Mosquito Man

by Jeremy Bates

  “But it’s just a baby! Please.”

  “I think you should leave it right there.”

  “But it will die.”

  “Everything dies, sweetie. And chipmunks aren’t exactly an endangered species.”

  “It’s not a squirrel?”

  “Chipmunks are smaller than squirrels, and brown, with a stripe down the back, like this one.”

  “Do they still eat acorns?”

  “They love acorns.”

  “More than human food?”

  “They hate Mexican food,” Rex said lightheartedly.

  Ellie eyed him suspiciously. “Well, I love chippymunks just as much as squirrels. So can I keep it?”

  Tabitha said, “I’ve told you—”

  “I promise I’ll take care of it!”

  “I’m allergic to chipmunks, honey. At least hamsters and gerbils. So probably chipmunks too.”

  “You can sleep outside.”

  Tabitha rolled her eyes and looked at Rex.

  He shrugged. “She’s right. It’s going to die out here. I think a turkey vulture already has an eye on it.” He nodded at the sky, where he’d spotted the large bird circling.

  Tabitha saw the vulture too. “I guess maybe we can take the chipmunk to the cabin,” she relented. “And if it lives until Monday, we can take it to a vet in town. But,” she added quickly, holding up a finger. “And this is a big but, sweetie. It stays with the vet. It’s absolutely not coming back to Seattle with us. That’s the deal.”

  “Deal!” Ellie said, reaching for it.

  “Whoa, hold on,” Rex said. “Not so fast. I don’t think chipmunks carry diseases, but it’s best not to touch it. Here.” He shrugged off his windbreaker and carefully scooped the rodent into it.

  “Can I carry it?” Ellie asked.

  “Be gentle.” He passed her the jacket and its cargo.

  Ellie held the injured creature against her stomach as if it was the most precious thing in the world. She started walking, Bobby in lockstep, peeking over her shoulder, asking excited questions.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor thing dies of a heart attack with those two ogling over it like that,” Tabitha said.

  “One summer up here,” Rex said, “I found a baby bird. I nursed it back to health before letting it go again. I felt pretty proud of myself as I watched it fly away. This might be a good life experience for those two if they can do the same for that chipmunk.”

  “You mean chippymunk.”

  “Right.”

  The road rounded a bend, and on their left, hidden behind a phalanx of hemlock, pine, and Douglas fir, was a brown-painted cabin with white trim and green shingles on the roof. The mailbox leaned drunkenly askew. The driveway was more weeds than gravel.

  “That was an old couple’s place,” he said, pointing it out. “The McCleods.”

  “Good memory,” she said.

  “I only remember them because Mr. McCleod—I never knew his first name—was a crazy bastard who once sicced his little…Yorkshire terrier, I guess it was…on Logan and me when we came down this way.”

  “You were scared of a Yorkshire terrier?” she teased.

  “I was five or six. Any yapping dog regardless of size is terrifying at that age.”

  “Why’d Old Man McCleod do it?”

  “No idea. Loge and I never really left the immediate vicinity of our cabin. There was no reason to really. With the lake, we had everything we wanted right there. But one day we went ‘exploring.’ Ten minutes down the road was pretty far for us. We saw Mr. McCleod out in front his place using a broom to get rid of spider webs or something around his eaves. He yelled at us, saying,” —Rex assumed a crackly voice— “‘What are you up-to-no-good-kids doing down here? I know your father. I’m going to tell him you’ve been snooping!’ At least, it was something along those lines. Then he said, ‘Blixy? Blixy?’”

  “The Yorkshire terrier?” Tabitha said.

  Rex nodded. “The dog came roaring around the cabin, and then Mr. McCleod was telling it, ‘Go get ’em, girl! Get ’em!’ I’d never run so fast in my life.”

  “What an awful old man,” she said. “I thought Canadians were supposed to be polite.”

  “Not him.”

  “Why did your parents decide to buy a place up here in the first place?”

