The bottle in his hands turned round and round.
“The thing is, you see, I know Tammy; I know who she is, what she’s like. I know you don’t like her, and you’re not the only one. But I love her anyway. Maybe I’m a foolish man, but there it is. So I gave her the ring. I can’t help hoping that one day she’ll look at that ring, she’ll recall I have money in the bank and I’ve promised to take care of her, and love her, and she’ll think, You know, maybe Dornan isn’t so bad, and she’ll come home and marry me.”
He drank, wiped his mouth, remembered me and passed the bottle.
“She was so happy when she called. Do you know what that’s like? That she was happy with someone else? But I’ve been through it before—she drops them as quickly as she picks them up, and she always comes home. But it’s different this time—never lasted as long before, for one thing. For another, she didn’t give me an address, or a phone number. And she hasn’t called again. It’s been two months. That’s not like her.”
Dornan’s voice was an irritant. The need to push him away was becoming harder to ignore.
“I tried directory assistance. Unlisted, they said. So I went to the police. They wouldn’t help me: they don’t have the time to go chasing down every woman who leaves her boyfriend.”
I drank some more. Irish whiskey, even the illegal kind, has a rough beginning but a smooth end, quite unlike most Scotch whiskeys. Which would Julia have preferred?
“Those first few weeks in Florida she couldn’t stop talking about this Geordie Karp and his bloody mall. ‘Geordie this, Geordie that.’ You’d have thought he was god himself. On and on, then nothing.”
I should really put some more wood on the fire.
“This silence isn’t like her. Something’s happened. I just don’t know what.” He ran a hand through his hair. Waited. “Well, say something.”
I added a log, pinewood that spat as the resin ignited. The flames burned more yellow.
“Aud, listen. Please. Julia is dead, yes, and I’m sorry for it. Sorry you had to see her shot, and sorry you had to watch her linger. Probably you think you should have been able to protect her, but—don’t you see? That’s how I feel about Tammy.”
If I closed my eyes, I could pretend he wasn’t there.
“Will you help?”
All my filters were gone. Everything was too big, too loud, too sharp. The squeal of brakes, a bright shirt, the stink of plastic: everything got in and I could sort none of it out.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m not—I can’t.”
“Ah, Aud …” He scrambled unsteadily to his feet, arms open.
“Don’t. Don’t come near me.”
I didn’t want his friendship. I didn’t want to be connected. Never again. Stay in the world, Aud. Before I met her, everything had been so clear, so simple, but she had made me aware how alive and complex the world and the people in it were. And then she died, and now I couldn’t shut that awareness out again, couldn’t make it go away, and nothing made sense apart from this cabin. I could look at the wood I had hewn, the shingles I’d split and the pegs I’d hammered, and know what they meant and that they were real.
Stay alive inside. Promise me.
“If you could just—”
“No.”
A log broke open in a spume of orange sparks, and flames began to gnaw at the tilted remnants.
I upended the bottle, swallowed the last of the whiskey, and dropped the empty on the grass. The silence lasted a long time. The flames ate their way inch by inch to both ends of the broken log, and began to die.
“It’ll be winter soon,” he said, finally. “You won’t be able to work on the house in the snow.”
“Once the roof’s finished and the windows are in, it’s all indoor work.”
“Look, I know you hurt, but you’ll hurt for years. You can’t stay up here that long.”
“I could stay here forever.”
He studied me; his eyes reflected black, with tiny orange flames. “But you won’t?”
I didn’t say anything.
“We all worry.”
I looked at him.
He nodded. “Helen and Mick, Beatriz, Eddie, Annie.”
Annie, weeping by her daughter’s bed as the words echoed around that white room: cerebral hemorrhage, massive brain trauma, we’ll give you a moment with her. All because of one bullet, a piece of metal an inch long. And now I was here, and she was dead, and Dornan was alive, and Tammy: alive and walking around, laughing, breathing while Julia was dead.
All I had left of her were the promises she had asked of me. The promises I had given.
“I’ll find her for you.”
