THE NEXT BAD PLAN
Half eight in the morning and Norbee and his pals were howling like banshees. In the kitchen, my mother’s cousin Trudy was shoving raw eggs and brewer’s yeast and, with tongs, the bristled ends of nettles into a blender as my mother hustled down the hallway to stand at the end of my bed and shake one of my toes hard until I jolted awake in pain.
“Leo,” she said. “Get up. Go stop that racket.”
No use to complain, to point out whose dogs they were. No, my mother had no use for any arguments I’d give. My mother wanted me up. She and Trudy had the blender tonics to fix and, with any luck, to get down Uncle Lud before she’d go to work. And more: she had to bathe Uncle Lud with downy cloths dipped in warmed-up holy water; make up the bed beneath him with fresh sheets dried with seven dryer sheets then hung out on the line just long enough to get wind-blown and sun-soaked, sweet-smelling and soft enough, she reckoned, not to chafe his newly delicate skin; and, last of all, murmur her secret, incantatory, and customized Catholic prayers into the open nest of his two hands. She had no time to waste on any nonsense arriving from my direction. So she monitored the hallway, her crossed-arm pose hustling me from bed to washroom to kitchen and straight out the back door before I was fully awake.
Outside, Bryan crouched on the old picnic table, mere yards away from the howling dogs, who gradually shushed at my approach as if ceding this dangerous intruder into my care. If Bryan glanced in my direction as I slid on the bench beside him, I didn’t notice. Bryan’s attention seemed pinned on my mother’s animal graveyard. Norbee, who longed for nothing more than to dig in that semi-sacred spot, wandered to the end of his chain and stared with us toward the newest grave, heaped high and decorated, as all the others, with a nice flat hunk of mountain shale.
“I never noticed all that before,” Bryan said. “Is that what they call a rock garden?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s my mother’s . . . project.”
“What’s she growing?”
“You couldn’t knock?” I said.
Bryan seemed to come more awake then. He cocked his head toward the driveway, where Trudy’s Monarch sat behind my mother’s dented station wagon. Well beyond, the tailgate of his old truck was visible. He’d parked all the way at the end of the driveway, pointing downhill for a quick getaway.
“Didn’t want to bother your mother and her cousin.”
Trudy scared the hell out of Bryan. He was convinced from local rumors and folks who knew her from the fire station that she could read minds and see the future. She’d once summoned a fire truck to an old sawmill a good five minutes before a blaze actually sparked. The truck arrived as the manager was beginning his frantic dialing for help. Bryan had been there. Fucking eerie, he said. No, Bryan kept his distance, oblivious to how he was riling Trudy and my mother by stirring up the dogs.
“Scared she’ll read your evil mind,” I tried to joke, “this early in the morning?”
I yawned, stretching out on top of the picnic table and taking a deep breath. That simple act undid me. I flew up and bent over into a hacking fit as if I were a pack-a-day man. I finally managed to catch my breath and shot Bryan an accusing look.
“What’ve you been doing out here?” I said.
Bryan shrugged. “It’s not me, man,” he said. “Check it out.”
He gestured toward the southeast and the dying hills studded with the reddish-brown boughs of dead jack pine. I could see now how heavy and low, how beleaguered the sky was, as if it were straining to contain the smoke we couldn’t fully see rising from the hills. The mountains to the south and east had all but disappeared under that lowered sky, the two pressed together. Even while folks had been eating themselves up alive with all kinds of new self-inflicted sickness down here in town, a mass of pine beetles had been at work in the forests as if to show them how destruction’s really done. It doesn’t take much, we’d learned, to ignite catastrophe among the weak. I could taste ashes, and I wondered aloud how long it would be before they closed the camp down the other way and Jackie would be back in town, taunting both the police and every local hoodlum she could before their own possible evacuation alert arrived.
“Looks like a bad one, eh?” Bryan seemed weirdly pleased. “That will empty the hills.”
“Jackie,” I said, shaking my head. I could guess what she’d have to say about Bryan’s plan.
