Iron House

by John Hart

  “It’s an election year.” The senator frowned. “He’ll be fine.”

  “You’re blind, Randall.”

  “Blind? I don’t think so.”

  “Blind and arrogant.”

  The senator leaned back in his chair, fingers laced above his belt. “Whose coat is that?”

  “That’s hardly relevant.”

  “I can have a doctor here by lunch. All you have to do is tell me who owns the coat you’re wearing.”

  Her sigh was an exhausted one. “Why do you even care?”

  “Because you said I’m blind.”

  “Fine. You’re not blind.”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “It belongs to Jessup. Are you happy?”

  “Jessup’s a good man.” He paused. “A bit humble for your tastes.”

  “The man loaned me his coat.”

  “Of course.”

  Abigail pushed the phone across the desk. “You’ll call?”

  “Of course.” The smile was a knowing one.

  “You exhaust me, Randall.”

  “I consider that my job as your husband.”

  “A doctor,” she said. “Soon.”

  * * *

  Back in Julian’s room, Abigail found that he’d used a stub of pencil to draw the shape of a door on the wall. It was small and childish, nothing like the art of which he was capable. Normally, if Julian were to draw a door, it would look so real one might try to open it and walk through. He could make it look that solid, or he could shape it in a manner so fanciful it could be a door to another universe, the passage to a world of magic and joy, or a black gate yawning wide to collect a host of damaged souls. But that’s not what Abigail saw. The lines on this door wavered and diverged, making an irregular shape less than five feet tall. The doorknob was a scrawl, the hinges thick marks of heavy black. Julian knelt in front of the door, still bent. He was beating his knuckles on the drawn door, the bandages not just wet, but torn.

  “Baby.” She knelt beside him, close enough to feel his heat. The skin under his eyes was bruised, his face so lean the cheeks were sunken. He ignored her, his eyes fevered and empty, his lips chewed raw and dry as chalk. He struck one part of the door, then another, so intent he did not react when she put a hand on his arm. “Baby, please…”

  His eyes were shockingly drawn, pulled so deeply into their sockets they looked black. His mouth opened and the tip of his tongue pushed against the back of his teeth. When Abigail reached again to touch him, her arm passed before the lamp so a shadow flickered on the wall. Julian flinched when he saw it, and Abigail cringed from the sudden terror in his face. Then, just as quickly, the emotion fled and his face emptied. She watched his lips move in mindless rhythm, and her fingers stopped an inch from his skin. “Baby, please.”

  “Sunlight…”

  His voice was the barest whisper.

  “Silver stairs…”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The doctor was like so many doctors, quiet and certain and spare. He arrived in the company of an unfamiliar nurse, and when the door clicked shut Julian froze, a new attentiveness to his features, a contemplation that seemed to emanate from some especially still place in his soul.

  “Julian, my name is Dr. Cloverdale. I’m a friend of your father’s. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to conduct an examination and fix up your hands. Is that okay?” Julian did not respond, and the doctor said, “We’re all friends here.”

  Moving gently, the doctor checked the sound of Julian’s heart and lungs. He shone a light in Julian’s eyes, and Abigail imagined her son’s face turned up in the dark, a small light seen from the bottom of a deep well.

  “You’re doing fine, Julian. Just fine.”

  The doctor continued his examination, and when the bandages came off Julian’s hands, Abigail stifled a small cry. “It’s okay,” the doctor said; but it was not. The knuckles were scraped and torn and weeping lymph. The meat was white, and Abigail thought she saw a wet, gray flash of bone. The doctor dressed the hands, and then sedated him. Julian did not react when the needle went into his arm. Abigail turned down the sheets, and together they got Julian into bed. At the door, the doctor spoke in a whisper. “The nurse will clean him up.”

  In the hall, Abigail put her back against the wall. “His poor hands…”

  “There’s no permanent damage.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Barring further injury, yes.” The doctor’s face was kind, but serious. “This just happened?”

  “Which part?” Abigail felt a hint of panic in her own voice.

  “When did this begin? Let’s start there.”

  “Three days ago. He went away—we don’t know where—and when he came back, he was like this. I found him in the garage, barefoot and filthy. He wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t go to his own room. He came here and locked the door. He wouldn’t answer when we tried to talk to him, wouldn’t come out. After a day, we brought in the locksmith.”

  “Does he often disappear like that?”

  Abigail shook her head. “No. Never. I mean, he goes places, of course. But not that often, and never without letting someone know.”

  “Where does he go, when he leaves? Friends? Vacations?”

  “No. Not really. I mean, he has friends, of course, but not close ones. People from school, mostly. No one person in particular. He goes to New York to meet with his publishers. He does occasional conferences, public appearances, things like that. Mostly, he stays here. Walks in the woods. Writes his books. He’s a very insular young man.”

  “Comfortable in his own skin.”

  “That might be pushing it.”

  “He’s rather old to be living at home…”

  “He has his strengths, Dr. Cloverdale; it’s just that he’s complicated.”

  “The senator filled me in on his history. I understand he suffered some abuse as a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it severe?”

