“The river. No matter what happens, the water just keeps coming. The river flows.”
“The waters of life.”
“Yeah. But I still can’t get used to that sorry pile of rubble that used to be the bridge.”
“Any progress on the restoration from your end?”
“Hah!” She emitted a bitter laugh. “The select board is voting on it next week, but there isn’t much hope.”
“There’s always hope,” he said, and winked.
Her eyes softened as she looked at him, then narrowed again as she turned her head to face the river. “I’d like to believe you, but now that they’ve arrested Gus, people have forgotten about the bridge.”
“Arrested Gus? What for?”
“Arson. Torching the farm stand.”
“Gus? Hmm. I wouldn’t have thought so, but he does go around mumbling about lesbians.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s an arsonist.”
“Did they put him in jail?”
“Yeah, but they can only hold him for a night, so I think they’re letting him out in about an hour.” She glanced at her watch and peered into the store from the window on the door. “I’m going to pick him up. Want to come?”
“Absolutely.” Yes, there was hope, and here was the proof of it. She was letting him in. “But I’ve been fantasizing about one of those Reuben sandwiches you make.” He directed his eyes toward the window. Sierra, in a shiny scoop-neck shirt with a big ruffle around the neck, was talking and laughing with someone at the cash register.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I have to run up to the house. I’ll meet you at the truck.” She stepped down off the porch and onto the path leading up to her house. Her silver four-by-four pickup gleamed in the sun at the far end of the parking lot.
Frank purchased his sandwich from Sierra, brought it onto the porch, and sat down on the bench. Warmed by the sun and the exercise, he ate in contentment. A young blonde woman parked her red minivan and came up the steps carrying a curly-haired blond baby. “Lovely day,” Frank said with a smile, and she smiled back. This was the way it should be, he thought: sitting on the porch and meeting people in person, as opposed to email or Facebook. He gestured toward the river. “I’d like to see that bridge rebuilt, how about you?”
She shifted the baby on her hip. “Totally,” she said. “I miss it like crazy.” She opened the door to go in as Mona came back down the path.
“Ready?” she asked, and Frank rose to follow her across the muddy parking lot. Mona opened the door and hopped up into the driver’s seat in one light move, like a dancer, and he climbed into the passenger seat.
“I saw you talking to Pauline Perry,” she said.
“Perry?”
“Edson’s wife.”
“Edson’s wife? Okay. I’m making inroads.” He was still in his spandex shirt and pants, his biking gear, and he could feel the velour of the upholstery smooth beneath his thighs. There was a touch of citrus scent in the truck, the scent of Mona, and suddenly he was feeling so good that he needed to place his helmet on his lap. This was like being in high school and hiding his bulging erection every time he saw big-breasted Katrina Mather.
As she pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road, Frank rifled through the CDs in a case between them. “U2,” he said. “I used to love them.”
Mona was biting her lip.
“Hey,” he said, in his most sympathetic tone of voice. “What’s the matter?”
“Gus wasn’t always like this.”
“Have you known him long?”
She nodded. “All my life. And he was a good teacher until just a few years ago. My nieces and nephew had him for math.”
“But something changed?”
“In his last few years, he started doing odd things. Not showing up for school, saying strange things to the kids. Then, he just left, and when someone finally found him up on the mountain, the only way he explained it was that he was cleansing his life of technology, living simply and off the land.”
“Did you think that was a bad thing?”
“I don’t know. In some ways, it makes sense. And I do feel some kind of spirit or presence up there. But I worry about Gus. I went to high school with him. His family lived out on Hemlock Hill, near Roz’s place, and we used to ride the school bus together.”
“Oh. Was he your boyfriend?”
“Oh, no. Gus never had a girlfriend. He was too much in his own world. But I’ve always been very fond of Gus. He’s been almost like a brother to me. And anyway, I wasn’t interested in boys back then.”
“What were you interested in?”
“I wanted to run away and join the Joffrey Ballet.”
“Wow, the Joffrey? Yeah, I could see you as a dancer. Did you ever dance professionally?”
“No. I used to do Morris dancing.” She winced. “But that was a long time ago.”
The truck coasted into the fire station driveway.
“Firehouse?” Frank looked puzzled. “I thought we were going to the jail.” He’d been watching Mona’s profile, her upturned nose and smooth cheeks dotted with pale freckles, her gray hair tightly braided, but surprisingly soft-looking. There was a mixture of confidence and withholding that emanated from her like a complicated forcefield.
“One-stop shopping,” she said. “Firehouse, sheriff’s office, jail.” She parked in front of the red two-bay garage on the left side of the building. The sheriff’s office, a one-story clapboard structure, was attached to the right of the firehouse, a yellow door between them. A hand-painted sign above the window said Sheriff. She opened the truck door and hopped down onto the pavement, and Frank followed.
Before they got there, the yellow door sprang open, and the police chief, Luke Spinelli, came out. He was wearing a floppy felt hat covered with fishing flies, a canvas vest with bulging front pockets, and thigh-high wader boots. “Gus just left,” he said, gesturing with a fishing pole and looking down at them from his six-foot-two height. He hurried past them toward a yellow Range Rover parked at the side of the building.
