“Thanks,” she said.
It was a fast-paced game; they didn’t study their cards and they didn’t look at the board when they moved the pegs. Bennie agreed with the man with the long gray beard: the beer was good.
When the deal switched, Bennie asked, “Ray LaBrecque—you know him?” The words came out of his mouth more quickly than he’d wanted them to, but the two men didn’t seem to mind.
The bearded man smirked and peered across at his opponent. They both started laughing. Bennie joined in, just a low chuckle.
“My name’s Zander,” the man with the beard said. “I’m a cousin of the LaBrecques’. A distant one, thank God. This guy here”—he squinted, slowly and dramatically pointing at the skinny man in the blue flannel—“that’s my second cousin Ray LaBrecque. We call him Dog.” Dog nodded. “And that guy over there, the drunk guy with the green hat, he’s Ray LaBrecque, too. They call him Sid, for some reason. Why do they call him Sid?”
They all looked over in Sid’s direction, at the table beside them. Sid was laughing and drinking from a bottle of Dr. McGillicuddy’s Men-tholmint Schnapps. The tendons in his neck were strained.
“His dad’s name is Paul,” said Dog.
“Yeah,” said Zander.
“But everybody calls him Sid.”
Zander looked at Dog, waiting.
Dog shrugged. “Even though his name is Ray.”
“Anyway,” said Zander. “There are probably four or five Ray LaBrecques in town.”
“Seven,” said Dog, and he seemed pleased with this correction.
“Seven Ray LaBrecques,” said Zander, smiling, pulling on his beard.
Dog glanced at the cribbage board before looking up at Bennie and asking, “You wanted to know about Ray LaBrecque?”
“Oh,” Bennie said. “There was a guy named Ray LaBrecque from up this way, I think—anyway, he was down on the island a few weeks ago. Meadow Island. That’s where we’re from.”
“That’s Little Ray,” said Dog. “He’s Big Ray’s nephew. He’s been away for a few weeks.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too,” said Zander. “Some folks are looking for him. He’ll turn up, though. He’s a tough kid.”
“He ain’t lost,” said Dog. “He’s just off doing his thing.”
“Big kid. Strong and hardworking. Goes up to New Brunswick a lot.”
“They like him at that logging camp, seems so. He’s a big strong kid.”
“He’s bigger than Big Ray, ain’t he, Dog?”
“Ray Junior’s pretty big,” said Dog.
“Yup, Ray Junior might be bigger than Little Ray, probably. Fatter, anyway.”
Dog looked at them. “Fatter. Definitely.”
Zander asked, “What was he doing down there, anyway?”
“Sea urchins,” said Bennie. “He was looking for sea urchins.”
Zander told them he’d seen Ray a while back, during the cold snap in February, flushing out the radiator in his cousin’s truck. That’s when Ray had told Dog he planned to go to the coast for a fishing job.
Dog and Zander had more to say about Little Ray: he rode his motorcycle all year round, he went up to Canada often in the winter to trap marten, he’d been the hard-charging center for the hockey team—they recalled the game against Lewiston when he netted five goals—and he dated a beautiful girl. They spoke in tones reserved for the kid you shake your head at, smiling, knowing you’ve never been quite so lucky.
“He got lost in the snow,” said Helen. “It was dark and snowing hard.”
“I’ve heard some people are worried.” Dog scratched his neck. “But I’ve got a feeling the big fella’s got everyone fooled.”
“Little Ray’s still got to be bigger than Ray Junior,” said Zander. “Even though Ray Junior is fat.”
“Ray Junior just sits around, listens to classical music, and collects disability,” said Zander.
“I’d take Little Ray over Ray Junior any day,” said Dog.
“Well, one thing’s decided. You’re the Ray LaBrecque who drinks the most beer,” said Zander. “You’re the drunkest Ray LaBrecque.”
“Not drunker than Sid,” said Dog, aiming his hand toward the table beside them.
“You’re the drunkest Ray LaBrecque who’s not an actual drunk,” said Zander.
“I guess so,” he said, raising his can of Busch. They both laughed.
