What was the point of worrying over this?
Her mother had drunk herself into oblivion, and, on the rare occasions when Addison visited here, he probably never looked past his own reflection in the glass. The man would have no interest in records of bird sightings, though these were not the typical birder’s journals. And, even if he should peruse a book or two, he would never crack the code.
Crafty Mom.
After kissing her sleeping mother, Isabelle carried the purloined journal downstairs to her bedroom, hiding it in the folds of her robe, knowing all the while that her parents would care nothing about her reading habits.
When had she become so paranoid?
An hour later, propped up by pillows, the ornithologist was still reading by the light of a bedside lamp, utterly engrossed in a book that had little to do with birds, though feathered characters were drawn on every page.
Once upon a time, with a child’s egocentric view of the universe, Isabelle had believed that these volumes were created for her. The fanciful illustrations better lent themselves to children’s books than a birder’s journals. And there were story lines and lines of dialogue in song. Before learning her ABCs, Isabelle had learned the human phrases used to identify a hundred birds, words that mimicked rhythm and the rise and fall of notes. As a little girl, her favorite song belonged to the pewee, and she had sung it all day long, ‘Ah di dee, pee a wee, ah di dee, pee oh,’ because it had driven Addison crazy.
Her mother’s logbooks made departures from traditional notations, though the songs could still be recognized. Upon returning to Coventry, Isabelle had read many of the old volumes again with a new understanding: Some of the birds drawn here did not appear in northwestern climes – nor anywhere outside of her mother’s fragile mind – and these were not fairy tales.
It had taken six weeks to work through the early years of life in Coventry. With the exception of the birthday balls, Addison had discouraged his wife from mixing with the residents. Isabelle, always away at boarding school, had felt abandoned and resentful in those days, but now she realized how lonely her mother had been. Yet Sarah Winston appeared to know a great deal about the town and its people, secret things gleaned by three telescopes and a pair of binoculars.
Hannah Rice had been the Rosetta stone, pictured here as an elf owl in constant company with a tall thin bird that had lost its crown of long feathers over the years – the balding Judge Hobbs. And, thanks to this morning’s sighting of Ferris Monty, Isabelle now knew the identity of the black-capped chickadee. The man’s bad toupee resembled the bird’s cap, and the yellow feathers of the breast matched the color of his Rolls-Royce. The gossip columnist did not sing, ‘Chicka dee dee dee.’ He sang, ‘Look at me, me, me,’ to the lark, who paid him no attention. And everywhere the lark went, the black-capped chickadee was sure to follow. Sometimes the lark would follow another bird, and they made a procession of three through the streets, the chickadee always at the rear, singing his hopeless song.
Her mother seemed to like Evelyn Straub, who was portrayed in colored pencil as an exotic pink heron with a graceful wingspan, long legs – and two nests, one in the town and one in the woods. In this volume, the lovely heron’s mate was still alive. Isabelle could not mistake the gray and shriveled starling for anyone but Millard Straub. He rode on the heron’s back.
Throughout the state of California, television viewers were annoyed by interruptions in their prime-time viewing hours. The late-breaking news was always the same image of the Coventry Library bathed in bright electric lights. The story was periodically updated by a manic anchorman’s message that the sheriff had still not responded to the emergency of a strange smell emanating from the premises.
Patrons of the Coventry Pub considered walking down the street to view the unfolding events of the sheriff not responding to a 9-1-1 call. However, upon being told that they would not be allowed to take their beers with them, they elected to stay and watch a picture of the library on television.
The camera angle swung around to show the approach of a jeep. The lawman emerging from the vehicle was identified as the county sheriff. The reporter approached him, microphone extended, excitement mounting. ‘Are you here to investigate the smell?’
‘No,’ said the sheriff. ‘I understand you’ve been fooling with a nine-one-one operator.’ He handed a folded sheet of paper to the reporter. ‘That’s a summons to appear in court tomorrow morning. Then you can explain why a smelly library constitutes an emergency.’
