“I read the most entertaining review of his new one on Amazon. I almost forwarded it to you,” she said.
“I appreciate the restraint. Did you get much done while I was out?”
“I finished a coat of paint in one of the rooms. How do you think we should keep the rooms straight? Numbering them seems a little sterile, don’t you think?”
“We could name them after plants or flowers—no, that’s lame,” Ben said. “We should try to bring in something local. Nearby mountain peaks?”
“Or name them after something special about the house—like the Gable Room or the Tower Room?” Caroline asked.
“That’s a good idea.” Ben nodded. “Yes, sir, the Ceiling May Cave in on You as You Sleep Room is available next weekend. Oh, of course we can accommodate your children nearby. The Absolutely No Insulation Anywhere Room is just across the hall.”
“Thank you, Ben. That’s really constructive.” She shook her head, but Ben saw that one side of her mouth had curved into a smile.
“Or maybe we could name them after some of our favorite slack-jawed yokels. Post their pretty profiles on each door. We can furnish the Deputy Simms Room with empty Milwaukee’s Best cans and Skoal containers.”
“Did things not go well at the general store?”
“Oh, no, it went great. We’re actually getting together later tonight. Going to knock back a few and watch the game.”
“Can you please try to make more of an effort?” she said.
“I met the owner of the Lancelight, actually,” Ben said. He’d chosen the cherry pie. “She was friendly and told me a little about Grams’s family. She also invited me to a meeting of the town’s Preservation Society.”
“Well, that’s good. Showing an interest in the town would be a good way to integrate with the locals. We’re going to need their support if the inn’s going to work. There could be a real synergic benefit in pitching the restoration of the Crofts as a manifestation of their civic pride.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ben said. He’d learned long ago that it was best to simply smile and agree when Caroline drifted into industry jargon.
“Speaking of community integration, one of the Catholic schools returned your call. Did you ever get back to the prep school in Northbridge?”
Ben sighed. “They’re still holding his spot.”
They had been all set to send Charlie to Northbridge Day until their last visit, when Charlie sat in on a class while Ben and Caroline spoke to the headmistress. The headmistress had had a lot of questions for them: about the problems in the last school, about why they had moved up here, and then about Ben’s books. Their meeting had gone on longer than they’d expected, and when they went to the class to get Charlie, they found that the teacher had left and the room was empty except for three boys who’d blocked Charlie into a corner, pushing him and pulling at the collar of his shirt. Charlie had stood there, letting the boys shove him, wearing an uncomprehending look that had made Ben want to reach across the room and shake him.
“Was St. Michael’s the name of the Catholic school?” Ben asked. There were more options for private schooling up here than he’d expected, but because he was a stranger to the region, it’d been hard for Ben to keep them straight. From what he’d been able to find out, St. Michael’s had a good reputation.
“I wrote it down.” She found the notepad. “The Priory of St. Michael’s.” The oven dinged and Caroline scurried over to scrutinize its contents. A wave of succulence wafted through the open door. Ben was about to ask her what she was cooking when an explosive noise came from the hall.
Caroline shut the oven and stood up. Charlie put down his book and cocked his ear. Hudson sprang up from where he had been lying, his nose probing the air. Bub paused his bouncing in his exersaucer. They stayed poised like that for a few seconds.
“Must have left a door open,” Ben said. He turned away from where he’d been watching the door to the hallway. “The wind probably slammed it shut.” He rubbed Hudson on the head. “That a pork roast, Cee?”
The sound came again, louder than the first time, loud enough to make them all flinch. It was a deep sound that reverberated throughout the house, like the bolting of a huge lock at the building’s heart. Hudson trotted across the room and began to pace in front of the door, a growl gathering in his throat.
“Ben?” Caroline asked.
“It’s just a door getting blown by the wind,” Ben said. “The deadlatch must have jammed.” He opened the utensil drawer and pulled out a knife. “It’s only to pry it loose, if I need to,” he told her.
