In a Dark Season

by Vicki Lane

  A single tear traced its way through the dirt on his cheek. He drained his tea and tried to rise. “Mrs. Goodweather, I must ask to be excused. I have arrived at that stage of my drunkenness where I become tediously lachrymose. If you would forgive me, I think I shall retire.”

  “He insisted on going upstairs to his bedroom but, Phillip, he started crying so hard, he could hardly see to stagger. In the end, I helped him up this claustrophobic enclosed staircase—there’s a door to it back in the kitchen area—and got him to his bed. He flopped down, still weeping, and began babbling all kinds of disconnected stuff. It was really hard to listen to—I have a pretty low tolerance for maudlin drunkenness and I was about to make my getaway when he said, very clearly, ‘Of course, Spinner was gay. Poor boy, he just wasn’t ready to admit it.’”

  “You sure he said ‘Spinner’?” Phillip had his arm around her as they walked back to the car. On the hill above them, two cruisers from the sheriff’s department remained and the fleeting beams of flashlights behind the shattered windowpanes showed that Blaine and his men were still at work, searching for evidence that might explain the blaze.

  “Oh, he definitely said ‘Spinner.’ Absolutely. So I sat down and waited. He was talking about all kinds of stuff but he kept mentioning Spinner. It seemed to be tied in with the abandoned cat—something like he had a weakness for helpless and abandoned creatures but he’s been more successful with cats than anything else.”

  “So what all did he say?” Phillip unlocked the car. “Did you ask him where Spinner was now?”

  “I tried to. But he launched into a long story about how he’d always been an outcast and that gave him a fellow feeling for other outcasts. He said he’d failed his family when he was forced out of the service.”

  Thomas Blake had tossed to and fro on his rumpled bed in an agony of confession that had brought no catharsis. “It was the calamitous termination of my military career that taught me to seek oblivion in a bottle. I tried to help a young corporal under my command, and ended by destroying us both. He was grieving at the loss of a comrade killed in a training mishap. And I, instead of telling him to buck up and be a man and a soldier, I, soft, foolish Thomas, put my arm around him to comfort him. I swear that was all.”

  Blake seemed to have forgotten her presence as he continued, words tumbling over one another as they escaped him. “I only made it worse for him. A self-important fellow officer, coming upon us at that moment, chose to misconstrue the situation. Rumors began to fly and my commanding officer was eager to be rid of me. And when I was discharged and returned home, my parents’ shame was so deep that they would have almost nothing to do with me. And so I drink.”

  Blake had lapsed into silence, broken only by gasping sobs. When the worst of the crying jag had passed, Elizabeth spoke. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Blake. I wish I could help you.”

  They were just words but she found that she really meant them, even as she wondered if, after so many years, help was possible for the Troll.

  The storm of drunken sobs passed. Blake lay still now, flat on his back, his face hidden in the crook of one arm.

  “Mr. Blake,” Elizabeth said gently, “you mentioned someone named Spinner. Was his last name Greer?”

  His reply had been muffled. “Greer? Possibly…it has a familiar sound. Spinner was an outcast too. But he vowed to face what he was and what he’d done like a man. I applauded his resolution and urged him to take the final step.”

  Blake lowered his arm and gazed up through his smeared glasses. “I thought he had done the thing; I believed him redeemed and safe; but I have recently learned that he reneged on his promise. In the end, I fear he was as big a coward as I—he ran away.”

  “And then Blake just fell asleep—or passed out. So I came downstairs to wait for you.”

  Phillip was preoccupied for a moment with adjusting the car’s heater. When at last it was working to his satisfaction, he said, “Mac told me some more about Blake’s past. Evidently this episode Blake mentioned—him with his arm around the soldier—well, it seems the soldier was gay and some of the roughnecks in his unit, once he’d been written up, decided on a little retaliation for quote ‘besmirching the honor’ unquote of their unit. Things really got out of hand. The young man was beaten severely and sexually assaulted with a—with an object, as well.”

  He reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sorry, sweetheart; it’s ugly. But it goes a long way toward explaining why the poor guy stays drunk all the time.”

