Chapter 12
Blind Alley



This, I think, is the price I’m paying for not having a better plan when I left Harwich. Why didn’t I think of a flashlight? I’m stranded on this mountainside until the dawn comes. And we are now a thousand feet up, high enough on the mountain that the air is colder than in the city. I never should have gone with the farmer. I have to say I’m angry with myself for my poor judgment.
But then, if I’d refused his offer, wouldn’t the next car have been the Porsche? Of course, maybe that was another Porsche. Any other night, I probably wouldn’t be so jittery about it. But, no, Rutland has only what – maybe fifteen thousand people? How many silver Porsche’s are in this area?
I shuffle in the direction I think will lead to the guard rail. It’s only a half dozen steps before the side of my left shin hits something hard. When I reach down, I feel the corrugated metal and some bolts that hold its sections together. Feeling with both hands, I make sure it’s high enough to sit on and then I lower my tail onto the rail. It feels good to get off my feet.
In this situation, I need a plan. Here I can’t even see my fist, not like back down the mountain, when I stood under one street light and had another one that would light up any traffic before it reached me. Here, all I’ll see will be two headlights. I won’t be able to tell what kind of car is coming – cop, Porsche or whatever. How am I going to protect myself from another wacko?
First thing to do, if I see something coming I don’t know about, I should jump behind the guard rail that I’m sitting on and hide. But I can’t see what is there. I could be jumping over a cliff or into a ravine. I’d better check out what’s behind me here in the dark.
I swing my downhill leg – my left leg – over the guardrail. My foot falls on what seems to be flat ground, so, turning, I swing my right leg over. Still sitting on the rail, my feet both seem to be somewhat level, so I stand in a crouch. With both hands gripping the rail – it’s cold to the touch – I walk my feet away from the highway. There is a small slope, not too much. So I stand and take a few more steps and feel my footing changing from gravel to grass – clumps of it, not like a lawn but like the hummocks in a swamp. I stoop and feel the grass with my hands. It’s not grass at all but leaves of some kind. Leaves that low probably are poison ivy. I can’t tell by touch. It’s lucky that I don’t catch poison ivy. I should say: Only a little. But I’d better not think about lying down in it.
Now it occurs to me that if that Porsche that passed happened to be Mr. Ponytail, and if he happened to be tracking me, I shouldn’t remain here, right where the old guy left me. I need to move away. Since uphill is toward Boston, I’ll follow the guardrail in that direction, put some distance between me and the farmer’s dirt road.
But wouldn’t you know? Soon as I begin climbing, I hear some vehicle up ahead, coming my way. I fall flat on my stomach in the gravel behind the guardrail. This is becoming habit-forming. My face is in weeds, just like back behind the liquor store when I escaped Mr. Ponytail.
I can see under the steel rail and, for an instant, everything in view is brightly lit by headlights. The car keeps going down the mountain, however, and when its tail lights disappear around the curve of the highway, it’s like someone threw off the light switch. I’m in total darkness once again.
Getting up onto my knees and then my feet, I reach for the rail and begin climbing again, trying to get as far uphill from the farmer’s road as possible. The grade of the roadside becomes a little steeper, so my right foot is downhill from my left. The gravel under my shoes is small – maybe the size of walnuts – and my feet are slipping out from under me after every few steps.
Now what’s that? My right foot has hit on something hard, not gravel. I get back down on my knees and feel about. It’s hard and rounded, and it doesn’t take long for the image to form itself in my mind. It’s a steel culvert coming out from under the highway.
I feel my way along to its end. The steel tube is about three feet in diameter, and there’s no grate or any other obstruction across its end. This would make a good hiding place, just in case. I’ll stop here and wait for a ride – a good ride.
So far tonight on this mountainside – it leads up to a couple of Vermont’s biggest ski areas – I have seen only two cars: That Porsche that passed the farmer’s Cadillac, and the car that just went down the mountain. I wouldn’t have dared take a ride in either. First off, I can’t tell what they are before they arrive. If I have to wait for daylight so I can see what’s coming, then I guess I’ll wait.
But what other options are there? I wouldn’t be afraid of hitching a ride on a big truck, a semi. And come to think of it, a truck would probably be going pretty slow if it was climbing the mountain, going my way. So that’s the plan. Until it gets light out, I’ll take a ride only if I can get one in a truck.
