Read The Wildman Online

Authors: Rick Hautala

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The Wildman (2 page)

BOOK: The Wildman
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He sighed as he ran his hand across the slick sheen of sweat that sprinkled his forehead. It wasn’t just the humidity, he knew, because an icy chill had formed in the pit of his stomach. He felt like he’d swallowed a snowball.

“I know,” Tyler said breathlessly. “Me, neither.”

Why does he sound so excited about this?
Jeff wondered.

“He’s inviting all of us from the tent.”

“All of us?”

There’s that echo again.

“Who does that include?”

“I assume he means him, you, me, Mike, Ralph, and Fred … all of us guys from Tent Twelve.”

“Fred Bowen? Jesus, I’ve always wondered what happened to him. You have any idea?”

“Not a clue, but Evan says he wants to have all of us out there if we can make it.”

“To the camp, you mean.”

Jeff couldn’t imagine why he was suddenly so cranky. Was it just because he’d been awakened so late, or was it because of the memories this phone call was stirring up?

“I—uh … Jeeze, Ty, I dunno. Like I said, I haven’t seen any e-mail yet, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He made an effort to keep the pique out of his voice, but he was sure he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“Yeah … Sorry,” Tyler said, lowering his voice and sounding truly apologetic. “My bad.”

It was just like Tyler to blame himself. Maybe he hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening years. Jeff narrowed his eyes and tried to picture his childhood friend now. It was difficult—no; it was impossible to imagine Tyler Crosby a grown man—a successful Hollywood lawyer, no less.

“No need to apologize,” Jeff said, hoping he hadn’t hurt his old friend’s feelings.

“I probably should have called you in the morning, huh?” Tyler said. “I definitely should have, but I was so excited about the idea I didn’t even think about the time difference, but after I got the e-mail … I just started thinking, you know? Remembering the good ole’ days, and I just … You know … I thought it was a really cool idea.”

“Yeah … No, I understand,” Jeff said.

He was still having trouble focusing his thoughts as he stood up and snapped on the bedside light. He squinted in the sudden burst of yellow light that made his eyes start to water. He cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes, forcing back the sleepiness. He had never liked waking up too fast.

“It’s just that … It’s been so long, you know?” Tyler said. “I mean … we haven’t been very good—none of us have—about staying in touch. I—” He sniffed with laughter, and Jeff could picture him shaking his head at the thought. “Remember how we had that whole BFF thing going?

“BFF?”

“Best Friends Forever.”

“Oh, yeah … right. I remember.” Jeff didn’t like how this conversation was so one-sided. Tyler might just as well have been talking to himself, dredging up reminiscences about the good ole’ days at Camp Tapiola.

“I checked you out on the Internet, so I know you’re still living in Maine. You’re still in Westbrook?”

“Uh … Yeah. Westbrook. I’m a real estate agent at a firm in Portland.”

“You married? … Got kids?”

That question, so innocent, gave Jeff pause because the last thing he wanted now was to get into all of that, especially with someone who was all but a perfect stranger. He still had more than enough emotional baggage to deal with, and this was not the time to get into it with Tyler or anyone.

“I got—uh, divorced a while ago. ‘Bout a year. Got one kid in college. At Ithaca.”

“That’s in upstate New York, right?”

“Yeah. Just south of Syracuse.”

“Got yah. But you’re doing all right, aren’t you?” The genuine note of concern in Tyler’s voice touched Jeff. Once again, he pictured him the way Tyler had looked when they were kids. That was the only memory he had of him with his long, dark hair framing a round face that remained pale no matter how much time they spent in the sun, and his blue eyes that always glistened like wet marbles. It struck Jeff as strange how, all of a sudden, he experienced a wave of nostalgia for his childhood. He must miss those days with his best buddies in some way.

BFF, indeed.

“I’m doing all right, I guess,” Jeff replied. “You know, the usual complaints at our age—gaining weight … losing hair.”

“Tell me about it,” Tyler chuckled softly. “I mean—it’s weird how I don’t feel like I’ve changed all that much, but a couple of years ago, I went to my high school reunion in Danvers, and a lot of people didn’t even recognize me. It’s weird, you know?”

“For sure,” Jeff said, but as he said it, he stifled a yawn behind his hand. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was 12:04.

Damn!

He had to get up in six hours.

“Look,” Tyler said. “I got your phone number and can call you tomorrow.”

“How’d you find me, anyway?”

“Google. It’s amazing what you can do on the Internet these days.”

“It sure as hell is.”

“So I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” Tyler said, “after you’ve checked your e-mail. But let’s make sure we stay in touch, okay?”

“Uhh—yeah … yeah. Sure. It’d be cool to reconnect after all these years.”

“It’s been
way
too long,” Tyler said.

A million years,
Jeff wanted to say but didn’t.

“we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Jeff said “Good bye,” but he wasn’t sure if Tyler heard him or had already hung up. When the dial tone started buzzing in his ear, he replaced the phone. For A long time, he sat there on the edge of his bed, staring off into space, his mind filled with memories and images from long ago.

It wasn’t long before the phone call took on a cast of unreality. Jeff checked the caller I.D. just to make sure he’d really gotten a call from California and not imagined it.

Sure enough, there was Tyler’s name and phone number.

Jeff thought to jot it down before he forgot about it, but he was too exhausted and a little dizzy from the rum, so he turned off the light instead and flopped back onto the bed.

It took a while, but he finally drifted off to sleep.

A few hours later, he awoke again with a start. This time it was because of a dream he had about
Camp Tapiola
, but upon waking, he couldn’t remember any of the details. All he knew was, the dream left him with a cold hollow feeling deep in his stomach in spite of the humid night air.

