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  ‘He what?’

  ‘I was fishing Miller’s Bend. He came along with two other boys. They wanted money from me. I told them there was twenty or so in the glove compartment of my pickup. Twenty wasn’t good enough. So your boy shot my dog.’

  The man looked stricken.

  ‘Danny wouldn’t do that.’

  Ludlow didn’t know whether to believe the stricken look or not. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Once.

  ‘I’m afraid he did, Mr McCormack. I’m sorry. But sometimes a man doesn’t know his boy as well as he thinks he does. Daniel was the one who did the shooting. The other two boys just stood by and watched and then laughed when it was over.’

  ‘They laughed?’

  ‘That’s right. They seemed to think shooting a dog to death was a pretty funny thing.’

  McCormack stared at him open-mouthed a moment and then pushed back in his chair.

  ‘So you’re telling me what? That the dog went after him or something?’

  ‘The dog was sitting where I told him to sit. He wasn’t the kind to disobey.’

  McCormack shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry. That’s just not my boy’s behavior.’

  ‘As I said, sometimes you just don’t know a boy the way you think you do. Does Daniel have a tee-shirt that says STOLEN FROM MABEL’S WHOREHOUSE on it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll check for me.’

  The man seemed to ponder this. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘What is it, Mr Ludlow? You want money?’

  Ludlow noticed he wasn’t Av anymore. He was Mr Ludlow now.

  ‘No, sir. I’m after whatever justice I can see coming out of this thing. What I want is to know that the boy admits to what he’s done and that he’s been made to feel damn sorry that he did it, damn sorry that he ever laid eyes on that dog and me, that he’s been punished for it as any decent person would want to see him punished. That would be where you come in, Mr McCormack. He’s your boy.’

  ‘Punished? What, are you talking about jail?’

  ‘I’d say a damn good licking for starters. But if I were you, sure, I’d turn him in. Before he gets to thinking he can do this again anytime he likes.’

  ‘You haven’t gone to the police yourself?’

  ‘Not yet, no. I was hoping you and Daniel’d want to do that for me. It’d go better for him, don’t you think?’

  McCormack thought about it and then leaned forward.

  ‘How am I supposed to know you’re telling me the truth, here, Ludlow? What proof have you got?’

  ‘I’ve got a spent shell-casing that the sheriff’s office could probably match to the Browning if it needs to come to that. But why not just ask him? Does the boy know I’m here?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I doubt it.’

  ‘Call him in. Let’s talk to him.’

  ‘These other two, what’d they look like?’

  ‘There was one near your son’s age, with too much weight on him. He wore jeans and a red teeshirt. Pack of cigarettes in the teeshirt. The other was younger, thin. He knew a little bit about fishing.’

  McCormack glanced at Ludlow and then down to his desk and stared frowning at the blotter for a moment, his hands folded in front of him, then picked up the telephone and pushed a button.

  ‘Carla, where’s Danny now?’

  He glanced at Ludlow again and tapped the mahogany desk with his index finger.

  ‘All right, you go on up and tell him to come down here to the study. Harold, too, if he’s in his room. Tell them I said right away.’

  Ludlow noted the name Harold. He expected that he’d got two birds with one stone.

  Fine. It made things easier.

  McCormack replaced the phone. Ludlow was aware of the silence in the room and aware of the comfortable chair beneath him and the strong lemon smell of furniture polish.

  ‘You ever consider selling your store, Ludlow?’ McCormack said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Your store. You ever consider selling it?’

  ‘No. I can’t say I ever have.’

  ‘What is it, an acre of land? A little over?’

  ‘That’s right. A little over.’

  ‘And you pull in probably about twenty grand a year net, am I right? That’s if you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Twenty’s about right, yes.’

  ‘But you’ve got a real good location there. Not just for a general store but could be for just about anything. If you should ever consider selling, my associates and I might be interested. Could make you a pretty good dollar.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  ‘It’d be a lot of work for a man your age, I’d figure. A place like that. A lot of long hours.’

  ‘Is that what you do for a living, Mr McCormack? You buy up people’s stores?’

  He laughed. ‘Among other things. Some friends and I develop property now and then. We just finished a deal for a new Home Depot complex out on Highway One as a matter of fact. I’m afraid in about a year or so they’re going to give you some pretty stiff competition.’

  ‘Competition’s fine with me. Just so long as they don’t manage to run me off the road.’

  The door opened and Ludlow was still considering how and why the man knew so much about him and his business when the boys walked in and he saw they knew him right away and knew why he was there. The younger boy had that scared look on his face again and he was struggling with that, trying to contain it. But the face on the one who’d shot his dog had gone from recognition to puzzled-looking in no longer than it took to close the door behind him. Which told Ludlow that this one was sly as well as mean.

  He also realized who McCormack reminded him of. It was the younger son, Harold.

  ‘You know this man here?’ McCormack said.

  Daniel shrugged. ‘No. Why?’

  Harold was looking at the floor. He shook his head.

  ‘Never seen him before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘This is Mr Ludlow, Danny. He’s been telling me a pretty amazing story. He says you tried to rob him yesterday. That you shot his dog.’

