JG02 - Borderlines Read online

  Buster had mentioned these people once on the phone. Oddballs, he’d said, members of a back-to-nature group that had bought most of the buildings on South Street and on the lower half of Atlantic. They didn’t use electricity, didn’t believe in money, didn’t own cars, and, according to Buster, had set up the only legitimate business enterprise the town had ever seen-something called The Kingdom Restaurant. The contradiction about money threw me off at the time, but Buster had merely laughed and said he wasn’t going to probe. Some of the people who came to eat there also topped up their cars at Buster’s garage.

  The garage, on my left, was locked up tight, looking like a rusty beached Liberty ship, far from the sea. What little I knew about cars, I’d learned here, tinkering on an assortment of wrecks. I’d never known if they belonged to Buster, were headed for the dump, or were actually the property of paying customers. Directly opposite-once a demurely rotting erstwhile farmhouse-stood the Kingdom Restaurant, its windows glowing yellow. Several cars were parked out front.

  I cut diagonally across the street to where a familiar figure was putting the final shine on the roof of a 1943 Chevrolet fire truck. He was standing on the running board and had his back to me, caught in the circular gleam from the sole streetlight by the road. The truck was parked in front of a two-bay firehouse with GANNET VOLUNTEER FIRE

  COMPANY carefully painted in red on the wall between the first and second floors.

  “Hello, Rennie.” Rennie, a man about my own age, turned with the rag still in his hand. He didn’t get down, but just looked at me from where he stood and smiled. “Joe Gunther, you son of a bitch. How the fuck are you?” I laughed and shook my head. “I’ve been better. How are you?” His familiar round, florid face broke into a theatrical scowl. He was a barrel of a man, short, square, and muscular, his body more a monument to hard work and fatty foods than to genetics. The diet had undoubtedly also contributed to his increasingly flushed skin tone, which by now had progressed to the stage where he looked either on the brink of blowing sky-high, or of having a major heart attack. He stepped down and shook my hand. “Pissed off. I told the others to be here to give the trucks their last wash and wax before winter, and I’m the only one that showed up. I’ve been here the whole fucking day.”

  “Can’t compete with the deer.” “Deer, shit. Just a bunch of drunks with rifles. What’re you doing’ up here?” His eyes were shining, and he still hadn’t released my hand. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his company.

  “Temporary job for the State’s Attorney-moonlighting.” Rennie snorted, dropped my hand, and retrieved a can of car wax from the roof of the cab. “Well, that chicken shit needs all the help he can get.

  What’s the job?” “Some town clerk dipping into the till. I’m supposed to dig up the proof.” “Murial’s dipping? Damn, you’d think she’d live better than she does.” “Not Murial, different town. I just thought I’d stay with Buster while I’m in the area.” He got behind the wheel of the fire truck. “Yeah?” he said nonchalantly, looking completely uninterested. “What town?” I grinned at him. “Nice try.” He started the engine with a tremendous roar and eased the truck backward into the station. The clearance between vehicle and doorframe was about an inch and a half on all three sides. Another truck-a ‘55 Chevy-stood at gleaming attention at the mouth of the second door. I crossed over to it as Rennie killed the motor and came around the front.

  “Memory row, huh?” I smiled and patted the red fender. “I remember when Buster first rode this into town.” “Yeah, the only brand-new truck we ever had.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m still partial to Engine 1, though, even if it is Army surplus. That son of a bitch has never been a problem.” “And this has?” Rennie shrugged. “I don’t like it as much.” I knew it wasn’t the truck-it was the fact that it was Buster’s baby. Buster was Chief-seemingly always had been-while Rennie had worked his way up to Assistant Chief through pure attrition.

  During my first vacations up here, Rennie and I had been “junior firemen,” duped by that meaningless title into sweeping, cleaning, washing, polishing, waxing until we’d qualified as Grade-A maids, all seemingly under the stern direction of anyone and everyone in the department eighteen years or older. My willingness to “shovel the shit,” as Rennie put it, despite my connection to the Chief, had formed the initial basis of our friendship.

