by Joe Hart
“Did you see what they looked like?”
“No, nothing distinguishing. Last night I did see his eyes. I couldn’t tell what color they were in the dark, though. I did buy a gun today. I got it from Stub on the far end of town.”
John smiled. “I’m gonna wager he lectured you more than once on safety, along with having a light on your gun.”
“Yeah, he did,” Lance said, laughing. “I’m all set up if someone comes back, though.” John seemed pleased with this and drained the last of his beer, as Lance finally asked him one of the questions he had been wondering since leaving the house earlier that evening. “Do you have any idea who would want to break into the place and not steal anything?”
John sat staring at the planking of the deck. His eyes glazed in thought, but Lance waited, unwilling to break John’s concentration with impatience.
“I can’t think of anyone that would want to scare you off, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said at last. “The place had its share of visitors over the years. The local kids would sneak onto the grounds to smoke pot or mess around with each other when there wasn’t a resident owner there. I’ve had to replace a fair share of broken windows over the years too, most likely by the guys who didn’t have girls to bring there.” John made a huffing noise of disdain and looked out over the yard. “No, other than the occasional vandal, there hasn’t been much trouble there.” John turned his attention back to Lance as he continued. “I’m sure you’ve already explored the notion of someone you know breaking in there for some reason or another?”
Lance nodded. The list of people who had anything against him was short, and the reasons they begrudged him didn’t justify entering his home at night, either.
“I’m pretty sure I haven’t made anyone mad enough to do that,” Lance said.
“If a man has no enemies, he has no character. I think Sinatra said that.”
“I think Oscar Wilde said it first, and more eloquently,” Lance said, keeping his face straight. John stared at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. John had a rolling chuckle that exuded warmth, and Lance imagined that even if the other man had been actually laughing at someone, the butt of the joke would’ve been helpless not to join in. Lance grinned at the elderly man’s mirth, feeling his endearment grow where there had only been anger before. John’s laughter faded and his face became sober again.
“All I can say is keep a sharp eye out, and I’ll keep my ears open if there’s something going on in town that I’m unaware of. I’m sorry I don’t have any answers for you, son. I wish I did, I really do. My wife used to say I was a lift in the shoe of the world. She said I always tried to make things right where I had no business doing so. ‘Let things be as they are, Jonathan,’ she used to say.” Lance watched John’s face darken at the mention of his wife. “I used to tell her I only wanted to help. Maybe that’s why I took to caretaking so well, making sure other people’s homes were set, sometimes before my own was.” Lance watched John wade through the mire of his thoughts. After a time, the older man seemed to emerge and rejoin his guest in the present, the vestiges of the past slipping away to merge with the growing shadows of the yard.
“Well, what say we have some dinner? I’m hungry as a lion in a cornfield.” John stood and walked haltingly into the house, arthritis faltering his meaningful stride.
“Can I do anything?” Lance asked, standing from his chair as he held his empty beer bottle.
“No, just burning a couple steaks on the grill if that’s okay with you,” John said, turning before he crossed the threshold of the house.
“That’s great. Could I possibly use your bathroom?” Lance asked. The two beers he had consumed pressed painfully against his bladder.
“Second door on the right, off the living room,” John said, pointing as he disappeared through the opening to the house.
Lance followed John through the sliding glass door and shut it behind him, closing out the warmth of the summer evening. He watched the caretaker make his way into the kitchen and begin loading several thick steaks onto a glass platter near the sink.
The hallway that led from the living room was narrow and dim, and the four doorways were dark rectangles branching off in different directions. As he walked, Lance realized a feeling of relief had settled upon him since entering John’s home. The guilt he had been harboring since their morning encounter had evaporated. The relief was so absorbing that he didn’t notice when he mistakenly turned the knob of the first door on the right and opened the door to John’s bedroom.
Immediately he realized his error, but couldn’t help noticing several empty whiskey bottles, lined up like soldiers near the foot of the double bed in the center of the room. A few full bottles were mixed among them, their amber liquid almost black in the low light. Lance frowned and started to shut the door, feeling as if he had just looked through someone’s window from the outside and seen them naked. The bottles didn’t seem at home there, and he had no doubt they had been placed there temporarily.
A picture propped on the dresser near the door caught his eye as he retreated, and he paused. A much younger version of the man fussing behind him in the kitchen was holding a woman with curly blond hair; his arms were wrapped around her as though he were afraid she would diffuse at any moment and slip away. The woman, in turn, held a boy around twelve years of age. The boy was laughing, his eyes focused on something other than the camera, and Lance could see an incongruity in his expression that suggested an accident or a disability of some sort. The family in the picture seemed the embodiment of happiness, and in that moment Lance recognized the silence of the house around him for what it truly was: grief. Mourning held a different kind of quiet. The simple lack of sound only roughly resembled the silence of grieving. When studied, the two were as dissimilar as tears and water.
