Pale Kings and Princes

17

From behind a cluster of evergreens on a hill above Mechanic Street I could see Esteva’s warehouse across the river. The road past it wound parallel with the river, then dipped under the Main Street bridge and out of sight. I was sitting in Susan’s red thunderjet for the third day in a row looking at the warehouse. When anyone came out or a truck pulled in, I looked at it through binoculars. Which meant simply that I was learning nothing at closer range. Crates of vegetables got unloaded off big trailer trucks and slid down rollers into the warehouse. Smaller crates came out of the warehouse and were loaded onto delivery trucks.

Susan’s car was not ideal for unobtrusive surveillance, being bright red and shaped like a carrot, but if Esteva or anyone else saw me they didn’t seem to care. Nobody came up and told me to scram.

I had a thermos of coffee, with sugar and cream. I was sure that not drinking it black was the first step toward quitting. I also had several sandwiches (tuna on pumpernickel, turkey on whole wheat, lettuce and mayo) that I’d made up the night before after shopping Mel’s Wheaton Market where I’d found the pumpernickel in the imported food section. The sun was bright and the greenhouse effect was ample to warm the car with the motor off. I had gotten Wall to fill my thermos without having to actually lay hands on him. Another tribute to the power of a winning personality. I sipped some coffee, took a bite of a sandwich. The sound of my munching broke the silence. It was the most excitement I’d had since Tuesday. Across the river a figure came out of the warehouse and walked toward one of the trucks parked against the chain link fence in back of the yard. He was carrying an overnight bag. I put my coffee cup down on the plastic top of the transmission hump, balanced the sandwich on the top of the dashboard, and picked the binoculars up off the passenger seat.

The person with the overnight bag was Brett Rogers.

It was the first time I’d seen him at the warehouse since I’d been sitting up there looking at it. He opened the door of a big tractor rig, tossed the overnight bag in, climbed in after it, and in a moment I saw a puff of smoke from the exhaust pipe that stuck up above the cab.

Why the overnight bag?

The trailerless tractor pulled slowly out of the yard and turned right along the river. I started up the car and put it in gear and headed down across the Main Street bridge, cloverleafed under the bridge onto Mechanic Street, and drifted along behind the kid. I didn’t have much expectation but following him was something to do. Three days of sitting had produced nothing. If I followed Brett Rogers around for a while and that produced nothing, what had I lost.

We headed south a ways, along the river, and picked up the Mass. Pike at the Wheaton toll station. We went east on the Mass. Pike. On the Pike it was easy to stay back a ways and still keep an eye on the big tractor ahead of me. Lots of cars went the whole distance on the Pike, so it wasn’t worrisome to see the same car behind you periodically. It’s a pleasant ride on the Pike, the hills west of Worcester roll easily, and the gleaming winter sun made everything look pristine. There was little to see but the forest, and every time I drove the Pike I thought of William Pynchon and that gang heading west through these hills to settle Springfield.

East of Worcester we turned off and headed north on Route 495. Route 495 had been built circling Boston on about a forty-mile radius in the hopes it would be like Route 128, which circled Boston on about a ten-mile radius and had turned into the yellow brick road. There weren’t as many hi-tech establishments along Route 495 yet, but no one had given up hope and opportunities for land development were advertised on community-sponsored billboards all along the highway. There were some plants going up, but you could still see cows along 495.

The highway ends its circumference near the New Hampshire border, where it joins Route 95 in Salisbury, on the coast. Brett’s tractor lumbered north on 95. I’d drunk all my coffee and eaten all my sandwiches by then and the early winter evening sun was starting down. South of where we were, Route 95 went through Smithfield where Susan had lived until last year. I felt a little homesick. I hadn’t seen her in six days. Lucky was tough as a junkyard badger or I’d be missing her badly.

Brett stopped for coffee and a men’s room on the Maine Turnpike between Portsmouth and Portland. I used the men’s room while he bought coffee and bought coffee while he used the men’s room. He had no reason to recognize me. I’d looked at him in the library and again on his way to Emmy Esteva’s. But he’d had no reason to look either time at me.

Then we were on the road again, northbound. Brett had bought a couple of cheeseburgers to go, but I settled for coffee. I’d sampled the road food in Maine and preferred hunger.

It was a little short of eight when we pulled into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn just off the highway. There were a couple of other chain motels next to each other across the street.

Brett climbed down out of his tractor, pulled his overnight bag after him and went into the motel. I parked down the line of cars and turned off my lights and left the motor running and the heat on. Actually in Susan’s car you didn’t put the heat on, you set the digital thermostat to whatever temperature you wish and the thing cycles on and off automatically. I had it set at seventy-two.

Brett had parked in the early evening and taken his overnight bag and gone into a motel. According to my collection of Dick Tracy Crime Stoppers, this was a clue that meant he planned to sleep there. What it was not a clue to was when he would wake up and pull out. I shut off the motor. If I checked into the motel and went to bed and woke up and found Brett gone I would feel inadequate, and the feeling would accurately mirror reality. I turned up the collar on my leather jacket, zipped it up close around the neck, and eased down in the driver’s seat. If I fell asleep, the sound of the big diesel tractor starting up would wake me, and I wasn’t good at sleeping in cars and on airplanes.

Around midnight I started the car again and let the heater run for a while and when it was warm I shut it off again. If I ran the motor all night I’d be low on gas when we started off and I’d run out before Brett had to stop, or I might. I figured he still had a ways to go, or he’d have gone there before he stopped for the night. Unless this was the last place to stay before we plunged off into the wilds someplace. Maine is not teeming with motels. Around 2:00 A.M. I felt somewhat like a wire coat hanger. There are not that many positions to assume while trying to sleep in a carrot-shaped sports car. I started the engine to let things warm up again and got out and stretched.

There was a light in the motel lobby and there were high cold stars and there was nothing else but the collection of silent cars and trucks. Once as I stood in the harsh cold a vehicle whooshed by on the turnpike back of the motel. I got back in the car.

Dawn came late, around six o’clock the first hint of it in the black sky thinning toward gray, and then the beginnings of visibility before there was any touch of color in the eastern sky. The motel kitchen was kicking into action. I could smell coffee. At six-thirty Brett came out of the motel and headed for his tractor. I cranked Susan’s car over and was a little ways behind him when we rolled out of the parking lot and back up onto the Maine Pike and away from the smell of coffee.