John sighed in relief—Olaf was finally ready to talk. He removed a small portable cassette recorder from his pocket and showed it to the old man, “Do you mind if I record this?” he asked.
“Can’t say … as I ever … been recorded … before. Suit … yourself. Let’s see now…. Paul Condor … yuh, yuh … I remember that boy. Killed his father … must be … nigh onto twenty years or more by now.”
Pelky found himself wanting to reach out and shake the words out of the old man. At his present rate of speech Swenson was going to be relating the story for the next six months. “2003,” he added, trying to spur the old man into his tale.
“Yup. That’d be … about right …’03. That was a mighty poor year … around these parts…. What with the plywood mill … shuttin’ down and all.”
“Mr. Swenson,” John said, “we’ve driven a long way to speak with you and we have a long drive home after we’re done. Please just tell us about Paul Condor.”
“Ain’t a whole lot to it. He … just got tired of that … drunken father of his … beatin’ the shit outta him and blamin’ him … for his mother’s death and … he … killed him.”
The boy killed his mother?” John asked.
“Now … it ain’t like it sounds.” Swenson became defensive. “If the old man had been around and not off drunk … he could have gotten her down to Caribou … and into Cary Hospital. That boy … was so big … that when she dropped him … he all but tore her apart…. If’n she coulda had some medical help … maybe they coulda taken it….” He struggled trying to find a word. “Oh … hell. You know … that operation they named after that … Roman feller.”
“Caesarean,” Pelky added.
“Yeah … that’s it. He sure was one big heifer … that’s for sure. Anyways … the old man beat that boy … like a redheaded stepchild…. Didn’t seem to need any reason … either…. He’d just up and whale the shit out of that boy … for just any old thing. Sadie, that’s my ol’ woman. She’s been dead … nigh on ten year now. She always said that one day … that boy was going to get his fill … and then Wally would be wearing his asshole … for a necktie. Well … boys. She was right as rain…. By the ol’ sweet Jesus was she ever right. That boy … finally had all he could stand … and he ripped ol’ Wally apart … just like he was nothing but a sack of guts…. Which I guess is all he ever was anyhow…. Let me tell you boys about that night…. It was the January thaw … and raining like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock, it was.”
The old man sat back and smiled at his guests. “Yup … I’ll sure as hell always … remember that night. Goddamnedest storm we ever had in these parts…. Thunder and lightnin’ … so hard it would scare your old woman right out of her monthly—”
“We get the point,” John said, cutting the old man off.
“Well,” the store owner went on, “they never did find out … who it was done it. I think it was the boy…. He ain’t never been seen since.”
It became evident to John they were not about to learn any more from the old man and he stood up. If I have to listen to this guy’s slow rambling any longer I’ll go nuts, he thought. “Well, Bob,” he said, “I guess we’ve learned all there is to learn here, and it’s a long drive back to Lyndon Station.”
Bob stood up with a look of relief and nodded his grateful agreement. “Yup, I guess we’d better be going.”
Neither man said anything until they were safely away from Swenson’s store and Bob was expertly guiding the four-by-four through the snow-covered curves of the twisting secondary road leading out of Oslo. John broke the silence: “Well …” he said in a parody of Swenson, “what … do … you … think … of … that … story?”
Bob playfully punched him on the left arm and said, “Enough already! That old man makes clock-watching exciting!”
John chuckled and said, “Seriously. Do you think the kid did his old man in?”
“I’ve seen some pretty big fellahs get kicked around by their fathers, mothers too for that matter. I mean kids who outweigh the adults by fifty or sixty pounds and could hand them their heads in a wicker basket. But for some reason they let the parents beat the living shit out of them and don’t lift a finger.” Bob’s face began to redden with a sudden searing anger. “Fuck, they even make excuses for the people who abuse them, say it’s their fault for misbehaving.
“John you wouldn’t believe some of the assholes that have kids! They beat the kids when they do something wrong; they beat them when they do something good; and they beat the kids when they do nothing at all!”
John listened to Pelky’s harangue and found himself remembering his childhood and his mother’s alcohol-fueled rages. He recalled her bending over and shoving her face into his, the alcohol on her breath reeking, shouting, and mocking him until he would cry. He remembered shaking in fear, knowing if he answered her questions she would beat him with the heavy wooden yard stick she always brandished when she was correcting him for some offense, real or imagined. He felt the hopelessness wash over him; to say something meant a beating, yet to say nothing also meant a severe walloping. To cry would leave him open to her favorite line, “Does the baby want a reason to cry?” John’s mind filled with the vision of her face as she shook the menacing wooden stick, “Well I’ll give you a reason to cry you goddamned sissy!” On the other hand, not to cry had always been interpreted as rebellion and it usually led to the most severe beatings of all.
John found his mind drifting to her funeral and the anger he felt as he stood dry eyed before her coffin. He was angry with his father for showing grief over the death of his son’s tormentor. He was angry at the relatives who for years had downplayed her alcoholism. Their hushed denial robbing young John of anyone with whom he could talk out his anger and frustration, as well as his fear and hatred of his mother. And now, those very people were openly admitting she was a hard woman. He was most angry, however, because he felt grief for her death. In fact he was torn between a desire to cry and the desire to break out into a dance of joy singing Ding-dong the bitch is dead, the wicked bitch is dead….
