The gray-lit sky told me it must be at least late afternoon. My empty belly growled. Dusk in Maine comes quickly in November. Poeticule Bay residents would already be looking for the last lobster boat’s return in dimming light. Everyone in fish and lobster-trap towns are oriented to the Atlantic. Their heads swivel not to the sunset behind Mount Hanley. Instead they'd naturally be looking to the heave and roil of the waves to glimpse boats and seals. Everyone’s back would be turned to me as I trudged into town. I waited for the burn of guilt in my head and panic to sweep over me but it didn’t come.
At the bottom of the mountain, I came out of the trees and took the new logging road. Wide and flattened with slow, easy curves, it accommodated the 18-wheelers the forest feeds. I walked past the spot where Jason and I pushed through the woods that morning. I saw no evidence of our trail. The tall grass had recovered from our passing. Such easy erasure seemed a good sign.
My mother died of a heart attack on a sunny afternoon just like this had been. I did not know the word “incongruous” then. Before she died, I thought it should rain when someone loses their life. Dad died out of sight of the sky, surrounded by the smell of sawdust and the roar of the machine that chewed, swallowed, and spit him out.
Now Jason was dead beside the beautiful deer he killed on another bright day. I searched for the opposite of incongruous. “Right,” I said aloud. “The word is right.”
Once I reached a scattering of houses at Poeticule’s edge, I sprinted. It would do me no good to be seen strolling. I flagged down a car halfway into town.
The fire hall siren wailed and this time, it kept going. The volunteer firefighters gathered first. Within a short time, the telephone tree brought most of the able-bodied town residents into the search. Chief Rose’s Jeep smelled of cheap cologne losing the battle to fat man sweat. He asked me questions between heavy breaths. Why had I not stopped at the first house to use a phone?
I shrugged and looked down. “Panic.” That, I was sure, would get me through: I was lost… I got confused…. Please save my brother…. Repeat.
Night was closing in before we got to the bottom of the trail. Dick and Rich flanked me while Chief Rose puffed behind us. I worried that the Chief was going to have a heart attack, too. I suggested he spread his forces into the woods.
“On both sides of the trail, Joey? You aren’t even sure which side of the trail you were at?” His eyebrows met in the middle.
“I got turned around in the woods. Every tree looks like every other tree. Even if I had a cell phone up here, all I could say was I’m in some trees and there’s a rock and there’s the sky.”
Chief’s laugh was gruff but he clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll find your brother.” He turned to tell the searchers to spread out. “No more than five feet between you, slow ’n steady!”
The small army swept the forest floor, their string of white and yellow lights bobbing. I was sure we weren’t even a quarter of the way to Jason and his deer. I felt queasy at the prospect of finding him. Dick, Rich and I took turns shouting so we wouldn’t go hoarse. They both said not to worry. They were never this nice when Jason was around.
“A head wound can bleed a lot, but that’s only because it’s a head wound,” Dick said. That satisfied him that Jason would be okay. Rich said Jason’s chances of having a heart attack were near impossible. When I reminded him our mother died young of a bad heart, he went quiet for a long time.
The searchers were methodical and the thick terrain made for slow progress. It was close to eleven before some people headed home. They promised to come back and look again at dawn. There were murmurs Chief Rose should call in a helicopter with an infrared camera. I wondered how long it takes a body to cool. I did not want animals to get at the corpse. However, now that my brother was an it, I didn’t want to see the body, either. When I thought we were getting close to the body, I shouted to Chief Rose. “He couldn’t be this far up!”
Rose consulted his map. He said we should go back but send the searchers deeper into woods on either side of the trail. A single groan rose up among the searchers but hissing whispers silenced the complainer. The reaching trees and thorny brush scratched and marked the would-be rescuers and the temperature had plummeted since the sun went down.
I wondered if I should just rent the house out at first or sell it outright? Would selling it too quickly look suspicious? The eulogy would be brief. I would be a tragic figure for the third time. I’d say, “My brother died on the last day of Indian summer.” Then I’d hop into the truck and head south. My future was always waiting to the south and the I-95 would be my time machine, helping me escape to a new beginning.
