"You don't have a clue what I think."
Sara waits on the porch while he throws together some gear. Backpacks. Plastic ponchos. Hoodies. DEET. Sleeping bags (not that he figures they'll be doing much sleeping). Stuff to eat, drink.
He's at the door when he turns to the snoring on the couch. “I'm taking that girl, the one I told you about. She needs it, Dad, she really does. She's strong too. She can handle it. I know she can.” He speaks as if it matters. As if his dad were awake and sober.
* * * *
Gil Boucher is having his usual at the diner when Fritshaw comes to fetch him. The deputy is all arms, legs, and excitement. In his seventeen years as Gideon Chief of Police, Gil has had his lunch interrupted only once before: Somebody had seen somebody over at the Ace Hardware who looked like somebody they'd seen on America's Most Wanted, though it turned out to be nobody. He polishes off his clam roll in two big bites, plucks up the remaining onion rings, and orders his Indian pudding to go. “No ice cream today, Mollie. Not sure when I'll get to it."
Story is, that cutie-pie from Connecticut who's living with the Alvins has taken off in Jimmy's truck. While Jimmy is royally pissed and vowing vengeance if he finds so much as a scratch, Penny Alvin worries something more sinister is afoot. “I wouldn't normally bother you, Gil,” she says, “but my niece's mother, my sister-in-law, you understand, she passed away last night, God rest her tortured soul, and well, I'm afraid Sara might do something regrettable. That whole side of my husband's family, you need to know, they're a terribly self-destructive lot."
"The girl is high-strung, is she?” Gil inquires.
"Oh, I pray to God not yet,” Penny Alvin replies.
As luck would have it, the first break isn't long in coming. Randy Gullickson spots the pickup in the Akers’ yard, plain as day. “Like I never come down over this way you know, but traffic was backed up on Nine like because of the new overpass they're building, and Jesus, like I'd know Jimmy's wheels anywhere."
Gil raps on the Akers’ door, spies Kevin's dad strung out on the sofa. He pinches a Stim-U-Dent from his shirt pocket, massages his gums some before letting himself in. He prods the guy awake, props him between sofa cushions. “Jesus, Carl, these benders of yours, man, you trying to kill yourself? Your old man, at least, he ended it clean."
When you're the Law in a town like Gideon, you might not know a lot, but you sure as hell know drunks. Rare is the crime not predicated on booze. Neighborly cop. Tough cop. Good cop/bad cop. None of these cut it here. Only patient cop. And though the Chief does his level best, his questions yield only squalls of cesspit breath (incentive enough to cut the interrogation short) and a garbled non-sequitur that skips from Jim Beam to Jack Daniel's to meeting your Maker's Mark on the Katakani. “Pray to God, Carl, your boy hasn't decided to follow in your esteemed footsteps."
Kevin's room is an oddity. Precious little to sift through. What kind of teenage freak is he dealing with here? No clothes or junk on the floor. No druggie paraphernalia. Books. School stuff. Reader's Digest Mysteries of the Unexplained. (Same book Gil Jr. got a dozen Christmases ago.) Yellowed paperbacks. The Book of the Damned. Strange As It Seems. Something written by some doctor—a Kübler-Ross. Thinks his wife might have read it. Walls mostly bare. A SpongeBob calendar four years out of date. Photos. The kid and his mom. The kid, his mom and dad. His grandfather seated in a skiff, the pier at Hurley's Basin over his left shoulder.
Previous April, Gil had attended a forensics seminar in Philadelphia, so he is up on the techie stuff like email and how it can offer up all kinds of insight on a suspect's psyche. Trouble is, there is no computer. What kid doesn't have a computer these days? Closest he comes is one of the souvenir pocket calculators Ballston Lumber had given out in celebration of their 25th. Even so, the Chief manages to find all the evidence he needs. Sitting in a drawer, it is. Short, sweet, and telling, written in an earnest backhand on a page torn from a wirebound notepad:
* * * *
Dear Sara,
I am sorry I made you mad.
I said stuff I shouldn't.
* * * *
The slope is gentle, but the going slow, the air rife with the stink of skunk spruce.
Kev and Sara stick with the trail until there isn't much of anything to follow. Given the chance, stuff grows like crazy on the Katakani. Trails blazed on the up gone by the down. And the trees, damn! So green, so tall, so full of themselves, the sun never has much choice but to slash and stab.
