Stutter Creek

by Ann Swann

  She supposed comparing herself to a stray dog was sort of silly, but she’d always had an affinity for animals. It was as if they knew she was trustworthy. As a child, she’d always been the one bringing home the stray dog or cat.

  Beth wished the little dog were still with her. Hard to believe she’s been gone over a year now. If not, she would be right here beside me, offering her own brand of doggy comfort. Perhaps when I get home I’ll adopt another dog. Or just sit out on the front porch and wait for one to adopt me.

  The turn to the driveway of the cabin appeared suddenly through the trees, taking her by surprise the way it always did, even though she had been watching for the opening for two miles.

  It was late now, full dark, but the moon reflecting off the snow lit up the landscape. It made it easy for her to see that the driveway was undisturbed except for the tracks of a small animal, a fox perhaps, going from one side of the yard to the other.

  Beth was so grateful that her father had held on to the small cabin. It felt more like home now than the split-level back in Sandy.

  The short distance from the road to the cabin ended in a circle drive that led right up to the front door. Beth turned off the engine and listened to the silence for a moment. Then she stepped from the car carefully, feeling around with her toe for ice beneath the snow. Apparently, the weather had been mild. The snow was fresh, no frozen hazard lurking underneath.

  Holding fast to her key ring, Beth made the few steps from the car to the covered porch. She found the cabin key by feel. It was a skeleton key. She had taken it from her father’s key ring and placed it on hers shortly after the funeral. It was like a talisman. It made her feel better.

  Her dad had possessed quite a dramatic sense of humor. He had found the ancient lock interesting, so he’d had an expert repair it when they had first bought the ramshackle cabin back when she was just a little girl.

  The porch was inhabited by shadows, some shallow, near the steps, some much deeper, where the porch met the wall. In places some were so black they seemed to be poured on, as though a bucket of ink had been splashed across the front of the cabin. She wondered about the boy again.

  Once she had driven out of the closed-in valley, up a bit higher on the mountain, she had finally gotten through to the DPS via 911. A trooper by the name of Tad Donaldson had met her at the mile marker nearest where the incident had occurred. He’d been very interested in her story. Apparently, a boy had been kidnapped in Albuquerque a couple of weeks earlier.

  Beth felt terrible. Together, she and Trooper Donaldson had driven back along her route, stopping to check every stand of trees on the east side of the highway. They found nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, a fresh, heavy, snow had begun to fall before Beth had even got out of the valley.

  After a couple of hours of searching, the trooper had taken her report and her cell number. He’d also noted the location of the Stutter Creek cabin.

  She’d listened as the trooper contacted dispatch and told them to relay the description of the boy to all local law enforcement offices in the city, county, and state.

  But Beth could tell he was beginning to doubt her story. After searching for a while, Beth noticed the trooper wasn’t making eye contact with her anymore. She didn’t really blame him. It was just too farfetched. How could a child be there one moment and not the next?

  She was beginning to doubt it, herself. When Trooper Donaldson asked her if she’d been under any stress recently, she broke down and told him she was going to the cabin specifically to get away from the sorrow of losing her father and her husband.

  He’d nodded sagely. Then he had regaled her with stories of the many highway accidents he had worked that occurred simply because an exhausted driver swerved to avoid something in the road—like a dancing stove, or a peacock in a top hat. And these folks were not under the influence of anything, he’d said. They were just guilty of operating a motor vehicle on too little sleep, or under too much stress, or both.

  Now, taking a deep breath, Beth slid the key into the lock and turned. It creaked loudly, just as it was supposed to. Her dad had adored that sound. A love of spooky books and movies had been one of the many things they had shared. Campfire stories had been another.

  Toward the end of their marriage, Sam had confessed that he’d often felt jealous of her dad. “I could never compete with him,” he’d told her, after she had caught him in another one of his lies.

  Her friend, Cindy, had chalked it up to Sam trying to shift some of his own guilt onto Beth. But thinking back . . . hadn’t she seen signs that he sometimes felt left out on occasions when they were all together? Their daughter, Abby, certainly hadn’t felt excluded. When she was growing up, she was the light in her Grampa’s eyes. Every weekend, the two of them were together. Just like when Beth, herself, was a girl.

  Sam had never complained about that. If he was jealous of Tom’s relationship with his granddaughter, it never showed. Usually, he would even join them on the camping and fishing trips. Especially when Beth couldn’t go. She had thought it was evidence that he had melded to her dad the same way she had. The way Big John Stockton had that one magical summer.

  But apparently, she’d been wrong. About everything. Her husband’s treachery had come at her like a train out of a black tunnel. Though she may have felt the rumblings, she had willingly believed his lies and excuses right up to the day she had come home from school early and found him and his young lover in her own bed. She didn’t think the pain would ever end, but she hadn’t really had time to process all the hurt because that’s when her dad’s health took a nosedive. Within months, they were both gone. All of them, actually. First, Sam, then Abby, then her dad.

