Stormer’s Pass

by Benjamin Laskin

  “Good dog. Yes, you are…” He petted Beowulf and kissed him on the snout. “I’ve seen a lot of helicopters pass overhead in the past few days. They weren’t just looking for me, were they?”

  “No, there’s been a full-scale search on for both you and Aidos.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean they haven’t found her yet?”

  “No.”

  “Who said she’s dead then?”

  “Well, that’s what everybody thinks.”

  “They haven’t found me and I’m not dead.”

  “You haven’t been missing for months either.”

  Max took Dawn’s hand and led her into the heart of the cave. He lit the burner and started preparing some coffee. He was smiling.

  Dawn continued. “There’s about six feet of snow in parts of these mountains. They think she’s under it.”

  “Hah!” Max scoffed. “Let them. She’s not dead. No way. I can feel it.”

  “Do you think so, Max? Really? How can you be sure?”

  “Dawn, they’re not dealing with a little lost girl. This is Aidos we’re talking about. She’s no more lost in these mountains than a deer or a wildcat. If she doesn’t want to be found, she’s not going to be. She’s not coming down until she’s ready to come down.”

  “But why? She must know that people are worried sick about her?”

  “I’m sure she has her reasons.”

  “Gosh, she sure is brave. It must be very important whatever it is.”

  “To her it is,” Max said. “Hey, what’s that in your pocket?”

  “This?” Dawn chuckled and pulled out a folded beret. She set it on her helmet of shiny, black hair, which was cut straight across just below her ears. She saluted.

  Max smiled and nodded approvingly. “You look like a French partisan,” he said. “A freedom fighter.”

  “I do?” She beamed. “I feel like one. We all do.”

  “Who’s we?” Max said, amused.

  “The Olympians. We all have one. Except Steve. He prefers his Walt Whitman hat. Here—” she said, reaching into her jacket. “This is yours.”

  Max took the black wool beret, snapped the creases out on his thigh and put it on.

  “So,” he joked, “what freedom is everyone fighting for?”

  “Yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “It’s just our way of saying that we’re all with you, Max.” She walked over to him and gave him a hug. Her head only came up to his collarbone.

  “How’s my family?” he asked.

  “The girls are fine, except Samantha got into a fight at school because one of her classmates called you a criminal.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, but the girl’s mother is making your mom pay for the dress she ripped up.”

  “And my mom?”

  “Not well, I’m afraid. She closed the restaurant.”

  Max stuffed his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. “Give this to my mom,” he said, handing Dawn a wad of crumpled bills. “And tell her to take what’s under my mattress. It should hold her for a month or so.”

  “Then what?” Dawn asked, tucking the money into the zippered pocket of her jacket.

  “Tell her there’s more and to go see a doctor for crying out loud.”

  “She’s worried. We all are.”

  Max shook his head, sorry. “I’ve been nothing but a pain to her my whole life. She’s had a crappy life. She married a turd and had two stinkers for sons.”

  “That’s not true, Max,” Dawn protested. “You help all you can. You’re just different, that’s all. You’re a good person and you’ll prove them all wrong. You wait.”

  Max didn’t say anything. Instead he picked the kettle off the stove and poured two mugs of thick, bitter coffee. He handed one to Dawn who cupped it in her gloved hands and held it poised under her chin to feel the warmth of the steam.

  “You’ve helped me,” she said softly. “And the others too.”

  He chose to ignore her comment and walked over to a flat rock and sat down. He blew into his coffee and took a sip.

  “You have,” she repeated. “You and Aidos both.”

  “How?”

  “Gosh,” Dawn said, “the fact that I’m here says everything. A year ago I would have been terrified to walk through the woods by myself. I just wouldn’t have. I’m not afraid like I used to be. I don’t cry as much. I see so many things differently now, and…well, I’m glad.”

  She walked over and sat down beside him.

  “Different how?” Max asked.

