Gilchrist: A Novel

by Christian Galacar

  Gertie’s hand was resting over a spot on her lower abdomen that appeared to be the source of all the blood. It was pooled around her on the floor, too.

  “I think it’s pretty bad,” she said. “I can’t feel my legs… my hands, either. I could barely pull that trigger. If you’d come a few minutes later, I wouldn’t need a new door.”

  “All right, keep pressure on it. We’re going to get you to a hospital, you’ll be okay.” He didn’t know if that was true or not. He had no clue how badly she’d been wounded.

  He looked her over but didn’t see any other bad wounds. There was what looked like bruising on her neck, though.

  “Where’s Elhouse? Something isn’t right with him,” Gertie said. Her tone seemed regretful and sad, despite the fact that her husband was likely responsible for her injuries—and likely the person for whom that double blast of buckshot had been intended.

  “I don’t know,” Corbin said.

  “You don’t know?” she replied sharply. Panic struck her face at once, and she started to try to push herself up.

  “Whoa, hold on, stay still.”

  “You don’t understand. He’s—”

  “Gertie, take it easy. He’s outside.”

  “Is he…?”

  Corbin nodded. He looked at her, then away. “I’m sorry.”

  Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes swelled with tears, but she never cried. “I don’t understand what got into him,” she said, speaking to no one.

  Corbin didn’t understand, either. He had roughly a hundred questions he wanted to ask her, but it wasn’t the time.

  With another crash, a large section of barn collapsed. Corbin rose to his feet and looked. The flames were licking the sky, sending twists of smoke and sparks into the blue.

  “What was that?” Gertie asked.

  “The barn’s on fire,” Corbin said, never taking his eyes off the hypnotic blaze.

  Gertie sighed.

  Through the window behind her, Corbin saw the first fire truck turn down the long dirt driveway and head toward the burning barn. Thirty seconds later, Buck Ryerson drove up in the ambulance with Hank Barrett riding alongside him in the passenger’s seat.

  Chapter Eight

  “YOU’RE LIKE ME”

  1

  Kevin Dooley sat on the edge of the kitchen counter at Shady Cove, drinking a mug of hot chocolate while Peter finished talking to the police on the telephone.

  “Yep… Uh-huh… Kevin Dooley, he said… My wife’s with him now. He’s a little shaken up, some cuts on his feet… That’s right—Mishell Road… I can ask him again if… Oh, okay, probably Mitchell, then… Oh, you do… Of course, I’m sure she’s worried sick… It’s Peter Martell… Yep, Martell, M-a-r-t-e-l-l…That’s correct—Lakeman’s Lane, number forty-four.” Peter gave the phone number for the lake house and hung up.

  Sylvia looked at him. “What’d they say?”

  “They know his mother. They’ll give her a call,” he said, folding his arms.

  “You hear that?” Sylvia said to Kevin. “Your mother’s going to be here soon. The police will call her, and she’ll come get you.”

  “Okay,” Kevin said. “I hope she isn’t mad at me.”

  “I’m sure she misses you like crazy, kiddo,” she said. “I know I would.”

  A bitter thought followed, though: What kind of mother doesn’t know her child is running wild in the woods, wearing nothing but pajamas? I would never let that happen. This thought was followed by a mean internal voice that cut like a knife: No, you’d never let that happen. You’d just have him fall out a window while you drew him a bath.

  Her heart squeezed.

  Peter, who had been standing silently with a look of contemplation stamped on his face, crossed the kitchen and took one of the stools at the counter. When he sat down, Kevin looked at him and giggled.

  “What is it? Do I have something on my face?” Peter wiped a hand over his mouth playfully.

  Kevin leaned toward him, slowly reached out his hand, and touched Peter’s forehead with one finger. “You’re like me,” he said, and smiled.

  “You mean handsome?” Peter glanced at Sylvia and smirked. “Apparently Mitchell Road is all the way on the other side of town, almost three miles away.” Back to Kevin, he said, “How’d you get all the way over here, pal? That’s quite a trip.”

