“You got your suspicions of him, like the rest,” said Dubus. “You want me to tell you if they’re true, because if we shared something like that, if we both had the same tastes, then maybe I’d have known, or he’d have opened himself up to me. Well, if you think that, you’re a fool, Mr. Parker. You’re a fool, and someday you’ll die for your foolishness. I got no time to talk to foolish men. Why don’t you head off now? Drive on up the road there, because I know where you’re going. Could be you’ll find the answer in Gilead. That’s where Daniel Clay found the answer to his questions. Oh yes, he found what he was looking for up there, but he didn’t come back from that place. You best step carefully, or else you won’t come back neither. It gets inside your soul, old Gilead.”
He was smiling broadly now, the keeper of the truth of Gilead.
“Did you ever meet a man called Jim Poole, Mr. Dubus?”
He pantomimed deep thought.
“You know, I think I did. He was a fool, just like you.”
“He disappeared.”
“He got lost. Gilead took him.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I know it. Doesn’t matter where he is, or if he’s alive or dead, he’s a prisoner of Gilead. You set foot in Gilead, and you’re lost.” His gaze turned inward. His eyes stopped blinking. “They said that we brought evil to that place, but it was there already,” he said, and there was a touch of wonder to his voice. “I felt it as soon as I set foot there. Old Lumley picked a bad spot for his city of refuge. The ground was poisoned, and we were poisoned too. When we left, the forest, or something under it, took it back.”
He gave a small, sick laugh. “Too much time to myself,” he said. “Too much time to dwell on things.”
“What was the Project, Mr. Dubus?”
He laugh faded away. “The Project. The Hobby. The Game. They all mean the same thing.”
“The abuse of children.”
He shook his head. “You may call it that, but that’s because you don’t understand. It’s a beautiful thing. That’s what I try to explain to those who come here, but they don’t listen. They don’t want to know.”
“Did Daniel Clay listen?”
“He was different. He understood.”
“Understood how?”
But Dubus did not reply.
“Do you know where Daniel Clay is?” I asked.
Dubus leaned forward. “Who knows where dead men go?” he said. “You head north, and maybe you’ll find out. It’s time for my show.”
He hit the remote again, adjusting the volume as he did so, and the TV blared into life. He turned in his chair, no longer facing toward me. I let myself out.
And as we drove away, I saw the drapes move at Dubus’s window. A hand was raised in farewell, and I felt sure that in his clean, neat house, the old man was laughing at me.
In the days that followed, the police would attempt to piece together the chain of events, to connect body to body, contacts to killings. During the final hours of his life, Dubus made two telephone calls, both to the same number. After his death, the cell phone would be found beside his body. He had hidden it under a loose plank beneath his bed, and to discourage any of those entrusted with monitoring him from discovering it, he kept a half-filled chamberpot above it, its stink enough to ensure that no fastidious parole officer would dare to venture there, although it might have struck a careful searcher that, in his otherwise pristine house, it was the only place where Dubus’s orderliness appeared to have lapsed. The phone was prepaid, and had been bought for cash at a big box store one month previously. It was not, the police guessed, the first time that someone had helped Dubus to circumvent the restrictions on his telephone use in this way.
Dubus made the second-to-last call of his life minutes after Louis and I had departed, then presumably returned the phone to its hiding place and went back to watching his TV shows. Tick-tick-tick went the seconds, counting down to the moment when Mason Dubus would at last depart this earth and face the greater justice that waits for every man.
But that was all to come. For now, the daylight was gone. There was no moon. We drove on, speaking rarely. The music was low, the National on the car stereo singing of doves in the brain and hawks in the heart, and I thought of men with the heads of birds.
And in time we came to Jackman, and old Gilead got into our souls.
V
Revenge proves its own executioner.
