Rick fantasized about buying the house if it was ever put up for sale, but he knew he could dream on. He’d won a workmen’s comp settlement ten years ago, and lived very carefully as a full-time father ever since, but there was no way he could afford a house like this one. Must be five thousand square feet, maybe more, and Sean had told him it was like a museum inside. Besides, Sean would flip out if he tried to buy the Toussaint place. He wanted nothing to do with it.
Apparently, Angela Toussaint felt the same way, Rick mused. Sorry damn shame.
Rick loved beautiful, unappreciated things. Maybe that was the root of his love of foster kids, he thought. Rick couldn’t stand to see kids unloved. He’d fought for sole custody of Sean after the boy’s Deadhead mother confided that she was planning to sell their blond-haired, blue-eyed baby boy to the highest bidder. And all of his “found” kids had special needs: Tonya had been five when he’d met her, legally blind, her contemplative dark eyes hidden behind thick, owlish glasses. Andres was a mixed-race Puerto Rican with a killer talent for drawing, saddled with his share of learning problems and a touch of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Miguelito had been a dark-skinned Mexican, his ethnicity alone serving as a liability in a system where most adoptive parents were searching for infants who looked more like Sean. But aside from the factors that had trapped the children in foster care for most of their young lives, Rick knew his kids were beautiful.
Beautiful and unappreciated. Just like Angela Toussaint’s stately shell of a house.
Overhead, a raven taunted Rick with a piercing squawk. The ravens on this property were goddamned possessive, chattering at him as if they expected him to pay a toll. Protecting their nests, no doubt. This one was right on schedule, like the ogre under the bridge in the children’s fairy tale. “Fuck off, bird,” Rick muttered, and he heard the bird’s wings flutter in what sounded like a fury.
Once the house was no longer in sight, Chestnut slowed, unsure of where to proceed as the rough path forked before them. Rick urged her to go left, past the large cedar tree with a heart-shaped crater in its trunk that served as his landmark. They came to the creek-bed bordered by salmonberry and horsetails, where the rushing waters had begun to rejuvenate with the infusion of October rainwater. In summertime, this portion of the creek dried to nearly nothing, although it never vanished. Chestnut splashed through the shallow creek to the other side, and the evergreens gave way to red alders and bigleaf maples, and then to a small clearing.
There, Rick saw a crooked configuration of three waist-high wooden fence-posts, blackened with age. There was no fence, and the remaining fence-posts, wrapped in vines and crabgrass, had probably been standing here since the Depression. At one time, old lady Toussaint must have come out here regularly tending to her herbs, because the plants still grew wild in clusters that seemed most abundant where her fencing might have stood. Rick had come across the herb garden by accident during one of his first rides here, and he’d been thrilled with his find.
He had a smorgasbord out here. Already, he spotted the ring of sweet basil plants, with their hairy stalks and yellow-white flowers. He could smell basil from a mile away. Not too far from there, closer to the creek, he saw a cluster of flowering valerian plants. And sweet woodruff growing behind one of the fence-posts. And some thin, practically leafless stalks of dill. His eye also caught the pretty yellow blooms of large-flowered mullein plants basking in a patch of sunlight. About ten yards east, he saw a few large elder shrubs, recognizable by their tiny yellowish white flowers and clusters of violet globe-shaped fruit, nearly black. It all grew of its own accord, some of it out of season. The plants didn’t care about the calendar. This was herb heaven.
“Good catch today,” Rick said, dismounting.
He untied the leather string on his basket and opened it, pulling out his dirty work-gloves, a small paring knife, and the honed-edge sickle he used to gather herbs. Once he collected and dried these plants, he would make teas that would help him and his kids cope with headaches, indigestion, constipation, sleeplessness, overexcitement, and any symptom a cold or flu might throw at them. Not to mention that the basil plain tasted good, the secret ingredient to his kids’ favorite spaghetti and herbed chicken recipes.
