Go With Me (14 page)

“Lucky Jim?” asked Conrad.

“His real name was Hubert,” said Whizzer. “Some kind of an engineer. He worked on the power dam. Worked for the Corps of Engineers.”

“He’s moved on,” said D.B. “Lucky Jim has. Nobody was too unhappy when he did. Some thought he used to help out his side a little. He had very fast hands.”

“He didn’t mind if you thought that, either,” said Whizzer.

“No, he didn’t,” said D.B. “That was part of his game, the idea that maybe he was helping himself a little in the deal but you weren’t sure. It was kind of like a little bluff he ran.”

“So one night we’re at Wingate’s, and Lucky Jim deals out a hand of short stud,” said Whizzer.

“Five-card,” said D.B. “There was Jim, Wingate, Whizzer, and me.”

“Lucky Jim’s dealing,” said Whizzer. “Short stud game. He deals out four hands. And high man is himself with — what was it?”

“Jack of Diamonds,” said D.B.

Lester walked around the nearest of the sawdust hills and began to climb up to its top. On the soft ground he went silently. He wasn’t going far, but he didn’t want the other two to know that. He didn’t want them to know where he was. When Blackway showed up, surprise would be what Lester had. It would be about all he had, and surprise means nobody’s to know. Not your side, not the other side, nobody.

From the top of the little hill he looked down at one end of the bus, fifty feet away. He could just see Lillian sitting before the fire ring. Nate had gone for wood. He was out of sight. This spot was no good. You couldn’t see the ground in front of the bus. You couldn’t see, and the bus was too far away. Lester now saw he would need to be no farther than a few yards from the fire ring when Blackway came. Closer would be better. That meant inside the bus — or, better, it meant up on the roof. The roof was the best place for what he had to do. Blackway, when he came, might know he was into something more here than a couple of kids. He would know it. He would be looking around for trouble. But Lester would be right on top of him, and Blackway wouldn’t be looking up.

Lester didn’t think he could climb onto the top of the bus without Nate and Lillian’s knowing he was up there. He’d have to wait till Blackway appeared, till he and Nate had gotten into it. That way, maybe none of them would hear him. Meantime he’d have to get closer to the bus, around the other side. For that he’d have to wait for full dark. He watched Nate drag the tree out of the woods and start trimming the branches with the ax. Lester had a little time. He waited.

He tried to recall the big yard at Boyd’s. Was this it? It might have been. You couldn’t tell. It was different then. No sawdust. Boyd hadn’t had a mill. The logs they’d cut over the winter they’d driven out down the river in the spring. So, no sawdust desert. And no bus. Boyd had had a log bunkhouse. Boyd also had stables, a kitchen, a shop, but if anything was left of any of them today, and if this was where they had stood, then the sawdust covered them.

Directly across the open ground from Lester’s position, a big pine tree rose thirty feet above the tops of the younger growth surrounding it. There had been a big one behind the bunkhouse at Boyd’s. Was that the same tree? Lester couldn’t tell from here. Up close, he might know it. The men had left that tree standing for a purpose — if you believed them. It wasn’t just another pine, they told the young Lester. It was a woods wife. A what? There was a knothole in the trunk, they’d told him, at just the right height for — well, try it yourself, kid. Fifty men stuck out there in the woods all winter. Not old men, either. Nothing to do but work and eat and sleep. No women. How much checkers can you play? You got to feel like you couldn’t stand it any longer. Then, they told Lester, what you did, you gave some business to your woods wife. You got a handful of lard from the kitchen, you got that knothole greased up pretty good, and you went right at it. Woods wives, they called those convenient trees, or pussy pines. If you believed them.

Lester didn’t believe them. Though it was true some of those old boys, some of those old-time choppers, were different. You could say they were colorful. You could say they were individuals. The point was, if they didn’t carry on with the trees, it wasn’t because they thought doing so was in poor taste.

They took a good look at Lester, too, didn’t they, when he joined the crew at Boyd’s: only a kid, small, curly-headed, and cute as a cricket? Yes, they had looked him over pretty close. First night, Boyd himself had come into the bunkhouse carrying a big butcher’s knife he’d brought from the kitchen. He’d made sure they all saw him give the knife to Lester, he’d made sure they heard him tell the boy to keep it by him in his bunk and to go ahead and use it if he had to.

Boyd himself was no common piece of work: a three-hundredpound Irishman with a face like a great ham. He was probably the same way as the worst of the choppers, but he made a joke of it. Boyd had been a bosun’s mate in the Pacific during the war and he upheld the great tradition of the World War Two United States Navy: If it moves, fuck it; if it doesn’t move, paint it. Though it’s true that in the woods there wasn’t much to paint.

