by Garth Stein
She heard sounds over her head and every now and then she looked up to see squirrel-boy leap ahead of her. And every time she saw him land above her in a tree, she veered off in a new direction until she was completely turned around and had no idea if she was even running up or down the hill.
It got quiet again. Jenna didn’t see him flying around in the trees anymore, which was good. Maybe he got tired and went back to his cave or something. She was scanning the bushes, looking for anything that might appear to be a path, when she saw him dart in front of her from one tree to another. Then she really didn’t know what to do because the thing was obviously a lot faster than she was, and she didn’t know if he was even still behind that tree. He could have run up the tree, leapt across to another, run back down, and been about to jump on her back.
She wheeled around and faced the opposite direction. Nothing. She was hot and sweaty and thinking about surrender, when she saw the path about fifty feet away. She took a deep breath and ran for it again. A big log lay across the path in front of her, and she thought she could take it with a good leap, but she was wrong. She jumped, but the spring had left her legs and her foot got caught on a branch. She went down hard on her face, this time unable to break her fall with her hands.
Her head must have hit a rock because she saw a flash of bright light. She might actually have been knocked out, but she wasn’t sure. When she finally got her energy together enough to get up, she was cold and clammy and a little dizzy. She sat on the ground covered with blood and dirt and feeling completely helpless, and she wanted to cry.
She heard some footsteps. They were slow and measured, like a human out for a stroll, so she didn’t panic. A man came into view down the path and he waved at her. He called out, “Are you all right?” Oh, she was finally saved. Someone had heard her yelling and was coming to find out what was wrong. He’d take her back to the hotel and the nightmare would be over.
He got closer. He was tall and thin and of dark complexion. His face had soft, rounded features, and, for the life of her, Jenna couldn’t tell how old he was. As he drew closer, he called out again, “Are you all right?”
“Some animal was chasing me,” Jenna replied.
“A bear?”
“It wasn’t that big, but it was fast. Do bear cubs run fast?”
“They can be pretty quick,” he said.
But Jenna knew it wasn’t a bear cub because bear cubs don’t fly. The man helped her to her feet and she smelled a strange odor coming off him. A musky scent, like a wet dog. The man’s arms were thin but very strong. As Jenna stood and tried to dust herself off, she noticed that his eyes were black. As if he had no iris. There was no colored part, just huge black pupils. Great, she thought, some guy tripping on acid found her. Now what should she do?
“Come on, let me help you out of the woods,” he said.
And as they started down the hill, Jenna heard a dog barking in the distance. It was an insistent, alarming bark. A bark that was trying to get someone’s attention. It was strange to hear that bark in the woods, especially since the silence had been so complete a moment ago.
Jenna’s rescuer thought it was strange, too. He bristled when he heard it. He straightened up, tensed his neck muscles, and turned toward the direction of the dog. Then he just stood there like that, almost as if he were sniffing at the air. It was too weird.
“Is that your dog?” Jenna asked. But the man didn’t answer. He stood, coiled up like that, ignoring her.
“Is everything okay?” she tried again.
He turned and his eyes bore into Jenna, such black eyes, so intense, and he formed his thin lips into a leering smile that revealed brown, crooked teeth. He seemed so large, so near. Jenna shuddered. The man nodded slowly and Jenna thought she must have been seeing things because his face seemed different. Flatter and darker. She told herself it was like when you stare at a picture too long and it starts to change. Or when your fear gathers up on you and runs out of control and no matter how much you understand that nothing’s going on, you still get more afraid. And she tried to hold in her shock because she knew she was imagining it all. She tried not to take a step backward, but she couldn’t help herself. She tried not to gasp, but it came anyway. A sharp intake of breath. She felt dizzy and chilled. She didn’t want him to see her fear, but he knew it. He could smell it. Jenna reeked of fear. She didn’t want to die.
“Come with me,” he said.
His voice sounded so familiar, so strange. He reached out his hand with his long fingers, and when Jenna looked down, they were more like claws, and then her mind was going a million miles an hour. She didn’t like this man. She didn’t want his help. She didn’t care if he was a man or a monster. She didn’t care if she was making the whole thing up in her messed-up mind. She didn’t want to be near him anymore. She wanted to go home.
But she was too frightened to run. He took a step toward her with his devil eyes drilling into her brain. She tried to turn away, but something was holding her there, not letting her go. The man touched her arm with his evilness, and Jenna squeezed her eyes closed and started to cry because she couldn’t do anything but stand there and let him touch her. She was paralyzed and she could smell him, his odor, all around her.
But at the moment she expected to die, he hesitated. The barking had started again, and when Jenna opened her eyes, he was looking off toward the dog. Sniffing the air. And at that moment she felt as if she could escape. It was her chance. She turned and ran. She ran toward the sound of the dog. A dog would be near a house, she figured, and a house would have a gun. She heard that freak behind her, and she ran faster than she’d ever run in her life. There was no way she was going to let some drugged-out psycho kill her in the woods. No way. She wove, she leapt over logs, she ducked under branches. She pumped her arms and imagined herself on a track, running for the gold medal. And when she thought she was going to pass out from exhaustion, she dug deeper and got some more of that adrenaline and ran faster than before.