  She shook her head as if to physically clear away the memories the way one would shake a dust mop to get rid of the dust. She flipped a switch and was relieved when light filled the small room. True to form, her dad had made sure the gasoline-powered generator was full and in good repair the last time he’d left the cabin. He had come up here alone after Abby married and moved to Italy. Beth knew he was happy for Abby, having found the love of her life, but she thought that maybe he had also come to grieve the loss of his best camping companion. By then, he’d known his time was getting short, so he’d jokingly told everyone he was going to the cabin to pray for great-grandchildren to be born quickly.

  “I’ll fly to Italy and personally feed them oysters if that’s what it takes!” he had boasted. But everyone knew he hated to fly. It was a huge family joke that was told every time anyone had to make a trip.

  When he and her mother had flown to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon, the plane had experienced electrical problems and had to return to the airport. Everyone had sat quietly while an electrician was brought on board to fix the problem.

  After an hour the electrician packed up his tools and departed. That’s when the captain had jovially announced that he thought they had the problem fixed and they would soon be underway.

  “You think the problem is fixed?” her dad had asked incredulously. Then, so the story goes, he had collected his new bride along with their new carry-on luggage and several dirty looks, and he’d gotten them the hell off the plane.

  Half an hour later, Tom and his new bride, Carrie, had been driving up the interstate in a rented Lincoln Continental listening to Boston on cassette and talking about where they would stop for the night.

  They’d finally made it to Niagara Falls, but by the time they got there, they had experienced a whole blissful week of driving and stopping and seeing the United States of America. He said they had spent only one gorgeous day and night in Niagara before gathering up the checked baggage that had made the plane trip without them. They’d lost their huge honeymoon-suite deposit for being so late, but he claimed they had never regretted one minute of the trip.

  Her dad always said that was the way everything about his married life had been: absolutely no regrets. They were married only three years before Beth was born an
d her mom perished from toxemia.

  Pushing her brown hair off her forehead, Beth vowed to cheer up. Her dad had managed when her mom died, and it would be letting him down if she couldn’t pull herself up out of the mire now. Besides, he’d always assured her that there was life after death. They hadn’t been churchgoers so to speak, but he’d instilled in her a deep respect for God, the creator of all things, and time and again he’d assured her that her mom was with God and the angels. And, one day, they would all be there, reunited.

  Beth sighed. She believed everything he’d taught her; she’d taught Abby the same things—but it was just so hard to accept that he was gone. Now this . . .

  Exhaustion had to be the reason for the hallucination on the highway. That had to be it. She blinked and her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep. She adjusted the propane-fueled heater that would have the little cabin toasty in no time, and she also took a moment to light the fire her dad had laid in the river rock fireplace. Another one of his rules: always lay the fire and have the kindling nearby before you leave.

  Beth was so glad for that little habit that she made a silent vow to always do the same when she left the cabin, even if she wasn’t sure when she would be able to return. It was like the rule her Aunt Clare had about scissors in the kitchen—more valuable than any knife, always have them handy.

  Now, having warmth and light, Beth stooped to turn on the water. The shutoff valve was under the kitchen sink. That pipe and valve were heavily insulated, as were all the pipes in the cabin. Nevertheless, it was always shut off upon leaving. Nothing worse than coming up for a vacation and finding everything flooded and ruined. It hadn’t happened to them, but she had seen it in the nearest neighbor’s cabin two miles down the road. She never wanted to see that again. Things molded quickly here in the rainy spring.

  Finally, Beth made the short trip out to the car to bring in the groceries she’d brought. She wasn’t sure how long she was going to stay, but she thought it was time she did something to help herself stop grieving over someone who no longer wanted her.

  All in all, she seemed set. Though she had never actually stayed at the cabin by herself for more than one or two nights, usually while waiting for her dad or Sam to get off work and join her, or for Abby to finish a college class, this seemed to be the only place where she could really rest and get away from the awful memories of a life that had turned out to be nothing but an illusion. Nothing but a fractured fairytale.

  Chapter Seven

  John had only been home for a couple of weeks, just long enough to get some of the dust swept out of the cabin and the broken windows replaced. He was glad he’d had the forethought to put a metal roof on his tiny home. Otherwise, he felt sure the whole thing would be open to the elements by now. He eyed the back of the house critically. Was there room for a studio? He unpacked his easel and oils carefully, his sketchbooks too. Sometimes, they were the only things that had kept him sane while he was overseas on assignment.

  He stopped unloading his new furniture from the truck just as Turk came crashing through the underbrush. The huge Anatolian Shepherd was so excited to see his master that he stood on his hind legs and placed his giant paws on the big man’s chest. John knew on anyone else, the paws would have landed on shoulders, but he stood six feet four inches tall in his stocking feet. That meant with his lug-soled boots on, he was easily six and a half feet.

  “Hey, mutt,” he mock-scolded. “What happened to your manners? Did you miss me that much? Next time maybe you’ll come when I call. You missed a trip into town. I had to load this new furniture all by myself.” The entire time he was speaking, John was rolling the big dog’s head back and forth, his grip on the thick mane of fur tender and careful. He’d rescued the Shepherd from his very last private bodyguard assignment in Kazakhstan.

