Go With Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

money, people that want money. Say maybe he knew somebody who had some woods, wanted to raise some cash. Blackway would talk to the owner. He’d make the contract. Then we’d go in and do the cut, Blackway gets a fee. That was all. Maybe once, twice a year, Blackway would come in with a job for us. He was like an agent. Once or twice a year. Not that often.”
    “Sure,” said Lester.
    “So, late April, May,” Fitzgerald said, “Blackway comes in with a job on a big lot in Jamaica. Owner’s not around, he’s here summers, lives in — I don’t know — Boston. But Blackway’s got his signed contract: so many feet, bounds, roads, you know how it works. It was two hundred acres, all on the side of the mountain, over there. Looks okay, so off we go.”
    Lillian took the chair beside Lester and sat. When she did, the little dog jumped up from its place on the floor by Fitzgerald’s feet and began yapping at her again.
    “Shut up,” Fitzgerald told the dog.
    “We’ve been in there I guess six weeks,” he went on. “Monday morning, I get a call at the office from George, the job boss. Seems he’s had a visit from a Mr. Simmons and a sheriff ’s deputy. Those are Simmons’s woods we’re cutting. Simmons is the owner. He is pissed. He wonders what the hell is going on here. He doesn’t know anything about any logging job. He doesn’t know anything about any contract. What he does know is he’s got about forty acres less woods than he thought he had. Seems he’s headed to the office with the deputy.”
    “Some mistake,” said Lester.
    “What I thought,” said Fitzgerald. “I wasn’t too worried. It had to be some kind of confusion, didn’t it? Because, after all, I had the contract, Blackway’s contract. It was a done deal.”
    “Sure,” said Lester.
    “So Mr. Simmons and the deputy turn up. He’s hot, yes, he is. He’s one of these rich guys, owns his own mountain, thinks every tree on it is his pet tree. The deputy? The deputy acts like he’s having trouble keeping awake, the way they all do. I bring out my contract, show it to Simmons. Simmons says he never saw it before in his life, never signed any such paper, never heard of Blackway, never talked about logging those woods with him or anybody else. His signature on the contract? Forged. And what am I going to do about his trees?”
    “Blackway forged the owner’s name on the paper?” Lester asked.
    “Somebody did,” said Fitzgerald. “That was Monday. Of course, I tried to reach Blackway. Of course, I couldn’t. Mr. Simmons says I’ll be hearing from his lawyer. I expect I will, too. I don’t have a lawyer. Deputy told me to go to Ripley Wingate.”
    “Wingate,” said Lester. He looked at Lillian. Lillian raised her eyebrows at him, but said nothing.
    “That was Monday, like I said,” Fitzgerald went on. “I was going to see Wingate the next day. That night, middle of the night, Cynthia and I are in bed, sound asleep. I wake up. For a minute I don’t know why — then I do. Somebody’s sitting on the edge of the bed, our bed, just sitting there in the dark. I feel his weight on the bed, and it wakes me up. Now I can see him, kind of, in the moonlight coming in the window, his shadow. I reach for the light.
    “‘Leave it off,’ he says. It’s Blackway.
    “Cynthia’s awake, too. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ she’s saying, but I shush her. Blackway pays her no attention. He’s talking to me, low, not whispering, but talking low.
    “‘You saw that owner.’
    “‘That’s right.’
    “‘What are you going to do?’
    “‘I don’t know.’
    “‘I heard you were going to talk to Wingate.’
    “‘I thought about it.’
    “‘You don’t want to do that,’ Blackway says.
    “‘Heidi,’ Cynthia says. ‘Where’s Heidi?’ Heidi’s room’s down the hall from ours. ‘Where’s Heidi?’ Cynthia’s crying. I shush her.
    “‘You don’t want to take this any farther,’ Blackway says. ‘You see that,