‘There could be a dead body in there! Aren’t you going to investigate?’
‘Well, no,’ said the sheriff. ‘The library’s closed.’
‘What about the smell ?’ The reporter pointed to the brick building, as if it might be hard to find. ‘You have to get closer to—’
‘No, son, I can smell it just fine, thanks. Are we on live television?’
‘You bet.’
Sheriff Babitt turned his smile on the camera and tipped his hat. ‘It smells like a pair of really ripe socks.’ He stepped back to look down at the reporter’s feet.
And so ended the statewide coverage of the Coventry Library.
When the lawman and the news crew had departed, lights came on inside the library, and they burned late into the night. A figure could be seen pacing across the window shades, but this was such a common sight, no one passing by took any notice.
The moon was on the rise and guiding Oren’s steps down the mountain road that would lead him home. He spared the flashlight battery for pitch-black moments when clouds blocked the moon.
A pair of headlights came up behind him, rounding a hairpin turn in the road. Minding Cable Babitt’s request that he not be caught near the cabin, Oren dove into the woods as the hotel van sped by. More cars came around the curve, their headlights aimed straight at him. He was back-stepping deeper into the cover of tall ferns, moving quickly, when his boots clipped a tree root behind him, and he fell to ground, but not to a hard landing. He rolled down a steep incline. Reflex kicked in. He covered his face, only scratching his hands on shoots and deadwood, rolling, rolling, and finally coming to rest flat on his back.
Fool.
He lay at the center of a depression shaped like the hollow of a giant hand. Above the rise of encircling land, he could see a glow from the parade of cars in the distance. Seduced by lack of sleep, he meant to close his eyes for only a moment. When he opened them again, all the light had been sucked out of the world. There was no demarcation line between sky and earth, no sense of up and down. Blackness only. Where was his compass, the moon?
Killed by clouds.
Where was the flashlight? Crawling sightless, he searched the ground by fingertips, touching brush and dirt until his hand finally closed on the metal casing.
Click.
No light. The batteries were dead.
On all fours, he climbed up the slope of the hollow and crawled toward the road. He crawled forever. The road was gone. He had gotten turned around in the fall and traveled the wrong way. For how long? How far? By touch, he found the root and rough-bark column of a tree and sat down to lean his back against it.
So tired.
He clicked the useless flashlight in his hand, desperate for a miracle, just a few seconds of light. Darkness was another dimension, where natural law did not apply. Separated from every visual clue to the solid world, he hugged himself for reassurance that mind and body had not gone their separate ways, but he could not lose that sensation of being suspended in a void.
The road could not be far. He listened for the sound of cars.
Useless.
There was only one cabin on the fire road, and the séance was long over. All the players had gone home by now. He rose to his feet and walked two steps into an alien land, hands outstretched to fend off low-hanging branches that might reach out for his blind eyes.
Which way?
He might be on a parallel route, only twenty feet from the road – or twenty yards. How long had h
e crawled in the wrong direction? Space and time had no meaning here.
This is not the first time you’ve been lost in the woods in the dead of night. Sit down and wait. At sunup, you’ll see the road, the way out.
Whenever he listened to that inner voice of reason, it always sounded a lot like Hannah. She would be worried, and so would the judge. How long would they wait before the alarm was sounded? He remembered other nights in these woods and the sight of waving yellow stalks of light, hundreds of voices calling his name. Every woodland creature had been awakened to flee on the wing or on the run, frightened by an army of searchers, their shoes and boots shaking earth and bough.
Not again – not one more time.
Even when he was a teenager, he would have known better than to move on tonight. And yet he did. Every soldier’s survival skill was forgotten as he felt his way from tree to tree. All that he could count on was the natural circle of one who was lost. His feet might bring him back to the beginning – and just as likely carry him away again.
High in the invisible canopy of tall trees, an owl called out. Hoo! Huh-hu-hu. Hoo! Hoo!