He kissed Caroline lightly on the neck on his way past her. “Relax, Hud.” He grabbed the beagle by his collar and pulled him over to Caroline. “Smells good,” he told her before closing the hall door behind him.
The lights were out in the hall. The sun had fallen behind the mountains at the west end of the valley, and the day’s last light littered the rooms in the geometry cast by the immense windows.
The hall seemed even more cavernous in the dark. It had been designed to be wide enough for two women in hoop skirts to pass each other with ease, but now it could have been twice as broad.
The sound came again, sending him back a step. It was a slamming door, he was sure, but the impact against the house’s wooden bones was such that it seemed almost to have a physical presence.
Ben picked up the pace, his footsteps keeping time between the crashing sounds. He counted the number of rooms he passed, but he couldn’t remember how many there were supposed to be.
The hall was a straight shot except for the last leg, which took a hard right turn. There was a cold draft in the air when he turned the corner, and he was just in time to see the door slam into its frame again.
He grabbed the handle to prevent the door from swinging open and saw that the deadlatch had indeed become jammed. The wind must have been knocking the door open, then a draft from another room would slam it shut.
He heard Caroline’s distant call.
“Just a door,” he yelled.
Ben realized he was shaking. The lock would need to be looked at, but not now. He used the knife to pry the latch loose so the wind wouldn’t push it open again. It was caked with a sticky residue, which surprised him, because all the locks were new. On his fingers it had the pine tang of tree resin. The door’s dead bolt worked fine, and he slid it closed. He ran his fingers along the door’s glass paneling, surprised that it hadn’t cracked in the repeated assaults.
He turned on the exterior lights and looked out the glass. Placed in the center of the stoop like the morning’s newspaper was a severed deer’s head, staring at him with black, blood-flecked eyes.
November 9, 1777
My Dearest Kathy,
The road is closed and I do not know when I will be able to post this letter. The snows fell early and heavily, but even if they had not, the Iroquois are certain to kill any horseman. It has been some four weeks since we have had contact from beyond the valley.
We heard rumors of the Iroquois alliance with the British, but before Father gave any credence to the idea, a raiding party burned Swannhaven. The church, Porter’s Store, the Hall, the Coplins’ Farm where we used to play—all of it up in flames. I cannot do justice to how it looked from the porch of the Crofts, the gleam of flames and tiny figures fleeing like motes of shadow against the frosted fields. I watched as they lost ground to the marauders and fell still against the cold of the earth. I was not certain it was real until I smelled the smoke for myself.
The Porters, Van Epps, Stevensons, Cartwrights, all of the Coplins dead, except for Raymond Coplin. There are more, but what good would it do to tell you? Thirty souls found their way here, and the rest made for the northern gap. We and the tenant families here on the Drop took in those who fled up the mountain, but for the others, I dare not guess what became of them.
The Indians have long feared the mountains, and Father believes they will not venture here. He has established a rotating wa
tch. His sermon this Sunday was of David and Goliath, and all of us left in elevated spirits. He has ordered the forest to the east chopped down. The widened visibility gives us some comfort. And with all the firewood, we will not freeze this winter. But for food, there is concern. The thirty extra mouths will push us beyond our limit. But we’ve already reduced our daily portions, and the men still hunt in the northern fields with some success.
These hunters saw smoke from the south this afternoon past, and we fear that the trading post on the Albany Trail has also been destroyed.
I am not permitted outside unaccompanied, but I went with Jack to review the men on watch. They do not see the Iroquois, but they hear noises in the wood.
It is so empty here. Do you remember what it was like on winter mornings when we were children? How from the porch we could peer into the face of the wild with nothing but the smoke from Swannhaven’s hearths to remind us of civilization? Now Swannhaven is gone, and it is as if we were the last people in all the world.
Pray for us, dear sister.
Your Bess
8
Ben swirled the remnants of his coffee. It was cold, and had been for a while.
He watched Bub in his exersaucer, where the baby played with his unspillable cup. Bub held the cup out by one handle and Ben clinked his mug against it, sending the boy into a series of delighted noises.
