KILLING MAINE

by Mike Bond

  Overhead the male eagle was circling over his mate’s grave. If only, I thought, he could tell me where this guy went.

  Reluctantly I swung around and headed back to Lexie’s.

  SNOW TIRES for Bucky’s 150 were stacked in the barn by the John Deere combine. I put the truck up on blocks and switched tires, then used Bucky’s Sawzall to cut out the rusted floor plates and bolted two plywood sheets in their place.

  The truck’s underbody was an archaeological relic, something that had survived the hundred-year flood and ended up on a sandbank in the Red Sea. But the tie rods and chassis, brakes, brake lines, drive train, tranny, fuel tank and steering column were all okay; this truck was like an old tank that continues to fire although half of it is blasted away.

  At Levesque’s Salvage on Route 17 I removed the heater core from another 150. Unlike replacing most heater cores, with the 150 you don’t have to pull out the dashboard, just the glove box, and you can unbolt it and unhitch it from its two hoses in fifteen minutes. I paid $21 to a guy with earrings and tattoos, installed it in Bucky’s and was elated it worked.

  With snow tires the 150 was much more cooperative, trundling over snow and ice as if they were barely there. Like the locals I’d also thrown about ten hay bales in the back so she didn’t spin out the way a light-loaded pickup will do. Altogether we’d made significant improvements to our lives, and as we headed down to Hallowell to look for Abigail, my feet and ankles warm and toasty, and with a trace of dying sun across the distant peaks, I felt a ray of hope.

  IN HALLOWELL I checked out the Water Street bars hoping to run into Abigail, figuring she had to be getting her one-night stands from somewhere. I did find her, but in the most amazing way.

  As I slithered along the bumpy brick sidewalk toward Slates I heard a lovely woman’s voice slicing through the frozen air. A magical voice, strange words and the soft plaint of a guitar.

  There was an open table at the back. I ordered two Tanqueray martinis and listened, stunned, to Abigail.

  She sat on a stool on the other side of the room of perhaps twenty tables, in a long green plaid skirt and lacy black blouse, a gut-string guitar on her lap, no mike. She was between songs now, tuning the guitar, her ear to the strings, her long coppery hair hanging down across its neck. “Okay, folks,” she said quietly, and everybody stopped to listen, “now I’ll play an old poem of a boy gone to war, never again to see his beloved.”

  It was strange, ancient ballad, the language yearning and complex, her fingering of the guitar simple and sublime. Yet this was the same person I’d met in the Capitol cafeteria; there was a haunting shamanistic appeal to her, a connection to another world. I had that magical rush in my soul we feel in the presence of human-created beauty.

  She finished and tuned up again, which, I realized, was a way of keeping in her own world between songs. “Play Danny Boy!” someone called.

  “Ay, laddie,” she answered in mock Irish, “ye callin out fer a young lady’s lament, are ye? And i’tisn’t even Irish, that song.” Then in her normal voice adding, “It was written by an English lawyer, and the tune’s an old English ballad called Londonderry Air.”

  She clipped a capo two frets up the neck and dropped us all into a timeless elegy, words and melody straight to the heart. A story of love and loss in the Irish Hunger, a young girl singing to her departing lover, knowing she may die of hunger before he returns, if ever he can. And that when he does return and visits her grave she’ll know he’s there, and shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

  It was so heartbreaking to realize how often things like that do happen, how often ardent love is quenched by death.

  “What does Abigail like to drink?” I asked the waitress.

  “That girl will drink anything, long as it’s strong. But if you bought her a diaquiri I bet she wouldn’t mind.”

  A lovely idea. “Let’s make it a double.”

  The waitress put the double down by Abigail’s guitar case and pointed back at me. Abigail squinted at me through the spotlight and shook her head in what seemed annoyance. But when the set was over she put the guitar on its stand and came to my table.

  “You again.” She thunked down the remains of her daiquiri and sat.

  “I was going to say something stupid like we can’t keep meeting like this.”

  “It’s good you didn’t.”

