Cry for the Strangers

by John Saul

  “Doesn’t sound very plausible, does it?”

  “I didn’t think so,” Elaine said. “I suppose I should have told you before, but I didn’t want to, not in front of Robby.”

  “Of course not,” Glen agreed. “I’ll wait a day or so—maybe try to find the kids a new puppy—then tell them. Or maybe I won’t tell them at all. I’ll just find them another dog and that’ll take their minds off Snooker.”

  Robby and Brad caught up with them in the trees in front of the Palmers’ cabin, and as they approached, Glen called to his wife.

  “Rebecca? Come on out here—we’ve got company!”

  Rebecca appeared at the door and, seeing her son, immediately swept him into her arms. Robby wriggled, protesting that he was fine, and finally Rebecca let him go, straightened up, and looked with surprise at Brad and Elaine.

  “You remember Dr. Randall, of course,” Glen said. “This is his wife, Elaine. I found them on the beach near the old Baron house. They’ve leased it and we’re going to be neighbors, so I brought them home for a glass of wine.”

  “Come in,” Rebecca urged them. “It’s not nearly as big as the house you got, but there’s room for everyone.” She led Brad and Elaine into the small main room and pressed them to take the two chairs usually reserved for her and Glen. “Let me get Robby settled in bed. Glen, why don’t you open the wine?” She disappeared into the tiny bedroom, and while Glen poured four glasses of wine Elaine and Brad inspected the cabin, Brad curiously, and Elaine carefully. By the time Rebecca reappeared Elaine was ready.

  “Can you really cook on that stove?” she asked, making the question almost a challenge.

  Rebecca looked blank for a second, then burst into laughter.

  “It isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks,” she said. “Come here and I’ll show you what happens.” She bent over the stove with Elaine, demonstrating how the various vents worked and how to control the fire so that the burners would operate at various levels of heat.

  “The main trick is to keep the fire fairly small so that you can move it around and control it Otherwise the thing gets so hot you can’t even get close to it But if your husband is anything like mine,” she finished, “you won’t have any problem—there won’t ever be enough wood to build a really big fire.”

  Elaine shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something tells me we’re going to be eating out a lot.”

  “We can’t,” Rebecca said. “And even if we could, we wouldn’t. Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve gotten to the point where I actually enjoy cooking on this thing. The worst part of living on the beach is bathing.”

  “My God,” Elaine breathed, closing her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision. “I hadn’t even thought about that!”

  “You’ll learn to dream about it,” Rebecca laughed.

  Elaine turned to her husband. “Did you hear that, Brad?”

  “I heard.” Brad looked unconcerned. “And I know perfectly well that I’m capable of getting myself spotless in one small pan of hot water. And after I’ve bathed in it, I can shave in it.”

  Elaine gaped at him. “You? You’re the one who loves to use up all the hot water with twenty-minute showers.”

  “If it’s available, why not?” Brad countered. “But loving to do it and having to do it are two different things. Just give me a couple of quarts of hot water—I’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” Elaine said sarcastically. “Then you can boil a gallon at a time and I’ll use what’s left.”

  “Before we get too involved in the glories of primitive living,” Glen interrupted, “I have a question. How on earth did you get Harney Whalen to rent you the old Baron house? We tried, and he absolutely refused.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to rent to someone with children,” Elaine suggested.

  “That old house?” Rebecca said. “I don’t mean to sound negative—God knows it’s a lot better than this—but still, it isn’t a place children can do much damage to.”

  “It was something else,” Glen said. “I’m still not sure exactly what it was. I thought it had something to do with us personally at first, but then I changed my mind I figured he just didn’t want to rent the house at all, especially to strangers. I guess I was wrong.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Brad said pensively. “He wasn’t eager to rent to us either. When he finally did he was acting strange, almost as though he was thinking about something else entirely.”

  “That is strange,” Rebecca commented.

  “This whole place is strange,” Brad offered. “I think I’ll write a book about it.”

