The Silent Strength of Stones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  This time I went right by Willow’s cabin and on to Kristen’s. She was sitting on the patio, looking out at the lake, and some big muscular guy in tennis whiles and a crew cut was sitting next to her.

  I watched them for a while. The guy talked to Kristen, but Kristen didn’t even turn to look at him when he spoke. So maybe there was hope. Eventually Kristen’s mom came out with a tray of iced tea glasses and a plate of cookies.

  I decided they were boring and went to check the other Lacey cabins. Four of them had families in them, and one had a couple who obviously weren’t married to each other. Up at the tennis courts I saw Paul rallying with some new guy. I decided to wait until he came into the store before I said hello; that would give me some idea of where we stood this year. I didn’t want to assume something stupid, like we were still friends, if it wasn’t true.

  I should have gone on to check the Hidaway, but somehow I couldn’t stay away from Willow’s cabin any longer.

  This time there were three grown-ups, the two men I’d already seen and a red-haired woman, and all four kids standing out on the back patio facing the lake. I didn’t see the white wolf anywhere. A cooking smell drifted up from the cabin, but it didn’t smell like meat, more like some sort of stew that included a few turnips and lots of onions.

  The family wasn’t talking. They just stood there, staring. Then the woman stretched her arms out in front of her, palms up, and said something. The rest of them murmured. Not a conversation. More like the statement​/​response part of the church services my mom used to take me to. The woman said something else, and the rest of them answered. I couldn’t even move while this went on. There was something so intense about it. The phrase “true believers” drifted through my mind.

  Suddenly all the others lifted their arms, too, holding their hands toward the sky. They sang something in harmony, and something shimmered around them all, maybe flickers of light reflected from the lake water. Maybe not.

  I couldn’t take it anymore, and I lit out running, which was a good thing, because my watch peeped about ten seconds later. I ran so fast that by the time I got home all I was thinking about was breathing, which was a relief.

  Pop and Granddad hadn’t made it home yet. I threw together some Dagwoods for them. The truck pulled up just as I poked the potatoes with a fork and discovered they were done. I turned the oven off and went outside.

  It didn’t take any time at all for Pop to figure out the creel was gone. He waited until we’d unloaded the odds and ends of stuff he’d picked up at thrift stores for resale before he lit into me, though.

  “You should have gotten the guy’s name from her—I got a quarter says she wormed it out of him—and gone after him,” he yelled when I told him Mariah had sold the creel.

  I set a plate loaded with sandwich and steaming potato in front of him and got the butter dish out of the cupboard.

  “What do you call this?”

  “Dinner,” I said. I never could control my mouth when it really counted.

  Granddad was just as happy. He bit into his sandwich and chewed, then grinned at me.

  “You go up to that woman’s cabin and get that name from her! Ten cents says he’s visiting her right now. You make him give you back that creel! She can’t sell things like that, she just can’t. Can’t you make her understand a simple thing like that?”

  I had only explained it to her twenty-six times, and no, I couldn’t get her to understand it.

  “If there was any single other person loose who would cover your danged lunch break I would fire Mariah in a minute!” But of course in the summer everybody else was working at a service job that paid at least minimum wage; Mariah was the only one who’d watch the store for three dollars an hour and a ten percent discount on her food bill. “Why don’t you just eat your lunch behind the register?”

  “Wouldn’t look good,” I said. It was the only way I had gotten him to give me a lunch break in the first place, by convincing him, really hard, with every slippery, bread-smelling word in me, that customers seeing me eat would not come up and try to buy something and we’d lose business.

  “Tell you what,” he said, his voice quieting just a touch from the full-scale yell, “from now on, you eat sitting right behind the curtain, and if you hear her bargaining with somebody for anything off the wall, you come out and fire that bitch right out on her ass! We can close up for half an hour while you eat!” Then he started chomping on his sandwich. I ate in silence.

