Zack had left New Hope shortly after Del’s murder. The police brought him in for questioning a few times (as they had done to several of the residents of New Hope) and once he was cleared of suspicion, he packed up his books and guitar and hitched a ride out of town.
I WALKED QUICKLY, fueled by my anger, and it was not long before I reached the boulder and saw the smoke rising from my mother’s chimney. A hot cup of strong coffee was just what I needed to clear the cobwebs and imaginary giggles from my head. A figure stepped out of the cabin’s front door and onto the steps. She turned my way, waving madly. It was Raven.
“Kate!” she called. “Where’s your mother?”
Shit. So much for that cup of coffee.
I started jogging through the slush.
“In her room?” I called back hopefully, but suddenly remembered undoing the padlock before hearing the meow.
“No. Her door’s unlocked and she’s not in the house. I thought maybe she was with you. Where were you?”
“I went for a quick walk. I was gone only twenty minutes, a half hour at the most.” She shot me an exasperated look and I knew she was right—my mother could do a lot of damage in half an hour.
But would she come back with a knife this time? Dried blood on her bandages?
“Come on, we’ve got to find her. I think she went out to the road.”
I jumped into Raven’s Blazer, self-consciously pulling my long coat closed to cover my pajamas.
“I thought I heard Magpie,” I told her, deciding not to mention the footprints. “Opal wasn’t out in the woods this morning, was she?”
“Jesus, Kate. Of course not. She was up at six and at the bus stop by six forty-five.”
I tried to picture the size of Opal’s feet and the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself she couldn’t have made those tracks. They would have had to start at the big barn. These tracks seemed to begin and end at the old cabin.
Just some kid Nicky slipped five bucks. Some kid who had a talent for levitation. Maybe she swung her way to the cabin and back on tree limbs, Tarzan-style.
Raven and I wheeled out of the driveway, following what could’ve been my mother’s tracks through the slush. They headed out of New Hope and onto Bullrush Hill Road, where we lost them. Raven continued down the road, both of us desperately scanning the woods on either side.
“Kate, this is exactly why she can’t be on her own. I brought you some numbers. People to call about long-term care. There’s a facility in St. Johnsbury that would be perfect.”
“She doesn’t want to go to a home.”
“I know. I know she doesn’t. But you’re a nurse, for Christ’s sake. You must understand the situation. She’s not going to get any better. There’s this woman who teaches at the college—Meg Hammerstein. She wrote a book on dementia and runs a memory clinic for Alzheimer’s patients. I put her name and number in there for you, too. You should look her up.”
Raven was driving too fast. I strained to look into the brushy landscape rushing by. A snowshoe hare zigzagged across the road and into the woods. White as a ghost. Were ghosts white? Casper was white. White and harmless. Besides, there was no such thing as ghosts. Only desperate men playing elaborate games to make you believe. Damn him.
“It’s got so that your mother’s a danger to herself and others,” Raven continued. “That fire could have been a real disaster. As it was, we just lost the tepee. But what if there had been someone asleep in there? What if Opal or I had been in the tepee? It was the middle of the night. It was only dumb luck that Opal was sleeping at Tori’s and I was at my boyfriend’s.”
“My mother didn’t see anyone on the way to the tepee that night, did she?” I asked.
Raven took her eyes off the road and flashed me a look of disbelief. She glanced from my face to my pajamas and shook her head.
“Kate, it was three in the morning. Gabriel saw the flames from his window. He thought I was in there. He came running over in his underwear and found only your mother. She struggled with him. She bit his arm when he pulled her out—like she didn’t want to go.”
Now it was my turn to shake my head, not in disagreement, but just because something didn’t quite fit.
“She keeps telling me there was someone in there with her.”
“Sure she does. She’s got people with her all the time, Kate—dead people, people she hasn’t seen in ten years, young people who are now old. It’s part of her illness. She can’t differentiate between now and then. She can’t tell who’s there and who isn’t.”
Maybe it’s catching, I thought, remembering my wild goose chase this morning.
Raven slammed on the brakes when we got to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. The Blazer skidded in the snow. The Griswolds’ farm was on our left. The EGGS HAY PIGS POTATOS sign swayed in the wind by the side of the road. I thought of the pigs, how badly I once feared their razor-sharp teeth.
“Damn it!” Raven pounded the steering wheel with her gloved hand. “Where the hell is she?”
RAVEN AND I LOOKED ALL MORNING for my mother. My penance for losing her was running all over town in my pajamas, asking everyone we came across if they’d seen her. Raven parked the Blazer and she and I went door to door—you haven’t by any chance noticed an old lady in a nightgown traipsing through your flowerbeds this morning? Gabriel searched the grounds at New Hope. Jim at the general store called the state police for us, and got some volunteer firefighters together to search through the woods between New Hope and town. Raven and I finally returned to my mother’s house to wait for word, only to discover that the phones were down again. The lines on Bullrush Hill seemed to go dead every time the wind blew or a few flakes of snow or ice fell. Sometimes they’d be out for days for no apparent reason at all. It had been this way as long as I could remember.
