Читать книгу Buried Treasure - Jack B. Downs - Страница 20

13 / Moon Launch

James eased the screen door closed behind him, lifting up the handle to silence the grate of jamb on door edge. The house felt occupied, but not warm. Am I already a visitor here? A distant relative, like—well, like his father was at the beginning of this summer? He felt the tension engulf him. If only… James felt a tiredness he had seldom known. It wasn’t just that dawn was minutes beyond the edge of the horizon. His head swirled with the new plan. Who was he kidding? There hadn’t been an old plan. Just some vague idea about getting out of Crane Ridge, probably by hitchhiking.

Now, the girl he’d thought of mostly for her ability to arouse his passion had pushed him to really look at his life—and admit that he didn’t have a clue. They had not been able to meet often in the last couple of weeks, but each time they did, he felt drained.

Prompt on the heels of her critique of his non-existent plan, she constructed a scheme that left him feeling queasy. One thing was sure. If there were some obstacle to leaving Crane Ridge, it would not be Anne’s ability to think ahead and to make some hard decisions.

“A body doesn’t just walk off into the sunset. That’s ridiculous. We have to have a car.” Anne spoke the last part almost to herself, her soft words mixing with the humming of crickets in the darkness.

The quarter moon shone milk-pale across the river. Anne leaned back thoughtful against James. When the crowd had dispersed last week after the Fourth of July fireworks, Anne and James had cut across the sea of departing townspeople to stand on the edge of the river. The crowd had thinned to a trickle. Officer Munro passed by on foot for the umpteenth time, looking harried and official. They had spread the blanket down on the bank beside the river, and sat motionless, comfortable in the silence, as the crowd’s chatter transitioned to the sounds of summer when the town slept.

Anne had turned to search the darkness, and spoke in a low voice. “Jimmy, I have to get home soon, or daddy will wonder. He already thinks you and I…” James had been watching the water gurgle by, but he looked up at Anne.

“Anyway, we have to talk. A week from tonight, here. Do you have that much time before they...?”

James shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. My father said maybe they’ll have to talk to Scooter, and he’s visiting relatives with his dad ‘til Friday.”

“I’m worried my father will get suspicious, but if I tell him far enough in advance…” Her voice trailed off.

“Tell him what?”

“Leave that to me. I have an idea.” James nodded. He was beginning to suspect Anne had lots of those.

Now in the noisy stillness of the deepening night, James sat enthralled as Anne laid out her plan to leave Crane Ridge—prepared to ensure they were well away before any alarm was sounded.

When she asked about Father Mullenix’s Plymouth, at first James thought she had changed the subject. Sure, he did chores around the rectory. Though Nana didn’t think much of the good Father, he had always gotten along with the priest. That’s why the idea of stealing the pastor’s car was so shocking. While James had a reputation as a hell raiser, he usually went out of his way to play by the golden rule.

“This is our chance,” said Anne. “Maybe our only chance. It only gives us a start. When we can, we can arrange to get the car back, and… fix the rest of it.”

“I still don’t like it,” said James.

“It’s the only car you’ve ever driven. What we need more than anything is a head start. Time.”

Once again, James felt his smoldering anger at his father. This all was his doing. James wouldn’t be in this mess if Sam had just stayed gone. Stayed dead, really. That was the way James had come to view Sam. Lost at sea, or killed in a war far off. He had still burned with humiliation when Scooter had challenged him a few days after Sam’s return. “Thought you said the old man was croaked!” Scooter had shoved his face in James’s, in what passed for a grin.

Anne stroked his shoulder. “We have a chance to be together. But not here. Not in Crane Ridge. Is there anything we forgot? I won’t be able to talk to you again before we leave.”

“I hate the idea of stealing Father’s car. I’m in enough trouble already.” James drew the chewed tip of grass from his lips and tossed it in the water. “Besides, he’s been pretty decent to me.”

“Look at me,” Anne said, in a tone both fierce and compelling. He turned and searched for her eyes in the shadows. “Do you really think that next week, or Christmas, or next year, we just get to waltz back into town like we went for a soda? If my father finds us he will kill you. And don’t count on him to sit here on his porch rocker, his gun on his lap, waiting patient for us to come scootin’ back up the walk.”

“Okay, okay. When can we meet again, Anne?”

“We can’t. Not until we leave. It’ll be too dangerous.” Anne thought for a moment. Then she outlined how they would communicate up to the morning they ran away.

“Do we really have to do all this, Anne?”

