Jenny sighed laboriously at the lecturing drone.
“It’s going to be a long week,” Sandy muttered.
“This place…” A note of awe entered Casey’s voice, and he stood up, brushing damp sand from his sweating legs. “Think about it. A forest this size in the middle of the most heavily industrialized state in the Union!” He shook his head in wonder.
Grinning to see his taciturn friend so animated, Alan nudged Sandy.
“What’s really incredible is that nobody even realizes it’s out here. What do people see from their cars? Trees on the side of the road—just the tip of the iceberg! Most people have to think, a few yards in, there’s another road or some houses. They can’t grasp it! Can’t conceive of—”
“Ugly. Ugly little trees.” Jenny stood up and pinched sullenly at the sides of her binding jeans, while Alan helped her struggle back into her pack. “Trees should be pretty. You look at these, and all you’re aware of is their miserable little struggles to survive.”
“Yeah, it’s like they’re alive or something.”
“They are alive, Sandy,” Jenny sighed.
After passing around the canteen, they started moving again, at first plodding along in a tight clump, but quickly resuming the old formation with Casey pulling ahead. For the first time, the air began to stir noticeably about them. As he walked, Casey scuffed at the sand with his boots, the gesture oddly proprietary.
The things he could tell them. For instance, they were crossing the bed of a vanished ocean, an ocean sixty million years gone. The breeze had grown, and he savored the fleeting coolness. He listened as the gentle current of air stirred a strange whirring out of the pines, a low moan like the ghost of a lost sea, and it swept his memories to all those distant Sunday afternoons when, shin deep in collapsing mud shoals, he’d dug for fossils not all that far from here. The mud banks would crumble with soft splashings, and icy waters would ooze, bubbling up around his ankles, trickling down to join the creek, washing away the sediment of shell particles, millions of years steadily melting away beneath his feet. Innumerable generations of monsters had hunted these waters, and the denizens of the ancient seas had left their bones and shells and marks.
The rest of the group pumped along behind him, chattering among themselves, and he moved still farther ahead of them, the familiar thrill of wonder, almost of reverence, coursing through him. He discovered, somewhat giddily, that if he squeezed his eyes half shut the blurring pines resembled a prehistoric landscape. A hairy tentacle clung to a nearby tree, the dark rootlets of the parasite vine, biting deep into the bark, coiling like some obscene, furred serpent up and around the cedar.
Unnoticed, a moth the size of his hand settled weightless on his shoulder.
“…had to work, and I swear to God that’s the truth. Athena?” Barry depressed the speak button with his thumb. “Athena?” He glanced up as Steve returned to the car. “Damn, that radio of theirs is a real piece of shit.”
“Watch yourself. You’re broadcasting.”
“Huh? Yeah, sure.” At forty-three years old, Officer Barry Hobbs was a large man, almost burly. Though the scar that slashed the bridge of his nose was the sort that fossilized a wound and kept it perpetually on display, the lines of his face, the wide, square jaw, still showed firm and handsome. Until a few years ago, he’d been a state trooper—discharged for reasons he never cared to discuss.
“You were gone a long time. You sick or something?” While critically eyeing Steve, he continued trying to raise the ambulance. “What in hell did you do? Fall down and roll in the mud?” His own tailored uniform was immaculate. His wife pressed it every morning.
Steve slumped brooding in his seat while static and the ghost of Athena’s voice drifted from the radio: “…and profuse bleeding…”
“Goddamn, she’s on a call.” Barry lit another cigarette, and Steve watched, envying his steady hand. Noting the attention, Barry yawned ostentatiously. “Yes sir, real heavy night last night.” He smirked, waiting.
Steve turned his head away, killed another warm beer and stared resolutely into the woods. A slight breeze stirred the pines. Still smiling, Barry tapped cigarette ash on the windowsill.
Steve crumpled the empty can. “So, uh…you were with Athena last night?” he asked, trying his best to pretend only casual interest. The attempt was pathetic.
