Cadillac Cathedral (11 page)

Of course Arvo had known about the short-lived “fling” with Martin but didn’t want to think about it. “And all is now forgiven?”

“I could never resist that chin,” Peterson said. “Nobody can.”

“I can,” Arvo said. “And what have you done with the balk-eyed border who lives in her sewing room? Did Lucy shoot him?”

“Herbie refused to sit in the back so Luce could sit up front and give directions the way she likes. When he saw she wouldn’t budge he decided to stay behind. He said he’d look after her eight hundred leghorn hens — but I think we’ll just head back and see if he’s cooled down a little. Maybe if he and Lucy can’t get along he can always ride with you.”

“Fine,” Arvo said. What else could he say?

Well, he could ask Peterson to get her out of the hearse before she decided to keep it. “I think she’s had enough time behind that wheel. Myself, I wouldn’t want to have an ex-wife who looked so pleased to be playing undertaker.”

Peterson closed his eyes. “I’ll try, Arvo. I’ll try.”

“If we let her get too attached she’ll be telling me to ride with you in the Henry J while she drives the hearse, and
then
you’ll see how unimpressed I am with that chin.”

Stepping out of the hearse, Lucy said, “That back end with all the windows’ll make a perfect hatchery for my chicks.”

“Uh-oh,” Peterson said.

“I’ll take her off your hands and put her out by my gate. Once people stop for a look they might as well buy eggs while they’re there. A pretty good gimmick, don’t you think?”

“Sorry,” Arvo said. “This vehicle is not for sale.”

“I never said anything about buying,” Lucy said. “Sooner or later you men are gonna feel like a lot of fools, playing with this thing like little kids with their toys. You’ll be glad to see me put it to proper use.”

“Anyway,” Peterson said, clearly uncomfortable. “Why are we standing around jawing like this? Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Not without Herbie,” Arvo said. “We started out on this trip together, the three of us. We can’t leave him behind to look after a bunch of stupid chickens.”

Lucy shot daggers but clamped her mouth shut before her tongue had a chance to say what she thought. Peterson walked a few steps in one direction with his eyes on the toes of his boots, then turned and walked back. He spoke sidelong to Lucy, as though ready to jump and run if he had to. “It’s not fair to Herbie. It’s not fair to your chickens neither, to leave him in charge. Herbie’ll start feeling sorry for the chickens stuck in a pen and turn them loose. Your hens’ll lay their eggs all over your ranch. Under logs, up in the trees. In the middle of blackberry bushes. Your whole damn investment will go squawking off between the jaws of foxes and raccoons.”

Arvo agreed. Suppose someone took advantage of Lucy’s absence to break in and steal a laying hen or two. Herbie had little experience with responsibility. He claimed to have delivered newspapers as a boy but his adult jobs had been short-lived, including nothing more demanding than picking strawberries in June, plucking turkeys in December, and now-and-then filling pot-holes in the logging company’s roads. He must have panicked when Peterson drove off and left him to keep an eye on Lucy’s ranch.

“I’ll tell you what,” Arvo said. “You two go back and rescue the chickens that Herbie has probably set loose by now and I’ll go on down to get Martin on my own.”

“The hell with that,” Lucy said. “You’re not leaving me behind.
I’ve got my reasons for looking Martin Glass in the eye and telling him what I think.”

Arvo looked to Peterson. “You didn’t tell her?”

Peterson frowned and lifted his shoulders. “She don’t always listen.”

“If she thinks Martin’s walking out of that hospital on his own two feet, why does she think we’re going down to get him with a hearse?”

Peterson looked down and kicked at a clump of weeds that had pushed up through the gravel. “Lucy doesn’t always hear what she doesn’t want to hear — do you, Luce? She can know things without letting them make a difference. I’m pretty sure that what she means is she wants to say good-bye.”

Arvo looked hard at Lucy, who was looking hard at him. “You hear that? Whatever you got to say to Martin you should have told him long ago. You might as well say it to those wild roses over by the store. Martin’s ears are sealed. I wouldn’t recommend you say anything unpleasant. I especially wouldn’t want you to say it where I might hear.”

“What a couple of old boobies!” Lucy said, clearly disgusted. “Let’s go rescue my chooks before your friend decides he’s Moses and sets the captives free. I shouldn’t’ve let him anywhere near my chooks.”

CHAPTER 7

HE COULD NOT WAIT
here for ever. Lucy was capable of talking Peterson into abandoning the journey in order to do chores he’d promised long ago to do — replacing broken glass in a window, patching a hole in the chicken-run fence, repairing a drainpipe fallen away from her house. She could keep him busy for days.

Peterson may have been hoping to lure Lucy back. What some people want the most is what they shouldn’t want at all. Peterson had driven up to Lucy’s when he didn’t need to, had brought her down to show off this hearse when he could have avoided even mentioning it, and then had put himself in the position of having to go back to her chicken ranch in order to collect Herbie. Yet he had sworn any
number of times that he’d rather slit his own throat than let that woman back into his life.

Arvo would admit to a grudging admiration for Lucy’s willingness to be generous now and then — though always on her own terms. She might leave a hind-quarter of venison on someone’s door-step — especially if that person hadn’t asked for it but had only paused for a friendly conversation in the Store. She had never directed any of this generosity towards Peterson’s friends, who’d sometimes claimed his attention while excluding her. Arvo’s workshop had been to Lucy what a gambling den might be to another man’s wife, Arvo himself both bookie and bartender taking advantage of a weakling’s addiction.