  “Your voice is magical. I was mesmerized. And the guitar…”

  She shrugged: it doesn’t matter.

  “You must be Irish?”

  “Nuh-uh.” Her violet eyes captured me. “Brit, all the way back.”

  “But you know Gaelic –”

  “It was just a passion I grew up with. Other girls were into clothes and boys and I was into tennis and Irish music.”

  “Danny Boy was lovely.”

  “If that damn song doesn’t make you cry nothing will.” She raised her glass. “Thanks for this.”

  “Be careful, it’s a double.”

  “That’s what I was thanking you for.” She drank a good half and sat back, sighed. “God, I get thirsty up there.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, in front of all these people.”

  She sniffed. “I forget they’re there.”

  “There’s a lesson in Danny Boy.”

  She nodded. “That few things are what they seem.”

  THERE WAS NO END of things to talk about.

  The music had started in a fifth grade class, then voice and violin, then a guitar from her uncle who’d been in a Sixties garage band. “I could play folk,” she said, “the blues, AC/DC, all the great bands, but the Irish melodies were so entrapping I fell into them, fell in love with them, more than anything else.”

  At Colby she won so many tennis trophies her coach wanted her to try pro. But that meant exclusive dedication to twelve-hour training days and lots of other pain and suffering, and not to playing the tennis she loved. “I don’t care so much about winning,” she explained, “I just love the game.”

  Her first taste of politics was in high school junior year as a neighborhood organizer for the Gore presidential campaign. When the Supreme Court Republicans stole Gore’s win she vowed to give up politics, as it was useless to fight such overwhelming corruption. But after Colby and grad school she took a job in then-Governor Lemon’s office, got quickly disgusted with him and switched to a young Democratic Legislator named Tim Coleman who was going to reform Maine politics. After two terms in the Legislature he was now in his first in the state Senate, and there was no evil he had once fought against, she said, he didn’t now embrace.

  “He tell you all this?”

  “He actually boasted about it. One night when he was drunk he told me the four truths he’d learned in politics. One, Know everything you can about your enemies – that means everybody. Two, There’s more than enough fools out there to make you rich. Three, A friend’s a friend only as long as you can use him. And four: People are far stupider than you think.”

  “Maybe he’s right. We keep voting for these bastards…”

  “Jefferson said we need a revolution every twenty years, so we’re a little overdue.” She watched me. “You made it up, this story of our meeting. Why?”

  That got me, her change of course. “I’ve wondered if it was a dream, even.”

  “Bullshit.” She drained her daiquiri. “I don’t believe any of that – predestination, synchronicity, black holes.” She flashed me a predatory smile. “And I’ll soon figure out who you are.”

  “In the Old Testament Abigail was King David’s third wife, he who’d killed Goliath, collected hundreds of his enemies’ foreskins and waged war all his life.”

  Her eyes widened. “You looked it up?”

  “It means thy father’s joy in Hebrew.”

  “Huh.” She looked puzzled a moment. “That’s spooky. No guy’s ever looked up my name.” Her lips crimped. “Never had a father.”

  “That’s awful.”

  She forced a smil
e. “Can’t miss what you never had.”

  That thought was awful too. I changed the subject. “It’s a beautiful name. How the syllables roll off your tongue.”

  “It’s in the family from way back. A great grandmother, others before that.”

  I didn’t mention that though the Old Testament says King David’s third wife Abigail was intelligent and beautiful, this Abigail was beyond beautiful, she was enchanting. A strong-edged face, sharp brows, a long narrow chin and wicked small mouth. That lovely coiling auburn hair. Deep violet eyes that didn’t flinch.

  I thought about the guys who’d spent the last two nights with her. And about her husband who’d been dead six weeks.

  I wanted her, craved her. But that wasn’t why I was here.

  She sang one more set and we had a few more drinks as the other tables slowly emptied. In a haze of alcohol and amorous anticipation we shared tales of being kids and learning about the world, about truths and falsehoods, friends and enemies, linking our fingers and staring into each other’s eyes.

