So, they ground on, in the direction of Spodosol.
It was as though Journeyman had been sucked up not into Todbaum’s car but into his old friend and employer’s devilish brain. Or not sucked up. Journeyman had ascended voluntarily. Stepped off his frost-heaved asphalt, out of that routine which now seemed miraculous for its calm, and squeezed through Todbaum’s murderous porthole, to accept a nuclear-fueled espresso and to hitch a ride aboard this ticking bomb. They moved toward East Tinderwick. Journeyman needed to execute his thin plan, his stalling maneuver.
“When did you last see the ocean?” Journeyman asked.
“Good question!” said Todbaum. Was he mocking? “Not since I blew town.”
Journeyman plowed on. “So, I’m thinking of where you ought to, uh, put down stakes to begin with. There’s a good spot for this . . . thing of yours . . . by the water. Sort of the town commons. Nobody will feel you’re sneaking up on them.”
“Ocean view? Sounds deluxe.”
“Well, water view, I should specify. There’s an island between our harbor and the ocean.”
Founder’s Park looked onto a narrow strip of land called Quarry Island. The uninhabited island’s length blocked any view of the open horizon. A hundred and two hundred years earlier its bedrock had been heavily worked, produced blocks of raw granite shipped on barges, to be polished and fitted into the lobbies of big-city municipal buildings. At the peak of the work dozens of men overnighted there. Their collapsed shacks were a desolate remnant, hemmed by new-growth trees. One titanic hunk of quarried granite stood like a windowless building on the island’s south edge, atop its ocean-facing cliffs. Whether abandoned because of some internal flaw or left as a monument, no one knew.
Journeyman heard himself babbling out bits and pieces, as if trying to keep Todbaum entertained during a pitch. “. . . some people say the island’s stone even went into the pilings for the Brooklyn Bridge—”
“Of course it did. It’s perfect, Sandman. I’ll sleep to the lapping of the waves, knowing I and I alone crossed from sea to shining fucking sea.”
Journeyman thought of the French boat, a mystery Todbaum would appreciate.
It had crashed on Quarry Island the winter before, on a night when fog obscured the moon and the island and coast were crusted in a new snow. The French crew had likely failed to distinguish Quarry Island from the more distant mainland; between lay coastal shelf, slimy barnacle-covered granite that made low tide a peril for the most local sailors even in daylight. Their boat ran three sails. If the two men found dead had been the sole occupants for an ocean journey from Europe, they’d had their hands full. The boat was shattered, the men drowned, or frozen before they could drown. There’d been no chance to ask what form the Arrest had taken in France.
Journeyman told Todbaum how the boat had been torn across the hacksaw barnacles by the action of the tides. The bodies too. Journeyman had been part of the cleanup crew. Not utterly unlike his work for Augustus the butcher.
“Saved your people offing those frogs, I guess!”
Offing them? Journeyman was nearly embarrassed to say that the three towns hadn’t killed anyone since the Arrest, not that he was aware of. He’d disappoint Todbaum’s appetite for Armageddon. “We didn’t find any weapons . . . We can’t know what they were thinking, of course . . .”
“I’m kidding, Sandman! You’re good people! You leave that unsavory shit to the Cordon folks, don’t you?”
“We’ve never asked the Cordon to kill anyone.”
“They’d have cracked me open like a bone and sucked the marrow if they’d figured how.”
Perhaps if you’d treated them as more than skunks or porcupines on the road—but this, Journeyman didn’t say. Todbaum might be right. Who knew what he’d endured? There was that windshield bullet. Journeyman would hardly be the only one eager to hear Todbaum’s account of his journey. The towns had argued for weeks whether the French sailors had fled danger or brought news of a distant reorganization.
It was then that the towns had begun talk of constructing a lighthouse on Quarry Island. A tower, at least, with a standing flare, to ignite on nights like that which had lured the French boat to ruin in their death-trap harbor.
“Some of us have a theory that there’ll be another French boat,” Journeyman told Todbaum now. “The chance to know what it’s like over there, over the ocean . . . it’s tantalizing, don’t you think?”
“Oh, there’ll be another French boat. The French always do things in threes, isn’t that the formula?”
Journeyman didn’t know that formula. “There’s been talk of a lighthouse, if we could find a way . . .”
By now the supercar had cruised through the village center of East Tinderwick—the old Grange Hall, the post office, the boatyard. The town center was tiny, and still. The vibrant part of East Tinderwick, thanks to the homesteading followers of Seldon and Margot Stevedore, was out at the end of long dirt roads, on the organic farms. Journeyman wouldn’t lead Todbaum to any of those, let alone Spodosol. He pointed him leftward, past the P.O., into Founder’s Park.
“A lighthouse!” Todbaum seemed delighted. “You people are ingenious. Fueled by human waste, huh?”
“My sister’s on the committee.” Journeyman winced. He hadn’t meant to mention Maddy. “We’d have to figure out some kind of way to keep a bonfire lit, on top—”
“We should make it look like the Statue of Liberty! Only crooked, like at the end of Planet of the Apes.”
“Ha.” Now the Blue Streak lurched toward the water, toward the park, and Quarry Island. There, Todbaum stopped it. To their left, the small park’s scrappy play structures: an old swing set and slide, a tire swing too, and a bare basketball hoop presiding over a quadrant of concrete. Founder’s Park wasn’t mowed anymore. The grass was high and yellow. Journeyman yearned for more cover, but there wasn’t any. The supercar was a sore thumb, unless he could persuade Todbaum to keep driving and sink it into the muck of the harbor.
“Seriously, that’s hot shit, Sandman. There’s a lot of raw potential up here.”
“Potential? Uh, yes . . .” Potential for what? Journeyman wished to scream.
Had Todbaum, master producer, come here to make some spectacle?
Was he location scouting?
18.
Before Journeyman Left Him, Todbaum Grew Sentimental
JOURNEYMAN EXPLAINED THAT HE HAD to go and leave Todbaum there. Would Todbaum be okay? Did he need anything in particular? Journeyman encouraged Todbaum to feel free to exit his machine and stretch his legs, to walk in Founder’s Park or even stroll through town. Todbaum laughed. “I’ve been living in this thing for nearly a year, Sandman.” Journeyman told him no one would try to hurt him here, in East Tinderwick, and he laughed again. “I won’t hurt them either.” Then, before Journeyman could try to exit the machine, Todbaum grew abruptly sentimental. He halted Journeyman by placing his hands on Journeyman’s shoulders.
“You ever think why?”
“Why what?”
“Why this? Why fucking this? Let me put it another way. Where does a person go? To a book? What do you reach for, Sandman: Philosophy? Psychedelics? Dostoyevsky? I mean in the Hour of the Wolf, at the end of the day, whatever. Is there some guru you like, under a tree? By a lake?” Journeyman was briefly perplexed: could Todbaum actually be making reference to Jerome Kormentz? Todbaum stared into Journeyman’s eyes, then twisted his mouth and made a sound: “Phhaaaghhh.” The sound was familiar: Todbaum’s oral-flatulent dismissal of all received wisdom. Previously, it would have been that wisdom dictating typical action in his chosen sphere, the industry.