Barry sneered in triumph. He took a drag on the cigarette, slowly exhaled, and finally started to talk. Steve gazed into the pines, letting his eyes drift out of focus.
“…then she sort of turns on her hip and wets her fingers and…” Barry’s words drilled into his skull, stuck there and festered.
“…holds on to it, you know, and puts her leg around…”
Steve’s headache intensified in direct proportion to the straining against the front of his pants. He sank farther into his seat, banging his knee against the dashboard.
“…and then she sort of reaches behind to…”
Stop. He breathed heavily, sweat trickling down his neck. Make him stop. He glanced at his watch. Incredibly, only minutes had passed, but the pressure grew unbearable. “Did you check in?” he blurted.
Barry’s big face split in a victorious grin, and he eased off. “Say, I was running a little late this morning.” He grinned again, and for a moment, Steve thought he might wink at him. “Did you get a chance to…?”
Another ritual—keeping Barry informed about reports and directives he never bothered reading. It was a small thing. Steve shrugged. Back in Trenton, he’d always been so conscientious, so eager—a real pushover for this sort of maneuver. “Mister Nice Cop,” Anna used to call him. Always doing favors. He’d been an honest cop too, and remained one still, save for occasionally covering up for his partner’s philandering. He lied to Barry’s wife about night duty, lied to the boss, sometimes even patrolling by himself while Barry screwed around. And there were other things. Small things. “They found that little girl’s clothes—the one disappeared from Marston’s Corner. All bloody and shredded. No body yet, though.” He mopped his neck and face with a crumpled handkerchief.
“Sex maniac, got to be,” Barry pronounced.
“They’re talking about putting dogs on it. You remember that bulletin a couple weeks ago? About that guy escaping?”
Barry looked surprised. “From the penitentiary?”
“From the asylum at Harrisville. Anyway, turns out he’s a killer—took his whole family out in Camden. Hospital tried to keep it quiet.”
“Well, then there’s your sex maniac. I bet somebody’s gonna lose a cushy job over that.”
“I doubt it.” The throbbing in Steve’s brain receded. Talking shop like this, they almost sounded professional, and he sat up straighter, his vision even clearing a little. This was as close as he ever got to the way he used to feel, back in the days before his most important duty all week might involve a broken garage window. “We should make our rounds.” He took out his pipe, then felt his other pocket and muttered, “Stop at Brower’s, I want to get some tobacco.”
Barry emitted another loud yawn.
“You want me to drive?”
The expression on Barry’s face spoke volumes about his opinion of his partner’s driving. He put on his sunglasses and checked himself in the rearview mirror.
“Those shades make you look like some kind of giant bug.”
Barry switched on the ignition, and they lurched forward, slamming Steve against the seat. As the car swung onto hot dirt, Barry kept his foot on the gas. Scrub pines flashed past as the car accelerated, and the sand road emptied onto asphalt.
“Wait a minute! Slow down!” Steve twisted around in his seat. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“Back there.”
“Not that kid with the bandages on his head again?” he asked, not slowing.
Steve peered out the back window. “You know him?”
“Billy Mills picked him up a couple times last week. He’s a retard.
Just goes wandering the woods. Father died in a car crash. Athena was telling me. Lives with an old aunt or something. She don’t want him. If he gets picked up again, probably going to wind up in Harrisville.”
Already, they’d left the boy far behind them.
Steve mulled it over. In one flashing glance, he’d observed the dirty bandages, the outstanding ears, the lost look. Yes, probably a defective. Certainly, there was no shortage of them around here. “You’re driving too fast,” he said with considerable force. “Have you ever seen inside of Harrisville? Poor harmless half-wits they lock up, but murdering lunatics walk.” With the wind in his face, he just stared out the window: the pines, a house, another, a half-plowed field. The homes looked like converted farms now. Up ahead, a pregnant woman in a halter top reclined in a beach chair. She glanced up without interest and then continued smearing her arms with suntan lotion. Barry slowed slightly and muttered a comment.
“I hear Larry Jenkins is working with the ambulance now,” mentioned Steve. “He’s good friends with your buddy Jack, isn’t he?”