  ‘Us?’

  McCormack nodded.

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Ludlow’s kidding, no. You say you don’t know anything about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you take the Browning out yesterday, Danny?’

  ‘No. We drove to Plymouth. Ask Carla. She saw us take the car.’

  ‘With who?’ McCormack said.

  ‘Just us and Pete.’

  ‘And you didn’t go anywhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t go to Miller’s Bend?’

  ‘Why’d we want to go to Miller’s Bend?’

  ‘All right. Do you have a shirt that says PROPERTY OF MABEL’S—’

  ‘STOLEN FROM,’ Ludlow corrected him.

  ‘—STOLEN FROM MABEL’S WHOREHOUSE? You own a shirt like that?’

  Danny grinned. ‘If I did, I’d probably wear it.’

  Ludlow had to admit, the boy was good. The nasty little bastard. And because he was good even the younger one looked more confident now.

  ‘But you don’t own a shirt like that.’

  ‘No.’

  McCormack stared at them a long moment and then swiveled in his seat toward Ludlow and sighed.

  ‘I have to tell you, Av. I thought this was all pretty far-fetched right from the beginning. I’ve got a couple of good boys here and they wouldn’t be involved in something like what you’re describing to me. I’m sorry about your dog, I truly am. But I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong pair of kids, that’s all.’

  ‘Pair of kids? I didn’t say anything about a pair of kids. As I recall the only one I mentioned was Daniel Seems to me it was you made the connection between what I told you the other two boys looke
d like and Harold here. Though he was one of them, all right. Danny called him by name.’

  He looked at Harold. ‘Isn’t that so, son?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘I want to thank you for lying to your brother about my flies, by the way. Could have brought a couple hundred dollars or so. And you knew that Nice of you not to mention that to your brother. But suppose you tell your dad about my dog.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about your dog, mister!’

  Even if he didn’t know better Ludlow wouldn’t have found him convincing. To tell a decent lie you had to believe the lie while you were telling it and make that jump from what was true to what was not with a kind of grace. The boy wasn’t capable of grace this time. Though he’d done pretty well about the flies.

  Knowing the boy, the father must have seen the lie too. But McCormack wasn’t saying.

  ‘The truth would swallow a whole lot easier, son,’ Ludlow said quietly.

  ‘I didn’t . . .’

  He decided to press him.

  ‘I heard all three of you laughing all the way up the hill. Heard you for a long time. You know that?’

  The boy was close to crying now.

  ‘I think that’ll be enough, Ludlow,’ McCormack said.

  Ludlow looked at him and for the first time could see the actual hardness to the man, could hear it in the passionless flat calm of his voice. The man bought land and sold it. Ludlow bet there was iron in every bargain.

  What had he expected? He supposed that people like Danny had to come from somewhere.

  ‘If they say they didn’t do it then that’s that,’ McCormack said. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken.’

  He stood up.

  Ludlow saw that he was dismissed.

  He’d learned to swallow what he was feeling during the war. He did that now.

  It was never easy.

  He got out of the chair and Danny smiled at him as though he’d taken Ludlow’s measure and didn’t find anything to worry him standing there. He opened the door for Ludlow as probably he would have for any tired old man and then the two brothers moved away into the room nearer to the father and out of the doorway. Ludlow stood a moment looking for something to waver in McCormack’s eyes but nothing stirred there so at last he turned away.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I asked you.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I said I asked you.’

  ‘Asked me what?’

  ‘To do the right thing here.’

  ‘It could have been the right thing, maybe. If you’d had the right boys.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got the right boys, Mr McCormack. It’s you who’ve got the wrong boys. You’ve had them all these years and you’ve still got them and I think you probably know that. I guess I have some work to do. Thank you for your time.’

  He paused in the doorway.

  ‘You’ve been looking at my land for a while now, haven’t you? You’ve been interested. That’s how you knew to call me Av. That’s why you let me in.’

  McCormack smiled. ‘That’s a fact, to tell the truth. How’d you know?’

  ‘You had to have some reason. I guess you’re different from your boy that way. Danny doesn’t need one,’ he said and stepped out into the hall.

  Five

  In the summer of 1950 Ludlow had landed in Korea in a vintage World War II C-54 transport plane so heavy it tore up the runway. He was with the 29th Infantry, troops who arrived during the second week of the shit-storm all the generals back home had thought was going to be such a walk in the park, boys so green yet needed there so urgently that while they’d been promised six weeks of training Stateside, they’d been denied that in favour of what was supposed to be ten days of intensive training once they arrived in Pusan. But they’d not gotten that either. That too was denied them and instead they were allotted a mere three days to draw their equipment and zero in their weapons. Then even this order was rescinded and they were rushed to Chinju right away. A single day in-country and they were headed for the front.

  He remembered all of them knowing how unprepared they were. Ludlow aware of how little his own 75 mm recoilless rifle was going to help him against the North Korean T-34 tanks which had already crushed the 24th Division at Osan, all of them scared young men huddled in the transport trucks in the terrible summer heat driving through a country that smelled like human shit because that was what the farmers used for fertilizer.