Somehow, the basil he grew in his home garden didn’t have the same flavor, and he couldn’t get valerian to grow from seeds at all. Besides, no other homegrown or store-bought herbs could offer anything close to the potency of the herbs he found on the Toussaint property. When he and his kids came down with the flu last summer, he’d knocked it out of their systems within a day. People in town said the old woman had been famous for her teas, and now he knew why.
Maybe it was something about the land, the nutrients in the soil. Whatever it was, Rick chuckled as he imagined the pretty penny he could earn if he ever found the nerve to plant a couple hundred marijuana seeds out here in the abandoned Toussaint herb garden. He’d have an empire in green. Better than Lotto, he thought.
But that was just idle thinking. Rick had given up grass at the same time he’d given up college, when he’d found himself responsible for raising a child. If he had an entrepreneurial bone in his body, he’d strike a deal with Angela Toussaint to grow more herbs out here, cultivate them, and market them, even if it was just to a local clientele. Hell, he could make money on the woman’s name alone, the way people in town talked—Madame Toussaint’s Magic Teas!Use the old lady’s picture on the box. He could envision it, all right.
But Rick Leahy had more ideas than he had drive or discipline. If he hadn’t lost the hearing in his left ear after a forklift broadsided him in the shipping yard at his old job in California, he’d probably still be working there today, fantasizing about his escape and hating every minute of it. But God looks out for children and fools, or so the old proverb said. His sister had hired him a good lawyer, and he’d walked away with five hundred thousand bucks, even after attorney’s fees and taxes. Someone with a fire under him could have invested that money and made something of it, Bonnie always said, but Rick was happy with his little chunk of land, his kids, and his horses.
Beside him, Chestnut chuffed restlessly. Her hooves came too close to the dill, so Rick guided her to a safe distance from his cache, looping her reins around the Y intersection on a thick branch of a fallen alder trunk. Fall leaves crunched under his boots as he walked back toward the dill, where his basket was waiting. Good a place to start as any, he decided.
Another bird complained, and when Rick looked up, he noticed a raven perched on each fence-post, all three of them regarding him with a convincing imitation of intelligence. Their black eyes were unblinking, appearing to follow his movements. Weird. He couldn’t think of a single time he’d come out here when the ravens didn’t gather around the garden to watch him. Still, he couldn’t spot the nests. “Ah, I see you brought friends,” Rick said cheerfully. “Well, fuck your friends, too.”
A mosquito whirred in Rick’s right ear, and he absently slapped at it before beginning his search for the ribbed fruit on the dill plants ripe enough to be of use. Had to be brown, and most of it wasn’t ready yet, but some was. Good enough. The flowering stems were good medicine, too.
The Doobie Brothers popped into his head, “Black Water,” so he sang quietly to his horse, the trees, and the ravens. “I wanna hear your funk in Dixieland…hey Mama, won’t you take me…” He was sure he was butchering the lyrics, like always, a disability Sean razzed him about. But he knew the melody, and this song always took him back to his childhood in Santa Cruz. WatchingHappy Days with his sister, who’d had a crush on Chachi. Eating Now N’ Laters. He could almost taste the candy now, tangy and sweet on his tongue. “By the hand, hand…gonna take your hand, little Mama…gonna dance with your daddy…”
Rick had thought he was in a good mood, so the sadness caught him by surprise.
He’d had his share of bad news in life, and he’d learned how to shrug it off with a sense of routine. He fixed things. If he couldn’t
fix it, like losing Miguelito, he shed his tears and learned to live with it. That would be his key to longevity in life, he always said. But after fifteen minutes of collecting herbs, soon after he’d moved from the dill to the valerian root he gave Andres in small doses to help him quiet his mind at night, Rick noticed that he felt so sad that his muscles had turned leaden. He could have just been kicked in the gut, for all the sorrow he felt knotted in his middle. The shift had been so gradual, he hadn’t even noticed until he was stewing in it, on the verge of tears.
Rick stopped singing. What the hell was going on with him? He looked up from the small mounds of soil where he’d uprooted the valerian plants and stared around him. One raven had flown off, but two still remained, staring. The ravens no longer amused him.
