The Life We Bury

by Allen Eskens

  Just as a trickle of a brook would lead to a river, I knew that the little cart path would lead to a road and to civilization. After an hour of walking, covering far less ground than I'd hoped, I came to a road. It was little more than a break in the trees—narrow, curvy, and not yet plowed—perhaps a gravel access road. A jaundiced sun bleeding through the clouds over my left shoulder told me that the road ran east and west. Because the northwest wind had been at my back when I'd escaped from Lockwood, I figured that heading west would take me back to the blacktop.

  The trail rose on an easy line, heading to the highest point of a hill. I marched toward that point, keeping cadence to a song in my head—the chant sung by the Wicked Witch's guards in The Wizard of Oz as they marched into her castle: “O–ee–yah, ee–oh–ah.” I would pause now and again to rest, to breathe, to look for human tracks, and to take in the beauty of the day: a day that Douglas Lockwood had tried to steal from me. Behind me, the land fell in grades toward a river in the distance, a good-sized river, but I had no idea which one. It could have been the Mississippi, the St. Croix, the Minnesota, or the Red River, depending upon how long I had lain in that trunk and which direction we had traveled.

  As I crested the hill, I saw my first proof of civilization in two days: a blacktop road, plowed clean, rolling out to the horizon. Three or four miles up that road, I could see a farmstead, with the silver roof of its barn shining through the trees next to a grain silo: a view that could not have been more splendid if it had been the Emerald City itself. The farm was still a long way off, and I knew I still had probably an hour before I would reach it. I also knew that I hadn't eaten enough and that running would wipe me out. But despite what I knew, I ran.

  I once watched a slow-motion video of an albatross trying to take flight from a sand dune, his webbed feet slapping flat on the ground, his body lumbering from side to side, struggling to stay erect, his clumsy wings stretched out to counter the lurching and pitching of his torso. I imagined that my run down that hill in knee-deep snow fairly resembled that bird—my feet strapped to pine boards, stomping a path more zigzagged than straight. I lunged from one step to the next, my arms extended to absurd lengths by the walking sticks in my hands, flailing in the air to keep balance. When I reached the blacktop, I fell backward into the snow, exhausted, laughing, enjoying the feel of sweat on my face, made cold by the winter breeze.

  I removed the boards from my feet and headed up the blacktop to the farmhouse, jogging most of the way, walking when I needed to rest. I reckoned by the location of the sun in the sky that I got to the farmhouse well after noon.

  As I approached the house, a dog stuck his head out of a doggie door and started barking to beat hell. He made no effort to advance, which surprised me given my appearance: green chest waders, cushion foam splaying out like scarecrow straw, arms wrapped in towels, and a red-checkered curtain draped over my shoulders and tied around my waist. I would have barked at me, too.

  As I approached the porch and the dog, the door swung open and an old man with a shotgun stepped outside.

  “Seriously?” I said, the exasperation dripping in my words. “You've got to be kidding me.”

  “Who are you?” the old man asked. He spoke in a soft voice, more inquisitive than angry. He pointed the gun barrel at the ground between us.

  “My name is Joe Talbert,” I said. “I was kidnapped, and I escaped. Can you call the sheriff? I can wait out here if you like.”

  The dog retreated into the house as an old woman stepped into the doorway behind the man, the girth of her hips taking up much of the opening. She put a hand on the old man's shoulder, communicating to him that he should step to the side, which he did.

  “You were kidnapped?” she said.

  “Yes, ma'am,” I said. “Jumped out of a car a couple nights ago, just before the storm hit. Been hiding out in a little cabin in the woods there.” I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb. “Can you tell me where I am?”

  “You're about seven miles from North Branch, Minnesota,” she said.

  “And that river back there—what river is that?” I asked.

  “The St. Croix,” she said.

  If I was right about why I had cinder blocks chained to my legs, then Lockwood was planning to dump my body into the St. Croix River. A shudder ran through my chest at the thought of how close he had come to completing his mission. I would have floated under the ice, my flesh washing away from my bones, eaten by scavenging fish, until the current cut me free of the log chain, separating my bones at the ankle. I would have bounced with the current, breaking into pieces as my body hit rocks and logs, the river spreading my remains between here and New Orleans.

