From Away

by David Carkeet

  “You brought this on yourself,” Lance said. “You shouldn’t have run. All you had to do was pretend to be ignorant. If you had acted like you didn’t know something had happened, everything would be fine.” Denny thought he was done with the subject, but then, as they reached the second floor, he said, “I can’t believe you ran. The same with her in the kitchen. She shouldn’t have screamed. I’m surrounded by stupidity.” Lance swallowed the end of the last sentence because Sarah was storming out of the bedroom. She huffed by them to the guest room.

  “Look in the closet,” she said.

  Lance hesitated. “Which—”

  “The bedroom closet,” she snapped. “Up high. I couldn’t reach up there. They’d be in a cigar box. We used to play with them when we were little. We’d lock Homer in.”

  Lance pushed Denny into Homer’s bedroom. “Get on the bed and stay there.” Denny complied. Lance began to rummage through boxes on the two shelves at the top of the closet. He pulled several down and set them on the floor. Denny’s view was blocked by the open door, but he heard the jingle of metal: keys. Lance leaned out of the closet, a cigar box in his hand, and shouted, “I’ve got it.”

  “Hang on,” Sarah yelled. She seemed to be in her office now. “Goddammit,” she said, but it was a mutter, not directed at them.

  Then Lance—a tidy fellow—picked up every box he had set on the floor and returned them to the two top shelves. When he was done, he paused—to admire his work? The open closet door blocked Denny’s view of him. He finally closed it and looked at his captive.

  “You’ve got to see it from Sarah’s point of view.”

  “I do?”

  “She thought you killed Homer in Florida. You can see why she did. You show up here at his farm, you know all about his life . . .”

  “I didn’t know anything about his life.”

  “How did you fool everybody then? Even Sarah. She figured you must have met him. I can see her train of thought—you meet him, you’re both astonished at the resemblance, you pretend to become his friend, you pump him for information, and you eliminate him. You had to eliminate him. Otherwise he could show up here and ruin everything.”

  Sarah went down the stairs. Lance listened to her movements. Then he resumed:

  “Then she finds out you’re trying to sell the house. There’s the motive. You didn’t want to be Homer—you wanted to pose as him for the money. She thought she was next on your list because you would realize she was on to you. Of course she didn’t mean to do what she did to Homer. She was defending herself against you—or so she thought. She was like an abused person striking back. It’s easy to see it that way.”

  “Especially if you want to go on screwing her with a clear conscience.”

  Lance pointed at Denny. “By my count, if you didn’t exist, there are two people who would.”

  It is hard to argue against a guilty thought you’ve already had about yourself. Denny looked away. Another drawer slammed below, and Sarah ran up the stairs. When she came into the room, she looked capable of anything. “Here.” She handed Lance a roll of picture wire. “I couldn’t find rope. This is better anyway.” She pointed to the nightstand as she headed for the door. “Get that phone out of here. And get his cell phone.”

  Denny said, “It’s in the kitchen.”

  “You shut up,” she snapped. “You’re a dead pig.” She stomped out of the room.

  Lance unplugged the nightstand phone from the wall, slowly wrapped the cord around it, and tucked it under his arm. He moved slowly, like a philosopher deep in thought. He took the cigar box to the door connecting to the computer room, closed it, and tried different keys until he threw the lock. He tested the door, pushing on it hard. He crossed the room and did the same with the lock on the far bathroom door. This meant that Denny would be confined to the bedroom and adjacent bathroom. The inclusion of the bathroom heartened him. It suggested he was meant to live for at least as long as one toilet-requirement cycle.

  Lance stepped back into the bedroom with a hand towel, which he gave to Denny. He pointed to the side of his face where Sarah had raked her claws. Denny pressed the towel there and looked at it—it was streaked with blood, which he now saw had run down to his shoulder. He held the towel against his cheek and neck. Lance went to the one window in the bedroom—the double casement window overlooking the dog pen—and gauged the distance to the ground. He tossed the roll of wire onto the dresser. “Fat chance of you going anywhere.”

