Fred moved around to help Constance with the two packhorses she had been leading. “Believe it or not,” Constance said, leaning against the rail and brushing one layer of dust off, “we feel exactly the same way the first few trips in and out every spring. But you almost get used to it.”
“Don’t let her kid you,” Fred said. “You’ll be able to hear her groan clear across the valley when she crawls out of bed tomorrow morning.”
“It will be a duet, I’m sure,” I said.
Both of them laughed. The thousand aches that made up my body didn’t think it was so funny.
“Twenty minutes to get this all unloaded and the horses taken care of.” Fred said. “Then you can hit the hot shower. Guaranteed to work wonders on horse-type aches and pains.” He looked over at where Constance was pulling a saddlebag off one horse. “Whose turn is it to cook?”
“You know whose turn it is,” Constance said, as she carried the saddlebag over and dropped it with a loud thump on the wooden back porch of the lodge. “And it’s not going to even get started until I get into a hot shower and then some clean clothes. Besides, if I cook, you do the horses. Remember?”
Fred patted the neck of the horse he had been riding. “How could I ever forget?”
***
It took closer to an hour before we had all the gear stored, my bag up in my room on the second floor of the lodge, and my body standing under a hot shower washing away the smell of horses. Fred made me promise that no matter how good it felt, I would make it quick. Hot water was scarce since all they had was one water heater powered by a generator. He didn’t want to take a cold shower.
I promised him. But it was a hard promise to keep.
After far too short a time, I fought my way out of the shower, put on a fresh pair of cotton work pants, my most comfortable shirt, and a thick wool sweater. I carried my shoes and padded in my socks down the wooden stairs.
The Monumental Lodge was one of those big, open-roomed places where the minute you walked in, you just knew deep down inside that you’d found the home you’d always wanted. The walls and rafters were all made of large, rough logs, filled in between with a light brown chinking. The kitchen sat in the right back corner as you entered from the main door. Directly to the right of the main door, in front of a large, small-paned window that overlooked the lower end of the lake, was a huge wooden table with a dozen chairs around it.
A stone fireplace filled the left wall, surrounded by a number of handmade couches and chairs padded with an abundance of throw pillows. The stairs went up the back wall to the one bathroom and two bedrooms upstairs. I dropped my shoes by the front door and walked slowly around the room, glancing at a few of the old pictures and odd knickknacks. The room made me feel cozy and warm, even with only a small fire in the massive mouth of the fireplace.
Constance had been first in the shower and she was now preparing dinner.
“Feel better?” she asked as I wandered into the kitchen.
“Six thousand percent,” I said. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Sure is. See that cabinet there beside the back door?”
I nodded. It was a rough wood cabinet with no sign of a lock. An old picture of six miners standing with shovels in front of an open mine shaft hung beside it.
She slid a ceramic mug across the counter. “Pour a little rum in that for me. Then fix yourself whatever you want. Figure I might as well let you do what you do best.”
I picked up her mug, enjoying the heavy feel of the stoneware in my hand. “What’s this for? Rum toddy?”
“Hot buttered rum.”
“Sounds too good to pass. Toss me a mug too.”
She slid another across the counter and I went to the well-stocked liquor cabinet.
“You folks sure know how to spend your summers,” I said, inspecting the supply of booze that would have made a small public bar proud.
“It’s been a lot of work.”
“Obviously. All a person has to do is look at this place to see that. Have I told you how impressed I am with all this?”
Constance looked at me with one of those very serious expressions reserved for marriages, funerals, or corporate boardrooms. “You mean it?”
“Of course I do. This place is fantastic.”
“That means a lot to me,” she said. “Really. Make sure you tell Fred. He’s afraid you’ll think this is all stupid. What with the ghost and all.”
“It’s far from stupid. And I’ll make sure Fred knows that. All right?”
“Thanks,” Constance said. She gave me one of her light-up-the-room smiles and went back to working on dinner.
“In fact,” I said, “even if you can’t think of a better way to get me in here than on some stupid horse, I think you’ve made a regular customer out of me. Assuming, of course, I survive the ride out.”
“You will,” Constance said. “Wait until you see the cabins. They’re really cozy. Perfect for that getaway with your current lady. And that reminds me, just who is your current lady these days?”
“No one,” I said, and then kneeled down in front of the liquor cabinet. That was one topic I really didn’t feel like talking about. In the years since Carla had died, I had spent very little time with any other woman. Somehow, I would end up comparing every one to Carla and that would be the end of that. For most of the last year I’d been keeping company only with myself and almost enjoying it. At least, that’s what I kept repeating to myself. Just as I kept telling myself I enjoyed tending bar at the Garden.
I finished putting the rum in the two mugs and went back to the counter. “Mix?” I held up the mugs.
“In the fridge. And the water should be almost boiling.”