  He remembered shell casings littering the paddy fields like a plague of gleaming locusts, so many casings that the whole field stunk of powder.

  He remembered the bodies of South Koreans lying thick as a log-jam in a river, lying all across the mountainsides.

  They were in way over their heads at the beginning but they learned quickly or else they died. Korea had taught Ludlow to fight, to obey the rules as you understood them to be and the hard voice of your knowledge and training as best you could. Then when all these were exhausted, to fight however it was you were able to fight with whatever lay at hand.

  Otherwise, like the North Korean human sea, the world rolled right on over you.

  He sat in Sam Berry’s office and said, ‘I want to go after them. I was hoping you’d know the best way.’

  Sam was a lawyer and Ludlow’s friend since their high-school football days together and Ludlow knew he was like-minded on this because Sam’s own dog, Buster, a big pure-blood Irish Setter, had once saved Berry’s life.

  Sam had been a hunter since the age of eleven and he was good at it and always a careful man with a gun. Coming up eight years ago this fall he’d been out for pheasant, alone but for Buster as bad luck would have it, though hunting alone was very rarely his custom. He forgot his safety for the first time in memory and tripped in a tangle of brush, his finger on the trigger of his shotgun.

  When he looked down most of his right foot was gone to just above the ankle, hanging by a bloody twist of muscle. He made a torniquet of his jacket but the blood was pumping out of him and he could feel himself going fast into shock all by himself there in the deep woods and so light-headed that he couldn’t remember which way the road was.

  He could hear the dog barking and saw that the dog would run a few paces and then stop and bark at him, run and stop and bark again.

  To Sam, the dog seemed to be encouraging him so he followed, first hopping and then using the shotgun as a crutch and finally crawling through the brush until he found himself in a culvert and knew he couldn’t even crawl anymore, much less make it over the hill ahead of him where the dog was, so he just lay there in the trickle of a slow-running stream.

  The dog would disappear over the top of the hill and then appear again. Appear and disappear.

  Sam kept falling in and out of dreams in which he was warm and cozy.

  But Buster had got him back to the road, or almost there. The road was just over the hill right in front of him and his luck was good as well as bad that day because a pair of hunters were driving by and saw this beautiful Irish Setter, a hunting dog, running back and forth across the road peering down into the culvert and barking and they thought, what’s a damn fine animal like that doing out here all alone? They pulled over. The dog walked to the top of the hill and howled and the hunters looked and there was Sam lying passed out in the culvert.

  He lost the leg at the knee and Sam threw away the Gravy Train and fed the dog top sirloin until the day he died.

  So Ludlow knew he was sympathetic. But right from the start he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  ‘Okay,’ Sam said, ‘you can’t prove attempted robbery, that’s just your word against theirs, so what you’ve got here is a case of cruelty to animals, maybe reckless conduct with a firearm. Those are Class D crimes in this State. Misdemeanors.’

  ‘Misdemeanors? Jesus.’

  ‘That’s right. And it gets worse. I hate to tell you this but in god’s truth, I don’t know that they’d even want to prosecute.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘First let�
�s assume your boy’s eighteen or over. If not, it’s a matter of juvenile court and all they’re going to give him’s a slap on the fanny, not even worth your damn time. But let’s assume he is. A crime like this would go before a judge in district court under title 17, section 1031, cruelty to animals. That carries a mandatory fine of a hundred dollars though, theoretically, a prosecutor could go for more. I say theoretically because most prosecutors would be happy with the hundred and some jail time. Under the law the most you could ask for in jail on animal cruelty is three hundred and sixty-four days. And practically speaking, no prosecutor in his right mind would shoot for more than thirty. Fact is, he’d be hoping like hell to get ten.’

  ‘Ten days. And a hundred dollars.’

  Sam nodded. ‘That’s right. You see where I’m going. Hell, Av, it costs the State more than a hundred just to serve him the damn subpoena, never mind the cost of dragging his sorry butt into court.

  ‘I’m sorry. God knows. But the truth is not many prosecutors want to bother with this kind of thing. Not unless they’re looking at a repeat offender or a whole lot of dead or damaged livestock. See, I’m talking property here, Av. Under the law, an animal’s just property. Not only here in Maine but in damn near every state in the Union.

  ‘Now what do you suppose old Red was worth on the open market? What do you figure’s the going rate on a good old faithful mixed-breed dog these days?’

  Ludlow tried to relax his grip on the chair. He felt a sick empty feeling in his stomach like his stomach was telling him he’d forgotten to eat for days. He wanted to hit something. To hurt something.

  He wanted to hurt the boy. Somehow.

  ‘Sheriff could arrest him, couldn’t he? He could do that much anyhow. Put the fear of god into the little son of a bitch.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘To arrest the little son of a bitch, the sheriff would have had to have seen him pull the trigger.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the law regarding animals. Same with reckless conduct with a firearm. He’d have had to have actually been there. Nope. Best you can get’s to serve them a subpoena for a hearing. And as I say, I can’t even guarantee you’ll wind up getting that.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I know. It’s not fair. Not one damn bit fair. But that’s the law.’