The Passenger (22 page)

I
DIDN'T SLEEP
a wink that first night at Camp Wildacre. During the day, I'd figured out how to go about my business without turning into a quivering ball of nerves, but nighttime presented a problem. While it seemed unlikely I'd have any visitors, one is most vulnerable at rest and I had to take measures in the event of unwanted trespassers. I found a shovel in the landscaper's shed and dug a few strategically spaced holes in the vicinity of my new home. It took a few afternoons to whittle branches into spikes, but eventually I had about twenty and I fashioned four Apache foot traps.

Booby traps aren't exactly my area of expertise and even I was surprised I would find a reason to use this skill. I'd made my first Apache foot trap more than fifteen years ago. Logan had taught me, back when I didn't know him so well. You dig a hole at least two feet wide and deep, then place several spikes of wood in the walls of the hole, the sharp ends jutting out of the dirt toward the center at a downward angle. If an animal (or human) steps into the trap, when he tries to pull his leg out, it gets caught on the wood daggers.

The day I helped Logan make his Apache foot trap, he told me he was trying to cut down on the deer population, which was becoming a menace to the community. There had been three deer-related traffic deaths in the past year. I'd read about it myself. Then a few days later this boy on the football team confronted Logan after he made some choice comments about the footballer's girlfriend. The footballer had forty pounds on Logan and looked like he was about to swing. Logan made a run for it, straight into the woods. The footballer gave chase and Logan led him straight to the trap. Logan jumped right over it. The football player didn't. He was out the entire season.

The cabins at Wildacre were organized kind of like the moons around Saturn. My cabin was at two o'clock. I set four traps in a semicircle about ten yards from my door. It might have been overkill, but the days were mine to do with as I pleased, and I figured it would give me peace of mind. I very much liked the idea of sleeping through the night. When I was ready to be on my way again, I would fill those holes right back up.

October 19 was the second night I spent in my new home. The air smelled so pure I couldn't help but breathe more than necessary. The moon was half-full. I couldn't make out all of the faces in the craters that I used to see as a child. I lay outside on the dirt and stared at the sky until my eyes couldn't stay open any longer. The sound of crickets was deafening. I tried not to think about all of the mosquito bites I'd find come morning. Well after midnight, I retired to my cabin and slept the sleep of the innocent. In the morning it felt as if I'd caught up on years of missed slumber.

I would never forget what I had done, the mistakes I had made, the innocent and guilty people I'd left in my wake. But when I weighed my crimes against the world, I still believed that I was owed a decent existence. I believed it was fair for me to find some small pleasure in life. In those few weeks I had at Camp Wildacre, I tried to find it.

In the morning, I'd wake and make coffee and oatmeal with my propane stove. I ate breakfast on the dock of the lake, as a few mallard ducks arrived and departed, paying me no mind. Sometimes in the afternoon, I roamed the campsite, found a hiking trail, and cleared my head with a good long walk. If the day warmed up just a bit, I took a dip in the lake. I swam every day I could, even though it left my fingers numb and my lips blue for a full hour afterward. It made me feel alive. And free.

My first thunderstorm at Wildacre reminded me that this was not a long-term solution to my housing problem. The temperature dipped twenty degrees, and I was wrapped in my sleeping bag in a cabin that could barely keep out the rain. Thunder rattled the entire bunk. It felt as if lightning could split the A-frame right in half.

Occasionally I'd venture out for provisions, but nothing more. I should have kept my head down, but after two weeks straight of admiring that glorious landscape, I wanted to see something else.

One day at the beginning of November, I walked straight out of camp and strolled along the road to this hamlet I'd spotted on my last journey out. Three Corners was basically a poor man's strip mall. It was home to a small grocery store, a post office, and a bar that had no name, as far as I could tell, but it looked as inviting to me as the crystal-clear lake had on my first visit to camp.

