by Daniel Hecht
They didn't reach Ben's cliff until sunset. Though Paul was too cross to admit it, Ben had chosen a beautiful spot, an unbroken sweep of forest below, falling away steeply nearby and then rising to another crest several miles east. Lake Champlain was a distant slash of light, the Green Mountains a dim band of misty green.
But Paul was cranky, footsore, tired of his father's exuberance. And a gnawing tension had begun in him: They had come many miles from help if they needed it. The woods had begun to darken. They had seen bear scat several times on the way in.
Ben set down his pack, helped Paul out of his—and then immediately suggested they go for a walk.
"I don't want to," Paul told him. He plopped down on the ground and stared at his legs stretched straight in front of him.
"Tell me why."
"Because I'm too tired. And I'm hungry and I'm sleepy."
"Are you scared?"
Paul suspected he was being led somewhere, but wasn't sure what his father had in mind. He looked at Ben, standing uphill, legs apart, somehow professorial even in his checked shirt and-short-brimmed straw hat, even in this wild setting. Behind him, the boulder-strewn slope of woods had slid into deep shadow.
"Yes," Paul said in a small voice.
Ben crouched next to him. "You know what? I'm scared too. So rather than lie here, scared to death of bears and bogeymen all night, let's take a little tour, make sure we know the ground, no surprises for us later. Right?" He stood and hoisted Paul up with him. "Come on. Five more minutes."
They went uphill, away from the cliff, and in the near dark began a wide circle around their campsite.
"See, Paulie," Ben said, "most of the things you're afraid of are inside you. They're not real. But they'll hold you back if you don't show yourself they're not real. So you reconnoiter your campsite. You get your eyes used to the dark, you figure out how to ally yourself with the terrain rather than ignore it or try to hide from it. You wouldn't want to camp twenty feet away from a bear's den, would you? It's better to face the scaries than have your back to them, right?"
"Yeah," Paul grunted. He felt very sorry for himself: On top of everything else, he had to listen to one of Ben's lectures.
Ben walked quietly for a time, pointing out in a near-whisper the branching game trails, the burrows of animals, the trunks of dead trees ripped apart by woodpeckers and bears. They explored the shadowed base of a tremendous boulder, then entered an area of pines where the branches grew close together, almost impenetrable and very dark.
"Face into it," Ben whispered.
Paul hated the brittle, clutching branches. He felt claustrophobic, blind, every nerve screaming. But when they finally broke free, he found that his eyes had adapted to the dark. He felt electrified by the mystery of night in the remote mountain woods. He could sense the animal presences, and the gently shifting trees seemed sentient, awakened by the onset of night.
"So," Ben said, "we've made a little map in our heads of the immediate vicinity. We know what kind of animals we're likely to hear later. We've made the woods accessible to reason."
Then Ben put his hands on Paul's shoulders, put his face close in the dim light, speaking with intensity that startled Paul. Clearly this was life-lesson time. "Paulie, the same thing applies to what's inside you. Don't ever run from what's scary or from what you don't understand about your own mind. Go into it, get to know it. Then you're really safe. Only then. Will you remember this?"
Ben started walking again. "If you think about it," he went on professorially, "it's the root principle of rational humanism . . ."
Paul tuned him out, trudging behind him. But when they got back to their packs, the open cliff edge seemed abundantly light. Thanks to the mental map their walk had assembled, he could now gauge the distance of the shifting and scurrying sounds all around, the size of the creatures that made them. They had a fine dinner of dehydrated beef Stroganoff and canned peaches, and slept soundly beneath the bowl of stars. Sunrise the next day was spectacular, royally extravagant, worth the hike and the fears of the night before.
The lesson had stayed with him. You had to face into yourself—reconnoiter the campsite, as it were.
On the surface the philosophy was not unlike Vivien's. The difference between Vivien's view and Ben's seemed to be that Ben believed the light of reason would prevail, that the conscious mind would bring light and order to the mind's darker places, civilization enlightening the barbarians. Whereas Vivien seemed to think the barbarians would, and should, storm the walls and conquer the city. Of course, it would be a hell of a lot easier to believe Ben's view if he hadn't demonstrated the deep loss of his own faith—if he hadn't jumped off the goddamned cliff at Break Neck.
