Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  Roxanne was sitting at the kitchen table, her face white and taut, knees drawn up underneath her flannel nightgown.

  “Did you call the police?” I said, jacking the three unused cartridges out on the table.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “She said it would be twenty minutes, at least. The deputies were on another call.”

  “Great. Remind me not to give Clair his gun back.”

  She looked at me, still pale, still wide-eyed. I picked up the cartridges, put the gun in the closet, and went to the kitchen counter and dropped the cartridges back in the box. I put the box back on the shelf behind the Ajax, then went to Roxanne, standing behind her chair with my arms around her neck. She didn’t move. I waited.

  “Do you think that was the right thing to do?” Roxanne asked softly.

  “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I didn’t feel like wrestling with them.”

  “Do you think that guy would have hurt me?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Would you have shot him if he’d kept coming toward me?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Just like that?”

  “No time to think about it. Maybe I would have fired one more over his head. Maybe not.”

  Roxanne was quiet. I could feel the pulse in her neck. It seemed too delicate, a dangerously fragile way to sustain her precious life.

  “Sometimes you don’t seem like the guy I met—what was it, almost three years ago?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’ve been assimilated.”

  “I’m serious. I feel sick. I mean, I could throw up right now. But you have this hardness to you. I know a lot of things have happened, but . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”

  “I was scared. I’m still scared. But I couldn’t show it out there. They would have been on me like wolves.”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s a hard world sometimes,” I said. “You know that. You, of all people.”

  Roxanne took my hand and held it to her lips, then put it on her chest.

  “I know that, but I don’t want it to make you hard, Jack,” she said. “I don’t want it to change you.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all an act. Inside I really was scared to death. Really.”

  It seemed an odd thing to say in an attempt to be reassuring.

  I kissed her cheek.

  “I’m going to go to Portland in the morning,” Roxanne said, so softly that it was almost a whisper. “I’m going to look for a place.”

  Now I was the one who felt sick.

  “Need any money?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Need any company?”

  “No. I don’t think so,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you’re ever coming back, after this,” I said.

  She didn’t reply.

  It wasn’t twenty minutes; it was thirty-five. I was sitting on the bumper of my truck when the cruiser’s headlights peered toward me from down the road, and then the side spotlights flashed on. I walked over and met the car as it pulled up. The spotlight flicked off. A flashlight flicked on from the passenger window.

  “You the guy wanted the subjects removed?”

  “Yeah. But they’re gone.”

  The deputy in the passenger seat was thin and young, with a long, narrow face. He didn’t get out. The driver, heavier and older and balding, kept the car in drive, his foot on the brake.

  “So what’s going on?” the younger deputy said.

  I looked down at him. The driver looked at his watch and took out a clipboard and wrote something down.

  “Some guys from Kennebec. One of them didn’t like me talking to his ex-girlfriend.”

  The young deputy’s eyes glazed over, just barely, a ripple of disinterest.

  “He beat her up and she went to court. I met her there and he didn’t want me writing about her.”

  “Writing what?”

  “For the newspaper. The paper in Kennebec. I’m working for them.”

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Jack McMorrow.”

  The older guy wrote that on his clipboard. The car was still in drive, his foot still planted on the brake pedal.

  “So what happened here?”

  “They made some vague threats.”

  “Then they left?”

  I thought of the rifle and the explaining I’d have to do.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Dispatcher said it was a lady that called,” the thin deputy said.

  “My friend. She was in the house.”

  He glanced toward the house.

  “Where is she?”

  “She went back to bed.”

  “So she’s okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So this is a domestic situation?”

  “Yeah, and I think the woman in Kennebec, she could be in trouble if this guy gets hold of her. This guy could kill her.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “At her sister’s. In Kennebec or someplace around there.”

  “Is that where this guy was going?”

  “His name’s Jeff. And, no, I don’t think he’ll bother her there.”

  The deputy behind the wheel yawned.

  “Well, if I was you, I’d take this up with the Kennebec police, sir,” the thin guy said. “Unless you want to file a complaint about the threats. You want to do that, I’d suggest you go to the S.O. in the morning. That’s in Belfast.”

  I thought for a moment, shook my head no.

  “Well, okay then, sir. If you have any more trouble, be sure to call. I’d talk to you more, but we have another call to respond to.”

  “The guy is really dangerous,” I said. “He could hurt her.”

  “I don’t doubt it, sir,” the thin guy said, his voice flat and mechanical.

  “He’s also drunk. Driving an older Chevy four-wheel-drive.”

  For the first time, the driver perked up and almost looked at me.

  We slept close together but felt apart. I got up every couple of hours and went down and stood by the window. Outside was impenetrable darkness that later peeled back before the glow that rose in the east. The sun had just skimmed the trees when Roxanne got up and went to the shower, taking her clothes with her. That was not a good sign. Going to get her overnight bag was worse.