  John’s employer was only one of the American contractors responsible for bringing ready-made building supplies to the petroleum-rich country, and they moved from place to place quickly. It was nothing for them to put up an office complex in a matter of days, nor was it unusual for them to have to vacate said complex just as quickly. That’s why the company security was so necessary.

  The last time, when the government liaison had said it was time to vacate, John and his crew had made a last minute sweep through the complex to make sure everyone was out. That’s when a stray bullet came through the window and took out most of Turk’s right shoulder.

  Turk was always with them, he took his job as protector very seriously. Just like any good law enforcement K-9, he had been trained to take down suspects, and search through buildings.

  There were a few differences between Turk and regular German police dogs, however. For starters, his breed originated in Turkey. They were originally bred for guarding livestock and they loved their jobs. In fact, if they didn’t have something to guard, they could become aggressive and hard to handle.

  But that wasn’t the only difference between Anatolian Shepherds and most other guard dogs. Size was their most defining feature. That’s what made them so intimidating. Standing nearly thirty inches at the shoulder, Turk weighed just shy of one hundred fifty pounds. His short, thick fur was the color of buckskin, his ears and muzzle were black, and his lively brown eyes bespoke an intelligence far superior to that of the average dog, police or otherwise. When happy or standing at attention, his long fuzzy tail curled over his back like a question mark, as if to say, “Okay, I’m ready. What next?” Turk was always game for anything. If unregistered dogs had middle names, Courage would have been his.

  Back in Kazakhstan, in the chaos of the battle that had sprung up outside the office complex, the smart thing would have been to leave the injured dog and run for the chopper. Smart, however, didn’t factor in the pleading brown eyes that fastened on John’s as the dog began dragging itself toward the landing pad. Turk knew the drill, when the shooting starts, it’s time to bug out, just like they’d done so many times before.

  With only a split second to decide, John had scooped up the bloody mass of bone and fur on the run. He’d then grabbed a coworker’s hand and would have pulled him from the open chopper door if he hadn’t helped to hoist the big Shepherd inside first. John jumped in when the bird was already two or three feet off the ground. Fortunately, there was a private doctor at the company headquarters who owed John a huge favor—John had been his bodyguard on several occasions. He took care of the wound and made sure the dog was comfortable on the company’s private jet. Then he gave John a giant-size bottle of canine antibiotics and wished him luck.

  Now, John let Turk down gently, making sure not to jar the still-stiff shoulder. It would probably always require cortisone shots to keep from freezing up, but John thought it was a small price to pay for such a remarkably close call.

  With one more pat on the big dog’s head, he turned to finish unloading the truck. In addition to a new generator and refrigerator, John had also splurged on a California King mattress set, a new sofa, and an extra-large recliner. Everything he’d had before had been ruined by mice and squirrels. He regretted not paying someone to look after the place while he was gone, but it was never his intention to be away so long.

  It was still hard for him to believe he had been away from this place for over twenty years. It felt as if he’d never left. The intervening years had passed so quickly, it was as if they belonged to someone else. As if he’d been someone else, perhaps.

  Recruited for private security duty right out of a six year stint in the Army, he’d spent the majority of those twenty years moving from place to place, always looking over his shoulder in his effort to protect whomever he was working for at the time. It had been quite an exciting life.

  He’d never had time to settle down. Actually, he’d never found any reason to settle down. But, the years abroad had changed him. He’d vowed to make Kazakhstan his final assignment, especially after he’d nursed the loyal Shepherd back to health. It was as if Turk was the sign he’d been looking for, the sign that i
t was time to try living a normal life for a change.

  John chuckled as he remembered how much red tape he’d had to go through to get Turk into the States. He reached down to ruffle the broad head again, but the dog was standing off near the edge of the yard, looking at him.

  “What?” he asked, as though the dog could answer. He automatically scanned the perimeter of the clearing, immediately alert for anything out of the ordinary. Turk didn’t bark or whine, he just stood looking at John, obviously wanting something.

  He wrestled the new, Indian-blanket-inspired sofa onto the dusty porch and strode to where Turk appeared to be waiting patiently. Before he reached him, however, the Shepherd turned and disappeared into the forest.

  John was dumbfounded. Turk was usually so well behaved, like a furry shadow at his heels. In fact, today was the first time he had ever seen the animal have an original thought, other than trying to drag himself to the chopper after the shooting. But, of course, that had just been self-preservation.

  He had never acted like this before. Come to think of it, maybe the dog had never been in a pine forest before. Probably wants me to check out a chipmunk or something, John thought, trailing along with a bemused expression on his face.

  Chapter Eight

  In her bright, cheerful living room, Barbara Myers was beginning to worry. Truthfully, she had spent all evening worrying. Now at nearly midnight, she was beginning to panic. The television was on, but Barb couldn’t concentrate on anything, not even Leno, her favorite talk show host.