Scott Spencer

by Man in the Woods (v5)

  “I sort of feel like I’m in jail, half the time,” Paul says. “I’m living the way you’re supposed to when they lock you up, when you just sit there and contemplate your wrongdoing.”

  “Hey,” Todd says. “Listen to me. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but I do know this: there is no way on earth that you belong in jail, I don’t care what you’ve done.”

  Paul laughs. It’s unbelievable to him what a lift it gives him to hear those words. “You want to come in?” he asks Todd. “Cup of tea, or we could open a bottle of wine.”

  “No thanks,” Todd says. “I’ve got señorita plans.”

  “Well I can’t stand in the way of that,” Paul says.

  “I mean literally señorita,” Todd says. “Did you ever meet Vicky Rodriguez? She nannies for the Rosenbergs over at Southwind. My grandfather used to have dinners at that house. The Rosenbergs have no idea what the history of that place is, their own house, I have to tell them all about it. This town is changing so fast.”

  “It’s just different rich people,” Paul says. “The new richies will make their own history.”

  “Not just that. There’s five times as many houses. If they put a fast train on the tracks, we’re going to be a suburb. No one makes anything, no one fixes anything. Everybody lives by their little rules, everyone’s worrying over their retirements and paying their insurance premiums. The adventure’s gone. They’ve cut the balls off this place. It’s not for me. And it’s not for you either. It’s not for us.”

  They are standing at the beginning of the driveway leading down to Kate’s house. Off to the side, a small herd of deer are foraging for what’s left of the summer’s grass; every now and then one of them lifts its head and its eyes shine like amethyst. From this vantage, the house is not visible, except for its halo of light. Shep has gotten so accustomed to seeing deer and has had so little success chasing them that now he seems to actually pretend not to see them. His energies are focused on going back to the house. The back half of his body writhes with excitement; his two favorite parts of a walk are being asked to come along and being allowed to return.

  “Well,” Paul says, “I’ll see you.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Todd says. He lays his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “If you’ve done something, you have to trust yourself to deal with it within yourself, on your own terms. It’s the do-it-yourself ethic, my friend. Men like us, we don’t look to other people to fix things for us. A sink gets stopped up, we don’t call a plumber, we snake it out, we change the gaskets, we do whatever it takes, and if a tree gets struck by lightning and falls on our house we get in there with a chainsaw and cut the tree into two-foot lengths and then we repair the roof. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, you’ll deal with it, I know you will, you always have. You’ve got something that’s so fucking far beyond adherence to the rules—you’ve got honor.”

  Todd rocks back on his heels and grins. There’s a gap between his right incisor and the next tooth, a dark tunnel leading to the depths of him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In the silence of the car, he has been composing a letter in his mind, or a speech. Dear Kate, I love you so deeply and so much. But he sees her glancing at him and he speaks. “They say that murderers always return to the scene of the crime,” Paul says, sinking lower in the passenger seat as Kate steers her car off of the Taconic Parkway and onto the Saw Mill.

  “No one’s a murderer here, so you can just shut up about that,” says Kate. She assumes this will sound affectionate, loyal, and confident, but she sees Paul’s uncertain expression and now she reaches for him, rests her hand on his knee, and adds, “I’m sorry.”

  He looks at her quizzically, as if a world in which Kate has to be sorry is somehow bizarre. But I don’t think I was ever meant to live with another person.

  “Next exit, right?” Kate asks.

  Paul’s knees ride nervously up and down. He looks like someone in an interrogation room who is starting to realize he won’t be able to hold out much longer. He looks like someone who is about to crack. As they close in on Tarrytown his mind is besieged with irrational fears, fears that began when he acquiesced to Kate’s request to see for herself the place where he did it, beat a man to death, and which have intensified the closer they get to Martingham. Yet he maintains his resolve to see it through. Kate is hammering out her own sense of what had happened that November afternoon, what happened to Paul, and what, by extension, and through the intractable bonds of love, has happened to her, and Paul feels he has no right to interfere.

