“Will you get those dogs to shut up for God’s sake.”
Swanson whistled once, shrill and peremptory. The hounds quieted. The storm was rabble enough on its own.
“Wait here a minute, deputy. I’ll pull myself together.”
When Swanson came back he pitched Cody a beach towel to dry off with before he climbed into the Ranger. He kept it parked beneath a tin roof next to the covered dog pen so the hounds could climb up into their kennels without getting wet. Once all three were locked in, he had Cody help him lower a camper shell over the bed and latched it in place. They got in and let the engine warm, chatter.
There was little room to pull up to where Cody’s vehicle was stuck. The back tires were buried an inch short of the chassis. That side of the road was only a couple of feet shy of the sheer. Nothing but thin trees, sharp rocks and room to tumble. It made Cody’s guts twist to see how near the edge he’d let the car come. So close to punching through that final austere wall.
“You got it wedged in there pretty good, deputy. I’ll give you that.”
Cody got out, took his time in the rain, unhooked the cable and guided it as Swanson let out the winch. His skin had learned numbness to the wet chill but his joints had begun to ache. His hands wanted to hold fast to any shape they grasped, so that his fingers were stiff as the cable itself when he tried the latch on to the undercarriage. He extended his fingers, heard them pop. Swanson was yelling at him to hurry, but he remained methodical, working the hook around. He opened the car door, eased the shift down and stepped away. The winch torqued, pled, and the car jumped free.
MASON KEPT driving, did not even slow, when he saw the pulsing blue light in the family hollow. Down the road about a quarter of a mile he was able to edge in on one of the park’s maintenance roads, hide the truck in a notch of flowering laurel. In the dim light, he was sure no one could see where he had parked unless they were looking, looking hard. He pulled a dark blue raincoat from behind the seat. It stank from its packaging and lack of use, but he snugged it over his head and drew the hood cords tight, made a direct course through the woods for the cabin.
The rain came down around him in a sudden burst, an uncalculated violence. It would not take long for the ground to begin to swell with surplus. The edge of new water would cut through the dust and straw. It would let confusion speak, make these woods into something exaggerated and hostile. No new mercy would come calling. No errant rescue. His lungs labored.
He operated in a kind of state of suspension, viewed himself from an abstracted distance, as he tried to push back the worst of his fears. He repeated the word “nothing” under his breath like it was a phrase he wanted to commit to memory, some trick of language that surpassed simple denotation. To give up himself, that alone was what mattered, what persevered—the painlessness at the center of forfeited hope. To enter into greater care would be to disrupt the good order of self-preservation. He could not allow himself to fall to pieces now that little more than mere pieces remained. He was a faulty but vital segment of architecture, a thin barrier against great suffering, both for himself and for those he loved.
Down past the hemlocks and the rhododendron, he stepped from park property into the family place. The dark bulk of the cabin was lit by the cruisers’ turning lights. The exact words of the officers speaking over the radio were lost in the rain, but he could hear them low and ripping, like old verses from a scratched record. He knelt within the concealing shadows while he waited for a chance to close the distance. He saw the sheriff sitting in his truck talking with a deputy he didn’t recognize. The deputy got out and went to his Crown Vic. Tore out of the hollow. Gravel dinged and sung.
Mason circled to the far side of the cabin, held close to the tree line until night had completely fallen. Perhaps half an hour. He could hear deputies around front, speaking with one another beneath the porch overhang. He chanced nearing them, heard their idle chatter. It was true that the longer he went without knowing what had happened inside to draw them here the more convinced he was that the crime was without ready name. That formlessness was not only terrible, but strained, frantic. Restlessness was a fire within, consuming its own cause. He could turn away from this unwanted discovery no more than he could avoid the reflection of his own face.
Another vehicle entered the hollow. Its long yellow headlights tailed through the dark, fluttered off. Two men in coveralls got out and hurried toward the front door where they exchanged dull greetings as they crossed the threshold. He heard their footsteps, moved back with his ear against the outer wall, pressed himself into some place inside the falling rain, close enough to hear them through the thin border between.
“Where’s the rest of them?” one of the voices asked.
“That’s it. Just Mister Lonesome.”
“You got an ID on him?”
“Old Irving, the cripple.”
“Jeezus. They got him good, didn’t they?”
“Good enough to make do, I’d say.”
Their feet thumped like dropped stones.
“What’s the sheriff figure, the boyfriend with the truck up at the head of the road? What’s his name?”
“Gillenwater? Naw, he’s the one who called it in, went tearing in there after them to find the woman. Best we can figure it’s that boy Mason Laws. Pulled a finale on the old top in here and ran the others into the woods.”
“The wife?”
“She and the old man are missing. Out there in all this weather as best we can figure.”
“Lord, if that ain’t a mess.”
“It’s close enough to pass for one.”
Mason backed away, bolted for the woods. Instinct delivered him from panic, led him back the way he had come. When he found the old truck he cranked the ignition and eased out to the state road without firing the headlights. He hugged the tight road in darkness for a mile before he felt safe enough to drive with the high beams burning. His pulse was a wild migration in his bloodstream, beating at his throat, his wrists, the deep trouble of his gut. Fear was a hectic fool inside him. Only patience could drown it. The dark miles leading home. He settled into them, leaned for someplace other than here.
