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CHAPTER 10
1
I crossed the employee parking lot for the third time, not quite running. I once more rapped on the
trunk of the white-over-red Plymouth Fury as I went by. For good luck, I guess. In the weeks, months,
and years to come, I was going to need all the good luck I could get.
This time I didn’t visit the Kennebec Fruit, and I had no intention of shopping for clothes or a car.
Tomorrow or the next day would do for that, but today might be a bad day to be a stranger in The
Falls. Very shortly someone was going to find a dead body in the millyard, and a stranger might be
questioned. George Amberson’s ID wouldn’t stand up to that, especially when his driver’s license was
for a house on Bluebird Lane that hadn’t been built yet.
I made it to the millworkers’ bus stop outside the parking lot just as the bus with LEWISTON
EXPRESS in its destination window came snoring along. I got on and handed over the dollar bill I’d
meant to give to the Yellow Card Man. The driver clicked a handful of silver out of the chrome
change-maker he wore on his belt. I dropped fifteen cents into the fare box and made my way down
the swaying aisle to a seat near the back, behind two pimply sailors—probably from the Brunswick
Naval Air Station—who were talking about the girls they hoped to see at a strip joint called the
Holly. Their conversation was punctuated by an exchange of hefty shoulder-punches and a great deal
of snorkeling laughter.
I watched Route 196 unroll almost without seeing it. I kept thinking about the dead man. And the
card, which was now dead black. I’d wanted to put distance between myself and that troubling corpse
as quickly as possible, but I had paused long enough to touch the card. It wasn’t cardboard, as I had
first assumed. Not plastic, either. Celluloid, maybe . . . except it hadn’t exactly felt like that, either.
What it felt like was dead skin—the kind you might pare off a callus. There had been no writing on
it, at least none that I could see.
Al had assumed the Yellow Card Man was just a wet-brain who’d been driven crazy by an unlucky
combination of booze and proximity to the rabbit-hole. I hadn’t questioned that until the card turned
orange. Now I more than questioned it; I flat-out didn’t believe it. What was he, anyway?
Dead, that’s what he is. And that’s all he is. So let it go. You’ve got a lot to do.
When we passed the Lisbon Drive-In, I yanked the stop-cord. The driver pulled over at the next
white-painted telephone pole.
“Have a nice day,” I told him as he pulled the lever that flopped the doors open.
“Ain’t nothin nice about this run except a cold beer at quittin time,” he said, and lit a cigarette.
A few seconds later I was standing on the gravel shoulder of the highway with my briefcase
dangling from my left hand, watching the bus lumber off toward Lewiston, trailing a cloud of
exhaust. On the back was an ad-card showing a housewife who held a gleaming pot in one hand and an
S.O.S. Magic Scouring Pad in the other. Her huge blue eyes and toothy red-lipsticked grin suggested a
woman who might be only minutes away from a catastrophic mental breakdown.
The sky was cloudless. Crickets sang in the high grass. Somewhere a cow lowed. With the diesel
stink of the bus whisked away by a light breeze, the air smelled sweet and fresh and new. I started
trudging the quarter mile or so to the Tamarack Motor Court. Just a short walk, but before I got to
my destination, two people pulled over and asked me if I wanted a ride. I thanked them and said I was
fine. And I was. By the time I reached the Tamarack I was whistling.
September of ’58, United States of America.