by Kihn, Greg;
Jukes stretched and sighed. “Yeah, the dream. I can’t get it out of my mind. I’ve been thinking about what she said. I might have an idea.”
“An idea where she said Cathy was going to be?”
“The place of my first failure. I think I know where that is.”
Jukes told Fiona the story of the boy at the lake and how that incident had colored his life. He traced his frustration with Cathy and his own social inadequacies to that moment, the moment the bully challenged him and he backed down.
“God, if I ever had one moment in my life to live over again, that would be it,” Jukes said.
Fiona propped herself up on one elbow. “Let’s go there.”
“Now?”
“Yes, exactly. Now. How far is it?”
“Only about an hour-and-a-half drive upstate.”
“We can be there by twelve-thirty. You just told me how much you need a rest, how stressed out you are, so why not do something impulsive and go there? We can make it a three-day weekend. I’ll call your answering service and tell them you’ll be unavailable till Monday.”
Jukes nodded. “I could get back to the roots of my anxiety. It should be therapeutic.”
“Don’t forget what the Banshee said. If you’re right, it’s where Cathy will be.”
“The more I think about it, the better it sounds. We can have some downtime together.”
Fiona sat up in bed, her naked body pale in the darkness of the room “All I ask is that we stop at my place so I can throw a few things in a bag.”
Before leaving, Jukes called George Jones. The line clicked and he got George’s voice mail.
“Detective Jones, this is Dr. Jukes Wahler. I’m driving to my family’s cabin upstate at Lake Pierce. I have a hunch that Cathy may show up there, and I want to be there if she does. I’ll leave directions with my answering service if you need to get in touch with me. There’s no phone up there, so I won’t be reachable until Monday.”
Jukes hung up and felt strange, as if he’d just put another ball in play in the pinball game of life.
The words of the Irishman came back to him: “They will appear to be a series of unlikely coincidences.”
Tom Rayburn was cooking some of the catfish he’d caught that morning when the phone rang, which surprised the hell out of him. He hardly ever got phone calls, especially in the off-season.
Tom wasn’t the most popular guy in the world. In fact, he was downright cantankerous. The people in town stayed away from him in droves. They didn’t like him and he didn’t like them.
He spent the winter baby-sitting the cabins on Lake Pierce. He spent the summer fixing people’s boats and running the only bait shop on the lake. Summer was a time to try to enjoy what few pleasures life still held for his seventy-six-year-old body. Winter was a time to do some serious drinking.
The fall was a transition period. He checked the cabins, pulled the boats out of the water, and went to the liquor store to stock up. With nobody around, he didn’t have to keep up the charade of sobriety. If he wanted to get falling down drunk and piss in his pants, he did it. And fuck the world.
Tom Rayburn knew how to cook catfish, though. The smell of it filled his cabin and stuck to his skin like a lightly breaded, aromatic sweat.
Heaven’s Glen, the next closest town, had a population of around two hundred people, most of whom were pissed off at him.
The phone jangled his nerves.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Mr. Rayburn?”
“Yeah, Tom Rayburn here. What can I do you for?”
“Mr. Rayburn, this is Jukes Wahler.”
“Harumph.…” There was a pause and Jukes could hear something sizzling. A moment later, “Little Jukey Wahler, the kid with the braces?”
“Yes, except I’m grown-up now. I’m a doctor, as a matter of fact.”
“A doctor? Well, bless my soul and kiss my hairy balls! A doctor! Well, don’t that beat all! Say, I’ve got this pain in my leg that keeps gettin’ worse; maybe you could look at it sometime,” the old man said.
“Actually, I’m a psychiatrist.”
Tom worked the spatula expertly, flipping the fish and a glob of greasy burnt cornmeal. “What is that, a headshrinker? Well, I’ll be damned! I guess I spoke out of turn, Doc. I may be old, but I ain’t crazy. What’s the occasion?”
“Well, Mr. Rayburn, I’m coming up to the lake tonight. Could you get the cabin ready?”