Another night bird answered with hollow whistles in the rhythm of a bouncing ball or footfalls losing their momentum, slowing, slowing.
All stop.
Wits lost.
Oren screamed his brother’s name.
All around him, he could hear things moving in the dark, small animals alarmed and stirring in the underbrush, creeping, running. He felt their panic, the same old fear, a coldness stealing up his throat. Shivering, he hugged himself for warmth. And what of Josh? His brother had left his jacket behind.
Josh is dead. You’ve seen his bones.
How many days had he gone without food or water? No hunger, no thirst. Today you had a chicken sandwich in the kitchen with Cable Babitt.
Oren turned toward the sound of a car engine in the distance, and he heard it die – suddenly – switched off.
He sucked in his breath and held it.
A small ball of light floated on the air, appearing and disappearing behind the trunks of trees. Was he dreaming this? Every time he dreamed, he died.
TWELVE
Hannah Rice was the resurrection and the light.
Oren fell to his knees on the dirt road. ‘How did you find me?’
She brushed the hair away from his eyes. ‘I got a telephone call to ask if you made it home from the séance.’ Hannah gently coaxed him to stand up. Then she took him by the hand and led him to the car, treating him as a handicapped person – and he was one tonight. ‘Evelyn Straub saw you dive off the road when her van came around a curve. Everybody knows you have a penchant for getting lost in the woods.’
After settling him into the passenger seat, she leaned across his body to fasten the safety belt. And here, all concept of road safety ended. The little woman provided him with the medicine of comic relief as she turned the car toward home. She strained to see over the steering wheel, sometimes using the wheel as leverage to raise her body up. Raising the seat was not an option, not if she wanted to reach the foot pedals. Yet Hannah loved to drive. She lived to drive.
‘Odd – this sudden interest of yours.’ She leaned toward him – big smile. ‘Séances, Oren?’
‘I heard you and the judge were big fans of Alice Friday,’ he said – big smile.
‘Oh, everybody went up to that cabin at least once or twice.’ Hannah looked at the dashboard clock and then put on some speed. ‘Dave Hardy called tonight. He wants to buy you a beer sometime.’
‘I didn’t expect to see him this morning. Most kids leave the day they come of age.’ His brother had been the rare boy who never dreamed of escaping from his small coastal town. Josh had loved Coventry – and he had loved his life.
‘But Dave Hardy did leave,’ said Hannah. ‘That boy made it all the way to Chicago. And now you’re wondering why he came back.’
‘He forgot to shoot his mother on the way out of town?’
‘Dave heard she was dying – a tumor in her stomach. Well, in this world of real estate gone nuts, his mother’s five-acre parcel is worth quite a bit. But I don’t think he came back just for Mavis’s money.’
‘Maybe he wanted to watch her die? Around here, you could sell tickets to a thing like that.’
Hannah shot him a look of disapproval. ‘You don’t want to say things like that when the judge is around. He won’t tolerate anybody making fun of that poor woman.’
Oren recalled that Mrs Hardy’s other champion was Hannah. He had never heard the housekeeper say one word against Dave’s mother – not in earnest, not in fun. And now he grabbed the dashboard as she made a sharp turn onto the road that would lead them home.
‘Dave came back to town about eight years ago,’ said Hannah. ‘Now here ’s the odd part. Mavis didn’t die. Her tumor keeps growing, but she just won’t die.’
Oren wondered if Mrs Hardy was toxic to tumors as well as people.
Hannah shushed him, and this should have spooked him, for he had not voiced that idea aloud. But Oren remembered all of the housekeeper’s parlor tricks, and this had been one of her best: divining impure thoughts from a smirk or guilty downcast eyes and the antsy feet of boys.
She looked from the dashboard clock to her wristwatch, double-checking the hour. This might be the first time he had ever seen her wearing a timepiece, and this thought chained back to his brother. ‘That photograph of me and Josh – he was wearing a watch that last morning. Don’t you think that’s odd? Josh never cared about the time of day before.’
