The Paperboy (41 page)

W
E FOLLOWED THE MAP
.

It took us north of Lately and then east, along a dirt road through dense stands of pine, the soil itself gradually getting darker as we came closer to the river. We were perhaps
twenty minutes in the pines, driving slowly, as I did not want to be in this place with a broken axle.

The road emptied into a clearing, and we saw the river. Glimpses of the sun reflecting off it, through the trees on the other side. I stopped the car. The road itself seemed for a moment to have disappeared, but then I noticed old car tracks beneath the weeds.

No one had driven through in a long time.

We sat in the car, at the edge of the clearing. My brother looked at the map, laid it on his lap and studied it, looking up from time to time to check a landmark. He put his finger on a spot near a shaded area and the river.

“We’re here,” he said.

I looked at it and saw the deputy had the road continuing to the river and then another two or three miles north. At the end of his map was a small house with a pitched roof, surrounded by a fence, and the words
Van Wetter
had been printed underneath.

“This isn’t a road anymore,” I said. Ward studied the map.

“We could get this thing high centered and have to walk out again,” I said.

“If there was a road once, it’s still there,” he said, and I sheared the car into first gear and started through. A doe appeared in the weeds ahead of us, picked up her head and watched us pass, leaving a path of tall grass bent to the ground behind.

I kept the car moving straight, and then we dropped into a deep rut, slamming the underside against the ground. The engine quit, and in the quiet I could hear the insects.

“Are we out of gas?” he said.

I turned the key and the engine turned with it. I found myself wondering if Hillary Van Wetter had heard the car. If he already knew who it was.

The engine caught and the old Ford climbed out of the hole and headed back across the clearing.

Ahead, there were trees, and I drove into them until there was no place else to go.

“It doesn’t go any farther,” I said, and Ward looked at the map again, then opened his door and stepped out. I turned off the engine and got out too. The heat rose off the old car’s hood in waves, and there was a whining sound in the air somewhere close.

Ward was looking from the map to the trees. They were thick here; no road had been cut through.

“He must have had it wrong,” I said.

I stepped around the front of the car, feeling the engine’s heat, and walked a few feet into the trees. The whine was closer in there, and its pitch changed. It was cool in the shade, and I walked farther in, trying to find the source of the noise. It seemed to come from one place, and then another. I sat down against one of the pines to pull my socks up out of my shoes. The dirt was cool beneath my pants. Ward came through the trees slowly, still holding the map.

“According to this …”

“He must have made a mistake,” I said. He put the map into his pocket and walked past me into the trees, tripping once and then stopping to put his heel back into his shoe. He always bought the same brown wing tips; he wore them everywhere. I had seen him shoot baskets in those shoes.

He bent at the waist and leaned with one hand against a tree to prop himself up while he adjusted the slipped shoe. There was a popping noise, about like a light bulb breaking, and then he was on the ground.

I got up; he sat up. A faint burning smell hung in the air around him, and he tried to get back to his feet and fell. Something newborn. He did not seem to know where he
was. I put my hands under his arms and pulled him to his feet.

“You all right?” I said.

He did not answer, but concentrated on keeping himself upright. It was always important to him to stay on his feet. I noticed the white insulator in the tree then, and the dark, narrow wire that was strung across it. The humming sound had stopped.

“It’s an electric fence,” I said, and he nodded as if he understood, but I was still holding more of his weight than he was himself. I had touched an electric fence too, when I was eleven or twelve, out dove hunting with my father. I’d thought I’d shot myself.

“They must be trying to keep out the bears,” I said.

Gradually, I moved out from under him, allowing him to stand on his own. “Jesus,” he said.

“It was an electric fence,” I said again.

“It was like being sucked into a hole,” he said. And he ran his hands over his face, as if he were feeling it for the first time.

“Sit down for a little while,” I said.

He shook his head and looked at his hand. It felt stung, he said, and he closed it once and then opened it, testing. He turned and looked at the fence he’d touched, and at the same time stepped away from it.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Let’s forget the whole thing.”

He looked into the trees. “It must be farther back,” he said.

“There’s nothing back there.”

“Somebody put up a fence.”

A moment later he ducked beneath the wire, giving it wide clearance, and started off into the trees. I stayed on the other side a little while, not satisfied that the matter had
been settled, but then, with no one there to settle it with, I went under the wire too and followed him in.

T
HE HOUSE SAT IN
a clearing of stumps—some cut lower than others, but averaging perhaps half a foot. A natural creek ran along the edge of this clearing, and a plank bridge had been constructed over it, substantial enough to hold an automobile or a truck. There were tire tracks on both sides, although I didn’t see how a car would get there, over the stumps, or where it would go afterwards.

Ward stood at the bridge, studying the house. The humming noise had resumed in the trees behind us; I had the distinct feeling that we were trapped. There was a sudden absence of birds.

The house itself was smaller than the one farther south where Hillary’s uncle lived, but like that one sat off the ground on blocks. It had not been prefabricated—it looked, in fact, as if it had been built at two different times, with two different kinds of shingles on the roof. There was a smaller building behind it where the generator was running.