  After about ten minutes, he said, “Okay, you’ve eaten enough. You get up to her cabin and get her to tell you what she’s done, dammit!”

  I slid my plate into a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator, hoping the rest of my sandwich would be there when I got back. Pop didn’t like me taking anything from the store unless he authorized it first, and I had thrown together supper from the last things he’d authorized. Sometimes when Pop was mad he got especially hungry, and tonight looked like one of those times. He’d eat anything he could find, including my leftover sandwich.

  The way my stomach was clenching, I wasn’t sure I’d be hungry later anyway.

  Mariah lived in a shack up on the ridge, reachable only by footpath. She had a small parking area below where her rusty old VW bug stayed. She used the car so seldom she usually needed a jump to start it. I had crept up close to her house, but I’d never been inside it; she had never invited me. She liked her privacy, and she was generally pretty boring to watch, so I granted it to her.

  I took a flashlight.

  What if Pop was right, and she had some guy with her? He’d never told me I had to go accost Mariah before. Other than training her on the register at the beginning and telling her what she was doing wrong later, I hadn’t exchanged many words with her, actually; what I knew about her, I knew from observing her interactions at the store.

  I started for her place, flashing the light on fallen pine needles and gravel, dreading the confrontation. I reached her parking lot before it occurred to me that I could lie: just tell Pop I had gone to see Mariah, and she had sold the creel to a passing stranger whose name she didn’t know, there was no chance of retrieval, we could kiss the creel good-bye, end of story. Mariah had no telephone. He wouldn’t be able to check the story unless he stormed up the mountain himself, and I wasn’t sure he even knew the way, for all we’d lived here half my life. I could catch her when she came to relieve me at lunch break, brief her before Pop could check with her.

  Less psychic stress on all of us.

  I switched off the flashlight and sat in Mariah’s parking lot, studying the stars and listening to the silence of the night. A faint whiff of wood smoke in the air, a stronger scent of pine needles. Owls hooted somewhere nearby. Something more distant screeched, maybe its tiny death cry as a night hunter killed it. And even farther away, the quavering howl of—of what?

  It came from the direction of the Lacey cabins.

  The wolf dog, I thought.

  Another howl rose and matched it.

  Surely they had only had the one dog?

  I had heard coyotes yipping, and dogs barking, but I’d never heard full-out howling before. It was less scary than just lonesome and sad, until I started thinking about wolves running loose around here. Bears were seldom things around Sauterelle Lake, but when one showed up the community response was slow-motion panic. I had heard that there had never been a documented case of a wolf attacking a human, but just the thought of some large creature with senses better than mine running through the night and maybe sizing me up as a meal was shuddery enough.

  I could run home, or I could go up to Mariah’s. What if Pop had an unlikely interest tomorrow and took a break from the motel desk to work the store before Mariah came in? Every once in a while he did that, especially after trips to the valley. He usually stopped at other stores along the way home, looking for ideas, and then he had to run our store for a little while to make sure it was up to the competition. Better if Mariah and I got our story straight
tonight.

  I switched my flashlight on and headed up the path. Now I found the howls reassuring. At least if they howled I had some idea of where they were, whatever the hell they were, and they were pretty far away.

  The bushes rustled on the left and I jumped a foot. When I shone the flashlight over there, I found nothing but leaves, some still moving.

  Stop it! I thought.

  By the time I reached Mariah’s house, though, I had a pretty good head of steam. I knocked. She opened the door. I pushed in.

  “Nick? Nick?” she said, her voice jumpy.

  “I have to talk to you,” I said. My voice had a trampoline quality, and I was having trouble catching my breath.

  “Oh?” she said.

  I looked around. Her house was log cabinlike, except that at one end where her studio was, the walls were windows, and I’d seen inside—just easel, canvases, paint, mess, table with paper cutter, mat boards. Stuff, not enough human attached to it to make it interesting.