  “I was playing esplorer,” he said, and sipped his cocoa. “I found a new cave nobody’s ever discovered before. But I had to run the whole time, though, because the monster was chasing me.”

  “Explorer? What’s that?” Peter asked. “Were you playing it with your friends in the woods? Is that what happened?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “What kind of monster was chasing you?” Sylvia asked.

  Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know, but it was big and had a bright face. Not like Mommy Monster.”

  Mommy Monster? Am I a Mommy Monster? A killer of children? Sylvia thought.

  “Well, there’re no monsters here.” She looked at Peter. “Did we bring any first-aid supplies?”

  “Yeah, I brought a few things. I put them in the bathroom.” He pushed back from the stool. “I’ll be right back.”

  Peter left the kitchen. Sylvia heard drawers opening. The medicine cabinet closing. Rummaging.

  “How’s that cocoa taste, kiddo? You like it?” she asked, leaning on the counter, her chin cupped in her palm.

  Kevin nodded.

  “You want some more marshmallows? They’re my favorite.” She popped one in her mouth and smiled.

  Kevin nodded again, his face brightening a little.

  She dropped in two more marshmallows before grabbing one of the chairs from the kitchen table behind her and taking a seat so that she could get a better view of his injuries. “Okay, I just want to have a look at your feet. We don’t want to let them get infected. Is it all right if I take a peek? I used to be a candy striper.”

  “Candy stiper?” Kevin repeated.

  “That’s right. A candy striper. It’s like a nurse,” she said as she took one of his heels in her palm and lifted his leg gently to get a look at the bottom of his foot. “So don’t worry, you’re in good hands. This won’t hurt a bit. I’ll just clean them off a little. Sound good?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She turned Kevin’s foot over in her hand a few times, inspecting it. There was a fair amount of dirt and dried blood, as well as a strange black substance. She ran her finger along the side of the boy’s foot, just above the arch. Something sappy, almost like tar, transferred off. She rubbed it between her fingers. It stunk, burning the back of her throat and nostrils like a whiff of acetone. It was a bitter, rotten smell. Damp smoke and putrefying organic matter.

  Peter returned, his arms full of the first-aid supplies he had brought from the medicine cabinet at home and put in Shady Cove’s bathroom. There were some Band-Aids. A wrinkled aluminum tube of bacitracin. Rubbing alcohol. Iodine. Gauze. Scissors. It looked as though he didn’t know what to grab, so to be safe he had brought everything.

  “This will have to do.” He dropped the supplies on the counter. “It’s all we have.”

  “Peter, can you get me a small bowl of warm water and a dish towel?”

  He stood there with his hands on his hips, staring vaguely around the kitchen. He looked, Sylvia thought, rather handsome. It was a strange thing to consider given the circumstance, but she thought it just the same. And it had been a while since she had thought that about her husband. Well, that wasn’t true. She had always thought Peter was handsome, but this was the first time since Noah died that she found herself attracted to him romantically. They’d had sex since their son died— it was part of the job when it came to trying for a second child—but there had never been anything particularly enjoyable about it. The physical contact was necessity, not sex. Not for her, anyway. And she assumed the same for her husband.

  “Peter?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” he said, and s
eemed to snap to. “Oh right, water and a towel. Got it.” He went to the cabinet beside the sink, found a small soup bowl, and filled it with warm water. Then he grabbed a towel hanging on the oven handle and handed it to his wife. She took it, and Peter set the bowl down on the kitchen table next to her.

  The phone was ringing.

  “Mommy,” Kevin said, as he sipped his hot chocolate. He never even looked up.

  2

  Kevin’s mother arrived at Shady Cove less than twenty minutes after Peter hung up the phone with her. Sylvia could see her through the window. Dressed in a dingy bathrobe and slippers, she came shuffling down the path, a worried expression cramping an otherwise pretty but tired face. It was a mother’s exhaustion. It was a mother’s fear.

  Sylvia headed to the door to meet her, while Peter played Go Fish with Kevin at the kitchen counter. He had given the boy his Red Sox hat to wear, and too big for him, it hung low over his eyes. He peered out beneath the brim, fanning through his hand of cards.