John Ford, The Broken Heart
30
It is often said that there are two Maines. There is the Maine of the summer tourists, the Maine of lobster rolls and ice cream, of yachts and boat clubs, a Maine that occupies a neat strip of coastline about as far north as Bar Harbor, with high hopes and property prices to match, apart from those towns without the good looks or good fortune to attract the tourist dollar, or those that have seen their industries fade and die, marooning them in a lake of prosperity. The rest of Maine derisively refers to the inhabitants of this region as “flatlanders” or, in even darker moments, dismisses them entirely as residents of “northern Massachusetts.”
The other Maine is very different. It is a Maine primarily of forests, not ocean, dominated by “the County,” or Aroostook, which has always seemed a separate entity due to its sheer size, if nothing else. It is northern and inland, rural and conservative, and its heart is the Great North Woods.
But those woods had begun to change. The big paper companies, once the backbone of the economy, were slowly relinquishing their hold on the land, recognizing that there was more money in property than raising and cutting trees. Plum Creek, the nation’s largest paper company, which owned nearly five hundred thousand acres around Moosehead Lake, had earmarked thousands of those acres for a massive commercial development of RV parks, houses, rental cabins, and an industrial park. For those in the south, it represented the despoiling of the state’s greatest area of natural beauty; but for those in the other Maine, it meant jobs and money and an influx of new blood into dying communities.
The reality was that the forest canopy hid the fastest-growing poverty rate in the nation. Towns were shrinking, schools were getting smaller, and the bright young hopes of the future were leaving for York and Cumberland, for Boston and New York. When the mills shut down, high-paying jobs were replaced by minimum-wage labor. Tax revenues fell. Crime, domestic violence, and substance abuse increased. Long Pond, once bigger than Jackman, had virtually died with the closure of its mill. Up in Washington County, almost within sight of the summer playground of Bar Harbor, one in five people lived in poverty. In Somerset, where Jackman lay, it was one in six, and a steady stream of people made their way to Youth and Family Services in Skowhegan, seeking food and clothing. In some areas, there was a waiting list of years for a Section 8 voucher, at a time when rural rental assistance and funding for Section 8 was steadily falling.
Yet Jackman, oddly, had prospered in recent years, in part because of the events of 9/11. Its population had fallen rapidly during the 1990s, and half of its housing units had been vacant. The town still had its lumber mill, but the changing nature of tourism meant that those who now headed north came in camper vans, or rented cabins and cooked for themselves, leaving little money in the town. Then the planes hit and suddenly Jackman found itself on the front line of the fight to secure the nation’s borders. U.S. Customs and Border Protection doubled its manpower, house prices shot up, and all things considered, Jackman was now in a better position than it had been for a long time. But even by Maine standards, Jackman remained remote. The nearest courthouse was in Skowhegan, sixty miles to the south, and the cops had to come up to Jackman from Bingham, almost forty miles away. It was, in its strange way, a lawless place.
Just as we came out of Solon, the Kennebec appeared before us. There was a sign by the side of the road. It read: Welcome to Moose River Valley. If you don’t stop, smile on the way through.
I looked at Louis.
“You’re not smiling,” I said.
/> “That’s ’cause we’re stopping.”
I guessed that statement could be taken a number of ways.
We didn’t head into Jackman that night. Instead, we pulled off the road a little way outside town. There was an inn on a small hill, with motel-style rooms, a tiny bar beside the reception area, and a restaurant with long benches designed to feed the hunters who gave it a reason to exist in winter. Angel had already checked in, although he was nowhere to be seen. I went to my room, which was simply furnished and had a small kitchen area in one corner. There was underfloor heating. It was stiflingly hot. I turned off the heating, ignoring the warning that it would take twelve hours for the system to warm the room to its maximum again, then went back to the main building.