  That had later blossomed as we’d graduated to manning equipment and fighting fires-albeit only the minor ones-always together, always a team. We’d even exchanged letters throughout the school year, comparing notes on how many ways adults conspire to torture teenagers.

  We were young men by the time Buster rolled into town on the new Chevy in 1955-both veterans. That was the last time I was to spend more than a couple of days in Gannet at one time. My connection to Rennie faded in intensity after I signed on as a policeman in Brattleboro; the correspondence died of neglect and memories began to replace an updated friendship.

  It had seemed reasonable to think that Rennie would eventually replace Buster as Chief. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Buster was in his eighties somewhere, and it looked like he would outlive us all. I imagined that fact, along with all the other intangibles that had grown between the two of them through the years, had created a kind of low-level but permanent friction.

  Rennie, like most of the other people in Gannet, worked in St.

  Johnsbury. He was a loading dock foreman for a large trucking firm, or at least he was the last time I saw him.

  I walked to the back of the station, reflecting on how many hours I’d spent in this building, so many years ago. Attached to the 55’s backstep, I discovered two shiny new Scott-Paks, breathing tanks and masks used for entering smoky buildings. I raised my eyebrows and pointed at them. “Pretty fancy. When did you get those?” Rennie grinned. “Ever try one on?” “A few times. We used to carry them in our patrol cars in case we had to go in with the firefighters. We dropped it, though. The training was costing a lot and the Fire Chief felt his turf was being invaded.” “Too bad, they’re kind of fun. The Order gave ‘em to us-good will gesture, I guess.” “The Order?” “Yeah. The Natural Order. The cult, or whatever you call it.

  Haven’t you heard about them?” I nodded. “I thought they didn’t support this kind of stuff.” “They don’t. But their leader is a real politician. He holds all the money, has electricity in his house, drives a car. He’s no fool-got the best scam running I ever seen. He gave us those and a couple of new portable pumps; he even tried to buy us beepers for when we get a call, except we don’t have a system that would trigger the beepers.” “What’s his name?” “Depends. If you’re a member, he’s called The Elephant; real name’s Edward Sarris. Nice enough for a nut; sure spreads the money around. Christ, when they moved into town, they paid top dollar for all those houses-cash, too.”

  “Where’s the money come from?” “Damned if I know. The restaurant does good business, I guess mail order, mostly; you know, granola head stuff organic foods. Rumor has it when you join, you got to give all your money to Sarris, but for all I know, they could be printing it in the basement.” I glanced out the door. “Well, I better get going. Haven’t seen Buster yet. You coming down to the Rocky River later?” “Sure. Be along in a bit.” I continued my walk down the street, taking in the sights. The contrasts I saw were familiar and typical of the Northeast Kingdom.

  Between and beyond the weather-blighted buildings and broken roads of the village, my eye was drawn to the land-wild, undulating, pristine.

  Its beauty lay in its pocket vistas, rarely extending beyond a mile or two. Farther south, the Green Mountains offered breathtaking views of valley passes and river gorges. Up here, the whole earth was shoved up closer to the sky, its hills and dales more interconnected, less in conflict. Seeing this land, oddly arctic in appearance at this time of year, gave one a comforting, although false sense, that there were perhaps corners of the world where civilization had yet to set foot.

 
I’d always thought it was as much the remoteness as the beauty of the region that made the Kingdom a shrine of sorts to the citizens of Vermont.

  I thought back to the man who had shot at me to protect both his freedom and his winter’s meat, which made me focus anew on how the once-familiar buildings of this town were being ground down without respite. The Kingdom would live on, but not as it had. The younger generations were already abandoning it, lured by the monied south, and those who had made that money were seeking new places, like the Kingdom, in which to buy real estate.

  For the Gannets, tucked away from the main highways, on the outskirts of the commercial centers, things weren’t looking too good. I began to wonder if after decades of clinging to this land, Gannet was finally slated to die.

  Considering that I’d come back here for some mental and emotional rest and relaxation, this kind of thinking was not the stuff of dreams.

