Folly

by Laurie R. King

  Not a sound, not a creak or a groan from the neatly aligned pairs of rafters that stretched from roof beam to walls, distributing the weight of that young tree without a murmur, pulled taut against the collar ties, compression and tension working together in beauty.

  The cork popped loudly, and Jerry caught the foam in the two glasses. She dragged the now-useless wood over to the discard pile, slid the hammer into its loop against her thigh, and went over to take the glass of champagne from her visitor. He held up his glass to her in a wordless toast, and then his eyes went up to the massive beam over their heads.

  “How the hell did you get that up by yourself?” he asked.

  “A step at a time, Jerry. One small step at a time.”

  He crossed the airy room to the south window and stood admiring the view. “Bobby told me you looked to be nearly finished framing. I figured that called for a celebration.”

  “Champagne and flowers.”

  “And dinner. I know you eat meat.”

  She sipped from her glass and pushed away the uncharitable niggle of resentment, that Deputy Gustafsen had been keeping an eye on her, and incidentally the progress of her work, and further, that Jerry Carmichael had decided that mere completion was not celebration enough. Damn it, Rae scolded herself, you are impossible to please, and held out her glass for a refill.

  She was feeling easier about his presence by the time they went down to the campsite.

  Jerry had brought steaks, thick and marbled with fat. He had also brought the expertise to cook them, so while Rae looked about for something to hold the grocery-store flowers, he laid logs and kindling in her fire pit and told her about his week. Like old friends, Rae thought with amusement, although she’d met him less than two months before.

  “We finally figured out how that Andrews girl got off the ferry,” he was telling her. “She must’ve gone under her own power, though, so she’s a runaway now, not a kidnap victim, no matter what the father says. She was driven off the ferry in a pickup truck, either hunched down on the floor under a blanket or in a tool compartment across the back. Just drove right off while her parents were standing there tapping their feet and waiting for her to show up at the car. Fifth or sixth car off was the pickup, and you know what the driver did then? He went up around the corner, turned into the park road, circled around, and got back in line for the ferry. The same ferry, heading west. We didn’t even think to look in the line of cars waiting to get on, for Christ sake.”

  “So what was it, a boyfriend?”

  “Some scruffy-looking older guy. As far as anyone knows, Caitlin didn’t have any older friends, much less boyfriends. But did you hear the kicker? About the mother?”

  “No, what happened to her?”

  “Last week, on Friday, the mother disappeared, too.” He sounded, incredibly enough, amused, as if this was someone’s clever trick.

  Rae sat forward in the canvas chair and stared at his profile. “You don’t sound terribly worried about it, Jerry.”

  “I’d say the only thing to worry about is if the two of them come home. See, the wife sent a letter, saying that she and Caitlin had taken their passports and fled the country, to get away from the husband. They couldn’t go at the same time because the father was always watching, so she waited a couple of days till he was fully occupied with the hunt, and then she pretended to collapse. She spent the next seven days, while he thought she was in bed weeping, out selling or pawning every last little thing she could pry loose from the house. At the end of it she stripped the checking and savings and took off. She’s riding the underground railway now, and good luck to them both.”

  “Seems a little extreme. I mean, why didn’t she just file for divorce?”

  Jerry, hunkered down out of the rising smoke from the fire, grimaced. “From what I’ve been told, it was one of those cases of a guy with enough weight to make sure that complaints and reports found cracks to fall into. The wife—Rebecca’s her name—had a history of emotional problems; she’d never have got custody of the kid, would’ve been lucky to get visiting rights. And as for alimony, don’t make me laugh.”

  “So now she and the girl have to disappear,” Rae said.

  “Until Caitlin turns eighteen.”

  “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Was it Shakespeare who said, ‘The law’s an ass’?”

  “Dickens, I think. That’s an odd thing for a lawman to admit, Jerry.”

  “I see it from the inside, Rae. It’s getting better—I do honestly believe that—but there are still plenty of big, unfair holes waiting to swallow up the innocent.”

  “Don’t I know it. I could have bought a house with what I’ve paid out to my lawyer over the last year.”

  It was said spontaneously, but the instant it left her mouth Rae knew that it had also been deliberate. She did not know for certain why Jerry Carmichael continued to drop by Folly, but if it was, in fact, something more than mere neighborliness on his part, she wanted all her cards laid on the table from the beginning. Or most of her cards. The Conversation, in fact. Complaining about lawyers had been an invitation for Jerry to take a step into her life; he did not hesitate.

  “Legal problems, huh?”

  She took a breath, let it out carefully. “My son-in-law, Don Collins, is trying to get me declared mentally incompetent.”

  The big sheriff gaped, and then guffawed as if she’d made the world’s funniest joke. Only when he realized that she was not laughing herself did he swivel on his heel to stare up at her.

  “You’re not serious? God. I’m sorry—for laughing, I mean. I—”

  “Don’t apologize, Jerry, for heaven’s sake. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for a long time, in fact, treating my instability as a joke.”

  “But you are serious,” he said, still doubtful.

  “Jerry, you knew I’d been in a mental hospital.”

  “Yeah, but you’re cured, right?”