Birds chirp. Peckers peck. Chipmunks fuss. Sara plows ahead as if the chorus is meant for her, resolute and single-minded, her disbelief on pause.
Kev slogs behind, calling out the way. Left. Right. Here. There.
Through weeds, wildflowers, and arboreal upchuck. Through God-awful muck that slurps on their toes, sucks on their soles and gags up their heels. Through ancient crud that crunches and snaps and drives shivers up their legs, their spines, their throats, their jaws, their thoughts.
* * * *
Word of the girl's disappearance is quick to get around. Pitching in in times of crises comes naturally to most in town. Tragedy provides a nice break from the routine, some might say, though not necessarily aloud.
Gil pushes through the crowd, his bad feelings about the whole episode only getting worse. Just something about it. A little voice inside his head warning all may not be what it seems. Then too, he knows stuff about the girl most others don't.
Meanwhile, the volunteers from Gideon High, they are quick to set him straight on how that Akers boy has had a thing for that poor girl from the second she showed her face. “The asshole wouldn't leave her alone,” Jimmy Alvin says. “I warned her. Me and Gully, we would've put that loser in his place for good, if she'd let us. But she never cared about anything we had to say. Like we were stupid or something."
Coach Hackles knows the kid better than most. “He's got this killer instinct, Gil, like I've never seen. He scared me, I tell you. A couple, three games there, I thought for sure he'd kill somebody."
The two cheerleaders in attendance go along with the coach. “We didn't know him like to talk to or anything like,” the blonder blonde says. “But he scared us too. Right, Stacy?"
"I think so,” the other cheerleader says, before asking to have another look at the boy's photo.
Miss Eggleton, the English teacher, comes brandishing what she calls the smoking gun—a dog-eared wad of Kevin Akers's compositions, all red Cs, Ds, and Fs. “Perverse. Beyond the pale. A gloomy, gloomy Gus."
Only Bette Leith steps forward in defense of the kid. “Kevvy wouldn't hurt a fly,” she tells him, then bites a trembling lip. “But one time, when that girl came into the pound, I hate to say it, Gil, she was kind of wary maybe. Didn't take her eyes off him the whole time."
* * * *
Your Rand-McNally and your Triple A, they'll tell you: On the Katakani, the forest does not thin at the ocean, does not gradually succumb to shrubbery and grass. Rather, it bullies its way to the edge of the bluff, as dense and deep as its dark green heart. In places, it sprawls right onto the face, bushy brows and muttonchops defying gravity and granite. Given half the chance, some say, the Katakani would put down roots in the sky itself. Pilot's Thumb is a rare exception, a weathered outcrop of black and gray stone that breaks from under the forest before giving up halfway to sea and sky.
Kev and Sara teeter at the brink, taking in the ocean, the breakers dying amid the rocks and shallows below.
"It's beautiful,” she says. She's got that melancholy in her voice folk tend to reserve for God's best work.
"Yeah. I guess.” He's nonchalant about a view he figures he's seen a million times, at least.
"Almost makes you want to jump, doesn't it?"
"What?"
She takes his hand, squeezes. “C'mon, what do we have to lose?” The glint in her eye, hell, this girl is packed and ready to go. All she needs is his okay.
Kev drops back from the edge. “The wind up here, it gets real strong....�
�� He tugs at her hand. She gives no ground.
"You don't have a sense of humor, do you? You really don't."
He gestures toward the beach, his expression glum as gravel. “My grandpa, that's where they found him, okay? His body. Right down there, okay?"
"You serious?"
"C'mon. Please."
"He jumped?” She's skeptical, yet he's made her feel like crap. When it comes to personal drama, she wonders if perhaps this boy doesn't have even her beat. If he is telling the truth, that is. Nope, no way she'll budge till she is good and ready.
And then he hits her with a doozy: “You don't want to die, Sara. You don't ever want to die. Not now. Not ever."
"What are you talking about? Everybody dies, Kevin."
He shakes his head in exasperation, and with a move as deft as any big-screen hero, he swoops in low, lays his hands about her waist, and tosses her over his shoulder. She doesn't know whether to laugh or yell, to punch him or hug him, so she gives him a taste of all four. Kev, for his part, can't believe what he's done. By far, the coolest move of his entire life. Does his best to hide his stupid grin.
