Mitch watched her disappear around the bend, wondering what kind of game she was playing with him. And why she was playing it.
The barn seemed empty and silent now. Hangtown had shut off the radio and was slumped at the workbench smoking a big, loosely rolled joint. “They won’t let me be, Big Mitch,” he grumbled, running a misshapen hand through his mane of white hair. “They never have. They never will. To hell with all of ’em.” He took a long toke on the joint and held it out to Mitch, who shook his head. “Life ain’t for sissies, that’s for damned sure. Just gets harder and harder-until one day you can’t take it anymore. That’s when you know it’s time for your nice long dirt nap.”
“Hangtown, if there’s anything I can do…”
He immediately brightened. “As it happens, there is. You’ll have to be my hands today. There’s no one else. So grab yourself a pair of tin snips. Now’s when the fun starts.”
Mitch stared at him with his mouth open. Hangtown’s mind had already gotten past what had just happened-compartmentalized it and shut it away so that he could focus completely on his work. Mitch had never before witnessed such intense willpower.
“You will work with me, won’t you?” Hangtown pleaded.
“Of course I will. But I’m still writing that article-okay if I turn on my tape recorder while we work?”
Hangtown shrugged and said, “If it makes you happy.”
Mitch set it on the workbench, grateful that he’d brought along extra microcassettes, while Hangtown got busy showing him what he needed from him.
What he needed, first, was for Mitch to take the snips to those sheets of copper flashing and make him dozens and dozens of rectangles in an array of sizes ranging from as small as six by eighteen inches to as large as four times that. Next, Mitch had to turn those measured rectangles into a vast assortment of copper boxes by folding them around different blocks of wood and pounding them into shape with a rubber mallet. Once the boxes were completed, Hangtown could arrange them one atop the other around the pipe skeleton that Jim had been making and-again, with Mitch’s assistance-weld them together to form his tower.
It was slow, painstaking physical work-donkey work. Mitch had always heard that copper was soft, and maybe it was as metals go. But this was nothing like trying to cut and fold paper. The flashing was stiff and resistant and its fresh-cut edges were razor-sharp. If he hadn’t put on a pair of Jim’s work gloves his hands would have been cut to shreds. Still, it was work that the old master couldn’t do anymore, and Mitch could, so he dived in, inspired by the heady realization that he was actually in Wendell Frye’s studio helping the great artist create a work of art. This was something he would be able to tell his grandchildren about someday: I once built a fountain with Wendell Frye.
“What will you write, Big Mitch?” Hangtown asked as he fiddled with his plans at the workbench, deciding which blocks went where.
“I don’t know yet,” Mitch replied, grunting from his exertions. “I’ll write the truth, as I see it.”
“I was with him. I was with Jim when Moose died.”
“There’s no chance you might have drifted off for a few minutes?”
“Even if I had, it’s a good fifteen-twenty-minute walk to those rocks from the house, and the same back. Plus he had to wait there for her, unless he knew exactly when she was coming home. Then he had to hide the gun when he was done with it-which they have not found…” Hangtown fell silent a moment, absorbed by his work. “Maybe I closed my eyes for a second. But I wasn’t asleep in front of that fire for no forty-five minutes. I know that. And I ain’t senile. And that so-called evidence of theirs means nothing-not if Jim has himself a good lawyer.”
Mitch agreed. It wouldn’t hold up for a second in court. Soave had to know that. So why had he taken Jim away? Did he think he might be able to squeeze a confession out of Jim once he had him in custody? “Jim did have a good reason for wanting to kill Takai,” he pointed out.
“Plenty good,” Hangtown admitted. “Only, why would he go to such elaborate lengths to do her in? Why not just go upstairs to her bedroom and slash the greedy bitch’s throat while she sleeps? Think about that. It makes no sense.”
The old man had a valid point, Mitch acknowledged, as he finished cutting out one of the pieces with the tin snips. Already his fingers were starting to ache, and he still had hours of work ahead of him.
Hangtown’s bomber had gone out in the ashtray at his elbow. He relit it and toked on it, coughing. It was a phlegmy, rumbling cough that sounded not at all healthy. Actually, the more Mitch looked at Wendell Frye, the more he realized that the artist did not look good. His cheeks seemed more hollow than they had two days ago, and his complexion was positively gray.