  “Yes.” She felt her own madness rise. “It was severe.”

  Cloverdale frowned. “Did he have counseling?”

  “With minimal effect. He went through the motions, but still wakes up screaming.”

  “Screaming?”

  “For his brother. They were close.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like this kind of self-injury?”

  “No. It just started last night.”

  Cloverdale shook his head. “This is not my area. He needs a psychiatrist, I suspect, maybe inpatient treatment at Duke or Chapel Hill. Someone who specializes in emotional trauma…”

  “Are you suggesting we commit him?”

  “Let’s not rush to judgment,” Cloverdale said. “If we did commit him, he would be placed under observation for several days. We can do the same thing here, no problem. Your husband hired me for the week, so I’m here. Why don’t we give it a day or two? I’ll keep Julian calm and comfortable. I’ll watch him. Sometimes these things resolve themselves.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” He showed his calm, doctor’s smile. “Why not?”

  She studied his eyes. “A few days, then.”

  “Good.” The doctor clasped his hands. “Now, let’s talk about you.”

  He made a kind face again, and only then did Abigail realize how distraught she must appear, mud-spattered and wild-eyed. She’d not slept in two nights, barely eaten. She was pale and exhausted, her son’s blood dried to a crust on her cheeks. She touched the nest of hair on her head and felt a sudden blankness move into her eyes as she focused on the doctor’s chin. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “If you’re worried I’ll discuss it with your husband—”

  “I’m fine.” The stare continued unabated. She knew it, but could not lift her eyes. It was an old feeling, the denial.

  “We all need help at times, Mrs. Vane. There’s no shame in it.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. No.” She felt her chin rise, and briefly entertained the no
tion of telling him the truth; but he would dismiss as a misguided boast her claim that he’d never met a stronger person than she. He would make polite noises, and when he saw the senator, he would shake his head and pretend to keep his confidence. But their eyes would meet, and in that touch would be a faint smile shared at the vanity of women. So, she kept the truth as her own. She did not tell the doctor she had seen things that would crush his heart, done things that would break him at the knees.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  And when he opened his mouth to disagree, she turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As large as the house was, and as grand, it was not technically Abigail’s home. The main residence was in Charlotte, a turn-of-the-century mansion on two acres in Myers Park. This was supposed to be their summer home, but Abigail loathed Charlotte. It was too large, its people too interested in the doings of their senator and his wife. As life unrolled behind her, Abigail found herself drawn more and more to the space and silence of Chatham County. Over the years, her time there grew longer and more certain, until now, she hardly left. She lived there with horses and privacy and her son.

  It was almost ideal.

  She swept down the long hall to the suite of rooms she’d taken as her own, where she showered, changed, and restored her face to its normal state of near-perfection. In a ten-foot mirror, her reflection was that of an elegant woman in peak physical condition. She turned once, found herself acceptable, and then went to Julian’s room on the third floor. It filled the top corner of the north wing, an extravagant space whose windows faced downslope and across the forest canopy. In spring, the view was of rolling green, an inland sea that in the fall became red and yellow and orange, an ocean of fire that died to brown and fell away.

  In the door, she stopped, hesitant. The room had ceiling-to-floor bookshelves that held framed photographs and twenty years of reading. A half-dozen easels stood against the far wall, large sketch pads propped open to show the pictures Julian had been working on: a forest scene, a lake in moonlight, characters for a new book he was considering. Shotguns and deer rifles stood, unused, in velvet-lined cases. They were gifts from his father, and from admirers of his father, expensive steel touched with fine dust; but Julian had never killed anything in his life. He was a gentle man, but a man nonetheless, and the room reflected this duality: dark rugs and expensive art, children’s books and silent guns. It was a man’s room, and a boy’s; and standing in the doorway, vision pricked by tears, Abigail saw the day they’d brought Julian home. He’d been so small and frightened, so lost without his brother.

  How many boys live here, he’d said.

  Just you.

  He’d stared at the room for a long time, his dark eyes restless as he’d looked out the window at the forest canopy, the long miles of deep and secret green. His fingers were small on the windowsill, his chin tipped up as he stood on tiptoes to see out.

  It’s so big.

  Do you like it?

  He’d thought for a long time, then said: How will Michael find me here?

  That was the question that made her cry.

  Abigail stepped across the threshold. She ran a finger along the spines of books, lifted a photograph, put it down. She was restless, worried in a way she’d never been, so that when she turned and found her husband in the open door, she jumped. She’d not heard a step, and as large as he was, that fact surprised her.

  “About what I said.” The voice was his penitent one. “I will, of course, put Julian first. I hope you know that.” His gaze ran the length of the room, and it was impossible to hide his distaste. As a politician, he was conservative in all things. As a man, he believed in manly pursuits. People like Julian were not his cup of tea, and Abigail always suspected, deep in her heart, that the senator was pleased that Julian, as a son, was only adopted.

  Less of an embarrassment that way.

  Less of a liability.

