The Lost Highway Read Online Free PDF Page A

those of unrequited lovers, was that Minnie really still loved him. He could not escape that hope. And it would be worth thirteen million to find out.
    But then again, if James Chapman ever got this money, Alex’s life may as well be over—that is how sure he was of the old man’s enmity at this moment.
    I may as well be buried up to my neck in pig slop, he thought. And then he thought again of jail. For if Jim Chapman got the money, Leo Bourque would tell about something Alex Chapman had done to the company a year ago. A very small little thing, but nonetheless it had destroyed the company completely.
    How could I know I’d ruin the company, he had thought many times. Though he knew because he taught ethics that he had known, and that he didn’t even have to teach ethics to have known.
    That could mean jail. He would be like an angel falling from heaven—that’s how low he would have sunk. He remembered the picture in his bedroom when he was a boy, of Satan and his herd falling through the sky. He always stared at the impassive non- expressive clouds about them as they fell, hurling through, as his great-aunt once said, “their own baleful conscience.”
    What a mess, he thought, panicking slightly. He stared at his wide and almost terrified eyes looking back at him from his mirror across the room. All those books, what good had they ever done—he may as well have eaten them, rather than have read them. And all those silly self-centered, pick-arsed authors that he wanted to be. What had they ever done? Did one of them win thirteen million?
    Over the last few months, since the business went under, he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For in a way he was the one who had caused the business to fail, and left Old Jim and his employees broke.
    So now the shoe had dropped.
    If there was a lost highway where souls traveled, this was it. It was a lost highway because those going downriver met the French communities that didn’t belong to them. Those French who came upriver met the English communities where they would never be welcome. The signs in both languages led nowhere at all, and right in among them were the Micmac, with their own language and as many problems.
    Such was this lost highway that sat along the edge of the bay and called itself a land. James Chapman himself had done much to aggravate this isolation by tearing French signs down in the 1970s, and so too had a mayor from the French side by painting over the English signs with the Acadian flag.
    But things had changed three years ago. The highway bids along this section of the province were now under French control, and people in power remembered Mr. Chapman, the Englishman who had tried to destroy them with his bids. Alex had blamed his uncle for his bigotry rather than the French who put Jim under; Alex had long ago decided his uncle and not the French was bigoted. He had believed for a time that his real father was in fact French.
    Now, about this other stuff—the millions—he would have to act, he knew this. He would have to do something he never did before—break into the house and steal that ticket. Or if he was being watched, as he was, find someone else to. He would have to, if he wanted to survive. Or he could let James Chapman have his winning, and it would mean the end of his life. That is, he would never be able to live down Jim Chapman’s hubris, nor would he be able to crawl back.
    So it was now, at this moment, that Young Chapman became resolved never to tell Old Chapman what he may have won, even unto death. He would do everything to get this ticket for himself. He would be resolved to do so, and not lessen his resolve until he had succeeded. This is what he must do in order to secure his independence. There was one moment when he thought he should not do this, and this was the time to let the idea go.
    But he couldn’t.
    There was a profound silence in the little room. And in this silence it was as if some kind of voice were