Dollar Road
The radio tower blinked and he couldn’t believe how bright the red light was, how red—he’d never seen it glow like that in the daylight.
We see the wide-brimmed hat and the beer belly, the cowboy walk with arms wide and swinging like he’s tougher than you—he saunters past Paul’s Shoe Store and over to the Western Auto like he’s ready to draw that .38. What’s he need in the hardware, anyway, beyond a chat with mustachioed Mr. Lee? Ammo, maybe. And why’s it Western Auto instead of Eastern? We ain’t in the West at all here in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania. If the hardware moniker matters to Wozniak—if a simple fact ever sways his cop mind—we have no idea. But he’ll talk to us. Not just the folks who toe the line of law, not just the ones who thought long and hard enough to be their own boss like Mr. Lee. Wozniak knows us to a point, and we know him as much as he’ll allow.
He must’ve put a million miles on that Ford cruiser by now, and you’d have to think that all that movement between Grandy Milling and the radio tower is automatic. He don’t have to think about those township roads—he don’t need directions or advice on whether to take that cow path detour past the ark that Ben Stoltz built out there on Dollar Road. No water big enough for it, and I guess the ark’s been propped up and landlocked since I was a little kid. Maybe I was seven or eight. I know Gram always talked about it. Don’t know if Ben was expecting a flood, or maybe he planned on launching it in that little frog pond below the sawmill. Like end of the world shit. Some of us think Ben knows something we don’t—and we avoid Dollar Road and his ark, but not Tom Wozniak. I seen Tom pullin’ out o’ there just a couple days ago. I seen him come out that way twice this week—honest to God I did. No reason to make up somethin’ like that.
I ain’t the type to speculate or gossip—it’s just talk—but I always thought Ben Stoltz was involved with all that bullshit over in Plattsville when they found Frank Lanzendorfer dead—just shot to death in his car outside of Yorgi’s Tavern. How many years is that? Ten? I was in high school, but that whole thing creeped me out. Frank was mixed up with that biker gang that was in town then. You’d see ‘em parked outside of Yorgi’s. Leather jackets and choppers. A dirty bunch. Not weekend riders. Even Wozniak said they was the real thing, like a gang that was into some bad shit. That was in the paper. I remember. But nobody, not Wozniak or anybody, figured out who killed Frank Lanzendorfer.
Frank was at Yorgi’s a lot, and there was always trips to Ben’s. That’s what Gram said. She told me Frank helped build the ark. She woulda known. Anyway, maybe Wozniak knows something or got a tip. I don’t guess that he’s going out there for the enlightened conversations that Ben offers. The sunuvabitch chased Dave Waxy off his property two years ago, and he wasn’t nice about it. “Whatchoo lurkin’ around here for?” is what he asked Waxy. And Wax was just tracking a deer from the Allagash. Ain’t like he got on Ben’s land on purpose. But from what Wax told me, Ben was real touchy about trespassers and pointed the 12 gauge right at him. I don’t know when somebody’s gonna do somethin’ about that guy.
The van’s lights were off. Walnut Road didn’t get much traffic, and Wozniak figured it to be parkers in the middle of—well, they were probably undressed, probably in the back and breathing heavy. This wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. He pulled behind the vehicle, his right tires in the long grass, close enough to the rusted gray bumper. The switch for the red light on top of his car was an automatic, unconscious effort, and it would give them time to put jeans and shirts back on. Time to get things in order. The light swirled and bounced off the vehicle’s rear windows and echoed its red glow on the cornfield across the road while eerie shadows pulsed in the trees on his right. It was an unnatural light, but Wozniak didn’t notice anymore. He put his own ignition key in the off position and sipped cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup—took a fresh chew of snuff and spat over the edge of the window.
He grabbed his ticket book and jotted down the license plate number. And he called back to the office. “Car 1. Got a blue Chevy van, probably 1972. Pulled to the side on Walnut Road, about 200 yards below Bam Eddy’s old place. Romance is my guess. Gonna check it out.”
“10-4, Chief.” Wozniak smelled the reefer from the van already.
The township was a lot to cover for one car—Steve Kline was just a part-timer—and if he’d put a million miles on the black and white cruiser’s odometer, each turn of the tires had carried him further from that tired State Police dream, far from the thing he’d really wanted the year he married Sally. She’d been okay with it, that he didn’t pass the test, but sometimes it stung—it stings to miss an important mark. He’d found his place here, though, and the ups and downs kept him busy or occupied or even happy some days. None of it was hard work, really. He could do this for another ten years, easy.
