Gilchrist

by Christian Galacar

  GILCHRIST

  a novel

  Christian Galacar

  Gilchrist

  Copyright © 2017 by Christian Galacar

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, or events used in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, alive or deceased, events or locales is completely coincidental.

  E-book formatting by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  Print ISBN: 978-1975802028

  To the memory of my father.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1: BAD NEWS

  2: DALE’S DELIGHT

  3: RICKY OSTERMAN

  4: THE METZGER KID IS DEAD

  5: SHADY COVE

  6: A SUNDAY MORNING IN GILCHRIST

  7: FIRE

  8: “YOU’RE LIKE ME”

  9: GOOD DOG

  10: DYNAMITE MEATLOAF

  11: JACKSON HILL

  12: IN THE LAKE

  13: MISSING

  14: SEARCH PARTY

  15: OUT IN THE WOODS

  16: TIME TO GO

  17: EPILOGUE / A NEW START

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER WORKS

  ONE LAST THING

  Prologue

  LAKEMAN’S LANE (1931)

  1

  “What the hell are you doing? Hold that goddamn thing steady!” Mullins shouted over the sound of the crane.

  The entire crew of a dozen men had gathered to watch. It was the biggest tree they’d felled since starting the job. Side bets had been made as to whether or not their equipment could even move the thing.

  “I got it,” John Dennison said, carefully working the crane’s controls. Though only in his twenties, he was a skilled operator. He had been doing it since he was a kid. His father had taught John everything he knew, but he didn’t want to think about his father right now. The boom lowered slowly, and the massive log it was hoisting inched farther out. After a few feet, the crane started to bow forward and lift the treads off the ground. Dennison reacted, raising the boom again, and the crane squatted back down.

  “Jesus Christ!” Mullins threw his hands in the air.

  “It’s too heavy,” Dennison said. “It isn’t meant for something this big. Why don’t we just drop it and push it with the dozer? It’s safer.”

  “It ain’t too heavy. You just don’t have a damn clue how to run that thing. Just take it slow, and it’ll be fine. You don’t worry about what’s safe. That’s my concern.”

  Dennison ignored Mullins. The guy didn’t know what he was talking about. He started letting the load line out to bring the swinging log down. But before it touched the ground, Mullins was running over.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, out of breath. He was a fat man with a taste for afternoon gin. His face was the hypertensive shade of a ripe plum.

  Dennison worked the controls, eyes focused ahead. “I told you it’s too heavy, and yellin about it isn’t gonna change a damn thing. So I plan to set this down, go have myself a smoke, then I’m gonna get in the bulldozer and push that log the way we should’ve done from the start. How’s that sound, Will?”

  “You little prick, if I tell you to do something, then you do it. That’s how this works.”

  “That so?”

  “You’re goddamn right.”

  With the log settled in the dirt, Dennison jumped off the crane and looked at Mullins. He was dog-tired and didn’t want to deal with his bullshit right now. Mullins was an okay foreman—not an okay guy, though an okay foreman—but he didn’t know when to admit when he was wrong, and that was dangerous with this sort of work. To top it off, it had been a long day. Hell, it had been a long summer. The crew had been out there since June, building the road to Lake Argilla. Lakeman’s Lane was the name Gilchrist’s town officials had decided upon.

  “Last I checked,” Dennison said, “you ain’t got no one else qualified to run equipment. So what choice do you have?”

  Mullins’s face showed a brief moment of embarrassed shock. Then, considering the crew watching, he pulled it into a hateful scowl. Without further warning, he cocked his arm back and took a swing.

  Dennison ducked, then lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Mullins’s stout body, driving him back. “You gone done it now, you fat shit.”

  “Get that sumbitch,” one of the crew said.

  “It’s on now,” another yelled.

  Others had started to laugh and cheer.

  Mullins and Dennison jostled in each other’s arms for a few seconds, then fell over in an awkward embrace and started swinging in the dirt. Before long, a few of the crew ran over and pulled them apart. Mullins bled from a cut above his eye, and Dennison from his nose.

  One of the men tried to put a hand on Dennison’s shoulder to calm him down, but Dennison jerked away. “Don’t touch me,” he said, and stormed off into the woods.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Mullins yelled after him.

  Without turning around, Dennison yelled back, “I told you, I’m gonna go have a smoke, and then I’m gonna get in that bulldozer and push that goddamn log. Then I’m going home.”

  There was a pause. Then Mullins, in a defeated voice, said, “Well, hurry up. It’ll be dark soon.”

  Dennison continued into the woods to find a place to sit. He just wanted a few minutes away from that moron so he could calm down.

  2

  Dennison sat on a rock at the shore of Lake Argilla and blew a wad of bloody snot from his nose. The bridge of it throbbed with its own dull heartbeat. He fingered a Lucky Strike from his pack and lit it. The sun was setting over the trees across the water. He was thinking of his father, who had died a few weeks ago of a massive heart attack. Dennison had been the one to find him on the floor in the garage. They used to come out to the woods and go fishing a lot when John was a kid.

  Those were good times, weren’t they, Pop?

