Straw Man Read online

“Assault. Beat up his ex’s new boyfriend with a pipe. Story is the ex got him locked up for aggravated domestic assault. He thought she was fooling around so he burned her with cigarettes and threw her out in the yard, naked.”

  “Nice. Why doesn’t this niece send him away again?”

  “Won’t testify. Scared to death of him,” Belle said. “She took her kids, moved to Manchester, New Hampshire. But she could tell you some stories.”

  “I’d talk to her,” I said. A story about the unreported toll of domestic abuse. Add it to the list.

  Belle glanced over toward the exit, where the pair of them slouched against the wall, just outside the door. She leaned close as she wiped the table with a cloth.

  “What are they doing in Prosperity?”

  “I guess they ran outta people to burn over there. Word going around is somebody busted his arm for him. Wish they’d busted the other one, and his legs, too.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “Guy like that, you don’t give him a chance to come back at you,” Belle said, leaning closer, and then it was the loud cheery voice again. “Well, you enjoy your breakfast.”

  I did, the eggs and the home fries with onions and homemade wheat toast. Belle brought me another cup of tea and I went through the gun list one more time. I drank half the tea and Belle brought my check. Leaving money on the table, I headed for the door.

  Kathy told me to have a good day. Belle said, “Take care of yourself, Jack,” like she meant it. I walked out into the parking lot and looked both ways. The sun was coming up. Billy and Baby Fat were to the right at the end.

  They were sitting in a copper-colored Dodge pickup with a homemade flatbed. The truck was backed up against the orange snow fence, and they were facing the door and me.

  I walked to my truck and got in, took the lug wrench from the floor, and put it on the seat next to me. Started the truck and pulled out of the lot and went left. There was a flashing light at the corner, and I took another left, and drove slowly west, watching the mirror, squinting at the glare of the rising sun. After a few seconds, the Dodge swung into view, but Baby Fat hung back.

  The road was two lanes, the main highway to places like Troy and Plymouth. There were farms on both sides, fields of late-season corn turned tanned and crisp. The road climbed and fell, crossing one ridge after another. The Dodge kept up with me, a steady quarter-mile back, like now that they knew my truck, they were following me home.

  Fat chance.

  I crested a ridge, floored the truck on the downhill side, hit eighty going into a long corner, braked hard, and slung off onto a dirt road, downshifting and climbing. The gravel spattered the underside of the truck as I skidded into the corners, woods on both sides. An oncoming car swerved right and I slipped past it, still climbing. There were farms ahead, on the hilltop, but first there were ramshackle cabins tucked into the trees.

  I slowed, swung into a dirt track into the woods, passed orange signs that said POSTED—NO TRESPASSING. Thirty yards in, a red SUV was pulled into a turnaround. The truck was covered with leaves. I backed in on the far side of it, shut off the motor. I didn’t want steam rising from the exhaust. I took my foot off the brake so no lights would show. And I sat.

  A blue jay called. The cooling motor ticked. The sun dappled the leaves, yellow in a stand of maples. I began to relax, thinking the Mennonite farmers were up on the hill to the northwest, that I could make my way over there. Maybe go in the bakery, strike up a conversation, make my pitch.

  I didn’t think the Mennonites were as publicity-shy as the Amish, but then again, these were Old Order Mennonites, and—

  The Dodge rolled slowly past the head of the driveway. I counted to ten, and started the motor and pulled out. I didn’t want to get cut off back in the woods. At least in the road there would be cars coming along and—

  Then the Dodge rolled back, in reverse, Billy with his head hanging out of the passenger window looking at the ground. I braked and stopped. The Dodge rolled to a halt. Billy looked up. He smiled.

  I stopped the truck and opened the door. Slid off the seat, slipping the lug wrench into the back of my jeans. I went to the front of my truck and stood. Billy eased his way out and down and Baby Fat came around the back.

  Baby Fat grinned. Billy stared.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Baby Fat said. “You’re a hard man to keep up with.”

