by Kristin Bair
* * *
Tap tap tippity-tap.
Agatha pulls the gun from her bag and loads a cushioned dart into the chamber. When she cocks it, the woodpecker stops. It’s as if he knows. As if he’s riddled many houses with holes and heard that click before. She lays the gun in her lap.
Tap tap tippity-tap.
She lifts it again. Takes aim. The woodpecker stops, turns, and looks. She drops the gun to her lap.
She can’t do it.
* * *
Dax:
Agatha, the boys saw you taking photos at our house last night and got upset.
Agatha:
You guys were at our house last night?
Dax:
Not OUR house, Agatha. Our house. My and Willow’s house.
Agatha:
Oh THAT “our house.” I thought you meant OUR house. Yup, I was at the House of Sin last night. Needed a few shots for the portfolio.
Dax:
The boys were upset.
Agatha:
More upset than they are about the fact that you cheated on their mother, left her, and moved them into a new house with a new person half the time? More upset than that?
Dax:
I’m sorry, Agatha. I am sorry.
This is Dax’s first “I’m sorry” that feels authentic, heartfelt, real, and even though it’s via text, a seemingly impersonal transmission, she knows him well enough, deeply enough, to recognize when something shifts.
As tears blur the letters on her phone, she almost, almost, texts back “I know,” but she can’t, not quite yet, it feels too much like “it’s OK.” And it will never be okay.
* * *
“I don’t have an Arctic fox,” Agatha tells the tomato plant.
“Liar!” the tomato plant says.
“Oh, shut up,” Agatha says. She rips the still-green tomato from the vine. It is split like a lip on one side. “Rotten thing.” She hurls it at the remains of the shed. It hits Thelma in the rump, not enough to hurt, but enough to make her jump off the ride-on mower. “Sorry, Thelma!” Agatha yells.
The last of the tomatoes is a rich red on all but one spot. Agatha turns it toward the sun.
* * *
During the second night with the goats, Agatha hears the scream of the fisher cat. It’s late. Maybe one or two in the morning. She tears down the stairs and out the door. Susan Sontag is in the yard. As the fisher cat flashes past, Susan raises her tail, Agatha yells, “Noooooo!” but it’s too late. She takes a direct hit.
The boys race out onto the porch, but stop when the stink hits them. “Mom!”
“Get my keys,” she says.
They drive to the pharmacy, thankfully open all night, and the same young man is at the window. He tugs off his headphones when they pull up.
“You again?” he says.
“I could say the same about you,” Agatha says.
“Same skunk?”
“Same skunk.”
“I’ve still got the wash if you prefer, but I suspect you’re going to stick with the wives.”
“You got that right.”
The young man holds his nose. “Your choice,” he says. “But come around to the back door. I’ve got a couple of cases this time. It will be easier than passing all those cans.”
Agatha nods. The boys are asleep in the back seat. The car is going to have to be fumigated.
* * *
“Lucy is not at Apple54,” Melody texts Agatha. “Hurt? Sick? I’m worried.”
Agatha rolls her eyes. She’s quite sure the Interloper has simply taken advantage of the dark and stormy day to commit the crimes Agatha knows she’s destined to commit: theft, kidnapping, murder. “Don’t worry,” she texts back. “I’m sure she’s fine. Likely pulling off a heist at the bank. Check the news.”
“The Wind Beneath My Wings” sings from Agatha’s phone. She answers.
“Agatha Arch,” Melody says, lecture-tone firmly in place, “I’m going to be the wind that busts your wings to pieces if you don’t stop this nonsense. Lucy isn’t capable of nefarious activities.”
“You’re so trusting, Melody. How do you know she isn’t? I didn’t think Dax was capable of cheating on me, breaking my heart, and shattering our family into pieces, and look at the reality of that. Every human—no matter how seemingly innocent—is capable of nefarious activities.”
“Once again, Agatha, I am sorry your husband was so brutal. Once again, if I could make it any other way, I would. I hate that you’re in pain. But once again, not everything in this world relates back to you. You have to let go and learn to trust the world again.”
Agatha huffs. Melody has no idea Agatha never trusted the world to begin with. She had simply buffered her fear and mistrust of it with Dax. Wielded him like a shield between the world and herself. No Dax, no shield. Without him, without that protection, who can she be in the world?
“If that’s how you feel, why are you telling me about the Interloper’s absence?” Agatha says.
“I want you to check on her.”
“What?”
“I want you to check on her. Make sure she’s okay.”
“Check on the Interloper?”
“Yes.”
“Go up into the Krug again to check on the Interloper?”
“Yes.”
“You’re joking?”
“I am not joking. Go to Lucy’s spot in the woods. Only you know where it is. Only you can find it.”
Well, isn’t this a pip? Talk about setting yourself up for something.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Agatha says.
“I am not. You’re the only one who can do this. Go, before something terrible happens to her.”
“Or before she does something terrible to someone else.”
“Agatha Arch.”
“Melody Whelan.”
“Agatha.”
“Melody.”
“Go.”
“It’s supposed to rain, you know.”
“Only a fifty percent chance.”
“A fifty percent chance of thunderstorms, a thing of which I am terrified.”
