Part 8 (1/2)

The tall guy didn't even turn to look at him. He just ducked his shoulder a little bit to give Tom access to his beer. He certainly didn't make any effort to give the stool back. Tom decided he looked like Xavier Cugat. He had that Cuban's arrogance.

Tom drank a little and tried to listen in on their conversation, but Cugat was talking in something below a whisper. Plus he had an accent that made his voice kind of dip and rise and slur around the corners, like the coaster over in the amus.e.m.e.nt park. Tom drank a little more and lit a cigarette. After a minute or two Cugat left off and Nick stuck out an elbow and pushed him back a little. He said while you're at it this is Tom. This guy right here. The guy I was telling you about.

Cugat swiveled slow, like a cat stretching, and he fixed his hypnotic eyes on Tom. He eased out a slow smile. It made that skinny little mustache of his slide outward and up at the edges and get even thinner. Like a paper cut that hasn't healed over.

”Hey,” said Tom through his cigarette.

Cugat slid a hand toward him. ”Tom,” he said, ”I am very pleased to meet you.” He was still using that roller-coaster voice, but he'd turned up the volume on it a little. ”I am Henri.”

A Canuck, then. That explained a few things. The Canuck bowed like some kind of old-time parlor magician, his black hair parted up the middle and slicked back. Tom half-expected him to reach over and fish a quarter out of his ear.

Nick said Henri was from Canada and Tom said he'd figured that out.

Nick said hey he could be from France couldn't he or he could live right around here and still have an accent since there was no law against having an accent that he knew of, and Tom said he guessed that was pretty much true but he'd been thinking Canada anyway for some reason.

Henri reached inside his jacket and took out his cigarettes-a flat box of those Matinees-and Nick looked from the pack to Tom and back again as if this were the secret, as if Tom possessed X-ray vision and had looked through the Canuck's jacket and identified his country of origin by his smokes. Fine.

”So, Tom”-here Henri paused to light up, making everybody wait for the rest of what he had to say as he fitted the Matinee between his lips and hunted down his Zippo and spun the thumbwheel and fired up the cigarette and squinted against the rising smoke and inhaled dramatically and held it for a second and then another second and then finally blew it out again-”I have heard a great deal about you.” It was turning out that Henri wasn't big on getting his sentences out all at once.

Nick bounced his eyebrows up and down and said yes, Tom was the guy he'd been talking about all right. Henri'd come all the way down here from Montreal and he couldn't go home without seeing Tom. Yes, sir, the three of them sure as s.h.i.+t had a little something to do if Tom was willing.

Tom was pretty sure he was. In the back room Luke and the Smoky Mountain Boys were caterwauling about some guy tracking a dead girl's footprints in the snow, but he blocked it out of his mind and took a quick look at Henri's Matinee cigarette and began to envision for himself a future in international trade. Then they had a few more beers and didn't talk about anything for a while.

Preston.

YOU'D THINK AFTER all this time you might start looking at it as a turkey coop, but I don't guess anybody ever will. It'll always be just a school bus with turkeys in it. I guess it's the color. There's nothing else in this world the color of a school bus. They call it yellow but it's not quite yellow, and it's not orange either. I'd say it's something somewhere in between margarine and Velveeta. It's not a natural color. Then again I guess if we wanted kids to grow up natural we wouldn't put them on a school bus in the first place. all this time you might start looking at it as a turkey coop, but I don't guess anybody ever will. It'll always be just a school bus with turkeys in it. I guess it's the color. There's nothing else in this world the color of a school bus. They call it yellow but it's not quite yellow, and it's not orange either. I'd say it's something somewhere in between margarine and Velveeta. It's not a natural color. Then again I guess if we wanted kids to grow up natural we wouldn't put them on a school bus in the first place.

The bus where the Proctor boys keep turkeys isn't quite that original color but it's close. At least most of it is. They got it thirdhand or maybe fourth from an old hippie over near Whitesboro. I understand he got it special for that big show down by Woodstock. The show wasn't really in Woodstock but everybody said it was. That's what they called it. Woodstock.

Where that old hippie got the bus to begin with I never heard. After the show was over, though, he came back and drove it around for three or four years-you'd see him in it here and there, just going to the grocery store or something or maybe to work, if he worked-and then I guess he got sick of putting gas in it. This was during the energy crisis. He pretty much junked it in a field out behind where he lived. You could see it from the Thruway if you knew where to look, especially during the wintertime when the leaves were all down. He'd painted it up psychedelic for that concert, so it got to where it was kind of a landmark.

Then one day it just wasn't there anymore. I was coming back from Herkimer on business and I always kept an eye out for it but it wasn't there that time. I didn't know where a person would take a junked school bus all dolled up like that or who'd want one, but from then on every time I'd go by I'd miss it. It was kind of like a pulled tooth. You'd notice it by its not being there. Anyhow a week or or ten days later I was taking Margaret out to supper at a place over on the road to New Hartford and I thought we'd go by where that old hippie lived and just take a look on account of we were there anyway and I was curious about it. Sure enough. Wouldn't you know that bus was in the barn and he was giving it a fresh coat of paint. It was pretty much that original school-bus yellow or as close to it as he could get. I don't think you could match that color without the specs on it. He was using a roller on a pole, just rolling it on like he was painting a house. He was covered with it himself. I think he had as much on himself as he had on the bus. I said to Margaret I bet that's latex house paint he's using and sure enough it turned out later that it was. It didn't stick for beans and you can still see the psychedelic paint job in places. I guess he was trying to reform that school bus. He figured he'd take the hippie out of it so somebody'd buy it from him. But you can't cover up a school bus with latex house paint. I figured even an old hippie would know that much, but that one sure didn't.