I told Rich and Dick I was hungry and thirsty. Someone from the bottom of the trail brought up wrapped sandwiches and coffee from the Poeticule B&B and the Bay Diner, but when it arrived I found I couldn’t eat. My nerves killed my appetite. Everyone else was shivering from the cold, but for me, it was the excitement. I had finally achieved escape velocity and my father’s insurance money was my rocket fuel.
We turned back. It was over. Someone else could find the body tomorrow.
Then two shots boomed behind us. There was a brief delay and then a third shot. Intent on being the first to get to my brother, everyone ran. Community and concern brought them out into the cold night, but competition for bragging rights and heroism were on the line now.
“Up to the left!” Rich yelled. “We’re coming, buddy!”
“Jason?”
“Jason!”
A would-be rescuer to our left let out a startled cry and we heard a splash. Another searcher fell into the water trying to pull out the first. We crashed through the bushes. One spot at the base of a pine brightened to white as more people with flashlights bore their way into the circle. My brother, the new boss man, lay in the center, draped over the dead deer.
I dragged my feet but Dick and Rich were irresistible forces pushing me forward. The circle broke open to let me in and I saw Jason, a shivering ghost awash in bright white light as the flashlight beams played over him. The rifle I’d left my brother lay across his chest. Dick and Rich whipped off their jackets as if they were two people sharing one brain. Dick took the gun. Jason whispered to them. They shook their heads in unison. Jason said something else I couldn’t hear. They nodded and Rich shouted for a doctor. When they stood up, they were frowning at me.
John MacGillivray and his wife Susan, the fire department’s EMTs, pushed through with their equipment. Susan MacGillivray peppered Jason with questions. He spoke in a raspy voice. Jason must have been shouting a long time.
“Pain down both arms,” Susan said to her husband, eyebrows raised.
“It’s not so bad now,” Jason said. “Not near so bad. I was dying.”
“Not hardly.” John MacGillivray fit a blood pressure cuff on Jason’s arm and called for the crowd to be quiet as he plugged his stethoscope into his ears.
“And where was the pain?” Chief Rose asked, leaning in. Jason pointed to his chest and his gut. John MacGillivray, annoyed at the Chief’s interruption, asked him to get someone to bring up thermal blankets. The Chief retreated to bark into his walkie-talkie.
I couldn’t look at my brother. I watched the fat silhouettes and long shadows cavorting among the trees instead. I listened. I waited for the accusations to fly at me with claws.
Susan stood to deliver her rapid-fire assessment. “You’ll need some stitches in that forehead and we’ll get you X-rayed. You’ll sleep in Orono hospital tonight. The docs will make the diagnosis, but my money’s on gall stones.”
“My heart?”
MacGillivray shook his head and shrugged. “Lots of people think a gall bladder attack is a heart attack. You’re too young. If your heart was the bug, it would be just your left arm that pained you. Your BP’s okay. We’ll check it out at Emerge, but what you describe? I wouldn’t worry so much. And cut back on fatty foods.”
“Where’s Joey?” Jason asked. I thoug
ht he was staring in my direction, but the ring of white light had blinded him to my face. “Where’s my brother? Is he okay?”
Rich and Dick pushed me forward. “Joey,” Jason smiled at me. “I thought you were dead. I must have passed out or fallen asleep or something,” he said. “I lost all track of time. I thought you must have hit your head on a rock running for help.”
Chief Rose bulled his way back in. “How long were you up here, Jason?”
Jason took a long time to answer. “How long since you left, Joey?”
I shrugged. “No watch.” I pulled my sleeve back to show everyone.
“Must have been no more than an hour before dark, you think?” Jason said, squinting at me.
Volunteers arrived with a stretcher and blankets. Two burly volunteer firefighters I recognized from the gas station lifted Jason gently and tucked the blankets around him as if he was a little boy. Many hands strapped him in.
“Joey! Joey! C’mere!”