They are almost to the treeline before he sets her on the ground. She glares at him. Shoves him in the chest. Fumes. Shoves him harder. Stands toe to toe with him, wrists bent, fists pressed to her hips. Doing all she can not to grab him by the hair and crush her mouth down on his. What's up with her, anyhow? A guy like this? A refugee from the pages of Of Mice and Men, that's what he is, for God's sake. Okay, maybe not to the George extreme, but gee....
She retreats a few paces. “I didn't come all this way to fight with you, all right? Just tell me what I'm supposed to be looking for. A burning bush? What?"
Well, the way he looks at her, you'd think she'd just said the most outlandish thing he'd ever heard, as if Bible tales were right up there with your Eyewitness News at 6 on 6. He stomps off so abruptly, she's sure he's trying to ditch her.
Up toward the Thumb he jogs and then down along the rim, two hundred yards or thereabouts. He glances behind to see if she's keeping up, tries not to make it too obvious. He waits for her before descending once more into the thick of the forest. And thick it is.
You don't walk between the trees here, you squeeze between, a trail blazed by bruise and blood. It isn't hiking, it's intruding, and it gives you the feeling this is a place you aren't supposed to be. She suspects he might be stalling, leading her in circles, putting off the inevitable admission he has nothing to show. She's ready to call him on it when, all at once, the forest gives up, as if Mother Nature has run out of ideas.
Kev crosses to the middle of the clearing and the whaleback of rock. He stops, stoops, gets right to it: “Here, Sara. He's here."
She looks about. Takes it all in. The wildflowers. The silo of trees towering about them. The circle of blue above. “Wait a sec! Just wait. You're not about to give me that sappy line, are you—about God being everywhere, in the sky and trees and wind? Because if that's what this is about, I swear, Kevin—"
He unsheathes his knife. All she can do is stare. So this is how she will die. He really is the psycho her idiot cousin Jimmy claims he is....
Kev scrapes a ragged X in the dirt at the base of the stone. Shame displaces her fear. “He's not everywhere, Sara. Just here.” She doesn't get it. “It's where He's buried."
It isn't that she can't speak, she has nothing to say.
"It's why the bad stuff happens."
"God is under the rock?"
"It's his grave."
She laughs right out loud. Can't help it. His God-is-dead approach is certainly fresh in its faithlessness, she'll give him that. Still, it comes down to more of the same. The Gospel According to Nutbar. “Who buried him, you?” She makes no effort to conceal her disdain.
"My grandfather."
"Really? And when did he happen to do this, before or after he jumped off the cliff?"
"Before.” His voice treads on a whisper. “And after."
"I knew this was crazy, but to follow you up here, to let myself believe for one second...Oh, God...."
"I guess I should've kept my trap shut."
"Do you think? Do you think?” She draws a hand across her eyes as if to erase him and with a flip of her ponytail bee-lines it through the clearing for the apparent downhill. Elbows flying. Fists flying. Skechers flying. Lady's slippers and bunchberries, trilliums and oxeye daisies, all bending backward to avoid her wrath. If only the damn trees ahead would do the same.
He shouts after her. “It'll be dark in an hour. You can't...."
"I don't care."
"It's not safe."
"Tough."
"You don't want to be out here alone."
"You're an asshole."
"I know."
"Leave me alone."
"You'll get lost."
"I don't care."
"That's not the way."
"I don't care."
"Stay. Please. I'll take you back first thing, I promise. I won't talk to you, if that's what you want. I won't say another word about anything, swear to God."
"God? You swear to God? Now that is funny.” She slows, tilts her head just so. “Should I be afraid of you, Kevin Akers?"
He thinks for a moment. “Should I be afraid of you?"
* * * *
Chief Boucher culls the herd. Not a chance he'll take this mob up the mountain. He offers up nonexistent leads. Sends teams off to search in places he least expects the boy and girl to be. Wal-Mart. Ames. Playgrounds. The cul-de-sac where the willows grow at the end of Coney Road. Last thing Chief wants is to get stuck searching for searchers on the Katakani. Daylight is worrisome enough; after dark, you got to be crazy. He isn't what you'd call keen about his own prospects up there, but fears if he waits till dawn and the girl turns up dead, he'll second-guess himself the rest of his life. Along with everyone else in town. Gideon is flush on the giving side, not so much on the forgiving. And should it be the boy who turns up dead? Well, that'll be a whole different set of hand-wringing and told-you-so's.
