The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [54]
John Wildstrand went out into the snow and Billy pulled the door closed behind him. As Billy followed him down the walkway, presumably with the gun still out or slightly hidden, Wildstrand’s confusion turned to a prayerful wish that he might find Maggie hidden in the car. That this was some odd prank. Some way of her seeing him. The windows of his house sprayed a soft, golden light all the way down the landscaped twist of pavers. There was a band of utter darkness where a stone wall and close-grown arborvitae cast a shadow onto the boulevard. The car sat beyond in the wintry shimmer of a street lamp.
“Get in,” said Billy.
Wildstrand stumbled a bit in the icy snow and let himself into the passenger’s side. The backseat was empty, he saw. Billy held the gun just inside the sleeve of a large topcoat, and kept it pointed at the windshield as he rounded the front of the car and ducked quickly into the driver’s seat.
“I’m going to ease out of this light,” he said.
Billy kept his gun out and his mild eyes trained on Wildstrand as he put the car in Drive and rolled forward into the darkness beyond the street lamp’s glow.
“Time to talk.” He put the car in Park.
Billy was a nervous-looking boy with deep brown eyes and a thin face. Toast-brown hair flopped over one eye and bent into his collar. There were little wisps of down on his chin. He was artistic. This sort of action, Wildstrand knew, did not come naturally to Billy Peace, though he was descended of the famous guide Lafayette Peace, who’d also fought with Riel. He might have gotten slightly drunk to force himself to drive to the Wildstrand residence with a gun and ring the bell. And what if Neve had answered? Would Billy have pretended to be selling candy bars for some high school trip? Would he have tried something else? Did he have an alternate plan? John Wildstrand stared at the gaunt little face of Billy. The boy really didn’t seem likely to put a bullet in him. Wildstrand knew, also, that Billy’s success in getting him into the car had depended on some implicit collaboration on his own part.
“So,” Wildstrand repeated, using the patient voice he used with jumpy investors, “how can I help you?”
“I think ten thousand dollars should be just about right,” said Billy.
“Ten thousand dollars.”
Billy was silently expectant. Wildstrand shivered a little, then pulled his coat tight around him and felt like crying. He had cried a lot with Maggie. She had brought all of his tears up just beneath his skin. Sometimes they rushed out and sometimes they trickled in slow tracks down his cheeks, along his throat. She said there was no shame in it and cried along with him until their weeping slowed erotically and sent them careening through each other’s bodies. Crying with her was a comfortable, dark act, like being painlessly absolved in church. There was an element of forgiveness in her weeping with him, he felt, and sometimes he became sentimental and sad about what his grandfather had done to a member of her family, long ago.
John Wildstrand heard himself make a sound, an ah of doubt. There was something about the actual monetary figure that struck him as wretched and sorrowful.
“It’s just not enough,” he said.
Billy looked perplexed.
“Look, if she keeps the baby, and you know I want her to keep the baby, she’s going to need a house, a car. Maybe in Fargo, you know? And then there are clothes, and, what, swing sets, that sort of thing. I’ve never had a child, but they need certain equipment. Also, she needs a good doctor, hospital. That’s not enough for everything. It’s not a future.”
“Okay,” Billy said, after a while. “What do you suggest?”
“Besides,” Wildstrand went on, still thinking out loud, “the thing is, in for a penny in for a pound. This amount will be missed just as much as a larger amount will be missed. My wife sees our accounts. There needs to be an amount like, say, let me think. If it’s just under a hundred thousand, the papers will say nearly a hundred thousand anyway. If