Was that part of what he was facing into here? When he'd told Lia he'd decided to sleep at Highwood, when he'd insisted on coming down on Monday rather than caravanning with her on Tuesday, she'd nodded and laughed understandingly: He'd arranged this solitary first day and night to challenge himself, face down the growing anxiety. She certainly knew that need quite well.
Paul stood up, stretched, and looked over the room. It was okay. It would do. Whatever had broken in Ben, that had been Ben's challenge.
This was his own. He'd made base camp at Highwood. Now it was time to reconnoiter.
23
OUTSIDE, THE AIR HAD COOLED slightly, enough that the rain had started to freeze. Little pellets of ice slid down the windshield of the Subaru and hissed softly in the woods. Paul opened the tailgate and found his clipboard and the big battery-powered floodlight. No winking Maglites today.
Inside, things were just as they'd been the previous week. In the main room, he squatted to inspect closely a tangle of drapes. Again, Lia was right: There were mouse droppings in every fold, showing that the cloth had lain just this way for some time. Paul straightened and made a note on his pad: Mousetraps? Exterminator?
He took his time now, ignoring his body's yearning to get out of the cold, crazed interior. In the library, the sea of paper stirred in a faint breeze from the smashed windows—torn pages of books and the papers that had been flung from file-cabinet drawers. Vivien had obviously saved all her receipts and correspondence: There were half a dozen four-drawer steel cabinets here, along with several lateral files, all crushed and twisted beyond repair. He'd noticed several more among the wreckage in her bedroom. File boxes, he wrote.
On his way out of the library, he spotted the headline of a yellowed newspaper and stooped to pick it up. North Salem Man Falls to Death at Break Neck. Below the headline was a smiling picture of Ben, in his early thirties, the same photo used year after year in the faculty section of the Columbia catalog. Paul's heart seemed to stop, then to pump dully, straining, as if his blood had thickened in his veins. It was the sort of thing he'd suspected he'd find here, wanted to find—yet confronted with it at last, he could hardly bring himself to read. Years ago, helping
Aster move, he'd come across a collection of Ben's obituaries, which had detailed Ben's academic accomplishments and had avoided specifics about his death. This was different: just a regular news item, reporting another morbid incident in all its grisly detail.
He carried the clipping to the smoking room, sat on the rug, and made himself read it.
Cold Spring, November 19. A prominent professor of history at Columbia University died today in a fall from the cliffs at Break Neck, north of Cold Spring. Dr. Benjamin K. Skoglund, of North Salem, fell three hundred feet from the steep rock faces above Route 9D, in an apparent suicide.
According to Putnam County coroner Harold Vanderlass, the fall was witnessed by several members of the Peekskill Outing Club who had paused at a bend in the popular hiking trail, below Skoglund.
"We saw him come out on the rocks about fifty feet almost directly above us," said Peter Melcher of Peekskill, president of the hiking club. "We had just stopped to rest when he showed up at the very edge of the cliff. Next thing you know, he backed up, out of view, like he was getting a running start,
and then came charging off the cliff."
Melcher and other club members descended the trail, called police and helped a medical team recover Skoglund's body. Skoglund sustained severe head and internal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to his wife, Skoglund was an experienced amateur rock-climber who regularly climbed at Break Neck. He had reportedly been upset and depressed by family problems in recent weeks.
Paul set the article aside, lay back on the rug, and stared at the ceiling. Without feeling any particular sadness, he found tears sliding out of the corners of his eyes and pooling in his ears. An ancient, ancient pain, so familiar as to be imperceptible. An underground lake of tears.
At some point in the distant past, Aster had mentioned the people who had seen Ben jump, the Melchers. Nice people, she'd said, an older couple. They'd attended the funeral, expressed condolences. Melcher was a dentist or an orthodontist or something.
