Читать книгу Broken Ground - John Keeble - Страница 12

THE NEXT DAY he sat in his backhoe. Rain dotted the windshield and slid down to the rubber molding on the outside. The backhoe, which he'd just driven up into the bed of his dump truck, growled beneath him. He was at Zymanski's warehouse, loading his equipment—which was no longer his. He would take the equipment to the Rome project tonight. Phil Grimes, a heavy-equipment operator and an old friend, was to transport the LeTourneau. Lafleur had to finish here, then stop at the toolshed to pick up his dog and clothes, and be at Blaylock's by eight o'clock to meet Phil.

His truck was a recalcitrant starter in the wet and he'd left it running, too, as he loaded. The backhoe had its vibration and it took up the vibration that came through the steel bed of the truck, up through the bed mounts on the frame from the trembling diesel engine. Lafleur was eating a cheese sandwich that he'd bought from a machine. The height he was at gave him a westward view of Swan Island, an industrial park, of the docks on the Willamette, and to the southwest of downtown Portland. A cloud cover stretched from the Coast Mountains over the city, and the low area from Swan Island to downtown looked like a pool of darkness filled with tiny candles. It was raining gently.

He bit off a chunk of sandwich and looked out the right-hand window at the warehouse, an old brick building painted gray. A man in uniform walked by the front of it. He'd seen that one a few minutes ago, a figure too big, much too tall, and too young to be the watchman Lafleur knew, Dave Petra, an old man with hunched shoulders. But then Dave appeared from the side of the building, climbed the steps onto the loading dock, and went inside to the offices. He shambled behind windows. The other man came back around from the other side of the warehouse and moved to the end of a line of equipment that stretched from the corner of the warehouse behind Lafleur's truck to the street. He had a watchful air and a light step for such a big man.

When Dave came back along the windows inside the warehouse, the other one vanished behind the equipment. Dave stepped out onto the loading dock and glanced up toward Lafleur, then moved down the steps and headed off in the opposite direction from where the other one had gone, back around the building. It was the second time Lafleur had seen that tonight, the two men prowling in a kind of extended dance, always missing each other. It seemed odd.

He stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth, pulled on his gloves, pushed open the door, climbed down, and walked to the edge of the truck bed. The backhoe's arm angled upward and the toothed bucket hung like a dislocated mandible over his head. His trailer and Caterpillar bulldozer, still loaded from his last job, stood in Zymanski's line of machines. His truck stood out in the open with its bed cocked up a foot and bridged to the ground by the two steel ramps that he had used to load the backhoe. The backhoe was a good-sized one, a Case 280B, and the truck was a Mack ten-yard rig, but not even the two of them together seemed particularly big because of their company in the line of machinery: bulldozers, earthmovers, cranes, semi-trailers and tractors, lowboys and more dump trucks. They were a prehistoric-looking bunch, mammoth animals, queerly appendaged and heavily armored. He gazed tenderly down the line as if to bid the machines farewell, and looking in the direction of the street he saw the big man again, across the street, standing under the awning of a used-furniture shop. A flickering red neon light played on the man's figure and rainwater streamed from the edge of the awning. Lafleur guessed Zymanski had hired a second watchman, but he couldn't make out why the man was over there. The figure did not move.

Lafleur turned back into the bed of his truck, crouched over the first of four chains, and fastened it to the undercarriage of the backhoe. He moved around, fastening the other three chains. Each time he bent, a rivulet of water slid from the hood of his slicker. It had been raining all day. His gloves were soaked. His shirt collar and socks were wet, the cuffs of his trousers were wet, and the moisture had wicked up to his knees. Quickly, he worked around the backhoe the second time, securing the chains to eyelets welded to the corners of the truck bed. The fourth chain hung up, jarring his shoulder when he jerked it. A link had caught sideways in the eyelet. He shook the chain loose and tugged again. It ran through and he kept it coming until it played out. He hung on to it, feeling his fingers going numb from handling the cold metal, and went down to his knees and peered behind the wheel of the backhoe to check the hook at that end. It was fine, still turned against the tension. He felt that someone was behind him, watching, coming near. Spooked, he froze, then slowly pulled out from under the backhoe and looked around. There was no one. He stepped up on the backhoe and looked over the truck's side panel to where he'd seen the man under the awning. The man was gone.