  “A book?” Glen looked at Brad critically, then shook his head. “Nope. You don’t look like a writer.”

  “I’m not,” Brad said. “But I’ve been kicking around an idea for a book for a long time. Now seems like a good time to do it, and Sod Beach seems like a good place. So here we are.”

  “Just like that?” Rebecca asked.

  “Well, not quite,” Elaine replied. “We have to go back to Seattle and dose up our house. But I should think we’ll be moving out here in a couple of weeks.”

  “Two weeks,” Rebecca said, almost under her breath. “I can make it that long.” She hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but everyone in the room heard her. Glen looked embarrassed, but Brad decided to probe.

  “I’m not sure what that means,” he said with a tentative smile that he hoped would put Rebecca at her ease.

  Rebecca flushed a deep red and tried to recover herself. “Nothing, really,” she began. Then she changed her mind. “Yes, I do mean something by it,” she said. “It’s damned lonely out here and sometimes I’m frightened. You have no idea how glad I am that you’re going to be living just down the beach. I know it may sound strange since I barely know you, but sometimes this place gets to me. Now I won’t be the only one.”

  “The only one?” Elaine repeated Rebecca’s last words.

  “The only stranger here,” Rebecca said. Then she looked from Brad to Elaine, her expression almost panicky. “You are strangers here, aren’t you? You don’t have relatives in Clark’s Harbor?”

  “I see,” Elaine said, leaning back and relaxing. She smiled at Rebecca. “No, we don’t know a soul here except you, and we’re not related to anybody, and,” she added in a rush, “I know exactly what you’re talking about It’s not easy to be a stranger in Clark’s Harbor, is it?”

  “It’s terrible,” Rebecca said softly. “Sometimes I’ve wanted to just pick up and leave.”

  “Why haven’t you?” Elaine asked.

  “Lots of reasons,” Rebecca said vaguely. “We’ve got most of our money tied up here—not that there’s very much of it. If we were to leave now we wouldn’t have anything left.”

  “And, of course, there’s Robby,” Glen added quietly.

  Rebecca looked almost embarrassed but Brad picked the subject of Robby up with apparent eagerness. “The change in him is almost unbelievable. In fact, if I hadn’t seen him myself, I wouldn’t have believed you. And you don’t have any idea what caused it?”

  “Not the slightest.” Glen shrugged. “But we aren’t about to question it either. As long as Robby stays the way he is now, we’ll stay in Clark’s Harbor, come what may.”

  “How bad has it been?” Elaine asked. “Or am I prying?”

  “You’re not prying at all,” Rebecca said emphatically. “In fact, maybe it would be good for us to talk about it, just to hear what someone else thinks. Sometimes we think we’re paranoid about Clark’s Harbor. But frankly, I hate to subject you to it—it’s so depressing.” She picked up the bottle of wine and refilled everyone’s glass.

  “Oh, come on,” Elaine said. “If nothing else at least it’ll let us know what we’re in for.”

  Softly, almost as if she were ashamed, Rebecca explained how they had come to feel that the whole town was somehow united against them. “But there’s never anything you can put your finger on,” Glen finished. “Every time somet
hing goes wrong there’s always a reasonable explanation. Except that I always have the unreasonable feeling that if I weren’t a stranger here none of it would ever have gone wrong at all. And then, of course, there was this morning.”

  “This morning?” Elaine thought a moment. “Oh, you mean Mrs. Shelling?”

  Glen nodded and Rebecca’s face tightened.

  “Did you know her?” Brad probed.

  “Not really,” Glen said. “I ran into her last night on the beach. Apparently just before she did it.”

  “Just before she did it?” Elaine echoed. “You don’t mean—?”

  “It happened on our property,” Glen said. “Our land goes back into the woods to the road, then parallels the road for a hundred feet or so. Miriam Shelling hanged herself from one of our trees.”

