“Dr. Jekyll has finally dealt with Mr. Hyde,” he said in a low voice to Nancy. “Or maybe the other way around.” To me, he said, “That may be a bad joke, but it’s not ill meant.” He went to get dressed. “Call Mike,” he said to me. “Drunk or sober, I want him there.”
Nancy showed me the phone. Then she went to the bedroom to talk with Matt. I could hear him soothing her fears. When Mike answered, he was sleepy and sober, but he woke up stampeding.
Deep night and a thin moon is a perfect time for ghosts, but none showed up as Matt rode with me back to the graveyard. The Chrysler loafed. There was no need for hurry.
I told Matt what I’d learned in Sheridan.
“That matches what I heard,” he said, “and we have two mysteries. The first mystery is interesting, but it’s no longer important. Was John Still pretending to be Jesse Still, or was Jesse pretending to be John?”
“If Jesse drove into a river in ’53, then it has to be John.” I didn’t like what I said, because Jesse was real. The best actor in the world couldn’t pretend that well. My sorrow choked me, but I wasn’t ashamed.
Matt seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “We don’t know how long the game went on,” he said real quiet. “We never will know. John could have been playing at being Jesse way back in ’53.”
That got things tangled, and I felt resentful. Things were complicated enough. Me and Matt had just lost a friend, and now Matt was talking like that was the least interesting part.
“Makes no difference whether he was John or Jesse,” I told Matt. “He was Jesse when he died. He’s laying across the seat in Jesse’s car. Figure it any way you want, but we’re talking about Jesse.”
“You’re right,” Matt said. “Also, you’re wrong. We’re talking about someone who was both.” Matt sat quiet for a minute, figuring things out. I told myself it was just as well that he’d married a schoolteacher. “Assume, for the sake of argument,” he said, “that John was playing Jesse in ’53. John drove into the river, and people believed they were burying Jesse.
“Or, for the sake of argument, assume that it was Jesse in ’53. In that case the game started with John’s grief. Either way the game ran for many years.” Matt was getting at something, but he always has to go roundabout.
“After years, John, or Jesse, disappeared. There was only a man who was both John and Jesse. That’s the reason it makes no difference who died in ’53.”
Matt looked through the car window into the darkness like he expected to discover something important. “This is a long and lonesome country,” he said. “The biggest mystery is: why? The answer may lie in the mystery of twins, or it may be as simple as a man reaching into the past for happy memories. At any rate, one brother dies, and the survivor keeps his brother alive by living his brother’s life, as well as his own. Think of the planning, the elaborate schemes, the near self-deception. Think of how often the roles shifted. A time must have arrived when that lonely man could not even remember who he was.”
The answer was easy, and I saw it. Jesse, or John, chased the road to find something they’d lost on the road. They lost their parents and each other. I didn’t say a damn word. Matt was making me mad, but I worked at forgiving him. He was handling his own grief, and maybe he didn’t have a better way.
“And so he invented The Road Dog,” Matt said. “That kept the personalities separate. The Road Dog was a metaphor to make him proud. Perhaps it might confuse some of the ladies, but there isn’t a man ever born who wouldn’t understand it.”
I remembered long nights and long roads. I couldn’t fault his reasoning.
“At the same time,” Matt said, “the metaphor served the twins. They could play road games with the innocence of children, maybe even replay memories of a time when their parents were alive and the world seemed warm. John played The Road Dog, and Jesse chased; and, by God, so did the rest of us. It was a magnificent metaphor.”
“If it was that blamed snappy,” I said, “how come it fell to pieces? For the past year, it seems like Jesse’s been running away from The Dog.”
“The metaphor began to take over. The twins began to defend against each other,” Matt said. “I’ve been watching it all along, but couldn’t understand what was happening. John Still was trying to take over Jesse, and Jesse was trying to take over John.”
“It worked for a long time,” I said, “and then it didn’t work. What’s the kicker?”
“Our own belief,” Matt said. “We all believed in The Road Dog. When all of us believed, John was forced to become stronger.”
“And Jesse fought him off?”
“Successfully,” Matt said. “All this year, when Jesse came firing out of town, rolling fifty miles, and firing back, I thought it was Jesse’s problem. Now I see that John was trying to get free, get back on the road, and Jesse was dragging him back. This was a struggle between real men, maybe titans in the oldest sense, but certainly not imitations.”
“It was a guy handling his problems.”
“That’s an easy answer. We can’t know what went on with John,” Matt said, “but we know some of what went on with Jesse. He tried to love a woman, Sarah, and failed. He lost his dogs—which doesn’t sound like much, unless your dogs are all you have. Jesse fought defeat by building his other metaphor, which was that damned cemetery.” Matt’s voice got husky. He’d been holding in his sorrow, but his sorrow started coming through. It made me feel better about him.
“I think the cemetery was Jesse’s way of answering John, or denying that he was vulnerable. He needed a symbol. He tried to protect his loves and couldn’t. He couldn’t even protect his love for his brother. That cemetery is the last bastion of Jesse’s love.” Matt looked like he was going to cry, and I felt the same.
“Cars can’t hurt you,” Matt said. “Only bad driving hurts you. The cemetery is a symbol for protecting one of the few loves you can protect. That’s not saying anything bad about Jesse. That’s saying something with sadness for all of us.”
I slowed to pull onto Jesse’s place. Mike’s Olds sat by the trailer. Lights were on in the trailer, but no other lights showed anywhere.
“Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness,”
Matt said. “We give and take as we build those worlds. One must wonder how much Jesse, and John, gave in order to take the little that they got.”
We climbed from the Chrysler as autumn wind moved across the graveyard and felt its way toward my bones. The moon lighted faces of grave markers, but not enough that you could read them. Mike had the bulldozer warming up. It stood and puttered, and darkness felt best, and Mike knew it. The headlights were off. Far away on Highway 2, an engine wound tight and squalling, and it seemed like echoes of engines whispered among the graves. Mike stood huge as a grizzly.
“I’ve shot horses that looked healthier than you two guys,” he said, but said it sort of husky.
Matt motioned toward the bulldozer. “This is illegal.”
“Nobody ever claimed it wasn’t.” Mike was ready to fight if a fight was needed. “Anybody who don’t like it can turn around and walk.”
“I like it,” Matt said. “It’s fitting and proper. But if we’re caught, there’s hell to pay.”
“I like most everything and everybody,” Mike said, “except the government. They paw a man to death while he’s alive, then keep pawing his corpse. I’m saving Jesse a little trouble.”
“They like to know that he’s dead and what killed him.”
“Sorrow killed him,” Mike said. “Let it go at that.”