  He took a drag, then held out his hand and looked at his knuckles. They were nicked and scuffed with dirt. His hand trembled from the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. Mullins was lucky they had been pulled apart. He might’ve killed the guy.

  “Moron,” he said to himself, and dropped his hand to his lap.

  He couldn’t wait to be done with this job. Recently, he had been thinking about heading west to see if he could find something else to do with his life. He was a good machine operator—despite what Mullins thought of him—and he knew it wouldn’t be too hard to find work. He had never been away from Gilchrist before, and he thought it was probably time. There wasn’t a whole lot left for him here.

  “Johnny, is that you?” a familiar voice said from behind him.

  Dennison wheeled around on the rock. He felt the blood drain out of his face as his skin chilled and broke out in gooseflesh.

  “Dad?” he said, shock washing over him. His Lucky Strike fell in the mud and hissed as the ember went out.

  3

  Mullins was climbing over a pile of cut logs when his foot slipped down into a seam and his ankle got pinned. He tried to yank up on it, but a log above him shifted, threatening to roll down on him and crush his leg. He remained still, trying to assess the situation. He’d gotten himself into a fine pickle. The crew was about fifty feet off in the distance, drinking coffee and mulling over the evening’s excitement. The last thing he wanted to do was call to them for help, especially after what had happened with Dennison. He’d looked like a fool enough for one day. If he kept at it, he would lose all respec
t. And without that, the job would never get finished. On the other hand, he didn’t want to end up a cripple, either.

  He bent down to inspect the situation better. Maybe if he could slip his foot out of his boot, then—

  The sound of the bulldozer’s diesel engine grinding to life startled him. He looked up and saw the exhaust pipe cough black smoke. The rain cap bobbed up and down on the muffler. Then he saw Dennison sitting behind the controls, staring at him. Great, he thought. Just the guy he wanted to find him like this.

  Mullins hesitated. But after a moment or two, he waved his hands over his head to make sure Dennison could see him. He was thirty feet away, on the other side of the little clearing where they kept the equipment parked. “I’m stuck!” he shouted reluctantly, pointing to his leg.

  Dennison continued to stare at him, his face a blank slate. Then he pushed a lever forward, and the dozer began to creep and squeak toward Mullins.

  “What’re you doing? Stop fooling around. Come give me a hand,” he yelled.

  But Dennison just adjusted a few more levers and maneuvered the dozer, pointing it directly at Mullins. Then he pushed the throttle all the way forward, and the engine wound up, jetting smoke from the exhaust. The treads started to cleak-cleak-cleak louder and faster.

  Mullins began to feel the first traces that something was wrong. “Cool it, asshole!” he shouted. “Shut that thing off and come help me. You’re gonna shake one of these logs loose. It’s not funny.”

  The dozer was only ten feet away now, and Mullins could see Dennison’s face clearly. But it wasn’t his face that drummed up a sense of disquiet in Mullins… it was Dennison’s eyes. He didn’t recall Dennison having such bright green eyes. Almost unnaturally green.

  The bulldozer’s blade started to lift, adjust… and aim.

  “Shut that thing off this second. I swear to God I’ll fire you and find someone else.”

  Dennison didn’t slow or change course, and Mullins knew he was in real trouble.

  “Help! Somebody help!”

  He heard people scrambling through the woods. Thumping footsteps. Or maybe it was his own heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. The dozer kept coming. He could see the rust and caked mud on the blade. Pieces of dried tree root. The bolts. The welds. The gouges in the steel from rocks.

  His gaze met with Dennison’s horrible eyes right as the bottom edge of the blade pressed against his lap and started to push him back against the logs. He heard two loud pops and felt the biggest pain of his life as his legs were crushed, and then severed. He looked down and saw gouts of blood pouring over tree bark.

  Then Mullins lost consciousness.

  AUGUST 1966

  Chapter One

  BAD NEWS

  1

  The silence settled like a cold slab between them, had happened that way since they lost Noah. Moments without forced conversation filled too quickly with unspoken accusations. Their life was supposed to be different, supposed to be perfect. Other people had these problems, not them.

  Peter and Sylvia Martell sat in the waiting room. They couldn’t look at each other without seeing the word FAILURE in giant blaring letters. Their lives were contaminated—infected—with the word, although neither would say so. They’d been evicted from their former life. The life where she smiled honestly and he didn’t drink so much—hell, they both drank too much. The life where they hosted dinner parties and people could talk about their own children without that look surfacing in their eyes that seemed always to say: These poor, unfortunate people. I can’t imagine…

  Peter picked at the knee of his pants, working on the seam of his khakis, trying not to think about what might be coming. Every so often, as to not seem beaten down by it all, he forced himself to look up and make eye contact with his wife. Sylvia nursed the paper cup of water the receptionist had given her, feigning polite smiles when the air grew too stale with tension. Her face wanted to be stoic, but the burden was too much. There was a time when she could hide things well, but those days were gone. Neither Peter nor Sylvia was a bad person, but both feared the other thought they were. And that might’ve been at the heart of the thing.

