by Ellen Datlow
While he blathered, I managed a few good shots including a Cooper’s hawk perched on a high branch, observing our progress. The hawk leaped, disappearing over the canopy. When I lowered the camera, Dad was gone too. I did what you might expect—called for him and dithered, figuring he’d poke his head around a tree and laugh at my consternation. Instead, the sun climbed. Patches of cool shade thickened; the lake surface dimmed and brightened with opaline hardness. Yelling occasionally, I trudged back toward where we’d beached the canoe.
He caught me as I rounded a bend in the path. A hand and ropy arm extended so very far from the wall of brush. A hooked nail scraped my forehead. Look, son! See? Instead of pausing to peer into the undergrowth, I ran. Full tilt, camera strap whipping around my neck and a miracle I didn’t lose that beloved camera before I crashed through the bushes onto the beach.
Dad sat on a driftwood log, serenely studying the lake. “Hey, kiddo. There you are.” He explained his intention to play a harmless joke. “You perceive your surroundings in a different light if a guardian isn’t present. Every boy should feel that small burst of adrenaline under controlled circumstances. Head on a swivel, right, son?”
I realized I’d merely bumped into a low-hanging branch and completely freaked. By the time we paddled home, my wild, unreasoning terror had dissipated. It’s all or nothing with kids—dying of plague, or fit as a fiddle; bounce back from a nasty fall, or busted legs; rub some dirt on it and walk it off, or a wheelchair. Similar deal with our emotions as well. Dad wasn’t a monster, merely a weirdo. Aunt Vikki’s crazed behavior had set my teeth on edge. The perfect storm. My thoughts shied from outré concerns to dwell upon on Dad’s casual mention that Greg planned on going to war and how we’d best keep on the QT. Not the kind of secret I wanted to hide from Mom, but I wasn’t a squealer.
He remained quiet until we were gliding alongside the dock. He said, “Randy, I was wrong to test you. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again. Scout’s honor.”
It didn’t.
* * *
Toward the end of our stay, the whole lot of us trooped forth to conduct our annual peregrination around the entire lake. We packed picnic baskets and assembled at the Black Gap. Except for Dad, who’d gone ahead to prepare the site where we’d camp for lunch. Another barbeque, in fact. Mr. Mercer brought along a fancy camera (a Canon!) to record the vacation action. He and I had a bonding moment as “serious” photographers. Mr. Schrader, Dad, and a couple of the kids toted flimsy cheapo tourist models. Such amateurs! Mr. Mercer arranged us with the pines for a backdrop. Everybody posed according to height. He yelled directions, got what he wanted, and joined the group while I snapped a few—first with his camera, then my own. I lagged behind as they scrambled uphill along the path.
We trekked to the campsite. Hot, thirsty, and ready for our roasted chicken. Dad awaited us, although not by much. None of the other adults said anything. However, I recall Mom’s vexation with the fact he hadn’t even gotten a fire going in the pit. She pulled him aside and asked what happened. Why was he so mussed and unkempt? Why so damned sweaty?
He blinked, pushed his glasses up, and shrugged. “I tried a shortcut. Got lost.”
“Lost, huh?” She combed pine needles out of his hair. “Likely story.”
* * *
That winter, drunken ski bums accidentally burned down the Schrader cabin. Oh, the plan was to rebuild in the spring and carry on. Alas, one thing led to another—kids shipping off to college, the Mercers divorcing, etcetera—and we never returned. The men sold off the property for a tidy profit. That was that for our Lake Terror era.
Greg skipped college and enlisted with the United States Marine Corps in ’69. Mom locked herself in her study and cried for a week. That shook me—she wasn’t a weeper by any means. My brother sent postcards every month or so over the course of his two tours. Well, except for a long, dark stretch near the end when he ceased all communication. The military wouldn’t tell us anything. Judging by her peevishness and the fact she seldom slept, I suspect Mom walked the ragged edge.