Generally, Arvo tended to be most impressed with women whose strengths might be the equal of Lucy’s but of a less abrasive nature. He admired Kevin Williams’ mother Marketta who, even while caring for her dying husband, continued to take on Community Association positions that no one else wanted. Alice MacEwan had camped out on the roadside for three months in an effort to prevent Public Works from appropriating part of her property to straighten out a highway corner so that drivers who drove too fast could drive even faster without ending up in the ditch. And Cynthia Howard, a dedicated teacher who had given the same sort of attention to running the concession stand at her drive-in theatre as she’d given to her students, was comfortable talking cars, piston rods, and logging practices with the men in Arvo’s workshop.

Waiting here was bound to make him irritable. Did Peterson think it didn’t matter how long it took them to get to the city? This was obviously just an adventure for him, without any real urgency. It wouldn’t even occur to him that they could be making themselves so late they might have to stay overnight in the city.

So why not go ahead on his own? He should probably have left on his own in the first place — snuck off in the night to pick up Martin himself. By bringing Peterson and Herbie with him he was asking for all sorts of problems — especially once they reached the city. Peterson would return from Lucy’s place with a long shopping list of items he’d promised to buy for her. The sensible thing was to leave now and hope the others forgot about him, forgot about the hearse, and forgot about their plan to bring Martin home.

But having Peterson and Herbie along could keep him from losing courage. Without them — without Peterson at least — he could end up convincing himself he was a fool who hadn’t the sense to let go of the past. When it came right down to it, maybe only the companionship of his friends would prevent him from changing his mind at the last minute and bring Martin home without ever pressing the buzzer beside Myrtle Birdsong’s front door.

He’d always been a man who fixed things — machines anyway: logging trucks, steam locomotives, pickup trucks, family cars. He had never worried much about the outcome. Sooner or later you discovered what was needed, made a decision, and either fixed or replaced the part that was causing the trouble. People, though, were another matter. The problem was never easy to recognize and usually far too complicated to fix.

Having to make a decision worried him. Whatever decision you made, you were still aware of the possibility you should have made the opposite one — or might think of a third option altogether. Just the thought of having to make a decision made him so tired he usually chose to sleep on it, hoping that somehow the decision would be made in his sleep or the morning take the matter out of his hands.

Other cars pulled in, other people went into the little store and came out with bags of groceries. If he sat here much longer someone
would come out to remind him that this small parking lot was meant only for customers. He could say he was fascinated by the turning of the tide, or the progress of a passing fish boat, but eventually someone would use the word “lurking” and then there would be no end of complications.

If the choice was between waiting here for the others to join him and driving to Lucy’s chicken ranch, the best way to avoid making any choice at all was to get back on the highway driving south at the usual pace so that they could eventually catch up. If Lucy detained them indefinitely, he would arrive in the city without them.

But before he’d started the engine, a silver VW Golf pulled up and stopped too close beside him. A woman stepped out and slammed her door but did not head off toward the store. The pleased-with-herself look on her face and the open notebook in her hand suggested he ought to have left before now. She was probably an off-duty police-woman asked by the grocer to check out the malingering hearse-driver. He would be subjected now to an interrogation. No ownership papers? A portable license plate? He would be required to accompany her to the station for questioning.

“Just leaving,” he said, for she had come around behind her car and put a hand on the lip of his half-door.

“This won’t take long,” she said. “A photographer’s on his way, but I have a few questions I want to ask while we’re waiting. For the
Telegraph
.”

The town’s weekly!

“Sorry. I was just about to leave,” he said. “You can call your photographer and tell him to stop wherever he is and turn back.”

She was a pleasant-looking woman of about forty, or maybe fifty — he couldn’t guess the age of younger people any more. She had freckles, and a mop of reddish hair. She might have persuaded him
to chat with her if she hadn’t mentioned a photographer. He did not want to see himself or this hearse in the papers. Not yet, at least. For the time being it was no one else’s business why he was driving to the city in this hearse.

“We might have had this conversation at your workshop yesterday if you’d unlocked the doors to Mr. Foreman and myself.”

If she worked for a magazine or newspaper, locked doors were bound to make her curious. If there was something to hide, there must be something to pursue. “There was nothing to talk about yesterday. There’s nothing to talk about today, either, unless you send the photographer home.”

“Dammit,” she said, and rooted around in her large maroon handbag. When she’d brought up a bright red cell phone, she held it to her ear and turned away. Arvo considered taking advantage of her distraction to back up and drive out of here, but of course she would catch up to him before he’d made the first bend. And then he’d have both her and probably the photographer as well to deal with. She lowered her voice to speak but Arvo, straining hard, could hear enough: “No, no, I’m sure he’s serious. I mean it. I can see he’s one of
those
.”

Arvo didn’t know what she meant by
those
. A stubborn old man? A stubborn old mechanic who didn’t trust photographers? He probably wouldn’t care to know what box she’d put him in.

He got out of the hearse and sat on the log facing the water. He was not going to be interviewed sitting behind the wheel. That would only encourage her to get in and sit beside him, and then there would be no way of getting rid of her. Even if he started the engine and drove out onto the road heading south, she would probably stay beside him, unshakeable, willing to nag at him right to the end of the journey. He’d never been interviewed by the press but he had a pretty
good idea they did not succeed at their job without being as hard to shake as a boa constrictor around your neck.

“Lucky you,” she said, coming up behind him and stepping over the log to sit too close. “His wife has the car and he was waiting for a cab. He said he would cancel the cab. I hope you’re going to reward me for this kindness.”

“It would not have been worth the price of a taxi. I have nothing worth putting in that notebook.”

“Not even to answer
Where did you find this beautiful hearse
?”

He could handle this. “The hills behind town are populated with any number of abandoned cars and trucks. No license, no registration, no owners. Someone has hauled them up there to get rid of them. You could go up and see for yourself. I’ve been doing this for years.”