Two days after the funeral John had been sorting through a dresser in his old room and came across his baby book, and he began to leaf through it. He was astounded by what he read in the old book. The author, while he knew it to be his mother, was a stranger. She had written flowing passages about the firsts of her son’s life with such obvious love and pride that John closed the book and hung his head in his hand. “Who was this woman?” he asked aloud. Suddenly sobs racked his body and tears rolled down his cheeks. He finally allowed himself to grieve. He grieved not for the woman who now lay cold in the ground but rather for the woman who had written in the baby book twenty-eight years before. John grieved for the loss of the mother he had once had, a woman he now had no memory of.
“John?”
“What?” Bob’s voice brought John back from his journey into the past.
“You left me and went off inside yourself without answering my question. Do you think the kid killed his old man?”
“If the abuse was as bad as Swenson said I only wonder why it took him so long. John thought about his childhood: Why did it take me so long to rebel against her? Why didn’t I kill her?
“Well,” Pelky said, “when I get home I’m calling the Department of Child and Family Services and see if anything was ever reported about Paul Condor.”
“Yeah, I’d like to know myself.” John lit a cigarette, cracked his window, and leaned back in the seat, suddenly exhausted. “I hope the weather clears. The forecast is for a clear day but you couldn’t tell it by this stuff.” John inhaled on the cigarette and stared at the snowflakes diving through the car’s headlights like white moths flying to a brilliant death. He slowly exhaled and forced his mind into nothingness.
It was close to six in the evening when Pelky and John drove into Lyndon Station. Neither had said much during the return trip from Oslo. Had they spoken the thoughts weighing heavy on their minds, they w
ould have been amazed to discover how much they had in common, not only with each other but with the Wendigo as well. They were both struggling with empathetic feelings for the vile freak of nature.
When Pelky and John stepped out of the car in front of Pelky’s house, Laura walked out to meet them. She looked at John and noticed he was still and haggard from the trip and the effects of the ordeal he had survived two days before. “Could you give me a ride to my room, John?”
John smiled weakly and said, “Sure. Just give me a minute okay?”
“Sure, I’ll wait in your truck. I took the liberty of warming it up about a half hour ago.”
John smiled and followed Pelky into the house.
He waited until Elaine released her husband from a long, welcoming embrace before he spoke. “I just wanted to thank you for the other night. It meant a lot to me.”
Pelky shrugged off the thank you and said, “No problem. It was the least we could do.”
“Well, it meant a lot. I don’t know what I’d do without you guys. I’ll see you in the morning, Bob. And, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep this.” He held up the cassette tape containing Swenson’s long soliloquy about Paul Condor.
“Sure. I doubt I could stand listening to that guy again. At least not for a few days anyhow.”
John nodded and left to join Laura.
John parked in front of Laura’s cabin and saw her compact parked alongside the building. “I see you got your car fixed,” he said.
“John,” Laura said, turning to face him. “Would you like to go to dinner with me? I really don’t want to be alone right now.”
“You too, huh?”
“Why don’t you go over to the diner and get us some burgers and maybe pick up some beer? We can eat it here. That is, if you don’t mind?”
“Sounds good to me. Do you want to come with me to the diner?”
“No, I’ll get a fire going while you go.”
“All right, give me a half hour.” He watched her safely into the cabin and drove away.
_____________
Laura dumped the refuse from the inexpensive meal into a trash can and, carrying two fresh beers, rejoined John on the small couch. John had been mechanically watching the news on the small black-and-white television, and looked up when she sat next to him. “John, what did you guys find out today?”
“About Condor? I don’t know if it’s believable.” He held out the tape. “This can tell you about it better than I can.”
Laura took the tape and held it delicately in her hand. “Can I listen to it?”
“Sure. There’s nothing there would stand up in court but, if you can stand that old man’s slow tongue, I’ll listen to it again. There ain’t anything there proves Condor is the Wendigo. But, I do know there is one running loose out there in the woods.”
She sipped on her beer and gave John a serious look. “Let’s change the subject. Tell me about John Bear. You don’t fit my picture of the type of person who runs around the woods for a living.”
“Well,” he said with an impish grin, “in the beginning I was born to a virgin….”
She playfully punched him on the biceps, “Be serious, I’m interested in you—very interested.”
“Okay, I was raised here in Aroostook County, got disillusioned with my life, joined the Marines, went to war, came home, and became a warden. That’s me in a nutshell.”
“Sounds pretty dull,” she said in mock seriousness. “Something tells me there is more to you than that.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” John replied, taking a drink. “There is always a lot more to people than they tell others. Now take Bob …”
“You really think a great deal of him don’t you?”
“Bob and I have a lot in common. We both went to war full of delusions of grandeur, ideals, and enthusiasm. We came home filled with resentment, grief, and turmoil. I guess he’s about the only person around here I feel understands me at all. We walked the same walk, so to speak.”