  “My great-grandfather jumped on the gold-mining train in the eighteen hundreds. He worked a claim on Cayoosh Creek for a decade and found a fair bit of gold. When the claim was exhausted, he retired in Lillooet. You might not guess it now, but at that time Lillooet was considered to be the largest town in North America west of Chicago and north of San Francisco—which was maybe why my great-grandfather ended up building the cabin out here. A little place to get away from everybody. I don’t know what happened to his place in town, but the cabin got passed down to my father.”

  In the distance, Rex thought he heard a car engine. He stopped and listened. Yes, a motor, approaching from the highway.

  “Guys!” he called to Bobby and Ellie. “Move to the side of the road! A car’s coming.”

  He watched them move to the margin. “A little more.”

  “We’ll be in the woods!” Bobby said.

  “Better than road kill!”

  They stepped back farther.

  The engine grew louder, then a rusty old pickup truck came bouncing around the bend—the high axle allowing it to traverse the ruts and potholes that scarred the road.

  “Maybe it’s Mr. McCleod?” Tabitha kidded. “Come back from the dead?”

  “Blixie’s revenge.”

  But Rex could see into the cab of the truck now. The driver was a middle-aged man with a long beard and a Stetson hat pulled low over his face, keeping his eyes in shadows. In shotgun was a younger woman with blonde hair. She waved at them as the vehicle crunched by.

  Rex and Tabitha returned the gesture. Bobby did too, while Ellie kept both hands securely cradling the chipmunk against her chest.

  Then the truck was gone around another bend.

  “Well,” Rex said as the sound of the motor dwindled, “at least now we know we’re not the only people out here.”

  CHAPTER 4

  They arrived at the cabin just as the sky began to spit small and icy droplets of rain. The cabin stood twenty feet from the road, surrounded by a variety of mature evergreens and deciduous trees, the leaves of the latter blazing fiery colors.

  In an age of pre-fabricated building material where everything was perfectly square or symmetrical, the idiosyncrasies of the cabin afforded it an old-world charm: the stacked logs with their rough axe cuts and corner notches, the slapdash gray chinking to seal the spaces between the logs, the hand-peeled porch railings, the crumbling stone chimney.

  Tabitha clutched Rex’s arm. “Oh Rex, it’s lovely.”

  “Amazing what you can do with a broad axe and mallet,” he said.

  “Can we go inside?” Ellie asked.

  “That’s the plan,” he said.

  They swished through a carpet of browning leaves to the covered porch. The wood planks moaned loudly beneath their footsteps. Rex stopped before the door and tried the cast-iron handle. It turned with a rusty gargle, and the door swung inward.

  “Glad it’s unlocked,” he said. “I don’t have keys.”

  “You’re kidding?” Tabitha said.

  “I haven’t had anything to do with this place since I was seven.”

  “What would you have done if it was locked?”

  “Broken a window, I guess.”

  Rex stepped inside the cabin. He scrunched his nose at the dank, musty odor.

  “Ewww,” Ellie said, pushing past his legs. “What’s that smell?”

  “It will go away when we open some windows, sweetie,” Tabitha said.

  Rex glanced around the room, surprised by how familiar it was to him. The teak sofa upholstered in drab earth tones; the Edison-style light bulbs in the brass fixtures; the rocking chair where his mother had read h
im C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian on a particularly rainy weekend; the wood-paneled television set, which had required bunny ears to pull in its only channel. The pair of antique ice block tongs he’d once taken off the wall and used to terrorize Logan. The little tin sign that read AN OLD BEAR LIVES HERE WITH HIS HONEY.

  A hand-carved bookcase held a number of foxed paperbacks and hardcovers bookended between art deco flying geese. On the uppermost shelf were three silver-framed photographs. The first was a studio shot of his parents, his mother’s auburn hair fashioned into a perm, his father’s parted neatly down the side and the same rich brown as his mustache. The second was of Logan wearing a Gobots tee-shirt and smiling to reveal the gap between his front teeth. And the third was of Rex who, with his blonde hair and blue eyes and dimples, bore a more-than-passing resemblance to Bobby.

  Swallowing tightly, Rex looked away.

  “Where can I put my chippymunk?” Ellie asked, stopping in the center of the room.