One day, Greg called and said he’d be home soon. Could Dad pick him up at the airport? He departed an obstreperous child and returned a quieter, thoughtful man. The war injured the psyches of many soldiers. It definitely affected him. Greg kibitzed about shore leave and the antics of his rogue’s gallery of comrades. Conversely, he deflected intimate questions that drilled too close to where his honest emotions lay buried. Dumb kids being dumb kids, I asked if he killed anyone. He smiled and drummed his fingers on the table, one then another. That smile harked to his teenaged cruelness, now carefully submerged. More artful, more refined, more mature. He said, The neat thing about Tiptoe? It’s humane. Curbs the ol’ urges. Ordinarily, it’s enough to catch and release. Ordinarily. You get me, kid? We didn’t speak often after he moved to the Midwest. He latched on with a trucking company. The next to the last time I saw him was at Dad’s funeral in 1985. Dad’s ticker had blown while raking leaves. Dead on his way to the ground, same as his own father and older brother. Greg lurked on the fringes at the reception. He slipped away before I could corner him. Nobody else noticed that he’d come and gone.
Aunt Vikki? She joined a weird church. Her erratic behavior deteriorated throughout the 1970s, leading to a stint in an institution. She made a comeback in the ’80s, got on the ground floor of the whole psychic hotline craze. Made a killing telling people what they wanted to hear. Remarried to a disgraced avant garde filmmaker. Bought a mansion in Florida where she currently runs a New Age commune of international repute. Every Christmas, she drops a couple grand on my photography to jazz up her compound. I can’t imagine how poster photos of wolves disemboweling caribou go over with the rubes seeking enlightenment. Got to admit, watching those recruitment videos shot by her latest husband, my work looks damned slick.
* * *
And full circle at last. My coworker startled me; nightmares ensued; and creepy-crawly memories surfaced. Cue my formerly happy existence falling apart. Two a.m. routinely found me wide awake, scrutinizing my sweaty reflection in the bathroom mirror. I tugged the bags beneath my eyes, exposing the veiny whites. Drew down until it hurt. Just more of the same. What did I expect? That my face was a mask and I peered through slits? That I was my father’s son, through and through? If he were more or less than a man, what did that make me?
On my next visit, I decided to level with Mom as I tucked her into bed.
“We need to talk about Dad.” I hesitated. Was it even ethical to tell her the truth, here at the end of her days? Hey, Ma, I believe Pop was involved in the disappearances of several—god knows the number— people back in the sixties. I forged ahead. “This will sound crazy. He wasn’t… normal.”
“Well, duh,” she said. We sat that there for a while, on opposite sides of a gulf that widened by the second.
“Wait. Were you aware?”
“Of what?”
Hell of a question. “There was another side to Dad. Dark. Real dark, I’m afraid.”
“Ah. What did you know, ma’am, and when did you know it?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Bank robbers don’t always tell their wives they rob banks.”
“The wives suspect.”
“Damned straight. Suspicion isn’t proof. That’s the beauty of the arrangement. We lasted until he died. There’s beauty in that too, these days.” Mom’s voice had weakened as she spoke. She beckoned me to lean in and I did. “We were on our honeymoon at a lodge. Around dawn, wrapped in a quilt on the deck. A fox light-footed into the yard. I whispered to your father about the awesomeness of mother nature, or wow, a fox! He smiled. Not his quirky smile, the cold one. He said, An animal’s expression won’t change, even as it’s eating prey alive. May sound strange, but that’s when I knew we fit perfectly.”
“Jesus, Mom.” I shivered. Dad and his pearls of wisdom, his icy little apothegms. Respected, admired, revered. But replaceable. A phrase he said in response to anyone who inquired a
fter his job security at IBM. He’d also uttered a similar quote when admonishing Greg or me in connection to juvenile hijinks. Loved, but replaceable, boys. Loved, but replaceable.
“He never would’ve hurt you.” She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her blankets. Her next words were muffled. I’m not sure I heard them right. “At least, not by choice.”
* * *
Mom died. A handful of journalist colleagues and nurses showed up to pay their respects. Greg waited until the rest had gone and I was in the midst of wiping my tears to step from behind a decrepit obelisk, grip my shoulder, and whisper, “Boo!” He didn’t appear especially well. Gray and gaunt, raw around the nose and mouth. Strong, though, and seething with febrile energy. He resembled the hell out of Dad when Dad was around that age and not long prior to his coronary. Greg even wore a set of oversized glasses, although I got a funny feeling they were purely camouflage.