  Until today, she did not ask which woods he had stopped in, and Paul never volunteered. Once, maybe the night he told her what he had done, or perhaps it was the day after, he started to tell her in detail where he had turned off the road, where he had parked his truck, but some instinct had made her stop him. Kate, normally curious, and sometimes insatiably so, didn’t want to be able to picture Paul’s deed too clearly. She had already begun on the path she had chosen, which was to keep him safe, this man, her man, who, except for that one thing, that one terrible thing, did nothing but make life better for everyone around him. Ignorance wasn’t bliss but rather a gauzy scarf thrown over the lamp of knowledge, coloring the light, making it less harsh.

  Yet it was odd to know so little about what had really happened that November afternoon, and Kate has begun to wonder how the blows had landed, where the body had fallen, what happened first, what happened second, what happened after that. And where? How could Paul and the man find themselves so alone, like two fugitives facing each other in the wilderness, how could this happen in the middle of Westchester County, which was in itself so close to Manhattan, and was really just the hem of the city’s long skirt?

  Your life was good, really good, when I met you…It is eleven in the morning and now that they have turned off the Saw Mill there are no other cars in sight. Kate is aware that Paul hasn’t spoken in several minutes, nor has he made eye contact with her. His knees continue to jiggle and he keeps his eyes fixed on the passing landscape. She comes to a stop at a T-junction. “Take a right, and then another right, and then there’s the entrance,” Paul says.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate says.

  He shakes his head. He will have none of that. You have your life, your writing, Ruby…

  “I just have to do this,” Kate says.

  “We’re here. We’re doing it. It’s for the best.”

  “I do think it will be.”

  Paul shrugs. He turns toward her suddenly, his face lacking in kindness. For a moment she can almost see it happening. “Maybe God wants us to be here. Is that what you’re thinking?” he asks.

  She feels the words like a blow, and her first response is to say something equally angry, but she is thrown off course by the sheer unfamiliarity of verbal nastiness from Paul, whose infrequent moments of irritation have heretofore been expressed through withdrawal and silence. “Maybe you’re right,” she says, “maybe that’s exactly what God wants.”

  “Well I’d like to know something about his wishes because this complete silence is a drag. I killed a man and the universe is totally silent.”

  She turns on the access road leading to Martingham State Park. Blue spruces border the blacktop; the white line dividing the road seems freshly painted. Above, the sky is lumpy and gray, a vast frozen oyster of a sky.

  “We’re going to be okay,” she says. “You’re never going to be caught, we’re never going to tell anyone. We’ll just live with it. What else can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul says. “It might be better if I’d turned myself in. Easier.” He slips his hand into his coat; his stomach feels as if he is digesting gravel. I feel like an infection…I think it’s time for me to disappear…

  “It would be pointless,” Kate says, a little sharply. “The thing is, nobody saw you. I used to write about this stuff, Paul, I know what I’m talking about. People who get caught? Most of them are already in the system, with long rec
ords of criminal behavior. And most of them are dumb or crazy. Or it’s so obvious, like the OJ thing, it’s like who else could it have been? Husbands kill their wives, wives kill their husbands, disgruntled employees, impatient heirs, these are the people who get caught.”

  “I’m already caught,” Paul says.

  Today there are other vehicles in the park’s east lot, six of them, any of which could be an unmarked police car. As Kate noses her car toward the same slot in which Paul had parked his truck, he is suddenly overcome by fear; it feels as if he is inhabited by a thousand small hands, all busily shredding his reason. So fierce, vast, and shaming is his panic that he can barely breathe, and Kate, who last night stayed up late and alone, drinking Snapple and watching an old production of Macbeth on PBS, remembers something dear Ban-quo says in the first act: Or have we eaten on the insane root/That takes the reason prisoner? Good question, Kate thinks, accelerating as she circles the parking lot. Paul is looking into each car as they pass it.

