In The Forest Of Harm (5 page)

Joan took off her sunglasses. “This is serious forest, isn't it?”

Mary shrugged. “Occasionally people don't make it out. Mostly, though, they do.” She smiled at Joan. “We certainly will.”

They walked back to the front of the store, where Alex had dumped six candy bars on the counter.

“You must not be into counting fat grams.” Jonathan punched the keys on the ancient wooden cash register.

“Not today.” Alex handed him a ten-dollar bill. “Me and my fat grams took separate vacations.”

“Hey, life is short.” He grinned, flicking open a brown paper bag. “And there's but a finite number of PayDays.”

Joan reappeared with three packs of Virginia Slims and a bag of red licorice whips. She held up the latter. “I heard these were good to eat on the trail.”

“Only if you like them in real life,” said Mary.

“Oh.” Joan fingered the candy, then put it back on the shelf. “Well, just give me the smokes then.”

“You might try these instead.” Jonathan grabbed a handful of Power Bars and shoved them in the sack with the cigarettes. “On the house.”

He rang up the sale. “I understand you ladies are going primitive,” he said as he gave Joan her change. “If you'd like one last shot at a flush toilet, you're welcome to use my facilities.”

“Wow, that would be great,” said Joan.

“Right over there.” He pointed to a doorway beside an old ice-cream cooler that now chilled grubs and night crawlers.

Alex and Joan headed for the bathroom.

“Would you like to walk out on the porch?” Jonathan asked Mary when the door had closed behind them.

She looked at the sun, streaming in the windows. It would be like old times—Jonathan, close to her in the warm October light. She smiled, but shook her head. “Thanks, but I'd like to look around in here a minute.”

“Sure.” His smile faded, and she knew that he, too, was thinking of that long-ago afternoon. “I understand.”

A sandy-haired man dressed in jeans entered the store, asking Jonathan about good spots to find trout. While they talked, Mary looked around. Little Jump Off was the same place it had been twelve years ago—still welcoming the mountain traveler with a little of everything and not much of anything. Although Jonathan now had a TV and a computer behind the counter, she knew if she stepped outside the back door, she would find an old well and a hog-killing trough and, further on, a cool, dark, hickory-scented shack where last fall's bear hams hung curing for Christmas. Further beyond that was the spot where she had said good-bye to him that awful afternoon. Involuntarily, she closed her eyes. Some things never change, however much you wish them to.

Slowly she walked over to the far corner where her mother's loom had once stood. It was here Martha wove the rugs and tapestries that tourists bought as souvenirs. Although the wide pine planks had been trod upon by a thousand different feet, the funny little discoloration in the wood was still there. Barely discernible to someone not looking for it, if you tilted your head at just the right angle you could see it. Mary knelt and covered it with her hand. It was here, at this point in the universe, that Martha Crow's heart had stopped and Mary Crow's heart had been broken forever.

She stared at the spot until she heard Joan and Alex coming out of the bathroom. Then she stood up quickly and turned away.

She used the bathroom herself, enjoying, one final time, the amenities of toilet paper and running water. Then she joined Joan and Alex, who were admiring Jonathan's snapshot of Jodie Foster.

“Ready, scouts?” she asked them.

“I am.” Alex grabbed her bag of candy bars.

“I've got my smokes,” added Joan.

“You ladies have a safe hike.” Jonathan grinned, and raised one hand to Mary. “See you later,” he called softly. “Be careful.”

“Bye.” She followed her friends to the door. Pausing, she turned back toward the counter. “Say, Jonathan, who's the sheriff up here these days?”

“Stump Logan,” he answered. “Same old fart as when your mother . . .” He stopped abruptly, horrified at the words he'd almost said. “He's fishing on Grapevine Creek,” he amended quickly.

“Thanks,” she replied. “Maybe I'll get in touch with him sometime.” She smiled at him. “It was nice seeing you.”

“Come back soon,” he invited, his voice buoyant with hope. “No need to be a stranger.”

She waved, then hurried to the car, almost bumping into the sandy-haired fisherman, who was ambling back to his car with a new fly for his rod.

“Yo, Mary, who was that hunk behind the counter?” Joan demanded from the backseat as Alex started the engine. “I'm sensing a little
historia
here, know what I mean?”