  “Oh, God,” Elaine said softly. “I’m so sorry. Rebecca—it must have been terrible for you.”

  “I keep seeing her,” Rebecca whispered. “Every time I close my eyes I keep seeing her. And the kids—what if one of them had seen her?”

  “But it wasn’t anything to do with you,” Brad said.

  “Wasn’t it?” Rebecca’s face was bleak. “I keep wondering. We talked to Miriam yesterday. She came to the gallery and started ranting at us. We thought she was just upset—”

  “Obviously she was,” Brad pointed out.

  “She kept saying ‘they’ got her husband and ‘they’ were going to get us too. And then last night—” Rebecca broke off her sentence and fought to keep from bursting into tears. While she struggled to hold herself together, her husband spoke.

  “So you can see, it hasn’t been easy.” He laughed self-consciously. “Some welcome we’re giving you, huh? Really makes you want to settle down here, doesn’t it?”

  “Actually, yes, it does,” Brad said. The Palmers stared at him. “You mentioned paranoia, and I’m not sure you were so far off base. You two have been living in pretty much of a vacuum out here as far as I can tell. Odd things happen in vacuums. Things get blown all out of proportion. Things that would seem small in ordinary circumstances suddenly seem terribly important And the longer it goes on, the worse it all seems to get But the key word is ‘seems.’ How bad are things, really? Are you going to be able to open the gallery before you run out of money?”

  “It looks like it, but I’m not sure how we’ve managed.”

  “You want me to tell you? By working steadily along, dealing with whatever has happened. Actually, everything has gone pretty much according to plan, hasn’t it?”

  “Well, I’d hoped to have the gallery open by now—”

  “Hoped,” Brad pounced. “But what had you planned on?”

  Glen grinned sheepishly. “Actually, if you get right down to it, I’m a little bit ahead of schedule. I allowed a lot of time for clumsiness.”

  “So what’s really gotten to you is the attitude you’ve run into, or more accurately, what you think you’ve run into.”

  “Oh, come on, Brad, be fair,” Elaine cried. “You know damned well what Clark’s Harbor is like for strangers. You can read it all over the place. And you heard as well as I did what those people were saying about Glen the first day we were in town.”

  “They were talking?” Glen said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Elaine looked away, wishing she hadn’t spoken so quickly.

  “Well, that’s something new,” he went on. “When I’m around that’s like everyone’s been struck dumb. What were they saying?”

  “Oh, just the typical small town stuff about artists,” Elaine said, forcing a lightness she didn’t feel into her voice. But Rebecca would not let the subject drop.

  “It must have been more than that,” she said gently. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have remembered it.”

  “Well, the gist of the conversation—if you can call it that, since it was mostly just backbiting—was that no one in town seems to be glad you’re here,” Elaine told them. “But I’m glad you’re here,” she went on, “for the same reasons you’re glad we’re coming. Maybe we can take the curse off the place for each other.” Elaine caught herself and glanced from one face to the other. “Sorry about that I’m beginning to sound like Miriam Shelling, aren’t I?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rebecca said. “Suddenly, with some people around and a couple of glasses of wine, I think I’m beginning to see some reason again. But an hour ago I wasn’t Is there any more wine in that bottle?”

  Glen poured them each another round, then went out to find another log for the fireplace.

  “I really am glad you’re going to be here,” Rebecca said while he was gone. “I had no idea how dependent I’d become on people till we moved up here and all of a sudden there wasn’t anyone to talk to. Sometimes I’ve thought I was going out of my mind, and I think Glen’s felt the same way. We’ve been holding on for so long now, telling each other it’s going to get better. But until tonight I didn’t believe it. Now I do.” She grinned suddenly. “I hope I don’t get to be a nuisance—I suspect I’ll be running up and down the beach every five minutes at first, just making sure you’re really there.”

  “You’d better be,” Elaine replied. “If you’re not I’ll have to do all the running, just to find out how to survive without electricity.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Whalen about putting some in?” Glen said, returning in time to hear the last “It shouldn’t cost much from where you are—the main line runs out almost as far as your house.”