MacGillivray waved me in. “Make it quick, kid.” To Chief Rose he said, “Let’s get out of these woods. If not for the deer under him, hypothermia would have done him in before dawn. Another couple of hours…well, it’s a good thing he had the gun to signal us or we might have missed him.”
Jason freed one arm, reached behind my neck and pulled me down, my ear an inch from his teeth. “We’ll hunt again,” he said. “Soon as I’m out, you and me, we’ll be out here again.”
I pulled back. In the swaying lights, I saw his glassy eyes and his grin. I imagine I had that same grin on my face as I sat nearby in the moss.
“As long as there are so many of you guys up here,” Jason shouted to the crowd, “bring my buck down for me, will ya?” A shrill laugh rose up from the crowd. Someone clapped and the rest joined in. They applauded my brother. The crazy drunk driver was now a hero to everyone. They congratulated themselves. As they carried the brave son away, he pumped a fist and gave his rescuers the thumbs-up to prompt another cheer.
Dick appeared beside me carrying Dad’s rifle. Rich pulled on my backpack and gripped my left arm at the elbow. “Time to go.”
Chief puffed up. “Good looking buck. You boys have a permit, I suppose?”
“Jason’s the hunter,” I said.
“In all the near-tragedy, Jason prolly lost it,” Rich said.
“Yeah-huh,” Chief Rose said. “Save me the tongue and the liver, will you? I don’t think we need be askin’ too many questions. Young Kind has been through enough without me pilin’ on, I imagine.”
The Chief pulled his glasses down his nose and looked at me. I felt like I was strapped to a board. He spoke loud enough for everyone to hear him doing his job. “You come up here again, you bring a compass and learn to use it, okay? I do not know how you got so lost, boy. The mountain’s that way.” He pointed. “The whole Atlantic Ocean’s that way. The woods are thick and you musta been in shock, but you missed an ocean, son.” When he laughed, his belly shook. Some of the local hyenas joined in.
The searchers shambled downhill in a ragged parade. The town had another story to chew. Stories are never swallowed and done with. For Poeticule people —Jason’s people, now — stories never lose their flavor. Small town stories are Poeticule Bay’s gum and glue.
Where the old trail met the new logging road, Dick and Rich pushed me into their pickup truck. Rich drove, I sat bitch and Dick cradled the rifle in the suicide seat. “The hospital is quite a ways,” I said. “Can we swing by my house first so I can pick up a few things?”
Dick checked the safety and pulled the bolt back and forth. “What do you mean, your house, Joey?”
“Jason might be in hospital a few days. Concussion maybe, or a gallstone operation, if the paramedics are right. I don’t know.”
“You hope,” Rich said. He lay on his horn and maneuvered the truck through a gaggle of cars. Everyone jockeyed to pull away from the road’s soft shoulder and head for home, but Rich bullied his way into a narrow gap and shot through.
At the tee junction, the back tires spit gravel and we slid onto the macadam. We followed the ambulance west, our backs toward Poeticule Bay. The ambulance plowed ahead of us, dividing the night as its flashing lights — red, white, blue, red, white, blue — strobed the countryside. At the next tee junction, we stopped. The ambulance stabbed out with one siren blast and roared off north toward Orono’s hospital. The ambulance’s big engine growled as it took off and they hit their high beams. My brother disappeared over a hill in a corona of light.
Rich let the engine idle a moment more and then looked to Dick, who nodded. Rich swung the wheel left. We weren’t following the ambulance. I was not surprised. We headed south, down the coast until another crossroad gave way to a smooth road with fresh asphalt. Xenon gaslights cast a bright yellow glow on the I-95.
Rich stood on the brakes at the bottom of the ramp. The tires squealed in protest and the truck rocked to a stop. Dick still held the rifle. He didn’t want to chance being seen with it, so I followed Rich out the driver’s side door. Dick shoved me out with the rifle stock’s butt jabbing at my kidneys. The highway stretched south to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. I would never see a dime of Dad’s insurance money. I didn’t even have a change of underwear.
“Your brother wanted us to make sure you stay until he gets out,” Rich said.
“And this?”
