Dead Creek

by Victoria Houston

  The truck sped toward Herman’s. Osborne closed his eyes against the glare of the late afternoon sun, letting the murmur of Julie’s and Ray’s voices lull him into a hazy daydream of Lew on a lake, casting, reeling, and casting again.

  In the dream, Lew’s bait is taken suddenly and pulled deep, deep into the water. He watches her play the line out, then jerk her rod to set the hooks deep in the muskie’s jaw. She shifts her feet and hunches her shoulders for the fight. He’s in the boat with her, gaff and net ready. They work together: he steadying the boat as she plays the big fish. When the fish is close enough to thrash along the side of the boat, he readies the gaff to hook it with his left arm, net it with the right. “Yours!” cries Lew. The moment is right, and he stands to reach forward—

  “Well, I’ll be, Herman’s expecting us.” Ray’s voice shook Osborne from his daydream as they pulled into the ruts beside Herman’s cabin. The old man was indeed standing out in the grassy area that passed for a yard. The clouds and the towering white pines that hung over Herman’s beat-up old shack made the day seem darker and later than it was. Hunks of fabric hung in his windows, and a rusted old bicycle rested against the outside wall near the front door. Osborne had first seen this shack thirty years ago, and he didn’t think a single detail had changed. Same old bike, same old raggedy curtains in the windows. Same old Herman.

  Herman waved and walked slowly toward them as they piled out of the truck. It always struck Osborne whenever he first saw the old man that his skin was as black brown as the tree trunks around him. Black brown and creased even blacker.

  Herman’s wasn’t a dirt like the soiled, grimy surfaces caused by food and lack of cleanliness. His was the black dirt of tilled soil from his vast truck garden. It was the dark dust that floated up from ditches that he drove through on his ancient tractor. It was a dirt permanently imbedded in his skin, maybe even his veins. Mary Lee used to threaten their kids saying, “If you don’t rub that washcloth hard, you’ll stay as dirty as old Herman the German.” It never occurred to her that Herman seemed rather happy in his dirt.

  And he looked happy today, though hunching and shuffling toward them under the weight of the blackened old brown tweed overcoat he wore winter and summer, it struck Osborne the odd figure might fit Julie’s image of Rumplestilskin—or an overdressed crab. Under the grimy, green plaid Scottish golfer’s hat that he’d worn for all the years that Osborne had known him, the grizzled, rough-bearded face parted in a smile. Of course, he wasn’t wearing his teeth. Osborne grimaced and said what he always said when he greeted Herman: “All that time and money, Herman, all that time and money.”

  Julie was charmed. She extended her hand to shake Herman’s and gave him a warm smile. Then she stepped back as Ray leaned down to put his arm around the old man’s shoulders.

  “Herman, you old coot. You never told me you adopted Marie. I thought she was your natural daughter.”

  “Hmm, ymmm.”

  Ray could understand him, but Osborne couldn’t. As Herman and Ray exchanged friendly mumbles, Osborne walked Julie over to Herman’s vegetable garden. The long, raised beds had been freshly tilled, and the soil was a deep, deep black. Osborne whistled at the sight.

  “You don’t see rich loam like this very often, Julie.” He knelt to grab a handful and rubbed it between his fingers. “See how fine it crumbles? Herman’s been working leaf mold into this for fifty years, I’ll bet. A number of years ago, back when I made his bridges for him, he offered to pay me in fresh corn, tomatoes, raspberries, little tiny new potatoes, and pumpkins for five years. Best deal I ever made,” said Osborne, keeping an eye on the conversation between Ray and Herman. He reached for another handful. “I’ll tell ya, this soil is pure gold.”

  “This is good country, isn’t it,” said Julie quietly. Then the two of them stood and waited in silence, their hands thrust into their pockets and a crisp wind blowing against their faces.

  Finally, Ray turned toward them and hollered, “C’mon, he’s gonna take us out to Marie’s place so Julie can meet her.”