The kitchen was bright: a relief after the week they’d had.
The storms had been a sight. The dark cumulus clouds had billowed from the west, turning the sky a trembling green before unleashing torrents of rain.
Ben now understood the warnings about the wind on the Drop. It had a way of finding weaknesses under the eaves, generating drafts throughout the house. He’d wake in the night to its screams when it collided with the rough angles of the roof; it sometimes electrified entire rooms with a tremendous, unwavering hum. And it shook the forest into a frenzy, filling the house with a riot of branches rapping against one another.
After the deluge came gray days of drizzle. Ben had found himself with the animal need to escape the Crofts, coupled with an agoraphobic revulsion of leaving it. He wondered if this was just a preview of what the winters would be like: endless months of cloistered suspense.
He hadn’t told Caroline about the deer’s head he’d found on the stoop. The mutilated body had been easy enough to dismiss as an animal attack, but the dismembered head was not the work of forest creatures. Ben threw the head into the forest and wrote the episode off as a prank, some sort of initiation by the village’s men. The animal had probably been hit by a car or killed by a hunter who figured he’d try to get a rise out of the new guy, the city guy with the pretty wife and the big house. He didn’t see the point of worrying Caroline and Charlie about it. The most they could do was file a police report, and, in a village as small as Swannhaven, that was certain to cause more harm than good.
“Wah?” Bub asked him, again holding out his cup.
Ben accepted the cup and filled it with filtered water from the fridge. He could hear Mick Jagger upstairs. Caroline was on the third floor, sanding the hallway. Ben was supposed to be working on his novel; Bub was supposed to be napping.
After the incident with the deer, Ben told Charlie he could no longer play outside by himself. Hearing this, the boy looked as though he’d been run through. His gray-blue eyes had widened as his lips had thinned. Tears didn’t seem far off, but then Charlie’s face had settled and he’d left the room without a word. He’d hardly said a thing in the week that had passed.
Ben also hadn’t been thrilled with the situation. Back in the city, the idea of Charlie going outside by himself had been unthinkable. Whenever they’d left the apartment, Caroline and Ben would be all over him with instructions and cautions. Stay on this side of the sidewalk; watch the curb; stand behind the yellow line; don’t touch that; don’t stare. It had been easy to find danger in every step. It had been exhausting. And in the end, none of it had ended up keeping him safe, anyway. But things were different up here. This morning, Ben told Charlie he was allowed outside as long as he kept the Crofts within sight. He was out there right now.
Bub took a few pulls from his cup, then started trying to knock it over again.
“We should get you to your nap,” Ben said as he lifted him out of his saucer. He fit the boy over his shoulder and let him pretend to whisper into his ear for as long as he could stand it.
“You’re tickling me.” He tickled his son back, and soon Bub was laughing, too.
They took the kitchen stairs to the second floor. The Stones were louder up here, but music never seemed to bother Bub. He was an easy baby. Charlie had been good, too, if not exactly easy. He’d been fussy in the same ways he still was: utterly intractable on some issues. But Ben couldn’t complain about either of them. His mother always said that he and Ted had been little nightmares. Crying constantly, hungry when they were supposed to sleep, tired and surly when they were supposed to eat. But raising his own children, Ben thought that perhaps his difficult childhood had more to do with her qualities as a mother than his shortcomings as a son.
“Now, if Mom asks, you’ve been here for an hour already, okay?”
“Ma,” Bub said.
“You got it.” Ben switched on the baby monitor and clipped the portable unit to his belt. He leaned over to kiss his son on the forehead. “Now sleep, and dream happy dreams.”
He walked down the hall to his and Caroline’s room. They’d ordered a couch to put by the fireplace, but the room still seemed indecently large. Three windows stretched to the fourteen-foot ceilings, offering a triptych of the valley and the hazy blue distance. Caroline had the contractors install a new bathroom and huge walk-in closets, which now struck Ben as ridiculous. It had been months since he’d worn anything fancier than jeans and sneakers. He walked to the one with his old things: dry-cleaned shirts and pressed suits that now seemed more like costumes than clothing. He reached for a Thomas Pink box he’d placed on the top shelf alongside boxes of shiny wing tips and handcrafted oxfords, but the sound of a slamming car door stopped him.
