Land Beyond the Map

Without invitation he seated himself at their table.

“And would you be the man lookin’ for the map, now?”

Crane thought very deliberately: “So I’ve been saved a decision — again.”

“I must be,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t ask.”

“Fair,” the old man said. “Very fair.” He squinted down his nose at them, then took out a red handkerchief and bugled. “Ye saw what happened to poor Barney?”

“Barney?”

“The wee idiot lad. Him as looks after the motor cars. Terrible, it was.”

“Oh.” Crane understood now. “We never did pay the car parking fee.”

The oldster crackled. “I wouldn’t let that weigh on me conscience, son. Barney’ll be the third — the third in twenty five years. I’ve known ’em all, so I have.”

“For God’s sake get to the point!” Polly’s face was blotched, the lipstick lividly patchy on bloodless lips.

Crane touched her hand gently.

“What did you see, Mister—?”

“What you did. And you can call me Liam.” He cocked an eye at them. “And none of your ‘old Liam,’ either. I’m not finished yet.” And the cheeky old devil leered lecherously at Polly.

Crane smiled and Polly perked up. The rigidness left the hand Crane was touching.

“Why, Liam?” Crane asked softly. “Why did it happen?”

“You don’t waste time, son, sure you don’t. It won’t be necessary for me to spend hours explaining. They took Barney and the other two so they could feel safe. And safe they are, the murdering devils.”

Crane glanced at Polly. He guessed her thoughts paralleled his — another O’Connell? Crane realized that this oldster sitting across from him was not as ancient and decrepit as he looked. There was a sparkle in him like the flash of fire from the surface of running water — and like running water he would be slippery and hard to hold. The white stiff hair seemed genuine enough; but the bent posture, the crackling-bone movements, the jerkiness, appeared to Crane to be put on deliberately. Disguise. That must be it. Liam also appeared to think that Crane knew more than he did, which might be awkward or useful. Crane chanced a gentle nudge.

“They thought they had the map, eh, Liam?”

Liam chuckled. His leathery face creased. “Sure and all that’s what they thought. Three times in twenty-five years — and each time wrong.” And he chuckled quietly to himself, the rheumy water standing in his eyes. Crane waited.

Presently Liam said: “And what’s the map worth, then?”

“At the moment,” Crane said, putting artificial hardness into his voice, “precisely nothing.”

“Is it nothing you say!” Liam rocked back.

“Nothing.”

“Faith — then maybe I’m wasting my time!”

“Maybe. And maybe not. Tell me, is it true that Barney was taken because they thought he had the map?”

Liam stared back as though Crane had suddenly sprouted horns. He couldn’t know the profound shock — a shock beneficially turned into shock of relief — shaking Crane at meeting a man who talked about a map logically, with rational speech, familiarly and with no covert leers about Crane’s state of mental health. Liam was a tonic.

“Well, of course. And why else should they take the poor wee creature?”

“And they thought those other two, the others in the twenty-five years, also had the map?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know where they went, Liam?”

“Yes.”

Crane leaned forward. He trembled very slightly, and he could feel his heart beating as though he were an insomniac, unable to sleep. He swallowed. “Have you been there, Liam?” The reply should not have surprised him. What was unsettling, even now, was the matter-of-fact, off-hand way Liam said: “Sure. Coupla times. In the long ago.”

“In the long ago,” Polly repeated in a whisper.

“And since then they’ve been after you for the map, Liam. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“It could be.” Liam’s face and voice became abruptly foxy. “I had a good look at you and your lady before I sat down here. I summed you up as people I could deal with, people who would deal squarely with an old man. There’s been another — a divil-faced heathen with sparks in his eyes who’d roast and eat newborn babes on the Sabbath day.”

“McArdle?”

“Faith, man, I didn’t stop to ask his name. And there’s always the chance I might find a true comrade, a person I could trust…. But I think that dream is over.” The foxy look died and in its place a long sad look of regret clouded Liam’s lined face. “Ther’s only the map left now.”

“If you’ve been — there — then you must have the map.”

Caution deepened the wrinkles around Liam’s nose and eyes. “That doesn’t follow at all, young man. Not at all. Maybe I had the map in the long ago…. I don’t want you to run away with the wrong ideas, though.”

“I won’t. Just that this isn’t an everyday happening, is it now?”

Liam lost his watchful look. “You won’t be contradicted in that, son. Most unnatural, sure it is. But you’re seriously trying to tell me the map is worth nothing? You don’t expect me to believe that — knowing what I do?”

“At the moment.” Crane took a deep breath. “How much were you thinking of asking for it?”

“Ah, now.” And Liam curled up and went into his shell like a tortoise tickled by a lettuce leaf.