A car, in other words, with some history.
Had Locke known this, he might have considered the nature of the vehicle’s
current
owner.
The driver stood up as a raving cliché: black cap, black driving gloves, a long tuxedo. Sandy blonde hair stuck out from behind the cap, and the man had a few days’ growth of whiskers.
Everybody trying to look like Mickey Rourke,
Locke guessed.
The young guys these days think it’s cool to look like shit.
“Mr. Locke?”
“Uh, yes,” Locke stammered once he was confronted by the driver’s reality. “I’ve been invited to—”
“Mr. Lethe is very much looking forward to your arrival. Let me get your bag.”
The man got out instantaneously, as Locke was dismissing, “Oh, that’s not necessary. It’s only a small bag—”
The driver seemed to not hear him at all, grabbing Locke’s travel bag and depositing it promptly into the truck.
Christ,
Locke thought.
I hope this guy doesn’t expect a decent tip.
“Mr. Locke?”
Now the driver was holding open the rear door for him. Locke awkwardly nodded his thanks and slid in across a long sealskin seat. The door shut, with almost no sound.
Then they were pulling off.
Locke felt lulled in quiet and comfort.
These things really do ride smooth.
Before him stood a pane of smoked glass, separating Locke from the confines of the driver. Below that, mounted along the back of the front seat, was a bar cabinet which seemed to be fashioned from a genuine Hepplewhite sideboard.
What a clunker,
Locke thought.
I wouldn’t be seen dead in this piece of junk.
An edge of white peeked through the leather map-flap on the side of his door. Locke felt impelled to lift it out…
Thin Ice,
read the cover of the small, saddle-stitched booklet. The cover-art seemed instantly familiar, and then he opened the booklet to see his name in the table of contents.
R. Locke / “Preceptor”…………………page 17
Locke couldn’t resist. He turned to the page, though it was his traditional view to never read anything he’d written once it was published.
PRECEPTOR
by Richard Locke
Once upon my love
once upon our day
once upon the
grave-dirt truth
of all that I’m
dying to say.
Back into the vale
kicked back wet from
the passion gale
my vision is futile
as my providence is dead
lamentation final smile
halo of ashes ring
round my head
Poet/Vagrant
grope for her
“I love you!” I cry
and cower
Oh, Preceptor
your son is back
with nine petals
plucked off of a flower
This is all that’s left?
in crimsoned raiments
to stand bereft?
once upon my love
once upon my glee
once upon the
resplendent promise
of all we could never be
Oh, Preceptor
forgive my grief
and kill my feelings
I beg of Thee
Kill my feelings…
Locke remembered, what Byers—the guy who killed himself in the black Firebird—had said earlier to him in the bar. Locke remembered writing this poem, fairly recently, but this was the first he’d seen of it. Lethe must indeed be a fan of his work, to get a copy before the author received his complimentary contributor edition. But that wasn’t what nicked at him.
Didn’t I write a frag of this poem in the bar that night? And didn’t Byers make some comment about it?
Locke felt sure.
But there wasn’t much else he could feel sure about…
“Help yourself to a drink, Mr. Locke,” said the driver.
Locke eyed the lusciously refinished antique, its intricate hand-set inlays and stiles, the burnished brass hinges and knobettes.
Liquor inside,
the thought thumped in his head, along with the rest of the hangover.
Just what I need, huh? Just what the doctor ordered after blacking out, hallucinating, morbid dreams, and hearing dead guys on the phone.
What else could he conclude? The phone call—the raddled voice of Byers, the poet-suicide. Locke didn’t believe in ghosts, nor in spirits or afterlives. The only world that lay in wait was the ground.
He’d passed out after the so-called phone call, which led him to suspect that he’d been unconscious all along, blacked out from his steadily increasing alcohol abuse. It had been nothing but a toxic dream spurred by a brain that was revolting against the daily poisoning of its cells.
What else could Locke expect?
Now I’m getting calls from dead guys.
Pretty soon I’ll be like one of those scarecrows sitting on some corner in the U District begging for hooch money.
Alcohol-induced schizophrenia; perhaps he was a lot closer than he thought. Shit, he’d even spiked his
coffee
with booze this morning.
“Thanks for the offer,” he finally got around to replying. “Trying to cut down.”
The driver made no further comment, stolidly driving the exorbitant car east.
Lethe must like clichés, a man of convention, an old saw of platitudes,
Locke considered. The man had dressed his driver up like an ornament; it must be embarrassing.