“Jack Buzby ain’t no friend of mine. Damn!”
“What’s the matter?”
He drove one-handed. “A splinter or something.”
“How you do that?”
Barry sucked noisily on his finger.
“It’s a good thing Athena’s not here.” Steve grinned. “She’d have wrestled you to the ground by now, been giving you heart massage, maybe mouth-to-mouth respiration.”
A sly look came into his partner’s eyes. “Yeah,” he slurped. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He took his finger out of his mouth. “You’d like to see that.”
Steve went rigid. Suddenly, his back felt soaked against the seat, and he looked away, tried to pretend he hadn’t heard. “Christ, it’s hot.”
Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Barry cleared his throat. “They’ll catch him.”
“What?”
“The escaped loony. They’ll catch him.”
“Maybe.”
“Come off it, Steve. Soon as they put the dogs on him, they’ll get him.”
Steve popped open the last beer. “If he makes it to the northern quarter…”
“You’d better hide that. We’ll be in town in a second.”
A distant look on his face, he didn’t respond. “I hear there’s stretches out there, forty thousand acres, some of them, without a living soul. If he wanted to, seems to me a fellow could stay lost for a long, long time.”
“Yeah?” Sunlight glinted off Barry’s dark lenses. “And what’s he gonna eat?”
Periodic cicadas had commenced their high-pitched, twitching whine, and the sound filled the woods, making them resonate, until the whole tangled structure of pine and cedar around the stream seemed to throb. And the air—the heavy liquid atmosphere of the summer afternoon—seemed to pulse as well.
Jenny floated. Though the creek’s level seemed low, such sunlight as filtered through the swath of red-brown liquid failed to reach the bottom, revealing only the tops of shattered tree trunks, ghostly in the murk.
“Isn’t this great?” Kicking sideways, Sandra swam over. “It’s deep over here!” Her tiny gold earrings flashed dully in the water as she sank to her chin, then bobbed up, large breasts just breaking the surface as she splashed. “Did you see the snake?”
“Snake?!”
“Alan said this great big copperhead went swimming by. I didn’t see it, thank God.” Turning from Jenny, she giggled and splashed back upstream, her pale buttocks visible through the dark water but the rest of her vanishing in the murk.
Diving from a rock, Casey splashed down heavily, drenching everything around. Everyone yelled. He surfaced, blowing like a whale, then tossed his head violently to clear his eyes. He’d finally put on his T-shirt, and it billowed up around him, holding air, his muscles knotting beneath it as he thrashed about.
Though she laughed with the others, Jenny remained tense. She sensed a…wrongness in making noise here. This place held silence, almost like a church. Wondering that the others didn’t feel it, she allowed herself to drift farther away from them, toward a bend downstream.
They were an intrusion. No question about it. She treaded water, and the murky warmth felt wonderful, soothing. Yet she kept peering up at the bank. The sun’s rays slanted low through the scrub above her, and deep shadows fell on the stream. Small insects flew drowsily, quietly, and the humid air seemed to press on the water.
A thick-bodied dragonfly hovered, iridescent wings glistening; then it thrummed heavily on, following the current. It made her think of jade. Emeralds. She watched it go. Green fire. She bobbed low. The current was sluggish but undeniably there, deep down, cool and heavy. She turned over to float on her back, and water dribbled out of her mouth, trickled shining down her chin and throat. Again she glanced up at the bank. Nothing moved, and she wondered what she kept expecting to see. All day, she’d thought these woods unutterably dreary and drab, but now in the lengthening shadows…
Sand and pebbles, late afternoon sun full upon it, the bank shelved steeply down to the murky current. Light striped the water but couldn’t penetrate. Bright bands of sediment eddied.
They kept clutching at her ankles—the black and twisted roots that grew out of the banks and deep into the water. And suddenly she recalled that Casey had mentioned giant snapping turtles. The voices of her friends drifted to her as she paddled against the stream toward them, her toes instinctively curled.
“…weird…no beer tabs or broken bottles.”