“I need you to do this. Please.”
Agatha finds it hard to believe she has arrived at a point in life in which she jumps when the Kumbaya Queen says jump. But there you go.
“Fine,” Agatha says. “Fine, fine, fine. But if I die, it’s on your head.” She hangs up, dons her spy pants and a rain jacket, sets her GPS for the Interloper’s spot in the woods, and drives to the grocery parking lot. When she sees Melody, hope rises in her chest. “You’re coming along? Oh, thank god.”
“No, I have an appointment. But take this food to Lucy.” Melody hands her a bag of muffins, bread, and Twizzlers. “She likes Twizzlers.”
“Seriously, Melody? I can’t carry this up there in the rain. It’s going to be hard enough.”
“You can do it. I know you can. Text me as soon as you know something.” Then she turns Agatha by the shoulders and gently shoves her through the trampled brush into the Krug. “Go now. Hurry.”
And Agatha does. She slogs up as the rain sloshes down. Her spy pants get soaked and mud splashes to her hips. By the time she’s halfway up, it is nearly night dark, and while her headlamp lights a good path, she can’t see what is going on in the periphery. She once again thinks about the wild animals released by the now-dead cuckoodoodle in New Hampshire, the grizzly, the lion, the gorilla, the unknowns. Agatha knows the Krug would be a perfect spot for a wild animal to thrive. Good food sources. Dense cover. She pauses, sure she’s heard a growl, a howl. “Please no, please no, please no,” she chants. She pulls Bear from a pocket and presses him to her cheek. “Fear sharpens us … fear sharpens us … fear sharpens us.”
That morning, a journey that usually takes forty-five minutes takes twice that, and Agatha cheers when she finally glimpses the Interloper’s tree through the sheets of rain. The first crack of lightning hits as she realizes the Interloper is not slumped against her tree, a
nd then kaboom! Thunder.
“Help!” she screams. “Help! Interloper lady, are you here?” As Agatha stumbles around in the clearing, her headlamp catches on a branch, flips to the ground, and clicks off. Without its artificial glow, it is dark. Night dark. Super night dark, as Dustin used to say when he was little. She kneels and feels around on the ground, trying to find the lamp.
“Interloper lady!” she screams. She curls into a ball, wraps her arms around her knees, and rocks like a baby. “I hate you, Bear Grylls! I hate you! I hate you, Melody Whelan! I hate you all!”
But then, during a quiet moment between thunder and lightning and the swoosh of rain, she hears a strange ssshhh from somewhere in the woods.
OMG. A ghost!
A stream of water gushes past her, and Agatha knows her headlamp is being washed downhill, gone forever.
Then a hand grips her arm. The hand of the ghost! Agatha starts to fight but she’s wet and muddy and slippery and she can’t shake the grip. She flails and strikes at whatever she can hit, which isn’t much.
Then a voice. “Lady, stop fighting. It’s me. Lucy. I’m trying to help.”
Interloper lady? Interloper lady?
Agatha reaches out and feels what she hopes is the Interloper’s head. “Interloper lady? Is it really you?”
“It’s really me.”
“Where were you?”
“Come on. I’ll get you to a safe spot.”
A safe spot? Out here? Normally Agatha would have debated the ins and outs of a safe spot with the Interloper in the Krug in a raging storm in the super night dark, but she doesn’t have time. Another crack of lightning splits the sky. The Interloper pulls her to her feet and drags her through the trees. Agatha sees a tiny light in the darkness, then she’s pushed through a door.
A door?
A door?
A door out here in the middle of nowhere?
Is she hallucinating?
As Agatha falls to the floor of this unexpected place, she expects Bilbo Baggins to offer her a cup of mead. “Gandalf? Gandalf? Are you here?” she cries.
“Woman, what are you jabbering on about?” the Interloper says.
Soaked and muddy. Exhausted. Heart pounding. Breath ragged. Agatha hears the door close behind her. Thunder booms, but she’s out of the rain. When her body stills, she lifts her head and looks around. She is in a tiny hut. Her head is inches from one wall and her feet are touching the other. She twists and sees the Interloper leaning against the door, soaked and muddy, too. No Gandalf. No Bilbo Baggins. No mead. “You saved me,” she says. Her voice is raspy and raw.
“Not really,” the Interloper says. “You would have survived as long as lightning didn’t hit you.”
“But it would have. I know it. You saved me.”
“Whatever.”
Agatha sits up. The hut is not really a hut. More of a shack with four walls, a door, and a decent floor. “Did you build this place?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Dunno. Mountain bikers probably. They’re the only ones ever up here besides me and you.”
“It doesn’t leak?”
“Nope. Whoever built it did a good job.”
There is a single camper’s lamp on the floor in the corner. “Where did you get that?”
“That woman friend of yours.”
“Melody?”
“I guess.”
Agatha is a little shocked the Interloper doesn’t know Melody’s name, especially after all the advocating Melody has done for her.
“Has she been here?”
The Interloper shakes her head. “No.”
“Has anyone been here?”
“Just you.”
“Are you living in this hut?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Where’s all your stuff?”