“Go on, get away,” he said, chucking a stone at the nearest fence-post. He had a good arm, so he hit it dead center. With unpleasant cries, both birds flew off. But they didn’t go far. He could hear them in the treetops, all three of them up there, probably. Or more.
Rick saw an image in his mind, then. But not exactly. It was more like reliving the moment when he’d first seen the image, crisp and clear: Migeulito’s brown arms reaching toward him from the caseworker’s embrace the day she and the boy’s uncle came to pick him up. They’d done the transfer slowly, letting the uncle spend time with Miguelito in the weeks preceding the change, and Miguelito seemed to like the guy, which had been a relief to all of them. They’d acted out the pleasantries in the living room, him and the other kids pretending they were greeting Miguelito’s thin, pock-faced uncle as a good friend because the caseworker thought it would be less traumatic that way. But when it had been time for Miguelito toleave, the kid had let out such wounded howls, his arms outstretched, brown eyes imploring as he called for Rick. Remembering the horror of that instant, Rick felt tears prick his eyes. His vision blurred.
“Motherfuck,” Rick said, tasting his anguish anew. First Sean’s friend had shot himself in the head, then they’d lost Miguelito a year later, when his uncle materialized out of nowhere. “Who the hell did we piss off? Can you tell me that one goddamned thing?”
Rick didn’t know who he was talking to, but he felt certain someone could hear him. God, perhaps, the orchestrator of it all. That sense, rather than giving Rick satisfaction, made his grief and anger more keen. What was the point of trying to spread love and do the right thing if it came to nothing in the end? What was the point of any of it?
Whatever it was—whoeverHe was—was watching Rick right now. He knew it.
“Youbastard!” he shouted suddenly, nearly pitching himself off-balance. He had never been more angry, and the shout tore at his throat. His phlegmy, altered voice echoed deep into the heart of the shady woods before him, toward The Spot and the reaches he rarely explored. “You heartless bitch-bastard! Go fuck up somebody else’s life!I’ve done my share!”
Spittle sprayed from his mouth. Both hands were locked into fists, rock-hard. He wanted to hurt someone, maybe to kill something. Rick was breathing in furious gasps.
Then, the moment broke. Rick was left crouching beside his basket with a clear mind, the terrible mood lifted, hearing the whirs and whistles of insects around him. What the hell hadthat been about? He could hear his last shout even now, bouncing in the woods. A stranger’s words in his own voice. He’d gone from singing the Doobie Brothers to screaming like a lunatic in the space of mere minutes. His underarms were damp, itching uncomfortably.
Do the wordsbad karmamean anything to you?
For the first time, the wordsbad karma meant a whole hell of a lot to Rick Leahy. Rick began to feel caught in a net, as if the tree branches surrounding him served as webbing. Almost as if—and this next thought made the hairline on his neck sizzle slightly—he could not leave here today when he was ready.Rick had never been claustrophobic, indoors or outdoors, but now he understood what the affliction meant. He felt trapped.
“This is nuts. I’m actually sitting here bugged out for absolutely no fucking reason,” he said. He tried to use an old trick he’d learned as a kid when he had nightmares, using his voice as assurance, a window to reason. Buoyed by his wave of rationality, Rick laughed at himself. “You’re letting Sean’s head-games get to you. This is priceless, Leahy.”
What happened next hadn’t happened to him as a kid, or at any other time.
At first, the scraping sound he heard in the leaves behind him sounded like the noise a small animal’s hurried passage might have made. A rabbit, a squirrel, maybe a creature as large as a fawn. The sound startled him because it was so close—ten yards, maybe fifteen—but he didn’t see any movement. Chestnut, sensing the shift of his mood, stirred with a snort, taking tentative steps forward and then backward, as much as her tied reins would allow.
“Easy, girl,” Rick told her, really talking to himself.
The sound came again, a little louder this time, though not as close, and from the opposite direction. Rick’s head whirled around. Nothing but the forest ahead of him, where it grew more densely, away from any clearings, gardens, or beaten paths. Where very little sunlight bled through.