“But Luke,” Mona called to his back, “where did he go?”
Luke half-turned his head as he opened the door of the truck. “That-a-way,” he said, pointing to the trees behind the building. He stepped up into his truck, closed the door, and started off down the road.
“Into the woods?” she asked the departing vehicle.
Frank watched the Range Rover careening away. The bumper sticker read “Fishermen Fly.” He coughed. “This is what we pay our taxes for?”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s fishing season.”
The wooded area behind the station was dense with white pine, spruce, and fir, and interspersed with pale trunks and branches of deciduous trees. At its edge, small boulders stuck up haphazardly, glinting like flint in the sun.
“But why would Gus go into the woods here?” Frank asked. “Isn’t his hut, or whatever it is, on the other side of the mountain? He could walk on the road and get there faster.”
“Maybe he’s afraid he’ll get picked up again.”
“Like a rabbit, hightailing it back to his lair.”
“Yeah, Gus is scared.”
“But he’s onto something with the stones.”
“The stones?”
“I did some research, and found that there are other stone circles in New England.”
“Stone circles? I know Gus sometimes mentions his sacred room, but I got the feeling it was a cave.”
“It is a cave. Erica and I found it. The books call these places stone chambers, and they think they were sacred places for the Indians.”
They climbed back up into the truck, and Mona gazed out at the mountainside behind the station. “I wonder what he does in there.”
“I don’t know. But I sensed something very powerful up there. Maybe the spirits, or spirit, or the presence of God.”
“Do you believe in God?” she asked, her face opening like a child, revealing a kind of trust h
e hadn’t seen there before.
“Yes, in a way.” He stroked his beard. “I believe in something universal, something beyond that one word, God. Something unnamable. Like the ancient Hebrews believed, something that is so beyond our comprehension that we can’t name it. The force of life, I guess. I go to church, because as flawed as that institution is, it’s one place where you can participate in the mystery.”
“That makes sense, and fits a little with what I believe.”
“Which is—?”
“It’s hard to describe. Mostly, it’s about people, about how we are all in it together, living on the earth, all connected. But I’ve never gone to church much. My parents were lapsed Catholics, so we didn’t get religion when I was young.”
He smiled. “Probably not such a bad thing.”
“But I felt like I missed something. And your image of God up on the mountain—I can understand that. I don’t know how to describe it, but I feel something spiritual up there too.”
She started up the truck, and as they drove back to the store, she put a CD in the player. Bono’s voice filled the truck with a plaintive sound, a guy looking for love. Frank watched her face: what was she feeling now? The music was touching, tugging at the heartstrings, but her expression was elusive, unreadable.
They pulled into the store parking lot. Frank picked up his helmet and made ready to get out, then turned to Mona. “There’s something about Gus, though, that is so familiar to me.”
Mona stopped zipping her parka and gave him a strange, amused-looking smile. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“That commune back in the eighties. Gus was there.”
“Gus? At the Moose Clan Commune?”
“He called himself Thunder.”
“Thunder? My God! That skinny little teenager! That was Gus?”
Frank cycled back down Beaver Brook Valley, across Mountain View Bridge, and along River Road, the river beside him tripping gaily over the rocks as if the jagged cliffs of ice had never been, and this day in spring was the only thing, the only moment. It was almost eerie, he thought, how life turned in these never-ending circles and cycles. Gus, this strange hermit with the extreme hair, was the boy who had called himself Thunder. He and Gus had been young together.
Frank passed the Perry farm. The Take Back Vermont sign was now in shade, and the cows were no longer in sight. The Moose Clan commune had wanted to create a different world, a place apart from the culture of capitalism, corporate greed, and the me-ness of the eighties. They would create their own lifestyle, live off the grid, and not rely on the electric company, with its dependence on nuclear power that could destroy the earth—not need anything except what they grew themselves or bartered for. They had vision and fervor and courage. They were a league, a team, a cadre, needing only one another and their superior understanding of life. They had thought of themselves as a tribe, and the moose as their totem. As he remembered, he could feel himself strong, like he’d felt back then: a warrior astride his horse, shining sword held aloft.
Then an Abenaki chief had come to visit the commune. Chief Willis Anderson.
“This is not the way,” he’d said. “This dope-smoking, this sitting around all day instead of working, this strewing of clothes and objects, this clinging to things, this living on welfare.”
“So, what is the way?” Frank had asked.
“The way,” Chief Anderson answered, “is the simple life, working and living in tune with the ancient patterns, the seasons and the phases of the moon. But you kids have substituted your attachment to ‘things’ with attachments to things,” he said. “Instead of fine clothes, big cars, and tropical vacations, now you are attached to your woks and your tractor and your teepees. You don’t have to live in a teepee,” he said. “You should buy mobile homes.”
Mobile homes? Disarmed by the advice, Frank had begun to see how averse he really was to that lifestyle, and how out of sync he was with this group of people, whose ideals disguised their petty greed and magical thinking, even from themselves. He wanted to engage in the world, learn a profession, find his own expression of those ideals. And so, he left the commune, that incubator of his identity; and, after college, enrolled in the business school at Harvard, where he threw himself into studying organizations.
