by Pete Hautman
“Don’t go out too far!” her dad yelled.
Elly aimed the prow at a dark tree limb sticking out of the water in the middle of the lake.
“Elly!”
She ignored him and paddled toward the lone deadhead. The kayak skimmed across the lake. She soon reached the deadhead. She stopped, waited for the ripples to settle down, and peered down through the water at the dark trunks and branches that had once been the Castle Rose.
“Grimpy? Are you still there?” She imagined him tangled in the branches. “I’m sorry I drowned you.” She blinked back tears, then laughed at herself. Grimpy was an old ragged stuffed doll, a child’s toy. She dipped one end of the paddle into the water to turn the kayak around, then hesitated and looked back down at the submerged deadfall.
Something was moving, rising toward her. An instant later it exploded up out of the water — a boy, gasping and flailing with his arms.
Stuey! They locked eyes, but before either of them could say anything he sank.
Elly leaned over the edge of the kayak, trying to see through the rippled surface. Had she really seen him? The widening ripples from his splashing faded. Stuey was gone. Was he down there someplace? She leaned out farther, then jerked back as the kayak threatened to capsize.
She had seen him. He had seen her too — she was sure of it.
She waited.
“Come back,” she said. The lake absorbed her small voice.
Her dad was yelling at her from across the lake. She waved to let him know she was okay, then continued looking down into the water.
All she could see were the submerged remains of Castle Rose, sodden and dark.
Stuey hung around until the police came and shooed him off. He walked home slowly, thoughts whirling through his head. Had those bones been Elly’s? If they were, then had he seen her ghost? Had he imagined it? But if it had been all in his head, then how had he gotten soaked? He hadn’t imagined that. His shoes were still squelching and his jeans were wet.
If it had been real, what was Elly doing in a kayak? And she had looked different — her hair was longer and she looked older. Did ghosts age?
Nothing made sense. He had thought he would be saying good-bye to Elly Rose, but it was more like they had said hello all over again. He pulled out his compass and looked at it. It was full of water. Probably ruined.
As he crossed the orchard he picked a green apple. He bit into the bitter flesh, spat it out, and threw it away.
The worst thing was that he couldn’t talk to anybody about it. His mom might send him back to Dr. Missou. Deshan and Heck would laugh at him. Alison would tell him he was being stupid.
He wished Grandpa Zach was still around. Gramps would listen. He might even believe him, or at least pretend to.
Stuey stopped at Gramps’s grave. It had been three years since they buried him. Green moss was creeping up the shaded side of the granite tombstone.
“I’m sorry we lost your woods,” he said. “Mom tried really hard.”
No reply — not that he expected one.
“They found a skeleton. Under a rock.” He stared hard at the gravestone. “I guess you’re under a rock too.”
Gramps would have laughed.
“I tried to read your book. It was kind of messed up from the storm. I didn’t find any secrets.”
Things nobody knows, Grandpa Zach had once told him.
“Mom says secrets are secrets for a reason.”
Things nobody would believe. He could almost hear his grandfather’s voice. He sniffed. Something was burning. It smelled like pipe tobacco. The back of his neck prickled.
“Look harder,” Grandpa Zach said.
Stuey froze and his heart thumped. He couldn’t move — it was as if the air around him had solidified and was holding him. It sounded like Gramps was standing right behind him.
“Gramps?” His voice came out a squeak.
“Read my book.”
“Your book got wrecked in the storm.” A curl of aromatic smoke drifted past Stuey’s cheek. Gramps was close.
“There is more,” Gramps said, right in his ear. Stuey closed his eyes tight. His breaths were coming fast and shallow; the smell of pipe tobacco was overwhelming; he could feel his heartbeat in his throat.
“My Book of Secrets.” Gramps’s voice now sounded farther away. “Look harder.”
“Where?”
He heard his grandfather’s laugh, then his cough. It seemed to be coming from deep in the orchard.
“Grandpa? Gramps?”