Tom.

THEY LEFT THE W WOODSHED and stood around in the parking lot. The lake was making some little lapping noises out past the scrub and the junk but they could hear it only when the wind turned the right way. Otherwise all they could hear was the noise from the amus.e.m.e.nt park. Bells ringing and rollers screeching on rusty tracks and that awful circus music from the carousel. and stood around in the parking lot. The lake was making some little lapping noises out past the scrub and the junk but they could hear it only when the wind turned the right way. Otherwise all they could hear was the noise from the amus.e.m.e.nt park. Bells ringing and rollers screeching on rusty tracks and that awful circus music from the carousel.

Nick asked Tom if he had his car with him and Tom said he thought he was still man enough to walk the four blocks from the body and fender place under his own power.

Nick said the two of them would go back there with him then, but Tom said no. Business and pleasure. Whatever they were going to do they would do right here in this lot or maybe in some other lot even emptier than this one, but they wouldn't do it at home.

Nick said that was pretty much what they had in mind and he was just trying to make it easier. He thought they could do it in the body and fender lot, maybe. Tom said was he nuts. The body and fender lot was lit up like they were selling used cars over there. The body and fender guys had a thing about security. They had a couple of closed-circuit television cameras set up. No way they'd do any business in the body and fender lot, not unless Henri here wanted to end up in a foreign jail. By which he meant, you know, an American jail. Which would be foreign to him.

Nick said fine you go get the car and come back and pick me up, and we'll follow Henri. Tom said where to and Henri said that Tom would most a.s.suredly find out soon enough.

Tom went and got the car. He didn't fetch any more dope from the closet upstairs because what he had in the glove box would do for a sample. If Henri wanted to buy more they could work it out based on that. When he got back Nick was waiting and Henri was behind the wheel of a big Caddy whose idle was even lower than the inaudible lapping of the water in the lake. Henri put the lights on and Nick jumped into the VW and they took off. Tom asked how long Nick had known this guy Henri and Nick said forever. Nick said he appreciated Tom's help and Tom didn't know what he was talking about but he didn't pursue it. He kind of appreciated Nick's help in connecting him up with this guy, but he let it go. After a few minutes and a half-dozen false starts where Henri would touch his brakes to size up some parking lot and change his mind at the last second and hit the gas again, they came to a campground that seemed to suit him. It was dark. There were a few trailers there but not many, most of them permanently dug in. None of them had any lights on. They belonged to summer people, gone home to Syracuse or Rochester, though Henri didn't know that. Henri cut back to his parking lights and Tom did the same and they drove among the trailers until they were out of sight of the road.

DeAlton TELL YOU THE TRUTH I liked it better before you threw all that yellow on it. You had something before. You had something that belonged in a museum. I liked it better before you threw all that yellow on it. You had something before. You had something that belonged in a museum.

I'm not kidding. You've got to be future-minded. You've got to take the long view.

I know. You've got a point. Maybe someday but not now. You park that thing outside the Everson Museum in Syracuse they'd just haul it away even if it still had all that psychedelic s.h.i.+t on it. They don't know the value of anything.

But I still don't think you've done it any favors with that yellow paint. Or yourself either, as far as that goes.

So what do you want for it?

f.u.c.k. You must be crazier than you look, and that's saying something.

Hey. You know I don't mean anything by it. Not after all we've been through.

Good. That makes me feel better.

I know you know.

So what'd you pay for it new or whatever?

Christ Almighty. You must have been plenty high.

Yes, sir, I knew you then and I know you now.

You missed a spot above that taillight. Right there.

And these days it doesn't even hardly run. I'm surprised you got it into the barn. Tell you the truth I don't see how you're going to get out from underneath it.

That tire's almost bald right there. And the other one too now I look at it. Plus you could get high just sniffing the seat cus.h.i.+ons. You probably don't notice it anymore but I don't know how you'll ever get that smell out. You're going to need yourself one understanding customer. You're going to need one majorly simpatico simpatico dude. dude.

Oops. There's another spot you missed right there.

All right. I'll tell you what. Why don't we add up what I owe you, take away a hundred for my trouble, and see if we can't work out something that doesn't hurt either one of us too much.

I know. I know.

Hey, it's your choice. You wait, though, you'll end up paying somebody else to haul it away. Plus if this thing gets in the wrong hands you're in deep s.h.i.+t.

Jesus. Have you ever even thought about running a Shop-Vac through it? A broom? You ever emptied the ashtray? That's what they call evidence, pure and simple. Don't you doubt it for a minute.

All right. Good. This is your lucky day, old buddy. Be glad I came along when I did.