by Brian Hodge
I was pretty sure I knew how it ended.
“He never came back.”
Shelly’s mug was empty by now, and she rolled it slowly between her palms, staring into it as if she expected Dennis to pop out alive and intact again. At last she tabled the mug and turned to me, finally deciding to talk directly to me instead of at the floor.
“The sheriff’s department found the Honda out at Pleasant Hills. Or Tri-Lakes. I like that better, really. Pleasant Hills is too much of a misnomer. They tried dragging the ponds, but nothing. Then a week later he turns up.”
Shelly stood abruptly and excused herself, heading back into the rest of the apartment. I watched her leave, watching those lean leg muscles. She didn’t have much in the way of a tan, but that didn’t stop them from being nice-looking legs. I heard her blowing her nose in the bathroom, halfway back the length of her home. Soon she was back, a little red-eyed and clutching a crumpled tissue in one hand.
“I’ve been a lousy host,” she said. “I didn’t even offer you anything to drink. Can I get you something?”
I shook my head. “Thanks. No.” All I wanted was to hear her finish.
“After the funeral I took a leave of absence from work. Without pay, but I needed it, and they let me. I went back home for a few weeks, back to Kansas City. Got most of it out of my system there. When I came back I was catching up on the news I missed, and came across that about your friend. And about the boot they pulled out of the pond. And I remembered your name. It all seemed like too big a coincidence, you know?”
I nodded.
“I was hoping you might be able to help me understand what happened to Dennis a little better. But it doesn’t look like you understand things any more than I do.”
“No, not really,” I said, and I stared into the floor much as she had several minutes earlier. It was true, my understanding didn’t surpass hers. But then again, I was holding out, wasn’t I? Even so, the few tidbits I was holding on to wouldn’t make things any clearer. They would only make it a bigger puzzle.
Shelly got up and wandered over to her shelves, quietly reaching out and touching a picture here, a knickknack there. I wondered what memories each one triggered.
“In time, I can get over this. I can get to the point where I see it was better that we didn’t get married. That things weren’t that promising between us. I can adjust to all that.” Shelly turned to face me again, her eyes distant and haunted. “But if I never understand what happened, and why it had to end between Dennis and me the way it did … I don’t know if I can ever really turn loose of it like I should.”
A bigger puzzle. I couldn’t see my last few trump cards contributing to any better understanding, or to her well-being … but what the hell. I’d shouldered their weight on my own for long enough.
“I’ve got a little more to add,” I said slowly. “I won’t blame you if you laugh in my face, because I know what some of this is going to sound like. But first off, I’ll swear to my dying day that no one threw Dennis’s body out in front of my car. I know what the police say, and I know what the coroner says, but none of them were there that night. He walked.” Then I told her about what I’d seen him doing next, before he finally fell forever silent and still.
I waited for the outburst I felt sure to come. The anger, the denial, the laughter, the demands to get the hell out of her home. None of which came. All it brought on was a slight frown, which for a moment was even worse, as if she might be humoring me along.
“What else?” was all she said.
I shut my eyes. “It didn’t end with Rick disappearing. There’s been more. Dreams. Or hallucinations, I guess you’d call them.” And the axe? What about that? “I don’t want to go into it all, not now. But the worst of it I’ve been living with for about three weeks. I found Rick.” Opening my eyes, I told her just exactly what state he was in now. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not on this one. You can go up there and see for yourself.”
It was out, for better or worse. Most of my cards laid on the table for someone else to see, and I felt a scary sense of relief. Shelly regarded me for a long moment with cool, watchful eyes. She grabbed her empty mug and rolled it between her palms again.
“I’ve seen a lot of people lie to me,” she said. “At work and away from it. But I don’t think you’re one of them. At least you believe what you’re saying, and you’ve got nothing to gain from lying.”
“What do you think it is?” I asked.