  Chapter 30

  Emerging from Darkness

  Tuesday, December 26

  The words came and went too quickly. Just when she had one forming at the tip of her tongue, it swirled away. Like those fortune-telling eight balls my classmates brought to school… Yes…No…Sometimes…Maybe…Wait and See…Never…The words and thoughts floated lazily up through her murky consciousness and disappeared again before revealing themselves.

  And that is a simile—using the word “like.” It is not a…not the other one where the comparison is direct. If I said “My mind is a fortune-telling eight ball,” that would not be a simile buta…a… The word swam away, laughing over its shoulder at her. Years and years of teaching the basics of poetry and composition to bored freshmen, drilling into them the simple terms, and now she couldn’t even remember…was it “dactylic”? She was sure there were three syllables: dah, dah, dah. No, dactylic was meter: the waltzing three-beat of “THIS is the FORest primEval/The MURmuring PINES and the HEMlocks.” The elusive word peeked out at her, then dodged away.

  “Here’s you your juice, Nola, and your pills. Sit up like a good girl…or do you need a helping hand?”

  Nola struggled to obey. She’d learned that Michelle’s “helping hand” was harsh and left dark bruises on the tender flesh of her inner arm. But she said nothing, staring straight ahead, letting her jaw hang slack. From the corner of her eye, she could just make out the other figure standing like lurking death near the closed door. Without her glasses, it was difficult to be sure, but when she heard the voice, her question was answered.

  “I brought some more of her meds. You should have enough now for the rest of the month. After that—”

  “Do you guys realize it’s almost nine-thirty! Mum, you never sleep that late. And where did you guys go last night anyway?”

  As Elizabeth and Phillip made their somewhat shamefaced entrance into the living room, Laurel turned from the sketch she was doing of her older sister to glare at the late-risers. Rosemary, her dark hair falling like parentheses on either side of her serene countenance, was elegantly sprawled across the love seat by the fire, engrossed in one of the books she had received for Christmas.

  At the sound of Laurel’s voice, Rosemary looked up with the somewhat bemused expression of the reader who must make the not-always-welcome transition from the enthralling world on the printed page to the mundane demands of the here and now.

  “Morning, Mum…morning, Phillip. There’s coffee made and I brought the bowl of ambrosia up from the basement refrigerator. And we filled the bird feeders and let the dogs out. Where did you all go? I heard the jeep going down the road in the wee hours this morning, so I came downstairs to see what was happening—”

  “And while it was nice that you left a note, Mum, ‘Back soon’ doesn’t really cover the ground, now does it?” Laurel added a few more lines to her sketch, frowned in an accusing manner, and erased them.

  “You’re right, sweetie. But we were in a hurry and there just wasn’t time to explain.”

  Feeling properly chastened, Elizabeth began to describe the events of the previous night while Phillip headed for the kitchen in search of coffee.

  “Then the old house didn’t actually burn down?” Laurel squinted at her sketch. “Rosie, would you put your head back the way it was…down a little more…there.”

  Rosemary complied and, still holding the pose, asked, “So, how do they think this fire got started?” The question w
as directed at Phillip, returning with a mug in one hand and a plate in the other.

  “It was probably deliberate but—”

  “Like that Hummer that burned up—maybe it was the same people—trying to scare off the developers.” Laurel broke into Phillip’s reply, only to be quashed by Rosemary’s quiet voice.

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Laur. Why would the people who’re trying to save the old stand from the developers want to burn it down? I think it’s more likely it was some bored teenagers ‘hoo-rahin’ around,’ like Miss Birdie says. They’d just see a creepy old house, not a historical landmark.”

  Creepy old house. The words echoed in Elizabeth’s head. Someone had called it that not long ago. Someone who—

  “Wait a minute. Nola’s niece said something about the sooner they tear down that creepy old house, the happier she’d be. And now that I come to think of it, that presentation by those developers—by RPI—about their plans for the Gudger’s Stand property—it talked about a historic recreation. I’d been assuming they were going to turn the old stand into the centerpiece of their development but—”

  “You could be onto something, Lizabeth,” Phillip said. “What if it was in RPI’s best interest to get rid of the stand house—not have to hassle with preservationists and folks like that who wouldn’t go for major changes at the Gudger house? It’s happened before—a piece of property that was inconveniently historic and too expensive to restore or maintain and in the way of progress suddenly burns to the ground.”