Angel was at the bar, a beer before him. He was sitting on a stool, reading a newspaper. He didn’t acknowledge me, although he saw me enter. There were two men to his left. One of them looked at Angel and whispered to his friend. They laughed unpleasantly, and something told me that this exchange had been going on for a time. I drifted closer. The one who had spoken was muscular and wanted people to know it. He wore a tight green T-shirt crisscrossed by the suspenders attached to his orange hunter’s oilskins. His head was closely shaved but the ghost of his widow’s peak stood out like an arrow upon his forehead. His friend was smaller and heavier, his T-shirt worn bigger and looser to hide his gut. His beard looked like an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the weakness of his chin. Everything about him spoke of concealment, of his awareness of his failings. Although he was grinning, his eyes flicked uneasily from Angel to his colleague, as though the pleasure he was taking in the casual tormenting of another was tinged by relief that he was not the victim this time, a relief qualified by the knowledge that the muscular man could turn just as easily on him, and if he did so it would probably not be for the first time.
The big man tapped a fingertip on Angel’s newspaper.
“You okay, buddy?” he said.
“Yeah, I’m good,” said Angel.
“I’ll bet.” The man made an obscene gesture with his hand and tongue. “I’m sure you’re real good.”
He laughed loudly. His friend joined in, a puppy barking with the big dog. Angel kept his eyes on his newspaper.
“Hey, I don’t mean nothing by it,” said the man. “We’re just having a little fun, that’s all.”
“I can see that,” said Angel. “I can tell that you’re a fun guy.”
The man’s smile died as the sarcasm started to burn.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. “You got a problem?”
Angel sipped his beer, closed his paper, and sighed. His main aggressor moved in closer, his friend muscling in alongside him. Angel spread his hands wide and patted both men gently on the chest. The barman was doing his best to stay out of the affair, but I could see him watching what was taking place in the mirror above the register. He was young, but he had still seen all of this before. Guns, beer, and the smell of blood was a combination guaranteed to bring out the worst in ignorant men.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” said the first man. “I asked you a question—you got a problem?—because it seems to me like you have a problem. So, do you?”
Angel seemed to consider the question. “Well,” he said, “my back aches, I’m stuck in the boonies with a bunch of crackers with guns, and I’m not always sure that I’m with the right man.”
There was momentary confusion.
“What?” said the big man.
Angel mirrored his expression, then his face cleared. “Oh,” he said. “You mean, do I have a problem with you?” He made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “I don’t have a problem with you at all,” he said. “But my friend behind you, on the other hand, I think he may have a big problem with you.”
The larger man turned around. His buddy had already backed away, giving Louis space at the bar.
“How you doin’?” said Louis, who had entered the bar shortly after me, and had spotted what was happening just as quickly as I had. I was now standing alongside him, but it was clear that he was the main attraction.
The two men took in Louis and weighed up their options. None of them looked good. At least one of them involved a world of hurt. The alpha male made his choice, opting for the loss of a little dignity over something that might prove terminal.
“I’m doin’ good,” he said.
“Then we all happy,” said Louis.
“I guess so.”
“Looks like they about to serve up dinner.”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
“I guess you better be getting along. Wouldn’t want to miss your vittles.”
“Uh-huh.”
He tried to slip past Louis, but came up short against his fat friend, who hadn’t moved, and was forced to elbow him out of the way. His face was growing purple with humiliation. The friend risked one more look at Louis, then trotted along after the bald man.
“Looks like you picked a good place to stay,” I said to Angel. “A little heavy on the testosterone, maybe, and you could have some trouble filling your dance card, but it’s cute.”
“You took your fucking time getting up here,” said Angel. “You know, there’s not a whole lot to do once night falls, and it gets dark like someone just threw a switch. There isn’t even a TV in the room.”
We ordered hamburgers and fries, opting not to join the parties of hunters in the next room, and moved to a table beside the bar.
“You find out anything?” I asked Angel.
“I found out that nobody wants to talk about Gilead, is what I found out. Best I could get was from some old ladies tending the cemetery. According to them, what’s left of Gilead is now on private land. A guy named Caswell bought it about fifteen years ago, along with another fifty acres of woodland around it. He lives close by. Always has. Doesn’t entertain much. Not a Rotarian. I took a trip up there. There was a sign, and a locked gate. Apparently, he doesn’t like hunters, trespassers, or salesmen.”
