Dorn leaned over the counter, weighing the new reel in his hand. “Can you believe it?” he said, “I drove all the way to Vermont. I was actually at the stream before I discovered that my reel was rusted solid. Now I can’t believe I put it away wet, but I guess I did.”
“Sometimes they’ll loosen up for you,” the man behind the counter said. “More trouble than it’s worth, most likely. And they’ll never be the same as they were. How are you for bait? Hooks?”
“Strictly a fly-fisherman, and I’m in good shape on everything else. On everything, now that I’ve got the reel. Say, I was noticing those guns when I came in. What do you have to go through to purchase a rifle in Vermont?”
“Have to be a resident.”
“I thought as much. And then you probably have to have a firearms card with your fingerprints on it.”
“Nope, just a resident driver’s license. Where you from?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“And you’ve got a lot of red tape down there, do you?”
“They’ve made it just about impossible to buy a gun.”
“Ayeh. I’d say that’s what they have in mind, wouldn’t you say?” he leaned his weight on the counter. “It’s different up here. I’ll tell you. You people have a situation with the colored. There are all those colored, so naturally a white man wants to arm himself. Way the government must see it, the more people with guns the more shooting is going to happen.” He winked, a gesture that astonished Dorn. “Put it this way, at least they can’t sell them to the colored either. Be thankful for small things, eh?”
The boy made himself comfortable on the car seat and asked if it was okay to smoke. Dorn told him to go ahead. The boy lit a cigarette and rolled down the window to flip the match out, then rolled the window up again.
“Nice car,” he said.
“It belongs to a friend. I borrowed it.”
“That’s the kind of friend to have.”
The boy was about 20, 5’9”, 140 pounds. Burton Weldon, former chairman of the now-disbanded Caldwell chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, was 21, 5’ 10”, 150 pounds. This boy was clean-shaven and had short hair. Weldon’s hair was long and he wore a Zapata moustache.
“You live here in Vermont?”
“Yes, sir. In Hazelton.”
“Can you drive? That’s the main reason I stopped, to be frank. My head is splitting and I don’t want to take chances with a friend’s automobile. You can drive?”
“Since I was fifteen.”
“You have a license? You have it with you, I mean.”
“Always carry it.”
“You wouldn’t mind driving?”
“A car like this? You kidding?”
Dorn pulled to a stop. He turned to face the boy. “Tell me,” he said. “What do you think of J. Lowell Drury?”
“Who’s he?”
“You don’t recognize the name?”
“I don’t think so. Is that your name or something?”
“Interesting you never heard of him,” Dorn said. “You helped to murder him.”
“Huh?”
“Your role was a small one. A spear carrier. You stole this automobile. Then you lost control of it and crashed it into one of those trees, I think. You weren’t wearing your seat belt.”
“Mister, I don’t think—”
“You died in the accident,” Dorn said, reaching, hands quick and accomplished. He cupped the back of the short-haired head with his right hand, caught up the shirt front with his left. He snapped the boy’s neck forward. There was no struggling. There was no time.
The boy’s license was in his wallet. The boy had automatically tapped a pocket when Dorn asked him about the license. That was the pocket he looked in, and the wallet was there. He took the license, replaced the wallet. The boy’s name was — had been? no, was — Clyde Farrar, Jr.
He propped Clyde Farrar, Jr., behind the wheel, left his seat belt unfastened. Dorn sat on the passenger side. He started the engine and steered with one hand. His own scat belt was fastened, and he was braced when the car hit the tree.
Before he entered a second sporting goods store, this one considerably closer to the Maine border, he used a pencil to change Farrar’s date of birth from 1950 to 1920. His signature on the bill of sale for the deer rifle would have fooled anyone but a handwriting expert, The clerk didn’t look at it twice, or at the altered date of birth, for that matter.
He changed it back after he left the store.
A long distance telephone conversation:
“Hello. You received the funds?”
“Yes. Something else occurs to me.”
“Oh?”
“It would be best if there were no academic difficulty in my home district.”
“We never considered it. That’s an undeveloped district, after all.”
“Like so many, it has some surface tension. Admittedly of low density. I wouldn’t want the waters troubled. It would spoil my own swimming.”
A chuckle. “As it happens, you have exclusive representation in your district. Now that you mention it, it might be worthwhile to assign someone in a conciliatory capacity.”
“Try it again.”
“You’re swimming alone, but if the water’s troubled we can send you some oil.”
“Understood, but no. It’s my backwater.”
“Delicious. Anything else?”
“No.”
Another long distance telephone conversation:
“Hello? Hey, turn that down, huh? Hello?”
“Is that you, Roger?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Burt.”
“I can’t hear you, man.”
“Burt Weldon.”
“Man, this is a shit connection. You got to talk louder, you sound like you’re coining through a roomful of Dacron or something. Is it Burt?”
“Right on, baby. Burt Weldon.”
“Like I can just barely make you out. What’s happening?”
“Everything’s happening, man. Everything.”
“You cool, man? You sound kind of weird.”
“I’m beautiful. I want you to recognize it when it happens.”
“Huh?”
“I want you to know where it came from.”
“You sure you’re all right? It’s Burt Weldon, baby, I don’t know what he wants. He sounds really weird, totally fucked up. He never used to use anything. Hey, Burt? What kind of trip arc you on?”
“The ultimate trip.”
“Whatever’s cool.”
“The ultimate cool. A trip down Drury Lane. That’s all I can say.”
“Whatever it is I couldn’t hear it.”
“I said a trip down Dreary Lane. We all know the Muffin Man.”
“Huh?”
Dorn set up the portable typewriter in his motel room. On a sheet of plain typing paper he typed:
To the good people, who are dead or in jaiclass="underline"
No one will understand this. Maybe that proves it was the right thing to do. The things the world understands always turn out wrong.
Does the end justify the means? I no longer comprehend the question. Once I knew the question but did not know the answer. Now I know the answer but have lost my grasp of the question.
We tried words. Words are out-of-date. Dreary Drury gives us words, and we throw back bullets.
It seems to me
An hour later he went to the off-campus apartment house where Burton Weldon lived. He traded the typewriter for Weldon’s, which was open on the desk. He put a box of shells for the deer rifle on the closet shelf and covered it with a dirty shirt. He crumpled the unfinished letter and dropped it in a corner of the room where several crumpled sheets of paper already nestled.
He left with Weldon’s typewriter in hand.
The night before commencement exercises he had a dream in Serbo-Croat.