  Something in that gesture—refusing to bind him with wire—filled Denny with the urge to plead his case, to appeal to the better Lance, since there did seem to be one. But Denny feared it could backfire. “What are you going to do with me?” he said.

  Lance paused at the door to the hall. “When did Homer come back? How long was he here?”

  Denny’s mind raced. How could he use the question—and Lance’s interest—to save his life? “He was here just long enough to meet me and arrange for me to box some things up and ship them to him. He put me in charge of that. He seemed to trust me.”

  “So you didn’t meet him before?”

  “Never.”

  “Wasn’t he mad about what you had done—about pretending to be him?”

  “He was a little suspicious at first. Then he was fine with it.”

  Lance shook his head. “Two oddballs.” He stepped out and started to close the door.

  “How did she kill him?” Denny said.

  “Lance!” Sarah yelled from below.

  “Coming,” he called out. He released the doorknob, and, without looking at Denny, made a driving gesture with two hands on a pretend steering wheel. Then he closed the door and locked it behind him.

  All through the rest of the day, Denny heard them talking, usually in the kitchen but sometimes in the living room and backyard. His fate was a river of words, and he couldn’t make out a single one—just the rises and falls, or a sudden foot stomp or hand slap on a table, and, once, a loud laugh. He kept thinking about Homer—how he would have spent the day yesterday, when his path would have crossed theirs. If Sarah had run him over, where had it happened? Had she done it with her car? When had Lance signed on? Had he helped her from the beginning or only with the mop-up?

  Near dark, Denny heard a car drive up. Its door opened with a creak. He had no access to a window facing the front of the house. He was tempted to shout for help, but he didn’t want to get another innocent person killed. There was talk outside between Sarah and a man. Denny heard a whine from one of the dogs, and he went to the casement window over the pen. At the front fence, the dogs began to dance with excitement, and the plumber in the orange cap appeared at the gate, leashed them, and took them away. He had probably been told that Homer had gone back to Florida. Homer was being phased out.

  Denny tried not to move too much. He figured the less noise he made, the longer he would live. But he did get off the bed to check one thing, and he did it just as soon as Lance left the room. He went to the closet, opened the door, and looked down at the floor. The happy housewife descending the chain ladder smiled up at him from the top of the box. Denny bent down and checked to make sure the ladder was still inside it, then shoved it aside with his foot to a dark corner of the closet. He tiptoed back to the bed.

  He was surprised Lance hadn’t seen the box. But he must have seen it. The better Lance must have seen it and decided to give him a fighting chance to escape. But, if he had, he had doubtless also seen the words “250 lbs. max. capacity” on the front of the box.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE BACK DOOR TO THE ETHAN ALLEN HOTEL WAS LOCKED, momentarily foiling Denny’s plan to seek refuge in the cubby. He would have to enter by the front door—if it was unlocked, and if Betsy wasn’t at the counter. He certainly didn’t want to see her now that he knew what had happened to Homer. As he worked his way around the hotel, he scanned the building in search of an alternative stealth-route—a pipe he could shinny up, gaps in the wall face enabling a free climb
. But he was getting carried away. A successful descent via chain ladder from a second-story window, even in defiance of a weight limit, didn’t exactly make him a Navy Seal.

  Fortunately, Lance and Sarah had cooperated. He hadn’t dared try his escape while they were downstairs because they would have heard the ladder banging against the kitchen wall. They had come upstairs about 11:00, talking as they had been all day. They paused at Denny’s door. Lance opened it and looked at Denny, lying on his back and contemplating his fate, and then he closed the door without a word. In appearance, the act was tender, like a parental check on a sleeping youngster. They then accommodated him further by having monumental sex. Their noises were like cheers rooting him on as he made preparations—tiptoeing to the closet, untangling the ladder, sliding its bottom end out the window, and easing it down along the wall until he could hook the top ends over the windowsill.

