Leave the Living (4 page)

“Thanks, Uncle Gary, you too.”

Gary laughed and shook his head. “You don’t have to bullshit me, kiddo. I got a mirror in my house same as you do. I know I look like hell.”

Mick started to disagree, but the older man waved his words away and motioned to a stool.

“Getcha a drink?”

“I shouldn’t, it’s—”
too early,
he began to say, but cut his words off, both because he realized who he was speaking to and because he’d already been drinking today, much earlier than this.

“Oh, it’s okay, Mickey. I know it’s too early to be drinkin’, but for me this is a late start.” Gary tried to smile, and it fell short into a grimace.

“I’ll have one, just a beer,” Mick said, taking a seat beside his uncle.

“Atta’ boy.”

Gary signaled to the bartender that stood at the far end of the bar watching a small TV that had been muted, newscasters mouthing unheard words. After his beer had been poured and the bartender returned to his program, Mick turned a little on his stool, taking in his uncle’s haggard profile, so like his father’s and yet so different.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Mick asked, gripping the beer glass harder than he meant to. “I had to hear it from the sheriff.”

“God, I’m sorry, kiddo. I really am. I had a bad day at the casino and was on a bender yesterday. I barely woke up when the deputy came to my door last night. When he told me”—Gary sighed, raising his glass to his mouth to take a deep pull from its rim—“I lost it. There was no way I would’ve been able to call ya and say what needed to be said. I’m sorry.”

The flare of anger he’d felt at hearing Gary’s voice on the phone, and furthered by his appearance at the bar, faded and winked out like an ember alighting on snow. His uncle’s stark honesty was somehow refreshing. Mick took a drink of his beer and nodded once.

“I understand. I forget sometimes how close you two were.”

“Yeah, we…” Gary fumbled for a moment and blinked away a film of tears. “…we were good friends, that’s for sure.”

Mick reached out and put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder, squeezing once before letting go.

“I have to say, it’s good to see you, kid. It’s been years, right?”

“I know. I’m sorry I never had time to stop by when I visited, though I didn’t get up here as much as I wanted to either.”

“Life gets in the way, as they say. How’s your boy? Aaron, right?”

“Yes. He’s good. He’s progressing on his therapy, and he actually took a few steps with a walker the other day.”

“Muscular dystrophy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Mick said, taking another sip of beer. “He’s in his wheelchair most of the time, but he gets around pretty good.”

“That’s great. And Cambri, how’s she doing?”

Mick paused and finished his beer in one long swallow. “She’s getting married tomorrow.”

Gary stared at him, perhaps waiting for a punch line. When none came, he shook his head. “Ah, shit, sorry I asked.”

“It’s okay. The guy she’s with is great, wonderful with Aaron, and he makes her happy. Something I couldn’t seem to do.”

“Story of my life, kiddo. Linda left me high and dry, well, not entirely dry,” he said, swirling the last of his drink around in the nearly empty glass. “Took most of what I owned and everything that I’d bought her and moved on. I don’t even know why. That’s before I drank as much as I do now, mind you. Women are one of God’s great mysteries, just like the Bermuda Triangle—to be avoided at all costs.”

Mick couldn’t help but huff a small laugh.

The bartender approached and motioned to his empty beer glass. Mick paused and then nodded. When a full drink was in front of him, he drank off the foam, the cool carbonation sluicing away the bad taste that had been in his mouth all morning.

“I’m happy for her, but in truth I’m angry because a part of me is still in love with her,” Mick said after a time. “Guess I’m just pissed off at myself for letting her go.”

“When a woman wants to go, they go, kiddo. Force of fuckin’ nature.”

“The good ones are, and she’s a good one.”

Mick downed half of his beer, letting the belch that rose slide out the side of his mouth. “The end of everything came at once, I guess. Burying my dad and my marriage in one weekend.”

“Ah jeez, kid. I’m sorry I even brought her up. You’ve got enough on your plate right now. Listen, what kind of help do you need? My logging crew is down for the storm over the next few days. I can come out to your dad’s and go through stuff with you or whatever you need.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’m going out there this afternoon to start on his paperwork, and I’m sure I’ll have to meet with the funeral home tomorrow.”

Gary hissed a breath out and finished his drink. He sank lower on the bar stool, deflated like the hot-air balloon Mick had spied on the ceiling of his room.

“You still doing your abstract decorating or whatever you call it?” Gary asked, almost reading his mind.

“Anamorphosis. Yeah. Still going strong, though business isn’t as good as it was last year.”

“It never is, it seems. Amazing that rich bastards have you come in and put pictures into the paint on their walls and ceilings. It boggles me, but I’m uncultured swine, as Linda used to say.”

“It’s definitely not for everybody, but it keeps me busy.”

Gary slapped him on the back and slowly lowered himself to the floor.

“Say, I gotta hit the head. Order yourself something to eat, and I’ll have another with you.”

“No, I have to get going. There’s”—he paused, imagining his father’s house, quiet and hollow and waiting for him to come home—“things that have to get done, no matter how much I don’t want to do them.”

Gary reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“I hear ya, kiddo. It was hell on me and your dad when our father died, but you’ll get through it. You’re a strong one. David always said so. What helped me was doing something we used to do together, something special, you know? Speaking of which, your dad had his portable spear house staked down out on a good spot in the lake there. We were actually out the day before…” Gary fumbled with his words and shook his head. “Anyways, the ice won’t have frozen too thick if you want to go down and sit a spell. I know you and him used to do that a lot. He was just telling me the other day…” Gary’s voice faded, and he shook his head again, dropping it forward to look at the ground as if all the strength had given out of his neck. “Anyways, it’s there. You call me if you need something—anything.”