  “What’s ‘cured’? Jerry, look. There are some people who are so stable you could build an office block on top of them—no self-doubt, no neurotic tendencies, not so much as a psychosomatic illness all their life. At the other end of the scale are the flat-out psychotics—delusional, violent, self-destructive, uncontrollable even with heavy medication. Most people spend their lives somewhere between the two extremes, functioning well most of the time, dipping into neurotic or even psychotic behavior under stress or hormones or the phase of the moon— no one really knows, although most mental illnesses seem to be about one part chemistry to four or five parts circumstance. Schizophrenia, like you said your cousin has, is a little different, but you probably know that.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I have been, at different times in my life, severely depressed, suicidal, and even delusional. My postpartum depression after my daughter Tamara was born nearly killed me. When my husband and other daughter died eighteen months ago, I ended up in a locked ward after another suicide attempt. Basically, Jerry, Don has a point: My foundations are not very stable. Don’t build a house on me.” It was a small joke, but it was also a warning, and Jerry Carmichael heard it clearly.

  “But you were also attacked,” he noted, as if she might have forgotten.

  “I was so wrapped up in my depression and my delusions that I forgot the world is a dangerous place, yes.”

  “So you’re saying it’s your fault you were attacked.”

  “Not my fault, no, but—”

  “But you feel like maybe it was.”

  “I suppose I do,” she replied slowly.

  “Because you were delusional?”

  “Because I was out of control.”

  “Not violent?”

  “No.”

  “Hearing voices?”

  “Yes. And movement, and footsteps, and—”

  “Why are you so sure those were delusions?” he asked calmly, and Rae gaped at him, as stunned and breathless as if he’d punched her in the stomach.

  “
But… they were,” she said stupidly.

  “Were they different somehow from real noises, or was it you that felt different because of the state you were in?”

  “I … Jesus, Jerry, I don’t know. But look, the sheriff and his deputy came up several times, and there was nothing there. I was hearing things. And,” she added suddenly as the thought came to her, “why are you asking me this? Because if you’re trying to convince yourself and me that I wasn’t stark raving nuts just because in the end two guys actually attacked me, I’m sorry, but I was.”

  He picked up her iron fireplace tool and poked irritably at the burning wood before blurting out, “Somebody’s been calling around the island about you. Asking where you are, when you’re coming back.”

  “Well, a lot of people know I’m here, but don’t know exactly where. The woman whose gallery I sell through in New York, for example. A couple of friends. My wood man in California.”

  “A gallery… oh, right. I didn’t know they sold furniture in galleries.”

  “My kind of furniture they do,” Rae said, and added with asperity, “I make furniture that wins awards and sells for a lot of money. I’m really very well known.”

  They both heard the plaintive protest in her voice, but Rae chuckled first.

  “So there,” she told him. “Look, are you planning on cooking those steaks? ’Cause in another minute I’m going to eat mine raw.”

  Their actions turned to the preparation and then consumption of food, but their thoughts were fixed on Jerry’s news. Once the peaceable hiatus of the meal was over, Rae turned back to what he had told her.

  “Are you trying to frighten me?”

  “By suggesting that someone’s looking for you? Someone who may or may not have attacked you in California last year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Shit, Jerry, thanks a lot.” She got up and began to slam dishes into the plastic dishpan, not a satisfying noise.

  “I’m just suggesting that you—”

  “Might come and stay with you?”

  “No, actually I was going to suggest Nikki, or her aunt’s inn.”

  Rae just snorted.

  “Only at night. One of us, or Ed, could run you over during the day.”

  “No.”

  “Rae—”

  “No! No. Nobody’s after me, nobody’s coming out to Folly to attack me. I told you, Jerry, this is my last stand. If I can’t make it here, I’ll—” Shoot myself, she did not say. “I won’t make it anywhere.”

  “I understand,” Jerry said after a long minute of watching her furious back. It might, Rae thought, even have been true. “Keep your handgun with you,” he said abruptly.

  At that she did turn around. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I have a permit?”

  “I’d rather know if you have bullets.”

  “I do.” Five now, which would not stop a charging grizzly but would no doubt send a hired attacker fleeing. Like William, into the night, her treacherous mind noted. “I also have the flare gun that you sent with Nikki. Now: You want some coffee?”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “Yes, damn it, I’m changing the subject.”

  “Then yes, I’d love some coffee.”

  The mood had changed, the growing tendrils of mutual awareness hacked off at the root. As he left, the launch motor seemed to fire unevenly, as if in displaced frustration. Rae retrieved the pistol and the flare gun from the locked box in her tent, and vowed to keep them both at arm’s reach at all times. She would be responsible for her own protection.

  Forty-four

  Desmond Newborn’s

  Journal

  September 30, 1921

  I clear ground, stripped to the waist on all but the coldest morning, and meditate on the nature of fear.

  The link between the two activities may sound unlikely to the civilian ear, but any font-line soldier knows well the logic of it. Green troops only panic and flee if they are allowed to rest in their advancement, given time to think about the approaching sounds of battle. Any sergeant knows that assigning the body a task, no matter how small, distracts the mind from its dread and allows the unseasoned soldier to learn how to master himself. If the task can be both mindless and physically demanding, so much the better.