I dug the mix out, added the hot water, and then sat down on one of the bar stools facing across the counter into the kitchen as Constance began her standard quiz about my invisible love life. For years she had been trying to set me up with one woman after another. None of the ones she had picked had ever lasted more than a date or two. But she showed no signs of giving up.
Fred came down the stairs at the same time footsteps sounded on the front deck, the front door opened, and two people came in without knocking.
I turned around on my stool, cradling my hot buttered rum in my hands, and studied the two new arrivals as they took off their heavy jackets and hung them on hooks beside the front door. They did it without hesitation, as if they were very used to doing so.
The man looked to be in his late thirties, about my height, maybe six foot one, with a full head of graying black hair, and a sincere smile. Clear across the room, I liked the guy. I didn’t want to like him. But for some reason, on first glance, I did. Annoying. Damned annoying.
That happened once in a while with a customer in the Garden. I would like certain people even before they said a word. The ones that I had been lucky enough to get to know ended up following along with my first impression. It had also happened a lot back when I was teaching. There was always one, sometimes two, students in the class that I would instantly like. It had been hard not to give the favorites too much extra attention. Angie had been one of those students.
The woman was young, maybe middle twenties. She had striking silver hair, cut in a short, page-boy haircut. She wore a “University of Idaho” sweatshirt and Levi’s as if they were the most natural things in the world. I could tell that her small green eyes didn’t miss a thing. The feeling I had about her was one of distrust. No more reason for it than for my liking the guy.
Fred, now wearing a thick baggy sweater and a wool stocking cap on his bald head, did the introductions and I again assumed my role as bartender. Susan Rule wanted a touch of gin with a lot of soda. A very unusual combination. Professor Steven Jerome wanted scotch, a splash of water, lots of ice. He was a drinker’s drinker. Another reason I liked him.
I handed Steven his drink, then slid Susan’s across the table to where she had sat with her back to the now-dark window. As I did, I noticed she was stari
ng at me as if trying to remember something and not really being able to.
“Fred said your name was Kellogg Jones?” she asked after I sat back down on my stool at the counter. “Do you happen to go by a nickname of some sort or another?”
I nodded.
“Sure,” Fred said as he sat down at the table with a can of beer. “Everyone calls him Doc. Why?”
Susan’s face drained of color and she looked quickly down into her drink. Then, as if deciding that the drink would help, took a deep gulp of it.
“Why?” I asked, after I got over shuddering from the thought of how bad gin and soda must taste. “Have we ever met?” I knew we hadn’t. I’d have remembered her. With or without the silver hair.
“No, we haven’t,” she said after a quick moment in which all of us looked at her. She smiled a weak smile. “The name reminds me of someone out of my past, that’s all.”
“I hope it’s not a bad memory,” I said. Judging from her reaction, there didn’t seem much hope of that.
“No, it’s fine. Your name just caught me a little off guard, that’s all.”
I nodded, not believing a word she was saying. “I’d change it if I could, but you know.”
She laughed. “No, really. I like the name a lot. Honest.” She looked me square in the eye and we held the pose for a moment. I didn’t know what to think by the time she looked down into the depths of her drink and her own thoughts. There was a lot more to this woman than what showed through the surface. And she was not as young as I had thought. No one had old eyes like that without having lived awhile. No one.
***
The rest of our informal cocktail hour and dinner was filled with laughing conversation and short history lessons about everyone involved, except Susan. She steered the conversation expertly away from anything about herself, always directing it back to someone else. She was a master at it, like a good teacher who could keep the students talking.
The meal was one of those fun meals between friends and strangers where everyone was relaxed and seemed to share a common sense of adventure. Being that far back in the wilderness made everyone friendlier, more open. In my trips to mountain lakes, I always found that occurrence interesting. And I was not immune to it.
It wasn’t until after Fred and I had the dishes cleared up and everyone was sitting in the big living area around the built-up fire that the topic of the ghost came up.
I started it.
“Steven,” I said, trying to keep my voice as conversational as I could, “what do you think of this ghost I’ve been hearing about?”
Steven shrugged and took a sip of his after-dinner drink, Constance’s lodgemade eggnog. He looked no more concerned about the question than if I had just asked him what time it was. “She’s just a trapped spirit,” he said. “And damned unhappy. One of the clearest cases in recorded study.”
“Clearest what?” I asked.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “She makes more obvious appearances than any other spirit I have ever seen or read about. Very regular and very consistent.”
“So this is a real ghost, then?” I asked, then glanced over at Constance and shrugged. I couldn’t help it. She smiled at me.
“In the common definition of the term ghost, yes. She is very real. By the way, her name is Gretchen.”
I didn’t want to ask how he knew that yet, so I turned to Susan. “And you’ve seen this ghost? She’s real as far as you’re concerned?”
“Very much so,” Susan said. “And anything possible should be done to free her so that she can move on. It makes me really sad every time she walks.”
I sat back against the pillows of the couch and stared into the fireplace. My intellect was saying go ahead and buy it, but my stomach and all my years of believing in only the here and now was yelling at me.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” Steven said. “Especially when you haven’t seen her yet. You obviously don’t believe in ghosts. Am I right?”