Lafleur went to the end of the bed and looked up and down the lot, then craned his neck and looked along the side of the truck. There was no one in sight—just the yard, machinery, warehouse, and across the street flickering neon signs and darkened shops, and everywhere the steady drizzle in the half-light. He ducked back into the truck bed. It was the running engines, he thought, that had spooked him, so surrounded him with noise that he conjured a presence out of his inability to hear. It was like the itch on an amputee's toe. It was absence, filling itself with emanation. He grabbed the chain, braced himself against the side of the bed, and tugged. Another link came through. He hooked the chain onto itself, then stepped over it and climbed up the side of the backhoe, entered the compartment, sat, and swiveled the seat so that he faced the bucket. He used the controls to raise the bucket, then made the light-colored articulated arm do a probing acrobatic in the gray air. The arm straightened, telescoped, folded, and the bucket came down neatly until its heel nearly touched the truck bed. He lowered the pods, the four flat steel disks mounted to hydraulic retractors on the insides of the wheels. He used the pods to lift the tractor, taking weight off the wheels and slack out of the chains, then he swung the door open and looked down at the chains. They were tight enough to play a tune on. He lowered the tractor slightly on the pods to ease up on the tension. He dropped the bucket to the bed, making the ninth point for the machine to rest on, to hold it steady on the trip across the mountains. He switched the backhoe off and climbed out, then jumped out of the truck bed to the asphalt. He picked up the end of each of the ramps, slid them under the backhoe, and climbed back into the truck to mount the tailgate, looking again as he moved, scanning the yard.

Heavy, the tailgate took everything he had to move it from where he had leaned it against the side panel. He slid the tailgate into position and lifted one end into the slot, then the other, grunting, feeling with satisfaction the pull of the cartilage in his knees and the thunk as the tailgate pivot fell into the second slot. It felt good to be engrossed with the manipulation of mechanical objects.

He clamped the gate shut, then eased down. He went around to the cab of the truck, climbed in, lowered the bed, backed the truck up and let it coast gently into the trailer hitch. It hit the mark and slid to, thumping resonantly. He got out, dropped the pins into the hitch and attached the safety chains between the trailer and truck, got back in the cab and pulled the trailer out of line and parked near the street. A car passed, illuminating cones of raindrops in the gray with its headlights. The truck engine idled and the windshield wipers slapped rhythmically.

He looked down at his toolbox on the floor of the passenger side and rapidly ran its contents through his mind. He had a steel case in the back of the truck, too, which held the heavier items: grease guns, filters, hosing, jacks, large tools, more chain, cable, spare parts…. He had his extra three-quarter-yard bucket in the back, and six ten-gallon cans of oil, two five-gallon grease cans. He was ready. His watch said ten after seven. It was time. He switched off the wipers. Rain dotted the windshield. He opened the door, stepped down to the ground, and headed for the warehouse to check his locker one last time.

At about thirty feet the idling truck became a pocket of noise behind him. He felt as though he had walked through a wall. The sun had dropped beneath the cloud cover. It shone laterally through the slit between clouds and distant mountains. The rain kept falling, but everything gleamed. The evening had taken on an unreal, luminous quality. He searched the yard for Dave Petra, for the big man. He looked between the machines to his right as he passed them. He saw no one. The puddles in the asphalt were a-quiver with light and had oily, coiling rainbows in them.

He climbed onto the loading dock and went into the office. Dave was not in here. Lafleur moved to a passageway that led to the shop and peered through the opening. Heavy tools lined the walls—jacks, bench presses, welding equipment, metal lathes—and in the dock nearest him stood a D-14 international tractor, disemboweled of its engine. The engine sat on the floor, a pig of a thing. A hook and chain hung from a rolling winch mounted on a track on a beam above the D-14. In the stillness it was a lethal-looking place. He called the watchman's name: “Dave?” His voice echoed in the cavernous room.

No one answered. Puzzled, Lafleur squinted. He turned back into the office and walked to his locker, opened it, and squatted.

