The Croning (26 page)

Don flushed. “Oh, nothing much. Couldn’t sleep.”

There came a long, humming pause. Michelle said, “What are you doing, then? Surely you must be doing something. I don’t hear the telly.”

“No, no television. I’m reading—”

“Reading! I’m shocked. Anything good?”

He sweated now. His pulse throbbed in his ears. Thousands of miles away and he felt no less guilty than a boy caught in the act of some dastardly mischief. “Oh, nothing good. Just the usual. Rocks.” He laughed weakly. “Isn’t it always about rocks?”

More static, then, “Yes, except when it’s not.” Her tone was unreadable over the connection. “Beastly hot here. We’re on the cruise, by the way. We docked in Istanbul this morning. Holly’s burned to a crisp—she’s keeping below decks for a day or two. No air conditioning, can you believe it?”

“It’s a crime.”

“What?” Michelle shouted.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he shouted back.

“Are you sure you’re quite all right, love?”

“Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

“No reason. Everything’s jolly, then? No problems?”

“Problems? Heavens, no dear. Don’t worry about me. Enjoy your trip.”

“I’ve got to go. Give Kurt my love. I’ll call you from town, later.” Michelle disconnected while Don was fumbling his goodbyes.

He stared at the mess of books and papers spread everywhere and shook his head. “Good lord, whatever Kurt’s got is contagious. Don, old bean, you need your head examined.” He put everything away and kept a couple of the latter editions for bedside reading. He locked the door behind him, chuckling in retrospect over his foolishness. A bit of domestic skullduggery had never killed anyone.

Much later, he paused to wonder why she’d called him at that hour, knowing full well he’d be fast asleep.

6.

Don saw to the record-keeping, Kurt performed the hefting and toting. As Don sardonically pointed out, occasionally the lad’s brawn was good for something besides swelling his collar. By noon they’d amassed an impressive stack of boxes. Unfortunately, they’d but scratched the surface of the project.

“At this rate, it’ll only take another five or six months and we’ll have all your junk buttoned up and ready to go,” Kurt said, wiping his brow on a beer bottle. He was into his second six-pack of Rolling Rock and getting mellow. He’d stripped to a pair of running shorts and a sleeveless tee shirt. His neck and shoulders flushed deep red from exertion and alcohol. That’s when it happened, the lightning bolt of inspiration that ruined Don’s day. “Say, Dad. I think tomorrow we should take the day and go camping like we talked about the other night. I haven’t gone since—well, since me and Holly were kids.” He nodded, animating as the notion took root. “I’ve a few more days of vacation. We can fish for trout up the creek, roast marshmallows; the whole bit.”

Don swallowed bile. When he became capable of speech, he said, “I hoped you were joking. Where on earth did you dream up this cockamamie scheme?”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “I dreamed about camping.”

“What the blazes—”

“I was in grade school again, nine or ten. It was late summer and you and Mom and me were on the hill behind the house. You’d caught some fish and Mom was frying them in a skillet. Then you took me hiking into the woods. We were hunting for rabbits or something—you had on your old Elmer Fudd hat with the dumb ear flaps, and carried that single shot .22 we used to keep lying around. Whatever happened to that rifle, anyway?”

“I don’t recall. Rusting away in the barn, I suppose. Hunting’s not for me, you know that.” Guns made Don nervous. The idea of shooting an animal made him slightly sick to his stomach. His youngest brother, Tom, hunted squirrels as a boy when they were growing up in Connecticut and it always disgusted Don to no end.

“We got separated. In the dream. I wandered through the woods and started getting panicky, like someone or something was watching me, chasing me. That’s how dreams are, right? There were kids playing in a meadow. I called to them for help, but they didn’t hear me. They were dressed in dirty pajamas and playing near some big rocks. The pjs kinda make sense since the kids were bald like those poor tykes in cancer wards. They sang a nursery rhyme that I couldn’t make out and when I got close, they ran behind the rocks and disappeared. Then you put your hand on my shoulder and I woke up. End of dream. Thing is, I’ve been dreaming about this area for a few months now, going back to the days me and Holly ran wild. Once or twice a week, I get these.”

“And that makes you want to go camping?” Don suspected his son’s sudden interest in exploring had everything to do with their recent discoveries in the attic. His hands shook.

