The Light in the Woods

by Jean Marie Pierson

  THE LIGHT

  IN THE WOODS

  JEAN MARIE PIERSON

  A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

  The Light in the Woods

  © 2017 by Jean Marie Pierson

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-68261-401-3

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-402-0

  Cover Design by Phil Rose

  Interior Design and Composition by Greg Johnson/Textbook Perfect

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Post Hill Press

  New York • Nashville

  posthillpress.com

  Published in the United States of America

  For Guy Francis

  …because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned,

  and revealed them to little children.

  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

  –Luke 10:21

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  Grigonis House – Pittstown, New Jersey, last year

  Sunlight flooded through the living room windows in the late afternoon, making squares and rectangles on the oval braided rugs where Ava sat playing with her grandfather’s toy midget racer. He would have been sitting next to her, tracing its wheels around the rope track if he wasn’t dying in the next room. Ava turned the car around the groves of the braided rug. Three of its wheels rocked and wobbled, while one did not move at all. The yellow metal racing car with the chipped red “8” was Ava’s favorite, mostly because it was Pop-pop’s favorite. Many Sundays ago, when he was well, they would spend the afternoons on that rug and race his collection of toy metal cars. The white sheer curtains would roll and billow in the open windows like starting flags and waves of the crowd. The spectators were always the same. They were family. Young and in black and white. Mostly people Ava never met. All long gone. A couple on their wedding day. A woman in a feather hat. A little girl with big glasses waving. A man and a young boy standing next to each other on a snowy day. All sat frozen in time around their woolen track in their cheap tinny picture frames. Some she imagined cheering her on and some cheering for Pop-pop. The two would start their engines, with a powerful breath flapping through their rubbery lips. Ava would start out strong once the handkerchief dropped but Pop-pop’s racer usually caught up to her by the third rope. At that point something inevitably happened to his engine and he would pull back, allowing the number 8 to easily pass him for a victory.

  She knew better than to ask her mother if she could go into Pop-pop’s bedroom to give him the car to fix. Her mom wouldn’t let her disturb him for mere auto maintenance. But since her mom was in the kitchen folding clothes with Pop-pop’s Polish hospice nurse, Ava thought he wouldn’t mind if she stopped in for a quick visit.

  Her little hand gently pushed the door open. You wouldn’t know it was daytime as no sun made its way into the room. No billowy sheer curtains hung from curtain rods. Long swatches of velvet green fabric stood guard in front of the windows, blocking out all light. Machines beeped and hissed as her grandfather lay in bed, covered with blankets too hot and heavy for a late summer’s afternoon.

  Ava walked slowly over to his side of the bed and watched him sleep. His lungs made clicking sounds as his chest rose and fell. His face, normally smiling and cheerful, looked contorted in pain. His exhales sounded more like moans than breaths. She held the number 8 racer in one hand while she shook his shoulder gently with the other.

  “Pop-pop? Can you get up?” she asked as she held the car up to his sealed shut eyes. “Pop-pop, you need to fix this.”

  But his pained expression didn’t change as he continued to sleep. Ava kept shaking him until she heard her mother open the door.

  “Ava!” her mother said in a loud whisper as she placed a stack of clean towels on the vanity. “Ava Grigonis, come here. Pop-pop’s asleep.”

  Ava answered in a louder whisper, “I know but it’s broken! How can I race if the wheels don’t move?”

  Ava’s mother hustled to the other side of the room and quickly shooed her daughter out of the door. Once outside the whispering stopped.

  “Sweetie, you know Pop-pop is tired and is not feeling well. He needs his rest.”

  “I know but…”

  “Please, honey,” she breathed. Ava noticed her mother’s face had more lines on it than it did at the beginning of the summer. “Not now. I’ve told you time and again to just let him rest.”

  “But what if…” Ava began to say as she clutched the racecar in front of her face in an attempt to hide her frown. Her green eyes peered and pleaded at her mom over the little hood. “What if…”

  “What if, what?”

  Ava’s eyes turned in the direction of Pop-pop’s door. Her seven-year-old expression appeared as pained as her grandfather’s. “What if he doesn’t wake up?”

  Her mother lowered the car down from her face and stroked her cheek. She smiled sadly.

  “He will wake up again. I promise.” Her mother pursed her lips together and blinked twice. Ava had seen this face before. It was usually when her mom wasn’t sure if she believed what was coming out of her mouth. As if she held the words tight enough inside her teeth it would make them true.

  Her mother bent over and kissed Ava, resting her cheek on top of Ava’s head for a time longer than Ava liked. Anything longer than a couple of seconds meant that the hug was more for her mother’s comfort than her own. That scared her. She was relieved when Pop-pop’s nurse, Berta, came into the room and broke her mother’s embrace.

