bad shape, he’d find a way to bull the Suburban through. He hadn’t come this far just to turn around.
DeWitt paused to snorkel back phlegm, then said, “Well, they don’t call it Shithouse Road for nothin, you know, and there’s probably a culvert or two washed out from the spring runoff, but you got your four-wheel drive, so you should be all right. Course you know Old Bill died.”
“Yes. One of his sons dropped me a card. We couldn’t make it to the funeral. Was it his heart?”
“Head. Put a bullet through it.” Roy DeWitt said this with palpable relish. “He was comin down with the Alzheimer’s, see? Constable found a notebook in his glovebox with all kinds of stuff written down in it. Directions, phone numbers, his wife’s name. Even the fuckin dog’s name. Couldn’t take it, don’tcha see.”
“Jesus,” Drew said. “That’s terrible.” And it was. Bill Colson had been a nice man, soft-spoken, always combed and tucked in and smelling of Old Spice, always careful to tell Drew’s pop—and later, Drew himself—when something needed repairs, and just how much it would cost.
“Ayuh, ayuh, and if you didn’t know that, I don’t s’pose you know he done it in the dooryard of your cabin.”
Drew stared. “Are you kidding?”
“Wouldn’t kid about…” The bandanna appeared, more damp and bedraggled than ever. DeWitt sneezed into it. “…about a thing like that. Yessir. Parked his pickup, put the barrel of his .30-30 under his chin, and pulled the trigger. Bullet went right through and broke the back winda. Constable Griggs was standin right where you are now when he told me.”
“Christ,” Drew said, and in his mind, something changed. Instead of holding his pistol to the dancehall girl’s temple, Andy Prescott—the wastrel son—was now holding it beneath her chin… and when he pulled the trigger, the bullet would exit the back of her skull and break the mirror behind the bar. Using this elderly gore-crow’s story of Old Bill’s death in his own story had an undoubted element of expediency, even strip-mining, but that wouldn’t stop him. It was too good.
“Lousy thing, all right,” DeWitt said. He was trying to sound sad, maybe even philosophical, but there was an unmistakable twinkle in his voice. He also knew when something was too good, Drew thought. “But you know he was Old Bill right to the very end.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he made his mess in the truck, not in Buzzy’s cabin. He’d never do a thing like that, at least not while he still had some of his right mind left.” He began to hitch and snort again, and scrambled for the bandanna, but this time was a little late to catch all of the sneeze. Which was a juicy one. “He caretook that place, don’tcha see?”
7
Five miles north of the Big 90, the tar gave out. After five more miles on oiled hardpan, Drew came to a fork in the road. He bore left, onto rough gravel that thumped and pinged off the Suburban’s undercarriage. This was Shithouse Road, unchanged, so far as he could tell, since his childhood. Twice he had to slow to two or three miles an hour in order to waddle the Suburban across washouts where culverts had indeed been plugged in the spring runoffs. Twice more he had to stop, get out, and move fallen trees off the road. Luckily they were birches, and light. One broke apart in his hands.
He came to the Cullum camp—deserted, boarded up, the driveway chained off—and then began counting phone-and-power poles, just as he and Ricky had as kids. A few were leaning drunkenly to starboard or port, but there were still exactly sixty-six between the Cullum camp and the overgrown driveway—also chained off—with the sign out front that Lucy had made when the kids were small: CHEZ LARSON. Beyond this driveway, he knew, were seventeen more poles, ending at the Farrington camp on the shore of Agelbemoo Lake.
Beyond the Farringtons’ place lay a huge swath of unelectrified wilderness, at least a hundred miles on either side of the Canadian border. Sometimes he and Ricky had gone up to look at what they called Last Pole. It held a kind of fascination for them. Beyond that one there was nothing to hold back the night. Drew had once taken Stacey and Brandon to look at Last Pole, and Drew had not missed the so what expression that passed between them. They assumed electricity—not to mention Wi-Fi—went on forever.