  “A lot to do,” I said.

  “We decided to take a day off,” Billy said. “Do some hunting.”

  “What?” I said. “Birds? Deer isn’t for another couple months.”

  “Getting ready,” Baby Fat said, still grinning. “Following trails. You know you oughtn’ta gone so fucking fast. On the gravel, tires slew up the rocks and shit. Leaves a trail like deer in mud.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I thought you were as dumb as you look.”

  The grin fell away and he took a half-step forward, hand going back and out of sight. I slipped the wrench out and held it in front of me, the screwdriver end pointed at him. Baby Fat’s hand came around, a hunting knife held low.

  “Easy, boys,” Billy said, a new side of him, a peacemaker. “Let’s not jump too fast-like.”

  His turn to grin, the carnivorous yellowed teeth bared.

  “You see, buddy,” Billy said, “we’re scouting. We ain’t up for shooting just any deer. We’re waiting for a trophy buck. One with a big rack. To get a big buck, when the doe walks outta the woods, even if it’s a fat one, you take your finger off that friggin’ trigger.”

  “And you’re a doe, asshole,” Baby Fat said.

  “We’re gonna keep watching. And waiting,” Billy said.

  “And your buddy there, bustin’ his arm—”

  “He’s the big buck,” Billy said. “Eight-point rack on that son of a bitch.”

  “He’s nobody to mess with,” I said.

  “We’re nobody to mess with,” Baby Fat said.

  “You kidding? You guys are chump change,” I said. “I don’t care if you were in prison, county jail, whatever. You’re way, way out of your league.”

  “Guy got lucky,” Billy said.

  “No, you were the one who was lucky. If you’re smart, you’ll just walk away. Really. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  “An old guy and some deaf-mute whack job,” Baby Fat said.

  I looked at him and smiled, shook my head.

  “The two of them could have killed all four of you. With their bare hands. In fifteen seconds.”

  “Bullshit,” Billy said.

  I turned and started for my truck. Over my shoulder I said, “Trying to tell you, but you won’t listen. This isn’t like beating up some girl.”

  Billy took a step toward me, then stopped.

  Took his finger off the trigger.

  6

  I backed down the drive away from the road, shut off the motor, and sat for a minute, the birds flitting through the undergrowth, the sun climbing beyond the trees.

  The tracks of the tires. Something to remember—that driving slow leaves less of a trail. The other thing was that I’d underestimated both of them, especially Billy. Nasty and violent I’d understood. Patient and persistent I hadn’t counted on.

  Questions: In this place of small towns, where somebody’s vehicle proclaimed their presence like a banner, how long would it take before they tracked me to my house? How long would it take them to figure out that Clair lived on the same road? Would they track down Louis Longfellow as well?

  If they found him in Sanctuary, God help them. A guy who spent six months shooting his way through Fallujah wouldn’t have any trouble with these yahoos. Or would he? And even if he didn’t, at that point it might be too late for Louis as well, explaining the two dead bodies on his front porch. I made a mental note for another stop for the day: Clair’s, for a briefing.

  I started the truck and drove up to the road, hesitated for a moment. Right was down and through the hills, where I could start calling and e-mailing the
gun sellers for the Outland magazine story. Left was north to the Mennonite farms, the story for the Times. Peaceful, God-fearing folks right out of the nineteenth century.

  I went left. Needed something to renew my faith in humanity.

  The background for my story ran through my mind as I drove. Asking around town, I’d learned that the Mennonites had come from Ontario in late spring, two years earlier. First they were a rumor; somebody had bought the Prentiss place, all three hundred acres, give or take, and paid cash. And then they’d arrived, three guys in a U-Haul truck. Word was that two of them had beards and were wearing white shirts and baggy black trousers. The third guy, the driver, was wearing jeans. He helped them unload some old suitcases and toolboxes, table saws, and a horse-drawn wagon, just like the Old West. And then that guy got back in the truck and left.