  Rex retrieved a hand-painted wooden box from next to the sofa, dumped the stack of dusty magazines onto the teak coffee table in front of the television, and set the empty box next to the magazines. “That should do,” he said.

  Ellie gently set the chipmunk into the box, then passed Rex back his windbreaker. He hung it on a wall-mounted coat rack fashioned from a barn-red bucksaw.

  Ellie studied the rodent closely. “Is she going to be okay, Mommy?” she asked.

  “How do you know it’s a ‘she?’” Tabitha asked.

  “Because boys are dumb, and I want it to be a girl like me.”

  “I think she’ll be okay for now. Once we’re settled in, we’ll get her some water and a little bit of food to nibble on.”

  “Where’s my bed?”

  “There’s a small second floor,” Rex said. “You and Bobby will sleep up there.”

  “Where’re the stairs?”

  “In the next room.”

  “Beat you to them!” Bobby said, darting around the afghan hanging in the doorway that separated this room from the next.

  “No fair!” Ellie said, giving chase. “You got a head start! No fair!”

  “Be careful!” Rex called after them. “The stairs are steep!”

  Tabitha dumped her shoulder bag on the floor. “This place is perfect,” she said. “It really is.”

  “Can’t believe it’s just been…here…unoccupied for so long.” He shrugged. “Better take the groceries to the kitchen.”

  The adjoining room featured a stone fireplace, a roughly hewn timber staircase that led to the attic, and a seventies-style kitchen complete with linoleum floor tiles, Formica counter tops, and an ergonomic dining table complete with four tubular steel stools. As far as appliances went, there was a harvest-gold Kelvinator refrigerator, a stove the same horrid color with a stacked-stone backsplash, and an avocado-green toaster.

  “Whoa,” Tabitha said. “I wasn’t expecting Carol Brady’s kitchen.”

  “I remember my father doing the ‘upgrades,’” Rex said. “He and my mom had been pretty proud of the finished product.” He set the groceries on the table and opened the cupboard above the sink. It was stocked with plates, bowls, and glasses, though these were all littered with mouse droppings.

  “Good thing we bought paper plates and plastic cutlery,” Tabitha remarked.

  Rex tried the sink tap. Not a drop of water.

  “I’m guessing there’s no electricity either,” Tabitha said, opening the fridge door with a sticky pop of the gasket seal. She immediately spun away, a hand going to her mouth.

  Rex caught the stench a second later and glanced inside the fridge. It was filled with all sorts of different shaped items—everything covered with a layer of putrefied mold and mildew.

  He slammed the door shut.

  “Gross!” he exclaimed, then, seeing the green look on Tabitha’s face, couldn’t help but laugh. “Guess we’re not having leftovers.”

  “It’s not funny!” she said. “I hope I didn’t breathe in any of those spores.”

  “We’re going to have to lock up the fridge somehow so the kids don’t go opening it.”

  “I can still smell that stench. It’s like…”

  “Maybe it’s time to air out the place.”

  They spent the next few minutes opening all the windows, letting the stale air out and the fresh alpine air in.

  “Much better,” Tabitha said, inhaling deeply.

  “After we light some candles, we’ll be all set.”

  “Dad!” Bobby yelled from the attic.

  “What is it?” Rex asked, facing the staircase.

  “Which bed can I have?”

  “There are only two. You choose.”

  “This one!”

  “I want that one!” Ellie challenged.

  “I called it!” he said.

  “I called it first!” she said.

  “Did not!” he said. “Dad!”

  “If you two can’t work it out, then you’ll have to flip a coin.”

  Silence. Then their voices lowered as they entered serious negotiations.

  Tabitha said, “I’m a bit scared to ask, but if there’s no water, what do we do for a toilet?”

  “Right.” Rex scratched his head. “Well, water used to get pumped up from the lake. But the pump needs electricity. There’s a big old diesel generator in the shed we used to use for electricity. Hopefully it will fire up. I was going to have a look at it tomorrow. For now, I’ll go fetch a couple of buckets of water from the lake. Pouring it slowly into the bowl should make the toilet flush.”

  “And if I can’t wait…?”

  “You really need to go that badly?”