Drug busts and complicated investigations always migrated to the state cops, even if Wozniak was close by, but he’d seen his share of ugliness, too: the suicides—at least a dozen, and the pictures that stayed in his head like glue—and murders. Seven of them in the last twenty-five years. One not solved, which picked at him more than a little. But maybe he’d done some good, and people knew his name and waved and beeped their horns. They invited him to weddings and anniversary parties, expected him to show up at funerals, and he did. It was the right thing to do. Or to stop and talk while they mowed the grass or planted potatoes. Maybe he was lucky the state job didn’t work out. How many state guys gave toasts at weddings just because of their chosen business?
The van’s driver side window was open when Wozniak pulled himself out of the car and approached. The girl’s hair was long and greasy around her pimply face—long and dark—and he watched her light a cigarette in the sharp beam of his flashlight, smelled the fluid from the Zippo. “What are you guys doing out here? It’s late.”
“Fat fuck. What’s it look like? Havin’ a smoke. It’s a free country.”
“I really don’t need your attitude tonight, missy, and I’m smellin’ more than a Camel in there. Let’s see your license and registration. And who’s in the back?” The figure behind the captain’s seat was just a shadow, and Wozniak aimed the heavy silver light directly at the face. “Ben Rhody. I shoulda knowed it. You two need to get outta here before I take you down to the station. And button your damn shirt.”
“Come on, Woz. We was just partyin’ a little.”
“Yeah, fatso. Just a party.” The girl laughed.
Wozniak didn’t know the face. “What’s your name, little girl?”
“What’s it matter? We ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Friendly would be better, and Wozniak didn’t need this shit on a Thursday night. The little brat. He shone the light in back again. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Rhody. I’m goin’ to see your Pap tomorrow if you don’t get the hell outta here in about two minutes. He’ll like this story, I bet.”
“Come on, Woz, you ain’t gotta do that.”
“Your smart ass girlfriend here wants to stir things up, and that’s fine with me. She ain’t the first. I’d be happy to take her in. I’ll be in my front seat writing up a drunk and disorderly on both o’ ya. Possession of a controlled substance for good measure. I doubt she’s even old enough for the beer.”
“Naw, we ain’t got—”
“Yeah, I know better. I’ll tell you what. If ya drive away before I finish the paperwork, I might forget yinz was out here, like I never seen ya. And I’ll be up to visit your Pap, regardless. Are we clear?”
The boy nodded and Wozniak put his light in the girl’s pouty face before he walked back to his car. A minute later, the van was gone with nothing left on Walnut Road except a lingering cloud of dust that floated in the cruiser’s headlights. He grabbed the mic from the dash. “Car 1. Romance it is. I sent ‘em home.”
“Copy that, Chief. And your wife wants you to call.”
“This late? What’s up?”
“She didn’t say, just that you should call her. Not an emergency is what she said.”
Wozniak made more dust on Walnut Road when he turned around and sped toward Barnesboro. The first payphone was outside the Shop and Save. He came to a quick halt under a streetlight in the grocery store’s empty parking lot and fished a quarter out of his pocket. Sally picked up on the first ring to Wozniak’s worried voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay,” she said, “But we got another weird call about ten minutes ago. The guy just said check the ark and hung up. Just like the last time.”
“Nobody hangin’ around outside? Trixie ain’t barkin’?”
“She’s sleeping right by the back door. Hasn’t budged from the rug.”
“No idea who it was? Nothin’ familiar in the voice?”
“No. I’d have said it if I thought so.”
And he knew that. Sally had taken plenty of calls before. “Okay. Keep the pistol with ya. I’ll see you later tonight.”
“Don’t do anything.”
“I probably won’t. Just get some sleep.” He was ready to put the phone in its cradle but pulled it back to his ear. “Ten years.”
“I know. Just let it go for tonight, okay?”
“Love ya, Sal. See you later.”
Wozniak sat and surveyed the American Legion’s parking lot across the street. 1 o’clock in the morning and just a few drinkers. He started the engine and grabbed the mic. “Car 1. I’m headin’ out towards Dollar Road. Somethin’ to check out.”
“Copy that, Chief. Need any backup? I can call whoever’s on in Hastings, or Kenny Whiteford in Spangler.”
“Nah, just gonna look around a bit. Ain’t plannin’ nothin’ big.”
Ten minutes from the Shop and Save, the chief backed the cruiser into a little pull-off on Number 9 Road. Yorgi’s Tavern burned down, the night after Frank Lanzendorfer got shot. Still a mystery—all of it—and he could never figure out Ben Stoltz’s part in the story, if he had one. But that damn ark. Maybe it’s something. He locked the car and started to hoof it through what everybody called the Allagash. He didn’t know how or why it got that name, but the little patch of woods was thick with briars and brush. The tamer edge of the woods was doable, close to the pavement of Number 9, and Wozniak made a right turn in the trees when the curved gravel bed of Dollar Road came into eyeshot, about fifty yards from his car.