An old sweater lay wadded in a corner. Scattered bits of things that had fallen out of his pockets over the several years littered the bottom. He scooped them out and looked: scraps of paper, tickets torn in half, a broken jackknife, pennies, paper clips, and a small, hard piece of clay. Junk. He picked up the clay. It was a head with protruding ears, agape mouth, and deep eye sockets, something slightly hideous made by one of his children, but he couldn't remember by which child, or when, or why he had carried it here. He turned the head slowly in his fingers, then put it in his shirt pocket. He put the pennies in his pocket and dumped the rest of the debris in a wastebasket, picked up his sweater, stood, swung the locker door shut with his knee, and moved back to the front door.

He went out onto the dock, stopped, and looked for Dave Petra. Usually Dave came out to talk to him when he loaded equipment after hours. The sun had sunk deeper and whitened light reflected off the bottoms of the clouds. He glanced over at his truck and trailer, which were waiting right next to the street. The truck rumbled. He snaked his eyes back along the line of huge, protuberant machinery, then he moved down the steps and started across the lot.

He felt cold under his slicker from being in the warm building. The air began to reverberate as he neared his truck. He looked around, across the street, even back over his shoulder, seeing no one. He went around the trailer, scrutinizing his load as he passed, checking it again, and walked to the cab. He had his foot on the step-up and the door half open when he saw a thick shape loom out from the front of the truck. The shape, a man, scurried under him. Startled, Lafleur froze. The man came up from beneath Lafleur, grabbed his belt, and thrust him into the cab. Quickly, Lafleur bent his leg up and kicked, and felt his bootheel strike, but there was another one inside the cab, who grabbed his coat and dragged him in, actually lifted and turned him and sat him down on the seat. The one outside got into the cab, jerked the door shut, slid over and pushed against Lafleur. Lafleur found himself wedged between the two of them. He had his foot caught behind the shift lever. He couldn't move. He smelled the men's wet clothing. The one on his left was bent over, rubbing his forehead through the black ski mask he wore pulled down to his neck.

“Caught you one, did he?” the one on the right said. He, too, wore a black ski mask. He was big. He had a big frame and a head like a huge black blot, but his voice came out sweet-sounding.

“Shit,” the one on the left said. “The sucker kicked me.” Then suddenly he turned on Lafleur, wildly punching Lafleur's chest and face.

“Easy,” the big one said. Lafleur had raised his arms to ward off the blows. He drew up one knee to try to shove the man off him. His other foot was still caught and he felt his ankle wrench. He heard himself shout. It sounded like someone else shouting, then he felt the big one lean over him, felt himself smothered by the body and pressed back into the seat, and he glimpsed the big one's arm move by and gently shove the man on the left away. “Easy,” the big one said.

“Okay,” the man on the left said. He slid back next to Lafleur, shoving against him. “Okay.”

“We thought we'd lost you when you first pulled this thing out to the street,” the big one said. The voice still sounded sweet.

Lafleur hadn't been hurt by the attack, just shaken. His foot was still caught and his blood was pounding. “Get out of my truck,” he said.

He felt the man on his left quivering. On his right, the big one's jaw worked slowly underneath the mask, then he said, “He wants us out of his truck. It's so nice and dry in here. Plenty of room, too.” The man on the left chuckled.

Lafleur tried to think what they wanted, or what he could give them. He tried to remember what he had on the floor, wondering if there was something loose down there that he could use as a weapon, but what had been so clear in his mind a few minutes ago, exactly what equipment he had packed, and where, had become a muddle. By pressing their bodies against him, the two men had him in a helpless position. When he shifted his leg slightly to disengage his trapped foot, the body on his right turned, then suddenly the movement became fast and inescapable like a tree, tipping, then rushing for the earth. He saw the fist coming at him, and the blow exploded in his face and banged his head against the back window. Everything went black.

When he opened his eyes he saw the windshield as a blur, wet and glistening. He felt the bodies next to him, the one on the left quivering as if with excitement. The two had their heads down. The one on the right was chewing something. The mask moved rhythmically at his cheek. When Lafleur stirred he spat and said, “There, now.” Lafleur's head throbbed. He touched his face, felt it. Through the windshield he saw a car go by, lighting up the street.

