He wasn’t sure he wanted them to see the hat. He didn’t know exactly why he felt that way, but this morning it seemed safer to follow his instincts than to question them, so he put the hat in the trunk and set off for town.
32
He passed Tom’s house again on the way to Bowie’s. The Scout was no longer in the driveway. For a moment this made Mort feel nervous, and then he decided it was a good sign, not a bad one – Tom must have already started his day’s work. Or he might have gone to Bowie’s himself – Tom was a widower, and he ate a lot of his meals at the lunch counter in the general store.
Most of the Tashmore Public Works Department was at the counter, drinking coffee and talking about the upcoming deer season, but Tom was
(dead he’s dead Shooter killed him and guess whose car he used) not among them.
‘Mort Rainey!’ Gerda Bowie greeted him in her usual hoarse, Bleacher Creature’s shout. She was a tall woman with masses of frizzy chestnut hair and a great rounded bosom. ‘Ain’t seen you in a coon’s age!
Writing any good books lately?’
‘Trying,’ Mort said. ‘You wouldn’t make me one of your special omelettes, would you?’
‘Shit, no!’ Gerda said, and laughed to show she was only joking. The PW guys in their olive-drab coveralls laughed right along with her. Mort wished briefly for a great big gun like the one Dirty Harry wore under his tweed sport-coats. Boom-bang-blam, and maybe they could have a little order around here. ‘Coming right up, Mort.’
‘Thanks.’
When she delivered it, along with toast, coffee, and OJ, she said in a lower voice: ‘I heard about your divorce. I’m sorry.’
He lifted the mug of coffee to his lips with a hand that was almost steady. ‘Thanks, Gerda.’
‘Are you taking care of yourself?’
‘Well … trying.’
‘Because you look a little peaky.’
‘It’s hard work getting to sleep some nights. I guess I’m not used to the quiet yet.’
‘Bullshit – it’s sleeping alone you’re not used to yet. But a man doesn’t have to sleep alone forever, Mort, just because his woman don’t know a good thing when she has it. I hope you don’t mind me talking to you this way -‘
‘Not at all,’ Mort said. But he did. He thought Gerda Bowie made a shitty Ann Landers.
‘- but you’re the only famous writer this town has got.’
‘Probably just as well.’
She laughed and tweaked his ear. Mort wondered briefly what she would say, what the big men in the olive-drab coveralls would say, if he were to bite the hand that tweaked him. He was a little shocked at how powerfully attractive the idea was. Were they all talking about him and Amy? Some saying she didn’t know a good thing when she had it, others saying the poor woman finally got tired of living with a crazy man and decided to get out, none of them knowing what the fuck they were talking about, or what he and Amy had been about when they had been good? Of course they were, he thought tiredly. That’s what people were best at. Big talk about people whose names they saw in the newspapers.
He looked down at his omelette and didn’t want it.
He dug in just the same, however, and managed to shovel most of it down his throat. It was still going to be a long day. Gerda Bowie’s opinions on his looks and his love-life wouldn’t change that.
When he finished, paid for breakfast and a paper, and left the store (the Public Works crews had decamped en masse five minutes before him, one stopping just long enough to obtain an autograph for his niece, who was having a birthday), it was five past nine. He sat behind the steering wheel long enough to check the
paper for a story about the Derry house, and found one on page three. DERRY FIRE INSPECTORS
REPORT NO LEADS IN RAINEY ARSON, the headline read. The story itself was less than half a column long. The last sentence read, ‘Morton Rainey, known for such best-selling novels as The Organ-Grinder’s Boy and The Delacourt Family, could not be reached for comment.’ Which meant that Amy hadn’t given them the Tashmore number. Good deal. He’d thank her for that if he talked to her later on.
Tom Greenleaf came first. It would be almost twenty past the hour by the time he reached the Methodist Parish Hall. Close enough to nine-thirty. He put the Buick in gear and drove off.
