As Good As Gone (9781616206000) Read online

  Burt barely looked up from his eggs. “He died.”

  “Died? When—how do you know?”

  “He died the very next day. Internal injuries, the sheriff said. Not a damn thing they could do. He gave me a call at the office.”

  “And you didn’t think—what?—that I should know? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  Perhaps most people would have taken from that incident a lesson about the danger of driving Montana’s highways at night or the fragility of the body’s organs, but what Beverly learned was that what might seem to be gallantry could be just another way for a man to control what a woman sees and knows. She climbs out of Calvin’s truck.

  BEVERLY FINDS CALVIN IN the backyard, crouched over a couple of sagging cardboard boxes filled with hunks of greasy iron and steel. Nearby another disabled car—this one with at least two flat tires—crushes what little is left of the grass. This automobile—Beverly believes it’s a Studebaker—looks to have once been maroon, but its paint has oxidized and the finish is fading in places to a shade that isn’t far from the color of lilacs.

  Calvin startles at her approach, but he doesn’t get up, not immediately. “I told you I’d let you know if I needed you.” It takes some effort for him to push himself to his feet.

  “You said you’d signal me. But you never told me what the signal was. For all I knew, you being gone for more than ten minutes might have been it.”

  He points down at the boxes. “Damn near all the parts I’d need to rebuild my carburetor.”

  “Well, maybe after you bend that tire iron over his head you could work out a deal to buy some spare parts.”

  He gives her a long stern look. “Go wait in the truck. I’ll be right along.”

  Beverly is aware that the smile she gives him is the same one she would shine on Ivan Kuntz just before she pinched a sizable hunk of skin on his arm and led him off to the principal’s office. “We might as well walk together.”

  Back in the truck, Calvin rolls a cigarette, but before he puts it to his lips, he offers it to her.

  What a strange set of manners this man has, thinks Beverly. “Thanks,” she says, “but I don’t smoke.”

  He licks its seam once more before lighting it. “And if you did, you wouldn’t smoke these.”

  “I like the smell. My father smoked a pipe, and his tobacco had a similar aroma.”

  He scratches a match into flame, lights the cigarette, and inhales deeply. “On the job I smoke tailor-­mades. No foreman wants to see someone stepping off to roll himself a smoke.”

  “The foreman . . . that’s not you? Ever?”

  “I’ve never been anything but a hired hand.”

  “And that’s the way you want it?”

  “It is.”

  Beverly isn’t trying to send Calvin a message, but once again the springs poking her butt make her move closer to him. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” she says, “I have trouble imagining you taking orders.”

  “Those of us who take orders don’t have to take on the order-­givers’ responsibilities.”

  “You told me you’re looking to take as much pleasure out of life as you can. Do you also mean to avoid as much responsibility as you can?”

  “I’d just as soon keep the weight off my shoulders, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “For a man who doesn’t want responsibilities, you sure took on a few when you came back to town this time.”

  There hasn’t been a car driving this street for at least five minutes, but Calvin still leans out his window to look up and down the street for any sign of activity. Fine, Beverly thinks, don’t answer me.

  “Do you mind telling me what we’re doing right now?” she asks. “And I’m not talking about responsibilities. I mean, why are we parked on Lanier Avenue staring at a house with nobody in it?”

  “We’re waiting.”

  “For how long? What if I have to be somewhere?”

  “Like where?”

  “I’m on the school library board. We usually meet today.”

  The skirt of Beverly’s sundress is partially spread across the seat, and Calvin pinches a bit of the fabric between his thumb and index finger. “Is that why you’re all dressed up today? For the library board?”

  “We usually meet at the Harmon House. They provide a lunch for us.”

  He doesn’t let go of her dress. Instead, he tugs gently on it. “That’s the second time you’ve used the word ‘usually.’ Does your board meet today?”

  “You are paying uncommonly close attention to my choice of words, sir.”

  “I sometimes go a week or more without hearing a human voice. That’s good training for listening close.” Now he rubs her dress between his fingers as though he’s assessing the strength and quality of the material. “And you still haven’t answered my question: Do you have a board meeting today?”