He turned away and poked vigorously at the fire with a stick. “Good,” he said after a while. “We’ll go back to the city in the morning.”
“You go. Bring back everything that might help us find out where Tammy is. Bring the mail from her apartment. Bring anything she sent you in the last few months: phone messages, cards, letters, photos. All of it.” The lovesick fool would have kept everything, just as I would have kept Julia’s letters, if I’d had any. “I’ll need other things, too. I’ll give you a list.”
I didn’t want to go back to Atlanta, to the house with the unfinished chair I had worked on while thinking of Julia, to the rug where she had curled up one evening, and the laundry on the floor that smelled of her: of sunshine and musk and dusty violets, of her rich skin, and her hair, oh dear god her hair …
“What?” Dornan said.
“There’s a sofa bed in the trailer,” I said harshly. “Go inside and leave me alone.”
I watched the rest of the stars come out, one by one, and tried to catch back that fleeting sense memory, her scent before she ended up wired to those machines, smelling of pain and medication and death.
An owl screamed in the wood and I wanted to ride behind its eyes when it plunged its talons into living flesh, wanted to tear something warm and soft to pieces while it squealed; wanted something else to hurt.
I dreamt of the phone ringing, the answering machine in Atlanta blinking red as messages piled up.
Beep.
A tremulous southern voice: “Aud, this is Annie. Why did you leave? You killed my daughter. She would be alive if she hadn’t gone to Norway. If she hadn’t loved you. You killed her and I want her back.”
Beep.
A cold, Norway-accented voice: “Hold for Her Excellency.” A pause. “On reflection, Her Excellency does not wish to speak to you. She no longer considers herself your mother. Not that she ever did, deep down.”
Beep.
Another voice, a woman’s, as warm and familiar as my own knuckles. “Love? You promised me. You promised.”
Dornan got up two hours after dawn. A raft of cloud had just floated over the sun and there was a breeze. He shivered as he climbed down from the trailer. I had water boiling over a fire.
“Morning,” he said. “Been up long?”
If he used his eyes he would see the pile of fresh shavings and newly stacked shingles by the shaving horse at the south end of the clearing. “There’s coffee in the pot but I’m boiling more water if you want fresh. I have some apples, and what’s left of yesterday’s rice, but if you want eggs or bread, then you’d be better off eating on the road.”
“Not too subtle, as hints go.”
“I put a list of the clothes and other things I’ll need in the glove compartment of your car.”
He nodded, but frowned. I waited. “I won’t, ah, I won’t bring any guns. Not across state lines.”
“I don’t need a gun. Here.” I handed him a cup of scalding black coffee.
“Ah, bless you.” He sipped, seemed to enjoy it as much as a fresh latte from one of his Borealis cafés.
“The day after tomorrow, then.”
“Aud …”
“Drive carefully.”
He smiled at me oddly, and carried his coffee to the Isuzu. The engine caught with a metallic shudder. He waved.
I nodded. He turned in a circle and went back the way he’d come, leaving me to the wind and the birds and the smell of sawdust.
CHAPTER TWO
It was nearly midday and the clouds long gone by the time I hammered the last shingle into place and sat back. The birds were quiet, the sun streamed down, and for a moment the valley felt like a place out of time, secret and silent and still, where no one intruded and nothing ever happened. Then I saw that the gilding on the trees up the mountain wasn’t just sun but the first tints of autumn which would seep downhill until all was copper and russet and gold and, not long after that, bare.
I climbed down the ladder and rattled the extension down after me; this afternoon I wanted to work on the ground-floor window framing. Once they were glazed, the cabin would be weatherproof.
It would have been easy to buy precut framing, just as it would to get already-made roof shingles, but the fine details kept me anchored. I’d already split out the boards from good pine, and dressed them with what was probably the same drawing knife that had been used on the original. I’d found it with a stack of other tools in the falling-down hogpen years ago, when my father’s will had cleared probate and I first saw the place. Many of them had been too rusted to be saved but some I’d taken back to Atlanta, where I had sanded off the rust, sharpened the blades, and fitted new handles of smooth hickory. Then I’d oiled and wrapped them, and forgotten them, until grief drove me from the city and I made my way here, somehow, with everything I needed, without even knowing how or why, except that I had to rescue something from ruin.
