Death Spiral (17 page)

“I have to ask you a question,” Carole said.

Duncan couldn’t stop shaking, she looked so beautiful standing there in the moonlight.

“That man they found out in Cline’s bush. Did you hurt him?”

Duncan was struck by a bolt of lightning. He fell down on his knees. “No! God, no! I wouldn’t hurt no one. Oh, Jesus Christ!”

“You wouldn’t?’

“No! I wouldn’t hurt you!”

“I know you wouldn’t hurt me. I know that.” Carole’s face had turned as pale as the moon. “Good night,” she said. She went into the house and closed the door.

Duncan remained where he was hoping she might come back. When it was obvious she wasn’t going to, he got up on his feet again. Try as he might he couldn’t figure out whether he’d won or lost.

He walked slowly back toward the trees.

At least she knew what he was thinking about and what he wanted, he’d spoken up like a man, and that part felt good. Asking about the dead man didn’t feel so good, though. The part about trusting him not to hurt her did, it felt especially good.

It was all mixed up.

Duncan wanted to keep walking like any respectable grown man would, move through the dark grove of trees, slide down the bank to the edge of the river and retrace his steps. But he couldn’t.

He looked back at the lighted window and stopped. He could see Carole again. She looked more beautiful than she’d ever looked before. Ever.

“Don’t,” Duncan whispered.

But she did. She reached up and pulled the curtains closed.

* * *

The cutter was missing from its place beside the stable and so was the gentle Babe. Dandy had been left behind, snorting and stamping around in his dark stall, unhappy with flashlights blinding him, unhappy with two strangers sneaking in through the door.

“It’s all right, Dandy. There’s a boy,” Wilf said.

“We should have checked the hotels first. Jesus.” Andy beamed his flashlight around the stable and out into a larger, cavernous barn. A buggy flashed by in the light. “He’ll be drunk as a skunk by now.”

“That should make it easier.” Wilf circled around Dandy’s stall and turned his flashlight off. He ran his hand along the big horse’s neck. He could feel Dandy’s hot breath on his face. He was settling down a little now that he’d had a good smell. Wilf felt sure that the horse remembered him from before.

“Maybe I’ll go over to the shop and look around,” Andy said.

“When I was out here earlier I got the impression that Duncan’s more than smart enough in his own way. There’s a ton of axes over there, all shapes and sizes, though I doubt the one he used on that poor bastard will be there.”

“Not likely.” Andy stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

Wilf was about to tell him that perhaps he shouldn’t smoke in a barn, but relented. Andy was being a faithful friend, particularly given what he was personally risking. Wilf decided to keep a close eye on him instead.

“You know what bothers me.” Andy was trying to manage his flashlight, his cigarette and strike a match all at the same time. “Motivation. You’ve been away a long time, Wilf. It’s quite the sight sometimes, when Getty’s had too much to drink and he’s lurching around like a big steamboat down in the hotels. The boys have their fun, some of it more than a little mean-spirited too, but he just smiles and goes around hugging everyone. I don’t think he’s ever raised his hand to anyone in all his life. So what was his motivation?”

Wilf felt for Dandy’s velvety nose. The horse jerked his head away.

“Even if that piece of paper matches up, all it proves is that he was on that back road in his cutter at some time. Nothing more.”

“Shhh,” Wilf said, reaching out again for the horse’s head, but slower this time. All the way out from town he’d been on the edge of telling Andy what Joe had said, but finally he’d ended up remaining silent. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because Joe seemed to be leading him back to where he didn’t want to go. Ovens and death camps. In the light of Buchenwald it seemed uncanny. “Are you getting cold feet?”

“No.”

“We have more than the weight tether. We have that kid who says the man in the photograph worked here.”

“Right. But you told me Duncan denied it.” The beam of Andy’s flashlight fell on a dusty window. He went over to it, turned his flashlight off and looked out toward the dark house. “I should have passed what that kid told me over to the OPP. That was a mistake. I’m in trouble again.”

“I crashed my plane near Buchenwald,” Wilf said.

In the faint moonlight coming through the window he could see Andy turn to look at him.

“It’s a work camp in Germany. They executed thousands of people in there.”

“Oh yeah?”

“So I’m just wondering, what do you suppose their motivation was? It went on for a long time. No matter what drove them to it in the first place you’d think they would have sickened of it after a year or two. Or three or four. Wouldn’t you? What kept it going for so long?”

Andy turned his flashlight back on. He was looking uncomfortable. “Beats me.”

“I wonder what Adrienne O’Dell’s motivation was.”

Andy flashed his light on Wilf for a moment and then flicked it away. “Money. Property. Wasn’t it?”

Wilf could see Adrienne’s pale eyes again. “I don’t know,” he said.

They sat in the buggy waiting for Duncan to return. Wilf didn’t talk about Buchenwald or Adrienne O’Dell anymore. He began to talk about moving to Toronto. Arranging a place to stay. Organizing his lectures. Getting a reading list.

Andy talked about wanting to take on a few administrative responsibilities from the Chief of Police, now that he was a sergeant, but the Chief was not inclined to share. Afraid to share most likely. Not even the most routine ones.

Dandy was the first to hear Babe’s sharp hooves clipping along the frozen road. He whinnied and began to bob his head. Wilf and Andy scrambled out of the buggy, retreated into deeper shadow and listened through the cracks in the barn wall. The cutter jangled into the yard and pulled up. After a moment an outside light and a light in the stable flashed on. They could hear Duncan clucking to Babe as he led her out of her traces, took off her stiff leather blanket, her heavy harness. The stable door swung open and the steaming Babe and Duncan came in. He swung the big animal around and began to rub her legs down with an old flannel towel. He picked up a wool blanket, tossed it over her broad back and cinched it up.

