The Man in the Woods

by Rosemary Wells

  Swearing, Pinky leaped down off the ledge. Helen could only hear him, as he was hidden from her in the fog. She knew what he was doing. He was tearing, bare-handed, at the nettles and poison ivy, looking for the door in the rock face he was sure was there.

  “Pinky, don’t!” she cried out. The nettle thorns were sharp as darts and half an inch long. They would rip his hands to shreds, and the poison ivy would infect him three times as viciously.

  There was no answer from Pinky. Only the snap of briars crushed beneath his boots and angry groans from between his clenched teeth. “Pinky, stop!” she called again, but he went on and on.

  Finally he pulled himself back to the top of the rock. “It has to be here,” he said. “The map showed it was here.” He kicked a clump of soaking moss down over the edge of the precipice and sat down, leaning over his folded arms and biting furiously at a hangnail.

  “Well, it isn’t,” said Helen bleakly. “I guess it’s the end for us.”

  Pinky did not seem to hear her. Gently she placed her hand on his shoulder. “It’s so very quiet here,” she said. She looked into the delicate fog-filled treetops around them. Only the crests of the dozen junipers showed above the mist like volcanic islands pointing out of a gray sea. “Pinky, thank you,” she said before she’d had time to think out anything to say. “You’ve been with me all the time. Nobody really helped me but you.”

  Pinky’s two fists, crisscrossed with bleeding scratches that went up over his wrists, were curled tightly in rage. He wept noiselessly, his whole body heaving with the effort, into his sleeve.

  Only in the movies, thought Helen, do people know what to say and have it all come out right. She wanted to put her arms around him, but she didn’t dare. She wanted to say something that would make him put his arms around her, but she didn’t know how.

  It didn’t matter. She heard her own voice crackle through the air like sudden lightning: “Pinky, my God! Look at that!”

  Chapter 12

  HELEN JUMPED DOWN FROM the top of the rock face, landing in a nest of briers. Pinky followed. “What?” he asked three times. “I don’t see anything!”

  “You can’t see it now,” said Helen. “You can’t see it except from up there, and even then, if it hadn’t been for the fog, I never would have noticed.”

  They crossed the grassy path again, but Helen ran on to the right of it. She stopped when she reached the first juniper tree. She slapped its rough trunk. “They were all planted Pinky,” she explained breathlessly. “All at one time. Trees in the woods don’t grow naturally in a perfect square, all exactly the same height. I never would have noticed from the ground, there’s too many other trees in the way. It was the fog. It blocked off every other tree below them, and only the juniper tops showed!” She paused for a little air. “Look. They must have been planted to disguise the location of the foundation of the house. It’s Lorenzo’s last mistake, Pinky. All of it’s overgrown, but we’ll find the basement here somewhere.”

  Very slowly Pinky approached one of the junipers, looked at the others, and calculated. As he did, he shook the wet leaves of a pokeberry plant over his wounded hands and washed them in the rainwater, grimacing with pain. “If it is here,” he said, “we’ll still have a job finding it. These trees have had a hundred and twenty years to set their roots.”

  Sometime later they found a rusty spring which could have come from a two-hundred-year-old chair or a ten-year-old chair. Then Pinky began digging around what he said looked like a hand-hewn granite block. They found a charred board and under that the beginnings of a brick walk. Helen looked carefully at the undergrowth that covered the woods floor. “Myrtle,” she said.

  “What?” Pinky asked.

  “Myrtle. This dark-green, shiny plant. It has purple flowers in late spring. We have it at home in our garden. It’s a cultivated plant, not a wild one.” Breaking out of a mound of piny humus was a stand of fragile purple toadstools. Next to them was a jungle of honeysuckle and more myrtle. It grew over an oblong stone.

  In the stone was a rusted iron bar, a slide bar, and under the vines was a door.

  The honeysuckle and myrtle had been carefully matted by hand to form a wild rug. Once the rug was lifted, the door into the ground opened easily.

  Pinky drew a flashlight from his pocket. He jabbed the button five times, but it produced only a dim, wavering beam. He said an angry word to it.