The only thought circling around in his mind as he tried to drift off to sleep again was that maybe having a camp reunion at Camp Tapiola wasn’t such a good idea. As nice as his memories of it were, there were also things he’d just as soon not think about ever again. And now Tyler’s late night phone call had dredged them up all of.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Jeff received a slew of e-mails, not only from Evan Pike and Tyler Crosby, but also from Mike Logan and Fred Bowen. It was beginning to turn into “Old Home Week” … or “Old Summer Camp Week.”

It wasn’t all fun, though. Jeff learned that two of the people he thought might be included—Ralph Curran and their former counselor, Mark Bloomberg—had both died. Mark had been a high school phys. ed teacher who had a heart attack at the age of twenty-nine, while Ralph, a life insurance salesman in Boston, had been stabbed to death a few years ago in a barroom brawl following a Red Sox game at Fenway Park where the Sox had lost to the Yankees.

As soon as he answered the first e-mail from Evan, he started getting several messages a day at his work account. It wasn’t long before it began to feel like an invasion of privacy, but the upshot of it all was this …

Evan Pike had become an entrepreneur of sorts. He had his fingers, if not his whole hand and arm, in a variety of deals—mostly real estate, but some manufacturing and industrial development as well as property management. He told Jeff about how a corporation called Willow Creek was in the process of buying and developing huge tracts of land in western Maine on the northern shore of Lake Onwego and the surrounding area, including Lookout Mountain. Their plans ultimately called for two eighteen hole golf courses, a ski slope, a huge marina, luxury homes for both summer and year-round residents, a shopping mall, and numerous outfitters for rustic activities such as hiking, camping, boating, fishing, and hunting.

Although the deal didn’t include Sheep’s Head Island, the small island in the southern part of the lake where Camp Tapiola was located, Evan had learned through some insider information that the camp property was up for sale as well. It had been abandoned for the last thirty-five years following the death of a camper, Jimmy Foster. Because of the lawsuit brought by the Foster family against the camp’s board of directors and the attendant bad publicity, Camp Tapiola had been forced to close. That was also the last summer Jeff and his buddies had been campers. It was also the last time all five of them—Jeff, Evan, Tyler, Mike and Fred—had been together … until now.

Because through the magic of the Internet, they had reconnected or were in the process of reconnecting.

And now that Evan had bought not just Camp Tapiola, but the whole island, he’d come up with what he thought was the fantastic idea of having all five surviving Tent 12 campers get together. The only hurdle was finding a weekend that worked with everyone’s schedules so they could meet at Camp Tapiola for a long weekend of drinking and reminiscing.

Maybe it’s the kind of thing that only looks good on paper,
Jeff typed in response to the third e-mail he’d received from Tyler the day after that first phone call.

Jeff had a mountain of paperwork to do because—finally—the Howlands were closing on a house they’d been dithering about for the last two or three months. He wanted to make sure he had at least three estimates for the cellar wall repair the couple had requested—no,
demanded
before they would sign on the dotted line. The last thing he needed was to be wasting time
IM
-ing and e-mailing Tyler or anyone else he hadn’t seen or talked to in the last thirty-five years.

BING.

The computer flagged a new e-mail, and Jeff groaned when he saw that it was from Tyler, not the contractor who had promised he’d have his estimate done before lunch and here it was, almost three o’clock.

Reluctantly, mostly because he had nothing better to do, Jeff opened the e-mail and read it.

U always were the cautious one. Time 4 you 2 have a little fun. Com’on. It’ll be GR8, trust me.

Jeff sighed and shook his head. He winced when he took a sip of his coffee, which had gone cold more than half an hour ago. It was one thing for his son Matt and his college buddies to butcher the King’s English with their abbreviations and “emoticons,” but Tyler was a bit old for such juvenile shorthand.

He hit
reply
and quickly typed:
I’m just saying late October’s probably not the best time for this. Why not wait until next spring or summer when it’s warmer? As it is, I’m swamped with work.

Without editing, he sent the e-mail, and moments later his computer signaled another new message. This was a reply from Tyler, not the contractor, so he closed the screen, got up from his desk, and wandered out into the front office. His time might be better spent flirting with Debbie Hendricks at the front desk, but then again—the way Debbie had been treating him lately, he was beginning to think he didn’t really have much of a shot with her, anyway.

By the time he got back to his desk half an hour later, there were more e-mails from all of his former friends—Evan, Tyler, Mike, and even Fred, who was replying to Evan’s e-mail for the first time. Rather than deal with any of this now, Jeff forwarded all of the letters to his home account and tried to settle back into work. The contractor didn’t get back in touch with him until almost five o’clock. By the time Jeff replied to him, it was too late to set up an appointment with the Howlands for today. It would have to wait until Friday. Jeff put any thoughts about a camp reunion out of his mind until he got home that evening.

That’s when Evan called.

* * *

“So what do you think?” Evan asked after he had laid out his plans in detail to Jeff, pausing every once in a while to get an affirmative grunt from Jeff before pushing ahead. After a couple of minutes, Jeff felt as though he had already agreed to go to the reunion even though he had never said as much.

No wonder Evan’s so successful in business,
he thought. He had a smooth, low-pitched voice … the kind of voice people would call “mellifluous” … and he had a way of making you feel as though you and he were on the same side of an issue with no opposition.

Very slick.

And truth to tell, it didn’t surprise Jeff that Evan had ended up like this. Back when they were at summer camp—which had only been for two weeks a summer from the time they were nine to twelve. Just three years. It seemed much longer, but in that short period of time, even though Jeff had been coming to the camp since he was seven, Evan took right over, acting as though he had always been the unquestioned leader of their little group.

There had always been an unspoken rivalry between Jeff and Evan, and Jeff had never accepted that he was usually demoted to second in command.

BOOK: The Wildman
6.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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