Mary stared at the store until Alex pulled out of the parking lot. “You sensed right, counselor,” she finally replied. “
Historia
is the one thing Little Jump Off is lousy with.”

SIX

I'll be damned!” Jonathan Walkingstick hurried to the door and watched as the red Beemer skidded in the gravel and pulled back onto the highway. The car hesitated once, then sped around the curve, the blonde girl's hair blowing like flax in the wind.

Suddenly he felt as if he'd been kicked hard, and in the stomach. After twelve years, Mary Crow had just waltzed back into his life, and had looked damn good. Stylish in the way of city women, but different, too. Strong. Confident. Jonathan sighed and rubbed at an invisible spot on the windowpane. Mary must be doing okay.

He'd sneaked off to see her once in Atlanta, although he'd never told a soul. He'd accompanied his girlfriend, Lena Owle, to a teachers' convention, and while Lena attended her meetings he'd ridden the subway out to the Deckard County courthouse. He spotted Mary the instant he walked in the door. Black suit, spike heels, skirt just touching the interesting part of a woman's thigh. Her breasts pushed against the deep V of her suit lapels, and he'd felt himself growing hard just looking at her. She'd hurried into a courtroom, and he'd snuck in behind her and hastily taken a seat in the back row. For the rest of the day, or at least until he had to meet Lena, he'd watched Mary work the jury as cannily as a collie herding sheep. He had to leave before the case was decided, but he knew the accused was well on his way upriver. Afterwards he'd felt bad about the whole thing. He'd taken Lena out to an expensive Thai restaurant to make up for it. Later, when they'd made love, he took extra care to make her feel good, but he'd had to keep his eyes open. Every time they closed, all he could see was Mary.

“I saved you a seat,” he said aloud now to the empty store, using their old line from high school. Back then he'd believed that he and Mary would go on forever, saving each other seats until the hearse arrived to take one or both of them to the grave.

“Too bad you took a different bus,” he muttered as he walked back to the counter. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to hold the scent of her in his memory as long as he could. When he opened his eyes he scowled at the folded-up newspaper and tried to refocus on his puzzle. He needed a seven-letter word for “member of a nudist sect.” He had just begun to write in “adahist” when the cowbell rang again.

“Hey, Jonathan!” Billy Swimmer, the skinny man who'd been shilling for photographs at the Demon's Den, stood in the doorway, his Sioux headdress tucked under his arm. “How goes it at Little Jerk Off?”

“Fine, Billy,” Jonathan replied, scarcely looking up from his puzzle. He figured Billy must have spotted Mary and her friends as they drove past the Den. Like most inhabitants of small towns, Billy Swimmer could smell gossip in the air much like a mule could sense a coming storm. Now he was up here to sniff out whatever juicy tidbits Mary might have left behind. Jonathan concentrated on his crossword as Billy strolled over and hopped up on the counter.

“You haven't heard of anybody needin' help doing anything, have you? Nobody wants to have their picture taken and I still need a couple of hundred bucks to get my fiddle out of hock.”

Jonathan looked up reluctantly from the paper. “Zell Crisp was in here saying you owe him a couple of hundred bucks, too.”

“Well, yeah,” admitted Billy with a helpless, snaggletoothed smile.

Jonathan shook his head. “Sorry. If I hear of anything I'll let you know.”

“Say, wasn't that Mary Crow I saw drivin' up here in that red BMW?” Billy now revealed his true subject of interest, plucking a speck of dirt off one of the white pin-feathers at the base of the headdress.

“Yep.”

“Is she coming back?” he asked just above a whisper, forgetting his feathers and staring at Jonathan with intense dark eyes.

Jonathan shook his head and peered at 14-Down. A six-letter word for “offspring of two gametes.” “Nope. She's just going camping with some friends. They're going to Atagahi.”

“Oh.” Billy stopped short, disappointed. His brows pulled together in a frown. “Are you sure?”

“That's what she said. They loaded up on cigarettes and candy bars and took a whiz in the john. That sounds like women going camping to me.”

“Well, hell, Jonathan. I don't see why she'd come up here just for that.”

“This is her home, Billy. Why shouldn't she come here?”

