The Lighthouse

“No.” Mitch’s hands were steady now; the walk up here had put him back in control again. He said, “Ryerson just showed up down at the Spindrift. Says somebody shot up his car with a rifle last night. Did two hundred dollars’ worth of damage.”

Hod said, “The hell!” Adam didn’t say anything; he had his eyes on the cards he was shuffling.

“Accused me of it,” Mitch told them. “Said if it ever happened again he’d call in the sheriff and have me arrested.”

“You do it, Mitch?” Hod asked. “Shoot up his car?”

“Hell no, I didn’t do it.” He said his next words to Hod, too, but he was looking at Adam. “You go out on the cape last night with Adam? After deer?”

“No. Overcast breaking up and all that moonlight… just didn’t seem like a good idea.”

“How about you, Adam? You go out?”

Adam popped the cards down on the table, got up in that bouncy way of his. “I went out. No damn deer, though.”

“What’d you take? That thirty-ought-six of yours? The one with the scope sight?”

Adam hopped around a little, let out a breath, and then said, “All right, Mitch, I done it. I put a couple of rounds in Ryerson’s car.”

“Well what the hell for?”

“I didn’t plan it. It was just there wasn’t any deer and it got me frustrated. I was out near the lighthouse, nobody around, that big Ford station wagon sitting there in the moonlight… hell, I don’t know. I remembered what you said Friday night and it just seemed like the thing to do.”

“What I said?”

“About not letting Ryerson get away with murdering Red. About making him pay for it.”

“I didn’t mean by shooting up his goddamn car!”

“What’d you mean, then?”

“I don’t know, not yet. But nothing like that.”

“Hell, Mitch, I’m sorry. I only meant it as a favor to you. I liked Red too, you know that.”

“Yeah.”

“I just never figured he’d come down on you for it.”

“Suppose he changes his mind, decides to sic the sheriff on me? Or tries to sue me for the damages? What then, Adam?”

Adam was silent for a couple of seconds. Then he said, “That ain’t going to happen. None of it.”

“Oh it ain’t?”

“No. Ryerson can’t do nothing to you for what happened to his car, any more’n you can do anything to him for killing Red. Not legally. He’s got no proof who fired those rounds last night. If there was anything he could do, it’d have been the sheriff talking to you this morning, not him.”

“Maybe,” Mitch said, but he wasn’t so sure.

“If he did swear out a complaint against you,” Hod said, “you could do the same thing to him, couldn’t you?” He’d been watching with round eyes and looking nervous. Hod was always nervous when things shifted off an even keel. “On account of Red, I mean?”

“No. I already told you the sheriff said I couldn’t.”

“Well, couldn’t you sue him for false arrest or something? You could get Gus Brooks, up in Bandon. He’s the best lawyer on the coast.”

“Hod, you talk like a man with a paper asshole. I can’t afford to hire Gus Brooks or any other goddamn lawyer. I can’t afford to get arrested or go to court or miss any damn time at all out on the boat. I can’t hardly make ends meet as it is.”

“Ryerson don’t have time for it either,” Adam said. “He’s out there writing some book-got a year to do it and no more. He ain’t going to make trouble no matter what happens. Putting the sheriff or some lawyer on you don’t buy him nothing but headaches he don’t want.”

Mitch didn’t say anything. He was still mad as hell, but now he didn’t know who he was mad at. Yes he did: it wasn’t Adam, it was Ryerson more than ever. Adam was his friend; Ryerson was a damn radical from California who’d murdered Red just because Red nipped him a little. Adam was stupid sometimes and didn’t use good sense; Ryerson was a dog-murdering son of a bitch.

“Whole damn year of him out at the light,” Mitch said finally. “Sitting out there all high and mighty, killing a man’s dog when he feels like it, threatening people. It ain’t right.”

“No,” Hod said, “but what’s there to do about it?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what?”

“Like send him to hell back to California. Pry his ass out of the lighthouse before this year’s out.”

“You mean force him to leave?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“How you going to do that without him running to the law?”

“There are ways,” Adam said. He looked relieved that Mitch wasn’t pissed at him anymore. “Ain’t there, Mitch?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “There are ways.”

Alix