We relocated to a tavern. He paid for a pitcher, of which he guzzled the majority. Half a lifetime had passed since our last beer. I wondered what was on his mind. The funeral? Vietnam? That decade-old string of missing persons in Ohio near his last known town of residence?
“Don’t fret, little brother.” Predators have a talent for sniffing weakness. He’d sussed out that I’d gone through a few things recently, Mom’s death being the latest addition to the calculus of woe. “Dad told you—you’re not the same as us.” He wiped his lips and tried on a peaceable smile. “They gave me the good genes. Although, I do surely wish I had your eye. Mom also had the eye.” The second pitcher came and he waxed maudlin. “Look, apologies for being such a jerk to you when we were kids.”
“Forgotten,” I said.
“I’ve always controlled my worse impulses by inflicting petty discomfort. Like chewing a stick of gum when I want a cigarette so bad my teeth ache. I needle people. Associates, friends, loved ones. Whomever. Their unease feeds me well enough to keep the real craving at bay. Until it doesn’t.” He removed a photo from his wallet and pushed it across the table. Mom and Dad in our old yard. The sun was in Dad’s glasses. Hard to know what to make of a man’s smile when you can’t see his eyes. I pushed it back. He waved me off. “Hang onto that.”
“It’s yours.”
“Nah, I don’t need a memento. You’re the archivist. The sentimental one.”
“Fine. Thanks.” I slipped the photo into my coat pocket.
He stared at a waitress as she cleared a booth across the aisle. From a distance his expression might’ve passed for friendly. “My motel isn’t far,” he said. “Give me a ride? Or if you’re busy, I could ask her.”
How could I refuse my own brother? Well, I would’ve loved to.
* * *
His motel occupied a lonely corner on a dark street near the freeway. He invited me into his cave-like room. I declined, said it had been great, etcetera. I almost escaped clean. He caught my wrist. Up close, he smelled of beer, coppery musk, and a hint of moldering earth.
“I think back to my classmates in grade school, high school, and college,” Greg said. “The drug addicts, the cons, and divorcees. A shitload of kids who grew up and moved as far from home as humanly possible. Why? Because their families were the worst thing that ever happened to them. It hit me.”
“What hit you?”
“On the whole, Mom and Dad were pretty great parents.”
“Surprising to hear you put it that way, Greg. We haven’t shared many family dinners since we were kids.”
“Take my absence as an expression of love. Consider also, I might have been around more than you noticed.” He squeezed.
As I mentioned, despite his cadaverous appearance, he was strong. And by that, I mean bone-crushing strong. My arm may as well have been clamped in the jaws of a grizzly. I wasn’t going anywhere unless he permitted it. “They were good people,” I said through my teeth.
“Adios, bud.”
Surely it was a relief when he slackened his grip and released me. I trudged down the stairs, across the lot, and had my car keys in hand when the flesh on my neck prickled. I spun, and there was Greg, twenty or so feet behind me, soundlessly tiptoeing along, knees to chest, elbows even with the top of his head, hands splayed wide. He closed most of the gap in a single, exaggerated stride. Then he froze and watched my face with the same intensity as he’d observed the waitress.
“Well done,” he said. “Maybe you learned something, bumbling around in the woods.” He turned and walked toward the lights of the motel. I waited until he’d climbed the stairs to jump into my car and floor it out of there.
A long trip home. You bet I glanced into my rearview the entire drive.
* * *
In the wee desolate hours, short on sleep due to a brain that refused to switch off, I killed the last of the bourbon while sorting ancient photographs. A mindless occupation that felt akin to picking at a scab or working on a jigsaw puzzle. No real mental agility involved other than mechanically rotating pieces until something locked into place. Among the many loose pictures I’d stashed for posterity were some shot on that last day at Lake Terror in ’68. The sequence began with our three families (minus Dad) assembled at the Black Gap and waving; then a few more of everybody proceeding single-file away and up the trail.