I picked up a town crier and sat at the bar. I was wearing old jeans, a flannel shirt, and a wool coat. With my blue knit cap covering my shorn locks, no one paid me much mind. I remembered that night in Casper, when I first met Domenic—the way the heads turned for Debra Maze, doing her best impression of Blue. Now I was practically invisible. There was a time I wouldn't have gotten pleasure from being undesirable, but now I saw it as a superpower.

“What'll it be?” the bartender asked.

I ordered ale since I had a bottle of bourbon back at camp. I read an article about a local tree surgeon, detailing specific root rots and suggesting preventative measures to manage the forestry around your home. It seemed more like an advertisement for his services than news, but it held my attention until the next set of customers arrived.

When the door swung open, I heard a woman giggle over a man's deep, modulated voice, finishing up some story that must have been hilarious.

“So I gave him the money and said fuck it. You only live once.”

I could have presented some serious arguments against his last statement, but I refrained. The city man was wearing designer jeans, a brown cable-knit sweater, and fashionable leather hiking boots that hadn't seen too many trails. The woman was bone thin, aside from her breasts. She was in a similar outfit, jeans and gray cardigan, and yet the pair looked as if they were from a foreign country.

A hush spread through the watering hole as soon as the duo arrived. It was as if their presence somehow sucked the life out of the room. Watching my fellow patrons, I observed a traffic jam of silent exchanges, followed by hostile sidelong glances at the new customers. None of this was lost on the city couple, who went mute as soon as they saw all of those scolding eyes on them. The duo sat down on their bar stools and looked like they were trying to shrink into themselves.

“What'll it be?” the bartender said to the city couple.

The man in the sweater ordered a beer to blend and the skinny woman ordered a vodka soda. They both said thank you and smiled and tried to ignore the eyes boring holes in the center of their backs.

“Do you want to leave tonight or tomorrow?” the man in the sweater asked. He kept his voice low, as if having a conversation in a bar is considered impolite.

“Tonight,” the bone-thin woman said. “There'll be less traffic.”

It was easy to feel a certain solidarity with the locals since I blended so well. But the city couple had inadvertently given me a gift so beguiling that I couldn't help but feel tremendous gratitude. Others like them were around—many of them, as far as I could tell. The few times I'd ventured out on the weekends, the town seemed to have doubled in size with moneyed folk from the city getting away from it all. Monday, they'd be gone. And in winter, they'd come less and less as the snow piled up. But their homes would remain empty for the taking. It was quite possible that I could find myself living in the lap of luxury at least five days a week.

The city couple departed, presumably for their country home, which would soon be vacant. I waited a moment and heard some grumblings from the other patrons about how the likes of them were raising taxes and ruining the local economy. I stepped outside as they drove off in the Sweater Man's Mini Cooper.

I got into my Jeep, followed them two miles up the road, and saw the Mini turn into a private driveway. From the road their home was completely obscured by foliage. If they were leaving tonight, I could check back Monday. I drove back to Wildacre, made a can of beef stew on my propane stove. I sat on the dock bundled up in my hat and my scarf and stared at the stars.

I
WOKE
the next morning to the sound of rifle shots. The blasts seemed to be coming from a distance and I didn't hear any voices, so I let myself drift off again. It was hunting season, and I'd have to get used to the sound of buckshot. Guns I could learn to sleep through, but human sounds would always grip me awake.

It was a human sound that came next. It was a howl, a man's wild scream of pain right outside my cabin door. I heard footsteps approach and other male voices trying to discern what I had already figured out. One of the hunters had fallen into one of my traps. In retrospect, the Apache snares might not have been a genius plan. They were intended to alert me at night should someone be hunting me, not to ensnare any innocent bystander and inadvertently alert him of my presence.

I peered through the window and saw three men surrounding the unfortunate one caught in my trap. One man began to notice the strategically placed branches on the ground outside my bunk. He took a few cautious steps and then swept the branches away with the butt of his rifle. I watched him as he stared down into the giant toothy holes in the ground.

“Found another one,” he shouted. “What the fuck is going on here? This a camp for kids, right?”