  At that point, he paused and gazed down at the dog pen, wondering if this was where Dennis Braintree would cease to be. He took a deep breath and straddled the sill. He set one foot on the rung he could most comfortably reach. As he eased his full weight onto it, a link popped, and the rung and his foot banged onto the rung below before he could catch himself by seizing the sides of the window frame. He pulled back into the room and took stock. It had been a mistake to put all 330 of his pounds—80 more than one would wish—on one end of the rung. He needed to distribute his weight. But to place his feet simultaneously on a rung, he couldn’t straddle the sill for his first step—he would have to back out, feet and ass leading the way.

  With that in mind, he slowly slid the bed around, moving it by silent increments until its side was against the wall under the window. The top of the bed was at the same height as the sill. He climbed onto the bed and backed out the window, making sure his feet were separated when they reached the rung below the one he had broken. With his belly lying across the sill and his hands holding each side of the window frame, he settled his full weight on the rung, his feet as far apart as possible. It held. Still belly-down on the sill, he rocked his body up from the rung and eased down to the next one.

  After two such operations, he had to leave the safety of the window frame, which meant that to set both feet simultaneously on the next rung down, he would have to lift himself by grasping the rung in front of his face and doing a chin-up. He wasn’t strong enough—he didn’t have to try it to know. In a panic, he saw himself suspended there until dawn, too weak to go up or down without breaking rungs. A sudden move could send him cascading through the entire ladder to the ground. After moaning into the clapboards for a while, he tried different maneuvers and found one that at least held some promise: he fit his elbows through the space between the rungs until his armpits hung on the rung and his arms clasped it tightly against his chest, and at the same time, his hands were free to grab the rung above the one clutched under his armpits. This enabled him to use two muscle groups to hoist his bulk. In this fashion, he made it down to the next rung. Groaning and whimpering, rung by rung he descended.

  When he reached the ground, he wanted to run for his life, but there was one thing he knew he would need. Did he dare? From above he heard, “Yes, yes, yes,” which he chose to interpret as an answer from on high instead of banal sex talk. He squeezed through the dog door into the kitchen and grabbed his cell phone from where he had left it on the counter. As he backed out the dog door, the sex talk again reached him, this time audible through the floor, but now it was “No, no, no!” Lance must have made a bad move.

  Denny scuttled across the dog pen and through its open front gate. He hurried past Sarah’s car, which was partly illuminated by the front porch light. Again, every molecule of his body wanted to hurtle on down the driveway, but he made himself backtrack and inspect her car, feeling its sides and front end. Then he got out of there. It was a long way to town, five miles or more, and he ducked down the bank into the bushes whenever a car approached from behind. It was after 1:00 A.M. when he reached the hotel.

  Now, at the front door, he saw Betsy at the counter, feeling along it and tidying as if marking the end of the day. He would wait until she left the desk. But what if the door was locked? He tested it, making no sound at all—or so he thought until Betsy sharply turned his way. He froze. Behind him, two boisterous couples appeared, heading for the door. As he stepped aside, he had the idea of using them the way besieged cowboys use horses in Western movies, as a protective shield in a getaway. One of the men swiped his hotel key in the door lock, and Denny swept inside with them, mingling like a fellow reveler.

  “Have a good outing?” Betsy called.

  The gang assured her that they had and then peeled away from Denny toward the bar for more good times. This left Denny stranded in the middle of the lobby, where he had foolishly stopped. If he had just kept walking to the stairs, Betsy would have taken him for one of the guests going to bed. He took a silent step forward, his eyes on her. Then another. She stood still, then turned her face fully toward him.

  “Mr. Braintree? It certainly must be Mr. Braintree.”

  Denny sagged. “Hello, Betsy.” He walked to the counter.

  “My strange night owl returns,” she said. “Are you still ‘on the lam’?” She jiggled her torso from side to side in a jaunty accompaniment to her words.