He parked shy of the apartment buildings and walked the half mile to the general store. Though several houselights were on, the rain lent cover, so he did not hurry. The sound of the falling rain was a million electric slaps against some distant skin.
He opened the door to the store and went in without risking the overhead lights. He left a puddle of sluice while he stood thinking. He went down the aisles and fumbled his hands through the dark stacks until he found the package he was looking for, ripped the cardboard end open. He struck the first match too hard and snapped the head. He tried again and flame spurted, sulfur rose. The dated cans of food appeared like wrinkled faces turned toward the light. He gathered whatever came to hand and carried them for one of the canvas sacks hanging behind the counter. There he found the shotgun and half a dozen shells of single aught buck. He lifted the gun, pocketed the ammunition.
Lights fanned across the glass façade, pierced the depths of the store for a moment before shutting off. Mason withdrew into a side alcove narrow with stacked plastic crates. From there he could see the front door and little else. He slowed his breathing, tightened his hands around the shotgun’s walnut stock. The door crunched open, rattled on its hinges.
Two men stepped in, moved unsteadily into the darkness like it was something soft—a dream, a mouth. One patted the wall, looking for the light switch, cursed when he couldn’t find it.
“Godssake, just shine your flashlight in,” he heard the other say.
The first man wrestled at his squeaking belt, a gunbelt, and snapped the beam live. It opened the emptiness.
“Laws, you better come on out if you’re holed up in here.”
The statement was punctuated by the sound of the speaker drawing his sidearm and thumbing back the hammer. They were less than ten feet from where he stood. He wondered if t
he shotgun’s pattern would be wide enough to knock both down at once.
“Come on,” the more nervous of the two deputies said. “Let’s get this and get out. He’s off in the woods anyway.”
The nearest silhouette did not shift nor balk. As if he tested the air with the basic probe of stillness. Finally, he moved on, passed by, his progress denoted by the light mention of the floorboards.
“What exactly are we supposed to grab?”
“Anything that’s got his scent. Something for the dogs to attach to.”
“How the hell am I supposed to find that?”
He heard them rooting around in the back, a shelved tipped and anonymous articles crashing down. Eventually, they found the back room, the cot, his tidy chest of Goodwill clothes. Everything he owned rummaged through, commandeered.
“Come on, this place gives me the creeps.”
“Hold on a minute.”
The sound of a struck lighter and the following inhale.
“What are you doing?”
“Me? Oh, I’m just thinking a little bit.”
“Thinking? About what? The sheriff will kill us if we don’t turn back up soon.”
The other laughed. They seemed to be behind the counter. Mason believed he heard one of them take a seat in the high stool beside the register.
“I was thinking, what if this sonofabitch isn’t out in those woods tonight. What if the sheriff is about to run us around in a bunch of empty woods. Wouldn’t it be smart to have someone set up in here, just in case Mister Suspect decides to wander on back? Take this on back. I’ll chance it here. I don’t feel like making a wet fool of myself tonight. You look like just the fellow for it to me. Go on.”
The nervous deputy stood a moment, then crossed quickly toward the front. Mason saw his swift passage, his exit. The cruiser smashing gravel as it left. He heard the older deputy cough, twist in the chair. Mason closed his eyes, waited.
The shotgun weighed heavier by the second.
DENNIS WAS lost. The weather and woods had conspired against him, shunned his honest efforts. Each trail was measureless, vague. Direction betrayed him quickly, and with the storm and oncoming night, he began to lose the rage that had drawn him in. Now, he was panicked, entangled. He was neither pursuer nor pursued. Tangents of fear had him at their beck. His purpose had been blunted.
The rain popped against his scalp, set claws to his skin. He was uncertain how long he had been out searching for Lavada. His throat was raw from yelling but still he called for her. He followed the ridgelines, hoped elevation would make him more likely to be heard. The lightning shuddered through the fog. He wondered what it would be like to be struck by such a force, have electricity open him. Feel his atoms unbind. Would there be enough time to comprehend the extinction or would he simply lack being? No, of course, there would be nothing, just nothing. He would be wrapped and delivered into whatever oblivion had fostered him, permitted no carriage of personhood into what came later. He did not fear erasure. Death was only a condition, a passage through a house with many rooms. To be left behind was so much worse, so much more inevitable. To be trapped by the need to survive.
He heard movement ahead, cracking through undergrowth. He concealed himself among the scrub until he saw a cone of light wheel and bob like it had been set upon the surface of a black ocean. He heard voices.
“Hello there!”
The troupe strung noisily along, unmoved by his hail. He cupped his hands to his face and shouted for them again.
“What’s that? You lost too?”
Dennis broke from cover, came on them like a strong chance.
“Lost?”
Their words confused him, but he sought them out, hungry for the comfort of like struggle. They were three men, arrayed in knee length ponchos and plastic hardhats with headlamps affixed. When the leader looked to him Dennis saw only the open severity of the single bright eye shining into his own. His hand slapped at the beam.
