13
Harry and Erin Dixon were deep in discussion when they heard the car approach.
‘We have to leave,’ said Erin.
‘And go where?’ said Harry.
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. We could promise not to tell if they just let us go and didn’t follow.’
Harry tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t stop himself. The idea that Prosperous had survived for so long just by allowing those who were uncomfortable with its edicts to leave was so preposterous as to be beyond belief. Erin, of all people, should have known that. They had hunted her father, Charlie Hutton, for years, and they had never given up. He had been clever and lucky. He was also been a teller at the bank, so he didn’t leave with his pockets empty, for he raided the town’s discretionary fund before he ran. The money bought him time, and some room to maneuver. It allowed him to set himself up with a new identity and a new life, but Harry was sure that he spent his days fearing every knock on the door and searching the faces on the street for the gaze that lingered too long.
Charlie hadn’t been afraid that they’d set the police on him. That wasn’t the way Prosperous worked. Anyway, the money that he stole didn’t officially exist, and the fund was used for purposes about which it was better that the law knew nothing. What had always stayed with Harry was that Erin’s father had never told. He could have gone to the police and tried to explain the nature of Prosperous, but it was so fantastic that he would have risked being dismissed as a madman. Even if they had chosen to believe him, there were no bodies to which he could point, no shallow graves to be dug up and bones to be exhumed. Harry wondered how deep you’d have to go to find the victims of Prosperous, if anything of them truly remained at all. Any searchers would have given up long before they first struck rock, and some of the bodies probably lay even deeper than that. And then there was the fact that rarely did it happen more than once in every twenty or thirty years, and those responsible kept the secret of it to themselves. To descry any kind of pattern would be almost impossible, and the names of those who had been taken were forgotten as soon as they were below ground. In many cases, they had never been known at all.
But there was another probable reason why Erin’s father had remained silent, a deeper reason: he was bound to Prosperous, and one didn’t slough off one’s loyalties to a place so old, and so strange, with any ease. He stayed loyal to the town even as he sought to put as much distance between him and it as possible, how he could not deny the truth of it, even if he wanted no further part.
But the town learned from what had happened with Charlie, and steps were taken to ensure that it wouldn’t occur so easily again. It kept a close watch on its inhabitants in the guise of caring for their well-being, and it bound them together with bonds of matrimony, of familial and business loyalties, and of fear.
‘You want to be like your father?’ said Harry, once his laughter had ceased. He hadn’t cared much for the sound of it. It held a distressingly lunatic tone. ‘You want to be hunted all your life?’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘But I don’t want to stay here either.’
But Harry wasn’t listening to her. He was on a roll now.
‘And he had money. We have nothing. You don’t think they’re watching our spending habits, our patterns of deposits and withdrawals? They know, or at least they suspect. We’re vulnerable, and that means they’re concerned about how we might act. No, we have no choice. We have to wait this out. We have to hope that our situation improves. When it does, we can start putting money away. We can plan, just like Charlie must have done. You don’t leave Prosperous on a whim. You don’t—’
And then there came the sound of a car. Lights washed over the house, and the words died in Harry Dixon’s mouth.
14
Rosie’s wasn’t too dissimilar from Ruski’s, but your chances of getting a seat in Rosie’s were greater than in Ruski’s simply because Rosie’s had more chairs. I didn’t want another beer so I ordered coffee instead, and watched the cars go by on Fore Street. Music was playing, a song that I thought I recognized, something about seas of charity and unchosen exiles. I called Rachel while I waited, and she put me on to Sam. We chatted for a while about events in elementary school, which seemed to involve a lot of painting, and a certain amount of argument with a boy named Harry.
‘His mom and dad named him after Harry Potter,’ Sam explained. She didn’t sound as though she approved. A whole generation of adults who had dressed up as wizards when they should have known better now seemed destined to inflict whimsy on their offspring. I wasn’t a big fan of whimsy. Whimsical people were the type who got run over by cars without anybody really noticing or caring that much beyond the damage to the vehicle, which was usually minimal anyway, whimsical folk being kind of lighter than most.
‘He draws lightning on his forehead,’ said Sam.
‘Does he?’ I said.
‘Yeah. He says it’s real, but it comes off when you rub hard.’
I decided not to ask how she knew this, although I was pretty certain that however she’d discovered it, the boy named Harry had been an unwilling participant in the experiment. Talk moved on to the trip to Florida she was taking the following weekend, where she and Rachel would join Rachel’s parents in their new winter vacation home. Rachel’s current boyfriend Jeff wouldn’t be going along with them, Sam informed me.
‘Oh,’ I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. I didn’t like Jeff, but it didn’t matter. Jeff liked himself enough for both of us.
‘Daddy!’ said Sam. ‘You don’t have to pretend you’re sad.’
Jesus.
‘Are you sure you’re just in elementary school?’ I said. ‘You’re not studying psychology on the side?’
‘Mom knows psycottagy,’ said Sam.
‘Yes, she does.’ Not enough of it to avoid dating a jackass like Jeff, but solving other people’s problems was often easier than taking care of your own. I considered sharing that insight with Rachel, but decided against it. Maybe I was learning at last that discretion was the better part of valor. ‘Just put your mom back on. I’ll see you when you get back.’
‘Bye. Love you,’ said Sam, and my heart broke a little.
‘Bye, hon. Love you too.’
I chatted with Rachel for a minute or two more. She seemed happy. That was good. I wanted her to be happy. If she was happy, Sam would be happy. I just wished Rachel could be happy with someone other than Jeff. It reflected badly on her good taste, but then there were those who might have said the same about her time with me.
‘What are you working on?’ asked Rachel.
‘Nothing much. Process serving. Errant husbands.’
‘Is that all? It won’t keep you from mischief for long.’
‘Well, there’s this thing with a homeless guy too. He hanged himself, and I can’t figure out why.’
‘I’ll bet he didn’t pay you in advance.’
‘You know, it’s funny you should say that, but someone in this city might have the money that he would have used to pay me.’
‘Do I need to tell you to be careful?’
‘No, but it always helps.’
‘I doubt that, but for the sake of your daughter …’
‘I’ll be careful.’
‘You in a bar?’
‘Rosie’s.’
‘Ah. A date?’