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BEEZER’S JOURNEY BEGAN with Myrtle Harrington, the loving wife of Michael Harrington, whispering down the telephone line to Richie Buth crush in spite of his having been married to her second-best friend, Glad, who dropped down dead in her kitchen at the ae of thirty-one For his part, Richie Buh macaroni-tuna casseroles and whisper-voiced phone calls froh two lad, even oddly relieved, to listen to, because he drives a truck for the Kingsland Brewing Company and has come to know Beezer St Pierre and the rest of the boys, at least a little bit

At first, Richie thought the Thunder Five was a bunch of hoodluth hair and foah town on their Harleys, but one Friday he happened to be standing alongside the one called Mouse in the pay- line, and Mouse looked down at hi for love never ot into a conversation that hts later he saw Beezer St Pierre and the one called Doc shooting the breeze in the yard when he caht he went over and got into another conversation that made him feel like he’d walked into a combination of a raunchy blues bar and a Jeopardy! chauys ¡ª Beezer, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill ¡ª looked like rockin’, stompin’, red-eyed violence, but they were ssland Ale’s special-projects division, and the other guys were just under hie They were interested in ood tiet a bike and let it all hang out like the at the Sand Bar proved that the line between a high old time and utter abandon was too fine for him He didn’t have the staa about the influences of Sherwood An-derson and Gertrude Stein on the young He, put down another couple of pitchers, eh the countryside, pick up a couple of experirade shit, and romp until dawn You have to respect people who can do that and still hold down good jobs

As far as Richie is concerned, he has a duty to tell Beezer that the police have finally learned the whereabouts of Irma Freneau’s body That busybody Myrtle said it was a secret Richie has to keep to hiave him the news, she called four or five other people Those people will call their best friends, and in no ti over on 35 to be in on the action Beezer has a better right to be there thanrid of Myrtle Harrington, Richie Bumstead looks up Beezer St Pierre in the directory and dials the nu me," Beezer says

"He called in, yeah?" Beezer wants Richie to repeat it "That worthless piece of shit in the DARE car, the Mad Hungarian?And he said the girl here?"

"Fuck, the whole town is gonna be out there," Beezer says "But thanks, man, thanks a lot I owe you" In the instant before the receiver sla else that gets dissolved in a scalding rush of emotion

And in the little house on Nailhouse Row, Beezer St Pierre swipes tears into his beard, gently moves the telephone a few inches back on the table, and turns to face Bear Girl, his common-law spouse, his old lady, Aood, and who is staring up at hi her place in a book

"It’s the Freneau girl," he says "I gotta go"

"Go," Bear Girl tells him "Take the cell phone and call me as soon as you can"

"Yeah," he says, and plucks the cell phone froer and ra to the door, he thrusts a hand into the huge red-brown tangle of his beard and absent-ers His feet are rooted to the floor; his eyes have lost focus "The Fisherman called 911," he says "Can you believe this shit? They couldn’t find the Freneau girl by themselves, they needed him to tell them where to find her body"

"Listen to ets up and travels the space between theles her compact little body into his massive bulk, and Beezer inhales a chestful of her clean, soothing scent, a coet out there, it’s going to be up to you to keep them in line So you have to keep yourself in line, Beezer No o nuts and start beating on people Cops especially"

"I suppose you think I shouldn’t go"

"You have to I just don’t want you to wind up in jail"

"Hey," he says, "I’et it," she says, and pats hi to call them?"

"Street telephone" Beezer walks to the door, bends down to pick up his helmet, and h his beard Two strides bring him to his motorcycle He puts one hand on the saddle, wipes his forehead, and bellows, "THE FUCKING FISHERMAN TOLD THAT FUCKING HUNGARIAN COP WHERE TO FIND IRMA FRENEAU’S BODY WHO’S COMING WITH ME?"

On both sides of Nailhouse Row, bearded heads pop out of s and loud voices shout "Wait Up!" "Holy Shit!" and "Yo!" Four vastout of four front doors Beezer aluys, but sometimes they remind him of cartoon characters Even before they reach hi about Richie Bumstead and the 911 call, and by the time he finishes, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill are on their bikes and waiting for the signal

"But this here’s the deal," Beezer says "Two things We’re going out there for Amy and Irma Freneau and Johnny Irkenhaets done the right way, and we’re not gonna bust anybody’s head open, not unless they ask for it You got that?"

The others ruled beards wag up and down

"And nuonna be the Fisherh crap around here, and now I a bastard who killed irl ¡ª " Beezer’s voice catches in his throat, and he raises his fist before continuing "And du shack out on 35 Because I a fuckhead, and when I do, I aet RIGHTEOUS on his ass!"