“Maybe… maybe this is my own sins catching up with me,” he said to Mitch, wheezing. “Someone getting even for the evil I’ve done.”
Mitch sat back on his haunches, peering at Hangtown curiously. “Like who? For what?”
“There’s a reason why I live like this, Big Mitch,” he said, his breathing growing more erratic. “Cut off from people. I’m hiding, don’t you understand?”
“I’m afraid not,” Mitch said. “But I’d like to.”
Hangtown paused for a swig of rye, struggling to compose himself. “I took my fists to Takai’s mother, Kiki, when I drank. Couldn’t help it. I was so angry in those days. I married her too soon, you see. Wasn’t ready. Was still grieving over Moose’s mother, Gentle Kate. But I didn’t know that then. How could I? Kate… Kate was the great love of my life. Big, strapping girl like Moose. Died when Moose was barely three. In 1972, it was.”
Mitch went back to working the copper, wondering why Wendell Frye seemed to have such a sudden, powerful need to confess his sins. What was weighing on the old man’s conscience?
“That was our summer of sunshine, Big Mitch,” he recalled. “We had artists staying out in the cottages then. Some stayed for weeks on end, working the farm for their keep. We had picnics every afternoon in the meadows. We drank our wine and smoked our dope and screwed our blessed brains out. I was a lion in those days, with a huge appetite for the young lovelies. Kate was a good, loving woman. But I was bad to her. Because I wanted them all-every single one of those tender young barefoot girls. And I had ’em all.” Hangtown heaved a huge, pained sigh. “Selfish and cruel, I was. Thinking only of my own pleasures. Had me a Volkswagon bus in those days. I’d meet ’em at the academy, take ’em down to the beach in my bus-no conscience, no shame, no regrets. Not a one… Until one hot morning in August, middle of a heat wave it was, a slender little sculptress with shining black hair down to her bottom came drifting through. Crazy Daisy, we called her. I never even knew her real name, and that’s the truth. She’d hitchhiked all the way from Winnipeg just to be here. She was a homeless waif, no family. Barely sixteen. But a tremendous talent, very gifted. And the prettiest little thing you ever saw in a pair of tight bell-bottoms, my friend.” Hangtown fumbled for his Luckies and lit one, his hands trembling now. “Late one night Daisy asked me to pose for her. I obliged. It was a warm, humid night. Not a leaf was stirring. Naturally, I was nude. Naturally, we were soon in each others arms, right here in this barn, on a paint-splattered drop cloth, the sweat pouring off of us. And I roared like a lion. And then
… then I heard another roar coming from that doorway right over there,” he recalled, shuddering violently. “It was Gentle Kate. She had herself a temper, my Kate. You did not want to make her mad…”
“What happened here that night, Hangtown?” asked Mitch, his voice nearly a whisper.
“Moose had awakened in the night. Couldn’t sleep. It was the heat. Kate gave her a cool sponge bath and got her back to bed. And then she came looking for me out here-thought I might want something to eat or drink. She found Crazy Daisy and me together in each other’s arms on the drop cloth, humping away… Kate let out a roar and grabbed the nearest thing she could find-a mallet-and she hurled it right at me. I-I ducked. Crazy Daisy didn’t. It hit her right between the eyes. Killed her dead on the spot.”
Mitch had stopped working now. He was just sitting there, transfixed, his recorder taping the old man’s every word.
“I murdered that girl!” Hangtown cried out, his voice choking with emotion. “Kate threw the mallet, but it was my doing. My pants I couldn’t keep on. My marriage I was trashing. A-and there’s more. Believe me, it gets even worse…”
“Hangtown, are you sure you want to tell me all of this? I’m here as a member of the press, remember?”
“There’s no point in holding back anymore,” he answered despondently. “Not with my Moose gone. What does it matter? What does any of it matter? Don’t you see, my life is over now!” He broke off, his barrel chest heaving. Tears were beginning to stream down his deeply lined face. “We… rolled her up in the drop cloth with her knapsack and the few pieces of clothing she had. Dug a hole up on the hill and buried her up there. No one else was
