Rattlesnake Hill

by Leslie Wheeler

  This was one of many changes Diana would have observed during the years she’d lived here. Had Diana derived the same peace from the beauty of the scene that she did? Peace broken by hunters’ gunshots and loud rock music? The latter noise must have really infuriated Diana for her to march into the woods for a fatal encounter with the teenager responsible. If only Diana had called the police. That’s what she would have done. Called the police and let them deal with it. But that wasn’t Diana’s way; she was someone who took matters into her own hands, however great the risk.

  The rumble of heavy equipment sounded on the road. She checked her watch. It was a few minutes past noon. She was due at Emily’s.

  *****

  “Earl’s going to tell me the story of how his great-great uncle earned the medal,” she told the old woman.

  Emily’s hand stopped midway to her mouth with a morsel of taco pie. “What’s this about Earl?”

  Kathryn resisted the urge to roll her eyes heavenward. “You said I should get the story from him.”

  “I did?” Emily’s blue eyes clouded.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “No, but I suppose I might have.” Emily brought the morsel to her mouth and ate it noisily. “You mustn’t be afraid of him, dear.”

  “Who—Earl?” Kathryn asked, startled.

  “No. It’s the other one you need to beware of.”

  “What other one?”

  “Your husband.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Aren’t you?” Emily stared wonderingly at her.

  “No.” Obviously, Emily had confused her with someone else. Diana?

  “Really? I could have sworn you were.” Emily looked past her toward the doorway. “Where’s Sis? Has she had her baby yet?”

  Kathryn groaned inwardly. Here we go again.

  Chapter 26

  Earl’s truck was gone when she returned to the Farley house. He’d either forgotten his promise to tell her the story, or something had come up.

  Amore met her at the door. “Looks like I’ve been stood up,” she groused, following the cat into the kitchen, where she opened a can of food and started to spoon it into a bowl. A loud knock made her drop the spoon with a clatter. Finishing the task, she went to the door. It was Earl, dressed in clean jeans and a work shirt that matched his faded blue eyes. His light-brown hair was slick from the shower, and he smelled of aftershave. “Ready, Starstruck?”

  “Sure.” Too bad she hadn’t had time to freshen up herself. “I’ll get some beer from the fridge, and we can go into the living room.”

  “I’ve got beer in the truck. Thought we’d go for a drive.”

  “Where?”

  “Lake Clyde, where the story I’m going to tell you took place.”

  Uh-uh. She hated surprises. He should have mentioned Lake Clyde beforehand. Alan would have. He always consulted her about plans for their get-togethers, and they often had lengthy discussions about which movie to see, which restaurant to eat at. Yet here was Earl, a man she barely knew, expecting her to go with him to a place she’d never been. “Why can’t you tell me the story here?”

  “Better there.”

  “Look, I—”

  “C’mon. Please.”

  At least he had some manners, knew to say “please.” And it was a “pretty” please, spoken in the same gentle but firm voice he’d used to get her to sit on the patio the other day when she was so mad. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed him to the truck and climbed in. The next instant, she gasped with horror and nearly hopped out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She pointed at the snake rattle dangling from the rearview mirror.

  “Take it down if it bothers you.”

  “It’s okay, I guess.” She didn’t want him to think she was a complete wuss. “Did your family really kill rattlesnakes and bring their tails to the town treasurer for a reward?”

  Earl chuckled. “Yes, but we don’t do that anymore. The timber rattlers we have in this state are an endangered species. Now I go with Norm to the den sites in the fall and help him do a count.”

  “Who’s Norm?”

  “The naturalist down at Barthlomew’s Cobble in Ashley Falls.”

  “You actually count snakes?” The idea horrified her.

  “Sure. They’re so gentle lying there in the sun you could almost pick ’em up.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get within ten feet of a rattler.”

  “Didn’t bother Diana.” Earl tapped the rattle so that it made a faint noise. “But there wasn’t much frightened her.”

  “Maybe she should’ve been more cautious.”

  “What d’you mean?” he asked with an edge in his voice.

  “Then she wouldn’t have gone into the woods to have it out with Brian Russo.”

  His expression turned stony. “That was a big mistake.”

  He started the engine, and the truck lurched forward, snake rattle whirring ominously. “Is it true a rattler will always warn you before it attacks?” she asked as they rumbled down the hill.

  “Usually, but if you take him by surprise, he might strike without warning.” They continued on in silence until, squinting at the rearview mirror, Earl muttered, “What the hell?”

  Kathryn had an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Was someone tailgating them? She glanced over her shoulder, relieved to see faint headlights in the distance instead of huge, gleaming orbs. Moments later, the headlights disappeared.

  After they’d driven a while longer, Earl turned off the road onto a strip of pavement. The truck beams shone on asphalt that had buckled and cracked in places. Weeds grew in the cracks. On one side, a rusty metal structure resembling a giant tiller reared into the air. Beyond lay an expanse of black water. The dark, lonely spot with its derelict equipment gave her the creeps. “This is it?”