“To go camping? They got plenty of campsites down in Georgia.”

Jonathan looked up from his puzzle. “Leave it alone, Billy,” he warned, his voice soft.

“I'm sorry. It's just a shame, everything that happened with you and her . . .” Billy's words trailed off awkwardly.

“Yeah.” Jonathan began to print
z-y-g-o-t-e
upwards from
adahist
. “It is.” He repressed a sigh. Everything Billy said was true, but what could he do about it? Mary was a hotshot DA in Atlanta. He ran the Little Jump Off General Store.

The cowbell jingled again. Jonathan glanced up, hoping that Mary had forgotten something, but a man he'd never seen before filled the doorway. The stranger wore hunting boots and carried both a shotgun and a battered canvas bag over his shoulder. His shirt and pants were standard Army camouflage, but with the name tag faded and the unit IDs torn off the sleeves. The sour odor of rancid fat and unwashed flesh wafted into the store. Billy gave a loud sniff and stashed his headdress safely behind the counter.

“Howdy, friend.” The word
brain-fried
flashed across Jonathan's mind. “Can I help you?”

The man flared his nostrils like a dog smelling unfamiliar territory. He turned in a slow circle, checking out the store, then he looked at Jonathan.

“I want to send a package.” His voice creaked like a rusty hinge.

“We can do that.”

“I got something that needs to go to Michigan.”

Jonathan frowned. He couldn't remember ever having sent anything to Michigan. He searched under the counter for his postage chart. “You got it wrapped up?”

“No. I'll need to buy some kind of box off you.”

Jonathan tossed his crossword puzzle beneath the cash register. “Let's see what you've got, then.”

The man strode over to the counter. Jonathan tried to look at him without staring. His eyes were strange. Deep-set and light yellow, they glittered wolf-like beneath dark brooding brows. His nose was a thin wedge, and his skin had the texture of worn bark. His fingernails were long and dirty. He could have been as young as thirty-five or as old as sixty. He shot an angry glare at Billy, who hastily scooted off the counter, then he plopped his bag on the floor and plunged one arm in elbow-deep. With a sly grin, he fished out something that looked like an old rope and dropped it on the counter.

“Holy shit!” Billy leaped backwards, nearly knocking over the potato chip display. “That's a rattler!”

The snake, which had been asleep, uncoiled swiftly on the counter and flared its neck like a cobra. Jonathan stared at it, unmoving.

The man chuckled at Billy. “Don't piss your britches, Geronimo. It's just a little old hognose.” He picked the snake up and cuddled it under his chin. “He guards my pelts when I travel. Most folks mistake him for a rattler, just like you.” He curled his upper lip at Billy, then cut his eyes toward Jonathan. “And most folks don't stick their hands in my sack but once.”

Still laughing, the man stuffed the snake inside his shirt and reached into his sack again. Billy eased forward in spite of himself, curious to see what the man was going to withdraw next. This time he fumbled around for a moment, then pulled out five luxurious raccoon pelts.

Like many bowmen, Jonathan regarded trappers and their little bottles of musk with disdain, but he did appreciate a job well done. These were big, thick pelts, expertly dressed. “You're looking at a little money there, buddy.”

“So I am,” the man growled. “You got something to ship a hundred and twenty-seven of these to Michigan in?”

Jonathan stuck his pencil behind his ear. “I'll see what I've got.”

He walked back to the storage room. A case of disposable diapers had arrived last week, and the boxy carton they'd come in might be big enough for a load of raccoon pelts. The deliveryman had kicked the carton over beside a barrel of tenpenny nails, and there it still lay, cardboard flaps open and ready for more cargo.

He carried the box out to the front and dropped it on the floor. “This is the biggest thing I've got.”

The man stretched the largest pelt out flat and stroked the fur. The tip of the fluffy ringed tail just missed brushing the side of the box.

“I reckon this'll do.” The man laid another pelt down, then a third. The box was wide enough for the skins to be layered perfectly in groups of three. Billy watched as the man fitted each thick, silver-tipped fur into the carton.

In ten minutes he'd packed them tight. Jonathan reinforced the sides and top of the carton with strapping tape. His postal scale only went up to ten pounds, so he lifted the carton and guessed its weight. “I put that at about thirty pounds,” he said, bouncing the case up and down. He handed the box to Billy. “What do you think?”