I laughed as if I had heard her voice, crooning from an open car window in the made-up accent she used to mock: Hey gangsta, hey baby. Where’s da boyz at, eh? Gone ta do a roundy wit out ya? Bryan’s old friend Dean had been a wannabe. That was before he had all those babies and succumbed to Religion—which warranted a new epic tattoo (Jesus on the mountain) to finish the sleeve on his left arm (his two babies’ names and likenesses decorated the other arm)—and spent every free moment he was not at a meeting playing video games in the basement or selling for Flacker and the Nagles. Jackie sometimes felt guilty for how she got on him, considering his piss-poor prospects. That didn’t stop her from getting up into even crazier faces, like the Nagle brothers, who everyone knew were using Dean. She didn’t like that Dean sold pot for them at the little kids’ school and really hated that Bryan took over for him sometimes. She didn’t know the half of it, but she guessed, and she put on her Big-Bad-Girl-Don’t-Piss-Me-Off act the moment they entered the vicinity, spitting on the sidewalk like a guy. At least once, they actually understood she was ranting at them.
“You gonna get yourself killed one day, bitch,” GF Nagle finally said to her when he saw her alone at the Sub-Rite. “And it ain’t gonna be a pretty passing.”
“Jackie’s already left the camp,” Bryan said. “I saw one of the fallers getting coffee this morning at the service station. She’s probably sleeping away the day in her own bed. I would be if I were her.”
Looking up toward the hazy hills, I inhaled another harsh breath, and my eyes teared as if the fire had already begun to race toward town. With the camp closed, I realized, and Jackie already back in town, Hana Swann must be here as well, all gleaming and subdued. I couldn’t imagine such a sight on Fuller Street. Thinking of her made me glance at the Band-Aid on my finger, my trigger finger.
“I’ll grab the gun,” I told Bryan.
“Leo,” he said with a sigh, “you are the dumbest smart guy ever. Didn’t you see those hills?”
But Tessa, I wanted to whine. What about Tessa? How will I see her today?
“No way we’re heading to the refuse station today with that fire. Ursie doesn’t even know how long she’ll have to stay. We heard all the camps have to close. She thinks she might be up at the P&P through the evening, getting the place ready for the crowds,” Bryan said. “Auntie will be there, though. She’ll bring her home tonight. Even stay with her if I’m not back.”
“Back from where?” I said.
“Listen, your dad still go fishing?”
“Not in a while.” I grimaced, waiting for the joke. My father’s idea of fishing was to dynamite a section of river and scoop up whatever surfaced with a net, a technique that never failed to elicit downright ridicule from Bryan and Ursie.
“I need to borrow something of his from the shed then, yeah?”
“You’ll get it back before he gets home?”
“Oh, sure,” Bryan said, sliding off the table.
Not that my father would notice much even when he did get home again. Years ago, he might have inventoried that shed on every return, practically counting the nails and the spray cans. It had been a long time, though, since he’d showed much interest. He kept a few tools in the mudroom—old tools he designated for my use—since he’d kicked most of the chores my way, leaving detailed lists about firewood and caulking guns as if he imagined my mother and I were totally ignorant.
Bryan was already fiddling with the shed door by the time I found my feet again, an empty sack he’d been sittin
g on clutched in his hand. As Bryan retrieved the hidden key and unlocked the padlock, Norbee starting going apeshit again, and I had to go over and fill the dogs’ water bowls and throw a handful of kibble into the grass to shut him up.
By the time I came back, Bryan had already locked up the shed, key hung back on the cup hook, and he was hoisting his sack of borrowed goods into the truck bed. The set of his jaw reminded me of those months Bryan would leave school midday to take his mother to her doctors’ appointments.
“You ready?” he said.
“For what?”
Bryan climbed into the truck without answering, and a moment later, I followed, slumping onto the tattered bench seat even as the truck rumbled alive and began hurtling down Lamplight Hill. Something else was different.
“The truck’s not screaming anymore,” I said.
