The people who live around Pocono Township have an expression, a coda they will add to the end of a declarative sentence or when they are replying to one. They will say: “And that’s no lie.” For instance, residents living around Ice Lake, Pennsylvania, or just – the lake – as the locals call it, will tell you that the lake is beautiful and that’s no lie. They will tell you that people around here are simple and pleasant and that too would be no lie. They will also say that folks around here are honest – but if that were entirely true then one has to wonder: why do they so often mention that they’re not lying?
Maybe it’s because around Ice Lake there are just too many secrets.
* * *
Big Bill looked around the woods with dismay. It had been a long time since he had been up here in the daytime and he was disgusted at the amount of trash lying around. This was one of his favourite places in the world but the younger generation wasn’t looking after it as they should. Everywhere there were beer cans and bottles, spent shells and cartridges of all calibres. And those damn red plastic cups. He didn’t mind the kids partying up here as he and his brothers used to but, in his day, at least they picked-up afterwards. ’Course they had to. If they didn’t Grandad tanned their hides when he came up to target practice. Tonight, Bill thought, he’d have a word with the younger set and threaten to chain off the path until they cleaned it up. Or maybe he would sell.
He found a big empty plastic bag that originally contained ice and used it to start picking up bottles and cans. He was determined not to let the fact that this clearing looked like a rubbish dump change his mind but he had to laugh at the thought that it was worth millions now.
Doesn’t matter, he thought. This is Thomson land. Grandad taught me to shoot up here, and I still remember how soft Teresa Shroder’s tit was that night when she finally let me touch it. I’ll not let those bastards ruin it whatever the price.
He was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the other car. When he saw that his appointment was walking with the double-barrel shotgun cocked and not broken like it should be he thought, the first lesson is going to be gun safety.
He didn’t get to give his first lesson.
Some people are prepared to die. The long-term ill and military bomb defusers make peace with their existence long before their demise. There are those that after miraculously surviving a parachute failure speak of calmly accepting their imminent death before they hit the ground. But for most, death is unwelcome and often a surprise.
Big Bill wasn’t ready to die.
When the shotgun blew out the back of his right knee he didn’t even notice the pain. He was more worried about the person behind him being hurt by what he assumed was an accidental discharge. Even when he saw his assailant shoot out his other knee he was confused. He couldn’t understand how the shooter could have been so careless as to have hit him twice. When he saw the spent shells hit the ground next to his face he still couldn’t imagine that the sound above him was the shotgun being reloaded. Even when he felt the barrels against his skull the last thing he thought about wasn’t his mortality. No, the last thing that went through his mind before the buckshot was, How am I going to get to my exam next week?
New York and Philadelphia are America’s first and fifth largest metropoles, bastions of culture, commerce, art, and architecture. Sure there is squalor within their beltways but the cities strive to fix that – or at least hide it. Not so with the road between. The New Jersey Department of Transportation seems to go out of its way to ensure that the scenery on the NJ Turnpike is as unbecoming as possible. Apparently if you want to build something that could be viewed by a Turnpike motorist, it can only be a warehouse or a chemical refinery.
Harry drove past the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Rest Area. Although he needed a break he refused to stop as a matter of principle: the 28th President of the United States, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and the architect of the League of Nations, deserved better than having a toilet named after him. Harry thought he could hold out until the Thomas Edison Memorial Stop – he had read somewhere that Edison was a bit of a bastard. Harry resolved that if he ever got famous he would stipulate in his will that no one could name a New Jersey crapper after him. On second thought he decided to amend his will as soon as possible, in case his dying act was so heroic that he was awarded with posthumous fame.
“THE GARDEN STATE,” what a joke of a state slogan that is. Harry spent the rest of the journey to New York trying to think up an alternative. The best he could come up with was: “NEW JERSEY – A STATE TO GET THROUGH.”
* * *
There was a typical half hour traffic build-up at the Holland Tunnel and Harry used the free time, as he usually did, by searching the FBI missing children database. He didn’t get far before his phone rang.
“Harry Cull, can I help you?”
“Harry, this is Edward Cirba.”
“Trooper Cirba,” Harry said with glee, “the last time I saw you was… let me think, it was a Buddhist temple, wasn’t it—?”
“You promised,” interrupted the caller, “not to ever mention that again.”
Harry laughed. He had met Pennsylvania State Trooper Edward Cirba at a national state police conference in Las Vegas. Harry had been speaking on interrogation techniques – specifically on how to spot lying. In the hotel bar that night Trooper Ed had told Harry “with all due respect,” that he was full of shit. Harry had ordered two shots of Patron and proposed a bet. He would ask a handful of questions in pairs. The cop would have to lie to one question and tell the truth to the other. If Harry could figure out which was the truth and which was a lie, he would pay for the twenty-dollar tequila shots. If he got it wrong, Trooper Ed would pay. Harry drank free all night and they ended up in a strip club called Nirvana. That was the thing that Ed Cirba asked Harry never to mention again.