  “No, no.” She was sadly behind the curve. “Just back in town on business. I need a room for the night. I’m exhausted.”

  “The hotel is chock-a-block. Let me straighten up the cubby for you. I’ll just need to smooth out the bed a bit.” She smiled as she walked around the counter: she had a secret. “My Homer took a little nap there.” She gestured to the hall leading to the elevator.

  “Homer? When?” Denny found his hopes rising—foolishly, he realized.

  “Yesterday afternoon. His visit was a real surprise. We talked for some time. Then he napped, and then he was off.”

  “Do you know where to?”

  “St. Johnsbury. An errand of some sort. Then back to Austin, Texas. And we thought he was in Florida all this time.” They stepped into the elevator. “I don’t know when I’ll see him again. My mind has been on him all day. I’ll miss him, but that’s not the most important thing.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “He’s a changed man. I believe he’s put all his troubles behind him.” She fell silent.

  The elevator opened on the top floor and they walked down the hall and turned into the rear wing. In the cubby, she ran her hands over the bed, smoothing the spread. She stepped back toward the door, but then she turned and walked around the bed and knelt down in the corner, feeling for the purple vinyl jewel box. There was uncertainty in her reach, as if she was checking to be sure it was there. On making contact with it, she squared it into the corner.

  “That was Amelia’s,” Denny said.

  Betsy pushed on the bed to raise herself from the floor. “He told you about her?”

  “I just know that she died.” Denny didn’t want to lie to her.

  “He said nothing more about it?”

  “No.” Technically true, Denny thought.

  She hesitated, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “Have you ever ridden a snowmobile, Mr. Braintree?”

  “No.”

  “Are you familiar with snowmobile ‘skimming’?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s say you’re going across a lake that’s frozen and covered with snow. You’re going at a fast clip, fifty miles per hour. Let’s say you’re very far from shore, and the ice suddenly thins out and you find yourself heading for open water. What do you do?”

  “Turn around?”

  “There’s not enough ice left for that. You’d be on the water before you completed your turn. Here’s what you do: you speed up. You go as fast as you can, you speed up to 60, 70, 80 miles per hour. It doesn’t work very often, but if you’re lucky, you will skim across the water. You must not stop under any circumstances, or you will immediately sink. And in water that cold, that far from shore, o
f course you will die.” Betsy took a deep breath. “What if your young sister is with you on your snowmobile? What if, at the moment you hit the water, something happens to her grip on you? Maybe there was a bump as you left the ice. Maybe fear seized her and cramped her arms. What if you find that she is no longer holding on to you? What do you do? You can’t turn around when you’re skimming or you will sink. The choice is clear. You can try to go back to her, or you can go on at full speed. In other words, you can die, or you can live. That’s your choice.”

  Denny saw it immediately. He saw the moment of decision, and he saw the rest of Homer’s life.

  “Homer made a choice, and he’s lived with it ever since. He invented a story about it when he got home—that she fell through a thin patch when she was walking on the lake, and that he wasn’t able to get to her. That’s what he told his mom and dad, not for himself but to spare them from knowing everything, because knowing what really happened makes it even more horrible. He had to tell someone, though.”

  Betsy slowly stood up. Denny, not knowing what to do, rose as well. “This was Amelia’s playroom when she came to visit me,” she said. “Sometimes she would bring a little friend from school. They all liked my johnnycake. She kept some toys here.” Betsy smoothed the bed where she had sat down and stepped toward the door. She paused. “Homer told me that she got on the snowmobile with him earlier in the day, at a different lake, because friends were jeering them, saying she should ride with them, not with Homer, because he was more likely to sink. They weren’t talking about any real added danger. They were just being unkind because of his size. Amelia rode with her brother. She defied them. They were far away from the others when the accident happened.” She reached for the doorknob. “He’s come to terms with it by taking steps, one after another. The last step was leaving here altogether. If he needs to be away to be happy, I’m all for it. He’s going to write me this time. He promised.”