  “I think the best thing is to act natural,” Kate says.

  “There’s two people in that black Buick,” he whispers. She’s done this to me …

  Kate cranes her neck to get a better view. He’s right, two people. But they look like teenagers, a kid in a Mets cap, another with pink hair. They’ve probably come here to smoke pot. But she doesn’t want to argue with him. She keeps driving, out of the parking area, back onto the access road. “Now what?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” Paul says. “We’re here because of you.” He sees the look on her face. He didn’t mean to hurt her. Monster…

  “Maybe this was a bad idea,” Kate says. “I don’t need to see any more. We can go back home.”

  Home. The word pierces Paul, the idea that there is a place in the world where he belongs, and the ease with which Kate has said it. He reaches for her hand. “No, it’s okay. Let’s turn around. I’ll show you where it happened.”

  “You don’t have to. I get it. I don’t even know why I wanted to do this in the first place.”

  “It was just seeing those cars.”

  “Those were just a couple of teenage guys in that Buick. I think they were getting high.”

  “Last time the place was empty. It’s weird to see so many cars.”

  “It’s a park. People come and go.” She looks over at Paul. His hands are folded in his lap, tightening and loosening their clasp.

  “I was at the post office yesterday,” Paul says. “A supplier sent me some chips of Louisiana cypress that I had to pick up.”

  “And?” she asks. His voice sounds hollow, distant. She is starting to miss him and long for him already, as if he has betrayed her and she has not been able to forgive him.

  “And there was this guy in front of me, he was already at the window. Buying stamps. But he was very particular about it, he wanted fancy ones. So Gerald shows him some Elvis stamps and those Robert Indiana love stamps, a bunch of stuff, and here’s this guy, he’s about fifty, he’s wearing his earmuffs and mittens inside the post office though it’s always insanely hot in there, and he’s taking his time making his big decision of the day. I’ve already been there for quite a while and I’ve got so much to do back at the shop, and I’m staring at this guy’s neck and trying to do a mind control thing to make him hurry up. But he thinks and he thinks and then he finally decides which sheet of stamps he’s going to buy and he starts taking nickels and dimes out of his belly bag, ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty-five, forty, and I’m thinking to myself: I’d like to break this guy’s neck.” He looks at Kate, pleadingly. “You know what I’m saying. This guy is getting on my nerves and the next thing I know I want to kill him with my bare hands.”

  “We all think things like that,” Kate says.

  “But I’ve actually gone and done it,” says Paul. “And it’s made me aware of how often I think about it, how often I’ve always thought about it. Someone’s driving too slowly in front of me, or I see some slob throwing garbage out of his truck, or somebody treats me like I’m a servant. I could murder that guy, this one I’d like to kick in the ass, this one I’d like to shake. But when you’ve actually done it?” He shakes his head. “I hope you never have to wonder about yourself the way I wonder about myself.”

  They have come to a stop sign. “What do you want me to do, Paul? Shall I turn around, or should we just go back to Leyden?”

  “I was just thinking…We’re going to be having a big party soon? I think that’s going to be weird. It doesn’t seem right.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Kate says. “We need to see people. And we should just act as normally as possible.” She means it to be comforting, just old-fashioned common sense, but to her own ears she sounds like someone who has entered into a conspiracy.

  “I feel strange around people,” Paul says. “I’m not part of them. I’m part of something else.”

  “People love you, Paul. They really do.”

  “I’m afraid of myself.”

  She takes his hand and places it on her throat. “I’m not afraid of you, I don’t think you’ve gone feral or something. I love you and I trust you and my advice, if you’re looking for advice, is for you to love and trust yourself, because you deserve it.”

  “What about—”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that at this point. It’s in God’s hands—and the way it seems so far is nobody else cares.”

  “All right,” Paul says. “I’ll show you where.”

