Colorado Kid Part 1

The Colorado Kid.

Stephen King.

With admiration, for Dan J. Marlowe, author of The Name of the Game is Death:.

Hardest of the hardboiled.

1.

After deciding he would get nothing of interest from the two old men who comprised the entire staff of The Weekly Islander, the feature writer from the Boston Globe took a look at his watch, remarked that he could just make the one-thirty ferry back to the mainland if he hurried, thanked them for their time, dropped some money on the tablecloth, weighted it down with the salt shaker so the stiffish onsh.o.r.e breeze wouldn't blow it away, and hurried down the stone steps from The Grey Gull's patio dining area toward Bay Street and the little town below. Other than a few cursory gleeps at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he hardly noticed the young woman sitting between the two old men at all.

Once the Globe writer was gone, Vince Teague reached across the table and removed the bills-two fifties-from beneath the salt shaker. He tucked them into a flap pocket of his old but serviceable tweed jacket with a look of unmistakable satisfaction.

"What are you doing?" Stephanie McCann asked, knowing how much Vince enjoyed shocking what he called "her young bones" (how much they both did, really), but in this instance not able to keep the shock out of her voice.

"What does it look like?" Vince looked more satisfied than ever. With the money gone he smoothed down the flap over the pocket and took the last bite of his lobster roll. Then he patted his mouth with his paper napkin and deftly caught the departed Globe writer's plastic lobster bib when another, fresher gust of salt-scented breeze tried to carry it away. His hand was almost grotesquely gnarled with arthritis, but mighty quick for all that.

"It looks like you just took the money Mr. Hanratty left to pay for our lunch," Stephanie said.

"Ayuh, good eye there, Steff," Vince agreed, and winked one of his own at the other man sitting at the table. This was Dave Bowie, who looked roughly Vince Teague's age but was in fact twenty-five years younger. It was all a matter of the equipment you got in the lottery, was what Vince claimed; you ran it until fell apart, patching it up as needed along the way, and he was sure that even to folks who lived a hundred years-as he hoped to do-it seemed like not much more than a summer afternoon in the end.

"But why?"

"Are you afraid I'm gonna stiff the Gull for the tab and stick Helen with it?" he asked her.

"No...who's Helen?"

"Helen Hafner, she who waited on us." Vince nodded across the patio where a slightly overweight woman of about forty was picking up dishes. "Because it's the policy of Jack Moody-who happens to own this fine eating establishment, and his father before him, if you care-"

"I do," she said.

David Bowie, The Weekly Islander's managing editor for just shy of the years Helen Hafner had lived, leaned forward and put his pudgy hand over her young and pretty one. "I know you do," he said. "Vince does, too. That's why he's taking the long way around Robin Hood's barn to explain."

"Because school is in," she said, smiling.

"That's right," Dave said, "and what's nice for old guys like us?"

"You only have to bother teaching people who want to learn."

"That's right," Dave said, and leaned back. "That's nice." He wasn't wearing a suit-coat or sport-coat but an old green sweater. It was August and to Stephanie it seemed quite warm on the Gull's patio in spite of the onsh.o.r.e breeze, but she knew that both men felt the slightest chill. In Dave's case, this surprised her a little; he was only sixty-five and carrying an extra thirty pounds, at least. But although Vince Teague might look no more than seventy (and an agile seventy at that, in spite of his twisted hands), he had turned ninety earlier that summer and was as skinny as a rail. "A stuffed string" was what Mrs. Pinder, The Islander's part-time secretary, called him. Usually with a disdainful sniff.

"The Grey Gull's policy is that the waitresses are responsible for the tabs their tables run up until those tabs are paid," Vince said. "Jack tells all the ladies that when they come in lookin for work, just so they can't come whining to him later on, sayin they didn't know that was part of the deal."

Stephanie surveyed the patio, which was still half-full even at twenty past one, and then looked into the main dining room, which overlooked Moose Cove. There almost every table was still taken, and she knew that from Memorial Day until the end of July, there would be a line outside until nearly three o'clock. Controlled bedlam, in other words. To expect every waitress to keep track of every single customer when she was busting her a.s.s, carrying trays of steaming boiled lobsters and clams- "That hardly seems..." She trailed off, wondering if these two old fellows, who'd probably been putting out their paper before such a thing as the minimum wage even existed, would laugh at her if she finished.