“You see this, me boy?” said Boyd, handing the butcher’s knife to Lester.“See this? Any of these animals interferes with you so you don’t like it, you cut it right off him, see? Lop it right off. That’ll slow him down.”

“What if he does like it?” one of the choppers asked Boyd.

“Then he can give me back me fucking knife,” said Boyd.

Years ago. Years and years. From the top of his hill Lester watched the fire Nate had built. He watched Nate and Lillian sitting together before the fire, talking. He saw the firelight shine on Lillian’s hair, where it lay down her back. He thought of Lillian’s hair spread out behind her, fanned out, on a grassy bank, on a pillow, Lillian lying back on her hair. You can keep your pussy pines. But, no. Not likely. Not for him. Too many years. Too many years and too few moments. What was he? An old man with a dirty mind. He wouldn’t know what to do with her, would most likely turn and run. Not like some. Not like Blackway. Lester thought of Lillian letting down her hair, fanning it out, spreading it for Blackway. That wouldn’t be happening, either, would it? Blackway might have picked on the wrong girl this time, it looked like.

The firelight made the night black. He could move anytime now. Still he sat, waited. Presently he unwrapped the parcel he’d been carrying. Inside was his uncle Walt’s old goose gun. It was practically an antique: a ten-gauge, with double barrels as big as water pipes, the kind of gun meant to be mounted in the bow of a skiff. The next gun bigger about got you into the field artillery, as Walt used to say. Walt and his wife had had girls, no boys, and when Walt died his wife had given the gun to Lester. He’d hung on to it, less from having any use for such a thing than from not liking to get rid of it. It stood in a corner at Lester’s. Irene hated it, she wouldn’t dust it, wouldn’t touch it. Then lately, when everybody got so worried about the terrorists and the Islamers and them, Lester had gone out and got a box of shells for Walt’s gun. Irene had mocked him, and Lester didn’t say she was wrong, but the way he reasoned it, he had the gun anyway. It fired. And nobody knew what was going to happen, did they? Did all those people, a couple of thousand people, when they went to work that morning in their office buildings, know that before lunch they were all going to be burned up and their buildings down in the street? They didn’t. What Lester did know, what he knew for sure, was that any Islamer or anybody else who got in front of Walt’s goose gun was going to be out of the fight for good.

Lester stood, a little painfully. He broke open the gun and took two shells from his pants pocket: fat red buckshot shells with shiny brass bases. They looked like things you might hang on your Christmas tree. Lester loaded both barrels. About time to do it, now, about time to get to work. Lester shut and locked the gun, then started quietly back down the hill in the dark.

“Jack of Diamonds to Lucky Jim,” said Whizzer.“Not much else on the table. We bet. Everybody’s in. Jim deals the third card.”

“Still nothing much,” said D.B.“Until Jim gives himself another Jack.”

“Wingate’s showing two Clubs,” said Whizzer. “What did you have?”

“Nothing,” said D.B. “We bet. Lucky Jim deals the fourth. Wingate pulls a third Club.”

“Jim pulls — what?” said Whizzer. “Did he get his other Jack then?”

“No,” said D.B. “He got a red trey. Jim’s got a pair of Jacks, only color on the table. He bets ten bucks. I quit. Jim, Whiz, and Wingate have the game. Pot’s right. Jim deals the last card.”

“Jack of Hearts to Lucky Jim,” said Whizzer. “That’s three Jacks showing.”

“Another Club for Wingate,” said D.B. “Four flush in Clubs looking at a possible four Jacks.”

“Or a possible full boat,” Whizzer said, “if Jim had paired a down trey. Either way he beats Wingate’s flush.”

“He does, if he’s got it,” said D.B.

“Not bad for a short game,” said Whizzer. “Lucky Jim’s high hand. He shoves in twenty bucks.”

“For this table, that’s a big bet,” said D.B.

“Too big for me,” said Whizzer. “I quit.”

Nate and Lillian sat side by side on the seat before the fire.

“What’s Lester going to do when Blackway comes?” Lillian asked Nate.

“Don’t know,” said Nate.

“I’m not wrong about the gun, am I?” Lillian asked. “That is a gun he’s been carrying around, right?”

“Don’t know,” Nate said. “I guess it is.”

“Blackway won’t be scared off by a gun,” said Lillian.