That meant no shortcuts. The original framing had been fastened to the logs with locust wood pegs. I’d destroyed those pegs pulling the rotting frames out, so I would have to make more. Metal pegs rot wood; it takes several decades, but every day I would imagine the deterioration eating at the logs and pine uprights.
The pile of seasoning lumber smelled of sunshine and brittle beetle wings. I had to unstack several pieces before I found the plank of yellow locust I’d split out when I’d first arrived. I hefted it onto my shoulder, careful of its rough edges, then realized I should have worn gloves. Both hands were a mess of splinter scars, new, healing, and half faded. I should have been wearing gloves for months.
The sawhorse stood in the sun. There was still no breeze, and cutting can be heavy work, so I picked it up with my left hand and carried it and the plank into the shade. There was no pain now in the injured arm and shoulder, not even a twinge.
I marked the plank at inch intervals with a blue pencil, picked up the saw, and braced the plank on the horse with my left knee. Yellow locust is dense and hard, but the bright steel teeth ripped through the plank in three easy pushes, and a finger of wood, an inch square and five inches long, dropped onto the grass. I shifted the plank an inch, set the saw, pushed forward and down, and ripped off another, then another, until it was a mindless, mechanical rhythm, and after a while there was nothing left of the plank but a nine-inch board I could use for something else, and dozens of wooden bars in a pile. When I scooped them onto a square of canvas, they sounded like a disordered xylophone. I sat on the turf and poured them through my hands and listened, imagining a mobile strung with different woods that made soft, wooden sounds in the breeze among the trees.
After a while I simply sat. Sometime later, I realized I hadn’t eaten.
The hogpen smelled of wood, and dirt on cool stone. The sealed painter’s bucket sat on the right-hand shelf. I swang it down, opened it, and took out the airtight tub of rice salad. I carried it to the log by the cold fire pit, and ate mechanically with my fingers. The woods were still quiet. The tomatoes seemed unnaturally red, the olives too pungent.
Somewhere in Atlanta Dornan would be sorting through piles of precious keepsakes, wondering whether to trust me with embarrassing love notes or the fact that he had kept phone messages from Tammy from the last eighteen months. In the end, he would; he wanted her back. To want someone back and know it might be possible …
A familiar shuddering started deep deep down in a place I couldn’t even name. “No,” I said aloud to any bears who might be listening. “Not now. I have things to do.”
Then do them. Concentrate on the details and everything will be all right.
No birds nested in the engine block, no rat snakes curled around the battery. It took a moment to loosen the dipstick, but when it came free it glistened with clear, pungent oil. I wiped it on the cloth, redipped it, and pulled it out again. The smell was stronger now, thick and sullen and artificial, and, as though some spell had been broken, a cool breeze set the foliage whispering. The oil looked fine.
The cab was hot—I’d kept the windows closed to prevent spiders and squirrels from nesting in the upholstery during the summer—but the fuel gauge looked healthy. When I turned the key the truck started with a deep, authoritative rumble. It was strange to feel artificial fabric on my bare legs and the vibration of manufactured power under my feet. The Chevy was a big truck, an extended bed rear-drive V10, fitted with a second gas tank and compression brakes. The dashboard was a complicated affair, with extra displays to support the cooling system, the trailer’s lights, the brake controller, and all the other extras a driver needs to haul thirteen thousand pounds up a steep incline and control it on the way back down. The side and rearview mirrors were big, and minutely adjustable. I looked in the rearview. An oil smudge split my forehead between my brows, like war paint. It should have made me look fierce, but it didn’t. I hadn’t realized how much my hair had grown, how startling my eyes were against a tan, but the real difference was my expression: the shock of seeing myself had been written across it clearly, just as now it registered intent interest. I had forgotten how to wear a mask.