  “Not worth it,” Brad said. “And even if it were I doubt Whalen would go for it For some reason he seems to be rooted in the past. He made a big deal out of telling us the old Indian story about the Sands of Death.”

  “That’s not so funny, considering what happened last night,” Elaine pointed out.

  “Except that Mrs. Shelling killed herself,” Brad said. “No one else was involved, and she certainly wasn’t buried on the beach in the style of the story Whalen told us.”

  No, but the dog was, Elaine thought suddenly. She said nothing, standing up instead: sending Brad a signal that it was time for them to leave.

  A few minutes later they started the long walk back down the beach.

  Glen and Rebecca watched them go until they were only shadows in the moonlight Then they closed the cabin door and put their arms around each other.

  “Things are going to get better now, aren’t they?” Rebecca whispered.

  “Yes, honey, I think they are,” Glen said softly. He didn’t tell Rebecca about the strange feeling he had gotten while he was out getting the log: the strange feeling of being watched….

  11

  “Well, that’s that,” Elaine said as she closed the last suitcase and snapped the latches into place. She began her final inspection of the room, pulling each of the drawers open, then moved on into the bathroom. “Damn,” Brad heard her say.

  “The hair dryer?” he called.

  “What else?” Elaine replied, returning to the room with the offending object in her hand. She stared glumly at the suitcase on the bed, mentally rearranging it so that the cumbersome dryer would fit “Maybe I’ll just throw it on the back seat,” she speculated. She tossed the hair dryer onto the bed and dropped heavily into one of the chairs, glancing around the room as if she expected some other item she had overlooked to appear suddenly from her new vantage point.

  “You were right,” she said suddenly. “This is a nice room. In a way I hate to leave it.”

  “We’ll be back.”

  “Yes, but not here.” She sighed and got to her feet, reaching for the coat Brad was holding. “Do I need this today?” She looked doubtfully out the window; the sun was shining brightly and the harbor lay softly blue below her.

  “It’s a bit snappy out,” Brad said. He picked up the dryer. “What about it? The back seat?”

  Elaine scowled at him playfully and reopened the suitcase.

  “As if you didn’t know.” She quickly reorganized the suitcase, mostly a matter of
stuffing several of Brad’s shirts further into a corner, and crammed the dryer in. It was a struggle but the suitcase closed.

  “How come the dryer always winds up ruining my clothes?”

  “Yours are cheaper, and besides, you don’t care how you look,” Elaine teased. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”

  Each of them picked up two suitcases and they left the room, its door standing open, to make their way down stairs. Merle Glind looked up when he saw them coming but didn’t offer to help them with the luggage.

  “Checking out?” he inquired.

  “No, actually we’re just moving our luggage around,” Brad replied, but the sarcasm was lost on the little innkeeper. He set the luggage down and tossed the key onto the desk. Glind picked it up and examined it carefully, then pulled their bill from a bin on his desk, matched the room number to the number on the bill, and began adding it up. Brad suppressed a smile as he noted that their bill had been the only one in the bin, and wondered what Glind would have done if the numbers had failed to match. He handed Glind a credit card, which was inspected minutely, then signed the voucher when it was presented to him. He wasn’t surprised when Glind carefully compared the signature on the voucher with the one on the back of the card. Finally Glind returned the plastic card and smiled brightly.

  “Hear you folks rented the old Baron house,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Brad said neutrally as he slipped his credit card back into his wallet.

  “Not much of a house,” Merle remarked. “No electricity. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roof leaks.”

  “Well, we’ll be living mostly on the first floor anyway, so I don’t expect a few leaks will bother us.”

  Merle stared hard at Brad, then decided he was being kidded. He chuckled self-consciously. “I suppose you folks know what you’re doing,” he said, “but if I were you, I’d think twice, then think twice again before I moved out there.”