In a Dark Wood (4 page)
My gut tightened remembering Luke’s comments. Well, fuck him.
Oh yeah. I already did.
I took the lightweight aluminum cup he offered, picked up the bottle and tilted the dregs into my coffee. He watched in silence. “Hair of the dog.” Against my will, I heard myself making an excuse. “Sometimes it helps a bad hangover if you have a little drink.”
He eyed me for a long moment, then rose and went to the sleeping bags, unzipping them. He re-zipped his own bag and proceeded to roll it into a tight neat bundle.
I drank my coffee and tried to stop shaking.
He tied his bag with a couple of quick yanks, and said flatly, “My old man was a drunk.”
It was like getting punched in the chest. I couldn’t get my breath.
He can’t really think….
“He was what you’d call a functioning alcoholic,” he added.
Maybe he’s not talking about me. Maybe he’s just…lousy at making morning after conversation
. I said, “I…thought he was a cop?”
“He was. For thirty years. He drank and he did his job and he came home and drank some more. He was a decent cop and he tried to be a decent husband and a decent father, but he basically lived his entire adult life in a bottle. There’s not a lot of room for other people in a bottle.”
“I’m not…I don’t have a drinking problem.”
Luke didn’t say anything.
“Look, I admit that I’ve gotten in the habit of drinking too much sometimes, but I’m not…I’m not an alcoholic.” I offer him a twitchy smile. “Really. I’m not.”
“I’m not judging you, Tim. It’s an illness. It’s like heart disease or HIV.”
“The hell you’re not judging,” I said. “Not that I give a damn what you think. I just hope you’re a better detective than you are…whatever this was supposed to be.”
I threw out the rest of my coffee and went to tie my own sleeping bag up.
* * * * *
Which leads us to current events.
I stared at the ragged cross in the pale bark, my chest rising and falling.
“You couldn’t be happy with dinner and a movie, could you?” I ask bitterly. “This is really all you dragged me out here for, to find this goddamned house. Why did you pretend it was anything else?”
“Look, I didn’t kidnap you. You agreed to come. I assumed you wanted to.”
“I wanted to see you again.” It sounded pathetic, but I was so far beyond pride at this point, what did it matter?
His eyes flickered. “I wanted to see you too.”
“Oh, please.” Now it was my turn to be disgusted. “You were never interested in me. You’re just looking to solve some big imaginary cold case. You’re just…bucking for
Detective First Grade
.” I mimicked the quiet pride in his voice when he’d told me his rank.
He flushed. “That’s bullshit. I wanted to ask you out before I ever heard about this skull house of yours. Rob said you weren’t interested.”
“I wasn’t. I’m not.” Now I was just being childish, but I didn’t care. I hated him for dragging me out here, for seeing me break down sobbing, for making me face things I didn’t want to face.
His mouth tightened. He said, “All right. That story about The Forester? That happens to be an urban legend that every cop in the northeast is familiar with.”
“I didn’t make it up!”
“I know.” He was cool again. “The night of the party…I watched your eyes when you were talking. You weren’t making it up.”
What the hell had he seen? I had no idea. I stared sullenly at the carvings in the tree trunk.
“Whatever you saw all those years ago…it still scares you. And I thought if I offered you a chance to face whatever that was, you’d…take it.”
“In other words, this is just a job opportunity for you.”
“I already told you…” He stopped. Shrugged. “I thought maybe we’d have a few laughs while we were at it.”
“A few laughs?
It’s
Lost Weekend
. In every
fucking
sense of the word.”
“Hey —” But he didn’t finish it, which was probably just as well. Instead he said, “It’s your call. You want to turn back or you want to see what’s ahead?”
I wanted to start back, no question about it. I looked at him. He met my eyes. I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he wanted. We’d come this far. I stared again at that little cross in the tree.
“After you, Jungle Jim,” I said bitterly.
We continued walking.
And walking.
And walking.
The markings on the tree were mine, but now Luke led the way like he knew where we were going. It was all I could do to put one stumbling foot in front of the other. Maybe there was a path, but to me it seemed like an obstacle course of poison oak and sharp stones and snake holes and bug-infested logs and things that slithered and skittered reluctantly out of our way.
Miles of it in the humid, autumn heat. My head pounded nauseatingly with each step; I felt my heart hammering in my side. I took one step and then another, and I stopped, slid off my backpack. My head swam. I was coated in cold sweat, dizzy…
Luke squatted down beside me. “You okay?”
I raised my head with an effort. “Of all the stupid questions…” I didn’t have the energy to finish it. “I’m sick,” I whispered.
