Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  On the surface of it, the idea was ludicrous.

  They had a teenage daughter — not his own daughter, granted, but he loved Bri as if she were his own, and that should be enough. At their age, the last thing they needed was to be strapped down with an infant. God, the thought of diapers and teething and “baby-proofing” the house sent shivers up his spine, but Julia’s desire to have another baby seemed to go much deeper than that.

  It also had put a glaring light on their sex life … or lack thereof.

  They had been married more than five years now, and sure, it made sense that the romance would dim. No one can live together, day after day, and maintain that unique spark of being totally bowled over by love … not and stay grounded in reality.

  But ever since they decided — Julia decided to move back to Maine, their sex life had gone south.

  Maybe it was simply that every damned time they started something, Julia suggest not using birth control, and that ruined it for him. He felt more like a performer than a lover.

  Or maybe they weren’t as sexually compatible as they had thought.

  Maybe five years together had doused the flames of passion entirely, and her eyes — as his were increasingly — had begun to wander elsewhere, looking at strangers and fantasizing.

  Hell, for all he knew, Julia and Randy had been getting it on ever since that day on the boat.

  No, he dismissed that thought as too ridiculous.

  But if Julia was messing around with Randy, that might explain what those frigging notes were all about.

  Maybe they were rough drafts of Randy’s frigging love letters to Julia.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he cautioned himself, but a seed of doubt had already become firmly implanted in his mind.

  Beyond that, other things — deeper and darker things — were bothering him.

  Some he could pinpoint easily enough … maybe a little too easily. Others made him feel like one of those six proverbial blind men trying to describe an elephant simply by touch.

  Moving back to where he had grown up hadn’t been —

  And still wasn’t!

  — his idea of a smart move.

  His sentiments for the people on Glooscap — especially his father — hadn’t changed in the time he had been away. If anything, they were more firmly entrenched. He had thought … had hoped that he had left all of them and their narrow-minded ways behind. After all, his father had been the one to push him so hard, demanding that he go to college, get a decent job, and not end up married to some island girl and finish his days spinning his wheels deeper and deeper into the mud on this island until he was deep enough to bury.

  Seeing Randy Chadwick and experiencing all the high school memories that dredged up wasn’t his idea of fun, either.

  At work he had made a few new friends — especially Barry. He enjoyed that relationship partly because it was new. It wasn’t based on having grown up together or having been high school buddies. Reconnecting with Randy and seeing how island living had aged him and Ellie both saddened and angered him. He knew that he and Julia would never feel comfortable socializing with the Chadwicks. Just knowing they had chosen to stay on Glooscap made him uncomfortable. He wanted to associate with people who had never known him as “Frank Carlson’s Little Boy.”

  And the workmen finding those buried bones out at the construction site by Haskins’ barn — that business sent cold, numbing waves of darkness through him whenever he remembered what had happened out there in that barn when he was a teenager.

  It wasn’t possible that Julia — or anyone else — knew about what had happened out there in the spring of his graduating year.

  No way!

  It was the one secret he would keep until he died.

  But things had happened since he and Julia came back to Glooscap that had stirred up those long-buried memories like a ladle gently stirring up the bottom of a witch’s black brew. Seeing the barn or even simple, innocent remarks by people like Randy Chadwick struck too deeply into his mind, sending out dark spider web rays of fear and guilt.

  “Yo, my man.”

  The voice suddenly intruding on his thoughts made John jump up out of his chair. His elbow knocked the pocket calculator from the desk. When it hit the floor, the black plastic housing shattered before skittering under the desk.

  “Christ! Don’t do that!” he shouted, glancing at Barry. He bent down and started scooping up broken pieces.

  “Sorry, man. Why you so jumpy?” Barry said, getting down to help him. “Looks like that’s a goner. Don’t worry. I’ll get a new one.”

  He handed John the few scraps he had collected, and John dropped them into his wastebasket.

  “Forget about it,” John said, shaking his head. “It was a cheap one I picked up at WalMart.”

  “Time to switch to decaf?” Barry asked. He glanced at the design John was working on, then locked eyes with him.

  “I was —” John took a deep breath and finished, “Just thinking.” He rubbed his forehead with the flat of his hand and sigh. “I’ve got some problems at home, is all.”

  “Nothin’ serious, I hope,” Barry said, frowning.

  John shook his head and forced himself to sound casual.

  “Naw. You know how it is.”

  Barry, who had been married for sixteen years and had four children, nodded his understanding.

  “Hell, man, I haven’t seen you that jumpy since … well, least since that day out at Surfside.”

  Squinting, John looked at Barry, hoping what he was feeling didn’t show on his face. Barry chuckled softly under his breath and shook his head.

  “I’ve never seen anyone get so freaked out. I mean — Christ, you must’ve been on jobs that uncovered bones before. Any other time, we’d keep on working, figuring whatever was buried there didn’t give a shit no more.”

  John nodded and, as much as he didn’t feel like working today, stared blankly at his current project, hoping Barry would get the hint and disappear.

  “Half those guys were looking at them bones like they were going to get up and dance, for Christ’s sake,” Barry said, still jiggling with laughter. “Maybe it was ‘cause it was so close to Halloween or something.”