“I will,” Mick said, holding out his hand.

Gary forewent the shake and embraced him, hugging him close. The scent of whiskey hung about the older man like cologne. After a long moment, Gary released him, held him at arm’s length, and then walked to the restroom. Mick finished what was left of his beer and began to head for his room when the bartender called out, stopping him in his tracks.

“Hey, this ain’t a charity, fellah.”

Mick turned back, not understanding until the angry-eyed man behind the bar gestured at the empty glasses.

“Good old Uncle Gary,” Mick said to himself as he drew out his wallet.

8

The road was almost indistinguishable from the ditches as he drove through the windswept and silent forest. The trees to either side of the narrow county road were thick and old with gnarled trunks bulged and knotted by time. Their branches reached out in spindly nakedness; their leaves forgotten corpses somewhere beneath the blanketing snow.

Mick counted off the miles, a habit from the time he’d started driving. It was four miles from the last neighbor’s mailbox to the winding drive and then another six in to their house. How many times had he traveled the road? A hundred? A thousand? All the hours spent coming and going. All the same until it was different. Until something changed it.

Their house. He’d always thought of the reclusive place as “theirs,” even after moving away and starting a family of his own. His father hadn’t wanted it any other way, always saying that someday the place would be his alone and that he should start paying the property taxes just to get used to the sting of it.

Mick let the smile form and then fall from his face. He glanced at the Tahoe’s dashboard, reading the luminescent clock. Only a little past noon and already the sky was darkening. Snow fell in light, swirling curtains that broke apart and formed before the headlights like capering waifs dancing in the storm. The drifts crunched beneath the tires sounding like a thousand small bones breaking in a continuous grinder.

The county road ended in a wall of trees, their heights intimidating as the upper reaches of their tops disappeared from sight into the falling haze of the storm. A tunnel of sorts branched off from the main road and curved away in an icy trail covered by fresh snow. Depressions of tire tracks were evident, their dual lines softened by the new powder, but he saw them nonetheless. Sheriff’s cruisers, an ambulance, and who knew what other official vehicles had treaded the drive over the past days. Mick glanced at the far edge of the dead end and wondered just where his father had been cutting firewood when the widow maker had come plummeting down to end his life.

He shuddered and twisted the steering wheel, guiding the SUV toward the driveway he knew so well. The interlocking branches overhead drew strange reflections on the polished paint of the hood, and the light dimmed further. He hadn’t ever been afraid of the long driveway during his childhood, not even once when his father had lost track of time in his woodworking shop and forgotten to pick him up from where the trundling yellow school bus had left him to wait in the darkening light of a late fall afternoon. He had stood there, staring around at the dying foliage that still clung to the trees, the leaves clicking against one another like the death rattle of a dying man. He’d decided to walk the six miles to the house. And though his imagination had tried to run away with him, creating jagged figures out of shadows and flitting shapes that were most likely squirrels scurrying to their nests, he’d made it home without giving in to the encroaching fear. Instead, he’d enjoyed the walk, listening to the low breeze, smelling the last breaths of fall, the chill of it on his face.

But now, piloting in through the building snow, the wonder was lost, replaced by a sickening ache of awareness in his chest. The world he’d known was gone, burnt by the fires that were kindled from childhood and became an inferno in the years of growing up.

Soon the trees on the right became sparser, giving way to the openness of the lake beyond. The expanse of flat white stretched out in an oval shape, not a pothole like so many other homes were built next to claiming “lakeshore frontage” but an honest lake that held fish year-round. The wind blew across the field of ice, piling up over four feet high in places while in others leaving its shining surface to gaze at the gray sky.

Cambri had once teased him about his father hiding him away from the world in this place, and it wasn’t the first time someone had made that observation. After his mother had died in childbirth, his father had sold their modest two-story home close to Warren and moved here, retiring from his position at the paper mill. He’d built the house as far away from the traveled road as possible and set up his woodworking shops as a hobby for retirement, though at the time he hadn’t been more than twenty-nine. Mick had asked him once if that was true, if he was hiding away from something here, some unknown assailant from the past he was terrified would find them and even a score that Mick knew nothing about. His father had merely chuckled and shook his head saying there was no one to run from in this world except yourself.

The drive followed the curve of the lake and climbed to a level enclosure of trees surrounding a clearing in which sat the house. It was a wide and dark structure of logs with a covered porch spanning its front. His father had been meticulous about keeping the wood cured with gallons upon gallons of stain, so the hearty brown stood out in stark contrast to the white icing of its roof. Its windows were black reflections that stared at him as he approached, a wooden wind chime his father had made jangled against the railing. Two outbuildings stood to the left near the trees, their forms muted in the falling snow.

Mick pulled even with the house and shut the SUV off. He sat, marveling that his father wouldn’t be stepping out the front door, happy and excited to see him. He sighed and looked at the slope of his old sledding trail he’d glided down as a kid. The snow erased the lake beyond into a white wall that climbed until it simply became another portion of the low clouds.

Before opening the door, he took inventory. His father’s keys were in his pants pocket, and he patted his sweater feeling for his cell phone. It wasn’t there. He ran through all his pockets again, even raising his ass off the seat to feel there. Nothing. He checked the Tahoe’s center console and then the floorboards, though he knew he hadn’t placed it anywhere in the car.

“I left it in the fucking hotel room. Damn it!” He slapped the steering wheel once as the sheriff’s words floated back to him—
Be careful going out to your dad’s place. That’s a long way out, and the snow’s just gonna keep falling.