“Little Ray, yeah, he’s a good kid,” said Zander. “Raised right. Both his parents died, but his uncle’s a good man.”
“Little Ray’s girlfriend—she’s here,” said Dog. “She’s right over there.” He pointed across the room.
“Martha,” said Zander.
“Sweet kid,” said Dog.
“Irish,” added Zander.
She was standing, collecting the paper plates from her table. “There she is, that’s her,” said Zander. She looked calm and easy in her movements, and Bennie watched as she dumped the pizza crusts from one of the plates into a teenage boy’s lap. She kept a straight face but everyone around her was laughing. She was wearing a Patriots T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt, and black jeans. To see her there in the Tavis Falls Grange, looking like herself—the same black hair and thin face—amid an assembly of strangers made Bennie feel like he was watching a movie. It made him feel old. Helen squeezed his arm. For her, seeing Martha must have felt more real—they’d never met.
“Yup, that’s her,” said Zander.
Arthur was getting ready to speak; he was standing behind the middle of the three podiums draped with purple cloth. People were talking and laughing and the noise in the hall had become riotous. There were a few tables where men were passing around large plastic bottles of LTD whiskey.
Arthur tapped a knife against a glass, but no one could hear him, so he started waving his arms, still holding the glass and the knife. That didn’t work, either. He tried yelling above the racket. His mouth was moving, and no one else seemed to notice. Finally, he set the knife and the glass on a nearby table and put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The crowd quieted down, slowly at first, and then, as though Arthur were about to lead them in a hymn, the Grange was silent.
“Hello,” said Arthur. “Welcome.”
There was a spattering of murmured replies.
“I suppose you’d like to know why we’re all gathered here,” he said.
A few tables away, a man raised a handle bottle of LTD and said, almost inaudibly, “We know why we’re here.” This got a few laughs, but mostly people were whispering to their friends, asking what it was the drunk man had said. Across the way, Martha had her arm draped around an older woman sitting next to her.
“What’s that?” asked Arthur, with a smile. No one answered, so he continued, “Anyway, I’d like to talk about why we’re all here. And I don’t just mean here as in here at the Grange. I mean here in the sense of being here, if you will, on Earth, and here in the sense of doing what we’re doing.”
Bennie was already starting to feel embarrassed for Arthur, but everyone remained quiet as he continued.
“The question I’d like to ask each of you is why.” He lingered on this last word.
After a few seconds of silence, a red-faced, curly-haired woman across the room said, “Why what?”
“Why here, why now?” said Arthur, calmly.
There was more silence, so Arthur spoke up again. “I mean, why are we here together? What brought us here tonight?”
A few tables over, one of the woodsmen said, “He drug me here,” and he pushed the guy sitting next to him. The two men were framed by one of the tall windows with dark panes; snow blew against the glass.
“Okay, out of companionship,” said Arthur, clasping his hands together. “Some of you were convinced to come here by your friends.”
“He’s not my friend,” said the man, shoving the guy next to him again. They laughed.
“Why else?”
Zander shouted, “For the food and the beer. Saint Paddy’s Day!” He r
aised his can, and nearly everyone in the hall raised a glass or can and cheered.
“Yes, of course,” said Arthur. “There’s nourishment for our bodies, yes. What I’m getting at, though, is the deeper meaning of why we’re here. How about fate? Do you think there might be something steering us all down the same road?”
“He drug me here,” the woodsman said again, and he pushed his friend a third time.
“I met a young gentleman named Bennie tonight,” said Arthur. “And he’s kindly volunteered to help me in my presentation.”
Helen leaned over and whispered, “You did?”
Bennie had no other choice than to stand and crutch his way up to the front of the hall. A slick sheen of sweat covered Arthur’s face as he looked out at the audience. Bennie saw Martha, who didn’t seem surprised by his presence in the hall; he nodded in her direction, and she laughed, shaking her head. Arthur handed Bennie a stack of white cardboard placards. The one on top had the word GOODNESS printed on it in big block letters.
“Life can seem confusing,” Arthur said. “We don’t always know the meaning of why we’re here, but we know we’re here. And we want to know the meaning, don’t we?”
