The Siege (8 page)

“You’re parked right out front,” Mrs. Appleby said. “Why don’t you bring the car up into the driveway and get your luggage up to your room? Lisa, why don’t you take Angie downtown for an ice cream before it gets dark?”

“Well, we haven’t had supper yet,” Dale said. “I was thinking we’d unpack and then go find someplace to eat.”

“Oh, pshaw,” Mrs. Appleby said, waving her hand in front of Dale’s face. “The sign says ‘bed and breakfast,’ but that’s just because I didn’t know what else to call it. You can have supper here with us if you don’t mind waiting until after seven.”

Dale looked at Angie, who gave him a what-the-heck shrug. “Fine,” he said. “That would be just fine. A home-cooked meal will beat anything we could find in town, I’m sure.”

“You two run along now,” Mrs. Appleby said, shooing her hands at Angie and Lisa. “Just don’t go off so far you don’t hear when I call you for supper, all right?”

With quick nods of their heads, Angie followed Lisa back out of the house the way she had come in. Again, there was a loud slam as they went out into the back yard by way of the kitchen door.

Dale turned to go down to the street and get his car, but before he went, he turned to Mrs. Appleby and said softly, “I want to thank you.”

She smiled widely. “For what, renting you a room? Don’t worry. I’ll give you a bill for that.”

“No,” Dale said. “I mean for everything else. Just for being here and even for having Lisa here. Coming for Larry’s funeral hasn’t been easy for me or for Angie. Larry was more than just someone I worked with. He was almost a part of our family. But I was expecting we’d be staying in some flea-ridden motel for the next two nights, and… and…

He wanted to say more, but his voice suddenly twisted and broke. Mrs. Appleby reached out and gripped him gently by the elbow.

“Now, now,” she said, almost cooing. “You just take it easy. I know what it’s like when you lose someone you love, and I could tell as soon as you mentioned Larry, that it pained you. You just get your car up, and I’ll show you your room. Then I can tell you how to get to Mildred’s house.”

Dale smiled and nodded as he went out the door and down the walkway to his car. All the while he was thinking that it was people like Lillian Appleby, people who reach out and help people in the simplest ways by being kind and caring who can, with time, help blunt the hollow pain of loss.

III

A
ngie was surprised how fast she and Lisa hit it off. It felt like they had known each other before. Even before they were out the kitchen door and walking across the back yard, they were chattering away to each other like long-lost friends. Again, Angie found herself thinking that she wouldn’t mind living in a place like Dyer if she could have a house like Mrs. Appleby’s and a friend like Lisa.

As they crossed the back yard, heading toward the line of trees at the margin of the well-trimmed grass, Angie paused and looked back at the house. Slanting sunlight lit up the side of the house, making it gleam so brightly it hurt her eyes. The windows reflected back the cloudless sky with a dark marble sheen.

“I thought we were going to take a walk downtown,” Angie said, frowning. She heard a car pull into the driveway and saw her father back into the turn-around. When he parked and got out to get their luggage from the trunk, he glanced up and saw them standing at the far corner of the backyard. He smiled and waved.

“I want to show you something else, first,” Lisa said. Her voice was hushed with repressed excitement, and Angie had a moment of doubt, wondering if she could trust her. Maybe, living in such an isolated town, she was weird or something.

“I was thinking maybe I should help my dad unpack,” Angie said. She hoped her momentary doubt wasn’t betrayed by her voice.

Lisa looked over and watched as Dale, a suitcase in each hand, walked up the back steps. “It looks as though he’s got it. Come on. I want to show you my secret place.” She spoke in a low, conspiratorial whisper and, lowering her head, glanced to either side as though the surrounding trees had ears.

“Exactly what is this place?” Angie asked.

“Follow me,” Lisa said, and she started off into the woods, following a well-worn path that twisted between trees and through ever-thickening brush.