I spread these photos on the coffee table and stared for a long, long while. I only spotted the slightly fuzzy, unfocused extra figure because of my keen vision… and possibly a dreadful instinct honed by escalating paranoia. Once I saw him, there were no take-backsies, as we used to say. Dad hung in the branches; a huge, distorted figure hidden in the background of a puzzle. Bloated and lanky, jaw unslung. Inhumanly proportioned, but unmistakably my father. His gaze fixed upon the camera as his left arm dangled and dangled, gray-black fingers plucking the hair of the kids as they hiked obliviously through the notch between the shaggy pines. His lips squirmed.
Eeny. Meeny. Miny. Moe.
Skinder’s Veil
Kelly Link
ONCE upon a time there was a graduate student in the summer of his fourth year who had not finished his dissertation. What was his field? Not important to this story, really, but let’s say that the title of this putative dissertation was “An Exploratory Analysis of Item Parameters and Characteristics That Influence Response Time.”
By the middle of June, Andy Sims had, at best, six usable pages. According to the schedule he had so carefully worked out last year, when a finished dissertation still seemed not only possible but the lowest of the fruit upon the branches of the first of many trees along the beautiful path he had chosen for himself, by this date he should have had a complete draft upon which his advisors’ feedback had already been thoughtfully provided. June was to have been given over to leisurely revision in the shade of those graceful and beckoning trees.
There were reasons why he had not managed to get this work done, but Andy would have been the first to admit they were not good reasons. The most pressing was Lester and Bronwen.
* * *
Lester, Andy’s roommate, was also ABD. Lester was Education and Human Sciences. He and Andy were not on the best terms, though Lester did not appear to have noticed this. Lester was having too much sex to notice much of anything at all. He’d met a physiotherapist named Bronwen at a Wawa two months ago on a beverage run, and they’d been fucking ever since, the kind of fucking that suggested some kind of apocalypse was around the corner but only Lester and Bronwen knew that so far. The reek of sex so thoroughly permeated the apartment in Center City that Andy began to have a notion he was fermenting in it, like a pickle in brine. There were the sounds, too. Andy wore noise canceling headphones while doing the dishes, while eating dinner, on his way to the bathroom where, twice, he’d found sex toys whose purpose he could not guess. He was currently in the best shape of his life: whenever Bronwen came over, Andy headed for the gym and lifted weights until he could lift no more. He went for long runs along the Schuylkill River Trail and still, when he came home, Lester and Bronwen would be hole
d up inside Lester’s room (if Andy was lucky) either fucking or else resting for a short interval before they resumed fucking again.
Andy did not begrudge any person’s happiness, but was it possible that there could be such a thing as too much happiness? Too much sex? He resented, too, knowing the variety of sounds that Lester made in extremis. He resented Bronwen, whose roommates apparently had better boundaries than Andy.
No doubt she was a lovely person. Andy found it hard to look her in the eyes. There were questions he would have liked to ask her. Had it been love at first sight? In the fateful moment that day, standing in the refrigerated section of the Wawa, had Lester’s soul spoken wordlessly to hers? Did she always love this deeply, this swiftly, with this much noise and heat and abandon? Because Andy had been Lester’s roommate for four years now, and aside from a few unremarkable and drunken hookups, Lester had been single and seemed okay with that. Not to mention, whenever Andy brought up Lester’s own dissertation, Lester claimed to be making great progress. Could that be true? In his heart of hearts, Andy feared it was true. He mentioned all of this over the phone to his old friend, Hannah. It all came spilling out of him when she called to ask her favor.
“So that’s a yes,” Hannah said. “You’ll do it.”
“Yes,” Andy said. Then, “Unless you’re pranking me. Please don’t be pranking me, though. I have to get out of here.”
“Not a prank,” Hannah said. “Swear to God. This is you saving my ass.”
The last time they’d seen each other was at least two years ago, the morning before she left Boston for an adjunct position in the sociology department at some agricultural college in Indiana. “Adjuncts of the corn,” she said and had done three shots in succession. She’d been the first of their cohort to defend, and what had it gotten her? A three-year contract at a school no one had ever heard of. Andy had felt superior about that for a while.