  The way her nose wrinkled when she laughed set me afire with lust and devotion. Her voice was like her songs – deep and contralto like Callas, husky and soft. The candles flamed in her violet eyes and her slim fingers danced across the tabletop as they had across the guitar strings, words rushing through her mind, her body dancing with every thought, her face like an ice wall continually fracturing.

  We got delightfully hammered. She let me carry her guitar in its case up the icy steep Hallowell hill to the gracious Victorian, and like the other guys I followed her up a wide winding cherry staircase to an oak-paneled hall then a bedroom with a wide feather bed.

  Her long lovely nakedness made me gasp. She settled herself atop me, sighed, biting her lip, “I could do this all night.”

  “We’re about to,” I said, feeling immense gratitude to her, the gods, the universe. For this great gift.

  It was wonderful. It went on for hours. But lying there in the darkness afterward I wondered if maybe it hadn’t been too easy.

  GRAY DAWN was seeping through the windows. I raised up on an elbow. “Can I see you tonight?”

  “Nuh-uh. I don’t do guys more than once.”

  A dreadful idea. I stretched out beside her, lacing fingers with hers. “Make an exception?”

  She Eskimo-kissed me, nose to nose. “In a few minutes you’re out of here.”

  She was lovely to kiss, the lovely angularity of her jaw and cheekbones and avid small mouth, her whole body smelling of sweaty sex, and tired as we were we got into it again. “So,” I says a little later, “if I see you downtown some night you won’t talk to me?”

  She ran a hand up inside my thigh as if checking the goods one last time. “I’ll tell you get lost.”

  “I used to do that, sleep with someone once then not want to see her again. It wasn’t just sex, it was something else.”

  “I love sex. Though in the morning sometimes I can’t stand the guy who six hours before was fucking my brains out. But so what, I never have to see him again.”

  With a strand of her hair I tickled her chin. “That how you feel about me?”

  “You’re cute. In the next life maybe I’ll keep you a while.”

  “Abigail,” I took her hand. “What are you afraid of?”

  She gave me the hard stare. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “My husband was killed last December. Again the pretend smile. “I’m a recent widow.”

  “Oh Jesus. I’m sorry.”

  “I get these moods, sometimes. Get angry, feel like killing someone. So I keep my distance.”

  “How was he killed?”

  She bit me, hard. “You can read about it anywhere. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But you’re sleeping with all these guys, you said. Like me.”

  “For a long time he and I didn’t have sex. I’m making up for it.”

  “To get over the pain?”

  “There isn’t any pain.” She sat up, lovely breasts tugging free of the sheets. “I feel sorry for anyone who dies. But my husband? I’d even stopped liking him. I’d already filed for divorce.”

  Wouldn’t that make her a suspect, I wondered, in his death? “So why’d you marry him?”

  “Back then he was different, fighting to save a piece of the world. He knew the chances are slim but had all this energy… Then it was like a vampire took him over.” She stared at me. “Who are you? Why am I telling you all this?”

  I ignored that. “How’d he change?”

  She took a deep breath and stared out the icy mullioned panes at the grim dawn. “What’s that old saying – If we aren’t liberals when we’re young we have no heart, and if we’re not conservatives when we’re older we have no brain?”

  “Because he became conservative? You were ditching him for that?”

  She laughed. “No, it was for the money.”

  “For the money?” This didn’t sound like her.

  “He started taking money from bad people – not for himself but his environmental group. Once enviro groups start taking money from the wrong people, pretty soon they’re pushing that agenda. Like the Sierra Club first taking $26 million from the natural gas industry in return for not challenging fracking, and now it’s in the news that they and other enviro groups took another $100 million in Russian oil money to fight fracking?”

  “It’s easy to buy, allegiance.”

  She swung her feet over the side and stood, a lithe pale silhouette. “What I’ve learned in six years as a Legislative staffer – working all the way to the top – is how corrupt it is. How big companies make millions off the Legislature, the taxpayer… They get to build a road where nobody wants one or replace a perfectly good bridge, create immoral tax credits –” she laughed softly – “have you seen the new Portland airport?”