  The women came by car a couple of weeks later. They were wearing long skirts with aprons and cloth bonnets. Their driver was a lady who stopped at the store on the way out of town. She had on jeans and a sweatshirt that said NIAGARA FALLS. Someone asked if they were Amish. No, she said. Old Order Mennonites. There’s a difference.

  The distinction was lost on the locals. We did note that they cleaned out the house and barn, stripped out the electric lights and appliances. They bought pulling horses and dairy cows, and the horses pulled a wagon around the perimeter so the Mennonites could put up new fences. Kids and another couple came not long after that, and some people in town started saying it was a cult. But then the Mennonites planted corn and wheat. They opened a little bakery, just off the main house. And they sold eggs and milk. They were quiet but polite, and they worked hard. Always paid cash.

  First, the Prentiss farm. Then a half-abandoned spread next door, from a couple from away named Greta and Dave. After that, the Geberth place next door, another two hundred acres, with fields across the ridge on top of Hanley Hill, which is where I found them.

  There were two Mennonite girls leaning against a fence at the side of the road. They were watching two teenage guys working a horse-drawn harrow to turn over a field of squash and pumpkins. The squash and pumpkins were piled by a gate. The girls, in skirts and aprons and bonnets, looked over the gate at me when I pulled up and got out of the truck.

  “Good morning,” I said, smiling. “How are you?”

  “Good morning,” the older one said. The younger one looked at me warily, and then away. The younger one looked sixteen or so, the other one a year or two older. The older girl smiled right back. She was blonde and very pretty.

  “I’m Jack,” I said. “I live in town.”

  The friendly one nodded; the younger one took two steps back. Beyond them, in the field, the guy on the plow seat shouted something at the horses and they pulled up. He slid down off the seat, handed the reins to a younger boy who had been riding on the frame of the plow, started walking across the field toward us.

  “So I’ve driven by ever since you and your family have been up here,” I said. “Never took the time to stop.”

  “It’s a nice day to be out and about,” the older girl said. Her accent was faintly German. Or maybe it was just Canadian. I leaned on the top rail of the gate and saw that there were wicker picnic baskets on the grass by the fence. I noticed again that the blonde girl was strikingly pretty, like an actress playing an Amish character. Except she was neither.

  “That your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the farmer?”

  “One of them,” she said. “But he works, too. For money. We all do. Except for my father. He’s the bishop. He does the services, mostly.”

  “Huh,” I said. And then the guy approached, his boots leaving tracks in the furrowed ground. He was lanky with sinewy arms and a noncommittal expression that I took for encouraging.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  He nodded. “Can we help you?”

  Same accent. More than Canadian.

  “Jack McMorrow,” I said. “I live in town.”

  “I’m Abram Snyder. I live right here.”

  A real smile. I pressed on.

  “I’m a writer. I write for newspapers. I’m wondering if you’d let me do a story on your settling here. Coming all the way from, where was it—”

  “Canada,” Abram said.

  “Abram,” the younger girl scolded. “You can’t.”

  “We’re just talking here,” I said. “Not for a story. I just wanted to introduce myself.”

  “Do you write for the newspaper in Galway?” Abram said. “Because our father, he told them already. We don’t do articles. Or pictures.”

  “I don’t write for them.”

  “Which one, then?” Abram said.

  I hesitated, then smiled and took the plunge. “Different places,” I said. “But mostly the New York Times.”

  The younger girl turned and trotted off across the field toward the kid with the horses.

  “I’ve seen it,” Abram said. “Your newspaper.”

  “You subscribe?”

  He shook his head.

  “I worked in a toy shop. Busy season. Before Christmas. They had their toys in an advertisement.”

  “So you do get out,” I said.

  “We aren’t hermits,” Abram said. “You live in New York?”

  He moved closer, and the older girl did, too.

  “Many years,” I said. “I grew up there. But I like it here more.”