She could see the break in the woods. Beyond the tree line was a clearing, she could see it. The dog was still barking furiously, encouraging her to reach it. Superfreak was behind her, but he wasn’t gaining. Jenna was holding her own and the light beyond the trees got closer and closer.
She punched through the last barrier of underbrush and out into the clearing. There was the dog she had been hearing, barking furiously, whipped to a lather. When she emerged from the woods, the dog rushed to her like an old friend. Her legs gave out and she collapsed in the tall grass. The dog stood over her, still barking furiously at the woods. Freak didn’t follow her out into the clearing. She was safe. Blood was pounding at her temples, pressing at her brain. She was drenched with sweat and she couldn’t breathe. Her throat burned as she heaved her chest, trying to suck in more air, but she couldn’t get enough. The world around her seemed to move; she couldn’t tell if she was looking up or down at the ground. Something was spinning, something was ringing, Jenna couldn’t tell what, was it her or was it everything else, she didn’t know, but the last thing she saw before the darkness closed around her was a dog, a pretty dog, barking at the woods.
A COOL BREEZE blew across the tall grass, making a bright tinkling sound that brought Jenna to her senses. She had fainted for a moment. Her body had gone into overload and shut down until it could get everything straightened out. But she felt much better now. Actually, if she overlooked the fact that her legs were covered with bloody scratches, she had a tremendous headache, and she was so thirsty she couldn’t swallow, she was doing great. She rolled over on her back and was startled by the large, black dog nose that hovered only a foot away from her face. Now she remembered. The dog.
Jenna sat up and looked around. She had expected to end up in a residential neighborhood, but there was no sign of civilization at all. A field in the middle of nowhere. She must have come out of the woods on the opposite side of the hill from town. She wasn’t sure what exactly had happened back in the woods.
She got spooked by some guy and then she panicked and ran. But now she felt bad. Why did she get so freaked out? The guy was probably some poor, deformed man who lived in the woods by himself and tried to help her out, and Jenna, insensitive jerk that she was, ran from him. She probably really hurt the guy’s feelings. Jenna couldn’t believe she could be so mean. She swore she would stop watching horror movies. They always gave her bad ideas.
She got up and headed away from the woods, and the dog followed right behind. Now that she got a good look at him, she could see he was a little funny-looking: a ruffled and mangy shepherd with a torn ear. He wasn’t well cared for—his coat was dirty and matted at the fringes. He must have been the town stray or something. But he was friendly enough, and they walked together in the high grass until the ground dropped away into a small creek.
Jenna looked down into the clear, cool water rushing past her and began to salivate. Oh, man. A godsend. She slipped off her boots and socks and stepped into the cold water. It was a shallow creek with a bed of smooth, round rocks. She knelt down and washed her legs. She could see, now, that on top of everything else, she had run through a nettle patch at some point. Her legs were covered with white, itchy blisters that she remembered from her days hanging out on her uncle’s farm down near Puyallup. She waded across the creek, put her boots back on, and walked with the dog across another field.
Eventually, they reached an old wooden horse fence. The dog squeezed through two of the slats while Jenna climbed over the top. They continued on a bit until they emerged from a line of trees and Jenna realized where they were. It was a graveyard.
Jenna froze for a moment on the edge of the row of tombstones. She had always had a fear of treading on graves. She’d seen people walk all around in graveyards with no concern for stepping on the soft ground over a body, but for some reason it gave Jenna the creeps.
She also froze because she realized that this was the graveyard in which her grandmother was buried. Jenna had never seen her grandmother’s tombstone. She didn’t go to her funeral. She was in school at the time and it was a huge trip to go from New York to Wrangell. Plus, Jenna’s mother didn’t really want her to go. Or at least that’s what Jenna thought. Her mother had enough on her mind.
But now Jenna wanted to see the tombstone. The graveyard wasn’t that big, and she knew that her grandmother’s grave was right next to a tombstone with a little lamb on it. Her grandmother had eleven children. Two of them died as infants. Those two children were buried side by side in one plot, between Jenna’s grandfather and grandmother. But Gram never had any money—she lived on Social Security, money from the state for being a “pioneer,” and guilt money from the federal government because the white man killed her people and took her land—so she could never afford to put a tombstone up for her children, even though she had always wanted to. Now and then she would talk about wanting a tombstone with a little lamb on it, because that’s the kind she saw that the rich people had when she was raised at the convent in Canada.
When Gram died, Jenna’s mother had two tombstones made up. One for Gram, and one for the two infants. And the one for the two infants had a little lamb on it to watch over them. So Jenna looked for the lamb, and she found it. There aren’t too many lambs in the Wrangell cemetery. And she stood there, looking down at her past.