He looked at the big man out of the corners of his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Good,” the big one said. He raised one hand and put something through the hole in his mask, and resumed chewing. “Much better,” he said.

“Money?” Lafleur said. “Do you want money?” The two didn't speak. “I'm going to take out my wallet,” Lafleur said, “and put it up on the dash. Take what you want.”

Neither of the men spoke, but the one on the left abruptly stopped quivering and Lafleur thought, Addicts, they're addicts, they want the cash. He moved gingerly, reached back for his wallet. He had to wedge his hand between himself and the one on his left to get at it. He eased it out, set it on the dashboard, and the one on the left jerked forward, snatched up the wallet, then bent down again, and rifled the contents. “There's two hundred dollars,” Lafleur said. He watched as bits of paper—his receipts and the notes on bits of paper—scattered to the floor. The man dropped the wallet and made a fan out of the bills and held them near the dashboard lights. The big man on the right turned his head slightly to look and Lafleur caught a glimpse of the pale skin around his eyes. The man on the left put the bills in his pocket, then squeezed back against Lafleur. “Now,” Lafleur said. “I don't know who you are. Leave me.”

“Full of ideas, isn't he?” the big man said softly.

The man on the left chuckled.

The big man spat again, then said, “It's a cage out there.”

Lafleur sat still, watching the big man's head. He was thinking that he needed to watch, to not appear to be a victim, even to try to talk. He closed his eyes and opened them. He felt groggy.

“They sent me to check on you,” the big man said. The man on the left laughed. “You've got to steel yourself before you go out there.”

“Okay,” Lafleur said.

“Wherever you're going,” the big man said. He laughed. It came out as a rapid wheezing, then he paused, drew his breath, and said, “Okay, he says. Okay what?” The man on the left laughed. It sounded like a cackle. Lafleur could feel the two bodies rocking gently with laughter, and he thought, These two aren't simply out of control, they're crazy. “It's all a cage,” the big man said, almost whispering. “I've spent my whole life in a cage. Life is hard.”

“I'm sorry,” Lafleur said.

“Sorry?” the big man said. “You don't know me.” The man on the left had begun to quiver again, then he pulled away from Lafleur, and Lafleur thought, Maybe they're going now. But the one on the left stopped. Lafleur sensed expectation in his position, then realized that the man wasn't leaving, but just getting out of the way. For an instant, a terrible, accepting sense of calm descended upon Lafleur. “You don't know what my life is like. Who do you think you are?” the big man said, and Lafleur saw the big, oval head bow, and then felt the huge body turning again, coming at him. Desperately, he tried to twist free, but the one on the left knocked him back. Lafleur raised his hands. The fist crashed through them, striking him on the forehead, and then again he took another crushing blow to the side of the head, and he smelled the big man near him, the strong odor of wet wool and something in his breath, rancid and faintly salty. The man hit him a third time. Lafleur's skull rattled against the window. As he passed out he felt another blow and it seemed almost soft, a cushion for him to lay his head on as he went under.

When he awakened he found himself half stretched out on the seat. Confused, he tried to raise himself. His foot was stuck. He disengaged it and turned it to test his ankle. He remembered that detail, the ankle. It was all right. He heard a car swish by. He tried to pull himself up by the dashboard, but couldn't do it. He fell back on the seat. His head pounded. He stared at the ceiling of the cab. He remembered the two men, then realized that he was alone. He felt a tremendous wave of relief. Groggy, he passed out again.

Then he came to, his thoughts clearer. He eased upright and hung on to the steering wheel. His head knifed with pain. The truck was still running, trembling. Down below, the lights of Portland stretched as far as the eye could see. He thought of Phil Grimes waiting for him at Blaylock's and he tried to read his watch, but couldn't make it out. He thought—Blaylock! In his mind, he saw Blaylock's pitted face. He wanted to blame Blaylock for this. He straightened, pressed the clutch down, pulled the shift lever, and grasped the wheel. He eased the truck out into the street. Behind him, the trailer clanked. A car honked. Its horn wailed and changed tone as it passed. He drove on, fighting sleep.