  “Batteries probably got wet,” said Helen. “Never mind, I can still see.” But her own words hung in her mind. I can still see. I can still see. She had thought a shadow had glided by one of the fog-blanketed junipers. She covered her eyes with her hands. Her eyes were so precious. Her hands too weak to…. Stop it, she told herself. I’ve been telling myself I’ve been followed for weeks now, and what does it turn out to be? A bag lady with a pair of discarded sneakers. An off-duty cop waiting for a public phone. A rabbit, a cat.

  But what was the shadow? There are no shadows in a fog.

  The door into the earth led to a flight of steps which gave way to a flagstone floor. The basement spread ahead, far beyond where they could see, but smack in the middle of the room, with a chair pulled out in front of it, was the Thurber writing machine.

  They turned to each other for a delighted moment but had no words. Pinky reached out and touched one of the smooth wooden keys, as if to make sure it was real, and drew back in awe. Helen unhooked the metal fasteners on Pinky’s slicker and opened the stiff rubber front of it like two doors. She clasped her arms around his back and buried her face in the fuzzy pullover that was now nearly as familiar as her own clothes. At last she could speak. “The Thurber … it’s beautiful!” was all she could think to say. “I never thought it would be beautiful!” Her eyes would not leave the burled walnut case with the word Thurber inlaid in mother-of-pearl below the typing keys.

  “Before we go,” said Pinky, “I want to take a sample of the type to show the cops. Do you have any paper?” Above them a dead twig snapped. Then another. They both looked up at the same moment. The mat of vines that had covered the basement door rustled. The door dropped back into place, clanging, then echoing. The bolt was replaced, and the footsteps ran off through the soft fallen pine needles as quickly as they had come, leaving Pinky and Helen in a blackness denser than any night.

  Helen sank to her knees and felt the slimy stone floor with both hands, as if the earth itself would suddenly fail her and she would be left dangling in space.

  “We’re going to die, Pinky,” she said.

  “No, we’re not,” Pinky answered in a whisper. “We’re not going to die.” He turned on the meager glimmer of his flashlight and then shut it off again. “We’re not going to die,” he repeated.

  Helen held Pinky’s legs. Panic swarmed through her body, covering her with sweat as cold as the floor’s, stopping her breathing, again turning the insides of her gut to hot, sickly water. Pinky’s legs were trembling. “Are you as scared as I am?” she asked.

  Through the darkness, thick as a pillow, she heard his usual ironic grin around his answer. “Hold on to it,” he said. “There’s no john down here.”

  She relaxed one or two degrees.

  “Come on,” said Pinky. “Let’s get that door open again before he comes back.”

  “The bolt,” she said hopelessly. “It’s solid iron and embedded in rock.”

  “The hinges,” said Pinky, “are what we’ll work on.”

  He stumbled over to the steps, climbed them, and pointed the tiny beam of his flashlight at the bottom of the door. “If I’m right,” he said, “this cellar’s got to be full of old guns and ammunition. All I need is a pistol I can load, and I’ll shoot off these hinges in two seconds. Even a bayonet would do. I can pry ’em out.”

  After many minutes of fumbling along unseen walls, over shelves, and among the shapes of unknown objects Helen found a small waxy cylinder, felt at the end for a wick, accidentally broke off the wick, and then restored it, digging at it with her fingerna
il. They lit the candle with one of the two dry matches in Pinky’s pocket. They could see quite well by it, as their eyes had now adjusted to the darkness.

  Helen stared at one side of the cavernous room, Pinky at the other. Along her wall there were rows and rows of heavy woolen greatcoats, hung five deep on iron rods, as they might be in a dry cleaner’s. They were huge, of a military cut, and spangled with motes of mildew. Under them were piled heaps of blankets, but for fear of spiders Helen touched neither the coats nor the blankets.

  On the other side of the room Pinky was furiously scattering a supply of crutches of all sizes. Carefully rolled swaths of heavy cotton cloth fell to the floor as he searched for a gun.

  Bandages, thought Helen and picked one up and put it back on the shelf.

  Pinky grabbed a piece of smooth, solid wood, thin and rounded at the ends. There were many like it. “A splint,” he said. “Might be able to pry with it if it’s hardwood.” He set it aside and went on, yanking stethoscopes with gum-covered cloth tubes and earpieces as big as silver dollars down onto the floor. Slings, braces, sticking plaster, and a scalpel all followed. A bottle fell onto the stone beneath their feet, and the odor of camphor filled the air.