I put on some clothes while Raven started a pot of soup—she said she had to keep busy or she’d go nuts. I stood on the front steps and opened the pack of cigarettes I’d picked up at Haskie’s, knowing how absurd it was. I haven’t smoked since college. I’m a nurse. I jog many miles a week through the rainy hills of Seattle, only occasionally treat myself to a non-fat frozen yogurt, always choose the baked potato over the fries. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to be calmed down by slicing up a bunch of carrots and rutabagas.
Opal surprised us by coming home from school early.
“What’s wrong?” Raven asked.
“Headache.”
“Again?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I just needed to come home.”
Raven filled her in on my mother’s escape, placing the blame heavily on me, which I willingly accepted. Opal offered to help with the soup and pulled up the sleeves of her sweater before getting started.
“My watch!” I said.
Opal looked puzzled, then touched it, smiled self-consciously, and took it off, handing it to me without explanation—almost as if she hadn’t realized it was there. Like it had suddenly materialized from the ether as soon as she entered the cabin.
“Uh, I think I’m gonna go to the big barn and lie down,” she said, more to Raven than to me. In fact, she was studiously avoiding eye contact with me.
Raven nodded and Opal slunk away, shoulders hunched, eyes on the floor.
“She borrows things,” Raven explained once Opal had gone. “She only does it to people she likes, so count yourself lucky. She would have given the watch back eventually. She doesn’t mean any harm. Most of the time, I don’t even think she’s aware she’s doing it.”
Now it was my turn to nod. Kleptomania with a touch of amnesia thrown in for fun. Add death threats from ghosts to that and some psychiatrist was going to have a field day with this kid.
When had Opal taken my watch? Surely I would have noticed if she’d done it during our visit last night. Did she sneak back into the studio once I was asleep? Was she to blame for my feeling this morning that someone had been in the room, watching me sleep? And had she come to visit before?
If so, what, if anything, had she taken?
“I know she’s becoming quite attached to you,” Raven said. “But I have to ask again that you please not encourage these ghost fantasies. I don’t want Del Griswold talked about. Not in any context. Have I made myself clear?”
“As crystal,” I said, buckling my watch on tight.
AROUND NOON, we heard a car pull up in the drive and rushed out to see Nicky Griswold helping my mother out of his truck.
Raven ran to her and gave her a suffocating hug.
“Jean, you gave us such a fright!”
“Had to get some eggs,” my mother said. She looked at me and winked. “I know you,” she said.
Raven put her arm around my mother and led her into the house.
“Where’d you find her?” I asked Nicky.
“She was walking around in the woods out behind our old place.”
“And what were you doing there?” Grateful as I was that he’d delivered my mother safely home, I was unable to hide the accusing tone in my voice.
“Just poking around. I had this crazy dream last night that the old cabin burned down. Someone was playing with matches.”
This was too much.
“Yeah, I bet you did.” I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Someone was playing with matches all right. That was a pretty strange idea of a joke, Nicky.”
He looked bewildered.
“Look, I just went out there to see if the cabin was okay, and I came across Jean in her nightie and slippers. I brought her straight back here. I knew you’d be worried sick.”
“Yeah, and what about yesterday? Were you out there yesterday, too? Is that when you did it? Was it before or after you talked to me? And where’d you find the kid who left the tracks this morning?”
He shook his head slowly, held his big hands up in a let’s-all-calm-down gesture. He was going to do his best to make me feel as if I were the one who’d gone off the deep end. I couldn’t believe I’d felt so drawn to him the day before—I was ready to throttle him now.
“Kate, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sounds like you’re the one whose been bit by the Wild Turkey.”
“Find Zack, Deputy! That’s what I’m talking about. The message you left for me in the cabin. Pretty twisted, Nicky. I don’t like being played with.”
“I didn’t leave any message in the cabin. I haven’t been to the cabin in months. Find Zack? That’s crazy. Zack’s right here in town. He teaches up at the college. We go out for a beer now and then.”
Nicky was a convincing liar and it made me furious. I took a ragged breath.
“I appreciate your bringing my mother home, but I’d like you to leave now.”
He looked like a dog that had been kicked in the belly. I almost regretted being so harsh.
“Look,” he said, chewing on his lip before continuing. “There’s something else. Something I found in the woods before I ran into your mother.”
He walked around to the back of his truck and reached down into the bed to pull out a bundle wrapped in red cloth. I moved in for a closer look, suspicious but curious. Raven opened the door, came down the steps to join us, and reported that my mother was in dry clothes eating lunch.
“What’s that?” Raven asked as she stared at the wadded-up flannel shirt in Nicky’s arms.
He lifted up a corner and we saw a tuft of fur. I reached out and pulled the shirt back the rest of the way, letting out a stifled cry.
