Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery by Dallas Murphy Read Free Book Online

to tolerate yourself in such solitude. You’d need something other than controlled substances to fall back on. Part of me wanted to retire Jellyroll, chuck in the whole career and make do with things as they are, tinker, plant, observe nature’s ways. Jellyroll would dig it, but would I turn sullen, distant, angry in the solitude, given to weird eccentricities and sudden psychotic outbursts? I didn’t know.
    The mainland was equally unpopulated, evergreen forests right down to the black rocks and the white surf. Somewhere around here was a town called Micmac from which I was to catch a boat to Kempshall Island, but I didn’t see a single roof or road as we crossed the coast.
    Captain Ron was talking about a summer camp he’d attended as a boy in this area. Apparently there were a lot of mosquitoes and bullies, but I couldn’t really hear. I nodded and grinned and longed for Crystal. The sun was going down, and I would be dependent on my own inner resources in the dark.

SIX

    N ow, in the falling light, I would try out the Jellyroll disguise. It wasn’t originally a disguise; it was a costume. A friend of his made it for Halloween out of fake fur left over from her production of
Cymbeline
. I think it was
Cymbeline
. Anyway, we went to the party as a couple of pagan village-sack-ers from the
Sagas
. It’s a tufted cape that fits over his back and shoulders and fastens around his chest and belly with elastic hasps. He didn’t like it then, and he wouldn’t like it now, but he’d comply. I asked him to stand up for a fitting. He did, but he was going to make me feel like shit about it. I held it for him to examine. There was a two-year, closed-closet whiff to it, but not bad enough to clear a room. At least not to the human nose. He looked up at me. “After years of loyalty, this is what I get from you, a stinking Shakespearean remnant?”
    Nonetheless, I was committed to the disguise. He watched it go on, feeling sorry for himself. He blew out his cheeks in protest. I stepped back. Not terrible. I told him how pretty he looked, but he didn’t buy it. Sometimes I think he doesn’t respect me.
    The copilot called back for us to take our seats and buckle up. We were landing. But where? I couldn’t see a single sign of civilization, not even a headlight. We were flying over wilderness. Suddenly a dim macadam strip popped from under the wing, and the pilots put us down with barely a jolt.
    We turned at the end of the runway near the forest wall, taxied back past parked single-engine puddle jumpers and a lovingly restored DC-3 to a new, square, cinder-block terminal building,where we stopped. OGLEVIE it said in spiffy aluminum letters, “Gateway to the North.” I couldn’t see anybody inside the terminal, and there was no activity out here, no fuel-truck drivers, baggage handlers, or small aircraft aficionados hanging around. To urbanites, absence of activity always seems menacing. But that’s exactly what Clayton told me to expect in Cabot County, exactly what I wanted.
    The pilots opened the door. I thanked them very much. They said it was their pleasure, and they leaned down to pet Jellyroll— until, simultaneously, they noticed the ratty fake pelt on his back and they froze.
    “He gets cold,” I said.
    They nodded and went about petting him places the pelt didn’t cover. He licked their hands.
    “Do you have children?” I asked.
    Naturally, they both did. Daughters.
    “Maybe they’d like a photograph.” I have glossies taken by a late girlfriend of mine. Jellyroll’s head is cocked to the side inquisitively, eyes alert and glistening at her behind the camera. It makes me sad to look at the picture, so I don’t. I gave them each one, shook their hands and deplaned.
    The linoleum-and-fluorescent waiting room was abandoned, except for a guy manning the rent-a-car booth. Flesh spilled over the top of his starched collar, and the brown company blazer caught him way up the arm. Nonetheless, I’d try the