  “Yup. The lakeshore’s all privately owned now except for this ramp. People launch their boats here during the day, and at night, well, couples come.”

  A parking spot. A place where teenagers came to neck, grope, and even go all the way. There were places like this in California where she’d grown up, in the hills or at the beach. But she’d never been to any of them. Her grandmother had seen to that. Parking in the driveway of their tract home hadn’t been possible either, because her grandmother would be watching for them, ready to come out and shine her flashlight into the window if she and her date lingered in the car.

  Without firsthand experience, she could only guess at the heady mix of excitement and fear that accompanied those furtive encounters. But she knew what the consequences could be from the whispered innuendo and finger-pointing when a girl lost her reputation or, even worse, became pregnant. She’d been spared this fate, thanks to her grandmother. And yet she sometimes wondered if it would have been better if she hadn’t been quite so sheltered.

  Earl shifted in his seat and reached for something on the floor, his fingers brushing against her leg. She moved out of the way, surprised to feel a spark of electricity at his touch. He removed a beer can from the cooler and popped the top. “Like one?”

  “Thanks.”

  He got his own beer, took a drink and gazed out at the water. “Before I begin, try to imagine what the lake looked like more than a hundred years ago. There were no powerboats then, only rowboats, canoes, and a steamer that made trips from one end of the lake to the other. People came in their wagons and buggies to picnic on the grounds at Johnson’s Grove and go swimming at the beach at Heron Point. And every year on the first Saturday night in August, they held a boat parade.

  “It was a beautiful sight with the boats on the water and the cottages on the shore lit up with Japanese lanterns. The boat parade was the second biggest social event of the summer after the Fourth of July. There was dancing and supper at Johnson’s Grove for a charg
e of $l.50. Or you could pay 15 cents just to watch.”

  She could easily picture the scene from old photographs of similar events in the Lyceum’s collection.

  “My great-great uncle couldn’t afford to pay $1.50, but he was able to scrape together 15 cents from working at the family forge and selling rattlesnake tails. He was eighteen then, a big, strapping fellow, and when he was cleaned up, handsome enough to turn the heads of the village girls despite being a Barker.”

  Earl might have been describing himself at eighteen. He’d undoubtedly been handsome then and was handsome still. Handsome and well-spoken, his normally laconic speech having assumed the rolling cadences of a storyteller.

  “My great-great uncle never paid much attention to the girls, though. Until he saw her.”

  “She was Marguerite?” Kathryn guessed.

  “Yes. He first noticed her when she and her party were having supper. He was struck not just by how pretty she was, but by the dainty way she held her glass. Later he watched her dance, and she floated past him like a cloud in her white dress.”

  Marguerite must have looked much as Kathryn had imagined her the day she’d moved into the Farley house: hair loose on her shoulders, red sash trailing after her as she ran. Without thinking, she removed the clip that held back her own hair so that it fell to her shoulders.

  Earl murmured something she didn’t hear. She glanced at him and realized he was looking at her. “What?”

  He shook his head, withdrew his gaze and continued: “When it was dark, he watched her step into a boat. She lifted her skirts and petticoats, revealing one slippered foot he would have given anything to kiss. But he didn’t dare approach her because she was so much above him, a dollar-fifty lady while he was only a nickel-and-dime man. So he just watched as the boat moved out on the water with Marguerite’s dance partner at the oars, another couple seated at the stern, and Marguerite at the prow, a vision in white. As more and more boats went out onto the water, their lanterns lit up the lake like fireflies. Like this.” Earl switched off the truck beams and flicked on a lighter.

  The sudden movement startled her. Light from the flame played on his face, giving it a sinister cast.

  “He managed to keep her boat in sight so that when the accident occurred he was ready.”

  “What accident?”

  “I’m getting to that. There was a bunch of rowdies among the onlookers. They whooped and hollered and passed around a whiskey bottle. As the evening wore on, they grew wilder and wilder. Finally, they decided to set off a couple of sticks of dynamite as the lighted boats went past. The explosion blew out the candles on the boats and threw the passengers into a panic. Their frantic motion rocked the boats until some of them tipped over, including the one she was in.” He waved the lighter wildly in the air, then capped it, plunging them into total darkness.

  Kathryn gasped. She couldn’t see him but knew he’d moved closer because the scent of his aftershave filled her nostrils. His breath tickled her earlobe.

  “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Your eyes will adjust like his did. He dove into the lake, and somehow in all the confusion, he found her. Her skirts and petticoats swirled around her like an unfurling sail, dragging her down. But he felt the flesh and fine bones inside the wet cloth, slipped an arm around her and towed her to shore.”

  Calmed both by what he said and how he said it, she relaxed and turned toward him to catch his next words, intimate and compelling like a confession whispered in the shadows.

  “He laid her on the ground in her white shroud. Then he put his mouth on hers and drank until he had drained her dry of all the water and little fishes and weeds she’d swallowed. She opened her eyes and looked at him. Drops from his face fell on her. She caught them with her tongue and lapped them up, as if she were thirsty and hadn’t already drunk several gallons of lake water. But before she could ask who he was, he dove back into the lake to rescue others.”