  It was funny, she thought as she glimpsed the moment, how quickly the boy had gone from a terrified state to calm and carefree. Kids were good at letting go of painful emotions, she supposed. At that age, the emotion filter of the human mind is new and clean. No clogs. Feelings pass through and get hung up on nothing.

  “Your mother’s here,” Sylvia said as she went past and turned down the short hallway.

  Both her husband and the boy were so absorbed in their card game that neither seemed to hear her. “You got any tens?” Peter asked. “Nope. Go fish,” Kevin answered.

  Before she could reach the screen slammer, Sylvia saw the boy’s mother opening the door. The two made eye contact, and the woman let go of the handle, looking apologetic.

  “Hi—hello. I’m Laura Dooley, I just spoke with—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but is my son here? The man I talked to said forty-four Lakeman’s Lane. That’s this house, right? The sign on the tree back there…” She looked over her shoulder, then back to Sylvia.

  “No need to apologize. That was my husband you spoke with on the phone. Come in, please.” Sylvia pushed the door ajar, and Laura took it the rest of the way and came in. “Kevin’s in the kitchen, walloping Peter at a game of Go Fish. He’s perfectly okay.”

  “Thank you,” Laura said.

  Sylvia regarded the woman. Her eyes were puffy and red. She had been crying, and she seemed nervous. Maybe more than that, though: she looked scared.

  The moment they entered the kitchen, Laura burst into tears at the sight of her son. It seemed to be a combination of sadness, relief, anger, and pure elation coming forth all at once.

  Kevin looked up from his cards and dropped them on the counter. His arms went out to her. “Mommy!” he shouted, with a huge smile.

  “Kevin, I’ve been so worried.” She went to him and wrapped her arms around him. For a moment they were one. A big flowing mass of bathrobe and pajamas embracing. And when the initial reunion faded, she held him off her hip with one arm, lifting his new hat and checking all around his head for signs of injury. “Are you okay? Where did you go? You just disappeared. You were in the bed and then…”

  “I found a secret cave, Mommy. It’s so big. The biggest ever.”

  “Yeah? A secret cave?” She kissed the side of his cheek. “And where was this cave, explorer man?”

  “The whole place, Mommy. Everywhere.”

  “The whole place?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, sweetie, everything’s all right now.” Laura pressed her son’s head against her chest and held him, her hand loosely covering his ear. She looked at Sylvia and Peter, who had moved together and were standing on one side of the counter. “I don’t know what happened. I have no idea how he snuck away without me seeing. It was like he vanished. One second he was right there on the bed. The next… Where’d you say you found him?”

  “He came out of the woods about a quarter mile up the road, I’d guess. Not far from here at all,” Peter said, taking his hands out of his pockets and gesturing toward Lakeman’s Lane at the top of the hill.

  “I don’t understand. Where did you go, little guy? And why do you smell like smoke?” She rested her face against her son’s head, took a long breath in. Kevin was asleep. “Don’t ever do that again, okay?” she whispered into the side of the Red Sox cap, and kissed him as she slowly rocked from side to side.

  “He must be one heck of a runner. He covered quite a distance. Especially impressive, considering he was barefoot,” Peter said. “His feet are a little worse for wear, but nothing a tough little guy like him can’t handle. Sylvia patched him up.”

  Sylvia pointed to Kevin’s gauze-wrapped feet. “I cleaned his feet a little and put some bacitracin on the worst of it. There was nothing but a few small scratches and blisters.” Sylvia paused. “I hope that was okay. I didn’t want anything to get infected, and I wasn’t sure how fast this would get sorted out.”

  Laura was staring into the living room behind them, eyebrows pushed together, still turning something over in her head. “I’m sorry, my nerves are a mess right now. I can’t focus,” she said. “Thank you, really. You have no idea how grateful I am you found him. I’m just trying to replay what might’ve happened.” She let out a humorless laugh. “Goodness, you must think I’m just about the worst mother in the world. I swear this has never happened before.”

  Sylvia suddenly found herself feeling guilty for her earlier thoughts about what kind of mother Laura must be. Sometimes accidents just happened. She, of all people, should understand that. The woman seemed genuinely terrified—and, likely, her imagination was showing her what could have happened if things had taken a worse turn.