"Fair might be the word you're lookin for," Dave said dryly, and picked up a roll. It was the last one in the basket.

Fair came out fay-yuh, which more or less rhymed with ayuh, the Yankee word which seemed to mean both yes and is that so. Stephanie was from Cincinnati, Ohio, and when she had first come to Moose-Lookit Island to do an interns.h.i.+p on The Weekly Islander, she had nearly despaired...which, in downeast lingo, also rhymed with ayuh. How could she learn anything when she could only understand one word in every seven? And if she kept asking them to repeat themselves, how long would it be before they decided she was a congenital idiot (which on Moose-Look was p.r.o.nounced ijit, of course)?

She had been on the verge of quitting four days into a four-month University of Ohio postgrad program when Dave took her aside one afternoon and said, "Don't you quit on it, Steffi, it'll come to ya." And it had. Almost overnight, it seemed, the accent had clarified. It was as if she'd had a bubble in her ear which had suddenly, miraculously popped. She thought she could live here the rest of her life and never talk like them, but understand them? Ayuh, that much she could do, deah.

"Fair was the word," she agreed.

"One that hasn't ever been in Jack Moody's vocabulary, except in how it applies to the weather," Vince said, and then, with no change of tone, "Put that roll down, David Bowie, ain't you gettin fat, I swan, soo-ee, pig-pig-pig."

"Last time I looked, we wa'ant married," Dave said, and took another bite of his roll. "Can't you tell her what's on what pa.s.ses for your mind without scoldin me?"

"Ain't he pert?" Vince said. "No one ever taught him not to talk with his mouth full, either." He hooked an arm over the back of his chair, and the breeze from the bright ocean blew his fine white hair back from his brow. "Steffi, Helen's got three kids from twelve to six and a husband that run off and left her. She don't want to leave the island, and she can make a go of it-just-waitressin at The Grey Gull because summers are a little fatter than the winters are lean. Do you follow that?"

"Yes, absolutely," Stephanie said, and just then the lady in question approached. Stephanie noticed that she was wearing heavy support hose that did not entirely conceal varicose veins, and that there were dark circles under her eyes.

"Vince, Dave," she said, and contented herself with just a nod at the pretty third, whose name she did not know. "See your friend dashed off. For the ferry?"

"Yep," Dave said. "Discovered he had to get back down-Boston."

"Ayuh? All done here?"

"Oh, leave on a bit," Vince said, "but bring us a check when you like, Helen. Kids okay?"

Helen Hafner grimaced. "Jude fell out of his treehouse and broke his arm last week. Didn't he holler! Scared me bout to death!"

The two old men looked at each other...then laughed. They sobered quickly, looking ashamed, and Vince offered his sympathies, but it wouldn't do for Helen.

"Men can laugh," she told Stephanie with a tired, sardonic smile. "They all fell out of treehouses and broke their arms when they were boys, and they all remember what little pirates they were. What they don't remember is Ma gettin up in the middle of the night to give em their aspirin tablets. I'll bring you the check." She shuffled off in a pair of sneakers with rundown backs.

"She's a good soul," Dave said, having the grace to look slightly shamefaced.

"Yes, she is," Vince said, "and if we got the rough side of her tongue we probably deserved it. Meanwhile, here's the deal on this lunch, Steffi. I dunno what three lobster rolls, one lobster dinner with steamers, and four iced teas cost down there in Boston, but that feature writer must have forgot that up here we're livin at what an economist might call 'the source of supply' and so he dropped a hundred bucks on the table. If Helen brings us a check that says any more than fifty-five, I'll smile and kiss a pig. With me so far?"

"Yes, sure," Stephanie said.

"Now the way this works for that fella from the Globe is that he scratches Lunch, Gray Gull, Moose-Lookit Island and Unexplained Mysteries Series in his little Boston Globe expense book while he's ridin back to the mainland on the ferry, and if he's honest he writes one hundred bucks and if he's got a smidge of larceny in his soul, he writes a hundred and twenty and takes his girl to the movies on the extra. Got that?"