  “What, uh — whatever happened with that, anyway?” John wanted to sound casual, but his throat felt like it was pencil-thin, and — at least to his ears — his voice sounded unnaturally high.

  Barry scoffed and waved his hand in front of his face.

  “Fucked if I know? I didn’t call the cops and ask. I figured, once they were involved, it was out of my hands. Our job was to get as much work done out there as possible before snow covered everything.”

  “Who would know what they found out about those bones?” John asked. The backs of his legs felt rubbery, the way they had that day after skating with Julia, so he eased back into his chair.

  Barry shrugged. “Call the staties if you’re wondering. Actually, I wanted to ask what you think the office should do for a Christmas party this year.”

  John scowled.

  “The consensus is it might be too late to plan something before Christmas ‘cause everyone’s already made plans. Most folks want to have a New Year’s Eve party instead.”

  “Sounds good to me,” John said with a shrug. He wished his voice would loosen up.

  “If you got no problem, then, I’ll put you down for New Year’s Eve,” Barry said. “It pretty much looks like that’s what it’s gonna be.”

  He turned to leave, but then paused for a moment at the door.

  “Sorry ‘bout your calculator. Maybe Sanity Clause win get you a new one for Christmas.”

  “I said — don’t sweat it.”

  It took an effort not to sigh with relief when Barry wheeled around the corner and was gone. If it hadn’t been too obvious, John would have gotten up and closed his office door, but instead, he turned back to his plans, telling himself he had to get working on them and not just sit there, pondering things that were p
robably better left alone, anyway.

  As he shuffled through the pages of notes, jogging them into order, he noticed a single sheet of paper sticking sideways out of the stack. As soon as he saw it, his blood went cold, and his hands began to shake.

  He recognized it immediately —

  A single sheet of notebook paper.

  Slowly, his teeth clenched and his breath stopping so long his lungs began to burn, he took hold of the edge and slowly pulled it out from his pile of notes.

  It isn’t! his mind was screaming. It can’t be!

  But as he slowly extracted the sheet of paper, his chest began to thump. Hot pressure filled his ears as he unfolded the paper. In an instant, it felt like someone had dashed his eyes with acid.

  There, in the middle of the paper, in heavy-handed pencil marks, were the words —

  I WON’T FORGET WHAT YOU DID …

  Whimpering, he shredded the paper, ripping it into confetti.

  Save that for the New Year’s Eve party, he thought as a crazy laugh tried to escape him.

  He crumpled the paper into a tiny ball and jammed it into the bottom of his wastebasket. A sharp piece of the broken calculator housing nicked the back of his hand, but he barely noticed the jolt of pain or the tiny beads of blood that formed. His mind was racing along dark, narrow lines …

  How the fuck did this get here?

  And who the fuck is doing this to me?

  II

  The night was cold and clear when John went out to the garage for an armload of firewood. Overhead, the stars were bright chips of diamonds scattered across the rich black velvet of the night sky. The first breath he took froze the lining of his nose, making it sting as if he had inhaled water. Even though his nasal lining was hurting, his teeth were chattering, and his misted breath hung over his shoulder like a scarf, he preferred this moment of arctic cold to being inside the house. Julia and Bri had gone Christmas shopping at the Maine Mall, leaving him — for the first time since his mother died — alone with his father.

  The logs he carried clunked like maracas in his arms. He wished — somehow — he could stay outside all night rather than go back inside and sit in front of the fireplace while his father read Readers’ Digest and he stared into the flames, seething with thoughts he couldn’t share with anyone.

  But the cold cut like a knife right through his sweater. Within seconds, his hands were so numb he was afraid he was going to drop the wood as he dashed back into the kitchen door and kicked the door shut behind him.

  “Might wanna leave some of the glass in them door windows,” Frank said, not bothering to look up from his magazine when John walked over to the hearth and dumped the wood.

  “It’s freezing out there,” he said by way of apology. His teeth were still chattering as he pulled open the fire screen and, wincing from the sudden blast of heat, dropped two fresh logs onto the bed of glowing embers. Sparks corkscrewed up the flue as he took the poker and jiggled the logs into a better position, then stirred the coals.

  “Should always put three logs in at a time,” Frank said. “Burns better that way. More even.”

  This time Frank did bother to look at his son, who stared back at him, wanting more than anything to tell his father to mind his own damned business, but the reflection of the flames in the chrome of his father’s wheelchair made him hold back his comment. Sighing, John straightened up, put the poker back in the rack, and sat down heavily onto the couch.

  “You know —” he began to say, but he stopped himself and rolled his head back and forth against the cushion to relieve the wire-tight tension in his neck. His body was wound up like a tiger ready to spring on its prey.

  “What’z that?” Frank said.

  He stuck his index finger into the middle of the magazine to mark his place and leaned forward a bit in the wheelchair. One of the wheels made a high-pitched squeak that set John’s teeth on edge.

  John opened his mouth again, feeling he had something to say, but he didn’t because he knew he would sound like …

  Like a little kid, he thought as a flush of heat that had nothing to do with the fire in the fireplace washed over his neck.

