“So it was you then, was it?” Heph said suddenly. “Randy said he was reading up on the internet and all that. Seemed to me there’s gotta be other people called Eric Loesch in the army, right?”
“No,” I admitted. “That was me.”
Randall was gazing at me with a strange intensity now. I turned my beer mug around and around on the tabletop.
“You’re not drinking your beer,” he said.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” I replied.
“Ahh, on the wagon. Sorry about that.”
I said nothing, though his characterization was not entirely accurate. I did not have a drinking problem from which I was recovering. I simply did not enjoy excessive indulgence in alcoholic beverages.
Heph spoke up, to fill the lull in conversation. “Welp, anyway, it’s you then. I’ll tell you, son, I think you got a raw deal. Seems to me none of that was your fault. You were just following orders, right? You were doing what had to be done.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“People on the outside don’t understand what it’s like,” Heph went on. “They think it’s all black and white! There’s bad and there’s good and nothing in between! But it isn’t like that, now, is it! It’s hard making decisions in a time of war, and when push comes to shove you gotta do your job and you gotta show the enemy who’s boss, don’t’cha think, Randy?”
Randall nodded slowly. He appeared to be slightly ill at ease after Heph’s little speech. For my part, I realized that I would be forced to leave. There was no way to carry on with the conversation, now that this subject had come up, and I began, in spite of myself, to shift uncomfortably in my chair.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, an excuse for leaving would soon present itself. Only a few seconds of awkward silence had elapsed when I began to become aware of the health-food meal in my stomach, and the fact of its not having yet been digested. It had been quite some time since I ate; the meal ought to have been well on its way through my system. Instead, it was threatening to make a dramatic return.
“Gentlemen, would you excuse me a moment?”
Randall and Heph replied with grim nods as I rose, then walked, then walked faster, to the men’s room. I pushed open the door of a stall just in time to expel my dinner into a filthy, waste-encrusted toilet. A few moments later I was washing my face with scalding hot water from the chipped and stained porcelain sink, and shivering uncontrollably. My stomach, though empty, turned over, and I returned to the stall for another round of painful release.
When I emerged at last into the bar, Heph and Randall looked up at me expectantly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I seem to have come down with something.”
“You look like you just saw a ghost in there,” Randall remarked.
“It was the ghost of my dinner,” I managed to quip, and their laughter went some way toward smoothing over the discomfort of the moment. I thanked them again for inviting me out, and walked unsteadily to my car.
Twice on the way back to the house I was forced to pull over and endure a series of dry heaves. The shivering intensified, and it was only through the sheer force of will that I was able to keep my hands steady on the steering wheel. I staggered into the house, up the stairs, and into bed, where I began what was to be several days’ discomfort and delirium.
I remember little of those days. Sometimes it was light outside, sometimes it was dark. At times I slept as though dead; at other times I rolled in my reeking, sweat-stained sheets, in an agony of nausea and pain. My head throbbed, my throat burned, and my belly ached from its exertions. At first I imagined that I had contracted some foodborne illness, but my body barely seemed to notice that the food was gone. Clearly, then, it had to be some kind of severe flu. Light exploded behind my closed eyes; I buried my head beneath my pillow, in fear of the sun. I must have managed to take some aspirin, because the almost-new bottle was half-empty by the time I came out of it; twice I woke from cramped sleep laid out on the bathroom floor. I also tried to bathe—I would wake up one night trembling in a tub full of freezing water, which I had no memory of having drawn.
When at last I came out of it, it was late afternoon, and a wind thrashed my bedroom window. I was surprised to find myself climbing out of bed to look out: the eastern sky was dark with roiling clouds, and the gusts carried a light rain that clattered against the pane like thrown gravel. I mustered enough strength to open the window an inch. The wind shouldered in, spattering the sill, and my hands upon it, with rain. Warm rain—a warm wind blowing warm rain. Relief spread through me. I was well again, and warm weather had arrived. Outside, the roof of the forest roiled like a sea, and the sunlight streaming from behind the house cast its long, strange shadow against the trees.
I shut the window and drew deep breaths there in the small, empty room. I could smell it now, my bed, my body: the sickness was gone, but its sourness, its stale spoor, was left behind. Shivering with hunger and weakness, I gathered up my filthy sheets and took them downstairs to wash; then I returned to the bathroom and bathed, scrubbing the past few days away. I dressed, went to the kitchen, and prepared myself a piece of buttered toast with trembling hands.
The toast was perhaps the most delicious food I had ever eaten in my life. The bread, thick and chewy, was flawlessly browned and crisped; the crust had been roasted nearly to burning, and it flaked off onto my tongue, releasing a full, rich, smoky roundness. The butter was sweet and half-melted, and I could feel its oily essence penetrating me, lubricating long-rusted synapses, opening up my mind and my senses after so many days of disuse. The toast was gone in seconds, and I made another piece, and a third, and a fourth, devouring them with robotic efficiency as I leaned against the kitchen counter.