  For fear can be mastered; more, it can be used. In one small step, terror transforms into rage, and rage is as powerful a weapon as anything a man’s hands might grasp.

  However, rage exacts a price from a man’s life force. When I came back from France, I felt as if the core of me had been emptied out, as if I were one of those ancient, center-dead trees, huge of girth but possessed of scarcely enough life to maintain a handful of leaves at the ends of its barren branches. Cut me down, and a person would have found a circle of wood surrounding a great hollowness.

  When life began to return, it was as painful as blood penetrating a dead limb. Many times, I wished devoutly to die. I was instead husbanded back to craggy life, and promptly misused my strength. It was terror, though, not guilt that drove me out onto the road, cold, sweating fear that would haverooted me to the spot like a frightened rabbit had I not kept moving, fear that I both embrace and keep at bay here on Sanctuary.

  Keeping the terror at bay absorbs all of my limited energy. If I work to exhaustion, dig and haul until the ache in my left shoulder fills my universe, then I am granted sleep; but if I quit for the day merely pleasantly tired, I am sure to wake at night with a scream clenched between my teeth.

  This preoccupation with my internal demons seems to have rendered any degree of social intercourse almost beyond my capabilities. No sooner did I move onto the island than my mind lapsed into a near-animal state. For weeks now I have found words difficult to retrieve and to use around others. I grunt at my grocer, I point and scribble my order, I nod and duck my head and smile like an imbecile. Indeed, I should not be surprised if my neighbors believe me to be mentally deficient.

  I tell myself it is the long accumulation of terror, that like a poison takes time to work its way out of the body. There are things the human eye was never meant to see, the spilled viscera of the human spirit. There are things the human mind and body were never meant to do—easy murder, casual betrayal, the theft of what is most precious.

  So I grunt, and put out a few stunted leaves at the ends of my branches, and spend my days sweating hard and meditating on the nature of fear.

  Forty-five

  In the days that followed, Rae applied herself to the roof, nailing boards across the rafters with a climbing harness securely around her waist. It was hot, tedious work and she was grateful when the fog lingered or the clouds blew over, grateful but equally worried that a summer rainstorm would catch her unprepared.

  Early in the mornings, however, and last thing during the lengthening evenings of summer, Rae went to the back of the house to rebuild Desmond’s woodshed, the structure that would hide the cave once again.

  That job went fast, once she had brought the lumber over, and was so cool and undemanding compared with the roof that it felt like a holiday entertainment. Sophisticated joinery, she had decided, was a luxury she could ill afford on a woodshed no one would see. The notches Desmond had chipped out of the rock face fit her supports adequately, and she even used plywood for the floor.

  The only tricky part was hiding the small door from the house into the shed. The door’s edges she placed behind studs and its top behind a fire block, so that all she had to do was whittle a latch for the back of the left-hand stud that fastened with a sliver of wood—which, because it could only be worked from inside, did not compromise the security of the house. She tapped the sliver into place and stood back. From two feet away, it just looked like a rough spot in the wood; when she hammered a casual eightpenny nail up on the bare stud above it and draped her carpenter’s belt over it, the door became invisible.

  Then she went inside the shed and repeated the process to make the door to the cave
, at the far back of the shelter, invisible as well. Unless a person knew it was there, that door, too, looked like part of a wall. And finally, for the large external opening used for filling the space with wood, Rae spent an evening fashioning a wooden latch that could be worked from either side, both as a source of amusement and for the security of knowing that her house would have a back exit.

  Then she returned to her roof.

  The roofing paper went down the first day of summer, a cold and gloomy, fog-bound morning that kept her firmly tethered to the climbing harness lest her foot hit a damp patch on the sloping surface. It was with a heartfelt sigh of relief that she let herself back onto the solid ground inside, unbuckled the harness (which pinched and chafed like a cross between a rock climber’s rig and a chastity belt), and flung the contraption onto the growing pile of discards blocking the empty front tower. The roofing paper would keep out the rain for a while, and she was seriously leaning toward hiring a team of professionals to put on the shingles.

  Ten days until the first of July, when Tamara, Don, and Petra were due to arrive, and Rae could not bring herself to spend the time constructing rough benches for their comfort. Instead, she took out the dauntingly lengthy list she would put in Ed’s hands the following day and wrote down (underneath such unusual requests as a battery-powered camp light and four six-packs of Heineken) “six folding wood-and-canvas director’s chairs.” They were ugly and flimsy, but they would keep her guests’ bottoms off the ground. She could always use them for firewood when her guests had departed.

  She glanced over the list, wondering what gaping hole in her provisions she had overlooked. She had written Petra to bring any “personal items” she might need, and hoped the girl would realize that tampons and Clearasil didn’t grow on trees. Toilet paper: check; an extra flashlight: check; a couple more beach towels: check. Rae’s eyes traveled down the list, caught on an item that had gone onto it following a warm-afternoon visit to the privy, and she took the pen and scratched it out. An aerosol spray can of air freshener in the woods was too absurd to contemplate.