Lance pulled the door shut without a sound and continued to the bathroom. When he reemerged from the house, John was already seasoning the hissing steaks. The caretaker glanced over his shoulder and gave one of the first smiles Lance had seen, hoisting up the corner of his mouth like an uncooperative tent.
“I hope you like your steak rare, ’cause it’s the only way I know how to cook ’em.”
Lance laughed, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he noted that the old man was definitely growing on him.
Their dinner was eaten without much conversation. Most of their attention turned to the food before them, with only the occasional comment of hungry appreciation from Lance. The sun continued its descent behind the tall pines in the backyard. The birds that had been so active, flitting to and fro earlier, were now settling for the night. A chorus of crickets began their creaking song, while the ducks below on the pond continued their soundless laps.
Lance finally pushed back from the table, his stomach feeling as though it were in need of some well-placed sutures. John had already finished and was nursing his fourth beer at the other end of the table. His eyes remained on the deepening murk of the water at the bottom of the hill. Lance watched him in the fading light, as he debated asking the other man questions that pushed and pulled at his curiosity like an unruly tide. In the end, his need to know won out over patience, and he reasoned that sometimes the only true way out is through. Lance opened his mouth to speak, but John’s question halted the words on his tongue.
“Ever been married, Lance?”
“No.”
“Why? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“It scares the shit out of me.” John looked over at Lance and chuckled.
After a moment of staring at Lance, who had only broken into a slight smile, John said, “I get the feeling you’re serious.” Lance merely nodded and sipped at his beer. “What a thing for a horror writer to be scared of,” John mused. “I guess you’re not unfounded in thinking that way. I sure as hell was scared when I was standing at the head of that aisle, staring at the woman who was gonna be mine for each day after.” John stopped speaking, as if Lance had interrupted him
. He looked out across the pond, to the emblazoned tree line beyond the water. The sun’s corona gave the illusion of a great forest fire behind the oaks and pines.
“I guess my parents didn’t give me the best example to judge it by,” Lance offered. “I’ll wager that between the right two people it can be something beautiful.”
John nodded without looking in Lance’s direction. “I built this place for her. My two hands, a hammer, and some nails were all it took. We moved here from a little town down south called Delrose. High-school sweethearts—wasn’t anything more foolish or more wise than what we had. Love pushed us this way after we graduated. I turned eighteen, and May, my wife, she was just shy of that when we got ourselves a one-room apartment down in Duluth. I tried working on a fishing boat for a while but it didn’t take. Must be my Irish legs stopped their heritage just short of the waterline in my case. Gave me a taste for beer, though,” John said, as he sipped the last of the brew appreciatively.
“I got a job caretaking at your place shortly thereafter,” John continued. “It wasn’t much at first, but it grew into more, and after a bit my name got around to the other, wealthier, folks up and down the shore. We were able to scrape enough together to build this place, and May eventually got her teaching degree. She taught at the school in Stony Bay, second and third grade mostly.” John abruptly stopped speaking again.
The pause stretched out and Lance became sure John wasn’t going to continue. He weighed his next words carefully, and spoke them with as much tenderness as he could, continuing with what the alcohol had nudged into view. “When did she pass away?” The question swept across the deck like a subtle gust of wind, but Lance could see its effect on the caretaker. John’s eyes scrunched as if remembering a nightmare from only hours ago, and Lance regretted actually voicing his curiosity.
“Fifteen years ago this December. Cancer.” The older man spat the word as if it left an acrid taste in his mouth. “I watched her, the woman I swore to care for and cherish, I watched her …”
John’s eyes were still closed tight and Lance considered telling him to stop, not to cause himself any more pain. But in the midst of the other man’s anguish, Lance sensed a deep need for John to say the words. Perhaps he felt that if he revealed what had been festering within, it would diminish, like a wound partially relieved of its infection.
“I watched her die,” John finished, and breathed out.
The caretaker’s eyes were wet and Lance looked away out of respect. He didn’t know how to react or what to say. He felt as if the other man had bared a piece of himself so raw it glistened with newness and pain. The urge to divulge the details of his own childhood to John arose within him. He reflexively shoved the images and longing to reveal his past away, and instead, offered the only words he knew that wouldn’t hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Lance said at last.
John nodded as he stared at the leavings of the meal on his plate. “Me too, son, me too.” A reserved quiet fell over them again, disturbed only by the crickets and the sighing of the pines.
After making sure John had regained his composure, Lance asked the other question that had been nagging him. “Do you know what’s in the room at the base of the stairs?”
John shook his head. “Storage mostly, I think. Always been storage, ever since I’ve known the place.”
Lance frowned. “I can’t seem to get the door open. One of the keys on the ring seemed to fit it, but wouldn’t turn when I put it in the lock. You wouldn’t have the key on your ring, would you?” Lance watched John’s face for a flicker of hesitation that would belie his apparent ignorance.
“No. Haven’t really had to go into the old place as of late. Carrie’s had a cleaning company come in, so I’ve just tended the outdoors. As I said before, I haven’t been as enthusiastic since there’s been no one to appreciate it.” John turned his head toward Lance and rewarded him with a disarmingly genuine smile. “But now that you’ve moved in, that’ll change.”