It’s strange to stand on your own history. To look down on where you came from and see that it is just dirt and grass and stone. It kind of puts it all in perspective to think that without these people you wouldn’t have existed. If someone had slipped and broken a leg—or hadn’t slipped and broken a leg—on a particular day, the world would be different. Not different in the sense of a war starting or not. There is a certain inevitability attached to huge movements in history. But at the same time, each breath that each person takes causes a chemical change in the world, and it affects something somewhere. And as Jenna stood at her grandmother’s grave, she tried to imagine what it was like for her grandmother to live as an Indian married to a white man. A man who told her he would take her away from this dank fishing village in the middle of nowhere but who never did. And so she raised his children, so many of them. And she was able to watch them grow and have more children until she had created a family of huge proportions. The strength of a woman to live on the fringes of civilization and raise nine children was beyond Jenna. She couldn’t even raise one.
Jenna heard a bark and saw the dog standing at the end of the row of tombstones looking at her. She guessed he didn’t like to walk on graves either. Beyond him was the road that led back to town. So Jenna headed back to the hotel with the dog following. She didn’t know what she was going to do with him. She certainly couldn’t keep him. He probably belonged to someone. But she figured somebody in town would see him and take him home. Her biggest concern was getting back to a place where there were people so she could feel safe again.
THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER. Sam loved saying that to himself while fingering the leather strap that held his .38 Special police issue in its holster. The world is my fucking oyster.
He scanned the Client Information Sheet for Robert Rosen while he waited for a human operator to pick up on the other end of the phone. Nice house, nice car, nice job. Sam should get a good couple of days of work out of this one. The world is my oyster. Sam was amazed, as always, at the amount of personal information someone is willing to give out on demand. With the information on this sheet, Sam could find out everything about Rosen, and all his relatives. Hell, he could bankrupt the guy. But Sam would never do something unscrupulous. Private Investigation is about trust. Fortunately, trust costs money.
“Your account number?”
He read it off to her.
“Mr. Rosen? How can I help you?”
Sam snickered and tried to sound like Mr. Rosen would sound.
“Yes, my wife misplaced her credit card for a couple of days, and I wanted to see what the last few charges were so I can make sure nobody else picked it up.”
“Certainly, sir, can I have your Social Security number?”
He read the number off the page.
“And your mother’s maiden name, please?”
“Abrams.”
“Thank you, one moment, please.”
Sam leaned back in his chair and jammed his pinky up his right nostril, probing for something inside. A hundred bucks an hour to make phone calls. What a joke. Sam could solve ninety percent of his “cases” from his office desk. His mind drifted off to Greece again. All morning he had been preoccupied with Greece.
He had just finished typing a report his daughter wrote for her social studies class. The one actual skill Sam had, other than the gift of bullshit, was typing. The report was about this palace on the island of Crete that had so many rooms, everyone called it the labyrinth. The king was named Minos. They used special pillars that were big on the top and little on the bottom because they discovered those were better in earthquakes. Pretty wild, when you think about it. The idea of going to Greece, drinking a lot of ouzo, and watching topless Swedish girls dance on the beach appealed to Sam. Appealed to him very much.
“Mr. Rosen, I have the information for you. The last charges to that card were a Banana Republic in Bellingham, Washington, and, also in Bellingham, the Alaska State Marine Highway. Both charges were made on Sunday morning, posted on Monday.”
Sam jotted down the information.
“Huh. This is strange,” the woman continued.
“What?”
“The Alaska State Marine Highway. There are two charges for the same amount made on the same day. Both for two hundred sixty-five dollars and fifty-six cents.”
“Hmm. That is strange.”
“Are those charges authorized?”
“Yes, my wife bought a ticket for Alaska on Sunday, that’s right. But she only bought one, as far as I know. Unless . . .”
“Would you like me to protest the second charge as a double billing? You won’t have to pay interest on the second charg
e while we investigate.”
“You don’t think that she would have . . .” He let his voice trail off.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s a double charge, Mr. Rosen,” the woman said quickly, picking up on Sam’s suggestion. “It happens all the time. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Well, I guess if you could check on it, I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course, Mr. Rosen. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Sam got off the phone and thought a moment. That’s the Alaska ferry system up in Bellingham. That clicks with the car turning up. He dialed a number.
If people only knew what they could find out for themselves by making a couple of phone calls, he’d be out of business. The bottom line is: people don’t want to do anything for themselves. The people who hire Sam are the people who can afford to have others do their grunt work. They like the excitement of hiring a P.I. They want top-secret phone calls and obscure messages. It’s the sensational aspect of it all. This Rosen guy gave Sam a code word that would get him out of any meeting without question.
A cheerful man’s voice this time.
“Tell me something,” Sam began. “If I have about two hundred fifty bucks and I bought a ticket from Bellingham, how far would that get me?”
“When would you begin your travel, sir?”
“Yesterday.”
A laugh. Just give me the answer, idiot.
“Well, sir, a one-way ticket from Bellingham to Skagway is two hundred forty-six dollars, plus tax. Of course, if you were going round trip, the price would be double that. Or if you wanted to spend a total of two hundred fifty dollars, you would only get as far as Prince Rupert, which is still in Canada.”
