Sandford, John - Virgil Flowers 02 - Heat Lightning by Sandford John

Author:Sandford, John
Language: eng
Format: epub

The kid, whose name was Don, had come off a farm outside of Blooming Prairie, had done a year at the University of Minnesota, working nights at UPS, throwing boxes, and final y realized that the whole thing wasn’t for him.

“I was too tired to read, and the university . . . the place is sunk in bul shit,†he said. “I tried to figure out how long it would take me to get through, and it might take me six years, going ful time, because there’s so much bul shit that you can’t even figure out ahead of time what you need to take to graduate.â€

Virgil had gone to the university, and they talked about that and looked at the stars, and the kid confessed that he had al three volumes of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. in his pack, and had read them so often that they were fal ing apart, and that he had just started Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and that he couldn’t get over the second paragraph.

He quoted part of it from memory: “In the offing the sea and sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand stil in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back stil seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over

the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.â€

“London,†he said. “I’d give my left nut to go to London.â€

“You got a ship for sure?†Virgil asked.

“I got a guy who says he’s got one, for sure.

I’m probably gonna be lifting weight, but I don’t care—heck, I grew up on a dairy farm. There’s no ship that could be harder than that.â€

Virgil thought he was probably right, and wished for a moment that he was going with him.

He dropped the kid at the I-35 intersection east of Moose Lake and cut cross-country to the west, thinking about the lakes he knew, and where he might bag out for the night, and stil get a good couple of hours on the water before he had to move in the morning.

The lights of Duluth were fading off the far eastern horizon when his cel phone rang. He glanced at it, saw that it came from the northern Minnesota area code, thought Ray, and then Ray’s gonna tell me something . . .

He flipped open the phone and a man on the other end said, “Virgil Flowers? This is Rudy Bunch. The Red Lake cop?â€

The young one. Virgil said, “Hey. How’s it going?â€

“Not so good, man. We’re in deep shit up here.

We’ve got a dead cop and Ray’s gone.â€

Virgil peered into the dark; it was something like an embolism—part of his brain shut down for a minute. Then: “What?â€

“Somebody shot Olen Grey on the side of the road. He was watching Ray.

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