Killshot

“Are you gonna call the marshal?”

“Right now. There’s probably nothing but catfish in that river. You like catfish?”

“I’ve never had it.”

“It’s like carp. You ever had carp?”

“Go call him, will you?”

Carmen watched him cross the street toward a restaurant decked out with a green awning. It looked nice. So far she had a good feeling about being here, in a new place. Maybe they’d love it and want to stay. Three weeks didn’t seem like enough time, not to make a major decision that could change your life. Carmen walked to the corner, to an opening in the concrete wall that was almost as wide as the street that came into it from down the hill. It could be a town in a foreign country.

She stepped into the opening. A giant metal door was hinged to the outside of the wall, where pavement sloped gradually to beds of broken rock along the banks of the river. No, the river didn’t appear especially mighty, it looked old to Carmen, about a half mile across to cottonwoods on the Illinois side. A boat pushing flat barges was coming this way from the bridge, out there in the middle not making a sound: a stubby kind of boat that resembled a tug but was much taller. Carmen had never seen one like it before. Moving all those barges, about fifteen of them, tied together three abreast and extending way out in front of the boat.

Carmen turned, looking at the wall from the riverside now, at the massive door they would swing closed when that quiet river rose over its banks, thinking, They didn’t build a wall like this for show.

She said to Wayne, coming across the street from the restaurant, “You know what this is? A floodgate. It’s my first one. You want to see how high the river rises? They have marks up there by the opening, and dates, almost to the top. I’d call that a fairly mighty river.”

Wayne looked up, but didn’t appear interested.

“The girl says Deputy Marshal J. D. Mayer isn’t in the office. I ask her where I can get in touch with him. We go back and forth, it takes about ten minutes to find out Deputy Marshal J. D. Mayer isn’t in ’cause he’s on leave of absence and the man in charge now is Deputy Marshal F. R. Britton. I said, well, then tell F. R. Britton that W. M. Colson has just come seven hundred miles to have a word with him, if he isn’t too busy. She says, after all this, he isn’t there, he’s out to the house. I ask her, you mean his house? No, he’s out to our house and we can catch him if we hurry. You believe it? Instead of telling me right away. Nine-fifty Hillglade Drive. I ask her, just where is that, please, and she says, ‘Out toward Cape Rock off Riverview,’ like, where else could it be? Off Riverview, asshole, don’t you know nothing?”

Carmen said, “Are you gonna be a grouch? If you are, let’s go home.”

She thought 950 Hillglade Drive sounded nice.

On the way there Carmen caught glimpses of the river from high up through the trees, seeing it flat gray, desolate. That’s the Mississippi? Wayne had a point, it didn’t look important enough. Still nothing on the Illinois side but trees. Maybe Missouri looked the same from over there, except it was hilly.

Street names, Carmen knew, could be deceiving. When Hillglade turned out to be a humped narrow road with ditches on both sides she said, “Oh, well,” and followed Wayne’s pickup along the road past a lonesome row of two-bedroom subdivision homes with car ports, lights on in some of the houses, bikes in the driveways, suppertime, a development that for some reason hadn’t developed, no sidewalks, not much of the land cleared, signs of a builder who’d run out of money. They came to 950 near the end of the street, off by itself in the dusk, windows dark, a red-brick ranch with white trim badly in need of paint. Carmen followed the pickup into a gravel drive sprouting weeds, turned off the engine and sat there. In the Algonac–Port Huron area the house would list for sixty-nine-nine, fixed up, and go for about sixty-seven. Landscaping would help, a new lawn and a front walk. A narrow worn path led from the slab front stoop to where a paneled door, its knob in place, lay across the ditch. Carmen told herself to stay cool.

Wayne came along the side of the pickup as she made herself move, get out of the car.

“What’re we doing, starting over? Jesus, twenty years ago at least we had a front walk, and shrubs.”

Carmen didn’t say anything.

“You want to go to a motel?”

She said, “We’re here now,” and started across the scrubby yard, Wayne saying after her, yeah, they were here, that was the goddamn problem. Where was the woods? That wasn’t a woods, it was a thicket. Carmen looked back at him as she reached the front step.

“There’s a note on the door.”

A three-by-five card held in place by the metal cover over the mail slot. She pulled it free, began to read the handwritten note, looked up and glanced at Wayne coming across the yard.

“It says, ‘Hi, welcome to Cape—’ He seems friendly.”

“Who does?”

“F. R. Britton, Deputy Marshal. ‘I have gone to have supper. Will be back by six forty-five.’ ” Carmen glanced at Wayne again. “He seems to have an organized mind. Energetic but even-tempered. The way he connects his t and his h, with most of the words sort of printed, shows originality and intuition.”

Wayne said, “Then how come he didn’t know we’d be here? We suppose to stand around and wait?”

“It says, ‘The side door is open. Make yourselves at home. Signed F. R. Britton.’ ”

With big loops, Carmen noticed, showing a certain amount of ego.

Wayne walked back to the drive and into the carport at the side of the house. Carmen followed, looking at the note, half written, half printed in a strong right-hand slant. She stopped in the yard, not sure about that circle dotting the i in Hi. It could indicate he was creative, but not necessarily. Her mom drew circles for i dots. The deputy marshal’s slant, on second thought, might be a little too much. She’d have to measure it on her Emotional Expression Chart. Carmen looked up, aware of Wayne coming around from the side of the house, Wayne with his grim look.

“What’s wrong?”

“You mean outside of there’s no electricity?”

Carmen made a face. “Don’t tell me that, please.”

“That’s the good part,” Wayne said. “No lights, you can’t see the bad part. The place’s a goddamn mess.”

The young guy wearing a sport coat and tie came out of a cream-colored Plymouth four-door holding up a handful of candles. He jumped the ditch and crossed the yard toward them saying, “Hey, sorry about that. You go see Union Electric tomorrow, they’ll fix you up. Or I can take you if I don’t have to be in court. Hi, I’m Deputy Marshal F. R. Britton?”

Making it sound like a question. Was it his accent, Carmen wondered, that buttery drawl, or wasn’t he sure who he was?

Saying now, “I’d prefer it if you call me Ferris. I don’t want you to think of me as your parole officer or anything like that.”

And now that stopped Carmen, already surprised by his boyish good looks, her idea of a U.S. marshal being a middle-aged man in a business suit. This one had a full head of wavy brown hair and a muscular build, thick neck and shoulders that made his tan sport coat seem too small, something he’d outgrown.

Carmen said, “Ferris? Is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am, like the wheel, and this must be Wayne Colson,” offering his hand now, “and Ms. Colson? How you folks doing, all right?” Holding Carmen’s hand he said, “I had to deliver a prisoner up to Marion, Illinois, I come back—did you see my note?”

“Have it right here.”

He said, “Good,” giving her hand a squeeze before letting go, his eyes smiling at her. “I didn’t want you to think I’d forgot you. See, I missed working out this morning on account of going to Marion—I do push-ups and sit- ups, lift some weights, so when I come back I had to get that done—”

“And have your supper,” Carmen said.

“Yeah, I had to eat. I imagine you folks stopped on the way?”

“Not since lunch.”

“Well, you want to get something first? There’s a Shoney’s on Route K out toward the mall, not too far.”

“We’re trying to decide,” Carmen said, “whether we want to stay here or go to a motel.”