A Bridge of Years (6 page)

He
should have been reassured. Instead, he felt oddly disappointed.
Disappointed because on some fundamental level he was convinced last
night's dream had been no ordinary dream. (No—but he couldn't say
exactly how it was different.)

He
walked to the verge of the woods. In his dream this was where the
broad trail of bright-eyed insects had passed into the moon-shadow of
the trees.

The
sun, this time of morning, did not much penetrate the deep Pacific
Northwest pinewoods. There was a trail leading back through this
tangle, but it began at the opposite end of the yard. Here there were
only these old trees and this fern-tangle undergrowth, the smell of
rotting pine needles and the drip of hoarded rainwater. The barrier
between the forest and the sunlit yard could not have been more
distinct. He braced his hands on a tree trunk. Leaning forward, he
felt the cool, mushroom dampness of the forest on his face.

He
turned back to the house.

In
his dream, the insects had moved to the forest from the house. Tom
paced back to the nearest wall. It was an ordinary frame wall
sided with cedar, well preserved—the paint hadn't blistered or
peeled—but hardly unusual. This was the wall at the back of the
master bedroom, windowless at this corner.

But
if his dream had not been a dream, there must be some sort of opening
here.

He
sat on his haunches and pulled away handfuls of high, seeded grass
from the concrete foundation where it rose some few inches above the
soil.

He
held his breath, gazing at what he found there.

The
concrete was riddled with small, precisely round holes. The holes
were all alike, all approximately as wide as the ball of his thumb.

His
foot slipped in the wet grass and he sat back with a thump on his
tailbone.

They
must be bolt holes, he thought. Something must have been attached
here. A deck, maybe.

But
the holes in the chalky, water-stained concrete were smooth as glass.

"Be
damned," he said.

He
plucked a stem of the tall grass and held it to one of the openings.

Like
shoving a stick into a hornet's nest, Tom. Real dumb. You don't know
what might be in there.

But
when he pushed the long grass stem inside there was no resistance ...
no
response.

He
bent down and peered into the opening. He didn't put his cheek hard
up against the concrete foundation, because he couldn't shake the
belief that one of those tiny saucer-eyed creatures from his dream
might be inside—that it might possess claws, teeth, a poison sac, a
hostile intent. But he bent close enough to smell the rooty earth
odor rising from the damp lawn . . . close enough to watch a sow bug
trundling up the latticework of a thistle. No light radiated
from the many holes in the foundation. He thought he felt a breath of
air sigh out, oily and faintly metallic.

He
stood up and backed off a pace.

What
now? Do we call Exterminex? Dynamite the foundation?

Tell
Archer?

No,
Tom thought. None of the above. Not yet.

He
explained everything else—the dishes, the dream—meticulously
to Archer, who sat at the kitchen table drinking instant coffee
and running his fingernail along the grain of the wood.

The
telling of it made Tom feel foolish. Archer was sanity incarnate in
his checkerboard cotton shirt and Levi's: rooted to the earth right
through the soles of his high-top sneakers. Archer listened
patiently, then grinned. "This has to be the most interesting
thing to happen around here since Chuck Nixon saw a UFO over the
waste treatment plant."

He
would
say
that, Tom thought. Archer had been a legend at Sea View Elementary—"a
world-class shit disturber," as the gym teacher had declared on
one memorable occasion. Maybe that's why I called him, Tom thought: I
still think of him as fearless.

"I
mean it," Archer said. "You're obviously upset by this. But
it's wonderful. I mean, here's this mundane little house in the
woods, one more shitty frame house out along the Post Road—pardon
me—then suddenly it's
more
than
that. You know the quote from Kipling? 'There was a crack in his head
and a little bit of the Dark World came through . .

Tom
winced. "Thanks a lot." Kipling?

"Don't
misunderstand. I would be disappointed," Archer said, "if
you were crazy. Craziness is very common. Very—" He struggled
for a word. "Very
K-mart.
I'm
hoping for something a little classier."

"You're
enjoying this too much."

"It's
my hobby," Archer said.

Tom
blinked. "It's what?"

"Well,
it's hard to explain. The supernatural: it's like a hobby with me.
I'm a skeptic, you understand. I don't believe in ghosts, I don't
believe in UFOs. I'm not that kind of enthusiast. But I've read
all the books. Charles Fort, Jacques Vallee. I don't believe in it,
but I decided a long time ago that I
wanted
it
to be true. I want there to be rains of frogs. I want statues to
bleed. I want it because—please don't repeat this —it would be
like God saying, 'Fuck Belltower, Washington, here's a miracle.' It
would mean the asphalt down by the car lots might break out in
crocuses and morning glories and tie up traffic for a week. It would
mean we might all wake up one morning and find the pulp mill crumbled
into sand. Half the town would be out of work, of course. But we
could all live on manna and red wine. And nobody—absolutely nobody
—would sell real estate."

Tom
said, "When I was twelve years old I used to pray for nuclear
war. Not so that millions of people would die. So that I wouldn't
have to go to school in the morning."

"Exactly!
Everything would be rubble. Life would be transformed."