Angie hesitated before following, uncertain exactly what Lisa had in mind. Growing up in Thomaston, she had never spent much time playing in the woods, although she didn’t exactly define herself as a “city girl,” either. But there was something about the forest, especially deep forest, like these must be, stretching all the way to Canada that unnerved Angie. She felt a gnawing of fear in her stomach as she watched Lisa’s yellow shirt plunge deeper into the foliage.

“Uh, remember what your grandmother said about not going too far from the house?” Angie said as she started along the path. “We don’t want to miss supper.”

Lisa glanced back at her over her shoulder and waved her arm to hurry her along. “We won’t miss supper,” she said with a slight agitation. “Come on. If you hurry, we’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

Taking a deep breath, Angie quickened her pace until she was only three or four steps behind Lisa. The woods grew thicker as she followed her, but the path continued, unwinding like a beige ribbon up a gradual rise. Angie cast several nervous glances behind her as she went, and the gnawing in her gut got worse when she lost sight of the large house.

“Your dad said something about you guys being here for Larry Cole’s funeral, huh?” Lisa said.

The woods were dark and cool, and the ground was thick with musty, matted leaves. Each step she took gave with spongy softness, and the air was full of a fresh, woodsy smell. Afraid she might trip over a hidden root, Angie didn’t hazard to look up when she responded.

“A-huh, he was a really good friend of ours,” Angle said, her voice low and throaty. “Did you know him?”

“I know some people named Cole,” Lisa said, “but not a Larry.”

Angie didn’t want to say any more about it, and was thankful that Lisa let it drop. They continued along the winding path, down in a dried stream bed and then up another crest, this one quite steep. At the top of the crest, winded, Angie stopped and hung onto a tree branch to catch her breath. There was no way she was used to tramping around like this through the woods.

“If it’s much further, I’m not gonna make it,” she gasped. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

“It’s just up there,” Lisa said. She pointed off to the left where the trees seemed most dense. At first, Angie couldn’t see anything. The gloom of the woods closed in on everything. But then she noticed what looked like a peaked roof sticking up through the autumn-stained foliage. The little she could see of the building was weathered gray, the exact color of a hornet’s nest.

“What is it?” Angie asked, still fighting the burning in her lungs.

“I told you my secret place,” Lisa said. “Come on.” They started toward the building, and Lisa explained: “When I first moved here, after my parents got divorced, I…”

“You don’t live with your parents?” Angie asked. Even though she couldn’t really remember her own mother, the idea that Lisa lived without either parent struck her as terrible.

“No,” Lisa said. “We lived in Connecticut, but my dad was never home much. Finally, he met someone else and ran off. My, grammy’s never told me the whole story, but I’ve heard from other people that he ran off with one of his students. He used to teach philosophy at the University of Connecticut. My mom, I guess, never thought she was much of a mother, so she asked her mom to take me for a while until she could get her life together. That was four years ago.”

“Gee,” was the extent of Angie’s response as she considered what a tough situation that must have been and maybe still was for Lisa. She felt a little guilty, feeling so sorry for herself when there were other people like Lisa who had to deal with things just as bad, or worse.

“Anyway,” Lisa said, forcing a smile, “that was a long time ago, and I’ve pretty much gotten used to it.”

“Do you ever see your folks?”

Lisa set her mouth in a tight line and shook her head. “My mom comes to visit once or twice a year and she calls me every couple of weeks. It’s been less and less over the years, though. I haven’t seen my dad since…” Her voice caught for an instant. “Since he left us.”

“Boy, that must’ve been wicked tough on you,” Angie said.

“Hey, I didn’t bring you out here to give you my sob story,” Lisa said. They had been making their way slowly down the slope the whole time they were talking, and now they broke through the screen of brush that had been hiding Lisa’s “secret place.”

Angie gasped and couldn’t help but wonder what such a big barn as this was doing out here in the woods in the middle of nowhere. Years ago, maybe a century or so, the land around it might have been cleared, but now big, thick-trunked trees towered over the ancient barn, almost completely hiding it. She could see where some trees had grown up inside the barn, and one was big enough to have pushed its way up through the roof.