  Sylvia felt a swell of Noah grief try to rise up in her, but as it had been happening since she arrived in Gilchrist, it didn’t break the surface. Instead it subsided, leaving behind only a strange warm buzz. It was a lot like her pills, but better. Cleaner.

  My pills, she thought. I really don’t miss them at all.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “These things happen.”

  “I appreciate that.” Laura’s eyes seemed to sharpen and clarify—normal order being restored to her life by slow degrees. “Listen, I can say thank you until the cows come home, but those are just words. On the phone, Peter mentioned you’re renting this place. Is that right?”

  “For the next few weeks, yes.”

  “Well, since you’re new in town, I’d like to officially invite you both over for dinner. It’s the least I could do. Consider it a welcoming gesture from our humble little Gilchrist, and a show of my appreciation.”

  “Oh,” Sylvia said, her hand touching her chest, surprised. She looked at her husband.

  He shrugged, a look that said: I don’t see why not?

  “I won’t be offended if you say no, but I’d be happy to repay you both with a home-cooked meal. I’m sure he’d love it, too.” She used her chin to point to her son. “I make a pretty good meatloaf. If you’re undecided, think of it this way—you get to avoid a mess of dishes for an evening, and I get to clear my conscience. It’s a win for all of us.” She offered a sincere smile.

  Now Sylvia saw that Laura wasn’t just pretty; she was quite young, as well. Perhaps only in her early twenties, and with a six-year-old child. She wondered if there was a Mr. Dooley. She didn’t see a ring, however, so she thought perhaps not.

  “We’d be delighted,” Sylvia said. “That’s very nice of you.”

  “Great. How does tomorrow night sound? Unless, of course, that’s too short notice. I’d completely understand if it was.”

  “It’s perfectly fine,” Sylvia said. “We got here a few hours ago, so it’s not like we’ve made any plans. A home-cooked meal sounds great. What time should we be there?”

  “Six o’clock?” Laura said, sounding unsure. “And nothing fancy. Wear something comfortable.”

  “Six is perfect.” Sylvia found herself enjoying the idea of a casual meal with someone who, at first impression,
seemed so very different from the kind of people she and Peter had spent the last five years of their life around. It was refreshing. She couldn’t remember the last time an invitation to dinner hadn’t come with the additional pressure of trying to impress someone, rather than simply enjoying the evening.

  After plans had been made for the evening and directions to her house confirmed, the three of them moseyed to the front door of Shady Cove. Laura kept repeating how she couldn’t understand how Kevin had disappeared to begin with. Sylvia had a pretty good idea about what had transpired, though: Laura had most likely been dawdling around the house with chores—as people often do on Sunday mornings—splitting her time between that and entertaining her son. She probably played with him for a few minutes, went back to doing something else, and when she finally returned, Kevin was gone. Chances were he had slipped out of the house and gone exploring in the woods, eventually getting lost. Then maybe something spooked him, and he panicked and took off running. He didn’t stop until he came out on Lakeman’s Lane.

  They were standing on the front porch.

  “It’s been nice meeting you both,” Laura said. “I’m sorry it had to be under the circumstance it was. I’ll bet half the town will have something to say about this once word gets around… and believe me, it will get around. That’s one thing you can count on in Gilchrist—secrets don’t stay secrets for very long.”

  “Well, they won’t hear anything from either of us,” Sylvia said, pretending to zip her lips.

  Peter had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, starting to look bored. “Don’t mention it. Nothing like a little adventure to spice things up. And as long as your meatloaf is as good as you promised, we’ll hold off on sending you a bill for our services,” he said, joking.

  “Hopefully I haven’t oversold it.” Laura smiled, and looked down at her son. “I almost forgot, can I assume this is yours?” She took the hat off Kevin and tried to hand it to Peter, but he refused.

  “It’s his now,” he said, “I gave it to him. I have about six more just like it at home.”

  Kevin’s eyes were blinking. They opened. He squinted in the bright sun, looking confused. Laura set the hat back atop his head.