“Has Merrick been here?”
“If he has, then nobody saw him.”
“Maybe Caswell did.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Yeah.”
I watched the hunters eating, and picked out the two men who had targeted Angel. They were seated in a corner, ignoring the others around them. The bigger man’s face was still red. There were a lot of guns around the place, and a lot of machismo to go with them. It wasn’t a good situation.
“Your friends from the bar?” I said.
Angel nodded. “Phil and Steve. From Hoboken.”
“I think it might be a good idea to send them on their way.”
“It’ll be a pleasure,” said Angel.
“By the way, how’d you know their names?”
Angel slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. They emerged holding two wallets. “Old habits . . .”
The lodge was constructed around a hollow, with the bar and reception building on the higher ground by the road, and the rooms and cabins at the bottom of the slope beyond it. It wasn’t difficult to find out where the resident homophobes were staying, as each guest was forced to carry his key on a fob cut from the trunk of a small tree. The key had been lying in front of the two guys as they taunted Angel. They were in cabin number fourteen.
They left the table about fifteen minutes after their meal was over. By that time, Angel and Louis were gone. The two men didn’t look at me as they departed, but I could feel their anger simmering. They had drunk seven pints of beer between them during and after their meal, and it was only a matter of time before they decided to seek some form of retribution for being bested at the bar.
The temperature had dropped suddenly with nightfall. In the shaded places, that morning’s frost had not yet melted. The two men walked quickly back to their cabin, the bigger man leading, the smaller, bearded man behind. They entered to find that their hunting rifles had been disassembled and now lay in pieces on the
floor. Their bags were beside the guns, packed and locked.
To their immediate left stood Louis. Angel was seated at the table beside the stove. Phil and Steve from Hoboken took in the two men. Phil, the larger and more aggressive of the two, seemed about to say something when he saw the guns in the hands of the two visitors. He closed his mouth again.
“You know there isn’t a cabin number thirteen?” said Angel.
“What?” said Phil.
“I said, you know that there isn’t a cabin number thirteen in this place? The numbers jump from twelve to fourteen, on account of how nobody wants to be in number thirteen. But this is still the thirteenth cabin, so you’re really in number thirteen after all, which is how come you’re so unlucky.”
“Why are we unlucky?” Phil’s natural animosity was returning, beefed up with some of the Dutch courage from the bar. “All I see is two shitheads wandered into the wrong cabin and started to fuck with the wrong guys. You’re the unlucky ones. You have no idea who you’re screwing with here.”
Beside him, Steve shifted uneasily on his feet. Appearances to the contrary, he was smart enough, or sober enough, to realize that it wasn’t a good idea to rile two men with guns when you had no guns at all, at least none that could be reassembled in time to make them useful.
Angel took the wallets from his pocket and waved them at the two men.
“But we do,” he said. “We know just who you are. We know where you live, where you work. We know what your wife looks like, Steve, and we know that Phil seems to be separated from the mother of his children. Sad, Phil. Pictures of the kids, but no sign of Mommy. Still, you are kind of a prick so it’s hard to blame her for giving you the bullet.
“You, on the other hand, know nothing about us other than the fact that we’re here now, and we got good reason to be aggrieved with you on account of your big mouths. So this is what we propose: you put your shit in your car and you start heading south. Your buddy there can do the driving, Phil, ’cause I can tell you’ve had a few more than he has. When you’ve driven, oh, maybe a hundred miles, you stop and find yourselves a room. Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, you head back to Hoboken, and you’ll never see us again. Well, you’ll probably never see us again. You never know. We might feel the urge to visit someday. Maybe there’s a Sinatra tour we can take. Gives us an excuse to drop by and say “hi” to you and Steve. Unless, of course, you’d like to give us a more pressing reason to follow you down there.”