(Vikings)
She turned that one over in her mind, opened her mouth to say something, probably just I don’t know, then shut it. Finally she gave a helpless shrug. She looked miserable, cheated and defeated.
“It’s a lot more than a few coincidences and a little hysteria, I know that now,” I said, trying to reason this through. “Maybe I could’ve believed that up to a point, but now, ever since I found Rick…” My voice trailed away. “It’s too directed, everything looks so focused in on me. And it feels like it’s biding its time, like it’ll let me know only when it’s good and ready.”
(Coming up Vikings)
“You’d know more about that than I would,” she said, barely above a whisper. “But if it’s true, then I pity you.”
The next afternoon, after running the conversation with Shelly over and over in my mind until I was ready to punch walls, something else started to gnaw at me. I remembered with perfect clarity something Mom had mentioned upon coming home from the hospital that first morning after Dad’s heart attack.
He’d been home for less than a week, and the last thing I wanted to do was say anything to upset him. Just the same, I had to know. I tried to rationalize it by telling myself that I might learn something to benefit us all.
I found him alone in the family room, watching solemnly as Godzilla kicked the hell out of Tokyo.
“I can leave you alone if you want,” I said. “This looks like pretty heady stuff.”
He nodded. “Keep it brief. It’s easy to lose track of the plot in something like this.”
I sat beside him on the couch, watching screaming little Asians swarming from a building, overcome with such panic that their voices lagged behind the movement of their mouths. Come on, get to it.
“Dad? I’ve been curious about something ever since your … well, you know.”
He glanced at me, his eyes turning the slightest bit wary. “What’s that?”
“When Mom came back the next morning, she said you came to for a couple seconds. And the only thing you did was ask about me. If I was safe. It’s just bugged me. Do you remember that?”
He shook his head, patted me on the leg. “No, Chris, I don’t. I don’t remember anything until sometime Thursday.”
“Oh.” Pause. “So you don’t remember why you would’ve asked that, then?”
He frowned, staring at his footstool. “I didn’t exactly say that, Chris.”
I held my breath. The fact that he couldn’t remember his actions but understood his motives seemed even more ominous.
“I don’t think I should even tell you this, Chris. I don’t see any good that will come of it, none at all.”
“Please? It’s important to me.”
He nodded wearily, resigned to sharing whatever secret he’d been keeping inside. I cursed myself for doing it to him.
“We’d just finished supper,” he said. “Your mom and I were clearing off the table. She was over at the sink, and I was standing by the window. I looked out at the woodpile, thinking how much I’d enjoyed working out there with you before you left. And I guess I had some sort of hallucination. The way I remember it now, it seemed to precede the heart attack, but I can’t understand how that could happen. So I guess it was a by-product and I just remember it wrong.”
I waited for him to go on, and he wasn’t any too eager. But we’d come this far. No turning back. “What was it?”
He shut his eyes. “It was you. Or rather, part of you. You were lying next to the woodpile. Bloody. S
o bloody. And someone was standing there with an axe. Holding your head.”
Every muscle in my body seemed to lock at once. I even forgot how to breathe.
“And I’ll never be sure, I never want to be sure,” he said slowly, painfully, “but I almost think it was Aaron.”
I drove up to Tri-Lakes then, my foot leaden on the gas as I kept the car just on the shy side of losing control. I skidded to a halt on the cul-de-sac, back end swerving around with a scream of rubber.
I burst from my car, not bothering to shut the door. In one hand I held the axe that had ended up in the tree next to my head, and I wondered if Dad would recognize it. I went striding closer to the grove, wading through weeds as the trees looked on impassively, green and leafy under a cloudless sky. Not unlike the day I’d been out to confront it before. And I thought I had been angry then.
“You’ve got my attention!” I screamed at it. “But goddamn you, YOU FUCKING LEAVE MY FAMILY OUT OF IT!”
The words seemed to echo and roll across the countryside. Again, I was struck by the absurdity of how anything could possibly be so wrong at such a pastoral site.