  She nodded. “I should have gone when Bobby did at the tourist center.”

  “In that case, there’s an outhouse not too far away…”

  She groaned. “I was worried you might say that.” She tugged free the KittenSoft toilet paper from one of the grocery bags, tore the plastic packaging open, and grabbed a roll.

  They went outside. The sky was still spitting, though the droplets didn’t have enough weight behind them to be anything more than a cold nuisance.

  Rex pointed. Fifty feet away the outhouse loomed rickety and ominous in the gathering dark.

  “Inviting,” Tabitha said.

  “You can go behind a tree,” he said.

  “I love having a choice.”

  “I’ll be back up in a few.”

  ***

  Holding her arms in front of her to deflect branches from her face, Tabitha made her way through the trees toward the outhouse. It was a fair hike from the cabin, she thought, but the location made sense. You didn’t want a stinking hole in the ground near your residence, did you?

  Tabitha experienced a sudden swelling of warmth in her chest—for Rex, for the cabin that time forgot, for the opportunity to be here with Ellie and Bobby for the weekend.

  Getting away from the city was not only what Rex needed, but what she needed too. The untangling of her life from her ex, Jacob, had been taking an enormous emotional toll on her, to the point where the stress of it had caused her to break down in spontaneous tears on more than a few occasions of late.

  When Tabitha and Jacob had first met, Jacob had been a software developer for Microsoft and had often traveled to conferences around the country. In the early days of their relationship, Tabitha had missed him terribly on these occasions. Then the weekends away turned into three or four days away, then full weeks at a time. Jacob told her the increase in travel was due to a promotion he’d received, and she bought that for a while. But then his attitude toward her began to change. He became aloof, easily annoyed. Communication seemed an effort. Tabitha was convinced he was having an affair, and she confided this to Cindy Chew, a friend she’d known since college. Cindy ended up asking her husband Danny if he had any dirt on Jacob, because Danny also worked at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, though in a different department. The dirt relayed back to Tabitha had been heartbreaking an
d mindboggling: Jacob was a notorious womanizer who had hit on half the woman working in his department. The mindboggling part: several of these women had filed sexual harassment suits against him, and he had been fired more than a year ago now. Tabitha confronted him that evening, they fought, he became violent, and she left with the girls, fearing for her safety. The following day she hired a divorce attorney—and in the process of sorting through their financial situation, she learned Jacob had been manipulating their books behind her back, and they were effectively broke.

  Tabitha had always suspected Jacob had a gambling addiction (though he’d done well to hide or downplay it over the years), and she instinctively knew it was this addiction that had swallowed their life savings. However, knowing something and proving it in court were two very different things. The judge overseeing the custody litigation wanted evidence, not accusations, and that evidence was proving to be frustratingly circumstantial and elusive. Tabitha had retained the services of a private investigator in the hopes of tailing Jacob to one of his gambling dens, but either Jacob was aware of the tail, or at least suspected it, and he was refraining from gambling in public, or he had moved his habit online, which he could do in the privacy of wherever he was living these days.

  Currently the investigator was combing the accounts of multiple online bookies and gambling operations. So far he’d found no links to Jacob, and if this didn’t change before the divorce proceedings began in a fortnight, Jacob could win joint legal and physical custody of the girls, which would throw their lives into chaos—

  No, Tabitha thought angrily. I’m not going to think about this now. I’ll deal with everything in a couple of days when I’m back in Seattle. Not now. This is my time with Rex and Ellie and Bobby.

  Jacob isn’t going to ruin that.

  Tabitha stopped before the outhouse. It was a humble and utilitarian structure that appeared to be one push away from falling over. Horizontal wooden planks had been nailed, Band-Aid-like, over gaps where vertical boards had fallen away.

  After a brief hesitation, Tabitha creaked open the door, which featured a star cut-out to allow ventilation and light into the stall. Cobwebs dusted the dank ceiling and walls, but a perfunctory glance did not reveal any eight-legged creepy crawlies. The toilet seat was nothing but a piece of wood with a hole in the middle of it. She peeked down the hole into the pit latrine. There was no smell, as any untreated waste would have decomposed years ago.