  “Marion?” said Berta in a thick Polish accent. Her brow wrinkled with worry as she wiped a juice glass. Neither surprised Ava as the stern look of concern was Berta’s permanent expression and her hands were always busy cleaning something. “Your father has visitors.”

  Ava’s mother stood up and ran her hand along her forehead. She looked around the room confused. “Really? Are they family?”

  “No. Say they are old friends of Raymond Kozak.”

  “That’s odd. Everyone has already come by,” her mother said as the three made their way towards the kitchen. Ava watched her mother shoot Berta a knowing look as Berta nodded in agreement. Two weeks earlier, family and friends paraded in to sit next to her sick grandfather in bed. They all acted the same. They walked into
his room happy and left wiping their eyes. Ava couldn’t understand why. Back then he could still talk and although most of what he said didn’t make sense, he looked far better than he did now. Now, he was curled up in a fetal position with his eyes constantly closed, like every second alive on earth was agony. He no longer recognized Ava. He knew her mother only for fleeting moments before drifting away in some medicated sleep. He called out for people Ava didn’t know. Names she remembered hearing around the dinner table and some names that sounded as if they were in another language. The disease that overtook his body rewound his brain and turned him back to being a kid. In his mind, it was the 1940s and he still lived in his childhood home on Jacob’s Lane in a small town on the very tip of Long Island. He was not an elderly man spending his remaining days in his daughter’s farmhouse in New Jersey. When he could talk, he would say things that would warm a heart. Like how he couldn’t wait for to Christmas to come. How he knew Santa Claus personally. How Santa’s reindeer kept an eye on him from the backyard, even in the summer. Ava loved when he would tell her his Christmas stories. But as he got sicker, he didn’t just say these things to Ava, but to everyone who came to see him. Doctors, friends, even their priest. It got so bad that when he mentioned Christmas, her mother would cringe. But now the cancer wreaked such havoc on his body that he could no longer speak. They all ached to hear something come from his lips that wasn’t a moan or a cry. Her mother’s voice now raised an octave every time she walked into that dark room and spoke to him. Ava thought that this is what her mother must have sounded like when she was a little girl. That maybe she spoke this way in hopes of Pop-pop recognizing her. But it wouldn’t work. Her voice sounded too sad. From outside the room, it sounded like a heartbroken child tending to a dying one.

  “I thought it was odd too,” said Berta as she puffed up her chest. “That’s why I kept them outside.”

  “Oh, Berta, they could’ve come in,” her mother said as she straightened up the kitchen by collecting medicine bottles and dropping them into the plastic pink hospital buckets. “I’m sure some elderly men wouldn’t hurt us.”

  Berta pointed her hand towel at the door. “That is why they’re outside. They are not old.”

  Ava walked to the window and peeked through the café curtains. On the stoop stood two men; one tall and lean wearing beige pants with his hands stuffed in his pockets and a clean linen shirt and the other shorter man wearing dungaree overalls, a long-sleeved shirt and a tweed checked cap. Ava thought it odd as it was too hot to wear a hat, let alone long sleeves. Odder still, she saw no car in the driveway. For a house located in the middle of a field with only a long dirt road leading up to it, there was always a car. Her mother must not have been too concerned as she opened the door to greet the two men. The taller one’s face seemed to light up when he saw her mother.

  “Marion Kozak?” asked the man in beige. Ava crept out from behind her mother’s pant leg and stood in front to get a better look at the men. She wasn’t afraid. Her mother, however, put her arms around Ava’s shoulders and held her close.

  “Yes. Well, no. I was Marion Kozak. It’s Marion Grigonis now,” she said but the man’s attention quickly turned to Ava. He bent over and faced her at eye level.

  “And this must be Ava,” he said with a smile.

  Ava couldn’t help but smile sweetly at the man. His eyes seemed warm and friendly like her grandfather’s. She felt her mother’s grip tighten.

  “Yes, but you’ll have to excuse me, sir. How do we know you?

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a friendly tone. “My name is John. John Charles. Your father did work for my company for many years.” He then took his right hand out of his pocket and held out a business card. Ava’s expression changed in an instant from smiles to horror, as if the man was handing her mother a dead cat instead of a small piece of paper. Her mother reached for his hand and then stopped suddenly. Along with missing a few digits, his hand was completely disfigured. Ava had only seen hands this twisted in old people and not in a man that was no older than her mother. The short man in the cap behind him let out chuckle.

  “It’s alright,” John Charles said. “They don’t hurt.”

  Her mother took the card. She opened her eyes wider and moved the card to a place where she could read it without her glasses.

  “INR,” she read. Her studied expression dissolved into a smile. “I know this! I remember seeing checks on Dad’s desk with this logo. For years, actually.”