“Only because the water’s so dark, you know,” said Alan, lazing on the edge of the current. “Anything might be down there.”
“…use to think cedar water was just like weak tea, but this looks more like coffee.”
“Amelia, don’t you think you should get out soon?” Jenny stroked smoothly. “Before you’re permanently stained?”
“Oh, Mom!”
“While there’s still sun to dry off.”
“I’ll watch her, Jenny.” Sandra scissored past.
Turning her shining back to her mother, Amelia plunged at Casey, and he yelped as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, commanding him to carry her after Sandra. Watching their glistening limbs, Jenny suddenly felt drained, her leg muscles aching, feet throbbing from the day’s hike. Still, the warm water soothed; she wanted only to rest. Then an odd suspicion formed: the stream was attempting to lull her. Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs, and she wanted out.
She kicked toward the spot where they’d left their packs. A clenched mass of roots gripped the shore, and below her, the streambed sloped away sharply, sliding grittily underfoot. To steady herself, she caught at a root, and her hand slipped down it. Slimy as a water snake, it left a wet sheath of green in her palm. She floundered, with one leg sunk to the calf in clammy silt, the streambed tilting farther beneath her. Hardly able to stand upright, she felt herself being dragged back into the middle of the creek and again tried to haul herself out. Clutching, she got a foot up on the bank, but it crumbled under her, sliding into the water. Panic gave her strength, and with a springing leap, she cleared the side.
She clambered onto the sand as a big hunk of the bank fell away. “Oh!” She crawled faster. At last, breathing rapidly, she sat on a flat rock, well away from the edge. The sun slanted down on her, and a column of midges whirled in the light over the water. “Amelia?” Anxiously, she watched the others, as moisture spread around her on the rock. “Aren’t you tired yet?”
Long-shadowed birches crowded near the creek, and tufts of pointed grass covered the sand hills. Beyond the bank, scrub merged with unbroken dwarf forest.
She dried quickly. As she rubbed her naked body, beads of water rolled off, leaving a smooth residue, like a fine powdering of rust. Slowly, her muscles relaxed, yielding to the sunlight.
Something fat and black glistened like a garden slug on the back of her ankle.
Behind her, somebody spoke. “There’
s a leech on you, girl.”
They were making their final rounds of the day. The road between Chamong and Hobbston bent around a cranberry bog, where red and green mats of vegetation lay thickly on the water. They rounded another curve, and dogs filled the road.
“Jesus Christ!”
More than a dozen mongrels scrambled madly as Barry gunned the engine, whipping the wheel hard over. The car barely clipped a collie mutt, knocked it tumbling over the sand. Barry hit the brakes, and the police car scudded, plowing deep furrows in the road. Revolver drawn, he leaped from the car.
Frozen, Steve gaped in disbelief.
Most of the dogs had already scurried off, disappearing into the pines. Except for the straggler—a runty shepherd mongrel, tail between its legs. A moment before, it had been secure in the midst of the pack. Now, looking around in confusion, it just stood in the middle of the road.
Flushed with excitement, Barry fired three shots, two of the bullets whipping harmlessly into the pines. One caught the animal at the base of the spine.
The dog screamed. It bounded, then sprawled in the sand, blood bubbling from its rump when it tried to get up and run. The oversize paws splayed all over the road, and the dog tumbled in panic, collapsed, kicking spasmodically.
Barry approached. The beast tried to crawl away from him, eyes rolling in terror, but its hind legs wouldn’t move at all. By desperately wriggling and clawing at the sand, it managed to writhe from side to side, feebly inching toward the woods.
Steve got out of the car, stood watching.
The dog bared its fangs, whined and then growled again as Barry stood over it, taking careful aim for the head.
Steve caught a flash of yellow movement in the trees.
“Behind you!”
A thick-furred pregnant bitch tensed to leap.
Barry whirled around, firing several shots. The animal bolted for the woods. A bullet buzzed past Steve as he ducked behind the car. Knocked sideways, the bitch never slowed but vanished into the trees, leaving only a smear of blood on the ground.
The Pines Page 7