What bothered him most was the line about Ben being "upset and depressed by family problems." After all these years, he really had no idea what those were. Aster must know—if she told the reporter there were problems, she must have had something specific in mind, not the vague generalities and evasions she'd offered whenever Paul had brought it up. Sooner or later he'd confront her about it.
Paul began to feel the fatigue of the long day, the drive, the initial tension he'd felt in the house. A spacey, floating feeling descended on him, and he lay, almost drowsing, remembering: Ben, Aster, and Vivien, sitting in this room at the leather-topped table, playing cards or doing the New York Times crossword puzzle together. Paulie lying in a square of sun on the Persian rug, looking at magazines and half listening to their meandering conversation. Or going off on expeditions in the woods near the house—
A humid haze suspended in the woods. Father away, work to do. Vivien says it will be a warm day, but it's chilly where the mist is thick. White dog snuffles along with. Out above the garden, then over and down into the boulder-strewn woods. A folded handkerchief Mother gave, with a whole Crackerfack box and a little sandwich made of bread and butter.
Finding aflat-topped boulder jutting over a ravine, lying stomach-down, face close to the rock. Ants trickle across the miniature landscape of mosses and lichens, carrying tiny larvae and dead insects. In books everything has a mom, but you never see bugs with their moms. Mist slowly thins, sun coming out, bright shafts, dark tree shadows. Forest like a big house, winding hallways.
Heading down into the ravine and up the other side. Socks full of tag burrs, ankles itching. A big mushroom with part of its thick red cap broken off, flesh still pale and fresh. Suddenly the dog stops, alert, ears arched, making a thin whistling, just air. Then a sound down the hill. A bad sound. Something moving. Not supposed to do that They're not supposed to. No one is supposed to see. Turning quickly back, then tripping, getting up quickly, afraid, running, catching at the rough sides of boulders, tearing skin off hands. Crying now. Everything in the way, everything catching, feet slipping.
Then seeing the house and running down through the garden. Shins scissoring, badly scraped. On the terrace, Mother stands up quickly, face full of concern.
"Baby, what happened?" Wanting to run to her and hug her, but then stopping, holding back. "What in the world happened?" Knowing you're not supposed to see, not supposed to tell. Crying, letting her gather you into her arms, letting her calm you, but knowing you can't ever tell her.
Paul recoiled from the memory, shook his head to dispel the trance of recollection he'd fallen into. Deeply chilled, he stood up and swung his arms, then checked his watch. No wonder he was cold: He'd been sitting without moving for almost twenty minutes. The vague terror fluttered at the edge of memory, indistinct images already slipping away.
He shadowboxed vigorously to get his circulation going, trying to clear his head. Face into it, he thought: The disordered mansion of memory was another scary terrain that would have to be braved. And, he decided, someday put into order.
He continued touring the house, adding to the list of items he'd need to buy to start the job. Large trash bags. He wrote down questions he'd need to remember to ask Vivien: Animal heads to taxidermist? Some of the repair work would be highly specialized. Furs? How do you restore a floor-length sable coat that mice had been nesting in for six months?
Upstairs, he looked into each of the rooms, counting broken windows. Vivien's room was the strangest of all—seeing it now, the destruction astonished him. The contents of the room were broken into small pieces and stirred together as if it had all been put in a big blender and ground up. And the windowless room next to it, although it apparently hadn't contained much, was the same. Paul switched on his floodlight and looked around the room they'd barely been able to see before. Tangled metal shelving, twisted, knotted onto itself, took up most of the floor. Cardboard boxes of linens had exploded, and several boxes of glassware had been emptied and thrown, the pieces trampled, pulverized into a coarse sand that sparkled in the flashlight's beam and gritted beneath his feet.
It was a strange room, far too large for a closet, yet clearly not designed for living. A darkroom? But there was no sign there'd ever been any plumbing. And the door from Vivien's bedroom: solid oak, four inches thick, decoratively paneled on only the outside face, steel plate on the inside, a single lock at the handle. When he levered the handle, he found that it slid thumb-thick bolts at the top and bottom. The hinge was continuous, a heavy steel flange the full length of the door. The room was very nearly a vault. If that's what it was, why hadn't Vivien bothered to put her important things inside before leaving? Another question for her.