The man who spoke next stood up and addressed Arthur with an even, well-mannered voice. He was probably in his sixties and was wearing a red checked wool jacket. His face looked banged up, but his silver hair was thick and neatly combed. “No one told us this’d be a church occasion, Mr. Page. It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, right? I’m drinking a toast to you and your assistant up there, friend.”
The crowd started cheering. Bennie wanted poor Arthur to let everyone know with a thunderbolt of purpose and conviction why they were all gathered in the Grange. The GOODNESS placard wasn’t helping. The ugly man with the neat silver hair sat down, but the crowd was still clapping, or tipping back beer cans.
“You bring up an interesting point,” said Arthur, raising a finger thoughtfully. He nodded his head a few times and meted out another dramatic pause. “I was there once myself, in your same shoes, turning my back on the serious questions.” His eyes darted over at Bennie, and then he quickly flipped through the placards Bennie was holding. He pulled one out that said QUESTIONS? He had all eyes on him now. “I was there. Letting my life burn along like a wick through a candle. Oblivious and undecided.” Arthur’s face was stern. He turned back to Bennie and pulled out a different sign. Bennie glanced down at it—it read PEACE.
“This is what we’re all after, right?”
The crowd agreed, quietly.
“And this?” he asked, taking away the PEACE sign and revealing one that said LOVE.
Whistles, applause, laughter. Someone yelled, “I don’t suppose you have a ‘BEER’ poster in there, do you?”
Arthur smiled in a sportsmanlike way. He looked down at his shoes for a moment, and the crowd quieted again. Then he continued in a gentle voice. “When you feel this resistance—this resistance to good and pure things in the world, you know who’s responsible, don’t you?” He let the question linger in the hall for a second or two before wiping sweat from his forehead and turning again toward Bennie. From the back of the stack Arthur pulled out another placard and placed it in full view. The crowd gasped. Three or four men stood up and threw empty beer cans, which fluttered before landing at Bennie’s feet. He peeked over the front of the placard and saw the word SATAN. Below it was a well-rendered drawing of a devil, with horns and seething eyes, a triangle tail and a pitchfork.
Arthur needed to yell now to be heard, and his voice was growing hoarse. He was smiling, desperately. “If you think this is nothing but a joke, then the joke’s on you. I’m sorry to say this, but Satan is alive and well. You can turn your back on him, though, my friends! Put the devil out of work!”
Those who’d been throwing beer cans earlier had started to crumple them up for better loft and aim, and the poster Bennie held was getting pelted. He held it in front of his face. He felt someone grab his arm. He turned and saw it was Helen. “Just put the posters down, Bennie,” she said, covering her head.
She led him away from the front of the room; Arthur had his arms folded across his chest and stared confidently out at the people in the hall, not watching Helen and Bennie as they left. They found Martha in the back of the room, near the kitchen. “Is this what it’s always like here?” he asked.
“I can’t believe it’s you, Bennie,” she said, the lights from the rafters reflecting in her light blue eyes. Helen put out her hand and introduced herself, and Bennie was pleased when they seemed to show a warmness toward each other. Helen told her they’d met Arthur Page earlier in the day, when he hadn’t seemed like such a nut, and Martha laughed. She said almost everyone in the Grange knew he was a kook; they’d come for the party and the free lasagna.
When they moved into the kitchen, where it was quieter, Helen didn’t waste time; she told Martha they were in town because they were concerned about her. Bennie told her they’d been to the snowfields; he told her how deep the snow was, and how tangled the brambles were, and what it must have been like to run through the woods during that storm. If Ray had been out there, said Bennie, there was a real chance he’d gotten hurt.
She shook her head, then looked away. “No,” she said.
“ ‘No’?”
“He’ll hitchhike into town tomorrow, just watch. Or he’ll drive back on his motorcycle. He’s done this before. I know he’ll come back and laugh at me for getting upset.”
“You really believe that?” asked Helen. Bennie worried that she was being too direct.