Wilf could see Babe lift her head up over Duncan every once in a while and stare straight at him. Duncan didn’t seem to notice. He led her into her stall, carried a pail of water to her, topped up Dandy’s water bowl, gave them both a dipper or two of oats and went back out the door. The stable light and the outside light went off.

Andy crept through the dark to the window again. “He’s heading toward the house. In a straight line. He must be sober.”

Babe was thrashing her head around.

“It’s okay,” Wilf called softly to her, “there’s a girl.” Though he couldn’t see her, he could feel her eyes rolling. “Shhh, Babe.” Dandy was complacently munching his oats. Wilf walked up to her. “You remember me. Sure you do.”

“He went inside.” Andy said and moved toward the stable door. “Come on.”

Wilf liked the smell of the stable, the rich, earthy warmth of it, and the fleshy reality of the horses, all that indisputable living weight. He wanted to touch Babe’s great neck, rub her nose a little. It seemed to him to be the most important thing he could possibly do. And stay there forever. And everything else would fall away.

Andy was already rummaging around in the cutter by the time Wilf came out. A light from the kitchen window was shining across the yard.

Andy poked his head up. “Look in the back,” he whispered.

Wilf walked around to the back of the cutter, lifted the top of a wooden box fastened there, stuck his flashlight in and turned it on. The inside of the box lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. He could see a pile of rags, a clutter of tools and chains, a coil of rope. And a round iron tether. “It’s here.”

Andy scrambled over the front seat, peered in and reached inside. “Goddamn thing weighs a ton.”

“It needs to be heavy because of the size of the horses.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Andy said, his spirits on the rise. He jumped down to the ground and tried from there, finally managing to haul out the weight with a minimal amount of grunting and banging, and bracing it against his stomach, staggered off toward the barnyard to be out of sight of the house.

“Be sure not to drop it on your foot,” Wilf said.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Andy replied. He eased it down on the snow and tipped it over.

Wilf shone his light on it. “
JF
. Right there in the middle.”

“I see it,” Andy said.

Wilf was checking his piece of paper. “That big crack matches up. So does this one. And the little ones. It’s perfect.”

Andy looked up at him. “We forgot something.”

“What?”

“That we have to carry this bloody thing all the way back to your father’s car.” Andy surveyed the situation. “Maybe we don’t. I’m going to drive right in here with the headlights off. Give me the keys. If Duncan notices it won’t matter. We’ll be gone before he can do anything about it.”

“He’ll know something’s up.”

“So what? Where’s he going to run? He’s got nowhere to go.”

Wilf watched Andy skirt around the barnyard, wade through some deeper snow to the road and begin to jog toward a hill some distance away. The car was parked on the other side and as close to a deep ditch as Wilf had dared to go. It was facing the wrong way, though, and the road was narrow.

Wilf turned away from the weight tether. The light was still on in the kitchen. Strains of dance music began to waft across the yard. A shadow glided by the kitchen window.

Wilf stood there for a moment and listened. The shadow glided by the other way. Wilf began to limp across the side yard. The music grew louder. He peered in through the window. All the fighters and the bombers were dancing together on the ends of their threads, swinging to and fro, spinning, tangling. Underneath them Duncan was sprawled out in the old sofa chair, his head tilted back, a bottle of rye propped up between his thighs.

Wilf moved along the side of the house to the back kitchen and unlatched the door. The music was even louder inside. He crossed to the other door and pushed it open. The planes were still moving of their own accord. Now he could see that Duncan’s eyes were closed.

“Hello, Duncan,” Wilf said.

Duncan rolled his head to the side and looked at Wilf for a long time. “I was dancin’. Just now.”

“Were you?”

“Wanna see?” Duncan put the bottle on the floor, got up and began to spin, slow and ponderous and stately, ignoring the fact that the beat of the music was moving twice as fast. He put his arms out and closed his eyes. The planes began to speed up. The whole house seemed to tilt a little, lift up off the ground.

Wilf had to lean against the wall.

Duncan pinwheeled around and around. “Look at the monkey dance,” he called out. “Look at him dance!”

Wilf crossed the room and turned off the radio.

Duncan came to a stop. His matted curls were hanging down, shiny with sweat. His heavy smell filled the room. “I’m practisin’ for my wedding. I’m marryin’ Carole.”

“Are you?”

“Well shit, Wilf, I don’t know!”

“Did she say yes?”

“You know what she said? She asked me that same question you asked me this afternoon. It was just exactly the same. I guess you must think I’m stupid.”

“You’re far from that, Duncan.”

“I’m the monkey in the middle.”

“No, you’re not.”

“She works for your father. So do you. You work together. Don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“You fucked up every fuckin’ thing!” The planes were still soaring in the air between them. “Why did you make her ask me that question? You ruined everythin’.”

Duncan was looking as sorrowful as anyone Wilf had ever seen. “Duncan, she was just trying to help you. That’s all. We’re both trying to help you.”

“You don’t need to do that though, do you? Because I didn’t do nothin’.”

“No?”

“No!”

“You mean, you didn’t do nothing really bad? When you were with Basil? Is that what you mean?”

Duncan’s cat eyes darted toward Wilf. The Spitfire with its red and orange flames was slowing down, circling over his head.

“This is what I know,” Wilf said. “Basil worked here and he must have bunked in here too, because it would have been too far to walk all the way back to the DP camp every night. Where did he sleep?”

“Is that what you told Carole?”

“No. She doesn’t know anything. Look at it this way. We’re all soldiers in life, you just as much as anyone else and sometimes soldiers have to do things.”

Duncan’s tawny eyes blinked.

“You’re like me,” Wilf said.

Duncan looked away.