  Peter picked up the copy of LIFE Magazine sitting on the table beside him. It was the August 12, 1966 issue. The cover showed a bullet hole in a window and a blurry silhouette of a tower in the background. The headline was in bold black letters: THE TEXAS SNIPER. Below that, in smaller white print: “Store window shattered by bullets fired from tower in background by Charles Whitman.”

  Peter cleared his throat. “Every time I see this, I think it can’t be real. What would make a person do something like that? Kill a bunch of innocent people for no reason? I mean, what’s the damn point?”

  Sylvia glanced at the magazine cover but didn’t say anything. Peter could tell she was nervous, preoccupied.

  He dropped the magazine back on the table. He had already read the article on the shooting last week, when the issue first came out. “Is your sister still coming for dinner tonight?”

  “I think so.” Sylvia crossed her legs, then swept the edge of her hand over her wool skirt, ironing out the already flat fabric.

  “That’ll be good. You haven’t seen her in a while,” Peter said. “Is she still with that teacher?”

  “Arthur?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Yes, he’s coming, too.” Sylvia started picking at the side of her thumb with her nail—her anxious tic. The skin there was raw and cracked.

  “We should stop and get some wine on the way home,” Peter said. “Maybe a bottle of nice scotch or something.”

  Sylvia checked her nails. “That’s a good idea.”

  The receptionist came and stood in front of them, holding a clipboard in both hands. She had it pressed against her bosom in an officious way. “Dr. Carlson will see you now. Just this way.”

  Peter looked at his wife and placed his hand over hers. “Everything will be okay. I’m sure of it. I love you, no matter what happens.”

  Sylvia smiled noncommittally. “Okay,” she said, sliding her hand out from underneath his. “Let’s get this over with.” She stood and shouldered her purse, pressing her fingers against the side of her auburn hair. Peter stood and dropped a hand into the pocket of his tweed sport coat. Then the Martells followed the receptionist through a door marked PATIENTS ONLY and down a tiled hallway that smelled strongly of antiseptic.

  At the end, the receptionist took a right and stopped outside a doorway. “You can have a seat in here. The doctor will be right with you.” There was a brass plaque beside the door that read EDWARD CARLSON, MD.

  Peter followed Sylvia in, and the receptionist closed the door behind them.

  They were not in an examination room. They were beyond that phase. In fact, if either of them never had to set foot in another exam room again, it would still be too soon. They were in the doctor’s personal office. The room, with its dark-wood paneling, was a place where long-awaited test results were discussed. A large oak desk sat in front of three tall bookcases filled with thick leather-bound medical reference books. Covering the walls were framed pictures of sailboats and nautical maps, and in one corner, which seemed to be designated for them, his diplomas—Boston College and Harvard—were hung. The one from Harvard was for their medical program. Graduating class of 1945.

  In the opposite corner was an antique globe supported by an elegantly carved wooden stand. Deep-green wall-to-wall carpeting covered the floor. Two chairs sat in the middle of the room, facing the visitors’ side of the desk. Sylvia sat in one and set her purse on her lap. Peter went over to the globe, spun it slowly, and stopped it with his finger. It came to rest on the coast of Africa. He sighed, spun the globe again without waiting to see where it would stop, and took the seat next to his wife. He swept away a few strands of his dark hair that had fallen across his forehead.

  The cold slab settled between them again. And the Martells waited without speaking. A clock on the wall beside t
hem ticked along in the silence, a lonely sound in the hollow heart of something dark on the horizon.

  2

  It was two thirty by the time Dr. Carlson came in. A tall, lean, handsome man in his late forties, with short black hair and smart features, he was a presence. “Peter, Sylvia, good to see you. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Hello, Doctor,” Sylvia said, her big blue eyes following Dr. Carlson as he went behind his desk and sat. He was wearing a lab coat with gray slacks, a white collared shirt, and a thin black tie. He pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and dropped it on his desk.

  He started patting his pockets. “I just need to find my glasses. They were short on eyes the day they made me. I can’t read a thing without them.” He checked the top of his head, but they weren’t there. He started picking up papers on his desk.

  Peter stared at him, his gaze searching Carlson. After a moment, he closed his eyes, his index finger and thumb rubbing together in little circles like he was rolling a pill. He could hear the blood running in his ears, the low thump of his heartbeat. He focused. The world around him fell away, then returned. “Do you have a jacket?” he finally asked, opening his eyes.

  “Yes.” Dr. Carlson stood and crossed the room to a coat rack beside the door, where a gray suit coat hung.

  “Check the inside pocket,” Peter said. “The left.”

  “Ah. Found them. Thank you. That was pretty good, Mr. Martell.”

  “You bet. That’s where I always keep mine,” Peter said.

  Sylvia glanced at him. Peter didn’t wear glasses, not even to read.

  Dr. Carlson returned to his desk, sat down, and put them on. “Okay, that’s better.” He opened a file in front of him and skimmed through it. The situation had the flat taste of chalk. The reading of the file seemed like a formality, as if he already knew exactly what he was going to say.

  “Some office you have here, Doc.” Peter gestured vaguely around the room.

  Carlson smiled modestly. “Thank you.”