Ask the Parrot

9

Parker got behind the wheel of the Taurus, adjusted the seat for his longer legs, started the engine, and then looked at Thiemann, who sat slumped beside him, staring at nothing, deep in his own thoughts. Parker waited, then said, “Which way?”

“What? Oh. Christ, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“You got shook up,” Parker told him. “It’s natural. Which way?”

“Uh, left out of the parking lot.”

Parker drove that way, seeing Lindahl’s SUV steady in his rearview mirror. “If I’m gonna make a turn,” he said, “tell me before I get to it.”

“Yeah, I’m okay now. I’ll be okay.”

“Good.”

They drove two miles, and Parker became aware that Thiemann’s attention had gradually shifted from his own interior landscape to Parker’s profile. Thiemann frowned at him, quizzical, seeming to try to understand something. Parker said nothing, and then Thiemann faced front and said, “There’s a stop sign coming up. You’ll turn right.”

“Good.”

They made the turn, and ahead was another roadblock. Parker lowered his window, eased over to the shoulder, and waved Lindahl to overtake him. When Lindahl did, his own passenger window open, Parker called to him, “We’re with you, you’ve got our guns.”

Lindahl nodded and drove ahead, Parker now following him. He said, “Tom know the way to your house?”

“Sure.”

“Good. He can lead the way, you don’t have to worry about telling me.”

“Probably good.”

Ahead, Lindahl slowed for the barricade. The cop there, local, not state, saw Lindahl’s membership card on the dash and waved him through, but Lindahl stopped, long enough to give the message. The cop looked toward the rifles on the floor in back, then nodded, waved Lindahl through again, and did the same to Parker; not grinning like the other one, but not stopping him, either.

They drove on awhile in silence, trailing Lindahl now, and then Thiemann said, “You didn’t like that roadblock.”

“It’s easier if they’ll wave you through it. And we wanted Tom out front to lead me.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t like the roadblock.”

“I don’t like any roadblock,” Parker said. “They make me nervous. People get tensed up, sometimes accidents happen.”

“Nothing makes you nervous,” Thiemann said.

Parker looked at him, then back at Lindahl up ahead.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I got the wind knocked out of me, up there, when I shot that guy.”

“Sure you did.”

“Tom felt it, too. But you didn’t.”

“Maybe I just don’t show things that much.”

“Maybe. But you were pretty cool. You knew what we should do and why we should do it. Tom and me, we wouldn’t have thought to leave that poor guy up there for the scavengers to eat. The first thing you said to me, what scavenger animals do we have around here?”

“Because you were in trouble, Fred,” Parker told him. “You know you were. And Tom knows it, too.”

“The second you saw that roadblock,” Thiemann said, “you were opening the window, getting off the road. You knew exactly what to say to Tom.”

“It was easier to get waved through on Tom’s ticket than have to stop and go through all that.”

“Just show ID,” Thiemann said.

“It was easier not to.”

Thiemann looked out the windshield, not saying anything more, but thinking it over. He was suspicious of something, but he didn’t know what. He had sensed the otherness in Parker, but he didn’t know what it meant.

An older Cadillac convertible, bright red, top down, big as a speedboat, came the other way, suddenly honking madly. The three guys in it, middle-aged, in their bright orange or red hunting caps, waved hands with beer cans in them at Lindahl, who honked and waved back but didn’t stop. Neither did the Cadillac, which went on by, the three guys all grinning and shouting things, now at Parker and Thiemann. They were very happy. Parker nodded but didn’t honk.

“That’s part of our group,” Thiemann said.

“I know.”

“They shouldn’t be drinking. That’s the worst thing you can do.” Then Thiemann turned away with a grimace. “Almost the worst thing.”

Ahead, Lindahl signaled for a left, and Parker did, too. “How much farther?”

“A couple miles.” Thiemann turned toward him again. “You don’t think much of us, do you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Not just those guys with the beer,” Thiemann said. “All of us, running around, being man hunters. You could see in those troopers’ eyes, they thought we were all just a joke. Useless, and a joke. And I could see it in your eyes, too. You think the same thing.”

Parker followed Lindahl around the turn. Thiemann’s sense of Parker’s otherness, which had led him toward suspicion, had now led him to embarrassment instead; Parker wasn’t an alien from outside them, unknown and untrusted, he was a judge from above them, finding them wanting. Good; that moved Thiemann away from a direction that might have caused trouble.

“Isn’t that right, Ed? You think the same thing?”

“Not a joke,” Parker said. “You just don’t have the training. I suppose, if you’d been trained, up there in the woods, you wouldn’t have moved quite so fast.”

“Not quite so fast.” Thiemann barked a laugh with no amusement in it. “You’d think, with the training, the trained guy’d be faster.”

“The trained guy knows when to be fast,” Parker said.

“You trained, Ed?”

“Some.”

“I thought so. It’s here.”

This area was more suburban than country, with curving roads flanked by neat small houses on large green lots. Lindahl, signaling for a right, didn’t turn but came to a stop just beyond a driveway. At the other end of the driveway was a tan stucco ranch with attached two-car garage.

Parker, turning in at the driveway, said, “Which garage?”

“Doesn’t matter, they’re both full of junk.”

Parker stopped, switched off the engine, and opened his door. But Thiemann went on just sitting there. Parker said, “The sooner you talk to her, the better.”

“What the hell am I gonna say?”

“Honey, I made a mistake today.”

Thiemann’s expression was haggard. “That’s a hell of a way to put it.”

“It’s what happened.”

“A mistake.”

“Let’s get out of the car.”

They got out of the Taurus and looked at each other across its top. “I keep thinking,” Thiemann said, “it’s a good thing for me you didn’t get impatient. I don’t know why I keep thinking that.”

“I got nothing but patience,” Parker told him. “I’m on vacation. Go talk to your wife.”

“I will. Maybe I’ll see you around, before you leave.”

“Maybe,” Parker said.