White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2)

by Jeff Van Valer

  “Yes. It’s Ted.”

  “Ted. I’m a lot more interested in goodwill. Not your money.” He handed one of the bills back to Ted and pocketed the other.

  The bearded youngster held his discerning, businessman eyes on Ted’s C-note and asked, “Where are you headed today?”

  “Up to White Birch Village. Old friend up there I’d like to see.”

  “I know where it’s at,” Caleb said, plying his gaze between his mother, father, and the hundred-dollar bill. “That’s about two hours. Two hours and change.”

  Private glances played out once again, this time between father and son.

  “That’d put me back here about eleven thirty,” Caleb said. “That and gas?”

  Ted handed the Caleb the bill in his hand.

  “Truck full of heavy scrap metal?” the trucker said, reaching into his pocket and handing his son the other hundred. “Even with the extra fuel for the load, two hundred bucks’ll bring you a little under forty an hour.”

  Caleb kept his eyes on Ted.

  “Give the poor guy a break, Caleb,” Heidi said. “He’s havin’ a rough time.”

  They all sat at the table.

  “So,” Heidi said. “Ted. Eggs and toast?”

  “Sounds perfect. Thank you.”

  After a quick breakfast, Alvin Williams whispered something to his son and slipped him the .45. Ted knew two hours and change was a long time for someone back at the farmhouse to mull over calling the police. If Mr. Williams had lied and paid for his sandwich and coffee with a credit card, the farm would have been swarming with authorities before they even got there. But he was sure his new friend had been telling the truth.

  Whether cash or credit card wasn’t his concern anyway. That old friend he’d mentioned, the one up at White Birch, was who he worried about.

  Especially if she was actually there.

  CHAPTER 45

  Caleb’s sure-but-always-rattling pick-up rolled down a highway Ted still recognized after all those years. A thousand pins poked at his skin from the inside. Around the bend coming up, they’d have just under a mile to go. The camp would appear before White Birch Village by a couple of miles.

  They passed a carved, brown wooden sign on the right. It stood next to an understated double track with a wood frame standing above it. Painted in white letters, the sign said

  cabin row

  The sign put good-old butterflies into Ted’s stomach, as though he had to sing in front of a crowd or something. He could not believe where he was. In another hundred yards or so, beyond a path, lined with basketball-sized granite stones and eerily unchanged after thirty years, stood a cabin that said

  office

  white birch camp

  The truck passed it by on its way to The Village. Theirs was the only vehicle visible in both directions. After a few moments, Ted made something up and told Caleb he thought he saw someone at the camp office.

  At the sight of Ted’s wallet, Caleb pulled a U-turn in the highway, drove back, and dropped Ted in front of the office. The young man seemed to have no qualms about leaving a well-paying passenger on the side of the road, miles from anywhere.

  In another minute or two, the diesel engine’s chattering sound faded, as did the view of the pick-up truck, down the highway from where it had come.

  Awestruck and nervous, Ted disbelieved the White Birch Camp sign until well after the truck and its engine noise disappeared. He put his cold-stiffening hands in his pockets, sighed a plume of white, steamy breath, and regarded the log cabin structure in front of him. It was as though it’d been a week, not thirty years.

  To come willingly to a place he vowed never to see again, to his surprise, may have been what his terrible memories needed. It muzzled the roaring tiger, exterminated the trapdoor spider, and doused the nightmarish fire. Maybe. When he saw Cabin Row and especially the lake, he might feel otherwise.

  He winced as a terrible gust cut into his face. The grains of sand it carried whispered along the cabin’s lacquered surface. For the first time in thirty years, the trees spoke to him. Or at least they seemed to. Their words whooshed in the high winter gust, to the twelve-year-old standing in front of the office.

  Karen, the trees said. Dad, Zeke, Neil. Hoss. Lloyd. You better hurry, before it’s too late.