Billy jiggled the box and nodded his head. “Sounds about right. Don't forget to charge extra for snakes, though.”

Ignoring Billy's remark, Jonathan hefted the box on the counter. “Okay, buddy. Who are you sending these to?”

The man took out a worn piece of notebook paper from a leather pouch around his neck and handed it to Jonathan. “Send it there. C.O.D.”

Jonathan copied down the Michigan mailing address. “You got a return address?”

“Just put Henry Brank. General Delivery, whatever this place is called. They'll send my money here.”

“Okay.” Jonathan filled out a label and slapped it on the carton. “You want insurance?”

“I'll take my chances without.”

“It'll go out Monday.” Jonathan looked up at Henry Brank, hoping this man's business was done. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“You got any shells?”

Jonathan nodded.

“Gimme three boxes of triple-aught.”

Jonathan retrieved the ammunition and shoved it across the counter. He thought about warning this man that he was two months early on the gun season and that the wardens in both Tennessee and North Carolina would fine his ass proper if he came out of the woods with an illegal bear, but he remained silent. A big-time trapper like him ought to know the law. If this yahoo got stuck with a thousand-dollar fine for a poached bear, then so be it.

The man's gaze fell on the Polaroid of Jonathan and Jodie Foster. He grinned, exposing long teeth. “That your wife?”

“No.” Though Jodie Foster had exchanged less than ten words with him, Jonathan suddenly wanted to stand in front of the photo and shield her from the man's inquisitive eyes. “She's an actress who made a movie over at Fontana.”

“Jonathan here was in that movie,” Billy piped up proudly. “Jodie asked him herself.”

Jonathan remembered the lights, the tangle of cables that stretched over the ground, the crews of Hollywood people who'd all looked vaguely stunned, as if they'd been dropped on Mars instead of a rural county in western North Carolina. Though the real filming work had been tedious, the pay was good and Jodie Foster had been nice even to nobodies like him. It had been the cushiest job he'd ever had, and he wished some other big star would come along and make another movie.

The man dug a crumpled bill out of the leather pouch. “I'll give you five dollars for it.”

Billy cackled. “He'd sooner sell his own grandmother.”

The man looked at Billy as if he were some yapping dog to be silenced with a kick. “That may well be, Geronimo, but I'm not interested in his grandmother.”

Jonathan shook his head, noticing a louse that had crawled out from the stranger's thick black beard. He tried to place the accent. This Henry Brank spoke mountain speech, but not with the twang of southern Appalachia. “Sorry. It's not for sale.”

The yellow eyes flashed for an instant, then settled on the knife protruding from Jonathan's belt.

“That a Bowie?”

Jonathan nodded.

“You any good with it?”

Of all the things Indians were supposed to be good at, archery and knife throwing were the only two Jonathan Walkingstick had mastered. He'd never learned the Cherokee syllabary or the rules for stickball, but he could, without fail, make bows that sang true and plant the business end of Ribtickler anywhere he wanted.

“I've skinned a few squirrels.” Unabashed, Jonathan looked the man full in the face.

“They're good knives.” The eerie saffron gaze slid away as quickly as it had come. “Better than Barlows.” Brank stacked his shells in a pile. “I need a few more things.”

He shuffled up and down the aisles of the store, pondering the vitamin display, reading the cereal boxes, finally wandering over to the bulletin board.

He studied the wall closely, first looking at all the photos of hunters grinning over their dead quarry, then reading all the notes posted for Appalachian Trail hikers who were currently somewhere between Springer Mountain, Georgia, and Mount Kahtadin, Maine. His mouth twitched in an up-and-down motion as he scrutinized each one.

“You trap them coons somewhere near the AT?” Billy hopped back up on the counter and fished a piece of grape bubblegum from Jonathan's penny candy jar.

“Nope.” The man smiled at the photo of Alice Andrews, who'd vanished two decades ago.

“Well, if you've got a picture of yourself and that snake, you ought to put it up there. You might win some kind of weird pet award.”

The man wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I kinda figured you were the weird pet around here, Geronimo.”