"Yes," Stephanie said, and looked at him with reproachful eyes as she drank the rest of her iced tea. "I think you're very cynical."

"No, if I was very cynical, I would have said a hundred and thirty, and for sure." This made Dave snort laughter. "In any case, he left a hundred, and that's at least thirty-five dollars too much, even with a twenty percent tip added in. So I took his money. When Helen brings the check, I'll sign it, because the Islander runs a tab here."

"And you'll tip more than twenty percent, I hope," Stephanie said, "given her situation at home."

"That's just where you're wrong," Vince said.

"I am? Why am I?"

He looked at her patiently. "Why do you think? Because I'm cheap? Yankee-tight?"

"No. I don't believe that any more than I think black men are lazy or Frenchmen think about s.e.x all day long."

"Then put your brain to work. G.o.d gave you a good one."

Stephanie tried, and the two men watched her do it, interested.

"She'd see it as charity," Stephanie finally said.

Vince and Dave exchanged an amused glance.

"What?" Stephanie asked.

"Gettin a little close to lazy black men and s.e.xy Frenchmen, ain'tcha, dear?" Dave asked, deliberately broadening his downeast accent into what was nearly a burlesque drawl. "Only now it's the proud Yankee woman that won't take charity."

Feeling that she was straying ever deeper into the sociological thickets, Stephanie said, "You mean she would take it. For her kids, if not for herself."

"The man who bought our lunch was from away," Vince said. "As far as Helen Hafner's concerned, folks from away just about got money fallin out of their...their wallets."

Amused at his sudden detour into delicacy on her account, Stephanie looked around, first at the patio area where they were sitting, then through the gla.s.s at the indoor seating area. And she saw an interesting thing. Many-perhaps even most-of the patrons out here in the breeze were locals, and so were most of the waitresses serving them. Inside were the summer people, the so-called "off-islanders," and the waitresses serving them were younger. Prettier, too, and also from away. Summer help. And all at once she understood. She had been wrong to put on her sociologist's hat. It was far simpler than that.

"The Grey Gull waitresses share tips, don't they?" she asked. "That's what it is."

Vince pointed a finger at her like a gun and said, "Bingo."

"So what do you do?"

"What I do," he said, "is tip fifteen percent when I sign the check and put forty dollars of that Globe fella's cash in Helen's pocket. She gets all of that, the paper doesn't get hurt, and what Uncle Sam don't know don't bother him."

"It's the way America does business," Dave said solemnly.

"And do you know what I like?" Vince Teague said, turning his face up into the sun. When he squinted his eyes closed against its brilliance, what seemed like a thousand wrinkles sprang into existence on his skin. They did not make him look his age, but they did make him look eighty.

"No, what?" Stephanie asked, amused.

"I like the way the money goes around and around, like clothes in a drier. I like watching it. And this time when the machine finally stops turning, the money finishes up here on Moosie where folks actually need it. Also, just to make it perfect, that city fellow did pay for our lunch, and he walked away with nones."

"Ran, actually," Dave said. "Had to make that boat, don'tcha know. Made me think of that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. 'We were very tired, we were very merry, we went back and forth all night on the ferry.' That's not exactly it, but it's close."

"He wasn't very merry, but he'll be good and tired by the time he gets to his next stop," Vince said. "I think he mentioned Madawaska. Maybe he'll find some unexplained mysteries there. Why anyone'd want to live in such a place, for instance. Dave, help me out."

Stephanie believed there was a kind of telepathy between the two old men, rough but real. She'd seen several examples of it since coming to Moose-Lookit Island almost three months ago, and she saw another example of it now. Their waitress was returning, check in hand. Dave's back was to her, but Vince saw her coming and the younger man knew exactly what the Islander's editor wanted. Dave reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet, removed two bills, folded them between his fingers, and pa.s.sed them across the table. Helen arrived a moment later. Vince took the check from her with one gnarled hand. With the other he slipped the bills into the skirt pocket of her uniform.

"Thank you, darlin," he said.

"You sure you don't want dessert?" she asked. "There's Mac's chocolate cherry cake. It's not on the menu, but we've still got some."

"I'll pa.s.s. Steffi?"