Their room looked west, and Ben craned his neck south to see who had pulled up to the Crofts. All he could make out was the back half of a blue pickup. He ran downstairs to the kitchen, and midway down the flight he heard a tentative rapping against the kitchen door. He opened the door, startling the young man on the stoop.
“Didn’t know which door to try,” the kid said. He couldn’t have been much older than eighteen. He wore torn jeans and a white T-shirt. A few wayward curls of his brown hair showed from under a faded Patriots hat. “I’m here to haul out some of your things. I think my dad spoke to your missus last week?” He tilted his head slightly to peer around Ben and into the house. “Maybe it’s the stuff in the pile outside?”
“Oh, right. I forgot you were coming today. That pile’s been there since last week,” Ben said.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” He smiled lopsidedly. “Dad’s back was hurting. I would’ve come earlier, but our truck crapped out. Got this one as a loaner from Joe Mills.” He pointed to the blue pickup. “You know him?”
Ben shook his head.
“Real nice guy. Your rides look pretty new.” He pointed to the twin SUVs parked beside the shed. “They don’t give you any trouble?”
“So far so good,” Ben said. “I’m Ben.” He stuck his hand out as he stepped outside.
“Jake Bishop.”
“So, yes, it’s mostly this stuff on the lawn,” Ben said. They walked across the wild grass to the pile of refuse that he and Charlie had assembled the week before. The mound of trash had been soaked by the rains. Upholstery and piles of newspapers had melted into one another, a congealed mass.
“Some old crap here,” Jake said thoughtfully, prodding the edge of a waterlogged cardboard box. “This the Swanns’ stuff?”
“I assume so, or whoever else lived here. There must be a hundred years’ worth of junk down there.”
&n
bsp; “No one but Swanns ever lived here,” Jake said. He glanced back at the Crofts, then turned to the pile. “You just want this outta here, right? You don’t care what I do with it?”
“I just want it gone.”
“ ’Cause some folks could use this stuff.” Jake opened up the cardboard box at his feet and revealed a heap of yellowing children’s clothes. “Tough times and all.”
“It’s yours if you want it.”
Jake nodded. “Might take a couple trips.”
“It’s only the tip of the iceberg, I’m afraid,” Ben said.
“More of this in there?”
“Acres of it. Your dad said he didn’t do stairs, but if that doesn’t bother you, I’d love your help.”
“Can’t say no to paying work.”
“How long are you home for?” Ben asked.
“Home?”
“Before you head back to school?”
“Done with school.” Jake shrugged. “School’s done with me.”
“Oh.” Ben nodded. He turned away and squinted at the sun. “Well, if you want to take care of this pile, we can figure out the rest later. Okay?”
“Sure, boss. You in any rush today?”
“I guess that depends on whether or not we’re paying you by the hour.”
Jake laughed. “Your missus got a daily rate. Dad says she’s a tough one.”
“That’s why I let her do the talking. I’m heading back in. Yell if you need anything.”
“You got it, boss.”
Once inside, Ben drained what was left of his coffee and returned to his bedroom. The Stones were still doing their thing at the other end of the hall, which meant Caroline was still sanding.
He returned to his closet and took the Thomas Pink box off the top shelf.
He sat on the floor and took the ancient Bible out of the box. He’d shown Caroline the old architectural drawings he’d found in the battered captain’s desk, but he’d hidden the Bible from her, afraid she might throw it out. Since then he’d taken it out a few times just to look at it. It was a beautiful book: stark and dramatic, with its metal cross fastened onto the thick black leather. It was certainly old. He wondered if he’d ever held a book so old. The type was a tight Gothic of some kind. Some of the passages had been marked with the spidery handwriting of the past age.
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