  The day after Christmas is not the best time for getting information, thought Elizabeth as she looked at the list she had made:

  1. Nola/Ambien

  2. Call Gloria re Spencer Greer

  3. Bam-Bam?—call Debbie at River Runners

  Phillip had left shortly after breakfast. “I told Mac I’d come back and give him a hand with looking around the Gudger place again. And I’ll stop in and check on your drunken friend—he probably feels even worse than I do this morning.”

  For once the little office was empty—the girls had already checked their e-mails and had gone to visit Miss Birdie. There’d been no sign of Ben and Amanda this morning, but that was not unusual. Only the dogs were there, crowding the floor of the tiny room with their sleeping bodies.

  Elizabeth studied the brief list, trying to decide what to do first. Nola—she’s my main concern at the moment. Phillip had spoken with Mac as promised and Mac had suggested that she call Adult Protective Services.

  “There’s nothing he can do, Lizabeth. You have to go through Social Services and, yes, they’re probably closed today. Why don’t you go visit your Miss Barrett this afternoon and see how she’s doing? If she’s been overmedicated, but has started refusing the pills, she may be able to communicate better now. And if that’s the case, maybe she’ll be able to take charge of her own affairs again.”

  I hope so. Wouldn’t it be great to walk into that awful little room and have the old Nola look at me and say “Get me my glasses and get me out of this ridiculous place! And what butcher is responsible for this travesty of a hairdo?”

  She put a question mark by Nola’s name and wrote down the number of Social Services after it, with the admonishment “CALL!!!”

  Bam-Bam. God, what a dreadful nickname. At least, I sincerely hope it’s a nickname. Elizabeth punched in the numbers for the proprietors of River Runners and was rewarded with an almost immediate answer.

  She began to explain who she was and what she wanted but was interrupted as soon as she mentioned Ben’s name.

  “Oh, hi there, Elizabeth. How are Ben and that gorgeous girl of his? Tell them we’re goin’ to do another moonlight run on the twenty-eighth, if the weather cooperates. How can I help you?”

  As Elizabeth had expected, Debbie remembered the girl named Bam-Bam. “She was a good guide. Small, but tough as nails. We were hopin’ she’d come back the next summer but never heard from her. No surprises there—most of the folks who work for us are free spirits—they like to keep movin’. Still, she left without botherin’ to pick up her last week’s pay. She was hitchin’ and probably got a chance of a good ride with someone at that last party and didn’t want to wait around till the next day. Of course, considerin’ she took with her a really good down jacket I’d lent her, I guess we’re even. But, damn, I still remember that jacket—almost brand-new, green and purple—really nice lookin’.”

  Bambi Fleischaker was the girl’s real name. Debbie had checked her records to be sure of the spelling. F-L-E-I-S-C-H-A-K-E-R. Elizabeth carefully tapped the name into a Google search and was rewarded with a mixed bag of information ranging from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to the Alaskan Malamute Annual and several sites devoted to unusual baby names.

  And one site called “Bambi, Come Home.”

  The Drovers’ Road X

  Love Medicine

  I slipped out to the barn as soon as the house was quiet, thinking that Lydy would be lookin for me in our old place. Up in the haymow where the pallet was waitin, I stretched out to wait, smilin to myself at how easy it had been. Lydy had took the applejack from my own hand, like Mariah had said he must, and he had drunk it down in one swaller, never tastin what was in it.

  When first I’d had sign that I was with child, I’d gone to see Mariah. Though they was Melungeons, Mariah and her man was well thought of in our part of the county and she was known to be a good hand with herbs and cures. She had helped me back of this when my courses begun and I had such pains every month that I had to take to my bed. Mariah had give me a tea brewed of raspberry leaves and willow bark, with honey from her bee gums and hit had stopped the pains almost to oncet.