  “Are you hungry?” the woman asked.

  “Very.”

  The woman nudged the old man, who stepped aside—although he never put the gun away. She took me inside and fed me cornbread and milk and waited with me until the sheriff arrived.

  The sheriff was a big man with a bald head and a thick black goatee. He asked me politely to have a seat in the back of the squad car, but I knew that his request was one that gave me no choice in the matter. I told him my story from beginning to end. When I had finished, he called my name into dispatch to see if I had any warrants for my arrest. I didn't. But I didn't come back as a missing person either. I hadn't told Lila where I was going. She probably assumed I had to go to Austin to deal with Jeremy and my mother.

  “Where are we going?” I asked when he started the car and pulled out of the turnabout.

  “I'm taking you to the law-enforcement center in Center City,” he said.

  “You're taking me to jail?”

  “I'm not sure what to do with you. I suppose I could arrest you for breaking into that hunting cabin. That's a third-degree burglary.”

  “Burglary?” I said, my voice rising with anger. “Lockwood was trying to kill me. I had to break in.”

  “That's what you say,” he said. “But I don't know you from Adam. I never heard of this Lockwood guy. There is no missing-persons report on you, and until I get to the bottom of this, I'm going to put you someplace where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “Oh, for God's sakes!” I crossed my arms in disgust.

  “If your story checks out, I'm not gonna hold you, but I can't let you go until I get this straightened out.”

  At least he didn't handcuff me, I thought. In the confinement of that back seat I could smell the pungent odor of the towels, the couch cushions, and the chest waders: an odor I hadn't noticed before. As I contemplated my scent, a thought popped into my head. I knew someone who could convince the sheriff that I was telling the truth.

  “Call Max Rupert,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Detective Max Rupert. He's with the Homicide Division in Minneapolis. He knows all about Lockwood and me. He'll vouch for me.”

  The sheriff got on his radio and asked dispatch to contact Max Rupert in Minneapolis. We drove for a while without talking, the sheriff whistling in the front seat while I desperately waited for dispatch to confirm that I was not a nut job or a burglar. As the sheriff pulled into the sally port of the jail in Center City, the female dispatcher crackled through the radio telling the sheriff that Max Rupert was off duty, but they were trying to locate him. I dropped my head in resignation.

  “Sorry,” the sheriff said, “but I have to lock you down for a while.” He parked the car, opened my door, and cuffed my hands behind my back. He led me to a booking room where a jailer had me change into the orange uniform of a convict. When he closed the door to the holding cell, I felt strangely content. I was warm; I was safe; and I was very much alive.

  A nurse came in about an hour later to clean up my cuts, putting bandages on the deeper ones and antibacterial cream on the rest. The tips of my toes and fingers still lacked feeling from having been frozen, but she said that might not be permanent. After she left, I lay on my bunk to rest. I don't remember falling asleep.

  Later, I woke to the soun
d of whispering voices. “He looks so peaceful. I almost hate to disturb him,” said a voice that I vaguely recognized.

  “We'd be more than happy to keep him here for a couple days,” said another voice, which I knew to be that of the sheriff. I sat up on my bunk, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and saw Max Rupert standing at the doorway to my cell.

  “Hey there, sleeping beauty,” he said. “They told me you might need these.” He tossed me a sweatshirt, a coat, and a pair of winter boots three sizes too big.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Giving you a ride home,” he said. “We have some catching up to do.” He turned, walking with the sheriff back toward the dispatch room while I changed clothes. Ten minutes later I was in Rupert's unmarked squad car—the front passenger seat this time instead of the back—leaving Center City and heading to Minneapolis. The sun had gone down, but its dying glow still marked the western horizon. I told Rupert what had happened, and he listened patiently even though I was sure that the sheriff had already filled him in.

  “I think he was going to dump me in the river,” I said.