“LET’S GET IT OVER WITH!” I shouted, not caring anymore, because anything had to be better than enduring these endless taunts, mystified as to why it had decided to pick on me, like a schoolyard bully deciding to get into some heavy sport with the new kid in town. So I stood my ground, remembering how it had accepted my challenge the last time. How it had shown me that different Tri-Lakes. Its alter ego.
“LET’S GET INTO IT!” I screamed, and hurled the axe toward the grove, startling myself with the beauty of the throw. The axe flipped end over end, whickering through the air, until it thunked solidly into the largest tree, chest-high. It looked as if it had been thrown by an expert. A warrior.
I ran into the grove and yanked the axe free, swung it again. Bark flew. I sagged to my knees among the sticks and decaying leaves, swinging the axe time and again, crying, swearing, taking out divots with each stroke and feeling as if I were violating Rick’s grave. I wouldn’t look up. Chopping, hacking…
And still, it wouldn’t even meet me halfway.
Chapter 27
Funny thing about pain, and the emotional ache that sets in upon losing someone you love. It’s cyclical. At least that’s how I found it with Rick.
There were days of deep depression set within spans of time when I fooled myself into thinking I was getting over it. It seemed like every time I thought I’d built up a little barrier between myself and that night, something would come along and tear it down and dig its nails into my guts and twist merrily away.
But nothing could’ve prepared me for the feelings that hit me like a runaway truck on a night in early October. Phil and Greg and Ashley and I loaded up into my car and road-tripped north to Chicago for a Van Halen concert. With Sammy Hagar in the lineup, they were still kicking major ass, but nothing could keep us from missing David Lee Roth. Everything’s a trade-off. We’d had tickets for a month, and didn’t care if we were too wiped out for classes the next day. We knew where our priorities were.
Yet as I sat amid the screaming audience, wreathed by halos of cigarette and dope smoke, watching one of Rick’s idols, I felt the hurt all over again.
Because in Eddie Van Halen — skinny, longhaired, hopelessly energetic, and having the time of his life onstage — I saw what Rick had aspired to almost since we’d met. There was what he might’ve become with a ton of hard work and no small amount of luck.
Once, maybe twice in a lifetime, you run across someone you know is destined for greatness. They can’t escape it. They’ve got both the talent and the drive to push it to its limits and beyond. Lots of people have one or the other, but the Rick Woodwards of the world are the rare ones with a matched set. I was biased, sure, but something deep inside told me he was going to make it.
And with him gone, the dreams he’d had that would never be realized would forever frustrate me. They weren’t mine to carry on. I had the guitar, but that was all.
So I wasn’t much in the party mood on the way back to Bloomington. That didn’t keep me from hitting the rum, though. Just for the numbing effects, not for fun. Fun was the province of the others. Phil had consumed a pint of vodka, Greg had his pipe, and Ashley had gin.
“Anybody’s ears ring as bad as mine?” Ashley said from the back seat. “That’s gotta be the loudest show I’ve ever been to.”
True. The volume could only be described as staggering.
Greg snorted in his sleep. He sat canted to one side in the back seat like the Leaning Tower, empty pipe beside him and hands loosely clutching a half-eaten bag of Cheetos. His mouth hung open slack and that fluorescent yellow-orange stuff from the Cheetos coated his lips and speckled his chin like a weird case of jaundice.
“How far back to Bloomington?” Ashley said.
“About forty more miles. You in a hurry?”
“It’s no fun riding around with a corpse back here. I’m no necrophiliac.” Then he grinned and pulled a Cheeto from Greg’s bag and tickled him under the nose with it. Greg’s arm flopped toward his face and he babbled softly in some strange new language. Ashley giggled. “What’s it like living with this poor catatonic wreck?”
“It’s okay by me. No drama,” I said, switching on the heater to its lowest setting. The nights were starting to hold a chill from dusk to dawn. “Except he’s the only guy I know who can fart in his sleep.”