Goddamn city slicker. Don’t he know anything? The weather’s changing; everyone is gone now.
“Well, ahh, I don’t think you understand; the season’s over. There’s nobody here. The place is all shut down, for Christ sake!”
Tom removed the fish from the pan and turned off the burner. He was about to hang up when Jukes Wahler spoke again.
“I’m driving up anyway, Mr. Rayburn. I’ll be there in about two hours. Do you know which cabin I mean?”
Rayburn squinted at the phone. His mood was not good. He had been looking forward to a quiet evening of catfish and bourbon. He coughed directly into the receiver. Rayburn imagined a big hunk of spittle flying out and hitting Jukes on the side of the head. Serves him right, he thought.
“Of course I know which cabin you mean! What do you think I am, an idiot? Your sister damn near tore the place down last summer! Say, you’re not plannin’ any kind of wild sex orgy, are ya?”
Jukes laughed. “No. No orgy. I just have a little family business I have to tend to.”
“What the hell for?”
“It’s personal.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it’s personal. What are you, some kind of a drug dealer?”
“No, Mr. Rayburn, I told you; I’m a doctor. Can you do me a favor and get the place up and running for me? Your fee is twenty-five dollars, right?”
“It’s a hundred now,” the old man grumbled. “That includes turning on the ’lectric, gas, firin’ up the heater, checkin’ it out for critters, gettin’ the water pump runnin’. You sure you want all that?”
“Yes,” Jukes replied firmly. “By the way, have you seen anybody up there in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Haven’t seen a soul.”
“Good. Well, keep an eye out; there may be somebody else. If you see them, let me know.”
Aha! So that’s it. Must be some kind of secret rendezvous. Maybe Jukey Wahler is one of them homosexuals now, Tom thought.
“No problem. I’ll just give you a holler on my cellular phone.”
“What?”
Tom realized his sarcasm was lost. “You don’t get it, do ya? It’s late, and I’m not goin’ up there tonight. I’ll get over there when I get the chance, probably tomorrow. That’s the best I can do. My truck’s been actin’ up lately; I don’t even know if it’ll start.”
“Mr. Rayburn, it’s really important that you do it tonight. I’ll pay you 200 bucks.”
“Two hundred? Christ, you’re the one that needs a psychiatrist.” Tom looked at the catfish and pondered the offer.
The fish’ll keep; the booze ain’t goin’ anywhere. That’s good money. Too good to turn down.
“OK, I’ll do it, but I still think you’re crazy.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll be up in a couple of hours.”
Tom Rayburn slammed the phone down and cursed. “Goddamn city slicker. Crazy as a shit-house rat.”
Jukes rented a car and drove north toward Lake Pierce. The weather was cold and clear. His fatigue faded from him like a streak of bad luck. With Fiona at his side, he was full of the strongest resolve he’d felt in years.
He was going back.
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when they arrived at the lake. Shafts of silver light sliced through the tall pines, bisecting the road with the moon’s waxing radiance. He’d taken a few wrong turns, which was to be expected after so many years, but for the most part he knew where he was going. The area had changed very little since he was a young man, and except for a few housing developmen
ts and convenience stores, it was still a quiet rural drive.
Tom Rayburn was right: the place was deserted. They drove past the tiny supply store and one-pump gas station and took the lake road into the resort. Built in the 1950s around what was then a thriving fishing spot, the rustic cabins were clustered on the periphery of the small lake like prehistoric wooden beasts gathered around a watering hole. Modest, even funky by today’s standards, the Lake Pierce Vacation Paradise and Travelers Club Approved Campgrounds held the charm of another era. Boating was now the major attraction here, and the lazy canoe pace of his youth had been replaced by the much faster and noisier pace of the water-ski rigs that now dominated the summer scene.
The serious fishermen had gone elsewhere, but the old-style family-oriented recreational atmosphere still existed. The modern world had taken its toll here, as everywhere, but Lake Pierce fought back valiantly. Jukes liked it; it was a solid and soulful reminder of simpler times.