"Life
would be
easier."

"More
fun! Yes."

"Sure.
But would it? I'm thirty years old, Doug. I don't pray for war
anymore."

Archer
met his gaze. "I'm thirty-two and I still pray for magic."

"Is
that what we're talking about here?"

"Something
extraordinary, anyhow. Unless you
are
crazy."

"It's
a possibility," Tom said. "Crazy people see things
sometimes. I had an aunt Emily who used to talk to Jesus. Jesus lived
in the attic. Once in a while he'd move over to the bedroom and
they'd have a chat while she combed her hair. Everybody in the family
thought this was terrifically funny. Then one day Aunt Emily sliced
open her wrists in a warm bath. Her landlord found her a week later.
She left a note saying Jesus told her to do it."

Archer
reflected on this a moment. "You're saying there are serious
things at stake."

"Either
way, it seems to me. My sanity. Or sanity in general."

"Screw
sanity in general." "My own in particular, then."

"You
want me to take this seriously," Archer said. "Okay. Fine.
But I don't know you. You're somebody I sold a house to. Somebody who
was a year behind me at Sea View Elementary. You seem like a
fairly reasonable guy. But let's be clear, Tom. You called me because
you want credentials for your sanity. I want more than that."

Tom
leaned back in his chair, considering this. Obviously time had not
much tamed Douglas Archer. Maybe it was important to remember you
could pull a jail sentence and a stiff fine for throwing stones at
Buicks, especially if you were old enough to know better. Tom had no
love for Belltower, but neither did he especially want to see morning
glories tying up traffic down by the car lots (though it would piss
Tony off no end).

Still,
there was something seductive about Archer's attitude,
especially after a night of nervous hysteria. He said, "You know
some of the old trails up through here?"

Archer
nodded.

"Let's
scout the territory behind the house." Tom stood up. "Then
we'll talk about what to do."

They
followed an old, nearly overgrown foot trail into the dense woods
behind the back yard.

Tom
had forgotten what it was like to walk through these big Pacific
Northwest pinewoods, this density of moss and fern and dripping
water. He followed the broad back of Archer's checkerboard shirt
along the trail, bending under branches or stepping over small,
glossy freshets of rainwater. The sound of cars passing on the Post
Road faded as they climbed a gentle slope westward. All this talk of
magic—his own and Archer's—seemed much more plausible here.

Archer
said, "There were Indians living in through here a hundred years
ago. Used to be an old totem pole in among the cedars, but they
dragged that off to the town museum."

"Who
uses this trail?"

"The
Hopfner kids down the road, but they moved away a long time ago.
Hikers sometimes. There are trails all the way up from the housing
development along Poplar. It's mostly overgrown down by your place—I
don't suppose anybody goes through that way these days."

He
paused behind Archer where the trail banked away through an open
meadow full of thistles and fireweed, past an old tin shack overgrown
with ivy: someone's long-abandoned store of firewood, Tom
guessed, the structure obscured and sagging moss-thick to the
ground. Archer pushed ahead into the deeper forest and Tom followed
until the tree shadows closed around him again.

They
hiked for more than an hour, uphill through pine forest until they
reached a rocky knoll. Archer clambered up the pinnacle, turned back
and extended a hand to Tom. "We've come up a good height,"
he said, and Tom turned back and was surprised by a sweeping view not
just to the Post Road but all the way to the coast—the town of
Belltower clustered around the bay, the pulp mill lofting a gray
plume of smoke.

"This
is why people come up here," Archer said. "It's not a
well-known trail. If we'd followed the other branch we would have
ended up in some serious swamp. Up this way, it gets nice."

"Is
there a name for this place?"

"Somebody
must call it something. Everything's got a name, I guess."

"You
come here a lot?"

"Once
in a while. I come for the perspective. From here— on a nice
day—everything looks good. The fucking parking lots look good."

"You
hate this town," Tom said.

Archer
shrugged. "If I hated it, I'd leave. Though from what I've seen
I doubt I could find anything significantly better. Hate is a strong
word. But I dislike it a whole lot— sometimes." He paused and
looked sidelong at Tom, shading his face against the sun. "I do
admit to wondering what brought you back here."

"You
never asked."

"It's
not polite. Specially when someone obviously doesn't want to talk
about it." He turned back to the view. The sunlight was intense.
"So are we still being polite?"

"My
wife left me," Tom said. "I lost my job. I was drinking for
therapy."

Archer
scrutinized him more closely now.

Tom
said, "You're wondering whether an alcoholic can be trusted when
he sees strange things at night. Fair enough. But it's been more than
a month since I touched any kind of liquor. As an explanation, a good
case of DTs would be almost comforting."

"How
long were you drinking?"

"Seriously?
Since the job fell through. Maybe three months."

Archer
said, "I can think of a couple of tough questions." "Such
as?"

"Lots
of people lose their jobs. Lots of people go through divorce. They
don't all jump down a bottle."

There
were lots of ways to answer that. The most succinct would be,
It's
none of your business.
But
maybe he had made it Archer's business; he had raised the issue of
his own stability. It wasn't a hostile question.