“Or he’s off sea urchin diving,” Martha said. “That definitely could be what he’s doing. Especially because I told him I didn’t want him to go, so that’s probably exactly what he’s doing—and he’s hiding from me because he knows I think it’s dangerous.”
Bennie wondered if everyone in Tavis Falls was delusional and unwilling to accept the truth, or if there was something truly extraordinary about Ray LaBrecque—that he was impervious to harm, blasting along on a motorcycle through the wilds of Canada.
“You don’t think there’s any chance he’s really missing?” asked Helen.
When Martha’s tears came, she hid her face in her hands. He could see how exhausted she was. He hugged her. Helen, too, put an arm around her.
“Just because I’m crying doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s alive,” said Martha, shaking her head, with red eyes.
The shouting started up again in the other room. Through the doorway they saw five or six men gathered in a tight semicircle up by the podium, yelling at Arthur and Nancy and another of Arthur’s cohorts. It was loud, but so far people seemed to be keeping their hands to themselves.
Over the noise Helen said, “Come back to the island with us, Martha. We can look for him. We can go out to where the urchin divers are and check if he’s there. We can search the snowfields. We can figure out what happened.”
“I don’t think I can handle seeing Littlefield right now,” Martha said.
“You won’t have to,” said Helen. “You can stay at my house.”
Martha seemed embarrassed to have cried in front of them. When she pulled her sweatshirt on over her head, scooping her ponytail out of the hood, she smiled again. Helen made another plea to Martha—she told her they’d keep looking for Ray as long as it would take.
“Why did you guys come all this way?” she asked.
“We want to help you,” said Bennie.
“There must be heat on Littlefield,” said Martha. “And that probably won’t go away until we find Ray.” She paused. “Well, I need to be back at Rosie’s on Monday, anyway. And my car doesn’t have snow tires.”
Bennie was amazed by the matter-of-fact way Martha approached the issue of Littlefield. He wondered if she would start asking, at some point, if he and Helen suspected Littlefield’s involvement, too. For now, though, her concerns seemed more practical.
Before they left, Bennie told them he wanted to give Gwen a call wit
h an update. Helen and Martha went out to warm up the car, and Bennie squeezed past a loud group of kids who were finishing the pizza, eating it directly from the boxes. The phone was mounted to the wall in the corner. He pressed his back against the warm wall, staring at his fingers as he dialed the number. When it started ringing he watched the group of junior high kids attack the leftovers, the boys in faded jean jackets, the girls in ski parkas.
When Gwen picked up, she didn’t say hello.
“Gwen?”
She whispered, “Bennie, you’ve got to come home. Now.”
He was staring at the back of a teenage girl’s head, at the way her short blond hair brushed the collar of her ski jacket. He asked Gwen what had happened. She didn’t respond, so he asked her again. She said, softly, “He’s here.”
“I need a few more details, Gwen. Why are you whispering?”
“You’ve got to come home,” she said. What she said next he could barely hear. “The guy who’s been missing. Ray. He’s here. In the Manse.”
Bennie knew the phone was in his hand, but otherwise he couldn’t feel anything except a dull pulse somewhere deep in his head. Two of the boys in jean jackets started wrestling with each other—laughing but grappling, hard. One of them backed into him and with his free hand Bennie shoved them and they toppled over. The boys continued wrestling, but everyone in the kitchen was looking at Bennie. He said to Gwen, “We’re coming. Are you okay?”
“Hold on,” she said. She’d taken her mouth away from the receiver and he heard her talking to someone else, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then all he heard was the dial tone. He called back. It was busy. He called back four times, and each time: busy.
He weaved through the crowd to the door and crutched out to the Skylark. Martha needed to get a few things from Ray’s trailer, so they drove out to the ridge above town, fishtailing on an unplowed county road. Ray lived behind a snow-covered blueberry field. Martha left the car and high-stepped through the drifts, up a short flight of stairs, inside. A light blinked on.
In the dark, cold car Helen asked, “Did you talk to Littlefield?”
“I talked to Gwen,” he said, swallowing hard. “She says Ray LaBrecque is alive. He’s at our house.”
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