Soon I was sated. But I felt no particular motivation to move. The washing machine churned and knocked in the laundry nook, working away at my bedclothes, and the afternoon sun blasted through the tiny window above it, bathing the kitchen in diffuse, blinding light. I was alone, and free to do as I pleased—and yet a strange emotion had begun to steal over me, a familiar one, that of being trapped, tested, manipulated. Scraped clean by my brief illness, I could hold up this emotion and examine it as though against a plain, uncluttered ground: in isolation, objectively. And I was given to wonder, had there ever been a time in my life when I had not been a pawn of those more powerful than I? My father, my teachers, my commanding officers? Indeed, was it even possible to live otherwise? I say this not to relieve myself of responsibility for my failings, for it was clear that, if I had always lived under the sway of the powerful, I had done so voluntarily, even eagerly. There is no comfort like the comfort of following orders. There is no relief like being relieved of agency.
In the midst of my drama of the year before, I was repeatedly counseled by my JAG attorney on the subject of what I should say during the hearings, which information I should volunteer, which I should keep to myself. I was coached at great length on how to tell my story so as to cast myself and my superiors in the best possible light, and at the time I regarded this advice as invaluable, and followed it to the letter. Indeed, the advice was correct, insofar as I was merely reprimanded and put on indefinite leave, and I ought to have felt gratitude and relief, and been proud to have made the best of a bad situation.
But then, as now, I felt this strange emptiness, this negation of self, as though there were some other course of action possible, one that might have produced a more satisfying outcome; and this possibility hounded me through my days of waiting and worry. Unfortunately, however carefully I considered and reconsidered my circumstances, I could not think of what this other course of action might be. Every day I was assured, both by my lawyer and by my commanding officer, that everything would work out fine, and the tacit assumption, which no one seemed to question, was that everything working out fine was what we all wanted. For what defendant, facing the accusations I faced, would not desire such an outcome? To be exonerated and set free in the world, to live at last in peac
e and quiet.
Today, in my newly renovated house, on the remote swath of forest that was mine and mine alone, I could not think of any better outcome. And yet I felt this uncertainty. That I might have assumed control of my destiny. That I might have defied my betters. That I might have saved my parents, or remained close to my sister, or averted the unfortunate circumstances that led to this drastic change in my relationship to the army.
The washing machine stopped, and I transferred my sheets to the dryer. I drank a glass of water, and stared out the living room window at the now-setting sun. When the dryer was finished, I tried to replace the sheets and blankets on my bed, and somehow, the act of stretching the fitted sheet over the mattress—tucking the fabric under each corner and smoothing down the wrinkles and folds—managed to drain every last bit of energy from my body. I fell onto the mattress and did my best to haul the bedclothes over myself, but it didn’t matter. Despite the early hour, I was asleep within minutes.
I awoke in darkness. The glowing digits of my bedside clock were missing, though I could barely discern its outline looming there beside my head; I must have unplugged it by mistake while I was making the bed. And clouds must have moved in to cover the moon, because its light was missing from the sky, save for the faintest glow emanating from the mist.
What had roused me? I was entirely awake and alert. I closed my eyes and strained to hear.
There—the scrape of metal, faint and muffled, as though from some distant part of the house.
I stood up, gulped a breath, and held it. My blood rushed in my ears.
I heard it again, and this time I recognized it—the rusty steel doors that led to the backyard from the cellar. Something was trying to get in.
I considered racing down the stairs, in an effort to intercept this intruder. But something led me to the window instead, the one that faced north, the same side the cellar door was on. I parted the curtains and thumbed open the lock, and as I reached down to pull up the sash, I heard the clatter of the open door against the stone abutment that supported it.
It was, as I have said, very dark. But in the faint light of the cloud-covered moon, I could make out a figure, climbing up the cement stairs and into the yard. It was not an animal, but a human figure, and before I could discern any of its features, it vanished into the shadows of the trees. I could make out some motion in the murk—the figure was headed for the forest edge.
Without hesitation, I spun from the window, dashed down the stairs, and threw open the door. In moments, I had arrived at the treeline, in the general area where I believed the figure to have disappeared. I remembered very clearly the impassible and quite hazardous deadfall that lay all over the forest floor, and my own struggle to penetrate more than thirty yards into the trees around my house. The night was cold, and I wore no shoes—to forge ahead would be foolish. Instead, I leaned in, my hand braced against a maple, and called out, “Who’s there!” I could see nothing—the darkness in the woods was total.
There was no reply. But I heard the rustle of branches. Against my better judgment, and with careful, halting steps, I moved past the tree into the blackness.
“Hello! Who are you!”
The forest was anechoic, and swallowed up my voice as neatly as a black hole. Nevertheless, I could still hear the intruder somewhere up ahead, the humus crunching under his feet.
His feet—for who else could it be?
“Doctor Stiles!”
Now the silence was deeper, longer, and pregnant with meaning. I waited one, two long minutes. And then, at last, I was rewarded with the sound of a footstep. Just one, and perhaps I was deceiving myself, but I believed it to be a step toward me. He could not have been far away, twenty feet at the most. Alarmed, I backed up, pressing myself against a tree—surely he was better equipped than I, this night, for a fight.