“Jesus, Jake, don’t blind the poor bastard.”
“Oh, sorry.”
The man clicked the device off and the streaming dark adjusted itself to their small distance. Dennis immediately realized they were not here for the same reason as he. They stared at each other for a while without saying anything more, viewing each other like dim reflections.
“What are you doing here?” the man finally asked. “Are you separated from your team?”
“My team?”
The man, having no other recourse, laughed. “Yes, the race. The adventure race. What team are you with?”
Dennis considered asking what kind of race brought them into the wilderness but decided nothing would be gained by the question.
“I forgot the name.”
“You forgot? Well, what about any of the guys you were with?”
Dennis paused, gazed at the tattering rain. “I can’t remember. We didn’t know each other. The weather confuses me.”
“The weather?”
“Yes.”
The man shook his head, spat.
“Look, we’re wasting time talking here with you. We’re on the clock, understand? We can’t take you on with us. It’s against the rules.”
“Goddammit, Jake,” the second man interrupted. “You’re not seriously going to leave a man stranded out here in this.”
“It’s against the rules to take on someone not on the roster.” Jake turned back toward Dennis. “Look man, you know I’d like to help, but the rules say we can’t navigate the course with anyone other than who’s on our team. You get that, right?”
Dennis nodded, said nothing.
“Here, take a look at this,” Jake said. He snapped on his headlamp and trained it on a laminate map in his hands. Dennis glanced down. Lines and whorls that meant nothing to him.
“We’re right here, at the bottom of this draw,” Jake said, stabbed his index finger at the slim print. “All you have to do to get back to the beginning of the course is follow it on up to this uppermost ridge and hike out west until you see the head of the valley. Follow that back north toward the road and you’ll see where the medical station is. They should have a radio to get you all sorted out. You got it?”
Dennis nodded again, already releasing the directions from his mind, ready to turn back to the blankness of the deeper forest. That silent and potential void.
“All right. Good luck then.” The man clapped him on the shoulder and the trio moved off, cut for lower ground. Dennis waited for their sounds to diminish, to be covered by the rain, before he followed the trail away from all decent company.
THE DOGS worked the scent, spited the rain. If only men could labor so well. Cody clutched at a twist of sapling to climb to a dry stone ledge, but as weight bore the roots tugged free and the tree came loose. Gravity swung. His arms wheeled.
A solid bulk interrupted the fall. When breath came into his throat there was simple pain. His ribs hurt, his neck too. He turned his head. Below, the argument of the river’s flood. As easily the argument of his own jostled blood.
“You alright?” a voiced called from above, Rick Swanson’s.
“Yeah,” he answered weakly, unsure if he was telling the truth. He must have fallen twenty feet.
“Where you at?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Keep talking.”
Swanson’s flashlight beam plumbed the woods.
“Over this way. Down here.”
The shaft of light pinned him. He put his hand up, waved.
“What in the hell are you sitting on?”
Cody looked around, knocked his fist against the pale blue surface. It banged: metal, hollow.
“It’s a goddamn car.”
“A what?”
He heard the telling ping of rain on its body. He traced his fingers along the chrome, the passenger door seam, the dimes of rust.
“Looks like a Chevy.”
“Stopping fucking off and get up here.”
Cody came to his feet and looked dow
n into the busted out interior of the sedan. It had been wrenched on its side and installed in the bank. Off a dozen yards he saw another half-risen shape, a farm truck maybe, jutting from the ground. A whole tier of buried vehicles engirding the mountain side. Erosion control. His father had told him how they’d done it all those years ago, hauled impounded vehicles into the forest to brace up the time eaten slopes. Never imagined they would have something like that in protected land. Probably some whim of government now conveniently laid by. No responsible bodies still present to atone.
He heard the distant howling of the dogs, Swanson getting jumpy.
“Come on, goddammit. They’re on to something!”
“You go on. I’ll just hold you up. Give the sheriff a call on the walky-talky. He’ll catch up with you.”
“Get up here you slack ass bastard. You’re the one that’s the law.”
Cody sank down into the open tomb of the car. If he leaned just right, he could stay dry.
“Gibb!”
Cody closed his eyes. Old age advanced on him in an instant. He was like a man frozen to the sheer face of a cliff. He put away all the noise, let his mind swing free of his body into the roaming wildness of its own creation, experience its own dream. There was such peace in these inner depths, these bottomless plights.
At once, he knew his condition. Some fundament of meanness survived there, a blasted root. He had sensed this for as long as he could remember, this vacancy, this contagion. What luckless fate to be born without the softer enjoyments of the world, the complacency of attachment others were so quick to call love. In him, none of that. A more vigorous passion instead. A hotter compulsion. Not something men of lesser commitment could understand. His nature belonged to the nature of the storm, the irrational riot of elements, the desire, the essential vacant desire of broken minds. He wanted to hunt, to defile. He belonged to that ancient race of resentment, the brotherhood of envy. To recognize himself at last. What a communion with violence that was.
A Shelter of Others Page 14