“Nostalgia, Pop. It reminded me of when I went exploring around here. Holly tagged along and…who was that kid? One of the farmboys who lived around here I think. There’s this enormous tree in the hills back there. I ever tell you about the tree? Petrified wood.” Kurt rapped his fist on the wall. His manner seemed more manic than usual; his eyes darted and he paced. “Yep, and we found some other things. A shed, some fire pits, pieces of rusted metal like the doors on a box car. Hell, Lyle claimed he saw some skulls, but he couldn’t find the place again. Crazy.”

Nostalgia, my eye
, Don thought with mounting unease. “There were some logging camps in the hills. Many, many years ago. They shut down before we moved into the area. Sheriff Camby said a few tramps lived way back there in tarpaper shacks and lean-tos like Snuffy Smith up until the ’70s. Mainly Vietnam vets who couldn’t adjust to the civilian life. Everything’s gone by now.”

“I know I’ve seen those rocks in the photos. I wonder if Aunt Yvonne knew about an Indian burial ground or something. Maybe I can find them again.”

“Holy cripes. You’re really convincing me to go camping with that malarkey.”

“It’ll be fun. We’ve got nice weather all week. Call Uncle Argyle; he’s not doing anything.”

“I don’t know—”

“You owe me for all this backbreaking labor. Besides, if you’re nice, I’ll help you move more of this stuff next weekend. What do you say?”

There wasn’t anything
to
say. Don felt like a rat in a trap. He rang Argyle and relayed the invitation, hoping the old boy would beg off. Argyle prided himself the consummate outdoorsman and had indeed spent a good deal of his life tromping in the wilderness. He said he’d be thrilled to “wallow about the brush and bivouac for a night in the wild” and promised to conscript Hank to serve as a porter. Ten in the morning sound about right? Don’s fate was sealed just that quickly.

Good grief, don’t be such a ninny
! He slapped his hand on the table.
You’re afraid of the dark; won’t go into the cellar to save your life; avoid sleeping in your own bed if you can humanly avoid it. My word, Don. Are you the same fellow who once caved the Dahl Sultan with a miner’s lamp and a knapsack? What’s done you in?
The self-motivation didn’t help much. Dread remained, a clammy vise on the back of his neck. He hoped he wouldn’t disgrace himself by succumbing to hysterics or wetting his pants. To be on the safe side he packed three gas lamps and a bottle of Valium he’d saved as insurance against Michelle’s threatened hike into the Appalachians. At least
that
trek never materialized, praise the gods.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Backyard Expedition

(Now)

1.

T
he hike was predictably delayed—Argyle didn’t bother to inform Hank of the camping trip the day before, thus they arrived two hours late. Worse, Kurt was notoriously disorganized, while Argyle was the polar opposite; the type who suffered near paralysis from dithering over the most trivial detail. Come noon, the Miller kitchen proved a disaster area of loose camping gear, sleeping rolls and various articles of mismatched clothing.

“Gads, people!” Don brandished a sock hat and a pair of insulated gloves. “We are not sailing to the Antarctic. The weather forecast is sixty with a low of forty-five. It isn’t even going to rain. And if you think I’m walking more than a mile, you’re off your rockers. Let’s get moving before nightfall, eh?” The idea of spending a night in the dark still made his stomach roil and his palms sweat. Since the situation appeared to be inescapable, the sooner they got started, the sooner they’d come home.

No one bothered to answer him, but they began to pack more quickly nonetheless and by mid-afternoon the small company trundled up the hill behind the house and followed the trail along the creek bank. It had rained the previous evening and the grass soaked the cuffs of their pants.

“Does the county own all this?” Hank said, sweeping his arm in a vague arc. “Or is it private land?” His broad face shone with sweat.

“Some of this is ours,” Don said. “Darned if I know where the lines are, though. Somebody else owns a big piece of this area—Goodwyn or one those other lumber companies. Goodwyn owns mineral rights to every parcel in this county from what I understand; it’s in the fine print on the deed.”

“Crooked bastards,” Argyle said and spat.

“I think the state controls a lot of this,” Kurt said. “You’ll notice the logging is selective and there’s some prime areas completely untouched. I bet the boys at the capitol are saving it for a rainy day.”