She shook her head. So-with some regret-did Dave Bowie.

Helen favored (if that was the word) Vincent Teague with a look of dour judgment. "You could use fattening up, Vince."

"Jack Sprat and his wife, that's me n Dave," Vince said brightly.

"Ayuh." Helen glanced at Stephanie, and one of her tired eyes closed in a brief wink of surprising good humor. "You picked a pair, Missy," she said.

"They're all right," Stephanie said.

"Sure, and after this you'll probably go straight to the New York Times," Helen said. She picked up the plates, added, "I'll be back for the rest of the ridding-up," and sailed away.

"When she finds that forty dollars in her pocket," Stephanie said, "will she know who put it there?" She looked again at the patio, where perhaps two dozen customers were drinking coffee, iced tea, afternoon beers, or eating off-the-menu chocolate cherry cake. Not all looked capable of slipping forty dollars in cash into a waitress's pocket, but some of them did.

"Probably she will," Vince said, "but tell me something, Steffi."

"I will if I can."

"If she didn't know, would that make it illegal tender?"

"I don't know what you-"

"I think you do," he said. "Come on, let's get back to the paper. News won't wait."

2.

Here was the thing Stephanie loved best about The Weekly Islander, the thing that still charmed her after three months spent mostly writing ads: on a clear afternoon you could walk six steps from your desk and have a gorgeous view of the Maine coast. All you had to do was walk onto the shaded deck that overlooked the reach and ran the length of the newspaper's barnlike building. It was true that the air smelled of fish and seaweed, but everything on Moose-Look smelled that way. You got used to it, Stephanie had discovered, and then a beautiful thing happened-after your nose dismissed that smell, it went and found it all over again, and the second time around, you fell in love with it.

On clear afternoons (like this one near the end of August), every house and dock and fis.h.i.+ng-boat over there on the Tinnock side of the reach stood out brilliantly; she could read the sunoco on the side of a diesel pump and the LeeLee Bett on the hull of some haddock-jockey's breadwinner, beached for its turn-of-the-season sc.r.a.ping and painting. She could see a boy in shorts and a cut-off Patriots jersey fis.h.i.+ng from the trash-littered s.h.i.+ngle below Preston's Bar, and a thousand winks of sun glittering off the tin flas.h.i.+ng of a hundred village roofs. And, between Tinnock Village (which was actually a good-sized town) and Moose-Lookit Island, the sun shone on the bluest water she had ever seen. On days like this, she wondered how she would ever go back to the Midwest, or if she even could. And on days when the fog rolled in and the entire mainland world seemed to be cancelled and the rueful cry of the foghorn came and went like the voice of some ancient beast...why, then she wondered the same thing.

You want to be careful, Steffi, Dave had told her one day when he came on her, sitting out there on the deck with her yellow pad on her lap and a half-finished Arts 'N Things column scrawled there in her big backhand strokes. Island living has a way of creeping into your blood, and once it gets there it's like malaria. It doesn't leave easily.

Now, after turning on the lights (the sun had begun going the other way and the long room had begun to darken), she sat down at her desk and found her trusty legal pad with a new Arts 'N Things column on the top page. This one was pretty much interchangeable with any of half a dozen others she had so far turned in, but she looked at it with undeniable affection just the same. It was hers, after all, her work, writing she was getting paid for, and she had no doubt that people all over the Islander's circulation area-which was quite large-actually read it.

Vince sat down behind his own desk with a small but audible grunt. It was followed by a crackling sound as he twisted first to the left and then to the right. He called this "settling his spine." Dave told him that he would someday paralyze himself from the neck down while "settling his spine," but Vince seemed singularly unworried by the possibility. Now he turned on his computer while his managing editor sat on the corner of his desk, produced a toothpick, and began using it to rummage in his upper plate.

"What's it going to be?" Dave asked while Vince waited for his computer to boot up. "Fire? Flood? Earthquake? Or the revolt of the mult.i.tudes?"

"I thought I'd start with Ellen Dunwoodie snapping off the fire hydrant on Beach Lane when the parking brake on her car let go. Then, once I'm properly warmed up, I thought I'd move on to a rewrite of my library editorial," Vince said, and cracked his knuckles.