Ask the Parrot

1

When the helicopter swept northward and lifted out of sight over the top of the hill, Parker stepped away from the tree he’d waited beside and continued his climb. Whatever was on the other side of this hill had to be better than the dogs baying down there at the foot of the slope behind him, running around, straining at their leashes, finding his scent, starting up. He couldn’t see the bottom of the hill any more, the police cars congregated around his former Dodge rental in the diner parking lot, but he didn’t need to. The excited yelp of the dogs was enough.

How tall was this hill? Parker wasn’t dressed for uphill hiking, out in the midday October air; his street shoes skidded on leaves, his jacket bunched when he pulled himself up from tree trunk to tree trunk. But he still had to keep ahead of the dogs and hope to find something or somewhere useful when he finally started down the other side.

How much farther to the top? He paused, holding the rough bark of a tree, and looked up, and fifteen feet above him through the scattered thin trunks of this second-growth woods there stood a man. The afternoon sun was to Parker’s left, the sky beyond the man a pale October ash, the man himself only a silhouette. With a rifle.

Not a cop. Not with a group. A man standing, looking down toward Parker, hearing the same hounds Parker heard, holding the rifle easy at a slant across his front, pointed up and to the side. Parker looked down again, chose the next tree trunk, pulled himself up.

It was another three or four minutes before he drew level with the man, who stepped back a pace and said, “That’s good. Right there’s good.”

“I have to keep moving,” Parker said, but he stopped, wishing these shoes gave better traction on dead leaves.

The man said, “You one of those robbers I’ve been hearing about on the TV? Took all a bank’s money, over in Massachusetts?”

Parker said nothing. If the rifle moved, he would have to meet it.

The man watched him, and for a few seconds they only considered one another. The man was about fifty, in a red leather hunting jacket with many pockets, faded blue jeans, and black boots. His eyes were shielded by a billed red and black flannel cap. Beside him on the ground was a gray canvas sack, partly full, with brown leather handles.

Seen up close, there was a tension in the man that seemed to be a part of him, not something caused by running into a fugitive in the woods. His hands were clenched on the rifle, and his eyes were bitter, as though something had harmed him at some point and he was determined not to let it happen again.

Then he shook his head and made a downturned mouth, impatient with the silence. “The reason I ask,” he said, “when I saw you coming up, and heard the dogs, I thought if you are one of the robbers, I want to talk to you.” He shrugged, a pessimist to his boots, and said, “If you’re not, you can stay here and pat the dogs.”

“I don’t have it on me,” Parker said.

Surprised, the man said, “Well, no, you couldn’t. It was about a truckload of cash, wasn’t it?”

“Something like that.”

The man looked downhill. The dogs couldn’t be seen yet, but they could be heard, increasingly frantic and increasingly excited, held back by their handlers’ lesser agility on the hill. “This could be your lucky day,” he said, “and mine, too.” Another sour face. “I could use one.” Stooping to pick up his canvas sack, he said, “I’m hunting for the pot, that’s what I’m doing. I have a car back here.”

Parker followed him the short climb to the crest, where the trees were thinner but within a cluster of them a black Ford SUV was parked on a barely visible dirt road. “Old logging road,” the man said, and opened the back cargo door of the SUV to put the rifle and sack inside. “I’d like it if you’d sit up front.”

“Sure.”

Parker got into the front passenger seat as the man came around the other side to get behind the wheel. The key was already in the ignition. He started the car and drove them at an angle down the wooded north slope, the road usually visible only because it was free of trees.

Driving, eyes on the dirt lane meandering downslope ahead of them, the man said, “I’m Tom Lindahl. You should give me something to call you.”

“Ed,” Parker decided.

“Do you have any weapons on you, Ed?”

“No.”

“There’s police roadblocks all around here.”

“I know that.”

“What I mean is, if you think you can jump me and steal my car, you wouldn’t last more than ten minutes.”

Parker said, “Can you get around the roadblocks?”

“It’s only a few miles to my place,” Lindahl said. “We won’t run into anybody. I know these roads.”

“Good.”

Parker looked past Lindahl’s sour face, downslope to the left, and through the trees now he could just see a road, two-lane blacktop, below them and running parallel to them. A red pickup truck went by down there, the opposite way, uphill. Parker said, “Can they see us from the road, up in here?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“They’ll get to the top in a few minutes, with the dogs,” Parker said. “They’ll see this road, they’ll figure I’m in a car.”

“Soon we’ll be home,” Lindahl said, and unexpectedly laughed, a rusty sound as though he didn’t do much laughing. “You’re the reason I came out,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“The TV’s full of the robbery, all that money gone, I couldn’t stand it any more. Those guys don’t get slapped around, I thought. Those guys aren’t afraid of their own shadow, they go out and do what has to be done. I got so mad at myself—I’ll tell you right now, I’m a coward—I just had to come out with the gun awhile. Those two rabbits back there, I can use them, God knows, but I didn’t really need them just yet. It was you brought me out.”

Parker watched his profile. Now that he was talking, Lindahl seemed just a little less bitter. Whatever was bothering him, it must make it worse to hold it in.

Lindahl gave him a quick glance, his expression now almost merry. “And here you are,” he said. “And up close, I got to tell you, you don’t look like that much of a world-beater.”

He steered left, down a steep slope, and the logging road met the blacktop.