He keeps it manageable: Deputy Fritshaw and that dog handler from Bar Harbor—Artie D'Angelo with his yellow labs, Osso and Buco. Search-and-rescue trained, they are. Osso alone is said to have rescued more toddlers from the bottoms of abandoned wells and mineshafts than Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Scooby-Doo combined.
Not thirty minutes into the search, it's clear the dogs are hellbent for Pilot's Thumb and Gil is troubled plenty by the ramifications—namely, all the lovers who had made the leap over the years. Of course, he does not know as yet whether he has your Romeo & Juliet here, your budding Ted Bundy, or your full-fledged Lizzie Borden. Most distressing, the boy's grandpa looms large. Gets word he's dying of the cancer, the old coot does, and goes off the deep end. For real. Splat. Nope, Gil does not cotton to any of the scenarios. He urges Fritshaw and D'Angelo to pick it up some.
"G'boys! G'boys!” Artie cries, and lickety-split that lunatic Buco pulls a u-turn, hauls off down the way they came, Osso yapping frenzy at his tail. They are onto something, alrighty. Not fifty strides downslope.
Gil levels his Remington 870 at the suspect bushes. Artie reins in his dogs. No taking chances, no sir. Wouldn't put anything past these kids. Going out in a blaze of misguided glory could well be the modus operandi of either.
Fritshaw flushes out the quarry, his Downeast twang loping into a Texas drawl. “Put your hands behind your head and come out real slow-like. No funny business, you hear?"
Jesus, wouldn't you know? Jimmy Alvin and Randy Gullickson.
Gil could kill the little pricks. The precious daylight they've cost him. “Didn't I send you boys off elsewhere? Didn't I?” He's a good half-foot shorter than each, but towers over them, he's so damn pissed.
Jimmy wisely addresses the barrel of the gun rather than Gil. “She's like a sister to me, sir. I should be here for her, sir.” The boy is as contrite as can be, hands clasped ever so respectfully behind his back.
"That's not wh
at your mother tells me, Alvin,” Gil says, though Penny has mentioned nothing of the sort. “She says you and the girl don't see eye to eye on much.” If the chief could have his way, he'd take the gunstock upside both their heads. For all he knows, the pair are complicit in the disappearance, like those Leopold and Loeb fellows he'd seen on Biography. Way back in the ‘20s, these sickos had killed this Bobby Franks kid just for the thrill of it. A copycat crime wouldn't be beyond these two, no sir. Athletes. Popular. Bright enough on the learning side. No shortage of bucks. Admired by just about everyone, save for the handful who didn't count. By Gil's standards, the more you had going for you, the more you had to hide. He looked no further than himself. Well liked. Respected. A half-decent halfback more than a few remembered from his playing days with the Bobcats. Yet, the skeletons in his closet were crammed hipbone to hipbone. Spiteful stuff mostly. Mean. Petty. Atoning was the reason he'd become a cop. Until he came to understand the job was also license to wreak more of the same.
"Chief? Chief?” Deputy Fritshaw weighs his hand upon the barrel, eases the shotgun away from the boys. “C'mon, boss,” Fritshaw says.
Gil grins, leaves no doubt he sees right through the lying little shits.
Too dark to send them packing now. Just wouldn't be the responsible thing.
* * * *
Kev and Sara make the most of the failing light. Gather wood, twigs. Get a decent fire going. Roll out the sleeping bags.
"Won't God mind us camping on his grave?” Sara asks. It's too soon to let him off the hook.
Kev hides a half-hearted smile behind his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Licks some sticky purple from his thumb. Fixes his eyes on the stars, the scratch of moonlight—what his mom used to call a lemon-peel moon. And just like that, out of nowhere, the boy feels soggy inside. Homesick for a home he isn't sure he ever had.
Sara has never thought of sadness as anything near contagious, but she can feel his achiness slipping under her skin. Before long, she finds herself asking about his mom and dad, and though he hardly tells her anything about anybody, she opens up about her family.
Her mom had been a swimmer. Almost went to the Olympics one year. Didn't cook much, but when she did.... She was funny too. Real funny. “You would have loved her, Kevin."
FSF, May-June 2010 Page 2