  “I might stay with Kim in Cape Elizabeth. If I’m still looking at places and I feel too tired to drive back up.”

  “You don’t have to work tomorrow?”

  “I gave my notice. They said there was no point in continuing.”

  “Your young psycho is going to be disappointed.”

  “He’ll cope,” Roxanne said, folding a blouse and placing it in the leather bag.

  “What about me?”

  She looked up at me and smiled.

  “You’ll be fine,” Roxanne said.

  “What’s the kid’s name? Maybe I’ll have him over for pizza. We’ll get a video. Some horror thing.”

  “He’s seen too many of those.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I can see The Sound of Music one more time.”

  She grinned halfheartedly. I felt halfhearted too.

  “This stinks,” I said.

  “Jack, I’ll be back.”

  “Not all the way back.”

  “Jack,” Roxanne said. “Last night, three hoodlums came here in the middle of the night. They wanted to beat you up and do who knows what to me. You took your rifle—it’s yours, not Clair’s, so don’t try to tell me otherwise—and shot at them and into their truck. How do you expect me to feel?”

  “Proud?” I said.

  I smiled. Roxanne’s terse expression crumbled into a smile and she shook her head.

  “God, I love you. I don’t know why sometimes, but I love you.”

  “I love
you too,” I said.

  “Then why are things so crazy?” Roxanne said, zipping her bag. “Why are they? Why can’t we just watch TV and sit around the house and be normal?”

  “Because the road doesn’t have cable?” I asked.

  Roxanne shouldered her bag.

  “I’ll call you tonight,” she said.

  “Drive safely.”

  “You be careful.”

  “I won’t fire until I see the whites of their eyes,” I said.

  “That’s not funny,” Roxanne said, and she kissed me on the cheek and walked down the stairs and out the door.

  I stood there in my boxers until her car was out of sight. Then I stood there some more. Then I went and looked out back. Tree swallows were nesting in the boxes on the wall of the shed, and I watched them pitch and swoop, popping back out of the hole like paratroopers bailing out of a plane. There was a buzzing clatter and an English sparrow fluttered up to one of the birdhouses. A city bird invading my woods.

  Even the bird world was going to hell.

  I went to the kitchen, put water on for tea, and poured a bowl of raisin bran. I poured milk on it and glumly shoveled it into my mouth. I used to wonder what I’d done to deserve Roxanne. Now I wondered what I’d done to deserve losing her.

  The kettle whistled. I got up to get a cup and tea bag. And the phone rang.

  I looked at my watch. It was five past seven. I grabbed the phone.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello, may I please speak to Jack McMorrow?” a small voice said.

  “This is Jack.”

  “Jack, this is Donna. Donna Marchant? The girl from the courtroom?”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey, I wanted to tell you I really like the article. Really. I mean, I got up first thing and my neighbor—she gets the paper—and I really liked it. I was like, ‘God, somebody finally believed me,’ you know? But I didn’t expect to be right there on the top. I was practically the only one you wrote about.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Yeah, well, I thought it was important,” I said.

  “Well, I wanted to thank you,” Donna said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “My sister called and she’s all pissed off that you put it in about the bite mark.”

  “Kind of hard to write around it,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I thought it was fine. Hey, that’s what happened, right? But that’s not the only reason why I’m calling. Jeff called too.”

  “Up bright and early, was he?”

  “I don’t think he’d been to bed yet.”

  “Probably got into a good book and couldn’t put it down,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, he didn’t call me, he called my neighbor. A different one from the one who gets the paper. He left a message on her machine, ’cause he, like, knows I know her.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said I was dead. And you were dead, too. But he was gonna kill you first so I would know you were dead. He said some other things that weren’t so nice.”

  “Thanks for only giving me the good news.”

  “No, I mean, like, this really gross stuff.”

  “And he left this message on an answering machine?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A master criminal.”

  “If he had a brain, he’d be dangerous,” Donna said.

  “He isn’t doing a bad job without one,” I said.

  8

  Wednesdays and Fridays were my days to work out. At quarter to eight, I put on my workout outfit—jeans, boots, a T-shirt, an old blue chamois shirt—and went out to the truck. It was a bright blue day, vivid against the pastels of the spring woods, and I almost wondered if I hadn’t dreamed what had happened the night before.

  Then I walked out in the road and picked up a nugget of window glass.

  I got in the truck and started the motor and pulled around to the shed door. I slid the door open and went inside and got my chain saw off the workbench. The saw, gas, chain oil, and a toolbox went in the back of the truck. I got back in the front and made sure my ear protectors were behind the seat. Putting the truck in four-wheel-drive, I pulled ahead, then stopped. I thought for a moment and then got out and trotted back to the house and then back outside.

  The rifle went in the gun rack, the cartridges in the glove box.

  I was ready. Jane Fonda, eat your heart out.

  Clair and I called it hardwood aerobics. He was probably already out there, but he was a real Mainer and an ex-Marine to boot. I couldn’t compete with that, so I didn’t try.

