At the far end of the dump were the junked cars, Buicks and Fords and Chevies and you name it, and my God the parts people left on their machines when they were through with them. Radiators were best, but a good four- barrel carb would fetch seven dollars after it had been soaked in gasoline. Not to mention fan belts, taillights, distributor caps, windshields, steering wheels, and floor mats.
Yes, the dump was fine. The dump was Disneyland and Shangri-La all rolled up into one. But not even the money tucked away in the black box buried in the dirt below his easy chair was the best part.
The best part was the fires-and the rats.
Dud set parts of his dump on fire on Sunday and Wednesday mornings, and on Monday and Friday evenings. Evening fires were the prettiest. He loved the dusky, roseate glow that bloomed out of the green plastic bags of crap and all the newspapers and boxes. But morning fires were better for rats,
Now, sitting in his easy chair and watching the fire catch and begin to send its greasy black smoke into the air, sending the gulls aloft, Dud held his.22 target pistol loosely in his hand and waited for the rats to come out.
When they came, they came in battalions. They were big, dirty gray, pink-eyed. Small fleas and ticks jumped on their hides. Their tails dragged after them like thick pink wires. Dud loved to shoot rats.
‘You buy a powerful slug o’ shells, Dud,’ George Middler down at the hardware store would say in his fruity voice, pushing the boxes of Remingtons across. ‘Town pay for ‘em?’ This was an old joke. Some years back, Dud had put in a purchase order for two thousand rounds of hollow-point.22 cartridges, and Bill Norton had grimly sent him packing.
‘Now,’ Dud would say, ‘you know this is purely a public service, George.’
There. That big fat one with the gimpy back leg was George Middler. Had something in his mouth that looked like a shredded piece of chicken liver.
‘Here you go, George. Here y’are,’ Dud said, and squeezed off. The.22’s report was flat and undramatic, but the rat tumbled over twice and lay twitching. Hollow points, that was the ticket. Someday he was going to get a large- bore.45 or a.357 Magnum and see what that did to the little cock-knockers.
That next one now, that was that slutty little Ruthie Crockett, the one who didn’t wear no bra to school and was always elbowing her chums and sniggering when Dud passed on the street. Bang. Goodbye, Ruthie.
The rats scurried madly for the protection of the dump’s far side, but before they were gone Dud had gotten six of them-a good morning’s kill, If he went out there and looked at them, the ticks would be running off the cooling bodies like… like… why, like rats deserting a sinking ship.
This struck him as deliciously funny and he threw back his queerly cocked head and rocked back on his hump and laughed in great long gusts as the fire crept through the trash with its grasping orange fingers.
Life surely was grand.
11
12:00 noon.
The town whistle went off with a great twelve-second blast, ushering in lunch hour at all three schools and welcoming the afternoon. Lawrence Crockett, the Lot’s second selectman and proprietor of Crockett’s Southern Maine Insurance and Realty, put away the book he had been reading (
He rattled the doorknob once to make sure the lock had caught and moved off down Jointner Avenue. He paused on the corner and glanced up at the Marsten House. There was a car in the driveway. He could just make it out, twinkling and shining. It caused a thread of disquiet somewhere in his chest. He had sold the Marsten House and the long-defunct Village Washtub in a package deal over a year ago. It had been the strangest deal of his life - and he had made some strange ones in his time. The owner of the car up there was, in all probability, a man named Straker. R. T. Straker. And just this morning he had received something in the mail from this Straker.
The fellow in question had driven up to Crockett’s office on a shimmering July afternoon just over a year ago. He got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk for a moment before coming inside, a tall man dressed in a sober three-piece suit in spite of the day’s heat. He was as bald as a cueball and as sweatless as same. His eyebrows were a straight black slash, and the eye sockets shelved away below them to dark holes that might have been carved into the angular surface of his face with drill bits. He carried a slim black briefcase in one hand. Larry was alone in his office when Straker came in; his part-time secretary, a Falmouth girl with the most delectable set of jahoobies you ever clapped an eye to, worked for a Gates Falls lawyer on her afternoons.
The bald man sat down in the client’s chair, put his briefcase in his lap, and stared at Larry Crockett. It was impossible to read the expression in his eyes, and that bothered Larry. He liked to be able to read a man’s wants in his baby blues or browns before the man even opened his mouth. This man had not paused to look at the pictures of local properties that were tacked up on the bulletin board, had not offered to shake hands and introduce himself, had not even said hello.
‘How can I help you?’ Larry asked.
‘I have been sent to buy a residence and a business establishment in your so-fair town,’ the bald man said. He spoke with a flat, uninfected tonelessness that made Larry think of the recorded announcements you got when you dialed the weather.
‘Well, hey, wonderful,’ Larry said. ‘We have several very nice properties that might-’
‘There is no need,’ the bald man said, and held up his hand to stop Larry’s words. Larry noted with fascination that his fingers were amazingly long-the middle finger looked four or five inches from base to tip. ‘The business establishment is a block beyond the Town Office Building. It fronts on the park.’
‘Yeah, I can deal with you on that. Used to be a Laundromat. Went broke a year ago. That’d be a real good location if you-’
‘The residence,’ the bald man overrode him, ‘is the one referred to in town as the Marsten House.’
Larry had been in the business too long to show his thunderstruck feelings on his face. ‘Is that so?’