  Halfway across the intersecting road, Kate makes a U-turn and they return to Martingham State Park. As they walk from the parking area to the trail, Paul notices a sign informing people of all that is forbidden in the park, including fires, bottles, weapons, and dogs. Dogs. There is a silhouette of a German shepherd, circled in red with a forbidding line drawn through it. Paul wonders if this is new; he has no memory of seeing it last month. He feels something touching him and he is startled for an instant before realizing Kate has taken his hand.

  If he was ever to be apprehended for that killing, today would be the day, Paul thinks. He feels both terror and relief at the prospect. He sees something in a nearby white birch—a camera? Maybe that’s exactly how the police are proceeding: they are filming everyone who comes to this spot and then checking their footprints against the prints they took on the day of the killing. He grins horribly at the camera. Film away motherfuckers. Then he is overcome with remorse: he does not want to get caught. Yes he does. No he doesn’t. Yes he does. Doesn’t. Does. Does not. Yet when they get closer to the tree the camera turns out to be a cancerous bulge. Still, that doesn’t mean anything.

  “This is how I walked in. And over there,” he says, lowering his voice, because they have come to a turn in the path, and someone—anyone—could be just a few feet away, “that’s where the picnic tables are, or were anyhow.”

  They are still here, and, on this cold winter morning, unoccupied, a coarse sheen of ice on their surface. With the roar of his own surging blood in his ears, Paul shows Kate where he placed his wristwatch, a gift from Kate herself. Though there is no one else near to them, everything he says to her is delivered in a low murmur, and when the wind picks up there are words here and there she cannot make out but she lets it go because even though his voice is flat and seems devoid of emotion, he is continually swallowing, breathing quickly, shallowly, and it seems to her that a sharp noise or a sudden movement would undo him completely. When he walks with her from the picnic table upon which he was sitting to the table where the man was beating Shep, his steps are shaky, uncertain, and when he points to the leg of the picnic table to which the dog had been leashed, his narration of the events of that day suddenly stops and he just stands there in silence, remembering. I love you Kate…You made a home for me I never felt so at home anywhere else…I love your body the feel of you your mind your crazy soul…

  Kate looks at the trees that encircle this clearing, their branches yearning toward the sky. She is trying to take it in, trying to absorb it an
d make it indelible, but it all seems like one of those dreams that you know you will forget even as you are dreaming it. “Over here?” she asks. “Is this where he…” She points to a spot on the ground, near the table.

  “Yes. Maybe a little closer. Like here.” His gesture is sweeping, indistinct. You are holding on to me and I am sinking I need to cut you loose.

  A large, lacy snowflake floats between them, and then another and another. Kate puts her hand out and catches a flake that dissolves on her leather glove. She wraps her arm around Paul’s waist as they head back to the car. They are already in a steady snowfall. Blue jays squawk in the distance. The hemlock boughs are catching the snowfall. The sunshine filters through the dark clouds illuminating everything, the trees, the picnic tables, the stones on the ground, and the snowfall itself, an immense swirling softness connecting heaven and earth.

  For an instant, they both feel it.

  “We’re being forgiven,” Kate whispers.

  “Do you really think so?” Paul wonders if his legs are going to support him. He holds on to Kate for balance.

  “Don’t ever leave me,” Kate says.

  I don’t have the right to ask you that.

  “I won’t,” Paul says.

  Can’t.

  Jerry Caltagirone steps away from Madeline Powers. Decent manners dictate as much. She is about to look at a dead man in a refrigerated drawer and odds are this man used to be someone she loved. Some kid he’s never seen before is working the morning shift at the morgue and Caltagirone feels like slapping him on the back of the head: you do not fucking stand next to someone and chew gum when they are identifying a body.

  A cloud of mist forms as the freezing air of the drawer mixes with the merely cold air of the white-tiled room. Caltagirone folds his arms over his chest and respectfully lowers his eyes while Madeline does the dance they all seem to do down here—the leaning forward, the rearing back, the coming forward again, hands up to the face, and then the shaking.