A half-moon shone above him and offered a little light, but he took his time to avoid any falls—rocks and branches. Roots. Mostly, he kicked through ferns and blackberry bushes, in the shadows and off the road. A spiderweb got him, and he spat and brushed it away before he hit the wide open Y where Dollar intersected with another dirt road, an unnamed fork that led up to the golf course. Cicadas chirped all around. A bullfrog barked. Lightning bugs flashed. He didn’t expect any cars out here, so he moved down a slight hill in high grass and aimed straight at the point where the roads met. He’d see headlights from a distance.
Dollar Road was mostly flat with fields of goldenrod, scrubby trees, and a couple of gas wells on its flanks. An ancient logging road or two headed nowhere. Now he moved onto the straight stretch and past the long driveway for the old Wetzel farm, the only place out here beside Stoltz’s. Wozniak used to dream of owning Fred Wetzel’s place, for him and Sally and the boys. A farm would’ve been nice, and some chickens in the yard, but now the abandoned house was falling in on itself.
In a minute more he could see the mercury light in Ben Stoltz’s front yard a quarter mile ahead. He trudged into the pines on his left and followed a path on the edge of a grove, far enough from the road and headed in the right direction. The unused ark was perched in a field across the road from the house, open land dotted with a sawmill, a couple of rickety log cabins—who knew why Ben Stoltz built the damn things—and the massive, curved boat resting on planks, a platform that was at least eight feet higher than the ark’s sharp bottom edge. The ark looked yellowish-green in the daylight, and Wozniak figured it to be covered in copper that was riveted to the wood. He didn’t know for sure.
The Stoltz homestead was dark except for that single mercury light near the road. Wozniak’s shirt stuck to his damp torso and he breathed hard. He couldn’t guess at the last time he’d walked this far, and this summer air was different from what you got in deer season. So damn humid. Putting on a slow drive to push out a buck in snowy weather took a different kind of energy; that was never this hard. He went down on one knee and stared at the ark’s silhouette; he caught his breath and wished he had some water. Then he reached for a fresh chew of snuff. Another quiet minute of rest settled his breathing, and he hauled himself up to a standing position before he threw his elbows back to stretch. The hat came off for a few seconds and he scratched and rubbed at the grey crew cut, which was soaked with sweat.
Chances that he was completely alone were pretty high, but he crouched and moved toward the ark, just a few feet at a time, like a damn TV cop, and he knew he ought to stop it. The ark had to be twenty five feet high and maybe twice as long. No door or gangplank—he’d seen it enough times—but a ladder reached in the darkness for a rail on the deck. Whatever was there to see, either below the deck or on it, would require a climb, and he trotted the last twenty yards. At the bottom of the ladder, Wozniak stopped to listen for dogs or engines or any kind of movement, but the bugs and a slight breeze were like white noise, a thing you wouldn’t notice until you paid attention. Nobody was around, nothing out of place, and he had to guess that Ben Stoltz was fast asleep. His wife too.
The ladder didn’t have much of a tilt to it, and he gave it a good shake. The climb was long and steep, and he figured the steps to be about eighteen inches apart. It was old but built solid and didn’t give an inch for his 250 pounds. At least Ben Stoltz did something right. His hands grasped the wood of the side rails, but he was careful not to drag them. The last thing he needed was a splinter. The ark’s entry was on the lower side of the property, facing the woods instead of the house, which was a surprise. If the boat meant anything, or if there was something to hide, he figured Ben would want the ladder in his line of sight, but it was dark enough, anyway. Wozniak’s ascent was slow and deliberate.
He stopped at the top and peered over the railing. The flashlight was out of the question, but his eyes had adjusted enough to see a framed trap door in the center of the deck. Even in this light, he spotted the metal handle made for a hand, the kind you put your fingers through—twist and lift. A pile of old two-by-fours sat at the front of the boat, and a frayed lawn chair on the right, what he thought was the starboard side, but he didn’t remember for sure. Ben didn’t seem like the type to sun himself, but who knows. You could shoot a deer from up here, and that might explain the chair.
Rather than step over the rail, he decided to climb through its narrow opening to the left of the ladder. The deck was accessible without too much effort—it was a tight squeeze and he laughed at himself—but here in the dark, his six-foot frame was still an easy target. He looked to each horizon—nothing out there, even with as little as there was to see at this time of the night—and then crouched down and got to his hands and knees to crawl toward the trap door that was about twenty feet in front of him. The damn thing had better not be padlocked. If it was he’d have to take—but there was no time to work through the problem of a padlock. Rotted plywood gave way and Wozniak’s heavy body dropped like a wrecking ball into the ark’s dark hull.