He could barely hear the reply: “Let me go, Stuey.”
Suddenly he could move. He whirled around, looking in every direction. He backed away from the grave and hugged himself, heart racing, goose bumps standing out on his arms.
It wasn’t real, he told himself — but he could feel the impression of his grandfather’s voice in his ears.
He could still smell the smoke.
The discovery of the bones was the first thing on the news that night.
“Construction workers made a grisly discovery at the site of the new mall in Westdale this morning. Reporting from the scene is Andrea Stevens.”
The report cut to Westdale Wood, to a blond woman standing in front of a strip of yellow police tape. Behind her several policemen were milling around the broken slab and the shallow hole.
“Thank you, Cal. Police have yet to identify the human remains discovered here, but some are speculating that it could be Elly Rose Frankel, who was last seen at this exact spot two years ago this summer.”
A picture of Elly flashed on the screen.
Stuey’s mom clicked off the TV.
“You don’t need to be watching this.” She got up from the sofa. “I’ll be in my studio.”
Stuey’s mom had been spending nearly all her time in her studio. She said it was therapeutic, whatever that meant. The Westdale Preservation Society had failed to save the woods, so she threw herself into her work. She was painting what she called her “death cards”— a collection of depressing greeting cards depicting American birds that had gone extinct in the last two hundred years — the ivory-billed woodpecker, the passenger pigeon, the great auk, the Carolina parakeet — she had a list.
Stuey sat on the sofa thinking. His mom was right. They would know soon enough. The police would figure it out. But he kept thinking about what he’d heard — or imagined he’d heard — in the orchard.
Look harder, Gramps had said.
Look for what? Where?
Stuey went up to Grandpa Zach’s room. Nothing had changed. The box of unreadable secrets was where he’d left it. He opened the box and flipped through a few of the pages. Still unreadable. If there was more, where would it be?
He started with the closet. It was full of Gramps’s clothes, mostly Pendleton shirts and khaki pants. There were several boxes in the back of the closet. Stuey opened each of them; they were all stuffed with old clothes, including a pair of white golf shoes with dried mud still stuck to the metal spikes.
He backed out of the closet, closed the door, and turned to the bookcase. He ran his fingers across the spines and pulled one out at random: Quantum Mechanics and the Many Worlds Theory. It was full of big words and charts and diagrams that looked like gobbledygook. He wondered if Gramps had understood any of it.
The dresser held nothing but socks, underwear, sweaters, and some old watches. Gramps’s smoking sweater — the one he had been wearing the day he died — was neatly folded in the bottom drawer. He looked under the bed and found a long canvas bag. Inside the bag was a fishing rod. He zipped the bag shut and sat on the bed, feeling a bit foolish. He wasn’t even sure that what had happened in the orchard really happened.
His eyes landed on the old leather golf bag, the one that had belonged to his great-grandfather.
The clubs were ancient, with wooden shafts and leather-wrapped grips worn smooth. Stuey peered down into the bag. More spiderwebs. He unzipped the large pocket on the side. Inside was a clothbou
nd notebook. On the cover was a label. book of secrets was written on the label, then crossed out and replaced with THE TREE FELL.
Stuey opened the notebook. Yellow, lined pages covered with Gramps’s handwriting. The script was not spidery and cramped like Gramps’s later writing; it was strong and clear. Gramps must have written it when he was younger.
Stuey sat on the bed and began to read.
June 30, 2006
I was in the orchard this morning trimming dead branches off the Prairie Spy tree. Lois says there’s no better apple for pie. I was up on a ladder sawing away when I felt a chill, like the cold breath from an open refrigerator on a hot day. I stopped what I was doing and climbed down to the ground. A man was standing a few feet away with his back to me, looking at the house.
I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was Pop. He always wore those old-fashioned plus fours when he golfed. He had his golf cap on too, a white linen porkpie as outdated as his pants. The same clothes he’d been wearing the last time I saw him alive.