A man might have made that sound. Or something bigger.
“Mr. Everly?” he called.
The mosquito’s whine in his ear was deafening this time, and Rick slapped at his earlobe so hard that it stung. Then, his hand froze where it was, like the flustered pose Jack Benny used to strike all the time, except that Rick didn’t feel flustered. He felt numb. His left hand was raised, and he’d slapped hisleft ear. He hadn’t heard a sound out of that ear in ten years, and yet he’d just heard a mosquito buzzing there, big and bad.
“What the fuck…?” he whispered.
Rick snapped his fingers outside of his ear, straining to hear, but the sound was indistinct, his right ear fooling him by taking up the slack. The dead space on his left side was still there. The judge had ruled he hadpermanent hearing loss, with five hundred thousand bucks to back it up. But Rick had heard something there a moment ago. A mosquito, or some insect. Something.
Rick’s heart cranked up, and he felt dizzy from the rush of blood to his head. He didn’t know what was going on this morning, but he didn’t like it. Not a puny little bit. He also wasn’t going to stick around to see if he’d come to like it any better. He was remote from everyone out here. He could shout himself hoarse, and no one would hear him.
“Know what, Chestnut?” he said. “I think I’m about ready to…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, because the noise had started again, a motion of dry leaves scraping the forest floor. But this time, even with his bad ear, he made no mistake: It wasn’t a rabbit, a deer, a man, or anything else living. This was much louder, bigger. The mass of leaves shifted with a sustained rustling hiss, there was a short pause, and then the massive shifting came again. The noise reminded him of what it might sound like if someone had an impossibly large broom and was slowly sweeping, sweeping, sweeping. An acre’s worth of leaves seemed to move at once, as if the ground was methodically shaking them from its back. There was no breeze to speak of, so it couldn’t be the wind. What, then? Rick stared, seeing no movement anywhere in his line of vision. But he heard it, and that was enough. The sweeping.
Coming straight at him, from somewhere in the woods.
Blood-flow seared Rick’s face. He sprang to his feet, abandoning his basket and tools. He freed his sweating palms from his gloves, still breathing hard. Chestnut whinnied when he approached her, wild-eyed, and he shushed her as nervous perspiration dripped into his eyes. He stroked her nose and muzzle, clucking, telling her she was a good girl. Chestnut was pulling so much that he had a hard time untying her reins, and when he did, he was afraid she wouldn’t stand still long enough to mount.
Horses were neurotic as hell, but this wasn’t like Chestnut. She was scared, the way she’d be scared if they were surrounded by a hidden pack of wolves. Using the felled alder to gain height, Rick flung himself across his horse’s back, la
nding hard and off-center. His testicles flared with hot pain. After making a confused half-circle, Chestnut turned toward the creek, back the way they had come. “Come on, girl,” he said, and man and horse began their flight from Marie Toussaint’s herb garden together. Some kind of bird, perhaps one of the ravens, wailed behind them.
Paw-paaaaaaaaaaawwww
For a horrible instant, the cry sounded precisely like Miguelito’s, the day they sent him away. Pure instinct made Rick sit straight upright, looking back. He saw only his basket, the fence-posts in the clearing, and the shadows in the woods. Goose bumps blotched Rick’s arms, and he spurred Chestnut faster, hunching down close to her mane. “Jesus…That wasnot Miguelito,” he murmured once, then twice, and soon he believed it.
Halfway home, when he could no longer hear the eerie sounds of rearranging leaves or birds parroting human cries—and was discovering rapid solace in the notion that he had imagined most of what he had heard—Rick cursed himself for leaving his basket of herbs. He had one hell of a stomachache, and a cup of dill tea would take care of him good.
Five
Two weeks later
FRIDAY
OCEANBEACHHIGHWAYin Longview took drivers through the city beneath hilltops dotted with expensive homes half-hidden behind evergreens. Because the streets were slick from earlier rainfall, the noontime sun made the four-lane highway’s asphalt gleam as if it were topped with glass.
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