  He squirmed at the memory of what Julia had said about how, ever since they had moved in, he’d been acting like he was still a little boy around his father — as if he weren’t an adult. Ironically, his father was now the child. He had become dependent on them. Still, that didn’t remove the feeling John had that he would always be the “kid,” and his father would always be the adult.

  “You ‘bout to say nothing,” Frank said.

  He reached out to the side and placed the magazine on the end table beside him.

  “No — I … It was nothing,” John stammered as he shook his head. He wished to heaven he hadn’t already gotten the firewood. He needed to get out of here.

  “Want a beer or something?” John asked as he hoisted himself up to his feet.

  Frank nodded and said,

  “Sure. A beer’d be fine ‘bout now.”

  Grateful to be out of the room, John went into the kitchen, grabbed two cans of beer and two glasses, taking his time about it before walking back into the living room. He handed a can and a glass to his father, who simply grunted his thanks, popped the top, and poured, raising an inches-thick head of foam.

  “That’s not how you pour a beer,” John said, wishing even as he spoke that he had kept his mouth shut.

  “Oh?” Frank replied. “Temm me, how d’yah pour a beer? I mean, I always pretty much assumed if yah got it into the glass and from there to your gob, you were doin’ all right.”

  As if a demonstration was needed, Frank tilted his head back, took a long swallow, smacking his lips with satisfaction.

  Not wanting to carry this any further, John slouched back on the couch and, dispensing with the glass, popped the top and drank. He wished he could stop bristling at even the slightest little thing his father said or did, and yet he also wanted to tell his father exactly how he had made him feel after all these years.

  What his father had said, about always putting three logs in the fire, was a perfect example of how he had always driven it into him that if he didn’t do something his way, he wasn’t doing it the right way.

  Especially now, John felt an urgency to talk with his father.

  After the stroke, he knew his father didn’t have all that many years left. As tough a nut as he was, his system had suffered a shock, and John didn’t think he would last more than five … ten years, tops. The man had lived his life, and it was nearing its end; but before he died, John wanted to clear the air about a few things. Otherwise, after his father was gone, he would spend the rest of his life resenting his father.

  Clearing his throat, John shifted forward and, looking from the fire to his father’s lined face, said, “That’s always been something you do that drives me crazy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re always telling me how to do things rather than letting me find my own way.”

  Frank made a deep rumbling sound in his chest, and John had a quick impression he was about to spit at him. He didn’t, though. Instead, he rubbed his hand over his face and sighed.

  “I’m tryin’ to give you the benefit of what I’ve learned,” Frank said softly. “I ain’t got much money in the bank, ‘n’ when I go — what’ll you have? This old house and a handful of unpaid medical bills Medicare won’t cover. I’m tryin’ to pass on to you some things I learned … ways of doing and looking at things that I think are the right way —”

  “Your way, maybe,” John snapped. “What works for you won’t necessarily be right for me … or anyone else.”

  Frank took a long, shuddering breath.

  “Well, what works always works, to my way of thinking. I’ll tell yah — what breaks my heart more’n anything is how you still won’t take your family to church. Now you’ve got a wife and a child, you should be going to —”

  “No! No way,” John said, making such a
quick slicing motion with his hand he almost spilled his beer. “I’m not gonna talk about that.”

  Frank’s expression hardened. In the glow of the fire, the lines on his face deepened like ink lines.

  “‘S far as I can see, that’s where you’ve gone wrong,” he said in a low, thundering growl. “If you could only see that —”

  “No, if you could only see!” John shouted, suddenly shifting forward. The motion splashed beer onto his lap, but he ignored it as he turned on his father. “If you could have seen what it was doing to us — to me and Mom — you might have eased up a little on that church bullshit!”

  “Better watch what you say,” Frank said.

  “I’ll say whatever the fuck I want,” John shouted, his face flushed with anger. “You didn’t — Christ, you couldn’t see it!” He lowered his head and shook it sadly from side to side. “You drove both of us fucking crazy with this church crap. All the time. As if going to fucking church was somehow miraculously going to change things.”

  Frank’s mouth opened, but he was so choked up with anger the only sound that came out was a strangled gasp. His hands tightened on the wheelchair armrests, and when he looked at his son again, tattered waves of darkness swept in around the edges of his vision.

  “This may sound spiteful,” John said, ignoring of his father’s rising anger, “but that isn’t how I mean it. You pushing it all the time — I don’t know, maybe going to church gave you the idea that your way was the only way, but I think that’s a lot of what got Mom started drinking in the first place —”

  “That had nothing to do with it,” Frank said. His voice was low, steady, almost under control, but John could see his father’s knuckles turning white as he increased the pressure on the armrests of the wheelchair.

  “It had something to do with it. I know it did. You never realized how much you pressured me about going. I didn’t want to have a thing to do with you or your fucking God.”

  “Watch your mouth, boy!” Frank snarled.

  “I’m not a boy,” John snapped back. “Jesus! Don’t you see it? Once even you couldn’t deny that Mom was drinking too much, what did you do? You prayed for her to stop?” He snorted and, for a breather, took a swallow of beer. “What the fuck kind of husband would let his wife drink herself to death?”