Lance nodded and finished his beer in a few swallows, as John stood from the table and grabbed each of their plates.
“You feel like some dessert? I picked up a pie from the bakery today. I can’t bake worth a shit, but the gals at that shop sure can.”
The rest of the evening flowed past like an idle stream. Pie was eaten and current events were discussed. The two men shied away from anything resembling a deeply personal issue, so when the topic changed to politics, Lance was grateful that he and John shared similar views.
It was nearly midnight when Lance stepped out the front door, into the yellow glow of John’s yard light. The woods had fallen silent at last and only the occasional snap of a tree settling in the breeze disturbed the peace.
“Thanks so much for inviting me, it was really nice,” Lance said, extending his hand and shaking with John, who swayed above him on the stoop. Lance had stopped drinking after three beers, but John had carried on. After the eighth bottle had been exchanged in the kitchen, Lance quit counting.
“Don’t mention it, son. Glad we figured things out. Not good to have bad blood between people, poisons the soul.”
“You’re right. You’ll be by the house this week?”
“Absolutely. I have some real work to do before she looks as good as she did years ago, but we’ll get there.”
Lance smiled and waved as he walked toward the Land Rover waiting near the garage. He watched the old man turn and hobble back into the house and shut the door behind him. The sight pulled at Lance’s heart. He wondered if that would be him someday, alone with only nights of solitary drinking to look forward to. A voice that spoke only when he wished it wouldn’t chimed in as he turned the vehicle around and headed down the dark driveway. It will be if you don’t let someone in.
Lance flicked the radio on and turned it up close to full volume to drown out any more words of wisdom, should the voice find it prudent to share its opinion again. He could see a light still on in the house behind him, and his mind replayed the evening once again. He could find no fault in John’s words, only honesty and deep sadness.
Before pulling onto the highway, he threw a final look back in the rearview mirror. The light had gone out in the house and only a black nebulousness floated behind the car, as if the world ended just past his bumper and fell away into nothingness.
Chapter 8
“Coincidence happens too often.”
—Unknown
The next two weeks passed by easily, as a routine became established in the large house overlooking the cooling September waters of Superior. Since the night Lance arrived home from John’s, there hadn’t been a single nightmare or invasion. The shotgun, which he’d forgotten in the back of the SUV until the evening of their dinner, remained unused but in an easy-to-reach position a few feet from Lance’s bedside. When he uncased it in the living room to admire its flawless shine of blued metal, he wondered if he was being rash in keeping a weapon on the premises. He had never felt the need to own one before, but after remembering the sight of the face floating in the darkness of his room, he decided that he wasn’t.
Each day that dawned on the lake held the warmth and promise of a summer that refused to end. After waking, Lance sat at his post in the alcove each morning until lunch drove him to the kitchen to appease his hunger. The afternoons were normally spent writing until John’s truck made its appearance in the front yard. The two men would gab, normally over beer that Lance now kept cold for just this occasion, and then John would announce that he should get to work. Gradually, the yard became not just tidy but well-groomed, and Lance began to see how truly gifted John was with his shears and mower. The evenings, Lance spent alone. He would sometimes walk the shore to the far points of the bay that had spawned not only the town’s name but, in all reality, the town itself. John had filled him in on the local history one particularly hot afternoon after finishing his second beer of the day.
“Whole town was built on shipping, did you know that?” Lance shook his head,
smiling at how John’s eyes lit up when telling a story. “That bay right out there was a major shipping port a hundred years ago. You wouldn’t think so, but the water gets real deep, real quick out there. Don’t go wadin’ in ’less you want to take a swim.”
“What about the rocks in front? How did the ships navigate between them?”
“Well, son, the ships you’re thinking of weren’t nearly the ships that are today. They could fit in smaller places than most. Although, they didn’t need to since those rocks you see out there were actually part of the port itself. They helped make up a gangway that stretched out over two hundred yards from shore.” John must have seen the questions arising in Lance’s face because he added, “Oh, the pilings are all gone now, rotted off and either floated away or sunk like anything else in that lake. No, they shut this port down and moved the harbor a few miles south of town. That’s only just a small recreational port now; the real shipping dock is in Duluth, of course.”
Lance imagined a bustling scene of activity and ships entering his small bay years ago in a time that felt like a myth. The only traces of what had once been were now between pages of a local history book and in the handed-down words of the oldest residents.
When his phone rang beside him one Thursday afternoon, it startled him from thoughts of sunken goods covered in wet moss and pilings that a man couldn’t reach both arms around in the cold waters below the window. Andy’s frowning face stared back at him from the screen, and with a flick of his thumb, Lance answered the call and tilted back in his chair.
“To what do I owe this momentous occasion?”
“Really? That’s how you answer?” The irritation was palpable even through the speaker of the phone. “You haven’t called me in over a week.”
“Hey, the phone works both ways, buddy, I’m just saying. Plus, it’s been closer to two weeks.”