  “Yes,” John Charles said with a smile. “He’s one of my go-to guys around the holidays. Never let me down. We just wanted to stop by and thank him for all his good work. We didn’t want to miss a chance to say…” John Charles looked down at Ava quickly, then back up to her mother. “To say hello while we were in the area.”

  A loud whistle screeched from the kitchen, then stopped abruptly. Her mother looked back inside, then at the men.

  “The kettle’s boiled. Please, will you come in?”

  Berta had already set enough cups on the counter for the men as they entered the kitchen. John Charles introduced himself to Berta with a handshake. His gnarled hands didn’t make her flinch like Ava or her mom. Nothing about the human body seemed to faze Berta. Ava thought she might go lightly on John Charles’ hand, like when she would lift Pop-pop up to eat or take his pills. But she did not. She greeted the two men like everyone else: with a knuckle-breaking hand squeeze and one hard yank of the arm, as if she were shaking crumbs off a tablecloth. Ava winced but it didn’t seem to bother John Charles. He just kept smiling.

  “Dad is resting now,” her mother said. “He might wake up soon. Please have a seat. I am so curious to hear about your company.”

  John Charles moved towards the table as the man with the cap looked down at the number 8 racer in Ava’s hand.

  “I remember those,” he said as he took off his cap and stuffed it into his back pocket. “I used to play with these ages ago.” For the first time she saw the man smile. He had a dimple like hers on his right cheek. Ava held it up so he could get a better look.

  “It doesn’t run,” said Ava, defeated. “See?” She plopped on the floor in front of him and rolled it on the ground, illustrating the car’s flaws. She rocked the only working wheels back and forth to show him the loud squeak. “The wheels are broken.”

  The man sat right down on the floor and crossed his legs tightly in front of him. Lowering his head, he closely examined the motion of the car. His expression looked more as if he were reading the racer than just observing its movements.

  “I think your wheels are ok. It might just be the axles.” He reached out to pick up the racer, then stopped suddenly. He asked with his hand suspended in the air, “May I?”

  Ava looked at her mom, who nodded to her that it was fine.

  “Sure, Mister,” she said.

  His rough and stained hands held the racer eye level to them both. A second smile stretched across his face as his thumb glided over the chipped red number “8”. His concentration broke as he looked over the hood to Ava.

  “Is this one your favorite?” he asked. Ava nodded her little head up and down affirmatively. He let out a quiet chuckle.

  “Yeah,” he answered as he spun the squeaky wheel. “It was mine too.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Jacob’s Lane – Southold, New York, 1944

  She couldn’t look at Ray as she pulled him through the woods. Ray had never seen his mother this angry. She hadn’t even bothered to button her winter coat before she tore out of the door to get him. Her one hand clasped the front lapels together while her other hand gripped Ray under his armpit. He stumbled along the path to keep up with her as his left foot could barely touch the ground. His mother’s fury gave her petite frame the strength of ten dads as she dragged him down the wooded path. He noticed the unpacked snow over the fallen leaves and twigs rose up and froze against her bare ankles. If
she weren’t so angry, Ray thought, she’d notice she was cold. He tried not to look at her face but couldn’t help himself. Her glare cut a trail through thickets and trees that crowded around the path. No breath came from her mouth but the cold streams of air shot out of her nostrils like an angry bull. It wasn’t until they broke free from the cluster of trees and made it into the open clearing of their backyard that she seemed to find the words.

  Ray’s mother whirled him around and grabbed his other shoulder, squaring his contorted ten-year-old face up to her frozen hazel stare. Her feminine fingers nearly punctured Ray’s winter coat. Each word was punctuated by a slight shake. “Raymond. James. Kozak. How could you?”

  “He’s old enough,” he said, ashamed that his voice was slightly trembling. Her anger frightened him.

  “He’s six years old, Raymond! Barely out of kindergarten. How would you have felt if…”

  Her stare suddenly broke as she looked over his head. Ray looked over his shoulder to see Olive Mott, his fellow classmate and next-door neighbor. She stood quietly at the end of his driveway watching the scene unfold. Olive wiped the snow off one of her lenses with a thick mismatched mitten without taking the glasses off her face. Ray figured Olive came to see if his mother was actually going to murder him. After meeting his mother’s glare, Olive nervously pushed her scarf over her nose and shuffled back through the snow towards her house. Although her head hung low, her chin stayed glued to her shoulder, in Ray’s direction. Ray just pursed his lips as they exchanged a knowing, worried look. There was nothing anyone could do for him now.

  His mother lowered her yell to a harsh whisper. “How bad would you have felt if someone did that to you when you were that age?”

  Ray couldn’t imagine it. He couldn’t imagine anything making him feel bad before the war. He couldn’t imagine anything bad happening when his father was home. But as he looked at his mother, breathless in anger, Raymond couldn’t imagine there was a time when he believed in magic, Santa, or anything that rewarded those who were good.