“Damn straight,” Twombley said. He yanked the cigarette from his mouth and rubbed it out in the ashtray. The windshield wipers clacked back and forth, and large beads of melted snow skittered like water bugs across the wide flat hood of the truck.
At first glance and often for a long time after you got to know him, Evan Twombley gave the impression of being a physically and personally powerful man, and most people tried to give him whatever he seemed to want from them. Often, later on, they realized that they had been foolishly intimidated, but by then it was too late and they would have other reasons for continuing to give him what he wanted. He was one of those American Irishmen who find themselves in their mid-fifties with a body that, in its bloat and thickened coarsened face, looks large, bulky, formidable, when in fact it is a small body, even delicate, with fine hands, narrow shoulders and hips, small precise ears, eyes, mouth. Forty years of heavy consumption of whiskey and beefsteak can turn a dancer’s body and a musician’s face into those of a venal politician. That other, much younger man, the dancer, the musician, was nonetheless still there and was wide awake somewhere inside and making trouble for Twombley now by questioning the venal politician’s right to bully people with his loud voice, by mocking his swagger and brag, his claims of physical fearlessness, and finally making the loud burly red-faced man often come off as hesitant, conflicted, vulnerable, even guilty. In the end, although one neared Twombley feeling intimidated by him and wary of and possibly hostile toward him, up close one quickly discovered a fellow feeling for him and a genuine sympathy, sometimes a protectiveness.
Twombley himself, of course, knew nothing of this transition; he only perceived its effects, the most useful being that it gave him power over people: at first, people were afraid of him; then they warmed to him. In human relations, this is a sequence that invites dominance and creates loyalty. And in Twombley’s particular line of work — which, after a long careful climb from the local organizing level, had come to be that of the president of the New England Plumbers and Pipefitters Union, AFL–CIO — dominance and loyalty were extremely useful, not to say essential, for without them he would have been forced back long ago to working with the wrenches in the trenches.
The truck entered a flat S curve in the road, and the rear wheels broke loose, and the vehicle fishtailed from one side of the road to the other; Jack hit the accelerator and nonchalantly flipped the front wheels in the direction of the slide and anchored the truck to the road again.
“You done much shooting with that rifle of yours yet?” Jack reached behind him with his right hand and patted the stock of Twombley’s gun.
“Some,” Twombley said, and lit another cigarette and looked out the window at the spruce trees and thatches of cedar flashing past.
Jack smiled. He knew that Twombley had not fired the rifle at all. It was a lovely thing, not a scratch or blemish on it, a Winchester M-94 pump-action, a.30/30 with a custom-carved stock. It must have set Twombley back two thousand bucks. Ah, sweet Jesus, these rich old guys and their toys! Jack seemed almost to sigh, but he ended by pursing his lips again as if to whistle. Men like Twombley, over-the-hill fat cats, cannot ever truly appreciate the beauty of things that they can afford to buy. And the men who can appreciate a gun like Twombley’s, guys like Jack Hewitt, say, who can remember the feel of a particular gun in their hands for years afterwards, as if it were a marvelous woman they slept with once, will never be able to own it.
Next to Twombley’s gun, Jack’s new Browning looked utilitarian, ordinary, merely adequate. Yet to buy it he had been obliged to borrow money from the bank, had lied and said that the money was for his mother’s medical bills, which was true, in a sense, because he was still paying for her stay in the hospital last summer and the old man was still out of work, and if Jack did not take care of his parents, who would? He had bought the gun, and now he had yet another monthly payment to make. In addition to the $48 a month for the gun, he sent out $420 a month for his truck, $52 a month for insurance on the truck, $35 a month for the engagement ring he bought last May for Hettie, $50 a month to Concord Hospital for his mother, and $200 a month to his father directly, for household expenses and food, which was, after all, the least he could do, since, as his father had explained one drunken night — shortly after Jack went and ruined his arm and quit playing professional ball for the Red Sox farm team in New Britain, Connecticut, and came home to Lawford and parked his ass back in his room the same week the old man got laid off at the mill — there was just no way the old man was going to be able to support him. In fact, if Jack wanted to live with his parents, then he would have to support them. So that now, only a few years out of high school, where, because of baseball and his intelligent good looks, he had been one of the most promising Lawford kids ever to graduate from Barrington Regional, Jack was already mired in debt, a man who worked overtime to make enough money to pay interest on borrowed money, and he knew it, and that made a gun like Twombley’s fancy Winchester all the more attractive to him. He practically deserved Twombley’s gun. As a reward, for Christ’s sake!
Twombley shifted in his seat and rubbed his red nose with a knuckle. “You get me close to a big buck by ten o’clock, kid, there’s another hundred bucks in it.”
Jack nodded and offered a faint smile. A few seconds later he said, “You might not kill it.”
“You think so.”
“And I expect you’ll have to kill it, for me to get my extra hundred bucks, right?”
“Right.”
“Can’t guarantee that, you know.”
“What?”
“That you won’t gut-shoot the deer, say, or cripple him up for somebody else to find and tag a mile downriver from where you shot him. Or maybe you’ll miss him altogether. Or just spook him before you even get a shot off. It happens. Happens all the time. Happens especially with a new gun. You want a dead deer, not a live one.”
Twombley crossed his arms over his chest. “You take care of your end, kid, I’ll take care of mine.”
“Yep.”
“You understand what I’m saying? Like you say, I want a dead deer, not a live one.”
“Yeah. I get it.” Jack was not stupid. He knew what Twombley was asking him to do. Shoot the deer for him, if necessary. Discreetly. “Okay,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. “No sweat. You’ll get yourself a deer, and you’ll get him dead. One way or the other. And you’ll have him by coffee time.”
“And you’ll get your extra hundred bucks.”
“Wonderful,” Jack said. “Wonderful.”
The truck crested the hill, where the trees had thinned and diminished in size, scrawny balsams, mostly, and low reddish furze scattered around boulders. Beyond the boulders was a shallow high-country swamp, a muskeg, covered with ice. Barely visible through the falling snow, at the high end of a short rise, was a log cabin with a low overhanging shake roof set in under a stand of drooping snow-covered blue spruce and red pine.
Jack slowed the truck and drew it over to the side of the road. “That there’s LaRiviere’s cabin he told you about,” he said, pointing with his chin toward the small one-room structure. “We can start a fire in the wood stove now, if you want, so’s it’ll be nice and warm when we come in. Or we can head out for that monster buck of yours right now. Up to you.”
“You’re a cocky sonofabitch,” Twombley said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You only got two and a half hours till ten, and you’re willing to waste time building a fire.”