He could hardly process the sharp slab of wood that pierced his left forearm and drove through between the radius and the ulna, and not the hard meeting of his face with the slope of the ark’s slick bottom. What he could gather, in the seconds it took to get clear about the fact that he’d fallen, was that he was lucky to have his arm impaled and not his head—that was the first and easy thing to recognize, that the fucking thing might’ve gone right through his eye and into his brain.
Everything hurt, especially his face, and maybe his entire body hurt more than anything had hurt in all his years. The labored and noisy breaths that interrupted the pitch black silence—breaths that sounded more like hoarse groans and rose from a desperate throat—were his own. Wozniak had seen plenty of bodies mangled in cars, and he’d listened to victims breathe and gurgle and snore, and he’d pitied them or prayed for them. A body in that condition couldn’t last for long, and he’d have to knock on somebody’s door to break the sad news. He’d watched the life seep out of a person enough times to know when it was coming.
An ambulance. Somebody could fix this, he knew it, even in here. Hastings was just over the ridge, but the walkie talkie was in the car, and after a moment of lonely panic he realized his right arm was still mobile, at least a little. Even with the burning ache in his shoulder, he could move his right arm—a goddamn miracle—and willed his hand to move with all his might; he willed the fractured hand toward the hip that was bound to be badly bruised and fired the old reliable .38, right in its holster, all six rounds, and about ten seconds apart. The .38 didn’t have the report of a rifle, though, and it was muffled by the damn ark, and muffled by the distance between the boat and the house. Muffled and defeated by Ben Stoltz’s copper coating. Even as he pulled the trigger, he knew that Ben Stoltz was asleep and wouldn’t hear the pistol, and not Mrs. Stoltz, even if she was wide awake and worried about something. Nobody would hear those fucking shots.
There wasn’t much to do except lie there and absorb the pain. To moan and remind himself that it was real, that he was face-down and injured—injured bad—in the ark. He’d been through some shit, and this was bad but nothing to cry about. Just lie there and listen. Maybe some water dripped. Or maybe that sound’s not in here at all. So tired. “So tired, Sally. I’m real tired.” Wozniak closed his eyes and tried to remind himself that he shouldn’t drift off, but he talked to his wife for a minute, and she was twenty-two. That was the year—her hair long and brown, just glorious, a shampoo commercial. Real pretty, like her senior picture. A hot spring day in that gold Chevy Nova he bought at Charlie Clipper’s, and the houndstooth bucket seats. “You’re beautiful,” he yelled to her over the noise. The loud engine—what a great feeling. He smelled Sally’s sweat and wanted to drink it in. He’d have to pull over to kiss her, but the sun was bright, too bright, and he’d left his sunglasses in the damn cruiser, hung ‘em there on the rearview with the radio squawking about a fire or an accident out on Ridge Road, he didn’t know which, really, but 10-4, 10-4, good buddy. I can’t really copy that. I can’t really copy that, buddy. Car 1 does not copy! Can you come back with that or just get me some backup out here? Just say it again, Willie, just say it again, will ya? You’re pissin’ me off now. I’m havin’ the hardest time hearin’ ya, so speak up, goddammit.
The radio tower blinked and he couldn’t believe how bright the red light was, how red—he’d never seen it glow like that in the daylight, like a fire, a goddamn surprise, like a fire, like, is it even the same radio tower, but it is, it is—look at that, Sally, look at the goddamn thing, and maybe there’s something wrong with it, an electric surge, like the whole tower might explode or shoot lightning bolts or something and he’d better call it in fast, or call Tom Rose at the radio station—I never seen anything like it, Mr. Rose—he’ll know what to do, call him before something bad happens, and Chief Wozniak drove faster than he ever had on these back roads, but he couldn’t find that damn turn out to the Harmony Grange with the tower light just glowing all to Hell, like it’s chasing him, and I know that fucking turn is here somewhere.
They’d see it all the way from Baker’s Crossroads. They’d see it from all the way out there at the crossroads and know it’s bad. But he was sleepy. He felt it coming on, the kind of deep sleep you always hope for, but the mic’s not on the dash when he reaches for it and he’d call Sally later—I’ll call ya later, Sal, from up at the radio tower. I think there’s a phone in that little cinderblock hut. I remember something about a phone in the hut with the transmitter. The pistol’s in the top drawer of the nightstand, honey, right next to my old driver’s license, the pistol’s right there. He’d have to call her back later—I’ll call you later, Sal, from the phone there at the transmitter, one of those old rotary models. My arm hurts real bad. Mr. Rose said it’s still there, he said the pistol’s there, and Chief Wozniak didn’t know if he’d ever been this tired, if he’d ever been so completely ready to go to sleep.