While the two other men helped dislodge their friend's leg from my trap, the fourth guy uncovered my third and fourth traps and began roaming the grounds looking for, well, me.

“Someone is living here,” the most curious hunter said as he entered the cabin right across from mine.

The exit to my cabin was out of their line of vision, but to get to my truck, I'd have to run right in front of three men with guns—four, if we were counting the one just trapped in a hole. I took the sleeping bag off the bed and shoved it into a cubbyhole that was out of view, slipped on my shoes and coat, and grabbed a lighter and the keys to my vehicle. I ran as fast as I could behind the mess hall of the camp while the curious hunter was still in the first cabin. I found a clearing right behind the building, out of their line of view, and began to collect kindling. I started a small fire, added more kindling, waited for it to take, and added three logs in a triangle.

Through the window of the mess hall I could see the men with their guns shouldered, searching the cabins.

Once the fire was ablaze, I ran into the woods and followed a trail about two miles long in a drunken crescent shape. The trail would spit me out a few hundred yards from my cabin, but on the side of camp where my truck was hiding in that carport. I ran full speed through the woods.

Twenty minutes later, I was on the edge of the clearing, crawling along the tree line, searching for signs of the hunters. As I approached the campsite, I saw the injured hunter sitting on a log. I heard some commotion over by the fire and could still see a plume of smoke. I got into my truck with no time to spare.

I gunned the engine, pulled out of the carport, and drove right past the injured guy and down the dirt path that led to the main road. My chain-link fence was still locked; in front of it was their Ford truck, blocking my only passage out.

I unlocked the fence and checked the truck. The keys were inside. Three shots fired into the air. I figured it was the injured hunter calling his friends. I couldn't back their truck all the way along the road and still have enough time to run back to get my Jeep. So I just backed up their Ford about fifty yards along the cratered road until I found a small clearing. I put the car in drive and drove to the edge. There was a short drop into a creek below. I didn't want to inconvenience the men by messing up their car, but I needed to be sure they couldn't give chase. This truck had way more pickup than my old Wagoneer. I stepped on the gas and barreled forward, taking the truck on a nosedive into the creek bed. The bumper bent and caved under the weight of the drop.

I climbed out of their truck and up the rocky terrain. I booked it back to my old Jeep, climbed inside, and gunned the engine.

I could see the hunters in my rearview mirror. I put my foot to the floor and ducked as bullets pounded the metal of my tailgate. I made a sharp right turn onto the main road, cutting off a Subaru, which honked wildly in my wake. I made a quick left turn on a smaller artery to escape the Subaru and put as much distance as I could between me, those hunters, and my short-lived home at Camp Wildacre.

August 23, 2015

To: Jo

From: Ryan

I'm going to keep writing, even if you never read a word of it. I just learned what happened to you, who you became, who you married. It's in the papers. Everyone knows you're alive.

There's something that I need to know.

Did you kill him?

R

T
HE
hunters had stolen only a few more weeks of camp life from me. I wouldn't hold a grudge. I probably could have survived the cold nights with a better sleeping bag and a few more provisions, but once we had our first winter storm, I'd never have been able to travel that driveway without a snowplow. Besides, I already knew my next move. I was just making it a bit earlier than planned. For the first three nights after my run-in with the hunters, I slept in the bed of my Jeep at a rest stop off the Taconic State Parkway.

That Sunday I began my house hunting. I frequented all of the local establishments: diners, supermarkets—farmers' markets were best. They always stood out, the weekenders, even if they didn't want to. I noticed a preference for sweaters, turtlenecks, corduroy, and denim that had been strategically worn down by a day laborer in China.

They were couples, mostly, the ones I followed. They'd toss their provisions into the trunk of their brand-new Jeep, Mercedes, or Range Rover and drive down twisty country roads, now edged by dead leaves and denuded trees. I kept a notebook and jotted down the route after we reached our destination. County Route 7, right at Jackson Manor, left on Cyril Lane, drive two miles, and turn onto a dirt road leading up to a house that was more often than not obscured by evergreens.