Jukes hadn’t seen another car for miles.
Fiona had fallen silent as soon as they left the main highway. She stared out the window, deep in thought.
The road went from two-lane blacktop to one-lane blacktop to dirt to ruts. The closer he got to his destination, the faster his heart beat. He felt as if he had a rendezvous with destiny up ahead, in the moonlight, among the pines. He rounded the lake where the ghosts of his youth still dwelled.
There was his father, waving from a rowboat, his fishing tackle in his hand, wearing a plaid flannel shirt rolled at the sleeves. A hat with a collection of fishing lures jabbed into it sat jauntily off the side of his head.
Jukes watched with his mind’s eye as the old man rowed slowly out into the center of the lake and disappeared.
Jukes rounded the next bend and came face to face with the bittersweet memory of his mother. There was a picnic basket at her side, and she sat on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth in a moonlit meadow. He could hear the singing of cicadas in the tall grass of his memory. His mother looked as fragile and delicate as china, a reflection of beautiful desperation.
The rising moon shone full on her face Its icy fluorescent colors gave incredible depth to the scene, making her stand out like she was in his old stereoscopic View-Master, the one he had spent hours playing with as a child. Jukes wondered what she had in the basket, some of his childhood favorites no doubt: fried chicken, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, homemade pickles, a slice of blueberry pie, maybe some potato chips.
The images of his early years tugged at Jukes’s heart like a hooked rainbow trout on his old Zebco fishing rod.
He knew he would see his sister next, paddling a canoe past the boathouse with all the skill and cunning of Hiawatha. God, it hurt to think of her with Bobby.
Jukes saw the boat dock where the nightmare began, where the most painful memories of all culminated and died. He could see it in the shadows, the water lapping against its pilings. It stood there like a memorial to Jukes’s youth, somewhat sagging now. His failure filled the air like the odor of the lake in midsummer. He saw the local boy, all toughness and arrogance, standing in his dreams, daring him to come down the hill and defend his sister.
“That’s the place,” Jukes said. “That’s where the bully stood, down by the dock, and I was afraid to walk down that hill. I can still feel the humiliation.”
Fiona touched his knee. “What’s important is that you’re here, ready to confront it.”
Jukes’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. He silently cursed the boat dock and drove on.
Jukes pulled up the dirt road, passed his father’s cabin, and drove around to the rear, so that the car would be out of sight to anyone driving up. He killed the engine.
The water was as still and quiet as black glass. From where he sat, it looked as deep as the ocean. They got out of the car, took the overnight bags they’d packed out of the trunk, and walked up to the porch. Crickets and frogs resumed their song. The moon loomed high in the sky.
“It must be beautiful here in the summer,” Fiona said.
“Look at the stars,” Jukes said.
They both looked up into a celestial canopy of countless brilliant dots of light.
Fiona sighed. “God, there’s millions of them. I never saw anything like it.…”
“The city blocks out most of it, but when you come out here, away from the lights, you really see the immense scope of the universe. Really gives you perspective. Man is so small in comparison.”
He looked at Fiona, saw the moist affection in her eyes, and kissed her. Her mouth was warm and soft against the chill of the night. Jukes felt his soul swell as he held her close.
Oh, God, it feels good to be held.
Old Tom Rayburn was as good as his word. The porch light was on, and Jukes could see that the storm shutters had been pulled back.
Taking the flashlight out of his bag, he shone it around the weathered front door.
“It seems so much smaller and shabbier than I remember.”
“That’s only normal.”
The old wood planks creaked under their feet as they stepped up to the door. It was unlocked. Rayburn knew that nobody would be around, and he didn’t lock and batten down all the cabins until the first week of November. Leaving the door unlocked was something that people still did in these parts. How alien it seemed to Jukes, a native of New York City. His own apartment door back home had four locks on it.
He twisted the knob and swung the door open. Its rusty hinges creaked loudly, like they hadn’t been opened or oiled in years.
He felt the wall next to him and found the light switch. It clicked on and the old room was bathed in weak yellow light. Rayburn had turned on the power, and Jukes was grateful for the illumination.
