NOW early, early morning of January 8, 1949, the boys felt compelled to trudge back to the gravel pit, open the car trunk, and diagnose Silver. They was hoping he’d sit up, teeheeing, asking what Sambo joke they were playing. Silver’s eye glared up at em. The brothers closed the trunk, but George, fumbling, couldn’t lock it. He couldn’t get the key to turn.
So Rue stomped on the trunk lid with one foot, then turned the key in the lock: “Joygee, go to Saint John and throw the keys in the harbour.”
Leaving Plumsy at the house with Otho, George and Rue wheeled to Minto. George wore Burgundy’s dark taxi cap. It felt good. Rue tried it on, rakishly, like a jazz man. The moon minted four copper pennies in four eyes.
In Minto, Georgie stopped at Junior Clarke’s place.
Rue knocked, yelled, “It’s me, Junior.”
Junior shouted, “Show your mug at the window.” Rufus stood at the window; a curtain swished. Then Junior cracked open the door. A big fat fellow.
Rue ask, “Got a game on?”
Junior said, “Show your stake.” Rue flashed his blazing bills.
Junior: “Okay. You cheat, I’ll bust your ass!”
Rue say, “What?” Junior weren’t amused.
Leaving Rue in Minto, George drove along the road back toward Fredericton. He saw a hitchhiker and stopped for him, a large-built fellow, this French chap whose English was shaky. He was a giant version of the little man in the trunk.
George ask, on impulse, “Know where I can get liquor and a gal?” The hitchhiker—Willy Comeau, ex-lumberjack—was scared of George. He feared he was a cop cause of that official-looking cap. George said, “I’s a taxi driver! Ain’t no cop! Ya know any Negro cop?” Both him and the French man roared at that gag.
Willy told George to go down a side road and up a hill and into a driveway and turn his headlights off and on twice. He begged Georgie for ten bucks, and Georgie used the moonlight to figure out what a ten-dollar bill looked like and gave it to Frenchy. Willy rapped on a door and parleyed in Acadian. This other man, who never turned on a light and never left the shadows, went away from the door, then came back with a box and a bag. Willy returned to the car with a quart of whisky and two quarts of beer, or two quarts of wine and one beer. This was all the liquor Willy had in his hands. Between 2:30 and 3:00 on Saturday morning.
Then Georgie motored back into Minto, on a whim, to check on Rue. Willy tagged along. Back to Junior’s went Georgie, arriving to see Rue leaving.
Rue was glad: “Junior just put me out cause I quarrelled with his rules.” He saw the hulking, quiet Willy and ask, “Who the fuck are you in my brother’s car?”
Willy only knew rotten English: “I’s knows where fuckin booze is, chief.” Willy showed Rue his cache of liquor.
Rue got into the car, opened the quart of wine, and give the big man a drink and took one himself and asked George if he wanted one. George said no, then let Frenchy out on a little hill by a store which sits on the right hand side of this road. Then him and Rudy boomeranged to Barker’s Point, passing again through Fred Town. The moonlight rained like bleach—the way it cut through shadows.
Back home, at 4 a.m., the boys sat in George’s kitchen, listening to Plumsy snore and trying to decide where to put that sluggish form in the trunk of the car parked in the gravel pit. Rue said again, “Best bet is to take the car into Saint John and park it there.”