But his next step was fainter, and the next after that was fainter still. And soon it was clear that he had chosen not to return. I listened as the intruder retreated farther and farther into the trees. How he navigated the treacherous ground, I could not begin to imagine; but, like a creature of the forest, he moved quickly, and soon I couldn’t hear him at all.
Nevertheless, I stood there several minutes more, perfectly still; and I might have lingered even later, had I not felt, quite suddenly, the horrible totality of the blackness around me. I may as well have been in the cellar, or some dungeon or cave, for all I could tell; and when I turned to leave I realized that I could not see out of the woods any better than I could see into them, and for a moment I believed I was lost.
But no. I mastered myself, and moved forward, back the way I came, my hands out in front of me, groping for obstacles. And a minute later I found myself in the yard once again, standing over the grave of the white deer; and a minute after that I was back in my moonlit kitchen, panting from the effort of the chase.
It was then I noticed that the rock I used as a doorstop had been shoved aside, and the door to the cellar hung open. The stairs led crookedly down into the darkness. Unnerved, I quickly shut the door and replaced the rock. The intruder, I understood—and it was he, Doctor Avery Stiles, I was certain—had come into the house. I cast my eyes about, trying to discern why he had come, and it was not long before I found the answer. It lay on its side in the center of the kitchen table, an object the size and shape of a box of large wooden matches. I reached out, picked it up, and held it in my hand.
It was cool to the touch, heavy for its size. Its cast metal surface was black, the paint chipped and scratched by years of careless handling. The sight of it, its weight, seemed familiar, infecting me with a vague, gnawing unease. It was, in fact, a toy—a miniature locomotive.
TWELVE
Whatever the true meaning of this cryptic object, its general intent was clear. It was a taunt—perhaps even a threat. “Look what I was able to do,” the intruder was saying. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have.” I suppose I ought to have been grateful that I wasn’t murdered in my sleep. But instead, I became angry. Stiles might still have owned his little square of land behind the rock, but the rest of it, the rock itself, and this house were all mine now—fully, and as dictated by the law. If he felt that I was trespassing, somehow, on property he still thought of as his own, well then, perhaps he oughtn’t to have sold it to the state. In any event, these disturbing games would not intimidate me. Indeed, I did not intend to sit still, idly waiting for his next sortie against my home, my land, and my hard-earned sense of personal well-being. If he wanted to taunt and threaten, then I could play the same game. I could deliver a threat of my own.
Thus resolved, I was tempted to gather my supplies and leave for the woods at first light, but I knew better than to undertake a difficult task while under the influence of strong emotion. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen table and made a detailed list, based upon my previous expedition, of what I might need in order to ferret out and neutralize this threat. When I was through, I lay in bed until daylight in a futile effort to sleep; in any event, I was able to get a bit of uneasy rest. By 7:00 a.m. I was showered and behind the wheel of my car.
Spring was certainly in the air on this clear, breezy day. Though the temperature was barely above freezing when I left the hill, the sun had driven the thermometer to forty-five by the time I reached Milan, and as I walked into the grocery store I felt a balmy gust sweep in from the southwest. Without a doubt, today’s journey into the forest would be different—I knew the way in now, and I knew where to seek my quarry.
It was 8:00 a.m. by the time I had gathered what provisions I needed, and a quarter past when I reached the sporting goods store. The store didn’t open until 8:30, so I parked about a dozen spaces away from the entrance and waited.
A few minutes later, a dented Ford Taurus spotted with primer pulled up a few spaces closer to the store. The door opened and the sandy-haired gun counter clerk stepped out. She went to the entrance of the store, pulled a key ring from her pocket, and let herself in. A few
minutes later, the other employees arrived as well, and a few minutes after that, one of them appeared at the door and unlocked it. A sliding panel in the plastic business-hours chart slid aside, revealing the word OPEN. I got out of my car and went in.
I walked slowly through the store, passing down almost every aisle, to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. In the clothing section, I chose a cap, shirt, jacket, and pants in forest camouflage. Then I approached the gun counter. In the glass case underneath it, I could see the Browning P-35 that I had chosen the week before. The clerk looked up with an expression of guarded friendliness, which dissolved into worry and discomfort as she recognized me.
“You remember me,” I said.
“Mr. Loesch, hello.”
“I’m surprised that I haven’t yet heard from you.”
She turned, pulled open a file drawer behind her, and removed a folder. “No, sorry,” she said, “I was going to call you today.” She placed the folder on the counter and opened it. “I’m afraid that you failed your background check.”
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“Well, that’s how it came back. I can’t sell you a firearm, sorry.” To her credit, she appeared frustrated and disappointed by the entire process, as though my rejection were a personal affront to her. Though this frustration seemed genuine, she was nevertheless still nervous in my presence. Perhaps she believed that I was a criminal.
“May I ask why?”
She shook her head. “I wish I could tell you. It just came back rejected, that’s all. We usually get some explanation, but not this time.”
“I have never been convicted of any violent crime or other felony.”
“I believe you. But the government says no, and we gotta listen to what the government says.”
The irony of hearing this from a private citizen was not lost on me, and I gave up the fight. “All right then,” I said. I took one last look at the Browning underneath the glass counter and walked away.
Castle: A Novel Page 14