  Kathryn’s mouth felt dry. She might have been doing the talking instead of him. She took a drink of beer, licking her lips afterward. Beside her, she heard Earl swallow and knew he’d taken a drink also. Then his voice, beguiling as ever, “Although she was ill for some time afterward, she made it her business to learn his name and where he lived. When she was well, she rode in her buggy up Rattlesnake Hill and found him working at the smithy, his face and arms black as a chimneysweep’s. ‘Are you Mr. Clyde Barker?’ she asked. When he answered ‘yes,’ she took his sooty hand in her white-gloved one and said, ‘Then, I thank you for saving my life.’

  “Later she and some other important people in town saw that he was awarded a medal for his heroism that night. She wanted the lake renamed in his honor, also. That didn’t sit well with the town fathers. They couldn’t imagine naming anything after a Barker. But she kept after them until finally they gave in and changed it from Seven-Mile Pond to Lake Clyde.”

  Clyde. The word hung in the darkness like the lingering note of an old ballad, “The Ballad of Marguerite and Clyde.” An unfinished ballad. She wanted to hear the other verses. “What happened to Marguerite and Clyde?”

  Earl switched on the headlights and reached across her to get a flashlight from the glove compartment. “What’s the matter?”

  “Think I heard something just now. Gonna check it out.”

  He left the truck and beamed his flashlight into the woods on either side of the boat ramp.

  “Must have been the wind,” he said when he returned. If that was all, why did he look grim as he put the truck in gear and backed off the ramp?

  “What about Clyde and Marguerite?” she prodded. “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened next?”

  “That’s another story. Get Em to tell you.” The snake rattle whirred menacingly as the truck sped along the road.

  “What if she won’t?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think she’s forgotten what happened, other times that she knows but refuses to tell me out of sheer contrariness.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t think you’re ready yet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  She was bursting with questions. Sensing his resistance, she tried another tack. “Who told you the story?”

  “I heard bits when I was a kid. They were like loose pieces of a puzzle. I didn’t put them together until Diana told me the whole story. She got it from Em and passed it on to me, because she wanted me to know something good about my family.”

  “Emily’s the original source?”

  “Yup, but if you ever played telephone, you know the message can get changed from one person to the next. There may be things that weren’t in Em’s version, but were added by Diana, or by me just now.”

  Which were his embellishments? Clyde draining water and little fishes from Marguerite? Marguerite lapping up the drops of water that fell on her from Clyde? Clyde’s story was his in certain respects. Like Clyde, he was a nickel-and-dime man who’d fallen for a dollar-fifty lady. And in both cases a body of water had brought the lovers together. Clyde had come to Marguerite’s attention when he’d rescued her from drowning. Earl had been noticed by Diana when he’d created the pond. Were there other similarities? She knew how Earl and Diana’s story ended, but not how Clyde and Marguerite’s had.

  In the driveway of the Farley house, she made a final attempt: “You can’t just leave me hanging. I want to know what happened to them.”

  “Ciao, Starstruck.” He shooed her unceremoniously from the truck and drove away.

  Off to pick up Brandy? In spite of herself, she felt a prick of jealousy. On the other hand, his abrupt departure could be related to whatever he had seen at the boat ramp. He’d seemed different afterward, spooked almost.

  Amore was waiting for her at the door just like her grandmother when she’d been out on
a date. “You didn’t have to worry about me tonight,” she told the cat. “He didn’t lay a hand on me, unless you count the time he accidentally brushed my leg.”

  She made herself a sandwich and ate mechanically, her mind on Earl and what he’d told her about Marguerite and Clyde. When Alan called ten minutes later, she was still preoccupied.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for the past hour and a half.”

  “Sorry. I went out for a while.” No need to tell him where she’d gone or with whom. “Is everything all right?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Sophie’s so much better the doctor thinks she can come home by the end of next week. I’m planning a small party in honor of her recovery. I hope you’ll come.”

  “That’s wonderful news! I’ll definitely be there.”

  “Good. I’ve missed you, Kathryn.”

  “I’ve missed you, too. I know this is going to seem like a strange question but—” She broke off, embarrassed.

  “What?”

  “If I were drowning, would you rescue me?”

  Alan was silent a long moment. Then clearing his throat, he said, “I think so. But first, I would like to know the circumstances surrounding this hypothetical drowning?”

  “Circumstances?”

  “For example, are other people in danger—children or elderly people, who would be in greater need of rescue than a healthy, young woman like you?”

  Her cheeks burned with shame. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “I would also want to know a little more about the situation. Did you develop a sudden cramp in a swimming pool, or were you swept overboard in thirty-foot waves?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “If it was the latter, I’d have to think twice. I’m a single parent with a young daughter. It would be irresponsible for me to attempt a rescue when there was a strong possibility I would be killed.”