  They followed the old man down a well-worn path that took them west across his front yard where they passed a decrepit shed with its roof caved in. On the far side of the shed, a wooden canoe, turned upside down, rested on sawhorses. That struck Osborne as a little strange: He knew of no water close by, and the old man’s battered truck wasn’t going to pull a trailer of any kind. Someone appeared to be working on the canoe. It looked as though it had been hand-sanded and given several coats of varnish.

  Now, that was very interesting: Osborne could see the boat was an antique. Antique and valuable, he thought, keeping his opinion to himself.

  “Well, hey, this could turn into something nice,” said Ray, stopping to look over the canoe. He gave the boat an affectionate pat. “Is this Marie’s work?” he shouted at Herman who was a little hard of hearing. The old man nodded. “Marie’s one talented carpenter,” said Ray to his friends. “She made my kitchen cabinets, y’know.”

  The path continued through a field a brief distance, then meandered into a stand of pine, and then suddenly, to Osborne’s great surprise, emerged along the bank of a tiny lake.

  “Herman!” he said. “I’ve hunted this region for years, and I never knew there was a lake here!”

  The little lake, maybe a half mile long and less than a quarter mile wide, was nestled beneath the shadows of elegant, loopy-branched tamarack. Lily pads were just sprouting around a huge boulder not far from shore. Across the lake was another boulder where a duck was currently resting against a backdrop of cattails.

  Even Julie was struck by the pristine beauty of the place. “I wish I had my camera,” she said softly.

  “I thought you’d like it back here,” said Ray. It was clear the lake was no surprise to him.

  A small cabin stood off to their right. Less than ten feet from shore, it stood sturdily on a dark-green cement foundation. That plus the rough shingles covering the sides, which had also been painted a deep, dark green, combined to make the cabin blend into the pine forest. What caught Osborne’s eye was a chimney made of river rock, each rock carefully chosen and set into place. He whistled. Someone had taken a great deal of time to put that work of art together, rock by rock.

  Osborne touched Julie’s arm and pointed. “You don’t see stonework like this anymore,” he said. She nodded. The three of them stopped and watched as Herman walked haltingly up to the door and knocked. The door opened. He was muttering and gesturing, and then he stepped inside so they couldn’t see him. A few minutes passed.

  “Now, you know about Marie, right?” Ray asked Osborne in a low voice.

  “I haven’t seen her in years,” said Osborne. He turned to Julie, “Marie’s a hermit. A true hermit. She attended the same grade school as my daughters but I don’t think she graduated from eighth grade even. As a child, she was absolutely beautiful. Blond hair, white skin and these angel-like tiny features. But she never went to junior high or high school. As far as I know, she’s always hid back here in the woods. She and Herman pretty much just live off the land.”

  “Berries, veggies, and fish,” said Ray. “I stocked that lake with walleye and trout for Marie a few years ago. I always bring the old man some venison. He gives me tomatoes and fresh corn—”

  Just then, Herman stepped out of the cabin, followed by a short, thickbodied woman in washed-out denim overalls and a dingy gray sweatshirt. For an absurd moment, the sight of her made Osborne think of a squat concrete silo with a black dome. Like Herman, she wore an old wool golf hat. Hers was black tweed flecked with white. It sat on her square head over stringy white hair that hung around her ears and down her back. Her face, much broader than Herman’s, was weatherbeaten, sun-spotted, and heavily freckled. The delicate features of childhood were gone, coarsened by weather and weight. She had short, stumpy, strong arms, and her stride was ponderous with her legs far apart as if to balance the bulky upper body. If they hadn’t been expecting a woman, Osborne would h
ave guessed her to be a man.

  As Marie neared them, she grunted several times in response to something Herman was saying to her. Then, looking at Julie and Osborne, burst into a giggle. She kept giggling and started to nod her head up and down.

  In spite of the giggle and the nodding, her eyes, wide-set under a high forehead, struck Osborne as glowing with intelligence and good cheer. She seemed genuinely pleased to see Ray, and as she grinned broadly to greet him, Osborne noted she practiced Herman’s mode of preventive dental care: she was missing a number of teeth.