  A hundred yards south, the tiny road leading to Cabin Row perforated the tree line. He scanned the highway once more. No one. He’d lied to Caleb about seeing someone in the office. The dark windows regarded him with a stolid but somehow evil gaze. It seemed to reach for him. Like the basement’s darkness after you turn off the light to head back upstairs. He wanted to run.

  Then the office door opened.

  CHAPTER 46

  In the doorway, dressed for cold weather, stood Karen Dinwiddie.

  “Good morning!” she said, full of open cheer. “Can I help you?”

  Ted nearly collapsed. It was as though the basement’s darkness actually grabbed ahold of him this time. His inner twelve-year-old said, “Um.”

  The forty-two-year-old thought, Hurry up and talk.

  His throat dried immediately. The slicing cold wind returned and made his eyes water. For a moment, he couldn’t see clearly. Red hair poured out from beneath the warm-looking, dark blue knit-cap she wore. He blinked once or twice and saw the woman wasn’t Karen. This youngster couldn’t be a day past her early twenties. She seemed as comfortable as he was out of his mind.

  “At least come on in here where it’s warm,” she said.

  Ted did as he was told, almost always as he had done at White Birch Camp. She held the door for him and seemed completely at ease around him. Maybe he looked as frail and gaunt as Carl Stupe. Maybe… he really was a sympathy magnet.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked as Ted climbed the small flight of wooden steps.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re limping. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “Oh. Just an old injury. Flares up when the barometric pressure drops.”

  Liar. Now you’re lying when you don’t even have to. He ran his thumb down his beltline again to make sure he still wasn’t bleeding.

  “Sorry it’s dark in here,” the woman said. “The fluorescent lights are rough on my headache. Hence the coffee. I have plenty if you’d like some.” She took a place behind the counter. A stack of papers sat near a portable computer attached to some other kind of device. “And please pardon the mess. I’ve finally convinced the owner to let me scan the camp’s records into my laptop for her.”

  Camp’s owner.

  “Sounds pretty reasonable,” Ted said. The words could not have been more useless, but nothing more substantive came to mind. He was exhausted, but he could still think enough to know the scanner and computer were because of a break-in. He surveyed the space. Three wooden filing cabinets held their places on the pine-plank floor, looking like they hadn’t budged in decades. They belonged in a black-and-white photograph. Or a museum. Drawer labels identified the years they represented, starting with 1927.

  She reached over the counter and stuck out her hand. “I’m Bradie. What’s your name?” For all the world, to Ted, it felt like an introduction to camp. He wondered if he might drag this poor girl into his life’s big lie.

  But then, for the first time in his adult life, he knew he didn’t have to. The lie was about to end.

  A lush, green field of hope sprouted in his mind, and something in him took over. He stepped up to the counter and shook Bradie’s hand. “I’m Ted Gables.” It didn’t hurt to say so, he learned, so he went a little further. “Cabin Seven. Nineteen seventy.”

  “Cabin Seven, Nineteen seventy,” Bradie said. “I love it. You’re a couple seasons off for a visit, though.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Isn’t it always visit season at White Birch?”

  “Touché.” Bradie stepped over to the filing cabinets and pulled open a drawer labeled ’68-’77.

  Next to the three relics stood a bookshelf holding a half-dozen
Loon Lake Sloth books. Between Bradie and the bookshelf hung a picture of a young woman in team softball garb—University of Michigan?—in full swing at the plate. The photo captured the bat right as it contacted the ball. Her arms were straight as arrows, right foot planted out front, her left behind her, heel off the ground, toes digging in. A red ponytail swatted at the air behind her helmet. Her gear, dated as it was, meant the picture had to be more than twenty years old. Karen. It couldn’t be anyone else. Was she left-handed? Ted replayed an old memory in which Karen threw a baseball in front of Cabin 5. She sauntered up to a couple kids playing catch and put a glove on her right hand.

  Ball in her left, she reached into the imaginary bucket behind her, right side facing her target. She stepped mightily into her throw, twisted her core, and all her energy shot up to her shoulder, down her arm and out through her fingers. Her line-drive sizzler snapped into the catcher’s glove. Every boy who saw that throw gasped. That may have been the moment Ted fell in love.

