From the 79 we turned off on 68, near a bend of the M River (forget it, it's unspellable) and shortly after that onto the access road to Cheat Road. This would take you in a round about way through stretches of forests to the snakey Cheat Lake; but the small cabin Top had in those autumn acres was not our goal just yet, but rather the house off a private drive that split from Cheat Road maybe two miles from Josie's motel room.
The private drive was gated, but a quick swerve around and down a rutted trail led us up to the drive and past a couple of modest homes.
Top's place was set off from the neighbors by a wooded lawn the length of two football fields. It was a two-storey grey house with a green roof and brown-eaved gables, their windows like predatory eyes watching our approach. Moira was squeezing my stomach hard in spasms of excitement. I grinned at that.
There were no vehicles in sight. The broad olive-green garage had its three doors shut; two tabbies lying side by side with their forepaws folded under their white chests, warily watching us cruise in neutral around a garden statue and brake gently to a stop beside a raised porch that faced its twin across beds of withering flowers.
At first I smelled only the oily heat of the hot engine and warm rubber; but walking past the flower beds to the opposite porch was freshened by the mix of tree types, the musky tang of leaf and branch.
The passing of a small commuter plane marred the otherwise quiet scene; that and the soft lazy tinkle of windchimes hanging from the ceramic nose of a Tibetan buddhist demon mask. It hung above a steel coffee urn on a sideboard of the porch, near fan-back wicker chairs.
Top had asked me to wait there until he came to fetch me. I told him on the phone that the girl might, or might not, be with me. I had discussed with Moira the idea of her staying with Josie that first night, but she would not hear of it. "After all this build up? No way am I not coming with you today!"
I considered the coffee urn, but the reckless feeling was still with me. Without a word of explanation to Moira I left the porch and went off across the back lawn, she right behind me, and into the woods.
Does a falling tree make a noise when no one's there to hear it? No, but neither are there any trees to fall when no human consciousness is witness. The forest existed there and then for my benefit; mine and Moira's, who took hold of my wrist as she looked around at the beautiful evil of the woods.
The call of the primal drifted through us. You can not be a civilized man in the woods. You either revert to the base animal nature or that of a native lost in the crudities of his world. I knew something of this spot, this little piece of the woods. A place to drink and piss and lure the willing miss. A place where a man and his wife were murdered by their daughter, who then took her own life, according to the coroner's report; but not according to Top.
He said the daughter was killed by her boyfriend. What evidence? All in his mind. But I knew what his mind could do. He wasn't just a biker enthusiast who played games with human weaknesses and human cruelty. He sought the elusive wisp of justice. "Setting things right by doing things wrong" was his motto. He might just as well say, "The end always justifies the means."
He intended to get even with Shovel (I will eventually explain why and how), and he intended to avenge the murdered daughter. I had remarked, "But she murdered her parents. Fate was the avenger. It arranged for her punishment. Why do you dispute it?" His answer was disarming: "Her parents deserved it."
How did he know that? Well, he just did. He just knew. In my experience, his knowledge of things he could only preternaturally know was always correct. I had come to his house on this occasion to see what he promised to show me: the avenging of the Deadly Daughter by the methods of the Game. I had asked him to explain. But he just chuckled and said, "When you get here. Don't be later than next week."
And so I made sure I got there in time, with or without a troubled but lovable hitchhiker.
"What's here?" whispered Moira. "Is this the scary part?"
The tease devil in me said, "It's the beginning of it."
When she said in a breathless voice, "What's the end? I think we're here to see it," I looked at her as I had often looked at Top, with a mildly amazed surprise. For people like Moira and Top, and I think maybe myself too, there is a parallel road following a little ahead of the road one has chosen to walk, or ride. At spontaneous moments one is on the parallel road, the mystic road that threads the present to the future. Here things are experienced on the emotional level that will be experienced later, on the chosen road.
We called Top 'the Lord of the Roads' not just because our oath to him demanded the designation, but also because he knew the mystic maps of the future and could traverse them at odd times; could somehow merge them with the ordinary map of our lives. This is not an easy thing to grasp or to explain, and I fumbled badly in trying to explain it to Moira. But I think she had an intuitive feel for it. She smiled, even as her eyes grew distant and dark.
Footsteps behind us. "There ye be," said Top. He came jovially, swinging his arms grandly, dressed in faded blue overalls and a fuzzy brown sweater. I introduced him to Moira but at the moment he was only interested in this: "You got in touch with Johnny Bee three or four days ago?"
I said yeah and asked "Why?"
He replied, "Why. It's the one question that we can never really know the answer to."
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