  Merely considering a lie is enough to make her flush. “No. But I could still have something planned for today. Something that doesn’t include staring at—” she looks again at the letter—“Brenda Cady’s house.”

  He lets go of her dress. “It’s not her house.”

  “I know whose house it is. And you know what I meant. Do you have a length of time in mind for staying here? An hour? Two? Twenty-­four?”

  “If you need to be somewhere, I’ll take you. I can find my way back.”

  Beverly twists up a handful of hair at the back of her neck and lifts it to let any trace of a breeze cool her sweat. She lets out a sigh of resignation. “Mr. Sidey. The dress was for you. And the casserole that’s sitting on your cupboard right now was nothing but an excuse to come over to see you. So I guess I got what I wanted out of the day: Time alone with you. Although I was hoping the circumstances would be a little different.”

  He flips his cigarette into the street. “I appreciate your attentions.”

  “My attentions? You appreciate my attentions? Oh my, I’ll float on those words for a week!” She leans toward Calvin Sidey in an attempt to make him look at her. “Tell me: Have there been other women in your life recently?”

  “White women, do you mean?”

  The broken spring be damned—Beverly has to slide away from the man who makes such a remark. “A woman, Mr. Sidey. Any kind, any size. Any living, breathing woman. Have you had relations with another woman in the last, oh, ten years?”

  He turns his intent gaze on her. “There’s a woman who cooks and cleans on the Jarman ranch, not far from me. We’ve occasionally found ourselves in each other’s company. She’s a Blackfoot. That’s a distinction that matters to some folks.”

  “But not to you?”

  He shrugs. “I saw fit to mention it, so maybe it does.”

  Beverly is responsible for the silence that now fills the truck’s cab. She can’t give voice to her next thought both because she’s ashamed of herself for thinking it and because she’s afraid of how he might answer. She doesn’t ask, And am I more to you than she is?

  For the next half hour Calvin slouches down with his eyes closed, and Beverly might believe that he’s dozing while she does sentry duty, yet at every sound of a car approaching—or of a child’s bicycle rattling closer—he comes alert.

  Finally, just when she’s convinced he really is sleeping, he asks, with his eyes still closed, “You probably don’t spend much time in this part of town, do you?”

  “I’ve lived in Gladstone most of my life. I’m all right on either side of the river.” Beverly sits up straighter. “In fact, there was a time when I thought I could turn my knowledge of this town to my advantage. I seriously considered selling real estate.”

  Calvin smiles. “Did you now? It’s a job that takes more than a pretty smile and a nice pair of legs, you know. You have to pass a test.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, Mr. Sidey, but you can be insulting even when you hand out a compliment. Yes, I know there’s a test. I’ve managed to pass a few over the years
.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Calvin says. “But it’s generally men who make the property-­buying decisions. And they’d rather shake another man’s hand over the deal. That’s true on both sides of the river. Up on your side of town or here in Dogtown.”

  “I know where that term comes from. And I don’t much care for it.”

  Calvin says, “I didn’t make it up.”

  “But it sure came ready to your lips.”

  He tilts his hat back on his head, and looks up and down the block. “I’m surprised my son has properties in this part of town.”

  Beverly says, “They need places to live too.”

  “They? Who are they?”

  “Well, Indians, I suppose.”

  Calvin smiles again. “Now you’re doing it too.”

  “Speaking of which,” says Beverly, “you were a little hard on Miss Ann last night when she brought up the idea of trying to help out the Indian population. She wasn’t doing anything more than displaying some youthful idealism. But I don’t suppose you ever had a case of that, did you?”

  “If I did,” he says, “I had a war to wring it out of me.”

  “And you don’t think the Indians have had a rough go of it in Montana?”

  “Does it matter what I think?”

  “I’m interested in your opinion, Mr. Sidey.”

  He continues to survey the street in both directions. “We won,” he says. “They lost.”

  “Simple as that?”

  “Simple as that.”