She exhaled, her bangs fanning up like netting in the darkness. Maybe it was his imagination, but even the chirping night creatures seemed to hush for a moment, expectant. “Roy Sampson will come looking. If we head south, he can’t know that.” In the dim moonlight, James could see her eyes pool and shine. “My daddy is a proud man. He will never ever forgive you. Or me.”

As if the night was suddenly more dangerous, they huddled closer. She trembled, though the air was warm and weighted. “Where do your parents think you are now?” he asked. James hadn’t wondered about that until this moment.

“I told them I was spending the night with Cherie. Cherie’s parents think that’s where I am too.”

“But how—”

Anne giggled and kissed James. “Cherie is the best kind of friend! First, I can absolutely trust her because I’ve covered for her and Rudy Mello twice now. Second, her bedroom is on the first floor!”

***

Heading north over the Bay Bridge on to the western shore seemed crazy at first. If they were headed south, why go the wrong way? But Anne’s plan was to head north, then west for a while, to create a false trail. James stopped in to Ledbetter’s Service Station on Canal Street to purchase a Pennsylvania Highway map. Doogie Owens, Stinger’s kid brother, was working in the bay.

“Planning a trip to the western shore? I hear that new bridge is high as the moon!” Doogie ignored the red rag in his hip pocket and smeared his hands on his caked jeans.

James shelled out 50 cents. As if just recalling something, he said, “I’d better take one for Maryland and Ohio too.”

Doogie handed back change and the maps. His greasy thumbprint stamped the front of Pennsylvania’s smiling Governor Scranton. Doogie picked at his nose and wiped his finger down his front.

“So what’re the maps for?”

“I’m thinking of taking a drive up to see Pete.” He opened the Pennsylvania map casually and glanced toward the western corner above Maryland.

“Pete Minsk? Where’s he now?” Doogie started at the clang of the air bell, and moved around the counter to pump gas for Mr. Geiger, easing out of his flaming red Falcon. When he came back, James had tucked the maps in his back pocket and sipped a Nehi, spinning his quarter on the crusted counter.

“Yeah, so…” Doogie had a disconcerting trait. His eyes did not track together, but tended to wander separate, like twin infants that are fascinated by everything but each other.

“Right. Pete Minsk. He moved up to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Near the turnpike. I got a letter from him and he says fishing is awesome on some river.” He tried to pronounce the name from memory, but it come out sounding like he’d drank a soda with a bee in it.

“Yock? Like yock yock?” Doogie grinned, one eye fixed on James, the other at some spot above him. James spoke slow, steady, trying to will the word onto the slippery walls of Doogie’s rodent-sized brain.

“How you going?”

James shrugged. “Not sure yet. Maybe the bus. You ever heard of that town?” James prodded.

Doogie looked puzzled. Doogie always looked puzzled. “Yock?”

“No. Waynesburg. Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Like Wayne Feed. Only Waynesburg.”

Doogie shrugged. “Nope.” He brightened. “I heard of Cambridge though!” Cambridge was approximately 45 minutes away. James wondered if, even with the prodding of Chief Munro, Doogie would be likely to remember this conversation. Oh well, it wouldn’t do to overplay it.

***

James crept up the front steps of the Sampson house, stepping over the squeaky third tread. A corner of pink stationery peaked from the newspaper in front of the door. A note was folded in the newspaper, just as there had been every other morning since they’d last met in person. He knelt and slid the note out, then stepped back slowly, facing the door. The curtain behind the glass panel dropped silently back into place. He lifted a hand, turned, stepped over the third tread, and headed homeward.

James paused under the streetlight on the corner and unfolded the note.

Moon Launch 17 Monday 5 am.

Corner River and Elm. √√ XOXO

James refolded the note and walked slowly home. He smiled at Anne’s code. Double check everything, she had said. This is a moon launch. Whatever we forget, we can’t go back for. So check and double check.

The town slept. James swiveled his head as he walked, alert and calm, listening to the crinkling silence. Sometimes he imagined he was the sentinel of Crane Ridge, patrolling the streets while the town snored and dreamed. He felt safe in the enveloping night, when the mask of toughness he wore was laid aside.

The moon rested on his shoulder, following close. It draped the full boughs of the trees that lined the street in warm gold plating. He ran his fingers along the picket fence rounding the familiar darkened corner on to Nash Street. In a few days, he would be a memory ghost, a cipher that the night recalled, more and more faintly, until some future dark gloom, when another angry, lonely boy stepped out and walked these streets, walked through his ghost, and scattered it.