Frank steered his bike into his driveway and pedaled up the hill, avoiding the muddy ruts, dismounted, and leaned the bike against the porch. Without the group, though, and the shared vision, the world had been a lonely place. He’d been unsettled by his experience in the commune, but it had stayed with him, contributing in some way to his backbone, his strength. It pricked his conscience with the sense of something unfinished. That dream of living off the grid, of being self-sufficient. And that spiritual something which was just now beginning to surface again.
Across the valley, Wild Mountain stood in a gathering haze, a silent witness to the life around it, the hatching birds and the soft baby foxes exploring their new world, the shoots and sprouts popping up. The whole landscape glowed and shimmered pink; that riotous burst of energy in the leaves before they unfurled and turned green. A sharp breeze cut through Frank’s spandex shirt, and a phrase popped into his head: On this holy mountain. Something he remembered from church. It referred to Mount Sinai, where Moses had heard the voice of God.
Gus, a.k.a. Thunder, had eventually gone back to the mountain. He’d found the stone circle and stone chamber, not so very far from the site of the Moose Clan Commune. They’d dreamed of living like the Indians, but hadn’t known how close they’d been to an old Indian site. Maybe it was even older than that. And Thunder had found it. Frank would go up there again tomorrow.
30
SEVEN O’CLOCK, AND JOHNNY WASN’T HERE. It was the beginning of May, and the sky was still light. A mild rain was falling, and the old hotel seemed almost loveable, sweet in the wet light, even with its peeling paint and the rickety front door. Mona had worked here one summer when she was in college, registering the odd tourist who strayed from the beaten track, the people on historical tours, and the couples from elsewhere who didn’t want to be seen together in their own towns. She had dusted and arranged the Civil War artifacts in their cases, and read all the historical books and tracts.
Mona stood under her umbrella and gazed at the building, grand and shabby, with the Stone Tavern to the right of the entrance. She didn’t even know what kind of vehicle Johnny had now.
Johnny O. There were times when he had been fine, loving and caring—but then there were the outbursts, the violence. Each time, she’d believed him when he said it wouldn’t happen again. But it did happen again. It took her six years to believe it. And even then, he was the one who’d left.
She looked at her watch. Ten after seven. How long should she wait here? Maybe he wasn’t coming. She didn’t have a phone number for him, so she couldn’t call him. Then she heard a rumble, almost like a motorcycle, and around the corner came an old blue Mercedes, polished to the hilt, but loud and sputtering, like it needed a muffler. Johnny O. was at the wheel. He pulled over to the curb beside her, eyes flashing, smiling broadly, and reached over and opened the passenger-side door. The same man, the same smile—but her feelings were completely different now. That smile no longer had power over her, and she no longer felt the melting, helpless excitement when she saw him. Now he was just an ordinary, somewhat damaged-looking man.
“Hop in!” he said.
She took a step back. “What for? I thought we were going to talk in the Stone Tavern.”
“No, I have something in the CD player I want you to hear.” Big smile.
“Well,” she hesitated. Would there be any harm in getting into the car? They could probably talk there as well as anywhere else. “Okay.” She climbed into the front seat and closed the door. An immaculate interior, leather seats and leather dashboard. Johnny had always loved old Mercedes, and had restored a couple of them.
He started the car and drove slowly out of town on Elm
Tree Road. In profile, he looked calm, smug almost, and he hummed along to a song on the CD player, a jazz version of “Moonlight in Vermont.”
“Oh,” she said, “Willie Nelson?”
“And Wynton Marsalis!” He turned the volume up. “Just listen to that sexy trumpet.”
“Very nice.”
“It’s a different rendition, but this was our song, don’t you remember?”
She was silent. What was he doing? Trying to get her interested again? Seduce her with music? She reached over and turned the volume down. “You had something to tell me, Johnny? Something about the fire?”
Suddenly, the car speeded up, and she realized they were heading toward Route 4. “Slow down,” she said. “You’re way over the speed limit. And where are you going?”
“Thought you’d like to come for a ride with me.”
“What do you mean? A ride to where?”
“See my new home.”
“In New Hampshire? What are you, nuts? Please stop and turn around.”
The car picked up speed. Now he was driving seventy-five in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone. They were going toward Route 4, which led east and to New Hampshire. “Don’t worry, Mona.” He was smiling serenely. “You’ll like my place. And it’s really where you belong. With me. I never should have left you. It was a big mistake. But now, I’m going to make it right. You belong with me.”
The car careened crazily, back and forth across the road, and Mona clutched the door handle. “Johnny! Stop!”
He turned and gave her a look she remembered well: his devil look. Such a mean coldness in his eyes. The mood that would overtake him when the violence would begin. Johnny was not going to stop. She was trapped.
Why hadn’t she remembered this side of him? Why had she trusted him and gotten into the car? He really was crazy. She tried to remember this road, and when the next town and intersection would come. Fair Haven, she thought—that was a town where there would be something, a convenience store or some kind of town center. Maybe he’d have to get gas. When the car stopped, she could jump out. Hopefully, he’d stop in a town, so she wouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere with this maniac.
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