33
When he arrived at the Parish Hall, there was a single vehicle parked in the drive – an ancient Ford Bronco with a camper on the back and a sign reading SONNY TROTTS PAINTING CARETAKING GENERAL
CARPENTRY on each of the doors. Mort saw Sonny himself, a short man of about forty with no hair and merry eyes, on a scaffolding. He was painting in great sweeps while the boom box beside him played something Las Vegasy by Ed Ames or Tom Jones -one of those fellows who sang with the top three buttons of their shirts undone, anyway.
‘Hi, Sonny!’ Mort called.
Sonny went on painting, sweeping back and forth in almost perfect rhythm as Ed Ames or whoever it was asked the musical questions what is a man, what has he got. They were questions Mort had asked himself a time or two, although without the horn section.
‘Sonny!’
Sonny jerked. White paint flew from the end of his brush, and for an alarming moment Mort thought he might actually topple off the scaffold. Then he caught one of the ropes, turned, and looked down. ‘Why, Mr Rainey!’ he said. ‘You gave me a helluva turn!’
For some reason Mort thought of the doorknob in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and had to suppress a violent bray of laughter.
‘Mr Rainey? You okay?’
‘Yes Mort swallowed crooked. It was a trick he had learned in parochial school about a thousand years ago, and was the only foolproof way to keep from laughing he had ever found. Like most good tricks that worked, it hurt. ‘I thought you were going to fall off.’
‘Not me,’ Sonny said with a laugh of his own. He killed the voice coming from the boom box as it set off on a fresh voyage of emotion. ‘Tom might fall off, maybe, but not me.’
‘Where is Tom?’ Mort asked. ‘I wanted to talk to him.’
‘He called early and said he couldn’t make it today. I told him that was okay, there wasn’t enough work for both of us anyways.’
Sonny looked down upon Mort confidentially.
‘There is, a’ course, but Tom ladled too much onto his plate this time. This ain’t no job for a older fella. He said he was all bound up in his back. Must be, too. Didn’t sound like himself at all.’
‘What time was that?’ Mort asked, trying hard to sound casual.
‘Early,’ Sonny said. ‘Six or so. I was just about to step into the old shitatorium for my morning constitutional. Awful regular, I am.’ Sonny sounded extremely proud of this. ‘Course Tom, he knows what time I rise and commence my doins.’
‘But he didn’t sound so good?’
‘Nope. Not like himself at all.’ Sonny paused, frowning. He looked as if he was trying very hard to remember something. Then he gave a little shrug and went on. ‘Wind off the lake was fierce yesterday.
Probably took a cold. But Tommy’s iron. Give him a day or two and he’ll be fine. I worry more about him gettin preoccupated and walkin the plank.’ Sonny indicated the floor of the scaffold with his brush, sending a riffle of white drops marching up the boards past his shoes. ‘Can I do anything for you, Mr Rainey?’
‘No,’ Mort said. There was a dull ball of dread, like a piece of crumpled canvas, under his heart. ‘Have you seen Greg, by the way?’
‘Greg Carstairs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not this morning. Course, he deals with the carriage trade.’ Sonny laughed. ‘Rises later’n the rest of us, he does.’
‘Well, I thought he was going to come by and see Tom, too,’ Mort said. ‘Do you mind if I wait a little? He might show up.’
‘Be my guest,’ Sonny said. ‘You mind the music?’
‘Not at all.’
‘You can get some wowser tapes off the TV these days. All you gotta do is give em your MasterCard number. Don’t even have to pay for the call. It’s a eight-hundred number.’ He bent toward the boom box, then looked earnestly down at Mort. ‘This is Roger Whittaker,’ he said in low and reverent tones.
‘Oh.’
Sonny pushed PLAY. Roger Whittaker told them there were times (he was sure they knew) when he bit off more than he could chew. That was also something Mort had done without the horn section. He strolled to the edge of the driveway and tapped absently at his shirt pocket. He was a little surprised to find that the old pack of L & M’s, now reduced to a single hardy survivor, was in there. He lit the last cigarette, wincing in anticipation of the harsh taste. But it wasn’t bad. It had, in fact, almost no taste at all … as if the years had stolen it away.