I nodded.
“What kind of afterlife do you believe in?”
“None,” I said. “When you’re gone, you’re gone. Six feet down and cold. Nothing more.” I told him the truth, but lately I had been wondering. I had figured that the questions I had been asking were a natural function of getting older and having that cold end come closer and closer. But there was no way I was going to get religion. To me it made no sense. I had lived a good life. If some God did exist, and was even half of what all those churches claimed, He or She would see that. If there wasn’t a God, then I certainly wasn’t going to go wasting time on an insurance program of pray now, collect later.
“The simplest way to understand a habitual spirit, a ghost,” Steven said, “would be to give the brain some credit. From what Fred has told me, you spent a lot of years teaching college. Right?”
“Too damn many.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Fred said.
“So then,” Steven said, “just think of a spirit as a brain that’s too powerful to die. For some reason, a spirit usually has such a strong feeling for something that the power of that feeling alone does not allow the essence of the person to either dissolve, as you believe, or pass on to the next life, as the religions teach.”
I had to give him credit. What he was saying made an odd sort of sense. “So then why is this Gretchen spirit still hanging around here?”
“Something happened to a man by the name of Alex and she felt he would return for her. She’s been waiting since the day the town was destroyed.”
“You’d think she would realize that this Alex is, in all likelihood, dead.”
Steven shook his head. “Maybe not. There’s a lot of evidence that trapped souls have no sense of time. And no idea who has died and who hasn’t. In a few cases in the past, it has been necessary to summon spirits from the other side to help the trapped soul.”
“I bought your ‘power of the mind’ idea,” I said. “But now you’re getting way past my gag level.”
Steven shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter with Gretchen. But I’d be glad to show the facts of other cases where such an occurrence has happened. That is, if you’re interested.”
I wasn’t. “Maybe sometime,” I said. “So tell me, why the dive into the lake?”
Steven looked over at Fred and Fred nodded for him to go ahead. “As I said, this spirit is waiting for someone named Alex to return for her. I got that much from her just in thoughts. She radiates it over and over. There is something down in the lake that is very important to her and to her search. I am unable to sense what that something is, but know for certain it is there.”
“Do you believe her?” I asked.
“I have to admit,” Steven said, “that I do.”
“You think we might be able to help her?” Fred asked.
Steven shrugged. “We’ll have to see what it is that’s so important to her. If you can find it.”
“What about the chance this may be some sort of trap?” I tried to mentally stop the shivers from running up and down my spine from the thought. I could see Fred shift on his seat. He didn’t look too happy with the idea, either.
“I doubt it,” Steven said. “But, of course, there’s no way of knowing. It’s not like habitual spirits to take any kind of action against the living. When some harm does come to someone, it’s usually because the spirit is doing something related to its own time and the living get in the way. Evil spirits are the invention of fiction.”
“But you said this Gretchen was different. Right?”
Steven nodded slowly while looking first at me, then over at Fred. “That she is. But I got no sense of animosity from her. None. She’s just lost. And waiting.”
I looked over at Susan and Constance. “Any opinions?” I asked. Both women shook their heads. I could tell that Constance was upset, but she wasn’t going to say anything. I could imagine the arguments she and Fred must have had over this.
I turned to Fred. “What do you think we should do?”
/> Fred shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much choice. We don’t stand a hell’s chance of keeping this place the way we want it without getting rid of the ghost. It looks to me like the best hope we have of doing that is on the bottom of that lake.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve made a dive,” I said. “Think we’re up for it?”
“Why not?” He smiled the half-smile that I knew meant we were in trouble. “Besides, when were we ever known for doing sane things?”
“Ten years ago, almost never. And this time certainly won’t be any exception.”
Fred nodded as his smile disappeared. “That it won’t be.”
An uneasy silence dropped over the room, leaving only the crackling of the fire and the very loud stillness of the mountain night. I listened hard, expecting to hear the faint sounds of piano music drifting in from the direction of the black water.
It was obvious I wasn’t the only one listening.
CHAPTER FOUR
Roosevelt Lake
June 27, 1990
“YOU GETTING CLOSE THERE?” I asked Fred as Susan handed me my mask and then moved back across the coarse sand of the lakeshore to talk to Constance.
“Almost,” he said. “Two more minutes.”
I watched him as he checked over his regulator and double tanks as I had done a few minutes before. In the old days, he had been faster at that predive routine than I was. But this time I was so nervous I did my equipment checks twice and still beat him.
I glanced down at the dive watch strapped to my wet suit. It was a little past noon. The day was one of those perfectly clear summer days in the mountains. The kind that a person always hopes to stumble across on a vacation, but never does. The lake had a deep blue tint and the fresh smell of pine was in the air. Even the sandbar beside the lake was warm. A complete switch from the way it had looked the night before.
Laying the Music to Rest Page 5