“Ever walk all the way to the source?” Argyle said, indicating the creek. He wore heavy lace-up boots, a wool coat and a soft cap and carried a madrone staff that he constantly used to flip rocks and sticks. Don couldn’t help but see the truant schoolboy masquerading as a white-haired old man.

“It peters out a couple of miles farther on,” Kurt said over his shoulder. He and Hank wore big packs. Kurt seemed to be more comfortable than his huffing and puffing counterpart. “The brush gets thick and it basically disappears. We aren’t going that far. I want to pitch the tent up ahead at this one spot—remember the fishing hole, Pop? Then we can explore a bit.”

Explore a bit
. Don wondered what that meant. Kurt’s sudden interest in checking out his old stomping grounds seemed increasingly out of character. He’d long since professed to set aside childish things in favor of career ambitions and the manly hobbies of collecting cars and women.
He wants to find that pile of rocks. Lord knows why, but the boy’s got his cap set
. Don studied his son’s powerful, determined stride. Maybe Kurt’s dreams were worse than he let on. He was the stubborn type, prone to exorcising demons via head-on confrontation.

The lazy, golden afternoon was further mellowed by a cool breeze and lengthening shadows. The creek gurgled through rocks and rushes and songbirds chirped in branches that yet kept most of their leaves. Clouds hung white and fat; they shifted and wobbled and remade themselves as animals and faces. A flock of geese honked as it skimmed low over a marsh across the way, then climbed rapidly and vanished beyond the ridgelines. Thule barked and raced ahead, peeing on every other bush and hunting for more birds to rubberneck.

After a bit, Hank called for a break; he and Kurt lighted cigarettes while Argyle scoped the valley with a pair of Zeiss field glasses he claimed to have looted from the corpse of a German Lieutenant during World War Two. That would’ve made him a stripling pup of seventeen or eighteen, a mere four years Don’s elder, but he figured the tale was true. Beneath the genteel exterior, Argyle seemed rather fierce. He habitually concealed a bayonet in its honing scabbard at his belt—another wartime memento. Don begged him to leave it home when they gathered at the tavern, convinced the old goat would stick some loudmouthed lout and get hauled to prison. Argyle grinned and told him not to worry so much—he’d go gray before his time.

Don shaded his eyes and studied the valley behind them. The house was tucked like a matchbox in a fold of the terrain, partially obscured by the barn and the trees; reddish, westerly light illuminated its walls, pooled in its dead glass windows. Don thought its windows resembled a spider’s eyes, its body a spider’s body, its legs folded in the waving grass. He considered bumming a smoke from one of the guys and instead took a drink from his water bottle and watched Argyle who’d squatted near a rotten stump alive with termites. Don had an uncomfortable epiphany—he wondered who was watching him and his friends. A goose ran across his grave and the bucolic panorama attained a sinister grandeur.

Cigarettes finished and water swallowed, the party commenced moving again.

2.

Eventually, they arrived at the proposed campsite, a shady bower beneath a stand of maples ten yards from a pool that teemed with minnows and trout. The area had overgrown in the many years between visits, but the four of them soon trampled the bushes and cleared off the ring of stones that formed a fire pit. Despite himself, Don was taken aback by the rush of memories of bringing Michelle and the kids here to fish and tell stories around the fire, and after, look at the vast expanse of stars through the telescope he rescued from the attic and brought along on their excursions. Kurt and Don pitched the tent while Hank gathered deadwood. Argyle supervised, his professed area of expertise. Dinner was pork and beans and a half case of import beer.

Velvet darkness settled upon their tiny hollow of light. It grew chill and a damp breeze rustled in the branches and scattered leaves. Argyle announced he needed his beauty sleep and turned in. Hank followed suit a few minutes later, his face red from fatigue and too many beers.

Kurt said, “I think Winnie’s going to leave me. At first I figured she was having an affair. It’s been less than two years. That’s not long, really. She’s alone…her temp job at the college—she helps the Chinese kids who don’t savvy English—it’s only part time. I work fifty, sixty hours a week. I’m gone ten days out of the month. India, Asia, you know. Wherever. She’s got a lot of time to kill. Bored and lonely can be a bad combination.”

Don stirred coals with a stick and kept his mouth shut. The wind moaned and darkness shifted around them.