On the way down the stairs, Paul paused on the landing to look closely at the broken end of one of the oak newel posts, one of two dozen that supported the banister and railing around the three sides of the balcony. They were all alike: paneled oak columns, fourteen inches square in cross-section, that rose to chest height and then tapered to a short, lathed neck, topped by a traditional pinecone finial—a knob of oak the size of a bowling ball, elongated and pointed at the top, carved with overlapping leaves or scales. All were intact but the post at the front of the landing, which was missing its finial.
The break was odd. Though it was at least three inches thick at its narrowest point, as thick as a baseball bat, the neck had been wrenched apart. A jagged bristle of oak fiber stood up where the ball had been. Fascinated, Paul tried to visualize how that much force could be brought to bear. From the direction of the broken fibers he could see that the ball had been broken outward, toward the other side of the room.
Lia would have a name for what he was looking for, he thought, forensic terminology like ballistic trajectory or some such. If the ball were broken off with a lot of force, it would travel in the direction the broken wood indicated. And, if no one had found some other use for it, like using it to smash mirrors, it might still be where it fell.
He sighted across the break and selected the most likely trajectory—straight across the big room—then picked his way across. At the opposite wall he found it, a pinecone of oak with a brighter yellow beard of torn fiber at the bottom, lying among the shards of a shattered vase. He lifted it, morbidly engrossed, his heart starting to thump. A good swing with a sledgehammer might have dislodged it, but it was inconceivable that the ball would travel fifty feet. And the hammer would have left the imprint of its head in the wood. Yet the carved edges were still sharp, the finish unmarred except for a smudge of white—paint or plaster. Paul scanned the wall and found the print of the ball's scalloped leaf impressed into the plaster.
He glanced back at the post. It looked as if the ball had traveled across the room and had hit the wall hard enough to dent the plaster. He couldn't imagine the level of force required to accomplish the act. Vivien's "presences," he thought. Ghosts.
He shivered, almost seeing it: patterns hidden in the room, lines of motion, arcs and trajectories revealed in the way things were smashed, the scatter of pieces,
the direction of bends and breaks. The meandering paths of tornadoes left destruction like this, leaving whorls and bends, roofs twisted, farm implements flung, trees fallen, all revealing the route and shape of the angry winds. He could almost feel a system of turbulence lingering in the air, like a retinal afterimage of a dancer's gyrations. Yes, it was as if some wild dance had happened here, mad giants spinning with dire abandon, leaving in the debris a record of their steps and leaps, the arcs of their flailing arms and legs. There was a kinetic melody here, a tune played in three-dimensional space, vehement beyond imagining.
Paul hefted the carved ball, wondering what it would feel like to open himself to that release, to feel that much energy channeled through him.
Something tugged at his memory, something fairly recent. His reading, his research. School? No—it had to do with Mark. He paused, trying to find the thread of his thought, but it was gone. Thinking about the finial had set it off, but weighing it in his hands now he could find nothing. With all his strength, he flung the ball back toward the staircase. It was too heavy to throw overhand, and his body compensated, shoving it through the air like a shot put. It fell short of the steps by ten feet, bounced and rolled.
The noise echoed in the house like a gunshot, shocking him out of the mood he'd drifted into. The fact was that what remained was a mouse-infested mess, a waste of beautiful and valuable things. An unacceptable violation of his aunt's house and her life. Which had fallen to him to remedy. He found his pen and made a note: Total 44 windows—39 broken.
He looked around at the room again, then jotted another note: Look up Salvatore Falcone.
Golden's Bridge was quiet: The commuters' cars were still parked along the roads, but the bad weather had discouraged shoppers. The pavement felt greasy beneath his wheels. Paul stopped at a pay phone and managed to reach Albert Martin, who told him to come on over.