  “Me. I’m different. I used to think life was something other people lived, not me. I mean, sure, I had a life, but I never believed that mine could ever be very exciting. Not really. But it can be, and it is. I tried telling this to my parents but they said I was being cheeky and acting too big for my britches. And you know what I said?”

  Max shook his head.

  “I said, I’ll just have to get bigger britches because I think life is too darn interesting not to get excited about it!”

  Max winced, knowing very well the sort of people her parents were. “And what did they say to that?”

  “That that was no way for a nice Christian girl to talk. Well, I said, this is the way I am and God loves me anyway. He knows there’s a gospel in me no preacher has ever heard!”

  “Ouch,” Max said, and then he shook her hand in congratulations. “Good for you, Dawn.”

  “Yeah. But boy would they throw a fit if they knew I was here.”

  “Because you’re with me, or because you went off by yourself?”

  “Both,” she answered. “But they don’t like you at all, Max.”

  “What did I ever do to them? Except fix the brakes on their station wagon and repair their busted pipes.”

  “That’s what I said. But they think you’re possessed. My dad says you’re a menace to society and should be locked up.”

  Max chuckled. “I’m living in a cave. Isn’t that good enough? Listen, you have to get going if you’re not going to be late for school. Do me a favor and tell Steve to meet me in the alley behind my mom’s restaurant at midnight. Tell him to bring my tool box and to get some rest because we have a full night’s work ahead of us.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Max smiled mischievously. “I’m tired of watching my shadow on the wall.”

  49

  Capers

  The elevator door slid open and out stepped Mayor Fitch, Jack Austin, Gary Webber, Mason Kohl, and Ed Boswell. The mayor led them down the corridor of the new courthouse. Cowboy art dominated the decor and it smelled of new carpeting. The mayor’s secretary, a portly woman with whipped-up hair and wrists jangling with costume jewelry, greeted them.

  “Any messages?” Fitch asked petulantly.

  “The sheriff called to say he’d be late. He’s at the Moonridge site. Seems there was another break-in there.”

  The mayor slammed his fist down on her desk. “Dammit!”

  “What kind of a town are you running here, Fitch?” Ed Boswell said, furious. “It’s been six weeks since you’ve been looking for Stormer and he’s still wreaking havoc. I’m two months behind schedule! Do you realize how much money that means?”

  “Excuse me,” the secretary interrupted. “The sheriff said he’s holding two suspects and will bring them in with him.”

  “Two?” Fitch said. “Did he say who?”

  “No.”

  “All right. If he calls again I want to talk to him. Did he say when he’ll be here?”

  “No, he just said he’d be late.”

  “What about this Thoreson character, where’s he? He’s supposed to be here now too.”

  “He wouldn’t call,” Ed Boswell said. “He doesn’t have a telephone.”

  “Doesn’t have—?”

  “No one else called, sir,” the secretary said. “Except for your wife. She said the car won’t start.”

  “It’s a brand new car, for Chrissa
kes! What does she mean it won’t start?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. All she said was that it wouldn’t start.”

  “All right, dammit. Call the garage and get someone over to look at it. Jesus, I tell you…”

  The mayor saw the impatience in the other men’s faces. He dropped the subject and motioned them towards his office. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and followed them in. Sticking his head back out, he told his secretary he wanted no interruptions.

  “Well,” the mayor said to the men huddled together in the center of the room, “have a seat already. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  They turned and gave him a vague, quizzical look.

  “Well…” Fitch said, presenting the room with open arms. “Sit.” The mayor tracked their uneasy gazes to the surrounding furniture. “The hell!”

  “Am I to understand,” Ed Boswell said, “that you had all this furniture custom-made?”

  “Of course not. I’ve been vandalized!”

  All the furniture, including the mayor’s large, handsome oak desk had had their legs sawed off to within four inches of the base. The wheels on the leather chairs, and the metal tabs on the couch, table, and desk had all been meticulously reinserted. The furniture looked as though it had been made for a family of midgets. No other evidence of tampering was visible in the office. The carpet even showed the tracks of having been recently vacuumed.