  No way on this earth was Karen not involved in this camp. The picture, the books, the young doppelgänger.

  Is she Karen’s daughter?

  “What brings you?” Bradie asked cheerily.

  Don’t lie to her, Ted. “I was in the area with a friend and decided White Birch is so full of bittersweet memories I had to pay a visit. Part of me wanted to stay away, but the other part won out. Haven’t been here for thirty years, and I’m not sure I’ll ever have the chance again. Does that make any sense?”

  “It makes perfect sense,” she said, walking her fingers among the files in the drawer. “You’re here to take a stroll down to Cabin Row? Say hello to the lake? Something like that?”

  The Cabin Seven, nineteen seventy stuff’s gonna be gone, Ted. What’re you gonna say then?

  “The camp pulls on you, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “My grandpa has a phrase for that, you know.”

  “White Birch Magic,” Ted said, tingling with exhaustion and indecision.

  Bradie stood up straight and spun around, her eyes widening almost uncontrollably. The file drawer drifted closed. “Only a true White Birch veteran would have known that,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ma’am? Ted, you’re losing it, Buddy Boy. “Just came by for a little nostalgia tour.”

  “Nostalgia Tour two thousand. You’ve got to be the very first. But not that I’d know. I’m usually not here during the winter.”

  Where are you, usually, during the winter? Ted wanted to talk to her, but he had to hurry. He regretted divulging his attendance in Cabin 7. It wouldn’t do for her to learn the records were missing. Ted readied himself to issue a conversational wrap-up and excuse himself. But what came out was different.

  “Are you a Dinwiddie?” he asked.

  Bradie’s face turned pink, and she nodded. It was as though Ted were a ghost. The only problem was, this girl seemed to like ghosts. “Nineteen seventy… you would have known him. My grandpa, Roger Dinwiddie.”

  “I thought his first name was Mister.”

  She gave a polite chuckle.

  “Is he… ?”

  “Fishing in the Florida Keys right now?” she said. “Sure is. I came all the way up from Ann Arbor for a few days, and he has the nerve to be gone. He’ll pay for this over Thanksgiving.”

  “Ann Arbor?”

  “Yeah. Graduate school. Biology. Have you heard of those riots going on? It’s just a little ugly down there. No big deal, I guess, but I decided to come home and get away for a few days.” Bradie lifted her arms in a grandiose way, showcasing the humble office. “It’s quiet. My aunt is paying me in dinners and wine. Hence the headache.”

  It was time for Ted to go, but instead, as though on autopilot, he pointed to the softball picture and asked, “Your aunt?”

  “Karen. Did you meet her back then?”

  He felt a sad warmth in his chest and nodded. Did I ever.

  Bradie said, “That was the summer of the”—

  Don’t say it.

  —“fire. Do you remember that?”

  “I sure do.”

  “And the drought. And the tornado.” When a brief shadow crossed her expression of wonder, Ted knew she’d just thought about her great-uncle Lloyd. “You were here for that?”

  “Yes, I was,” Ted said.

  “Grandpa told me stories about that summer. His favorite is how some kid saved his life during the tornado. Pushed him out of the way of a falling tree. Did you know about that?”

  Time to go, Ted. “You know? I read Karen’s very first Loon Lake Sloth story.”

  “Book one?”

  “Nope. She wrote a short one that summer.”

  Bradie’s eyes turned almost predatory. “In nineteen seventy?”

  “I have it at home.”

  “No, you do not!”

  Her unmasked excitement soothed him for the moment. Girl loves her aunt Karen. Ted suddenly wanted to be at Thanksgiving with Bradie. And Karen. And Mr. Dinwiddie. Kathryn would love them all.

  Be nice, wouldn’t it? But time to get going, Ted.

  “I do,” he said. “Maybe I could mail it to Karen. But hey… you look busy here. It’s been so n—”

  “You should mail it. She’d get a kick out of it.”