We stood still, watching the house, and the realization settled on me that Charlotte was inside.

Ward started across the bridge and I fell in next to him, thinking of Charlotte. I wondered if her looks had changed, living in this place. If she spent as much time on her face and clothes now there was no one but Hillary Van Wetter to see them. I knew she had to work at her looks; in some way that made her more attractive.

We had come halfway across the yard when the door opened. Hillary stood above us, naked. Except for a small beard of pale blond pubic hair, his body appeared hairless. He looked thicker than he had in prison; his legs were as big
around as my head, and curiously out of proportion. Too short for his size.

Ward took a step or two closer and then stopped. Hillary didn’t move. They stared at each other, and then slowly Hillary shook his head.

“What is it now?” he said finally.

“I want to talk,” Ward said.

“More talk.”

My brother nodded. “About the night you and your uncle stole the sod,” he said.

Hillary stood still. He had been more animated in prison, chained to a chair. “What about it?” he said.

“Was it true?”

“You said it was true,” he said. “It was in the newspaper that it was true.…”

It was quiet again, except for the sound of the generator. “Yardley Acheman said he met the man who bought it,” Ward said.

Slowly, Hillary Van Wetter began to smile. “It was in the paper,” he said again. “How could it be a lie?”

He looked quickly at me, and then behind me, back into the trees. “Where’s the other one?” he said.

“He’s done with it,” Ward said.

Hillary smiled again. “He got what he wanted, and now he’s moved on.…”

My brother nodded, and Hillary turned sober. “Tell him something for me, would you?” he said. “Tell him I done the same thing.” And then he turned and went back into the house.

I stood still, the sun pressing against my back. When Hillary reappeared, he was wearing shoes and a pair of pants; the belt hung loose in the waist. He stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him as if there were a cat inside that he did not want slipping out between his feet.

“You tell him I done the same thing,” he said again, happy with the way that sounded.

“I don’t know what that means,” Ward said.

Hillary Van Wetter smiled. “Ain’t that the truth?” he said. Then Hillary put his hands in his pockets and looked at Ward as if something about my brother confused him. “Is there something else?” he said.

“The night you stole the sod …” Ward said, “how did you know where to go to sell it?” They looked at each other over the question, and I brushed at a mosquito in my hair and it was hot from the sun.

“You don’t just steal the sod off a golf course and then drive around looking for somebody who wants to buy it,” Ward said.

Hillary Van Wetter shrugged, comfortable with the story the way it was.

“So either you knew the man before, or there wasn’t any man,” he said.

Hillary sat down on the step leading to his front door; he leaned forward and dropped a line of spit between his feet.

“You think you come into the prison with all your friends and saved me,” he said. He stuck a finger in his ear and screwed it in and then out, and then studied the tip. I noticed again that there were no birds in the trees; I thought perhaps the noise of the generator kept them away. That or something in the spectacle of the stumps.

“Let me tell you something,” Hillary said. “Ain’t no such thing.” He wiped the earwax off his finger and onto his pants, leaving a stain. He saw me watching him and said, “I secrete abnormal amounts of cerumen.”

I nodded without knowing what he was talking about. “Earwax,” he said, and then he smiled, almost as if he liked me. “paperboys don’t know everything after all.…”

My brother did not seem to be listening.

Hillary said, “The prison doctor told me that; about my abnormal secretion.” He paused a moment, thinking of the prison doctor, and then spoke again to me. “Now, there was a man that also needed excitement in his life, just like you two, and he got himself cut for his trouble.…”

He spit again, the color of coffee.

“He was there when some colored boys broke in for morphine.” He smiled.

My brother sat down on a stump two feet across. He didn’t say anything; he had asked his question and now he was waiting for an answer. Hillary turned to him, and the smile that had come with the memory of the colored boys cutting the doctor was gone. “Let me tell you something else you don’t know,” he said.

“Tell me about the man who bought the sod,” Ward said.

“I’ll tell you something better,” he said. He leaned forward; his elbows rested on his knees and his hands dangled in the air in front of him. He was wearing a ring that he hadn’t worn in prison, the kind you get for graduating from high school. “You didn’t save nobody. Once a man sees his own death in front of him, you can’t bring things back to what they was.”

He nodded back in the direction of the house. “How many of you was poking the lady while I was in prison?” he said. “I didn’t see nothing about that in the paper, that while the
Miami Times
undertook its investigation into the railroaded prisoner that they was having his fiancee on the side.”

Ward shook his head, and seemed about to deny it, and then stopped. “I don’t involve myself in other people’s copulations,” he said quietly. Hillary did not understand the word.

“Pokings,” I said, thinking that now we were all even for
cerumen
.

“I mind my own business,” Ward said.

“If you was minding your own business, you wouldn’t be here sitting on my stump,” Hillary said.

I was looking back at the little house again, wondering if Charlotte would come outside. He caught me at it; he seemed to read my thoughts.

“You lovesick?” he said.