  “That's a pretty good bet,” Rupert said. “When I heard that you wandered out of the woods like some deranged mountain man claiming that Lockwood kidnapped you, I checked out a few things. Ran your vehicle information. Your car got ticketed and towed yesterday. It was parked on a snow-emergency route in Minneapolis. I stopped by the impoundment lot before heading up here.” He reached into the back seat and grabbed my car keys and backpack with my cell phone in it. “These were in your car.”

  “You didn't happen to find a wallet or digital recorder?”

  Rupert shook his head. “But we did find a hand-held ice auger and sledgehammer in the back seat. I'm betting those aren't yours.”

  “No,” I said.

  “He was probably planning on slipping you through the ice on the St. Croix. We'd have never found you.”

  “I think he thought I was dead.”

  “Must have,” Rupert said. “When you strangle someone, they tend to pass out because the blood stops going to their head, but they're not dead yet. With the cold weather dropping your body temperature, I'm sure he thought you were just a corpse.”

  “I almost was,” I said. “You said they found my car on a snow-emergency route?”

  “Yeah, parked about a block from the bus depot,” Rupert said. “Lockwood could be on a bus heading anywhere.”

  “He's on the run?”

  “He could be. Or maybe he wants us to think he's running. We checked for credit-card purchases under his name but didn't find one. He may have bought a ticket with cash though. I also have a couple officers going through the surveillance footage from the depot. So far they haven't found Lockwood on the tapes. We put a BOLO out on him.”

  “BOLO?

  “Be on the lookout.”

  “So you believe me?” I asked. “That he's the guy who killed Crystal Hagen?”

  “It's looking that way,” he said. “I've got enough to arrest him for kidnapping you, that'll give us his DNA…when we find him.”

  “We can go to his house,” I said. “He was drinking from a whiskey bottle. It'll have his DNA, or we can grab his toothbrush.”

  Rupert pursed his lips and sighed. “I sent a squad out to Lockwood's house already,” he said. “When they got there, the fire department was just wrapping up. The place was burned to the ground. The fire marshal is pretty sure it was arson.”

  “He burned down his own house?”

  “He's trying to cover his tracks—tie up any loose ends that might point at him. We couldn't even find a cigarette butt or beer bottle—nothing that might have his DNA on it.”

  “So what are we gonna do next”? I asked.

  “There is no ‘we’ in this anymore,” Rupert scolded. “You're out of this. I don't want you poking around looking for Douglas Lockwood. Am I clear? We have an investigation going. It's just a matter of time.”

  “But time is the problem—”

  “This guy almost killed you,” Rupert said. “I know you want to wrap this all up before Iverson dies. I'd like that, too. But it's time for you to fall back under the radar. “

  “He won't come after me now—now that you guys are involved,” I said.

  “You're assuming that Lockwood is rational, that he isn't the kind of guy to kill you just to make things even,” Rupert said. “You've met him. Would you say he's rational?”

  “Well, let's see,” I said with an edge of sarcasm. “In the short time that I was with Douglas Lockwood, he cried, spouted crazy Bible verses, hit me with a whiskey bottle, strangled me, shoved me in a trunk, and tried to shoot me. I think we can rule out rational.”

  “That's my point,” Rupert said. “You need to watch your back. If he's still around, there's a chance he'll try to come after you. He'll see you as being the cornerstone of all his problems. I assume he has your name and address. It was in your wallet, right?

  “Damn.”

  “Do you have someplace you can stay for a while, someplace he won't look—your parents’ maybe?”

  “I can stay with Lila,” I said quickly. “You met her.” I didn't mention that Lila only lived a few feet down the hall from me. I wasn't about to go back to Austin.

  Rupert reached into the console between us and pulled out another of his business cards. “Just in case he shows up. I wrote my personal cell number on it—if you need to reach me, twenty-four/seven.”