“Pretty neat, huh?” Lisa said, her voice tinged with the pride of ownership.

Angie nodded agreement.

Most of the weathered-gray boards still clung to the sides of the barn, although many were loose at one end or the other, giving the whole exterior a random, lopsided look. Shingles had peeled off one side of the roof, exposing the skeletal structure of the rafters beneath, and the loft doors hung open at awkward angles on either side. Tumbledown fences and rusted farm equipment littered the overgrown dooryard. The big front doors were closed, but the side door was torn off its hinges and lay like a platform entrance. Dappled shadows thrown by the setting sun cast the whole structure in a deep gloom. When the breeze stirred the leaves, the whole barn seemed to vibrate with a weird sort of energy.

“I found it one day when I was taking a walk in the woods,” Lisa said solemnly. “I used to do that a lot when I first moved here.”

“You must have been pretty lonely,” Angie said. She locked eyes with her newfound friend, surprised she could feel so close to her after so short a time together.

Lisa shrugged. “I have no idea who owns the place,” she said. “But I come out here a lot when I want to be alone so I can—you know, think and stuff. You’re the first person I’ve ever shown it to.”

Angie smiled, acknowledging the honor she had been given.

“Somebody else knows about it, though,” Lisa said. “ ’cause sometimes I find stuff moved around, and the ground inside the barn sometimes looks like a lot of people have been inside. Lots of times, ’specially in the late summer, I find burned-out campfires. But I’ve never seen anyone else here.”

“Maybe you’re not the only kid in town who comes out here,” Angie said. “I’ll bet maybe some of the local teenage boys come out here drinking or something.”

“Or to make out with their girlfriends,” Lisa said with a giggle. “But I don’t usually find empty beer cans lying around.”

“We have the returnable bottle bill to thank for that,” Angie said. She stood for several seconds, silently admiring the barn and absorbing what it must have meant to Lisa, to have a place to come to when she needed to be alone. Since her father told her about Larry’s death, she understood even more how important a place like this could be.

“Well, don’t you think we ought to be getting back?” Angie said after a while. She glanced at her watch. “Your gram said supper would be at seven and we’ve already been gone more than half an hour.”

“Before we go, though, I want to show you the hay loft,” Lisa said. “Come on.” She tugged at Angie’s arm until she followed her into the barn.

As soon as she stepped inside the barn, Angie felt a shiver run up her spine to the back of her neck. It wasn’t just being out of the sun that chilled her, either. There was an eerie…
deadness
inside. It was a deadness that went beyond the broken stalls and rusted tools that littered the scuffed dirt floor. Sunlight lanced through the cracks in the wall, and slanting bars of golden-lit dust sliced downward at hard angles, giving what should have been a large, open space a tight, claustrophobic feeling.

Angie tried to take a deep breath, to get rid of the choking sensation she felt in her throat, but the dusty air only made it worse. She wanted to tell Lisa that she didn’t like it, not here inside the barn, but Lisa was heading toward the back wall where a ladder of rough-cut two-by-fours led up into the hay loft.

“Up here,” she said, and in a flutter of arms and legs, she scampered up through the hole in the ceiling. “Come on,” she called, her voice muffled by the ceiling between them.

As Lisa walked slowly across the loft floor above, small bits of dust and hay chaff sprinkled down like thin snow through the cracks in the floor. Angie sneezed and, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, cast a wary glance back at the door. Through the opening, the shimmering green woods outside looked somehow unreal, as though the barn was all there was, and the woods outside merely a tiny glimpse of a better, purer reality.

“We don’t have all day,” Lisa called out. From the direction of her voice, Angie could tell she was near the front of the barn.

Finally Angie took a deep breath and made her way over to the ladder, grabbed the first rung, and slowly started up. The rusty nails holding the boards in place creaked softly, but Angie figured they had held for nearly a century; they weren’t about to pull out now.