I turned the engine off and climbed back down to the turf, checked the tires on the dual back wheels, and the muffler and lights. The gas can, jack, tools, fire extinguisher, jump cables, and flashlight were in the trunk; the spare tire felt firm. No mask. How odd. Under its protective tarp in the truck bed, the fifth-wheel coupling looked fine.
When I couldn’t think of anything else to check, I went into the trailer, to the sink in the tiny bathroom. I turned on the tap and let the water run over my hand, endlessly. My hand got cold. I stared at it, then turned the water off. I’d been waiting for it to run hot. It wouldn’t; the point heater was set on OFF to conserve the battery. I stood gazing at the wet sink for five minutes before I lifted my head.
My face lay on the glass like a picture of someone else. I turned this way and that. No, more like a picture of a rock after some vandal has ripped off its decades-old layer of moss and soil, and the bare stone is revealed. I touched my reflected eyes. Wolf eyes, Julia had said, not long after we met, so pale and hungry. For a moment I saw her behind me, leaning in the doorway, arms folded, smiling at my reflection but serious as she said, “More like a blasted heath, now, Aud,” and she was so clear, the words so exactly what she might have said, that I almost turned around.
Run, I thought, run and run and run, and when Dornan comes back, don’t be here. Hide.
Sunshine warmed the middle of the clearing. I stripped, knelt, hands palm up on my naked thighs, and began the measured breathing of zazen. At first I was aware of the dry grass poking at my shins and instep, the ruffle of breeze stirring the tiny hairs in the small of my back, the scent of my body, and I still wanted to run, but as I breathed steadily, in and out, and in and out, everything faded but the rhythm of air. My eyelids half closed. My heart beat steadily, relentlessly, like a machine. “You are not a machine.” Julia’s voice in my head. I smiled. A tear ran down my cheek. I didn’t move to brush it away. Not a machine, then. A living, breathing being. Alive. Julia was dead, but I was alive. Skinless, and half mutated, but alive. In and out. Stay alive, Aud. Promise me. Had she known how hard it would be?
In and out. In and out. Nothing else.
A bluejay shrieked. I blinked. The sun was well past its meridian. Midafternoon. The need to run was buried, f
or a while. I stood, stretched, walked naked to the hogpen, and pulled the tarp off the generator.
The Onan Microlite 4000 is essentially a lawn mower motor that drives a tiny electrical generating plant to produce 115 volts. Like a lawn mower, it can be cranky. I changed the oil, put in new spark plugs, and topped up the fuel reservoir from the red plastic can, then pressed the starter button. The clearing filled with its shattering roar and a plume of blue hydrocarbon smoke. I watched it for a few minutes until it burned clean, then climbed up into the trailer to take a look at the converter and smart charger. The flickering LEDs all said what I wanted to see: the deep-cycle marine battery was charging swiftly. I tested the electrical appliances one by one, turning them on and then off in careful sequence. Everything seemed to work.
I hadn’t run any of the propane kitchen appliances for a long time so I checked and rechecked the fridge and stove and air conditioner to make sure the gas lines were closed and the pilot lights off before I went back outside and detached the regulator. The two tanks on the tongue of the trailer were more than half empty. I hefted them into the truck bed.
Still naked, I walked into the trailer, turned the water heater on, found my cell phone and started it charging, then took paper and pen to the captain’s table and wrote a list. The pen felt strange in my hand. When the list was done, I found my wallet and put it on the bed. Next to it went clean clothes, suitable for going into Asheville. Then I dug out a towel and fresh soap, and had a shower.
I drove through the toylike downtown to carefully streetscaped Wall Street, with its new old-fashioned lights and neatly ordered trees. Everything was very clean, very open. Healthy-looking people smiled. It was like moving through the set of a 1960s TV show of the utopian future. There was a parking space in front of the Heads Up Salon. Someone had even left time on the meter.
A young woman was cutting a man’s hair in the brightly lit interior. “Be right with you,” she called, looking up from her work, beginning to smile. The smile went out and she stepped forward a pace. “Ma’am? Are you all right?”
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