  “Marie, it’s been awhile.” Ray stepped forward and put a friendly arm around her shoulders, as if oblivious to the giggling and nodding that Osborne figured was some kind of involuntary tic. “I’m afraid we have some disturbing news for you. Our friend here is a lawyer from Kansas City, and she’s come to Loon Lake to investigate the murder of a man who might have been your natural brother.”

  Osborne thought later that it should have dawned on him right then, when Marie’s giggling and nodding never broke its rhythm, when she registered no surprise at the mention of a sibling—a murdered sibling, no less—that his life was about to change. Ray described the finding of the bodies, then he introduced Julie. Julie told Marie of her legal relationship with Bowers, briefly mentioned the adoption history, and then, Osborne noted with surprise, told Marie of her engagement to Bowers.

  “So,” she said at last in gentle tones, “you and I might have been family if this hadn’t happened.”

  “Oh? Yeth? Heh, heh, heh, heh….”

  Ray’s eye caught Osborne’s: That was one weird concept—the idea that these two women could be remotely related.

  Meanwhile, Marie, who had taken a seat with the rest of them at a wooden, beaten-up old picnic table by the lake’s edge, continued to grin as the staccato-like giggle repeated at a low hum. The nodding, once she sat down, turned into a full-body rocking motion. She didn’t seem to notice anything unusual in her behavior, her eyes eagerly observing each of them. Herman said nothing. Then Herman mumbled something to Ray.

  “Excuse us for a minute, folks,” Ray said, standing up, “Herman’s got some blackberry bushes he wants me to see.” As the two men stood, Marie pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. She lit a cigarette and inhaled with satisfaction.

  Osborne suddenly wished he still smoked. This was the perfect time to fiddle with a cigarette and have an excuse to turn away from the strange scene, if only to think over what to do next. But he didn’t smoke, so he decided to sit still and observe the next few minutes. He figured Julie must be finding the entire scene even more surreal. But he should have been prepared. Hang around with Ray long enough and you discover that life exists on planes you never knew about.

  As he sat quietly, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu swept over him: He inhaled the cool late afternoon air into his nostrils, he felt the breezes blow across his fingers where they rested on the table before him, he looked at the color of the lake surface behind Marie’s rocking head directly in front of him—and he felt he had been here before, seen this scene, felt this space, heard this silence. He felt strange and light and disconnected from everything around him.

  As the two men walked off, Julie looked at Osborne with an expression of helplessness. She didn’t know what to do or say.

  “So … Marie, how do you know Ray?” she finally asked Marie, her voice loud enough to be heard over the giggle.

  “Rayth’s a good friend,” said Marie, blowing smoke through her nostrils. She spoke with a lisp due to the lack of teeth but was otherwise rather matter-of-fact. From all the cigarette butts Osborne had seen as they walked along the path, he figured she smoked as heavily as Herman.

  “Have you been friends a long time?” prompted Julie.

  “Um-hmm. Since Saint Mary’s—I think twenty, twenty-five years maybe?”

  “Same class?” asked Julie.

  “He’th much younger,” said Marie softly. She’d stopped giggling and spoke so softly that it seemed like a spell was cast around the three of them as they sat there. Julie told Osborne later, she felt the same way. Both of them were wise enough not to say another word. Marie sat silent but rocking steadily back and forth for a few more moments. Finally, she inhaled deeply, tossed the cigarette down at her feet, and ground it out with her heel. Then she spoke. Her voice was firm and reedy now.

  “Hmm, in them days, Herman was pretty bad, y’know. He’s drunk as a skunk most of the time. He sure didn’t know how to take care of a little kid, y’know. Heh, heh, heh. So’s I didn’t have nice clothes or nothin'. He got me to school ‘cause the sheriff made ‘im take me, but that’s ‘bout as much as he did.” Marie smiled sweetly. “He isn’t mean or nothin', he jes didn’t know no better, heh, heh, heh, heh….” The giggle rattled on for a while.

  “It was okay at first, but pretty soon the other kids could see that I was funny, y’know. I started to look funny. I’ve always looked funny. My hair? See, it’s all over me. I, heh, heh, heh, I had too much hair since I was maybe seven years old, heh, heh, heh…. That’s why I like living back here … y’know?” With that, Marie rocked harder and giggled a long spell, as if angry about something she’d just said or thought about.