“No!” Phil said, while Ashley dissolved into snickering laughter.
“No lie,” I said. “I can be at my desk, studying after he’s already asleep, and I’ll hear this little poot of wind. Really vile.”
“That’s too much!” Ashley laughed. “Too much!”
Greg stirred from sleep, his Cheetos bag rattling with indignation. “I heard that,” he mumbled. “I do not fart in my sleep. I never have.”
“The hell you don’t. Why do you think I still sleep with the windows open? Smells like something crawled up your ass and died.”
Phil and Ashley broke up laughing and pounding the car, but Greg merely grumbled and went for the Cheetos. He tilted his head back and dumped a fistful into his mouth. Then he hiccupped and jerked spastically, Cheetos flying from his hand and mouth like a burst of fireworks. Greg wheezed, then doubled over and coughed.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Phil.
Ashley was watching with mild fascination. “I think he inhaled a Cheeto.”
Greg verified this with two hoarse rasps, and his eyes bugged half out of his head.
“Quick, get it out of his windpipe!” I yelled. “I don’t want him puking in here!”
“What the hell do I do?” Ashley said. “I’m a psychology major!”
“Anybody know the Heimlich maneuver?” I asked.
“Nah,” Phil said with a shake of his head. “I think you have to be standing up for that.”
“Well, hell, hit him on the back,” I said.
“Chop him in the throat!” Phil cried.
Any other time I would automatically have pulled the car over to the shoulder. But this time I was just drunk enough and sullen enough to not want to bother with it. And so I attempted to drive while keeping one eye on the road and the other on the back seat. It couldn’t be done, and I ended up swerving back and forth, steering out of one lane into the other and back again, the car rocking from side to side while the tires screamed. Lucky for us there were no other cars nearby.
Ashley leaned over and rolled down the right-side window as Greg began clutching his throat and making a gallery of anguished faces. Ashley then seized him by the seat of the pants and the scruff of the neck and shoved Greg halfway out the window.
“Turn your head to the right and cough, please,” Ashley said in a nasal voice just before he began pounding mercilessly on Greg’s back. For one fearful moment I just knew Ashley was going to take my soft, plump roommate and squash him over the door like an overripe banana.
I’d never heard
a worse din of noise … the wailing of the tires, music from the tape player that blared louder as my knee struck the volume, Phil’s hysterical laughter, Greg’s muffled gagging, which became a harsh scream when Phil loudly warned me against sideswiping a mile marker I wasn’t even close to. And then something else: a soft popping noise I barely heard over the rest. I listened for it again, but it didn’t come. Fine. I had enough to worry about.
“Okay, it’s out!” Greg yelled.
Ashley tugged him back in just as I brought the car under control again and let out a breath I’d been holding for what seemed like minutes. Once again the car rolled straight and true, and I turned the music down, a welcome calm settling over the car again.
“You gonna live?” I asked.
Greg sat wide-eyed and erect, cornsilk hair windblown and sticking out like a bad punk cut. “Uh huh.” He wiped his yellow mouth.
Phil dabbed at his eyes with a shirtsleeve. “Now that’s something to tell your kids and grandkids about. Narrowly saved from a tracheotomy by the skilled hands of Ashley Hopkins, Supershrink.”
Ashley clasped his skilled hands and shook them aloft.
“With any luck I won’t even remember this in the morning,” Greg said. He fumbled for his pipe and dope bag in his sock.
“Hey, you know the rules,” I said. “No smoking in the car.”
“Okay, okay,” he huffed, leaning back to stare at the roof.
I savored the calm. If we could hang on like this for just a bit longer, we could get back to campus and climb into our beds and put this long, tiring night behind us.
And things probably would’ve been fine if I hadn’t smelled smoke.
“Damn it, Greg,” I said. “Did you light up?”
“No!” He sat up and leaned forward. “What for?”