Bryan nodded. “I tightened the fan belt finally. Yesterday.
“Stealth mode,” he added, laughing.
We passed the corner of Fuller and Craig—vacant, of course. I knew I was being stupid. Tessa would have looked up toward the disappearing hills and known right away none of us would be heading to the refuse station. She was always miles and miles ahead of me. But I wanted her beside me so badly for a moment I was sure I glimpsed her racing down a side street toward our corner. I swiveled around and peered out the window, coughing again, so overcome I didn’t notice where we were heading, until the truck jumped the curb and Bryan manhandled it, backing it into a space right in front of the Sub-Rite.
Ours is the sort of town that can feel empty even as cars snort through intersections. The Sub-Rite’s parking lot almost always felt desolate despite a steady trickle of squabbling kids and dazed young mothers weaving through the lot to dodge the whey-faced, unshaven men in trucks that couldn’t ever seem to stay in the empty, narrow lanes. Nobody paying attention. It’s an illusion, of course. We are always watching one another. All of us in our private worlds, peering out as if no one can see us, but we’ve got the front row, you bet. As Bryan came to a stop, I could imagine him gearing up that minute for a nasty bit of business and half the parking lot taking full note of it.
Not that anyone would try to stop him.
“Ah, c’mon,” I said. “Don’t tell me you got another plan?”
“Sure do,” Bryan said, “I’m going shopping. A few last particulars.”
He pulled a couple of plastic Sub-Rite sacks from behind the seat.
“Your dad send something?”
Bryan grimaced. “Yeah, you bet he did, Leo. And Gerald Flacker invited us over for a beer and party snacks.”
“You wait here,” he said as he hopped from the cab. “Don’t let this sucker stall, or that mob will probably loot it.”
“I might loot it myself,” I told him.
Then I watched Bryan saunter between the clusters of Sub-Rite shoppers, all of them seemingly in a hurry, flat blind to everything but the ashy clouds above and their own fiery demands.
My mother had chased me off before I could so much as pinch a slice of bread. I rummaged through the pockets of my jeans looking for something—gum, a Tic Tac, anything to silence my stomach’s long, unwinding growls. Although I knew better, I even started to search Bryan’s glove box and found only a wad of notebook paper folded into thirds. They looked like the notes my mother used to write to me, inspirational letters that she’d slip into my pants pocket or beneath my keyboard, winsome, pep-talk notes like girls wrote to one another in a school yearbook:
Never give up, my son, she’d write. Be true in Your Spirit.
Life is hard, Leo, she always seemed to add, but you are a Strong Boy with a Fine Mind.
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, I thought.
Dumbest smart boy ever, now slumped behind the wheel of a truck he can’t drive, revving the stalling engine and waiting for his best friend to finish his petty larceny. I could barely bring myself to unfold the papers, and when I did, I was stunned to see each page covered with a string of taunts, all aimed, it seemed, at Gerald Flacker. But Bryan couldn’t be so crazy, could he? Didn’t he know what would happen if the Nagles happened to catch sight of these? Or, what if Mitchell Flacker stopped him, unraveled these notes, and called him out? The back of my neck began to sweat.
It was only then that I noticed just how packed the parking lot was. The road, too, was streaming tight with cars and trucks. Too early in the day for this crowd or this heat. The truck cab was sweltering as if it, too, were under unusual pressure.
“Get over here. Get over here now!” a woman screamed as two kids loitered by the bubblegum machines. “We got no time for that.”
She didn’t seem to realize that she and her overburdened cart were smack in the middle of the main thoroughfare, holding up an ever-growing line. And no one had time for her troubles either. One truck began to weave around her, coming dangerously close to sideswiping another car. A motorcyclist revved up the side, nearly hitting one of the kids. And the mom didn’t even notice. Finally, everyone actually in his own world. A perfect situation for what I finally realized was Bryan’s intent. I let the truck stall out, manhandled the gearshift into first, and followed him into Sub-Rite.
It was the Nagles who’d taught Bryan how to shoplift.