  “How ’bout I poke my head in when I stroll back up to the office?” he said. “Maybe I could use your phone then?”

  “Sure,” Bradie said, adding, “Please do. And say hello to the lake while you’re back there.”

  Ted walked out the door, trying to hide his limp. He looked both ways down the highway, half-expecting to see the minivan, but it wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER 47

  Ted would bet money not one of the basketball-sized, granite stones had moved since he last saw them.

  She’s gonna get in the filing cabinets and look up 1970. Right then’s when she’ll get dragged down into the big lie. She’ll be suspicious. And call the police.

  But then again, Ted was within minutes of calling them himself. Once he could get the list of names, that was, and spread them around the world a few times. That’s right, he thought. Maybe he could actually make good use of the internet himself.

  His body moved, as though floating like plankton, toward his own childhood. His less-than-perfect legs carried him, and he couldn’t believe where they were going. When they got him to Cabin Row, he was sure he’d be twelve again. If only his greatest worry were showing up late to camp and being screwed, for the summer, with a bottom bunk. Or facing a childhood bully like Frank Bruska.

  A thin spiral of bright motivation swirled into an ancient batter of melancholy and regret. The ochre pine-needle path among the stones led him to the sign a hundred yards down the cold highway. A few rogue snowflakes danced past the sign that said

  cabin row

  An arrow pointed down a sandy, wind-sculpted, double-track path barely wide enough for a car. He was glad for the new boots and jacket. Even in the woods, half a mile from the lake, the wind was harsh enough to take his mind off his knee and the gunshot wound. Sand stung his face as he took to the fresh, windblown path. An acorn fell in front of him, splatting into the sand and rolling a few inches. The wind immediately obscured the mark it made. Little twigs and needles crunched beneath his uneven steps. His steamy breaths deepened.

  It was too cold to smell the conifers. Tall, white and red pines stood bravely against the elements as they lined the winding path. A surprised audience of high branches murmured in the weather. After maybe a quarter mile, Ted reached a familiar split in the path. Straight would lead him to Headquarters and was the quickest way to the lake. Left would take him on a route parallel to and behind Cabin Row. From there, a smaller path would take him west to the archery range or east to Cabin 4. Unless they’d changed it. After thirty years, he supposed, they could have changed a lot of things, but he bet they hadn’t.

  Loon Lake pulled him. He set off toward Headquarters and the bluff that dived down
into the mile-wide surface.

  Considering all the avoidance, secrecy, and all the passive, keep-quiet lying since he’d last seen the place, Ted felt as though he’d just arrived at home. Deep in his very darkest places—something he had managed to forget—he loved White Birch Camp. His pace quickened, despite his pain, and the stinging wind filled his eyes with tears.

  He passed Headquarters. Then the big white birch itself. The tree was noticeably thicker, and dark fissures cut into the bark. Otherwise, the tree was the same as always, only leafless.

  I can’t wave at you, Ted, the tree seemed to say. Not like I used to. Not anymore.

  “White Birch Magic,” he mumbled. He passed Cabin 1 and hesitated at the top of the bluff. There, he stood precisely where his dad dropped him off in 1970. He met Karen at the same time and place. It was there that Hoss first heckled Ted for issuing a hopeful I love you, Dad. Ted had grown used to losing good friends at the end of each summer. But losing his mom was something different. In June, 1970, right where he stood, Ted thought he’d lost his dad, too.

  And now, all these years later? The trapdoor spider appeared but had nowhere to pull him. Thirty years of figurative trips to White Birch Camp concentrated on the ground beneath his feet. He realized he’d defied them all and the spider for good. You’re here, Ted. You’re actually here. Despite the wind, overcast sky, and partially frozen bleakness of Loon Lake, it was spring in his mind. He glanced across the water and beheld the prodigious regrowth of the once-charred other side.

  There’s your field of hope, Ted. Get to work.

  He readied himself for his next stroll down Cabin Row. He counted one through seven.

  There it is. Cabin 7.