  Gary Webber said, “Stormer?”

  The mayor rubbed his hand over his balding head and walked around to the back of his desk. He opened his drawers to check if anything was missing. He slammed them shut. Everything seemed to be in order.

  “That does it,” the mayor growled.

  “Does what?” Ed Boswell said. “I’ve yet to see you do anything around here.”

  “How did he get up here?” Jack Austin asked, leaning out the third-story window.

  “He’s a clever young man,” Mason Kohl said. “We’ve quite underestimated him.”

  “He’s a punk,” the mayor snarled.

  “How do we know for sure it’s him?” Boswell asked. “Not one person has seen him since he went into hiding.”

  “It’s his work all right,” Kohl said.

  Fitch said, “Someone has seen him.”

  “Who?” Boswell said. “Why haven’t you checked it out?”

  “We did. Stormer popped up in Timberdale, the next town over, and met with a fellow named Jacobs. He went there to sell his mother’s restaurant. I guess the man has been asking about it for years. He’s got a few pancake houses along the ridge. Maybe you’ve seen them—Flapper Jack’s Pancake Barn? The Stormer kid set up the sale.”

  “Why didn’t you snag him while he was doing all this?” Boswell asked, irritated.

  “He disappeared again before we got wind of it. He had this Hardy Thoreson character handle the paperwork for him. The kid negotiated top dollar for it too.”

  “Isn’t Thoreson guilty of anything, then?” Boswell said. “Abetting a wanted criminal at least?”

  “We can’t prove it,” Gary Webber said. “The mother signed the papers and won’t admit to anything.”

  Tired of standing, the men took seats on the shrunken furniture. They felt silly and looked silly, but no one said anything. Not because they didn’t care to further humiliate the mayor, but because each in his own way felt a victim of the elusive Max Stormer.

  To Mayor Fitch, Max Stormer was an outlaw, a pest, and a threat to his popularity and reputation. He hated the boy and was convinced that he was doing it all just to spite him. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve Stormer’s vengeance. It just wasn’t fair.

  For Mason Kohl, Max Stormer was an abomination who contested his own willful powers. The boy was impervious to intimidation, and for Mason Kohl, that posed a serious threat. Inspired by Stormer’s reckless, liberty-loving spirit, a number of other students had already begun to openly question the principal’s authority. The boy was a walking obscenity and had to be stopped.

  Ed Boswell felt inconvenienced, which for Ed Boswell was intolerable. Accustomed to getting his way, his ambitions in Pinecrest had suddenly snagged, tearing a run in his gilded stockings. All he ever really wanted from Pinecrest was the deliverance of his niece. There was nothing greater he could give to his wife than a daughter, and he could imagine no finer daughter than Aidos. Max Stormer’s shenanigans were making a mess of both his business and his munificence.

  Commercial affairs aside, both Mr. Austin and Gary Webber resented Max Stormer for the fondness Katie had for him. They knew that he was not good enough for her. Gary Webber—young, handsome, Yale-educated, successful, and every father-in-law’s filial wet dream—could not get over the fact that Katie was not crazy about him. His worldly experience and meticulously cultivated persona did not fascinate her, and that was not right.

  “He’s not working alone,” the mayor said. “That we know for certain. He can’t be in two places at once. He’s had help in these capers.”

  “What else has he done besides sabotage Moonridge?” Boswell asked.

  Fitch said, “In the past week alone, he cut down every billboard leading in and out of Pinecrest. He broke into the kennel where the tracking hounds are kept and set them all loose. They joined up with the strays and run around in packs at night raiding garbage cans and crapping on the sidewalks. He also sawed off the ax from the lumberjack statue that the Ladies Auxiliary recently commissioned for the park.”

  “What did he do with the ax?” Boswell asked.

  “He welded it to the lumberjack’s ass. Then, of course, there’s this…” Fitch spread his arms in presentation of his office.