  Rupert telling me to stand down put a foul taste in my mouth. This was my project. I dug it out of the dirt. I brought it to him when he didn't want it. Now that we were so close, now that Lockwood was at the tips of our fingers, he wanted to dismiss me. He said: “We have an investigation going.” But what I heard was: “We'll add this case to the stack of ongoing cases, and if Lockwood shows up, we'll arrest him.” I closed my eyes, and a vision invaded my thoughts. I saw Carl thrashing in a river, slipping under the water, my grandfather's lifejacket twisted around his arms. In my vision I was holding on to that anchor rope—not letting go, not saving his life. Not again, I told myself. I was not finished with this project. I would figure out a way to keep my shoulder to the wheel. I would do what I needed to do to keep the investigation moving at a pace that would put Lockwood in jail before Carl died.

  I called Lila and asked her to pick me up at City Hall. The police were holding on to my car as evidence to be dusted for fingerprints and the like. On the phone, I told Lila some of what had happened. I finished telling her the story as she drove me back to our apartments. She touched the side of my head where the Jack Daniels bottle cut me open, letting her hand slide down to the abrasion on my neck where his belt roughed up the skin on my throat. She asked me to repeat the words that Lockwood said after reading the diary. I struggled to remember.

  “I think he called Crystal the whore of Babylon,” I said. “He was rambling on about how I didn't understand his love for her…that it was biblical and she was…what was it…something about children being man's reward from God. Then he said that he does the thing he hates, and he hit me with the bottle.”

  “He sounds insane,” she said.

  “No argument.”

  I kept a lookout on the drive home, scrutinizing the face of every man we passed. When we parked at the apartment, I looked around the area, examining car windshields for signs of a body in the driver's seat or a face peeking over the dash. A streetlight flickering at the end of the block made the shadows move. I thought for a second that I saw the slumped shoulders of Douglas Lockwood hiding behind a dumpster, but it turned out to be a used tire. I didn't tell Lila the reason for my new-found paranoia, but I think she understood.

  I hadn't fully appreciated the toll that my ordeal had taken on my body until I walked up the narrow stairs to my apartment. So many parts of my body burned with pain: my calves, shoulders, and back felt like one giant charley horse from having been knotted up during my convulsive shivering. Cuts and scrapes crisscrossed my che
st and arms and thighs as though I'd been wrestling a razorback. I stopped at the turn in the steps to make a mental note of everything that hurt before I continued to the top.

  I didn't have to ask Lila to let me stay in her apartment that night—she offered. She also offered to make me some chicken noodle soup. I took her up on both. Then she led me to her bathroom and started the shower for me and left. The water felt wonderful against my skin, loosening the knots in my muscles, washing the dried blood from my hair, and cleaning the dirt from my cuts. I stayed in the shower longer than normal and would've stayed even longer than that had I not known that Lila was making soup for me. I patted myself dry, being careful not to reopen my cuts and abrasions. When I stepped out of the shower, I found some of my own clean clothes folded neatly on the toilet seat. Lila had fished my apartment key out of my pants pocket and gone next door, returning with clean boxer shorts, a t-shirt, and my bathrobe. She also brought my razor and toothbrush so that I could shave and brush my teeth for the first time in three days.

  When I walked out of the bathroom, Lila was pouring soup from the saucepan into a bowl. She had changed into her favorite oversized Twins jersey and her pink pajama bottoms with matching slippers. I liked her Twins jersey.

  “You look like you're in pain,” Lila said.

  “Yeah, I'm a bit sore,” I said.

  “Go lay down,” she said, pointing toward her bedroom. “I'll bring your soup in.”

  “I'd feel better if you let me sleep on the couch,” I said.

  “Don't argue,” she said, pointing at the door to her bedroom. “You've had a rough time. You're gonna sleep in that bed. End of story.”

  I didn't argue further. I'd been looking forward to sleeping in a bed, with a pillow, sheets, and a warm comforter. I propped a pillow against the headboard and climbed into bed, closing my eyes for a few seconds to savor the softness of her bed against my sore body. Lila brought the soup with a compliment of crackers and a glass of milk. She sat on the edge of the bed, and we talked about my ordeal some more. I told her about starting the fire in the cabin and the designer outfits I wore to my rescue, gingham coat and all. When I finished my soup, Lila took my bowl, plate, and glass, and I listened to the clinking as she put the dishes into the sink. Things got quiet for a moment before Lila came back to the bedroom.