“I know.”
He opened his pack and pulled out a silver flask. “Medicinal purposes,” he commented, measuring out a stingy little dose. “I think this qualifies.”
I eased the rest of the way down and rested my head on my knees. I wanted to tell him to shove his little silver cup up his tight ass. There was no way that I could.
“Here.” I looked up and he handed the cup to me, steadying my hand with his own.
I was a caricature, a movie drunk. I could hardly manage to get the cup to my mouth.
“Jesus,” he said softly.
I drank. Put my hand still holding the flask cap over my eyes. Like the magic potion in a fairytale, I felt it begin to work, burning through my system, snapping on the lights, warming, calming, illuminating…. Maybe it would make me invisible to Luke; I didn’t want him to keep looking at me like that. I wiped my face on my sleeve. “I’m okay.”
Oh, yeah. Superb. Sick and shaking — but for God’s sake: I was exhausted and sleep-deprived and out of shape; it wasn’t all withdrawal. I didn’t bother telling that to Luke, though. I’d already told him three times that weekend — possibly more — that I didn’t have a drinking problem, so there was no point telling him again.
Even I knew by then that I was lying.
Follow the signs to journey’s end: I couldn’t get through the day without a drink. I was an alcoholic. A drunk.
“You can have another shot,” Luke said. “But you may need it more later.”
“I can wait.” I didn’t even know if that was true or not.
I didn’t look into his eyes because I couldn’t bear to see the reflection of what I already heard in his voice: attraction and liking replaced by pity — and distaste.
I heard myself say, “I’ve tried to stop. I can’t.” I listened in shock to the echo of those words.
Silence.
He said finally, “Have you ever thought about getting help?”
“You mean like…AA?”
“There are other organizations, but yeah, like AA”
“I…can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
I swallowed hard. “I can’t go and talk to a bunch of people about…my problems.”
I couldn’t believe I was talking to
him
. Just imagining standing up in a room full of strangers made me feel light-headed:
Hi, I’m Timothy…
I looked at him shame-faced and said, “Besides, I don’t…think it would work for me. I don’t think I can stop on my own. I have…tried.” I dropped my head on my folded arms.
Why was I
telling
him?
And yet, as humiliating and painful as this was, there was a terrible relief in just…saying it. Admitting it once and for all.
Luke rested his broad warm hand on my back. “What about getting medical treatment?”
“You mean…a hospital?”
“Rehab, yeah.”
Voice hushed, I admitted the real truth. “I’m afraid.”
“Of rehab?”
I moved my shoulders. “Of giving up control of my life.”
He said gently, “Tim, you already gave up control.”
* * * * *
The house leaned crookedly behind a wall of forbidding trees. I didn’t remember the gingerbread trim. Those frivolous curlicues sweeping up and down the edge of the roof above the wall of trees seemed incongruous with the house of my memory. The vines and tree branches seemed to be all that was holding it rooted into place; I heard the old boards groaning like the building was ready to topple over any moment.
One or two of the upper story windows still had glass panes. The others gaped blackly or had been boarded up. The double wide front entrance was also boarded up. I couldn’t remember if there had been a door before; I didn’t remember the baby blue posts holding up the sagging portico. There was no giant tree growing out through the peeling roof; my imagination must have supplied that.
But there was no question it was the same house.
“There must have been a raised porch that ran the length of the house,” Luke said, studying the high windows.
If there had been stairs they had disappeared with the long-ago porch, and the windows were too high to climb through unless one of us boosted the other.
The building creaked ominously in the breeze, like the laughter of some demented old crone. The sound snapped me out of my trance. “We have to get out of here.”
I tried to brush past Luke. He said something, and reached for me, and I struck at his hand, ducking back when he lunged for me again. He swore. His foot caught on a tree root and he went down on one knee. I slipped out my pack and ran like a deer.
Only it wasn’t running so much as trying to plough through the brush and bushes and trees. I didn’t get more than a few yards when Luke caught me up. He grabbed my shoulder, and I turned around and swung at him.
He blocked me without particular trouble, not letting go of the steely grip he had on my shoulder.
I tried to slide out from under this hand, and when that didn’t work I tried to slug him. He grasped my fist, yanked me forward, throwing me off balance, and I crashed against him. He still had hold of my arm and he twisted it behind me, turning me away from him.
The pain was instant and startling. I cried out.
“Don’t struggle,” he said, breathing fast. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re breaking my fucking arm!”
“Then hold still, damn it.” His other arm locked across my shoulders in a restraining hold that stopped just short of actually choking me. “Tim — stop.”