His boys, his crew, his posse shake their fists in the air and bellow Five e noisily into life "We’ll take a look at the place frohway and double back to the road behind Goltz’s," Beezer shouts, and charges down the road and uphill on Chase Street with the others in his slipstreah the middle of town they roll, Beezer in the lead, Mouse and Sonny practically on his tailpipe, Doc and the Kaiser right behind, their beards flowing in the wind The thunder of their bikes rattles the s in Sch up fro over the bars of his Harley, Beezer looks a little bit like King Kong getting set to rip apart a jungle gyet past the 7-Eleven, Kaiser and Doc side Sonny and Mouse and take up the entire width of the highway People driving west on 35 look at the figures charging toward them and swerve onto the shoulder; drivers who see them in their rearview mirrors drift to the side of the road, stick their arms out of their s, and wave them on

As they near Centralia, Beezer passes about twice as hway on a weekend ured it would be: Dale Gilbertson is bound to have a couple of cops blocking traffic turning in from 35, but two cops couldn’t handle , really seeing, the Fisherh cops to keep a lid on all the screwballs ho hieeks into tent pegs Losing control is exactly what he cannot afford to do, not if he expects any cooperation from Dale Gilbertson and his flunkies

Beezer leads his companions around a crapped-out old red Toyota and is visited by an idea so perfect that he forgets to strike unreasoning terror into the beater’s driver by looking hisland Ale, the best beer in the world, you di, and neither one let him down The people who earn this treatly vehicle irotesque form of sexual assault, and they freeze like rabbits, they stiffen right up Jolly good fun, as the citizens of E in The Wizard of Oz The idea that has distracted Beezer from his harmless pleasures possesses the siet cooperation is to give it He knows exactly how to soften up Dale Gilbertson: the answer is putting on a baseball cap, grabbing its car keys, and heading out the door ¡ª the answer lies all around him

One small part of that answer sits behind the wheel of the red Toyota just being overtaken by Beezer and his jolly crew Wendell Green earned the rounds His little car in with, but by now it is so disfigured bysneer; and Green drives with an unyielding arrogance he thinks of as "dash" He zooates as a means of intihtest provocation Wendell is a menace The way he handles his car perfectly expresses his character, being inconsiderate, thoughtless, and riddled with grandiosity At theeven worse than usual, because as he tries to overtake every other vehicle on the road, most of his concentration is focused on the pocket tape recorder he holds up to his olden voice pours into the precious htedness of the local radio stations in devoting so e Rathbun and Henry Shake, when they couldcommentary on the news for an hour or so every day) Ah, the delicious combination of Wendell’s words and Wendell’s voice ¡ª Edward R Murrow in his heyday never sounded so eloquent, so resonant

Here is what he is saying: This rieving, and thebucolic Highway 35 Not for the first time, this journalist was struck, and struck deeply, by the immense contrast between the loveliness and peace of the Coulee Country’s landscape and the ugliness and savagery one deranged huraph

The news had spread like wildfire Neighbor called neighbor, friend called friend According to apolice station, the mutilated body of little Irma Freneau lies within the ruins of a former ice-creas And who had placed the call? Surely, soentleentle written while it happens, a concept that cannot but murmur "Pulitzer Prize" to an experienced journalist The scoop had come to Wendell Green by way of his barber, Roy Royal, who heard it from his wife, Tillie Royal, who had been clued in by Myrtle Harrington herself, and Wendell Green has done his duty to his readers: he grabbed his tape recorder and his ca to telephone his editors at the Herald He doesn’t need a photographer; he can take all the photographs he needs with that dependable old Nikon F2A on the passenger seat A sea examination of the new century’s htful exploration into the nature of evil ¡ª a co ¡ª an unsparing expos¨¦ of one police depart on in his mind as his mellifluous words drip one by one into the microphone of his upheld cassette recorder, is it any wonder that Wendell Green fails to hear the sound of motorcycles, or to take in the presence of the Thunder Five in any way, until he happens to glance sideways in search of the perfect phrase? Glance sideways he does, and with a spurt of panic observes, no more than two feet to his left, Beezer St Pierre astride his roaring Harley, apparently singing, to judge fro

huh?

Can’t be, nope In Wendell’s experience, Beezer St Pierre is farlike a navvy in a waterfront brawl When, after the death of A the ancient rules of his trade, dropped in at 1 Nailhouse Row, and inquired of the grieving father how it felt to know that his daughter had been slaughtered like a pig and partially eaten by a ripped the innocent newshound by the throat, unleashed a torrent of obscenities, and concluded by bellowing that if he should ever see Mr Green again, he would tear off his head and use the stump as a sexual orifice

It is this threat that causes Wendell’s lances into his rearviewout across the road like an invading ar skulls on ropesto do to his neck after they rip his head off Whatever he was about to dictate into the invaluablewith his daydrea the Pulitzer Prize His stomach clenches, and sweat bursts from every pore on his broad, ruddy face His left hand treht shakes the cassette recorder like a castanet Wendell lifts his foot fro his head as far to the right as he dares His basic desire is to curl up in the well beneath the dashboard and pretend to be a fetus The huge roar of sound behind hirows louder, and his heart leaps in his chest like a fish Wendell whiile skin of the car door

Then the hway Wendell Green wipes his face Slowly, he persuades his body to sit up straight His heart ceases its attempt to escape his chest The world on the other side of his windshield, which had contracted to the size of a housefly, expands back to its normal size It occurs to Wendell that he was nowould be, under the circuard fills hiuys he knoould have driven right off the road, he thinks; uys would have crapped in their pants What did Wendell Green do? He slowed down a little, that’s all He acted like a gentleman and let the ass-holes of the Thunder Five drive past hi a gentle the bikers race on ahead