  “It’s huge. Half empty – But your husband wasn’t a Legislator –”

  “The wind industry buys the big environmental groups, the unions, the NGOs, the media like public radio, the snowmobilers’ and hunters’ groups – whatever they need to get a bill passed. To get the taxpayers to pay for what the industry wants, not what the people need.” She went into the bathroom, sat on the can, flushed it and turned on the shower. “How’d you know he wasn’t a Legislator?” she called.

  I felt caught, shrugged. “Just assumed. Aren’t most Legislators older?”

  “Older than what?”

  “Than you…”

  “Some of the Legislators here are the same age he was… How’d you know?”

  “I didn’t. I was just listening to you.”

  In a few minutes she came out of the shower looking all slippery and beautiful. I held her, not wanting to let go. “You still didn’t tell me about your husband.”

  She pecked me on the lips. “Get out of here, sweetie. You’re history.”

  Driving back to Lexie’s I was frustrated to be no closer to who killed Abigail’s husband and why. Even worse, I really liked being with her and she’d just cut me off.

  Though in life I’ve learned:

  – Never lower yourself to “Let’s just be friends”.

  – If you want her, never give up till she asks you to.

  – But once you’re sure it won’t happen, Stop. You’re wasting time you could spend with other women.

  With Abigail I wasn’t to Stop yet. And whether she wanted to sleep with me again or not, I sensed she could help get Bucky out of jail.

  As I was leaving Freedom a big white cruiser pulled out behind me.

  Jail Meat

  ONLY AN EX-CON can know the fear when a police car locks in behind you.

  He’s maybe a hundred yards back. You take your eyes off the road to check your speed or look at him in the mirror and you aren’t watching the road and begin to wander and now he’s going to think you’re drunk and pull you over for that.

  He nears, slowly, like a shark homing in on blood. You’re sweating and
shaking and trying not to let the truck wander but now it has a life of its own, wants to wander.

  He’s closer. The tension’s so great you ache to find a driveway, anywhere to pull off, hope he’ll pass by. You try to keep your speedometer needle a couple of miles over the limit. Pretending you don’t see him, just a normal driver enjoying the scenery.

  He hits the flashers and in your bones you know you’re headed back Inside. You don’t know why. But you know.

  Because that’s the way it always happens.

  Once you have a sheet you’re jail meat.

  The same way marketing programs focus on people’s weaknesses, sending credit cards to people who can’t afford them, or casino coupons to gambling addicts, thus do the cops focus on us folks who’ve been Inside. We’re their bread and butter. And it doesn’t matter if we’re guilty or not.

  Even if we’re not they think we should be.

  So you pull over and roll down the window, a quick check of the cab that nothing’s out of place, like you know you’re guilty – he just has to find it.

  “You’re not the owner of this truck?” the cop says, peering at Bucky’s Maine registration and my Hawaii license, as though I’d been impersonating Bucky and now he’d found me out. Or maybe he thought Oahu was one of those places full of Muslim terrorists when I could have told him no, it’s mostly tourists, land developers and crooked politicians.

  I note his nameplate, “O. Trask,” assuming I’ll need it later, and explain him it’s Bucky’s truck. Being careful not to be too friendly because cops don’t like you to be friendly. They want you intimidated.

  “Where’s this friend, that you have his truck?”

  That’s a question I don’t want to answer. That Bucky’s in Maine State Prison isn’t going to help a bit.

  Trask sits in his cruiser punching in my ID and in a minute he’ll have my record. Undeserved as it may be it may someday cost my life.

  Cold sweat trickles down my ribs. I remind myself to breathe. My hands are shaking but I can’t stop them. I tell myself ten times Don’t worry: there’s no weed in this truck.

  He gets out of the cruiser, hitches up his gun belt and saunters back, tosses the registration and license in the window. They fall on the floor. “You’re quite a pair, you and Mr. Franklin. Two murderers, he’s in prison and you’re headed back there the moment we can find anything on you.” He thunked his fists down on the open window ledge. “You’ve got a bum brake light.” He hands me a summons. “Fix it in ten days or we bring you in.”