  So now I made my way through the woods, along the trail that ran above the drovers’ road. Hit was more steep-like and twistin amongst the rocks and trees but at this time of the year the drovers’ road was deep in muck and no place for a single girl to travel on anyways.

  I found Mariah in her little stone house, strainin honey into the heavy brown crocks she had. Like always, she had flowers in her hair and like always she was happy to see me.

  Lulie, she says, openin out her arms and smilin that way that always makes me wish I’d known my mother. I walk into her arms and as I feel her warmth, I bust out bawlin.

  What is it, Lulie? she asks, when I can talk again. She puts her big hands on either side of my face and looks into my eyes, like she is seein my inside thoughts. It’s not the monthly pains this time, is it? And before I can make answer, she says, No, I see. Quite t’ other way round.

  Mariah, says I, I don’t know what to do. He hasn’t spoke for me yet and I fear he may not.

  Her dark face was grieved as she spoke. Lulie, you’ve not come here thinkin I’ll rid you of this child? I know what the talk is but that’s a thing I will not do.

  I had knowed that, but hit had been at the back of my mind that she might help me that way. It was whispered that my stepmother Belle had once rid a girl of the bastard she was carryin but then the girl had bled to death. That girl had been sickly to start with and she’d likely have died anyway, is what was said. But Belle was still in Warm Springs and even had she been to hand, I could never have gone to her with my secret.

  No, Mariah, I’ll not ask for that. But I’ve heard you can make a drink that will bind a man to a woman forever more. That’s what I want of you.

  She cast her eyes down and stood silent for a minute. Mariah, I said, if I can’t marry Lydy, all that’s left for me is to fling myself into the river. I’m beggin you, fix me that love medicine.

  Hit’s a powerful thing, she warned me. And oncet hit’s done, hit can’t be undone. You got to think on that. Lulie, if the boy don’t want to marry you and your daddy casts you out, you can come here. Me and Ish’ll care for you like you was our own.

  Them two had never had children but Mariah mothered any sick or lame creature that came their way. She had nursed me through the summer complaint the year I was born for Belle hadn’
t had no idea how to care for a baby.

  But I kept on a-beggin and swearin to throw myself in the river till at long last Mariah agreed and told me what I must do. I was to dig the root of the little three-petaled woods flower that bloomed white in the spring. I knowed which one she meant and where there was a patch of them, though the pretty white flowers was long past. Next I was to wash the root in spring water and lay it to dry in some dark place. When hit was bone dry then I could crush it into a powder.

  My granny said that it should be a Friday when you crush the roots and Friday midnight when you mix it with the honey, Mariah said.

  Did you ever use this potion? I asked and her eyes went to the open door. Out there was Ish, bent over hoein the garden rows. He seemed to feel her lookin at him and straightened up, a great white smile on his brown face.

  Only oncet, said she.

  I had done like Mariah told me and the little bottle of love medicine was hid away in my feather tick against Lydy’s return. Truth to tell, I’d almost forgot hit, thinkin I might not have need, thinkin maybe Lydy would come to me on his own. But after I seen him save Belle from the hogs and carry her into the house, all unheedin of my call, a cold fear come over me and I unstitched the tick and got that little bottle out.

  I held it up to the window, letting the last rays of the settin sun stream through it, lightin it up with a yellow glow. Put it in his food or drink at night and give it to him with your own hand, Mariah had said. Make sure he takes all of it and make sure you lay with him afore the sun comes up. As soon as that happens, he’ll be yourn forever more.

  The moonlight sifted through the logs of the barn, making bars acrost my body and the sweet-smellin hay beneath me. I lay there, eager for Lydy and eager for the lovin that was to come, the lovin that Mariah had said would bind him to me for all time. To me and to this baby, I thought, layin a hand on my belly. I shut my eyes and begun to picture the years to come, me and Lydy with our fine family—runnin the stand and bringin up our boys to do the same. I fell asleep picturin them so clear, standin afore me like stair steps, from the tallest to the least un…