‘You mean, not so you noticed.’ She reached out to pat his hand. ‘When you were a kid, you missed a lot of things. Take Isabelle Winston. I remember the first birthday ball, the first time you kids set eyes on one another. You were only twelve years old, but I saw your whole life all laid out in front of you that night. I could see all the way into a generation of your grandchildren. But something went wrong, and that was long before Josh disappeared. The life you’ve been leading isn’t the one you were meant to have.’
Isabelle Winston focused her lenses on the distant glow of a porch light, and she watched Hannah and Oren enter the judge ’s house.
She lowered the binoculars and carried them inside, where her mother lay on the bed in a drunk’s blackout sleep. No dreams. Was that the reason for her mother’s drinking? Was there no peace for her, waking or sleeping? Sarah Winston lay with arms outstretched, her wrists exposed, and her daughter stared at the old razor scars running across the veins. Though these suicide attempts were old events, years in the past, Isabelle had first learned of them only months ago when she had come home for a short visit.
And now she could not – would not – leave.
She climbed the ladder to replace the bird log borrowed earlier and to take another one down from the shelf. At the end of the last journal, the beautiful long-legged heron was pursuing a bird much younger than her gray starling husband. The young hawk and the heron soared together, describing circles around one another in the sky. However, Isabelle ’s mission tonight had nothing to do with Evelyn Straub’s extramarital love affairs.
This time, she did not take a journal and steal away with it, for she had remembered something learned at her parents’ dinner table. One of the guests had been a well-known politician. ‘Kid, if you’re gonna do something wrong,’ the man had said to her then, ‘do it right out in plain sight. It ’s the hidden things that attract attention.’
She sat down in the chair by her mother’s bed and switched on the lamp to decipher the code of drawings and birdsong. A letter fell from the pages, and she recognized the quirky handwriting on the envelope, though she had not seen a sample of it in decades. The lines of longhand were small and lightly penned, all but begging to go unnoticed.
Crazy Mavis.
In the old days, her mother and Mrs Hardy had gone bird-watching in the woods. In the summers of childhood, Isabelle had sometimes accompanied them, and she had loved the conspiracy of keeping
these outings a secret. Addison would never have approved of his wife befriending the town monster.
The opened letter in her hand was filled with descriptions of flight, the colors of feather and sky, and the music of the deep woods. Almost poetry. Apparently Mrs Hardy had depths unknown and qualities that were not monstrous.
Oren paused by the closed door at the bottom of the staircase. He leaned down to the housekeeper and whispered, ‘I heard something.’
‘I’m sure you did.’ Hannah consulted her wristwatch. ‘It’s about that time.’ She turned to the judge ’s door. ‘Did you know that used to be the sewing room? That’s why it’s too small for anything but a twin bed. A few days after your mother’s funeral, your father moved all of his things out of their old bedroom. He said he wanted to sleep down here so he could catch you boys if you tried to sneak out late at night. Well, you were only three years old, and Josh was still in diapers. Personally, I think his marriage bed just got too wide for him.’ She tapped the crystal on her watch, as if that would make the hands move faster. ‘Any minute now. I got this down to a science.’
The judge’s voice could be heard inside the small room, but the words were unintelligible. Oren cracked the door and looked inside, asking, ‘Did you need something, sir?’
‘He ’s sleeping.’ Hannah lightly tugged on Oren’s arm to pull him back.
‘He sleeps with his eyes open?’
‘Just wait.’ After closing the bedroom door, the housekeeper produced a string of cowbells from a drawer in the glove table and hung them on the knob. She walked down the hall saying, ‘You’ll see.’
Oren followed her into the kitchen, where the table was laid out with a whiskey bottle, two empty shot glasses and an ashtray – evidence that Hannah and the judge continued to enjoy their postprandial drinks and cigars. She set out two clean glasses and Oren’s gift, the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Next, she laid down a stack of paper with printed text.
Bone by Bone Page 10
