The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards

Author:David Adams Richards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781596929388
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2007-11-02T23:00:00+00:00

Strange how soft the night was, and music coming from far across the river for the grand opening of the fair. And what else—yes, yes, yes, the most faint traces of Beethoven’s song of joy.

—

AMY HEARD THE SAME SONG OF JOY AS SHE WAS APPROACHING her house. She was trembling with anxiety.

She woke the next day and, for the first time in her life, felt a sense of dread. What had happened the night before?

Later that day, after she picked blueberries in the field, she heard that Poppy Bourque had disappeared. The first thing she thought of was how coincidental it was to have seen his nephew the night before. Then, standing with a pail of blueberries in her hand, waiting for her mother to come from across the field, a feeling of trepidation suddenly filled her.

Nonsense, she thought, it was nothing!

Alex Chapman was a well-known man all over the river who had done nothing if not treat her kindly.

Why, he was the one who wanted to give them $700. Maybe that’s why he put their number on the receipt, to help them get it, who knows!

—

ALEX DID NOT GO OUT UNTIL THE NEXT EVENING, AND HE crept up to the highway just before sunset. He had not washed in over a week, and he could smell his own sweat permeate the air. He had remembered the loonies in his pocket and was going to buy a small box of tea. With everything he saw, and every car that passed, he felt a kind of physical fault beyond endurance—an almost needlelike shame swept over him.

The little old man who had been painting his signs about his vegetables, the hands folded on the old man’s lap, when he finally died, the picture of him Alex once saw, in front of a big heap of sawdust. Or the times he listened when Alex was upset and said: “Don’t worry, trust in God and all will work out!”

What god did Poppy trust in, to go for a drink? And yet this is what he thought all day, what Poppy had told him: “Don’t worry, trust in God and all will work out!”

It was now coming to the end of summer, and Alex heard from some of the men that Sam Patch was coming back to the river for vacation after a nine-month rotation.

“He’ll have nice money,” one of them said.

“Damn right,” said a second.

“Ahhhh,” Alex said bitterly, and he left into the dry dust settled across the parking lot.

Now they all went away to work, for there was nothing here. But Alex’s problem had been that he in fact was trained for nothing and he could no more get a good job away than he could here. What could he do? Fix a roof? No. Run a motor? No. Clean an underground skip? But there was something more: he had always thought he was too good for those jobs, and now it was too late. The fact was Patch would bring back money—perhaps as much as $50,000.

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