“We’re Jason’s friends,” Rich said. “We’re doing what’s good for him. Sometimes water is thicker than blood, I guess.” He thought a moment, dug two twenties out of his pocket, threw the bills at my feet and backed away. He kept his eyes on me until he got back behind the wheel. He slammed his door and locked it. I watched them back up and begin a three-point turn. Dick rolled down his window and pointed the rifle at me. “Don’t look back!”
I wondered then if they had changed their minds. Maybe Dick was working up his nerve to shoot. I felt a small circle between my shoulder blades where I was somehow sure Dick trained his aim. Without thinking, I raised my arms as if I was in an old western.
“Don’t come back!” Dick screamed. The pickup’s wheels squealed again as they peeled away. The back end fishtailed for a couple of seconds and then they were speeding home to Poeticule Bay.
Soon they will install the hot tub Dad’s death paid for. Some of what should have been my money will pay for the marijuana Jason buys his friends to build a deck out back of the house — Jason’s house now. My brother will invite Dick and Rich over to get drunk and smoke weed in that hot tub. They will invite girls. My brother will talk about his adventure in the woods. Soon the whole town will know what I did. It will come out. Anything bad always does. They will never tire of talking about me. I will be chewed up but never swallowed.
I walk up the ramp toward the circles of yellow light. I remember a hot summer day when I was little. I thought the water was too cold so I dithered at the side of the town pool. Dad pushed me in. It was warmer than I thought, and a relief to swim and play in the water.
And now here I am again, pushed.
At the side of the highway, I stick out my thumb. I have never considered hitching a ride on the I-95, especially at night. However, it is cold and cars have heaters. Besides, I am the most dangerous person out here tonight.
The first of several drivers to stop is a lonely long-haul trucker. He says he wants conversation to keep him awake but he does all the talking. It is a logging truck with a heavy load of hardwood. I imagine that, somehow, a drop of Dad’s blood is traveling south with us through Bangor, Augusta, Portland and beyond.
I cannot wait to see New York City at night. This New Year’s Eve, I will cheer fresh resolutions and unlikely hopes as I watch the ball drop at midnight. I will be on TV, one of the throng in Times Square. I will be safe among strangers.
I close my eyes and reach for a fragment of a memory of my mother. I feel like I am being carried.
ASIA UNBOUND
My starlet, Asia Minor, is a prelude to another sta
rlet, Legs Gabrielle, from the first story in Self-help for Stoners. Legs will make a return in some suspense books I’m planning: The Poeticule Bay Series and the hardboiled crime novel, Hollywood Jesus. Legs has a better sense of humor than Asia (and, as of this writing, I haven’t done any stand-up, so Legs is my outlet.) Asia is a tormented soul but Legs wouldn’t exist without her. ~ Chazz
He couldn’t get near her at the funeral. She was at the moving center of the universe, her own gorgeous, ethereal gravity well. People pulled in close and pushed in closer and he allowed the crowd’s currents to carry him to the edge of her horizon. He didn’t want to meet her again in the middle of the craven crowd. He wanted to see her again alone so he arrived at midnight.
The paparazzi seemed to have given up hounding her. Maybe they knew the excitement was over for the day or they were still filing their stories from the circus that was the funeral. He saw her silhouette in the window, sleek and tall and untouchable…or at least not touchable anymore. He had been denied her so long he felt something akin to hunger.
She watched the ocean, probably dreaming of faraway places she would soon visit again. He wondered if he would ever see any of those places.
He thought he’d be angry. Then she opened the front door and he was in love all over again. “I heard you were back in town,” he said.
“As I recall, that’s why I left this place. You couldn’t walk outside without everyone gawking at you and talking behind your back.” She looked him over. He sucked in his gut a moment too late.
“Can I come in?”
She waited a beat too long, letting him see her debate.
“I won’t bite,” he said.
“Unless I ask you to. I remember.”
She stepped back and waved him in. After he passed her, she leaned out and looked left and right. There wasn’t a soul around. The advantage of a place as small as Poeticule Bay was that strangers stood out from the crowd of locals.
Murders Among Dead Trees Page 9