The furniture was unsophisticated, to say the least, and the dust was thick over most of the room. The shabby look of the place, with its hopelessly warped flooring and its cheap wall coverings, gave him a chill. It was something that he hadn’t felt in decades.
The place gave him an unmistakable case of the creeps. The smell was damp, the memories painful. He walked in very slowly, careful to avoid touching anything. It all seemed somehow tainted.
“Let me take a look around first, before we get settled. You never know what kind of animals might get in. Why don’t you stay here?”
Fiona nodded. “Be careful.”
Jukes systematically began to search the house. First the bedroom. The lightbulb in the hall was burned out. Likewise the bedroom light. He clicked on the flashlight again and inched along.
The bedroom was dreary, and as he splayed the light across the walls, a gloom seemed to settle over him. The peeling wallpaper cast uneven shadows, and the bed, devoid of sheets, looked as cold and unappealing as a coffin. The mattress sagged in the middle with the weight of an invisible body. The metal frame was rusted, and the whole room smelled of mildew.
He shone the light on the closet door. A new chill went through him as he pondered whether or not to open it. He knew he had to, just to be totally sure. The thought filled him with dread, and he had to force himself onward. He tiptoed up to it and listened.
His mind, already stretched to its limit, threatened to play tricks on him. He thought he heard shallow, raspy breathing coming from inside. He had to shake his shoulders to get rid of the gooseflesh there, but it didn’t help.
What did he expect to find? The Banshee, her unearthly body coiled and ready to leap out at him as soon as he touched the door? Or Bobby Sudden, murder in his eyes, about to lunge at him with a butcher knife? Or maybe just more bitter memories?
His mind raced. Jukes knew he’d best get it under control or it could be a very long night. He took a deep breath, grasped the door handle, and yanked it open.
A rusted coat hanger fell from the upper shelf and startled him. He jumped back as if it were a poisonous snake. It rattled to the floor with a forlorn metallic clatter.
“Are you OK?” Fiona called from the li
ving room.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just a little dark in here.”
He peered into the empty closet. Jukes felt his heart pounding in his chest like a runaway pony.
He shone the light up and down inside the forlorn old closet and backed away. Satisfied that the bedroom was secure, he moved back out into the hallway.
Never an overly religious man, Jukes said a silent prayer, a true testament to his growing unease.
“OK in the bedroom. I’ll check the basement next.”
He approached the basement door stiffly. It stood before him like the entrance to a tomb. He gripped the flashlight in his hand tightly.
“Before I go down there, I want to check something.”
Fiona didn’t answer. She stood in the center of the room shivering, half with the cold and half with the anxiety of the old cabin. She wondered if she’d be able to sleep in here.
Jukes walked back into the front of the house, where the electric lights still burned reassuringly. There was a utility closet in the kitchen, a walk-in pantry. He opened it and shone the light inside. The empty shelves looked back at him. He stepped inside.
In the back of the pantry, above the top shelf, was a false panel. He removed the loose board that hid a long space from view and reached inside.
His hand touched something cold. He wrapped his fingers around the object and carefully pulled it out.
All right! It was still there after all this time.
Incredibly, his old .22-gauge hunting rifle hadn’t changed a speck. Wrapped in a couple of garbage bags, it had stayed dry over the years, and it looked as good as the day he’d hidden it there. He felt around inside the wall for a box of shells. Bingo! He thanked God for one of life’s little victories.
He checked the gun. It looked fine. He loaded it up and put a handful of shells into his pocket. The smell of gun oil still clung to it, and he wished he had time to clean it properly.
It had been at least thirty-five years since he had last fired the weapon, when he had killed a raccoon. His parents had been very upset with him for doing that. It was only with the agreement that he would never aim it at anything living that his father had let him have the lightweight .22. Jukes was looked upon as a perfect son, an angel who would never do anything wrong. When he’d abused that privilege, it shocked his parents in a way that he’d never been able to rectify.