“Tell me about how you saved his life.”
John finished off the can of beer and she saw, for the first time, the pain he held imprisoned inside of himself. He slid down in the seat and rested his head on the back. “There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “Bob was captured by the enemy and I trailed them for two days before I found him. Wasn’t all that exciting, just part of the job….”
Laura found herself touched by the pain and grief in his voice and on his face. She saw he was trying to minimize it, without much success. He doesn’t realize it shows, she thought, but it’s there like a boil that’s about to burst. What he needs is someone to lance the boil and let the poisonous pain out. Then he and all the other veterans of that disgusting war can finally heal.
“It sounds as if you have a good friend.”
“My best, don’t misunderstand me now, Murph’s a good friend, too. But Bob, well with Bob there’s an attachment most men can never hope to realize. It’s sort of a brotherhood of pain. We went through a lot together.” He stared off to a place only he could see and tears began to gather in the corner of his eyes. “I don’t make a lot of friends,” he said, his voice trailing off in a detached monotone, “but whether a man is my friend or not, no one deserves to die like Ryan Kelly did. He was butchered like an animal.” His voice trailed off to a moving silence and he stared into his beer.
Laura sat still. She felt the weight of John’s silence but was at a loss as to how she should break it. Again she was touched by his deep sense of loss over the violent, unnecessary death of a young man. She felt herself being pulled into his deep remorse, perhaps by some innate maternal instinct. When she looked at him she saw a lonesome man staring off into space. She slid across the couch and took him in her arms. She looked up into his downturned face and gently kissed him. They would later wonder if the passionate evening that followed was due to their attraction for each other or from the need of two bewildered people for intimate contact.
_____________
It was early when John awoke. He lay quiet in the bed, staring at the ceiling, savoring the warmth of Laura’s soft, nude body as she nestled against his side. He replayed the week’s events in his mind, visualizing the sights of the dead bodies of both Ryan Kelly and Raymond Labelle as vividly as if they were in the room with him. The sound of his father’s mournful monotone vibrated in his head. The thoughts haunted him. He recalled the confrontation in the woods and he decided upon a course of action. A course he was sure would put him in jeopardy of meeting a fate similar to that of Ryan and Raymond. John shuddered.
Laura sighed softly in her sleep and rolled over, pushing against him as she moved yet closer to the warmth of his body. Her feminine smell took his thoughts away from the Wendigo and its victims and pushed them in a softer, more pleasurable direction.
He suddenly felt the room’s chilly temperature; the cabin’s woodstove needed wood. Trying to keep from waking Laura, he placed one naked foot on the floor and hissed when the cold caused him to inhale sharply. Damn it, he thought, why in hell doesn’t Del put oil heat in these cabins? Bracing his body against the chilly air, he slowly swiveled into a sitting position and placed his other foot onto the frigid hardwood floor. He eased himself out of the bed and felt his entire body erupt in a layer of goosebumps.
“John?” Laura mumbled from a state of half sleep.
“Yeah.” He slid into his trousers.
“You leaving?”
“No, I’m just going to stoke the fire.”
“Hurry back,” she purred. She burrowed deeper into the blankets, preserving the warmth trapped there.
“Don’t worry, I’ll only be a few minutes.”
John walked from the tiny bedroom and was in a quandary as to what he intended to do. The rational half of his brain was telling him to get dressed and to run like hell. Run until he was far from the horror and upheaval Lyndon Station had come to represent. However, the human brain is a complex computer, one that also has an emotion
al part, so logic and rational thinking did not always win out. The emotional half of his brain recalled one of his father’s favorite sayings. Each and every time John had gone to the old man with a problem requiring actions contrary to those John wanted to take, he had heard the same thing. The nostalgic phrase came to the forefront of his mind: “Son,” his father had said, “there are times when what we want to do and what we know deep in our hearts we must do are two entirely different things.”
“But,” the bewildered boy had answered, “how will I know which way to go?”
“Listen to your guts boy, the brain will lie to you—it is intelligent. Your guts now, they ain’t got the sense God gave a housefly, but they react on instinct—on what they feel is right. Sometimes there just ain’t any logical reason to do what your gut says has to be done, even though your brain will deny it, it just has to be done. I guarantee you, boy, if you ignore your gut instinct that brain of yours will turn on you later on and you’ll wish you hadn’t listened to it. When you don’t know which way to go, just stop. Stop and listen to your gut. You’ll never regret it.”
There was no doubt in John’s mind as to what he wanted to do. He wanted to run. Tuck his tail between his legs and run like a scalded dog. But he knew what his gut was saying and what he would do—tomorrow morning he was going to find the Wendigo. Even if it killed him.
John took out his cell phone and called the DIF&W district headquarters in Ashland. When the dispatcher answered he said, “This is John Bear. I need a plane in the morning.”
When he’d made the necessary arrangements, he opened the stove door and tossed two good-sized pieces of firewood onto the glowing coals covering the bottom of the fire chamber. He saw the coals flare up into flames and then returned to the warmth of the bed, and Laura’s willing body.
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