  “Why?” he said. The girl watched. Up close she had blue eyes and fine skin, a faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  “New York’s fun,” I said. “But loud. And crowded. If Prosperity is like a pond, New York is like a rushing stream. You step into the water and it sweeps you away. Get caught off balance and you drown.”

  “I’ve been to Buffalo,” he said. “We drove through.”

  “Think taller,” I said, turning to the girl. “What’s your name?”

  She glanced at the guy before replying. “Miriam,” she said. “Abram is my brother. And Sarah, that’s my sister.”

  “And the guy on the plow?”

  “That’s Victor,” she said. “He’s not our brother.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “The subways must be cool,” the guy said, like he’d been waiting for a place to break in. “I read about people living down there. Some of them even had beds and chairs and stuff.”

  “Yeah, some people actually settle in in the tunnels. It’s pretty spooky, when you go to find them.”

  “You’ve done that?” he said.

  “Many years ago. For a story.”

  “Maybe we should do the article on you,” he said.

  Again the accent.

  “Sure,” I said. “Glad to talk. I could come and talk at your school or whatever.”

  “Father would never,” the girl blurted.

  “Is he the teacher?” I said.

  “He’s the Bishop,” the guy said.

  A flicker of something in their eyes, a look exchanged. Rebellion?

  “So I’d have to talk to him to do a story? On the Mennonite community in Prosperity?”

  “He’d say no,” Abram said.

  “Can’t hurt to ask,” I said.

  “Have you been to Ground Zero?” he asked.

  I looked at him. Who was this Mennonite guy?

  “Before and after,” I said.

  “What about the Bronx?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “A lot of murders there,” Abram said.

  “Some,” I said. “But that’s exaggerated. Like saying everybody in Maine is a lobsterman. Mostly good people in the Bronx.”

  “I’d like to see it,” he said.

  “You could take the bus down from Portland,” I said.

  The look exchanged again.

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “We have work to do here.”

  Miriam looked like she was gathering herself up to say something. I looked at her, smiled, and waited.

  “I’d li
ke to see Ellis Island,” she said.

  A monument to immigrants, I thought. Just like them.

  “Definitely a must-see,” I said, and then Sarah came running back, jumping the rows, her skirt billowing, sneakers digging into the clumps of soil.

  “Victor needs Abram,” the younger girl said. She moved close to her sister and whispered, “We have to go back.”

  “We brought their meal,” Miriam said to me. “Second breakfast.”

  There was something endearing and earnest about her, like she was eager to engage but wasn’t sure how to begin.

  “What did you make?” I said.

  “There’s bread and butter and pie and—”

  “Miriam,” Sarah said, pulling at her sister’s arm. “Now.”

  The girls turned, Sarah leading Miriam like a calf on a rope. Abram stayed put, hands in the pockets of his trousers.

  “Let’s talk again,” I said.

  “Yeah, Mr. McMorrow,” Abram said, and then stepped closer. “But not here.”

  Worried about their father, the Bishop?

  “Okay. We could have coffee,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, turning and moving away. Victor had come off the rig, was headed our way. When he was ten feet from us, he stopped and stared at me. Hard.

  “This is Victor. We work the horses together.”

  “Hi there,” I said. “I’m Jack.”

  Victor hesitated, then nodded.

  “Just talking to Abram about the big city,” I said. “I’m from New York.”

  Victor nodded again, then moved close to Abram, covered his mouth to talk. What was he saying? Don’t talk to the—what was it that Amish called non-Amish? English? Was there an Old Order Mennonite equivalent? Would the Bishop tan their hides?

  The huddle broke up and Abram smiled, said, “We have to work.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Plow well.”

  “We’ll talk,” Abram said.

  “Abram,” Victor urged, grabbed him by the arm, and started to pull him back toward the horses.

  “Good meeting you, Victor,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  And then they were back at the plow. Abram waved back, climbed up on the seat, and gave the reins a shake, said something that sounded like Yap. The horses shook their heads in their harnesses and dug their hooves into the loam. Victor hopped up on the plow frame, looked back at me and scowled.