  Beverly well remembers Burt saying, on the occasion of yet another injustice involving an Indian, “They bring it on themselves.” Is Calvin’s attitude any improvement over Burt’s? They’re Montana men cut from the same cloth, that’s sure, and Beverly feels the familiar old frustration and hopelessness in the face of their hardhearted social philosophy. She’s about to say—and this time she really will say it—I’ve had enough, take me home. But then a car comes down the street and pulls into the driveway. The woman who’s driving and the little boy with her barely have time to climb out of their car before Calvin is out of the truck and striding over to meet them.

  “Brenda Cady!” The way Calvin shouts the name it is not a question, and her fearful expression when she sees the man coming toward her convinces Beverly once again to get out of the truck and follow Calvin.

  Beverly catches up to him just as he reaches the woman’s car. “Do I know you?” Brenda Cady asks, glancing briefly at Beverly but trying to keep her attention focused on Calvin.

  “You don’t need to know me,” he says. “You just have to listen to what I’m about to tell you.”

  Brenda Cady is plump, probably in her early thirties. She’s dressed in a sleeveless white blouse and bright blue pedal pushers. She’s almost pretty, but there’s something slightly lopsided about her pushed-­in features that give her a look that’s both sullen and submissive. The skinny little boy clinging to her leg is four or five years old, dark-­haired, and dark-­complected.

  “You’ve been given notice to vacate these premises,” Calvin says, and at first Beverly is surprised at his phrasing, but then she remembers that Sidey Real Estate had once been in his hands. “And I expect you to comply with that order.”

  Brenda Cady has driven up in a pastel-­green Chevrolet, and now she reaches over and slams its heavy door. Beverly sees in the backseat two grocery bags.

  “I’m workin’ on it,” she says, hugging the boy closer to her.

  “You’ll do more than work on it. And I’ll tell you what else you’ll do: You’ll tell your husband or your boyfriend or whoever the hell that was that if he comes around my place making noise again he’ll have trouble the likes of which he won’t believe.”

  “Lonnie? What did he—?” Brenda Cady stops herself and leans toward Calvin Sidey. “Lonnie’s not scared of you.” Brenda Cady’s mouth twists down and her eyebrows arch. In all her years of teaching, Beverly has never struck a student, but every time she comes across an expression like Brenda Cady’s in the classroom or the schoolyard Beverly has to fight an impulse to slap the wearer across the face.

  “Isn’t he?” Calvin steps forward and places his hand on top of the Chevrolet. “Well, now, Lonnie doesn’t know me.” He runs his hand lightly over the roof as if he’s a prospective buyer come to inspect the merchandise. When he gets to the back window, he stops stroking the car and taps on the glass lightly with his fist. “So it’s up to you to educate him. You teach him he damn well better be afraid.” Then he looks down at the child, a stare so steady and thorough he could be trying to see into the boy’s ancestry. Brenda Cady’s son ducks behind his mother.

  Calvin turns then and begins to walk back to his truck, leaving Beverly to stand with Brenda Cady and the boy. Beverly feels she should say something, but what? Everything that comes to mind immediately cancels itself because she can’t be sure of its truth. Don’t mind him; his bark is worse than his bite. That wouldn’t do—she suspects Calvin Sidey’s bite could go very deep indeed. He didn’t mean to frighten your little boy? No, he probably intended to throw the fear of God into anyone who crossed his path. Perhaps Beverly should get right to the heart of the matter: You might think that was nothing but a crotchety old man, but that’s only because you’re new to Gladstone—that was Calvin Sidey, and many people believe he once caved in a man’s head because the man made a vulgar remark about Sidey’s wife. What do you think he’d do to someone who actually burst into the Sidey home and made a threat?

  But Beverly says not a word to Brenda Cady and her scared little boy. Instead, she runs across the street to join the man about whom she might have issued such dire warnings, the man with whom, for better or worse, she has thrown in her lot.