Pop’s ghost never looks at me. I’m not sure he knows I’m there.
“What are you looking at?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer. He never does. I looked at the house to see what he was staring at so intently, but saw nothing unusual. When I looked back he was gone.
Moments later I heard Lois calling my name. She was running toward me from the house, waving her arms.
“Annie just had her baby!” she shouted. “It’s a boy!”
Stuey felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. His mom’s name was Annie. This page, these words, had been written on the day he was born!
The next page was dated a few days later.
July 5, 2006
I have carried these secrets far too long.
My father began his life of crime during Prohibition. Pop was a teenager when he stole a jug of white lightning from the back of a moonshiner’s Model A pickup truck. He sold it for twenty-five cents. Soon he was bringing trucks full of whiskey across the border from Canada and had become one of the biggest bootleggers in the Upper Midwest. His buddies in those days were mostly gangsters, guys like Leon Gleckman, Kid Cann, and Alvin Karpis.
By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Pop had become the subject of an intensive criminal investigation run by a young district attorney named Robert Rosen. Pop saw the writing on the wall and closed down his bootlegging operation. Mother was pregnant with me by that time, and Pop made the decision to become a legitimate businessman . . .
Stuey was several pages into the notebook when he heard the clunk-ka-clunk of his mom coming up the stairs. He shoved the notebook back in the bag, ran out into the hallway, and closed the door.
“Hey,” his mom said as she reached the top of the stairs. “What are you up to, besides standing there looking guilty?”
“Nothing,” Stuey said.
She raised her eyebrows. “It’s been awfully quiet up here.”
“I was reading.”
“I see.” Still with the suspicious look.
“I was just going downstairs.” He walked past her and ran down the stairs. A moment later he heard her clogs clunking toward her bedroom at the end of the hall.
Stuey wasn’t able to get back to the notebook until that night while his mom was binge-watching some British TV show where all they do is talk. He took the notebook to his room and curled up in bed.
I started working at the golf course when I was ten, picking up balls on the driving range. Pop paid me five cents a bucket, which was good money in those days. Eventually I went to work with the groundskeepers. By the time I was fifteen they were letting me drive the tractor.
Some of those groundskeepers were kind of sketchy. Pop had hired a bunch of his old cronies from his bootlegging days. One of the sketchier guys, Stan, chewed tobacco and had the brownest teeth I’d ever seen, but he told me a lot of good stories from the old days.
“Always carried Gertie back in the day,” he said, pulling an old revolver from his pocket, a short-barreled .38 with wooden grips worn shiny. “Still do. Keep her for varmints. Them groundhogs can mess up a fairway in no time.”
I don’t know if Stan ever shot any groundhogs, but he did shoot up a bar one night. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. The cops confiscated his pistol and threw him in jail. When he got out a couple months later, Pop gave him his job back.
“But no more guns, Stan.”
“No problem there,” Stan said. “That district attorney, he won’t give Gertie back to me anyways. I bet he kept it for himself.”
I still wonder if this whole terrible thing started with Stan’s gun.
When Pop opened the country club he invited all the local bigwigs to join. The mayor of Westdale was given a free lifetime membership, as were several other politicians.
Robert Rosen, the district attorney, did not receive an invitation. Rosen and Pop had a lot of unpleasant history from back in Pop’s bootlegging days, and I don’t think Pop would have let him join the club even if Rosen hadn’t been Jewish.
I must have been about ten the first time I saw Robert Rosen in person. He showed up at our house one day with several policemen and a search warrant. A tall, thin man with a slightly stooped posture, he made me think of a crane or some other long-legged bird. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, a dark suit, and a frown. Rosen and the police spent hours going through Pop’s papers, turning his office upside down. Pop was livid, but there was nothing he could do. I don’t know what they were looking for, but whatever it was they didn’t find it, or so Pop said. I didn’t know anything of Pop’s past back then.