  This cellar hasn’t been disturbed in over a hundred and twenty years, thought Helen. Aloud she said, “There aren’t any guns down here, Pinky. Lucy sent all the guns down South. This is where she stashed the medical supplies she was supposed to be sending in those packages. She hid it all down here.”

  Pinky just mumbled something about bullets and rifles. The rest of the shelves held square wooden boxes. Pinky ripped open four of them, using the splint to pry up the nails, but they were only filled with something called Dover’s Powder. In the next lot were red glass flasks laid on their sides in sawdust. The splotchy labels read Laudanum, Cure for All Maladies and Distempers of the Human Body. There were three cartons of these. Pinky threw down his splint in disgust.

  Helen took the candle and wandered to the very back of the basement, where she found a walk-in closet. Two canvas stretchers with ornately carved wooden lifters stood against the door, which creaked as she opened it. The closet’s ample shelves were loaded with Dr. Theodore’s Elixir, good for horse and man alike, bars and bars of oil-paper-wrapped lye soap, containers of pills, which Helen rattled against her ear, labeled in German. She picked up a round tin can, brought it close to her eyes, and read: Dr. Buckland’s Scotch Oats Essence. Cures Insanity, Paralysis, Brain Softening, Nervous Exhaustion, Sick Headache, Sleeplessness, and St. Vitus’ Dance. She put it back on the shelf. There were vials of Kidney Wort Cure, jars of Congress Water, and packages and packages of Cuticura Anti-Pain plasters.

  “Anything?” Pinky called.

  “Horse liniment,” said Helen, “and more horse liniment. No guns, no pistols or ammunition, not even a bayonet.”

  “Let’s not waste any more of the candle,” he said, and cupping the bright little flame in his hand, he took it up the stairs and set it in a crack on the top step. Then he began to clean the rusty hinges with the scalpel.

  “How long?” asked Helen, sitting on the step below him.

  “I don’t know. If I had a crowbar…. He wiped the scalpel’s curved blade on his pants. Then they heard a scratching on the other side of the door.

  Helen grabbed the candle. Soundlessly they hurried back down the stairs. Above them they heard the sound of metal scraping stone. Pinky looked desperately in all directions. “The coats!” he whispered hoarsely. “Hide in the coats! One in the back of the row. Button the coat first. Then get in and hide your feet under one of the blankets.”

  The iron door fell open with a harsh, vibrating crash. Inside the thick woolen coat Helen imagined the bluish daylight flooding into the cellar. She tried not to think of spiders and snakes and fungus in the sleeves of the coat. She could sense Pinky breathing beside her in the next coat. She remembered the smashed camphor bottle. She wished she’d taken one more second to pick up the long broken neck of it. It would have been something to hold. It was jagged and sharp. Dear God, she began to pray, if You were ever by my side, please be here now. Don’t let him find us, dear God. I know I have failed you many times. Forgive me. Don’t let him find us.

  A quiet minute spun by. What was he doing? The person in her mind’s eye was hooded, the face blank except for bright close-set eyes, like a sewer rat’s. There was a pinging of glass from the far side of the cellar.

  Did he have a knife? An ice pick? The scalpel! Had Pinky left the scalpel, sharp as a new razor, pointed as sewing scissors, on the top step? Had he found it? Slowly, without a sound, Helen turned around inside the coat. If he stabs quickly, he’ll get the back of my head, she told herself. Not my eyes. Not my eyes first.

  The footsteps padded to the closet. She heard the door ratchetting open and the stretchers shifting. She heard his hands moving, fingering things on shelves, shoving them slightly. She could hear him breathing in and breathing out.

  Then, starting at the far end of the row, he began poking at the coats. Brass buttons clinked together as he did this. Halfway down the row he said, “Hunhh,” as if he were about to stop. Then he continued. Pinky and Helen were in the next to last coats on the end.

  Suddenly Pinky nudged her hard. She turned. “Run for it!” he said, his voice shattering the deep silence, but it was too late. The man had opened the buttons of Helen’s greatcoat and stood directly in front of her. The light from the open door spilled behind him, and she could see nothing but his black, shadowy form. He was tall. He chuckled.