Lillian watched Nate lean forward and take hold of a little branch of the fir tree he had dragged to the fire ring. He broke it off and poked its end into the fire. The dry fir caught and blazed quickly up, sputtering and snapping.

“I ain’t scared of Blackway,” Nate said.

“Yes, you are,” said Lillian. “You say you aren’t, but you are. Everybody is. This thing isn’t going to work. You can’t do it. You and Lester together cannot do this.”

“Maybe not,” Nate said.

“Why, then? Why keep at it?”

Nate shook his head.

“We came here,” he said. “We are here. We came this far. We got to go through. You got to go through. That’s what Les says.”

“Les, Les. Fuck Les,” said Lillian.

“Take it easy, now,” said Nate.

“Hello, sweetheart,” said Blackway. “Who’s this?”

“Wingate sees him,” said D.B.

“And then,” said Whizzer, “Wingate shoves in twenty more.”

“So now it’s right up to Lucky Jim, ain’t it?” said D.B.“He knows what he’s got. Maybe he’s got his four Jacks. Maybe he’s got his boat. Maybe he don’t. Then what? Trip Jacks. Not too bad, but not good enough if Wingate’s got his flush. Does he?”

“One way to find out,” said Whizzer. “You got to go through.”

“You got to go through,” said D.B. “It’s a learning experience.”

“So Lucky Jim sees Wingate,” said Whizzer. “And Wingate turns it over.”

“Flush in Clubs,” said D.B. “He’s got it.”

“Jim don’t,” said Whizzer. “Jim’s got his three Jacks.”

“Jim’s got air,” said D.B.

“Most of two hundred bucks on the table,” said Whizzer. “Jim’s pissed.”

“He’s pissed,” said D.B. “Chucks in his cards, gets up from the table, and stomps off out of the room. And I said to Wingate, ‘Well, that was a game.’”

“And Wingate says,” Whizzer went on, “‘I knew he didn’t have it.’ And I asked him —”

“And you asked him,” D.B. interrupted, “‘How did you know? It was his deal.’”

“What with Lucky Jim having fast hands, you see?” Whizzer said. “‘How did you know?’ I asked Wingate. ‘It was his deal.’ And Wingate said —”

“And Wingate said,” D.B. picked up. But Whizzer cut him off:

“‘His deal,’ Wingate said. ‘My deck.’”

Lillian drew herself back into the seat and looked at Blackway. She couldn’t see his face. He stood in the shadow on the opposite side of the fire, just outside its light, about twenty feet from them. He had on a long, sweeping coat, a kind of duster. It fell almost to his heels, and in the play of firelight and shadow it made Blackway look even taller than he was, and he was tall enough.

“Who’s your friend, sweetheart?” Blackway asked. He stepped closer to the fire and looked narrowly across it at Lillian and Nate.

“This is a baby you got here, sweetheart,” Blackway said.“Another baby. Come on, where’s the men?”

Lillian couldn’t answer him. She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t speak. She looked at Nate, who had gotten to his feet. Blackway began taking off the duster.

Nate said nothing, but went right at Blackway, leaping over the fire to reach him. He got to Blackway before Blackway had shed his coat, but Blackway was ready for him. He threw the coat at Nate and stepped aside, letting Nate go past him and tripping him as he did. Nate pitched down headfirst and Blackway kicked him hard in the side as he lay, but Nate was up again in an instant and back at Blackway. Blackway let him come. He feinted right and swung at Nate with his left fist, but Nate got around it and hit Blackway on the side of the head. Lillian could hear that hit, a sound like the bursting of a paper sack.

Blackway staggered two steps to his right and nearly fell. He put one hand on the ground to brace himself and sprang back at Nate, who stood bent a little at the hip to favor his side, as though Blackway’s kick had hurt him. Blackway came at him low and tried to butt him in the midsection, but Nate caught Blackway’s head under his arm and clamped it there, then hit his jaw, twice, three times, with short downward blows as though struck with a hammer. Blackway went down beside the fire. He shook his head and spat out blood. Nate shouldn’t have let him recover, not even for a second, but Nate was hurt, too. Blackway was on all fours near the little fir tree lying ready to be burned, near the ax Nate had used to chop it up.

“Look out!” Lillian whispered.

Nate didn’t hear her. He threw himself at Blackway. Blackway grasped the ax and rolled out of the way of Nate, kicking up at him. His boot got Nate under the right kneecap. Neither man had made a sound before then, but with the kick to his knee Nate let out a yell and collapsed to one side. He grabbed his knee in both hands and rolled on the ground.