  Kohl said, “He’s been vandalizing my school too. The other day, someone hot-wired a Volkswagen belonging to one of our teachers, a Mr. Bannister. We found it the following morning idling inside the school cafeteria. Don’t ask me how Stormer got it in there. He also wallpapered the boy’s bathroom with the teachers’ grade books and tampered with all the locks on the classroom doors so that nobody could get in.”

  “You must know who his friends are, who’s in on all this,” Ed said accusingly. “Can’t you control a half-dozen juvenile delinquents?”

  “Don’t blame me for this country’s moral turpitude,” the principal snarled. “These kids don’t pick up their depravities at my school. I stand on my scholastic record.”

  “All right, all right,” the mayor said. “This has nothing to do with any of us. Stormer is a sociopath who couldn’t care less about education or anything else. He just wants attention.”

  Ed Boswell said, “So, again, what are you doing about it?”

  “We’re doing what we can. Maybe the sheriff has something for us.”

  “That oaf couldn’t find his own prick in the dark,” Boswell growled, out of patience. “And what about Aidos?”

  “Who?” Jack Austin said.

  “His niece,” Gary Webber said.

  “That’s right, my niece, dammit. You are still looking for her, aren’t you?”

  “What do you want from us, Ed?” the mayor said, trying to remain calm. “We had every available man looking for her. We even called in Search and Rescue. She’s either run away or is under a ten-foot snow bank somewhere. I’m sorry…”

  “She has no money and nowhere to run. She has to be up there.”

  “We couldn’t find her. Not a trace.”

  “You had to have found something,” Ed insisted.

  “All we found was a crazy old hermit who’s been living up in those mountains for thirty years.”

  “Did you question him?”

  “Of course, but he was no help. The old goat is half mad. He said he saw a girl—”

  “When? Where?” Ed pressed.

  “Hold on,” Fitch said. “I said he was a lunatic. He also said he saw Big Foot and flying saucers. A real psycho. He calls himself Doc. That’s all we know. He wasn’t at all happy to see people showing up asking him questions either. He ended up grabbing his g
un and chasing them all away.”

  “What else did he say about the girl?”

  “We’re not even sure it was a girl. He said he saw an angel.” The mayor rolled his eyes, growing more and more annoyed by Boswell’s persistence in the matter. “I’m telling you, he was insane.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t at least check out his story,” Ed said.

  “They did. They searched all over his place for a two-mile radius—dogs, helicopters, a twenty-man ground crew. Nothing.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Me?” the mayor said, indignant. “You think I’m going to go traipsing around those frozen woods? I have a town to run. No, the sheriff found him. He told me the story.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “He should be here any minute. Can we get back to business now?”

  “Not the sheriff. Doc.”

  “Who?”

  “The hermit, dammit!”

  “Mr. Boswell, you’re wasting our…your time. Really, let’s concentrate on Stormer. He’s the one costing you big money. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but honestly, we’ve done all we can.”

  “I want to talk to him. Take me to him.”

  “Ed, be reasonable,” the mayor pleaded.

  “I can pull out of this dump at any time,” Boswell said. “What I’ve lined up, I can dismantle.”

  “With all due respect,” Jack Austin said, “we have signed contracts.”

  “There are a lot of other contracts that aren’t signed yet—”

  “Gentlemen,” interceded a smiling, though worried, Gary Webber. “I see no problem. When the sheriff gets here, we’ll ask him to schedule a copter and Mr. Boswell and I will have a talk with old Doc at the first possible chance. No harm done, right?”

  “Hey,” the mayor said, throwing up his arms in conciliation. “If it’ll make you feel better, go right ahead.”

  “Good,” Webber said, clapping his hands. “Now we’re moving.” He reached for his briefcase, set it on his lap, and popped open the locks. “I’ve got good news for Pinecrest. As a matter of fact, I’ve got great news. I met with the gentlemen from Timberscape Lumbering. With the opening of the new highway next year and all the old-growth woods around here, they are very interested in Mr. Austin’s proposal for reopening the old sawmill. All we’ve got to do to get this ball, or should I say, log, rolling is to—”