  The Rocky River Inn was the one glaring exception to the town’s generally muted architecture. It took up one entire side of North Street, with one wing at the corner of Route 114, and the other looking straight down Atlantic Boulevard. It was an enormous place, dwarfing any three buildings in town put together. It was also a first-rate Victorianstyle dump. It had a sagging rusty metal roof, diseased-looking, paintpeeling walls, and its windows were covered with either torn plastic sheets or dilapidated plywood. Although it had “wrecking ball” written all over it, it had looked that way for as long as I could remember.

  It had once been a palace, of course, built in the middle of nowhere in the 1 850s by a lunatic logging king named Gannet, who had died one week after moving in. It sported turrets and bay windows, porches and balconies, and more gingerbread than any sane Victorian would have considered tasteful. Now, however, one of the turrets was draped with a moldy green tarp, the balconies had been declared unsafe, and the wraparound first-floor porch groaned under the weight of several cords of stacked firewood. The gingerbread was half gone, and two of the bay windows flickered with the garish light of several neon beer signs.

  A combination hotel/bar/cafe//home, the Inn was owned by a mercurial woman in her fifties named Greta Lynn. She had run the Rocky River for the past twenty-five years or so, inheriting it from her equally eccentric mother, and lived there with a succession of mousy male companions whose names nobody could recall. Greta, Rennie, and I were, as they say “of an age,” and had run around with the same crowd when we were younger. In later life, after “Peanuts” had become a popular comic strip, I was convinced that somehow Charles Schulz had met Greta-and had found his inspiration for Lucy Van Pelt. I climbed its warped, cracked and creaking front steps and entered a huge entry hall.

  A crumbling carved hardwood staircase rose directly ahead, and two equally large rooms opened on either side. The room to the right had been converted into a cafe//bar-where I’d slurped sodas of yore-and was segregated by a pair of ornate multi-paned pocket doors. The room to the left had no doors and spilled out into the entry in a seeming attempt to take it over. I turned left to what everyone called “The Library” to find Buster, for this was his home away from home-a room of paperback-cluttered halls, of tall dirty windows, clanking radiators, and derelict furniture, overshadowed by a gap-toothed, non-functional, cobweb-choked handelier. There, at the head of a semicircle of mismatched sofas, armchairs, and ottomans, like some long-dethroned king with his wery-bred entourage, Buster held court.

  He saw me as I crossed the threshold and raised his beer high.

  Goddamn, it’s the celebrity. Come here.” He struggled to his feet as I approached and placed one gargantuan arm across my shoulders. He was a huge man, fat and bearded, six and a half feet tall, with crooked, yellow teeth and bleary, misty eyes-a man with intimate knowledge f the bottle, yet whom I’d never seen under the influence. Or maybe ever seen sober.

  I am no grasshopper myself, but standing next to Buster, I felt like a child posing with a hippo.

  He waved his beer can at the small group of people sitting around e semicircle of chairs. “You know any of these guys? John The man finished for him. “John Secco.” “Right; not too good with names,”

  Buster muttered. “This is Joey gunther-sorry, Lieutenant Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro Police department, my nephew. Remember hearing about that Ski Mask murder case down in Brattleboro? Well, Joey here nailed him.” Several heads nodded, I think out of pure politeness. He pointed at another man, hesitated, obviously groping for a name, and finally gave up on the general introductions. He pushed me to the chair to his right, settled back down himself with a grunt. He as about to ask me a question when Greta entered the room. “Thought I heard you in here.

  How’s your mother?” No hugs or kisses from her. There never had been; never would be. Greta Lynn was square, no-nonsense woman who prided herself on being ready and able to spit any man in the eye metaphorically speaking. She was short-tempered, opinionated, and brusk and, as far as I knew, had never shown a different side of herself to anyone in all her fifty-six years except to my mother. To her way of thinking, it would have been sappy and contrived to have made more of a fuss over my arrival. “She’s fine. I dropped by on the way up here.

  She asked me to give you her best.” “That’s very thoughtful. And your brother?” Here her tone was solicitous. Leo, who still lived with our mother in the old family house in Thetford, loved classic cars from the fifties, cheap flashy omen, his work-he was a very successful butcher-and our mother, ho was older than Buster and whom Leo nursed in his own effective fashion. It was a combination of plusses and minuses in Greta’s eyes, and had always found absolute whites and blacks easier to deal with.