The culvert makes a good place to wait. I can straddle it like a horse so I don’t have to stand. Let me try that. Okay, it’s comfortable enough. I can’t see over the top of the guard rail from this position but a passing car probably can’t see me, either. And if necessary, I have a hole where I can hide.
I’m sure lucky it isn’t raining or, worse, snowing. The culvert wouldn’t be much help in the rain. There would probably be water flowing through it, maybe enough that it would be gurgling Right now, it is pretty quiet. There’s not even enough breeze to make that whispering sound the wind makes going through the trees, not even a rattling of the drying autumn leaves.
In the distance, I can hear the sound of a brook deep in a valley behind me, down the hill where the culvert drains. It’s a low, rushing sound, barely enough to hear, constant but not enough to hide the song of a night bird if it was singing nearby. If it were summer, there would be insect sounds. But the first frost last week must have driven the bugs into hibernation. Without the splashing of the brook, it would be silent here. Silent, totally dark, impenetrable. Quiet enough to snooze.
Except just as I thought that, I began to hear another, faint sound coming from up the mountain. In one ear, I here the brook. In the other, this sound which could be a wind stirring the treetops at a higher altitude on the mountain.
But as I listen, I know exactly what I’m hearing. It’s a car coming down the highway, and looking up the hill, I can already see the glow of its light – not the direct beam of its headlights but a white glow moving through the nearby forest where the highway must be around a bend.
I’m lowering myself to crouch before the opening of the culvert, and I can now see the headlights under the uphill part of the guardrail. And this is odd: I hear the car downshifting, as if it’s going to stop. Oh, man! It’s a Porsche. I’d know that sound anywhere! He’s slowing even more as he passes me, and I’m getting lower, ready to back into the culvert. The Porsche is about one hundred yards – a soccer field – down the hill and stopping. Maybe he is at the farmer’s road.
Now I’m peering over the top of the culvert up the bank to the highway, so I can’t really tell what’s happening. But I hear the Porsche’s engine rev a bit and I see the sweep of his headlights against the trees of the forest just downhill on my side of the highway. Geeze, he’s turning around!
No time to waste. I get down on my knees and crawl backward into the culvert. There is sand under me, damp on my knees, the wetness sponging through my jeans and the sand gritty on the palms of my hands. I can feel spider webs catching on the back of my head as I retreat into the culvert.
I can hear the Porsche beginning to drive back up the hill, but it’s going slowly, still in first gear. And now it sounds – I can’t be sure and I sure am not going to try to see – it sounds like he’s stopping – right above me!
There is a voice, muffled, blocked by the sound of the idling car engine. My head is just inside the culvert opening, so I’m straining to hear. Wait, the engine just stopped. Now, silence, the kind of loud silence you’d get sitting in a metal garbage can playing hide-and-seek. And now the voice again. I’d recognize it any place. Mr. Ponytail.
“Call it a hunch,” he says. “I saw that old car stopped just down the hill from where I’m standing and at first I thought nothing of it. What?”
Sounds like he’s on a cell phone, talking with someone.
“Yeah, I drove on by, all the way up to Killington or just past, where Route 100 turns north. But then I thought: There’s no reason for that car to be stopping there except I’d noticed a dirt road just opposite it. And I thought, if he’s hitching up the mountain, maybe they’re dropping him off. What?”
Silence again. Guess he’s listening to whoever it is.
“No, I heard it on the scanner. A cop saying he had a hitchhiker in custody and was pursuing a fleeing vehicle. The cop asked someone to come and apprehend the hitchhiker. I was there in less than a minute, but the kid – and I’m sure it was the kid – was gone.”
What is this guy’s problem? Why is he tracking me? I can’t believe I’m being hunted! My heart is beating now in my chest so hard it seems to echo in my ears, in this culvert, the sound of my pulse amplified by the corrugated steel, so loud it could be vibrating up through the ground, through the pavement, right into Mr. Ponytail’s feet!
“Look, I know we have to find him. He knows too much already.”
Another pause, and then,
“I’ve never lost one before, Fred. He looked like all the rest, a perfect prize. Don’t worry, I’ll find him, probably before sunrise. Vermont’s not that big.”
A pause, and then,
“It’s a promise!”