“You know where my stuff is. You’ve been through it enough times.”
Caught. “The tree?” Agatha says.
The Interloper nods. “Probably soaked and ruined now.”
Agatha thinks of the bag of goodies Melody had forced her to tote up the hill. It is long gone.
“Will you have anything to eat after this storm is over?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.”
Agatha sits for a few minutes, listening to the thunder. She doesn’t expect a cathartic conversation, but the two of them sitting together, soaking wet, surviving a storm, has a Beaches-like quality Melody would adore.
“Why did you save me?”
“Do we have to talk? Isn’t it enough that I got you out of the storm? I could have left you there, scared to death, screaming like a baby.”
“I wasn’t screaming like a baby.”
The Interloper smirks.
“Aren’t you frightened being up here at night by yourself all the time?” Agatha says.
“Nope.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be back home, wherever that is? Out west?”
“Nope.”
“Aren’t there people missing you?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t you want to go home to them?”
“Nope.”
Right then the Interloper stands. Sure she is going to pull a machete from behind her back and hack her to bits, Agatha tucks her head into her arms. A pool of water has formed around her. Now it is going to be mixed with blood. “Don’t kill me!”
Instead of murdering Agatha, the Interloper opens the door and steps out into the storm.
“Hey,” Agatha yells over the pelting rain. “Where are you going?”
“Away,” the Interloper says. “You’re fine.”
“You can’t go out there. You might die.”
But the Interloper is gone. And just like that Agatha is left alone in the tiny shack with lightning crackling all around her.
Seconds later, the big one hits not far from the hut. The smell of burning wood permeates the shack, and when she peeks out, Agatha watches a twirl of smoke rise into the sky. “Please don’t let it be the Interloper. Please don’t let it be the Interloper,” she chants. Melody will kill her if anything happens to that young woman.
When the rain subsides, the lightning eases, the thunder moves away, and the sky lightens, Agatha steps out of the hut. She follows the smoke and sees that the Interloper’s tree has been struck. All her things, few as they were, black and charred. Agatha sighs, relieved. Lucy’s things, but not Lucy.
* * *
With the most dangerous elements receding, Agatha gets her wits about her. She pulls her cell phone from its waterproof pouch and takes a selfie with the smoking tree. It’s a keeper. Hair plastered to her head. Twigs poking up out of her shirt. Mud everywhere. And, yikes, blood all over her face and neck.
The rain shrinks to a drizzle as she makes her way back down the hill, and by the time she bursts through the final copse of trees into the parking lot, the sun is shining and a rainbow is hanging over the grocery store. She couldn’t have set the scene any better. Three cars slow to a stop as she gives herself the once-over. Besides the blood and twigs and mud, the left leg of her spy pants is shredded, revealing the lower part of her buttock. Thank goodness for the seven brand new pairs of spy pants still in the box.
The first two cars slide past her suspiciously, but the brave guy in the third car pulls to a stop and lowers his window. “Hey, lady, are you okay?” he says.
“Sure,” she says, smiling “what could be wrong?”
He shakes his head and drives away.
Agatha sits on the curb, pulls out her phone, and pops onto the Moms FB page. “In the Krug once again—this time in that crazy lightning storm—protecting all of you from the Interloper. Everyone, say, ‘Thanks, Agatha!’” She adds the selfie of her with the Interloper’s smoking tree and hits post.
Seconds later, the page fills with responses.
Ava Newton:
“Agatha, what were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
Blonde Brenda
-What’s-Her-Name:
“You aren’t protecting us from anything, you nincompoop. That young woman isn’t dangerous; you are!”
Jane Poston:
“I wish you’d been struck by lightning, Agatha Arch. It might have shocked some sense into you.”
Yikes.
Priya Devi:
“I thought you were afraid of storms.”
Agatha Arch:
“I am. I did this for you. For all of you.”
Rachel Runk:
“No, no, you didn’t, Agatha. Not one of us supports you in this craziness. Go back to spying on your husband and his lover.”
Ouch.
Melody Whelan:
“Ladies, Agatha actually went up the mountain at my request. Lucy was absent from her spot at Apple54, and I got worried. I asked Agatha to go. Despite what she says, she was making sure Lucy was all right.”
Agatha types a series of sticking-out-your-tongue emojis and clicks off. When she looks up, Melody is standing in front of her, hands on her hips. “Really, Agatha? After everything you just went through, you’re bad-mouthing Lucy on the Moms page? Have you seen yourself? You look like a crazed maniac.”
Agatha throws up her hands. “Seriously, Melody? You’re the one who demanded I go! What are you hollering about? Besides, you’ll never believe what I found.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do. The Interloper has a shack up there.”
“Lucy. You mean Lucy.”
“Blah, blah, blah. Yes, Lucy. Lucy has a shack up there.”
“A shack?”
Agatha smirks. “I knew you’d want to know. Yes, a shack.”
“You saw her?”
“Yeah, she actually pulled me to safety out of the storm.”
“She’s okay?”
“I’m assuming so. From what I saw up there, I’m pretty sure she’s immortal. Anyway, I’d lost my headlamp. Lightning was popping all around me. She dragged me into her shack.”