  Then the giggling stopped again. She rocked as she spoke. “One summer day I was at the park by Ray’s house, watchin’ kids fly kites. Herman’d come to town and brung me along. I didn’t have no kite, of course. I was jes watchin’ and tryin’ to stay out of the way so no one’d pick on me. Then Ray came over and asked me if I would like to fly his kite.”

  Marie’s eyes were soft and friendly as she spoke. “He gave me his kite ‘cause he said he had to go home for lunch. He jus gave it to me—this beautiful kite. Heh, heh, heh…. That was very nice. He was my first friend.”

  Marie stopped rocking and stood up, reaching into her overalls pocket for the pack of cigarettes again, shook one out, reached into her other pocket for the lighter, and flicked. She inhaled deeply, then exhaled, giggling as she sat down again. The air had grown cooler around them, and the sky was starting to darken, but it seemed very calm and peaceful to Osborne. Julie was sitting in silence, her elbows on the table, her chin resting in her hands. She had not taken her eyes off Marie.

  Marie took another deep drag on the cigarette, and then she repeated her earlier words, “Ray is a good friend. I have two good friends. Ray is one.” She resumed her rocking.

  “Who’s the other?” asked Julie.

  “Herman. Heh, heh, heh, heh…. Come on, let me show you something.” Marie stood and motioned for them to follow her back toward her cabin. Then she motioned for them to stop before the front door. She went inside, walking through a small outer porch, then through another heavier door into the interior of what must be a two-room cabin. Julie watched her go inside, then she stepped to the left and craned her neck to look through the outside window at something on the small porch. Osborne noticed Julie had tensed and moved forward, her nose literally pressed against the window pane.

  Osborne cleared his throat. She was pushing the bounds of etiquette. Marie had made it clear she wanted them to remain outside. Then, from where he stood, outside one of the main cabin’s windows, Osborne saw a light go on in the dim interior. Marie bent down toward the light to reach for something. As she did so, her hat fell off, exposing knots of hair growing in clumps from her skull. The light caught the shadows of her cheekbones and eye sockets, offering an effect identical to that of a flashlight aimed from the chin up. Osborne froze, the image setting off a flash in his memory. The interior light went off, and he looked away quickly. The shock of what he saw had so stunned him that he didn’t even notice the strange, tight look on Julie’s face.

  Just then, Marie stepped out of the door. Her head was tipped down, but her eyes were watching theirs as she held in both hands what looked like a rolled-up old map. “Heh, heh, heh….” The staccato giggle ran on like a low-toned motor.

  Gently, gently, she unfolded her paper treasure
: the kite. The vivid colors of the old Japanese kite had faded, but its support sticks had been tucked inside, and all the strings were still attached. With two deft moves, Marie held the delicate paper in one hand and snapped the support sticks into place.

  “I bet it can still fly,” said Julie.

  “I wouldn’t want to rip it or nothin',” said Marie. Then she unsnapped the supports and very, very carefully rolled it back up. She gave them both a sweet smile of pride, then shrugged and giggled. She walked back to open the porch door and set the kite down inside, then she returned, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her overalls.

  Osborne didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Julie, too, seemed at a loss for words. Marie had seemed so vulnerable, standing between them with her talisman of friendship. Osborne knew then why she had been in the woods that night. Just as the three of them started slowly back to the picnic table, they heard voices and looked up to see Herman and Ray coming toward them. Osborne was anxious to get moving. He signaled to Ray.

  “Oh, Herman, sorry,” said Ray. “Looks like I gotta get the good dentist back to his dog.”

  “I left him at my daughter’s house,” apologized Osborne, “and I must pick him up before five.” The three men started back toward Herman’s house and the truck. Julie hung behind, deep in conversation with Marie for about five minutes before she ran to catch up.

  Once in the cab of the truck and down the road far enough to be out of earshot of Herman and Marie, Julie spoke. “Can we pull over and talk for a minute? I’m quite upset.”

  Ray did as she asked. He kept the truck idling as both men looked at her.