Castle Freeman Go

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.The whirligigs were for sale, and from time to time somebody bought one, but Lester made the things mainly because Irene and their girls had liked them.He was sentimental about Irene and their girls.Lester left the truck and went to the door of the house and in.Lillian and Nate sat in the truck and waited for him.After a moment Nate reached forward and turned off the engine.“I’ve always wondered who lived here,” Lillian said.Nate didn’t say anything.“Does he have a wife?” Lillian asked him.“A family?”“Who?” asked Nate.“Him.” Lillian nodded toward the house.“Lester.”“Les? Don’t know.”They watched Lester’s whirligigs pivoting and jerking about in the yard like a clockwork kindergarten.“Did he make all these things?” Lillian asked Nate.“Don’t know.”“If he does have a wife, I feel sorry for her,” said Lillian.“Look at this place.”Nate didn’t respond.They listened to the whirligigs clacking in the wind.After a moment Lillian asked him, “How old is he?”“Who?”“Lester, okay? Your partner.Lester.Lester.Who have we been talking about?”“Les?” said Nate.“Don’t know.Pretty old.”“Right,” said Lillian.“Look: Tell me the truth.Can he, can you do this, with Blackway? Really do it?”Nate didn’t answer her.He watched the whirligigs.After a couple of minutes he spoke again.“I ain’t scared of Blackway,” said Nate.Lester came out the side door of his place and around to the truck.He had a long parcel wrapped up in a black plastic trash bag under his arm.He opened the truck’s door, laid his parcel carefully on the floor behind the seat, and got in beside Lillian.“What’s that?” Lillian asked him.“Curtain rods,” said Lester.“Curtain rods?” said Lillian.“It’s a gun, isn’t it? That’s some kind of gun.”Nate started the truck’s engine and backed it out of Lester’s driveway into the road.“Curtain rods,” said Lester.“Wait a minute,” said Lillian.“No guns.Nobody said anything about guns.I don’t want any guns in this.”“Hold it,” Lester said to Nate.Nate stopped the truck.“Turn it off,” said Lester.Nate shut off the engine.They were stopped in the middle of the road.Lester turned to Lillian.“Okay,” he said, “what is it you want, here?”“What do you mean, what do I want?”“From us,” said Lester.“What is it you want us to do for you? About Blackway?”“Get him to stop what he’s doing,” said Lillian.“Get him to leave me alone.”“And how do you think we’re going to do that?” Lester asked her.“Are we just going to talk to Blackway? Talk to his friends? Reason with them, with him? Argue Blackway into leaving you alone? Can we do that?”“I don’t know,” said Lillian.“No.No, you can’t.”Lester grinned at her and slapped his thigh.“Yes, we can,” he said.“We can reason with Blackway.” He turned to Nate and nodded.Nate started the engine, put the truck in gear, and got them headed around in the road.“We can so argue with Blackway,” Lester said.He reached down behind the seat and patted the parcel he’d laid on the floor back there.“This here’s the argument.”6SHE LIKES IT HERE“Kevin Bay,” said Whizzer.“She was Kevin’s girl.She and Kevin lived in a trailer there behind his folks.Past Dead River.”“She worked,” said D.B.“Where did she work? At the inn, didn’t she?”“Waiting tables,” said Coop.“Holds herself pretty high for a waitress, don’t she?” said D.B.“It seems as though she worked at the school, too, for a while,” said Whizzer.“She was a teacher?” Conrad asked.“No,” said Coop.“Some kind of teacher’s helper.”“Her and her You people.What’s the matter with you people?” said D.B.“She’s coming in pretty high for a girl wipes the little kids’ asses at school.”“She’s a bright girl,” said Whizzer.“She worked at the nursery, too.Worked for Edie, there.Edie thought the world of her.No, she’s a bright girl.Hard worker.Good thing, too.”“Good thing, with Kevin,” said Coop.“What I meant, wasn’t it?” said Whizzer.“Her boyfriend?” asked Conrad.“Kevin was no prize, put it that way,” D.B.said.“I don’t know about that,” said Whizzer.“In school he was.Nobody ever said Kevin wasn’t smart.Quick.Teachers wanted him to apply to college.”“Can you go to college in jail?” asked Coop.“That’s the thing,” said D.B.“Kevin was smart, all right.He was too smart.He was the kind of smart that thinks everybody else is dumb.”“Kevin was a god damned mess, is what he was,” said Coop.“Had a juvenile record about a hundred pages long.Turned eighteen, never looked back.Graduated, like.”“Funny how often you see that,” said Conrad.“See what?” Coop asked him.“Blackway stopped him one night,” said D.B.“Stopped him?” asked Conrad.“Blackway was one of Wingate’s deputies,” said Whizzer.“He stopped Kevin on Route Ten for operation of a vehicle with defective equipment.”“Headlight was out,” said D.B.“Stopped both of them,” said Coop.“She was driving.”“That’s right, too,” said Whizzer.“She was.I forgot.”“Kevin had a bunch of dope in the car,” said Coop.“Bunch of pot.”“Had it hidden away under the backseat,” said D.B.“Where nobody would ever think to look for it.”“Clever kid,” said Coop.“I told you he was sharp,” said Whizzer.“Master criminal,” said D.B.“The girl didn’t know Kevin had anything in the car,” said Whizzer.“She said she didn’t know,” said D.B.“She didn’t,” said Whizzer.“Blackway did, though,” said Coop.“Sure, he did,” said Whizzer.“Blackway knew looking for dope under Kevin Bay’s backseat was like looking for ants at a picnic.”“Like looking for hot dogs at Fenway,” said Coop.“He also knew,” Whizzer went on,“with Kevin’s record and him being eighteen and not a juvenile anymore, he was in real trouble this time.He was going away.”“So he decided to work on him a little,” said D.B.“Put a little weight on him.What do you call it?”“You call it a shakedown,” said Conrad.“Decided to shake him down a little,” said D.B.“That’s a thing Blackway has going for him,” Whizzer said.“Had going,” said Coop.“Had,” said Whizzer.“Kind of a sideline he had.Deputy don’t get paid much, you know.”“You got to hustle,” said Coop“You got to be an entrepreneur,” said D.B.“Blackway took the dope,” said Whizzer.“Confiscated it,” said Coop.“Impounded it,” said D.B.“Told Kevin he’d let him go this time,” said Whizzer [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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