As I later learned, Robert Rosen was looking to make a name for himself. During Prohibition he had prosecuted hundreds of bootleggers, smugglers, and speakeasy operators. He was never able to catch Pop. Even after Prohibition came to an end, Rosen kept trying to bring charges against him, but nothing stuck. Pop had too many friends in high places.
For most of my childhood Pop split his time between running the golf course and defending himself in court. He didn’t have a lot of time for Mother and me, or even for golf, a game he loved. About the only time he could get out on the course was in the evening, all by himself.
The last time I saw him was the summer before my senior year of high school. Mother had made chicken à la king casserole, one of Pop’s favorites. Pop called to say he was going to play a few holes before dinner, so Mother put the casserole in the oven and we waited. Around eight o’clock or so she got tired of waiting and sent me out to fetch him.
By the time I found him the sun was almost gone. The air was heavy and still. Tree shadows striped the fairway from one side to the other. He was on the seventh hole, and he was not alone.
I saw him from the far end of the fairway. He was standing in the white-sand bunker in front of the green, talking to another man.
They were arguing — Pop had a golf club in one hand and was pounding its head in the sand. The other man was stabbing his finger at Pop’s chest. Even from two hundred yards away I recognized Robert Rosen by his height and his stooped posture.
I had a bad feeling.
I started running toward them, but I was too late. Rosen took something out of his pocket and waved it in Pop’s face. Pop lifted his club in both hands and brought it slashing down on Rosen’s head. At the same moment, I heard a sharp bang, like a firecracker.
Rosen collapsed. I stopped running, shocked by what I had seen. Pop dropped the club and stood very still, then sank to his knees.
I stood there undecided for a few seconds. I knew Pop wouldn’t want me to see what he had done. What would I — or could I — say to him?
He was kneeling over Rosen, almost as if he was praying for him. I started toward them. It felt like the air was fighting me. Every step was an effort. By the time I reached the bunker Pop had slumped to his side, clutching his belly.
I called out. He turned his face toward me and lifted a hand — I couldn’t tell if he was greeting me or waving me aw
ay — then his hand dropped and he became very still.
My pulse hammered at me, a dull, subsonic throbbing. Pop’s shirt was dark with blood. I saw a gun in the sand near Rosen’s hand. I forced myself to breathe. The air was like bitter honey and the sun squatted on the horizon and darkness crowded the edges of my vision.
I knew they were both dead. I don’t know how I knew. Perhaps I sensed their souls abandoning their bodies. Or maybe it was the amount of blood seeping into the sand. Or their lack of movement, an utter stillness that no living thing could attain.
I can’t recall the jumble of thoughts careening through my head. Even if I could remember, I doubt that they would make any sense to me now. I had just seen my father kill a man, and be killed himself.
I knelt there for no more than a few minutes but it felt much longer. I was alone with two dead men in the dark. I think I was waiting for Pop to sit up and laugh and tell me it was a joke. I finally stood up and backed away until I could no longer see the bodies. I turned and ran for home.
I couldn’t tell Mother what had happened. I just couldn’t — it was too awful — so I told her that Pop was spending the night at the clubhouse. She expressed no surprise at that. Pop often worked late and slept in his office. The two of us ate chicken à la king and a chopped salad. I washed the dishes, Mother went to her study to read. I said nothing more about Pop.
By that time my thoughts had settled a bit, and I was thinking about what was to come. People would be searching for them. They might be looking for Rosen already, and when they found the bodies, then what? Rosen was the district attorney. They would think that Pop had attacked Rosen, and Rosen had defended himself. Even if they couldn’t prove it, the scandal would destroy my father’s reputation, and probably spell the end of the country club.
I know that sounds cold and calculating, especially for a seventeen-year-old kid, but those were the thoughts that ran through my mind that night. I was incapable of worrying about my mother’s emotional response, let alone my own. I have since learned that that isn’t uncommon. Some people respond to an emotional shock by seeking refuge in the cold-blooded minutia of survival.