“How long have you known Mr. Lethe?” Locke asked when the car’s quietude grew awkward.
“Not long.”
Locke waited for some enhancement but got none.
A real chatterbox, huh?
“I met him a few nights ago in a bar,” Locke said. “He was looking for me. Never did ask him how he knew I’d be there.”
“Mr. Lethe has an uncanny knack for finding what he’s looking for,” the driver finally saw fit to make comment. “He needed a driver so…he found me.”
Locke glimpsed the driver’s face in the rearview, a blank mask made blanker by sunglasses. “Oh, yeah? Where was that?”
“Pardon?”
“Where did he find you?”
The driver’s words unreeled in a hesitant drone. “A shipping terminal. I used to be a charter captain.”
Locke frowned.
Those guys make decent scratch,
he thought.
Lethe must be paying him well.
“Interesting,” he replied. This was curious but he couldn’t think of anything but small-talk. “So I guess you like driving Rolls Royces more than boats, huh?”
The driver seemed to nod.
“Oh,” Locke bumbled then. “I didn’t catch your name.”
The driver didn’t answer, just kept driving as the city drag gave way to suburbs, then wider expanses of property.
Locke just shrugged. Figured the driver hadn’t heard him.
««—»»
Locke wasn’t quite sure what to think when he saw the house about half an hour later.
I wouldn’t quite call it a shit-heap, but…
In the drive, they’d traversed most of North Bend’s girth, to outskirts even Locke wasn’t aware of. They were driving down a long, narrow road full of leisurely twists and turns—more of a country road, Locke contemplated, in some rather run-down country. Fields stretched out on either side. Farmland? Locke didn’t know, for the fields only displayed acre upon acre of wild, unkempt vegetation, banks of thistle, and weeds. In the distance he may have a spotted a barn or grain silo or two, but they stood only as teetering frameworks of wood, gray now, and long gone to vermiculation. Soon they were driving through dense woods which seemed to decay along with the road as the latter eventually lost its asphalt in favor of runneled dirt bisected by an endless hump of scrub grass. Ugly larch trees and coarse-barked hemlock and red spruce lined the road in crooked spires, their branches growing together in disarray.
Locke didn’t feel that he’d missed much in not knowing about this recess of land.
Just plain Fugly,
he thought.
Whatever happened to land conservation?
These were truly the wilds, something he’d never really witnessed in the past. The leaning trees and narrow dirt-scratch of a road seemed to drain his sense of dimension. Not a road at all but a lane through remote woodland. Locke flinched, as a claustrophobe might. He pitied the mailman who had to make
this
trek. But the land revealed a secret of its owner—certainly Lethe was a man who liked his privacy.
Then came the house.
The Rolls had turned onto an unmarked byway, after which another half mile took them to a cul-de-sac surrounded by huckleberry and thorn bushes, all ill-clipped, an atrocious attempt at topiary. The house looked…
Creepy,
came the word to Locke’s mind, perhaps a lenient play for atmosphere. Then, staring through the side window, he gave up his leniency.
I must correct myself—it
is
shit-heap.
It seemed to poke the afternoon’s calm in the eye with its disrepair and odd angles. Large, yes, a manse, with a plastered wraparound porch, pale awnings from the second-story windows, even rusted iron cresting along the heavily steepled roof. Front bow windows showed only latched shutters and paint-flaked stilework. Locke couldn’t even tell if the wooden siding had been painted but he didn’t think so; weathered gray, brown, he couldn’t tell—it appeared to be bare wood, that is very
old
bare wood. Oddest of all was the third-story oculus-room sitting atop of parapet heap with dead leaves like a drab box placed on top of the mansion as an afterthought. The oculus window seemed to peer down—a sightless eye.
“How, uh, how long has Mr. Lethe lived here?” Locke asked even against his better judgment that the driver had not much of a care to use his vocal cords.
“Just a few weeks.”
The Rolls stopped by the wide porch stairs, the engine died.
Yeah,
Locke thought,
Lethe’s a man who likes his privacy. He’s also obviously a man who likes dumps.
The homestead looked a century old, with no tending for as long. Its storied front walls genuinely
sagged,
and several window shutters had fallen entirely or hung from broken hinges. But at the end of the thought, the driver turned, glanced over his shoulder, and for the first time looked Locke in the eye. “Mr. Lethe doesn’t have much use for cosmetics or facades. It’s the inside that counts.”
“Uh…sure,” Locke bumbled.
“Old things are better than new.” The driver adjusted his cap visor, took off his sunglasses.