  This room I’d never seen; it was wide and windowless and had a big old bear skin, complete with growling, toothy head, on the floor in front of a river-stone fireplace. Above the fireplace loomed a glassy-eyed moose head. I could smell mildew and turpentine, moth balls, incense smoke, and boiled lentils. A small table stood across the room, with a kerosene lamp glowing on it. A doorway to the right had light coming through it, but I couldn’t see anything except log walls. I wondered where she slept.

  “What, Nick? You’re interrupting me,” Mariah said, having finally found her irritated voice.

  I could see papers spread out on the table by the kerosene lantern, and a jar full of dark water with brushes sticking out.

  “You sold the creel,” I said.

  Her outraged homeowner stance wilted a little.

  “Pop told me I had to come up here and ask you who you sold it to, find out where he is, so we can get it back.”

  “But—”

  “You really shouldn’t sell that stuff, Mariah! It means a lot to us! Why did you do it?” I listened to my own wounded voice in horror. I had a plan, didn’t I? I was supposed to stay cool and crush her with logic. Why was I losing it this way?

  “I couldn’t help it,” she said.

  “How can that be? Can’t you just say something’s not for sale?”

  “I couldn’t—it wasn’t like that. It was a man with burning eyes—”

  “And sandy hair and a nice smile,” I said.

  “No,” she said, her face tightening, her mouth twisting into a frown. “No,” she said, and this time it was a whisper. “A man with dark hair and burning eyes, and he spoke to me, so quietly, just telling me he had to have that creel and I had to give it to him and there really was no other way…it reminded me…” She broke off and looked toward the mantel. Following her gaze, I noticed a white ceramic unicorn with pink mane, tail, and hooves, and gold detailing. It looked weird below the moose head.

  After a brainstorm, Pop had ordered a dozen of the unicorns, about two years ago, and nobody had wanted them. I had still been in supersalesman mode at the time. I really couldn’t stand them, and I unloaded them quick. I think most of them got used for target practice.

  “—of why I don’t like to talk to you, Nick,” Mariah said.

  “I haven’t done that to you since then, have I?”

  “I don’t give you that chance,” she said.

  “I don’t do that anymore,” I said. “If I did, I’d talk you out of selling the private stuff.” Maybe I should wake up that part of myself just long enough to do it. It had never occurred to me to use it for anything but sales.

  She looked at me, her eyes full of darkness, and I thought that was a stupid idea and I better forget it. She said, slowly, “Well, it was just like that. He stared into my eyes and talked to me, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I took the creel down and sold it to him. He even told me the price.”

  “Did he tell you his name?” I asked. Even if I knew, would I go after this guy, given what Mariah was telling me about him?

  “No,” she said, “but I saw him drive away. It was in an old black truck like the one in Paper Moon.”

  I stumbled down the hill, my flashlight making a circle of light on the path, but my feet stepping into darkness. In Mariah’s parking lot I paused again. The wolves weren’t howling anymore. I wanted to go to Willow’s cabin, found I didn’t really care what anyone else on Earth might be doing except for Willow and her family, no matter how many times I told myself my interest in everything was all embracing.

  Instead, I went home, and hungry to bed.

  The next morning I started my route at Mabel’s Backwoods Café, which was across the road from the Venture Inn and depended on out-of-towners for its existence. I bought myself coffee and a side of greasy hash browns. Mabel was so surprised she kept staring at me from her position by the grill. Pop had drummed into me that we didn’t eat out when we could fix for ourselves much more cheaply. Somehow I didn’t want to face our kitchen, and maybe Pop, that morning, though.

  After breakfast I started my route in the direction away from Lacey’s, but then I decided that was stupid; what could have changed since last night? If people were driving up from the city, it would take them two hours to get here, and it was only around seven-thirty. I could check back for new people on my evening rounds.

  Besides, I didn’t fear the wolves in broad daylight. I eased the other direction around the lake to scope out the Lacey’s.

  I stopped first at the tiny indent of lake just below the Venture Inn and dipped fingers into the cool water.