First and only rule: It all belongs to us. Or should.
You could say a lot about the Nagle brothers, but you’d never call them shifty. They claimed space; proud beyond all reason of themselves. Even—maybe especially—when they were in the thick of a bad piece of business, they cocked their heads up and chests out. It was their calling, their world; it fucking belonged to them.
Up and down every aisle. No Bryan. He must have been practicing every bit of Nagle wisdom, I thought, because he was flat invisible in that crowd of equally purposeful shoppers. I couldn’t find him anywhere. One of Jackie’s sisters was working a register, scanning items with a speed that seemed downright violent. I might have taken my chances and asked her for help if I hadn’t finally glimpsed Bryan through the clouded gray front glass of Sub-Rite. He was outside already, crossing the parking lot with that borrowed headlong white-boy gait, as if all the bits of knowledge he’d gleaned from his criminal brushes had attained perfect reason: a skill set for a mission I couldn’t imagine he’d really go through with. Not one head turned upward, and no one chased behind Bryan either as he tossed four full plastic bags nonchalantly, one by one, into the bed of the truck.
“You know I have to,” he told me once I caught up to him.
And even though I’d disagreed mightily, I couldn’t say a word. She was standing there again in front of us, holding out that white forearm with its trace of stolen blood that was, in actuality, a coursing river of a dare, and there was no turning away for Bryan. I could see that. Self-destructive though the path might be, it was the only one that made sense to him.
And it made no fucking sense at all.
What Bryan hadn’t figured on in his initial plan, what he realized last night once he’d gone back, he said, was that getting rid of Flacker had to involve getting rid of the Flacker operation, not just the man himself.
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“Be crazy not to,” he said.
A great wail of sirens began outside the Sub-Rite, even as overhead a bird-dog plane led what might already be a low-flying air tanker over the hills. Could the fire really be that close? If so, Bryan wasn’t kidding; this fire was swift and serious. Perversely, I was pleased. No way he would try a stunt in the middle of a town emergency. A police cruiser inched past the lot. Bryan looked right past it. Even when the sirens began again, rippling across downtown, he didn’t flinch. No one did but me, because clear as could be, I had heard another call.
“I need to go home,” I said. “Right away.”
OUT OF THE PAN, INTO THE FIRE
Albie Porchier couldn’t believe it. Broad daylight and they were brawl
ing. Thanks to Christ the head logging boys had left at dawn to assess the eastern-ridge fire. But there were others to think of, weren’t there? He cursed as he noticed the entertainer’s van was no longer in the back lot. Had they already chased his newest regular away? Ursie had run to tell him. She had rolled her cart to the upper rooms and was cranking through each task at an even higher speed than usual, anticipating an early finish and the progress she’d exhibit for Keven Seven, when the first crash pierced her and she flew down to the office, leaving the door to Room 18 wide open, her vacuum cleaner fallen to one side.
“It’s Room 11,” she said, rushing into the narrow lobby where Albie was training a new clerk, a thin-lipped white girl named Tracy.
Albie managed a quick glance at the computer over Tracy’s shoulder. Even so, he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Vincent was a moron, but even he should have known better than to check in a Nagle brother. You had to steer that shit back out to the highway, out of town even a breath, toward the half-ruined chain motel that had obliviously sprung up in this wasteland of a town and immediately gone to seed with bedbugs and fleas, fire and water damage. A Nagle brother stood more chance of harming himself there than doing much more damage to the place. For all the Peak and Pine’s failings, Albie maintained. He had a contract with the two lumber companies and an understanding with a few oil outfits as well. Bad enough the occasional drunken parking-lot brawl. He did not need the likes of a Nagle brother, the real promise of murder and mayhem and, hell, full-bore destruction.
“You two stay right here,” he told Ursie. “If I’m not back in four minutes, call the police, Tracy. And get in the back room there, and shut that door tight. Don’t want them taking anything out on you if they see you in here on the phone.”
Tracy bolted straightaway, forgetting the phone and locking the door behind her.
A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain Page 15