  “Leo’s fine, too. Making a killing with his new butcher shop.” She made a noncommittal grunt. “Would you like something?” “Cup of coffee would be nice. Thanks.” “All right.” She turned to Buster. aNother one?” He never got a chance to answer. Suddenly, the front door flew open with a crash and a middle-aged, thick-waisted woman half-fell into the entrance hall. She was disheveled and frightened and was still holding her leather handbag.

  “My husband,” She gasped as she tried to get up off the floor.

  Greta ran to help her, the rest of us looking on. “What happened?”

  Greta asked.

  “It’s Bruce. He’s gotten into a fight with one of the cult people.” “Where?” “In one of those houses, down the street.” She pointed toward Atlantic Boulevard.

  Greta looked over her shoulder at us. “Well, come on, move it.”

  She turned the woman around and charged out the door with her. The crowd, I among them, moved like cattle to follow them.

  “You know what’s going on?” I asked Buster, as we hurried down the street, struggling into our coats. “I can guess. She and her husband came up here a couple of days ago trying to find their daughter. Sounds like they got into trouble instead.” “What do you mean, ‘Find their daughter’?” “My guess is she joined the Order and her folks are trying to get her back.” “Has this happened before?” Buster shrugged. “Off and on. We get parents, clergymen, newspeople. They either come to gawk or raise a little hell. Never amounts to too much.” Rennie, catching sight of us from across North Street, ran over to join us. “What’s going’

  on?” Buster chuckled. “I guess that Boston fella is getting the short end of the stick with the Order.” Rennie looked down Atlantic Boulevard at Greta and the woman.

  “Oh, Christ, Greta on the warpath.” He trotted on ahead to catch up to them.

  We were near the bottom of Atlantic when we heard muffled shouting coming from the last house on the east side of the street. Ahead of us, Rennie, Greta, and the woman, who Buster identified as Mrs. Wingate, broke into a run. Mrs. Wingate began calling, “Bruce. bruce,” as she went.

  Rennie reached the front door first and pounded on it with his fist, yelling for someone to open up. As Buster and I drew near, I noticed absolute stillness from the neighboring houses, and felt the odd sensation of dozens of eye
s watching me from the dark. I was struck again by the same ominous chill I’d felt earlier upon seeing the four children and the dog in the street.

  I stood beside Rennie and tried the doorknob, my adrenaline now pumping at a good clip. Inside, the shouting had been joined by the sound of objects breaking. The knob turned in my hand, but the door was obviously bolted from the inside. Mrs. Wingate began to cry. “Please, get him out. Somebody’s going to be killed.” Rennie glanced at me.

  “Window?” I nodded. The two to the left of the door were blocked by a flower box, so Rennie and I ran for the building’s south side, looking for another option. The sounds from the inside continued unabated.

  As we rounded the corner, a shattering explosion of glass at head level made us veer on, our arms thrown up to protect our faces. As if n slow motion, his jacket fluttering like broken wings, his white shirt blowing in the night as with an energy of its own, a man came sailing backward through a large, ground-floor picture window, accompanied by a million tiny shards of glass, each twinkling fiercely in the light of the full moon. He landed with a solid thud, flat on his back, his arms spread eagled, and his expression one of utter astonishment. From his clothing, which included black slacks and penny loafers, I knew he had to be attached somehow to the tweed-and-wool Mrs. Wingate.

  His face was bleeding slightly and he looked utterly astonished, but otherwise he appeared more surprised than injured. Above us, standing still what used to be a ground-floor window, loomed a tall bearded man with long black hair, dressed in quilted cotton.

  “What’s going on here?” Rennie shouted.

  “He threw Bruce out of the window,” Greta said, emphasizing the obvious.

  I stepped over the shattered glass and bent down near the man on the ground. “You okay?” He looked at me in silence for a couple of seconds. “I think so.” I could sense him trying to regain his composure. He was having to dig deep.