  Pinky grabbed him from behind, yanking him backward off his feet. The scalpel blade in Pinky’s hand flashed by like a tiny scimitar. Then Helen saw who it was, and so did Pinky, and he stopped the scalpel just short of the vein in the throat.

  “What are you doing here!” Pinky yelled, straddling his chest and still not releasing him.

  The old Indian sputtered helplessly. “Let me up! Let me go!”

  “Why didn’t you say who you were when you came down the stairs,” Helen demanded. “You scared us half to death creeping around like that.”

  “I wasn’t sure it was you,” said the old man balefully. “I was just as scared as you were. Please put that thing down!” The Indian tucked his shirt tails into his pants and gazed mournfully at the scalpel that Pinky still held at his side.

  “I was following him, you see?” he said. “Saw him slam the door down. Figured maybe somebody was in here, so I came down.”

  “Who were you following?” asked Helen.

  “Why?” asked Pinky.

  The Indian didn’t answer. Inside the works of the Thurber machine lay a scrap of crumpled-up paper they hadn’t noticed before with several letters of the alphabet typed on it.

  “We better take this to the cops,” said Pinky slyly.

  “Wait a minute,” said the Indian at the mention of the police. He sat heavily on the lowest of the cellar steps. “I don’t know who he is,” he mewled. “Swear to God. I was following him because he gives me this stuff. See? In the red bottles. Helps my leg. Good for the rheumatism. Met him last spring over at Sander’s Ridge. Real nice to me. I told him about my leg, and next time I met him, he brought me one of the bottles. Three times that happened. Then last time he tried to charge me. I don’t have no thirty bucks. I was mad, see? So I followed him, and now I found where he keeps it. Right there in those boxes.” He pointed. “I don’t want cops finding me,” he pleaded. “They’ll put me in the state old-folks’ home.”

  “Who is he?” asked Helen.

  “I don’t know,” said the Indian. “Just a guy. Ordinary-looking.”

  “Can you describe him so I can draw him?” asked Helen.

  “Guess so,” said the Indian. “Let’s go up in the light. Cellar’s damp. Brings on my pain again.”

  Helen had a pencil in her pocketbook but no paper. She ran to the closet at the back of the cellar. Surely there would be a piece of paper, a label of some kind. She grabbed a can of Dr. Buckl
and’s Scotch Oats Essence and tried to pull off the wrapper, only to find it had been stuck on with a hundred-and-twenty-year-old version of Krazy Glue that smelled of fish. The candle, only half an inch long, now began to burn her fingers. She blew it out and stuffed it in her pocket. She reached wildly in among the shelves, over the lye soap in its slippery oil paper. There were ten large boxes in the back, under the Cuticura Anti-Pain Plasters. She opened one of the boxes and found tin upon tin about the size of pipe-tobacco cans. She picked them up one by one, but they were all sealed tightly with oil paper, except for the last. She breathed a sigh of great relief when the paper label slid off easily.

  Helen ran up the stairs and out into the light. She flattened the thin paper on one of the smooth splints Pinky had found and sat next to the Indian on a fallen log.

  “How old would you say he was?” he asked.

  “Oh, young, young,” said the Indian. “Then, of course, they all look young to me.”

  “Who’s they?” asked Helen.

  “Everybody,” said the Indian. “I’m ninety-two.”

  When Helen had gotten the shape of the head, the ears, the hair, eyes, nose, and mouth all to the Indian’s satisfaction, he rose and said, “You got ’im. That’s him to a tee.” His joints popped as he went down into the cellar again.

  When he came back, he was wearing one of the greatcoats. “Took all the red medicine,” he said, grinning. “Put it all in the lining of this coat. Nice warm coat too.” Then he limped off merrily, the hem of the coat dragging and bulging with bottles of laudanum, cure for all maladies and distempers of the human body. He turned and waved once and then clinked and clanked his way off into the fog-filled woods until they could hear him no more.

  Chief Ryser was not in the mood. That, Helen and Pinky could tell the moment they were shown into his office. “Your folks have called,” he said sternly to Helen. “Your aunt tried to find you up at the high school. She wanted us to put out a missing person on you two. I figured you’d turn up.”