  On the way over to Lacey’s I saw a bald eagle flying low above the other side of the lake and decided that on my half day off on Saturday I’d try tracking him to his nest, if nothing else was going on.

  I was almost to Willow’s cabin when I heard a splash from the little inlet a stone’s throw from the cabin. I veered, walking quietly, and dropped down behind bracken and a fallen log, then peered between fronds and saw Willow naked and beautiful in the water. Where she stood, close to shore, the water only came up to her knees. She dipped both hands in, scooping up water, carrying it above her head, then tilting her hands. The water traveled from her hands to the lake in a way I had never seen before: in silver threads instead of droplets. Morning sun snagged in the water threads as if they were dew-pearled spiderweb. Willow murmured something. She lifted more handfuls of water and let it run down her body as she sang.

  I watched and imagined I was the water, sliding down her body in the closest possible embrace. It got tangled up in a winter memory I had, of a time just after Mom left, me going out on the lake after it had frozen, lying down on it, taking off my mittens, jacket, shirts, and freezing my upper body to the ice, except I had felt heat from the ice, warmth and comfort like I was feeling now, only now I felt even warmer and not so comfortable. Icy heat against my skin, water against Willow, and the lake, talking to each of us, talking to both of us, tasting us.

  I tried to stop thinking about it because there wasn’t much I could do to ease myself, but it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, how the sun touched the wet edges of Willow and glowed, how free and comfortable she was out there in the open air, no self-consciousness, confident in her aloneness, how she was talking to something or someone who wasn’t there, but it didn’t matter. How wrong it was for me to watch her when she couldn’t know I was there.

  What a weird thought. I thrived on invading people’s privacy. If they wanted to do interesting things where other people could see them, was that my fault?

  The hairs were prickling on the back of my neck. Maybe she really wasn’t alone. Maybe somebody else was watching me. I glanced behind me. Nobody.

  I should leave, I thought. I could always watch Willow some more when she had clothes on. I pushed up, ready to climb to my feet as quietly as possible and sneak off, but I couldn’t resist one last look.

  Willow still had her back to me, but now her arms were stret
ched straight out toward the rising sun. Light glowed around her hands, spun around her body like liquid tinsel. She turned, still singing, her wet hands weaving in the air about her, and she flickered and was gone.

  2

  Disappearances

  I dropped down behind the log and shook my head, then slapped my cheek to see if I’d wake up at home in bed, wondering what the symbolism of this dream was. All that happened was my cheek hurt. I lay listening to birds and trees and the rev of somebody’s motorboat from across the lake, a noise like a far-off lawnmower in need of a muffler. The air tasted fresh and cool and wide awake. Gradually I realized something: it was Friday, and Willow, the girl I had just seen naked, seen vanish, was going to come by the store and pick me up tonight at seven-thirty for the dance. Unless she was just fooling with me.

  I closed my eyes a moment, then opened them and stared at the water, wondering if Willow had dropped under the surface without a splash and would come up any minute now, gasping for air.

  Nothing.

  Maybe I made the whole thing up? When time stretched or I was feeling especially trapped, I did make things up. I knew I was making them up, though. I didn’t think I was inventing this one.

  I watched the water unblinking until my eyes hurt from staring at reflected sunlight. No splash. No Willow. No sense.

  Finally I climbed to my feet. The back of my neck still felt like static was attacking it. I glanced around, but not a leaf or pine needle twitched. I shook my head and eased away without looking back.

  I had stocked the till from the safe box, switched on the lights, and was just turning the OPEN sign in the door around when Pop came downstairs. “Well?” he said.

  “We need more groceries,” I said.

  “Make up the list and stock the cupboards and the fridge while there’s no one in the store,” he said impatiently. We had a jingle of bells hanging above the door that sounded whenever someone came into the store, which helped when I had to do back room stuff. “Don’t eat anything until I have a chance to approve the list. You know what I want to know, Nick.”