  TWENTY

  Will leans his bike against the garage and heads toward the house. He’s thirsty after baseball and he plans to make a pitcher of lime Kool-­Aid. Will’s almost to the door when he hears Adam Lodge calling out from the Lodges’ yard.

  “Hey, kid. Come here for a second.”

  Adam Lodge has been mowing the lawn, but he hasn’t progressed beyond cutting one or two strips around the perimeter. He shuts off the mower and crosses to meet the boy.

  “Come here,” Adam repeats. “I’ve got a business deal for you.”

  Because Adam Lodge is tall and slender, Will has always thought of him as kind of a sissy. But when he sees the man without a shirt—Adam is wearing only a pair of grass-­stained high top basketball shoes and plaid Bermuda shorts—Will is surprised at how muscled Adam is. Yes, he’s skinny—his ribs show—but his shoulders are broad, his pectorals are hard plates, and his long arms are knotted with muscle.

  “What’s the matter?” Adam says. “Didn’t you hear me? How’d you like to make a couple bucks?”

  “I guess.”

  “If you finish mowing the lawn, I’ll give you two dollars.”

  Will knows exactly what he’d like to spend the money on. That afternoon at Little League he borrowed Mike Florence’s thick-­handled bat, and he got two hits. With two dollars and a little from his savings, Will could buy his own Richie Ashburn model Louisville Slugger. Nevertheless, he says to Adam Lodge, “I better check with my grandpa.”

  “Your grandfather isn’t here. He and my mother drove off together over an hour ago. So what do you say?”

  Will’s father often complains about the lack of attention Mrs. Lodge pays to her lawn, and there’s the evidence—grass so tall it’s started to tassel and so many dandelions their gray puffy heads look like fog rising out of the lawn. Will imagines he’ll have to lean hard on the mower to get it through this pasture. But maybe when he finishes he’ll still have time today to buy that bat.

  THE MOWING IS TOUGH going all right, but Will puts the slow circuits around the yard to good use. He tries to think of how he can discourage Stuart and Glen and Bobby—Stuart especially—who won’t rest until they can spy on Ann when she’s naked. Yet for all his concentration on the dilemma, Will can
come up with no reasonable solution. He has to persuade them that they must leave his sister alone, but how could he possibly persuade someone like Stuart Kinder? No reasonable solution . . . Suddenly Will feels as though he understands how a murderer might think—it’s someone so powerless he resorts to his crime because it seems no other option is available.

  The most dangerous places in and around Gladstone, at least those that Will is familiar with, are the river with its shifting channels and unpredictable currents, and an old coal chute, a steep galvanized steel slide that starts at the railroad tracks on a bluff above the river and finally empties onto jagged boulders far below. The problem is, how can Will lure or direct Stuart to either site? And how can he then position Stuart at the top of the chute in just such a way that Will can push him to his death? Or how can he get Stuart to step into the river right where the river is waiting to pull someone under and hold them down all the way to Wyoming? Maybe Will can use Ann as part of the trap. Stuart, Ann’s sunbathing naked over on that sandbar—no, you can’t see her from here; you have to cross that part of the river.

  By the time he pushes the mower through a few more circuits, his face is hot not only from exertion but embarrassment. He’s a kid, and he can no more put these plans into action than he could have imagined into life his plastic cowboys and Indians. Now, if Will’s father were like almost all the other fathers he would have guns, and Will could simply wait inside the house with a Winchester or a Colt .45 at his side, and if Stuart Kinder entered the Sidey home, Will could be ready and waiting to blast him away. The mower snarls and coughs its way through the thick grass, and its fumes fill the air, but it’s not the smell of exhaust that’s sickening Will. His own fantasies make him feel like throwing up.

  ALL THE GRASS IS cut except a bed-­sized rectangle in the middle of the yard when the mower quits. Over and over Will winds the starter rope around the housing and yanks, but the engine just gasps. Will unscrews the cap on the gas tank, holds his breath, and peers in. He hates the sharp smell of gasoline even though for him it has become the smell of summer. The tank looks empty, and when he taps on it with his fingernail the way he’s seen his father do, the tank echoes hollowly.