  Truth was, the senator had never forgiven Abigail for her inability to conceive. He’d wanted one of each, a boy and a girl, both well mannered and sharing their mother’s photogenic qualities. Adoption was a hard-fought compromise, and Julian a massive disappointment. In the end, she’d won the argument on one basic premise: adoption—especially of older, unwanted children—would show he was a man of heart and conscience. His polls were lowest in the mountains. He’d thought about it, nodded once. And that was that.

  The senator stepped to the nearest easel and began flipping pages, looking first at one drawing and then another. “About Julian,” he said. “I was out of line. I’m sorry.” He flipped a final page and considered the drawing there: a half-dressed girl with leaves in her hair and eyes like black smoke. “This one’s unexpected,” he said.

  Abigail glanced at the drawing; a beautiful girl, provocatively drawn. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “It’s so sexual.”

  “He’s a children’s author, not a child. He’s had girlfriends.”

  “Has he?”

  “Must you be so dismissive?”

  The senator flipped pages until the drawing was covered. He studied Abigail’s face, his own features sad and utterly convincing. “Give an old man a kiss.”

  His eyes broke from hers, and she knew the interruption was purposeful. She extended her cheek and he kissed it, his lips dry and cool. Stepping back, he looked into the room. “This place is a mess.”

  “I’ll speak to housekeeping.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  She watched him go, then began to pick up the room. She made the bed, stacked books, and gathered coffee cups. Finally, she lifted Julian’s tuxedo and carried it to the closet. It smelled of cigar smoke and aftershave. She smoothed it once, and in the pocket found a photograph. The girl was a waif: nineteen years old and small enough to be elfin. She stood on a sagging porch, the house behind her barely painted. Wild, blond hair framed a face that would be striking in another context; but she was barefoot and dirty, her eyes large over hollow cheeks, her mouth an angry line as she glared at the camera. She wore faded cutoffs that rose too high on her legs, a tank top that was too thin and tight for the breasts that pushed against it. Her hands were shoved into her pockets hard enough to push the shorts low on her hips and expose the blades of her hipbones, the plane of tight skin between.

  She was burned brown by the sun.

  The yard was dirt.

  Abigail had not seen the girl since she was a child, but she recognized the house. With a sickening feeling, she turned to the easel and flipped pages until she reached the charcoal sketch of the young woman, nude in the woods. She looked at the drawing, then at the photograph. She stepped closer and held them side by side. The drawing was the work of skilled hands, the young woman made even more attractive, her face at home in the forest, eyes slanted and deep, leaves twined into her hair. The sketch showed the curve of her hips and breasts, eyes that were entirely too knowing.

  “Oh, no.”

  Abigail stared hard at the drawing, a twist of nausea in the lowest part of her.

  “No, no, no.”

  She left the room at a near-run, the photograph bent double in her fist. Outside, the rain had died to mist. She found the Land Rover where she’d left it, cranked the engine, then checked the loads in the pistol and pointed the vehicle toward the rear of the estate.

  “No, no, no,” she said again.

  And the forest deepened.

  * * *

  In a lifetime of conflict, machination, and political intrigue, there was one persistent thorn in the side of Abigail’s husband. On the back side of his four thousand acres was a sixty-acre inholding, an island of old-growth pine that had been owned by the same family since the 1800s. The tract was rugged and untouched, a series of sharp hills and ravines with a gravel road leading to ten acres of flat ground and a house that had stood since before the Civil War. The land came with an easement across the back of the estate grounds, and in spite of the senator’s offers, the lady who owned the l
and refused to sell. He’d offered five times its value, then ten, and twenty. He’d lost his temper, and then things got complicated.

  The woman’s name was Caravel Gautreaux, which she claimed was Louisiana French. But who could say? The woman was a liar and insane. There was history between them. Bad things.

  The main estate road led off the manicured grounds and onto the working sections of the estate. Pavement gave way to gravel, and the road curved past vineyards and horse paddocks, the organic dairy operation Abigail had built from scratch eight years earlier. She drove beside the wide spill of river, then turned north through the deep woods and out across seven hundred acres of pasture dotted with cattle. When the road dipped back into woods on the far side, the gravel began to thin out, the road to narrow. Trees pressed close enough to scratch paint, and new growth folded under the front bumper as she pushed harder into the forest. This was the wild part of the estate, three thousand acres of game preserves and hunting grounds, vast tracts of old forest never timbered.

  She drove until the ground rose then fell away in a gorge with a fast, white stream at the bottom. She dropped into low gear and ground through water that rose to the axles, then up a steep incline, trail bending. The earth here was folded and raw. Granite pushed through thin, black dirt; hardwoods fell away to longleaf pine that still bore scars from the turpentine trade two centuries earlier.

  The trail intersected a narrow, gravel road that led to the state highway south of the estate, but Abigail didn’t care about the highway; she turned north between two hills, and the banks steepened as she drove, light fading as the road seemed to plunge. Abigail had not been to this place in twenty years, but the same fingers twisted her guts when Caravel’s house came into view. It was small and old, a jumble of poor rooms washed with white paint and left to settle on a bare dirt yard littered with rusted cars and animal droppings. Curtains hung from open windows. Goats stood in mud beneath a pecan tree, shaggy horses in an open shed.