  I drove up the road to Clair’s house and turned off before his barn. The path led past the barn, through a pasture and into a stand of maples, with second-growth stuff all through it. With the branches scraping the side of the truck, I drove up the road, following the ruts made by Clair’s truck and tractor. The path went over a rise and back down to a small stream that ran during spring runoff but already was subsiding to a trickle. I lurched the truck through it, then back up the hill on the other side, the tires grabbing at the ruts. At the top of that rise, the path veered to the right past two big beeches and came out into a clearing that had once been an orchard. Clair’s big Ford was parked on the far side.

  I drove over and turned off the motor.

  Clair looked up from his tailgate, where he was filing his saw.

  “How are the flies?” I said.

  “They’re good. Eating a healthy breakfast. What you got that for? Rabbits?”

  I glanced at the rifle.

  “And squirrels,” I said. “We’ll make some pie.”

  “With that thing, you’ll make squirrel burgers,” Clair said. “You expecting trouble, or you just trying to impress the girls?”

  “A little of both, I guess.”

  Clair went on filing, leaning with both elbows across the big Husqvarna. He’d already shucked his flannel shirt, and I could see the muscles stretched across his shoulders, rippling in his arms. Silver hair stuck out from underneath his baseball cap. He looked great for fifty-five. He looked great for twenty.

  “You gonna explain or am I gonna have to drag it out of you?” Clair said.

  I opened my tailgate and dragged out my saw, another Husqvarna, and my toolbox. The file was in the toolbox, along with wrenches, screwdrivers, a spare chain, and a spark plug, all of which Clair had showed me how to use. He liked to say I arrived on the dump road in pretty sorry shape, skinny and runty and not knowing how to shoot or saw wood. He called me his “project,” and had taught me how to do both. His wife, Mary, said I was the son he never had. Clair said if he had a son, his genetic imprint alone would cause him to shoot straighter than me. But he allowed that I’d improved.

  “I had some visitors last night who weren’t what you would call friendly,” I said, drawing the file across the first of the saw teeth.

  “What time was this?”

  “Around midnight, I think.”

  “I heard a couple of shots about then. Figured it was the Maynards out jacking. Almost got on the horn to John Philbrick, but then I decided to let me and him sleep.”

  “This was a different kind of varmint,” I said.

  “What kind’s that?”

  “Kind that doesn’t like what you’re going to write about them in the paper so they try to get the story killed.”

  “But don’t go through the editorial desk,” Clair said.

  “They went right to the source.”

  Clair tossed his file in his toolbox and reached for his gas can.

  “And what did the source do?” he asked.

  “We talked and they weren’t listening. Then one of them decided he was going to try something with Roxanne.”

  “She okay?” Clair said sharply.

  “Yup.”

  “So what were the shots?”

  “One just over one of their heads. One through the back window of their truck. I think it went out the driver’s window, but tha
t was open.”

  “I take it they weren’t in the truck at the time.”

  “No, they were standing in my yard, being chatty.”

  Clair poured chain oil in the saw’s reservoir.

  “How were they after you shot off that bazooka?” he said.

  “Whole different attitude. But this morning one of them said he was going to kill me.”

  “Forgets quick.”

  “Either that or he doesn’t forget at all. He said he was going to kill me and then kill his girlfriend, but he was going to do me first so she’d know I was dead.”

  “And this boy’s loose?”

  “Like a cannon,” I said, pouring gas in the gas tank.

  “Who’s his girlfriend?”

  “A woman I met in court. I’m writing for the Observer now. Covering the court in Kennebec.”

  “I know,” Clair said. “I read it this morning. That the girl?”

  “Yup. And the guy is the guy who bit her.”

  “And he came out to see you.”

  “Right.”

  “How’d he know about you, if the story wasn’t in the paper until today?”

  “She told him about it.”

  We lifted the saws from the trucks and started walking toward the woods.

  “The girl coming out to see you too?”

  “She calls,” I said.

  “What’s Roxanne think of that?”

  “Not much,” I said, stepping over a blowdown.

  “How was she after this brouhaha last night?” Clair said.

  “Not so good. She’s moving to Portland.”

  Clair’s face went somber. He looked at me, then stepped up to a big maple with a trunk a foot across. He fiddled with the choke on his saw.

  “You have to work at finding trouble or does it just come naturally?”

  “It finds me,” I said.

  “Well, sounds to me like you may have found it but good,” Clair said. “Next time you have visitors, don’t hesitate to invite me to the party.”

  He started his saw. It revved once, then sputtered and stalled.

  “I mean that,” Clair said, adjusting the choke. “Somebody who comes all the way out here over some little newspaper story isn’t gonna just forget somebody blowing a window out of his truck.”

  “It wasn’t that little,” I said. “And the writing was clean and evocative. Didn’t you think?”

  Clair looked at me sideways.