“Jesus!”
It was Magpie. Her throat was slit clean through, the white fur on her chest soaked in blood. Her body was soft and limp, the blood still damp. She hadn’t been dead long. I jerked my hand away and rubbed it clean on my jeans.
“Jesus,” I said again.
“Your mother’s, isn’t she?” Nicky asked.
I nodded, glancing at Raven. Her eyes were huge.
“You think it was a fisher? Or a coyote?” Raven asked.
“It wasn’t any animal.” Nicky shook his head slowly. “Not a four-legged one, anyway.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wadded-up red bandanna. He opened it up and took out a Swiss Army knife. I recoiled. It looked an awful lot like my knife. But they were common things. Red knives with a large blade and small, bottle opener, screwdriver, corkscrew. And my knife was tucked safely in my pocketbook, wasn’t it?
“That cut on her throat is clean and straight, and I found this next to the body. Far as I know, fisher cats don’t need Swiss Army knives.”
Raven shivered. “Where’d you find her?”
“Out in the woods, along the path that runs between our old place and here.”
“Wait a minute,” Raven said, “isn’t that where you went for your walk this morning, Kate?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t see anything. I thought I heard the cat out there, so I went to look.” I sounded unconvincing, even to myself. I knew better than to throw in the minor details of the child-sized footprints and giggles I heard in the cabin.
Raven folded the old shirt back over Magpie and took the cat from Nicky’s arms, carrying the wrapped bundle over to her Blazer, where she laid it down carefully in the backseat.
“I’ll bury her,” she said. “We shouldn’t tell Jean. We can’t let her see this. It would wreck her. And I want that knife, Nicky.”
Nicky handed her the Swiss Army knife, nodded at both of us—his wordless good-bye—got in his truck, and backed out of the driveway. Raven followed, saying she’d be back later to check on my mother.
“Don’t leave her alone again,” she said, her words more a warning than a request.
I stood a minute, listening to the car sounds fade. As I turned to go back into the house, my mother appeared in the doorway, holding a torn piece of bread topped with sliced turkey and an egg-sized glob of mustard.
“Where’d he go?” My mother asked. “I brought him a sandwich. Such a nice man. If you weren’t already married, I’d say you should settle down with him.”
“Nicky’s a turd, Ma.”
“Who?”
“Nicky Griswold. The man who brought you home. The man you made the sandwich for.”
My mother nodded serenely.
“Such a nice man. His sister was killed in the woods. Poor thing. They slit her throat, you know.”
No. Del was strangled. It’s the cat with the slit throat.
She took a bite of the mangled sandwich and wandered back inside.
“Poor little thing,” she mumbled, her mouth full of turkey and bread.
9
Early to Mid-June, 1971
IT WAS THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, June 16, that my great plan backfired, as the plans of unpopular fifth graders desperate to make friends are doomed to backfire. I remember the date clearly, even now, because it was later that evening that Del’s body was found. These two events—my betrayal and her murder—have become so strongly linked in my mind that it is like one could not have existed without the other. Other than her killer, I was the last person to see Del alive. And when I last saw her, she was running from me. Running as fast as her scrawny legs with their scabby kneecaps would carry her.
In those last weeks before both my fifth grade year and Del Griswold’s life ended, things at New Hope were coming to a head. Life in the tepee had been far from peaceful. Lazy Elk, it turned out, was the father of Doe’s baby, Raven. Mimi was the one to tell my mother, who—instead of tearfully, yet with quiet dignity, thanking Mimi for her honesty—immediately accused Mimi of being a meddler and rumormonger who couldn’t stand to see anyone else happy. Mimi stalked out of the tepee, with my mother shouting after her, “You don’t know anything about it!” Soon after that unhappy scene, Lazy Elk slunk through the tepee’s flap, sent, no doubt, by Mimi or even Gabriel himself. He admitted that, yes, there had been one, or perhaps three or four, indiscretions with Doe, some time ago, but they had just been having a good time you know, maybe they’d smoked a little, and it didn’t have anything to do with his feelings for his Jeanie
-Bird. Jeanie-Bird wasn’t having any of it. She pummeled his chest, sobbing, saying, Liar! over and over. Then she told him to get the hell out.
There was a heated community meeting in the big barn that evening that went on past midnight. Doe’s boyfriend, Shawn, was not in attendance—apparently he had hopped into his battered El Dorado and set off for California that morning as soon as he had learned Raven wasn’t his. I was sent out after the first hour, when things began to turn nasty. I listened from time to time outside the door to the raised voices, the pointed accusations. Doe and my mother went at each other—Lazy Elk attempted to intervene, but they both turned on him. Everyone, it seemed, had some choice words for Lazy Elk. The problem, announced Gabriel again and again, was one of deception. No one was judging Lazy Elk for sleeping with Doe—after all, they were consenting adults, and nobody at New Hope bought into the patriarchal trip of obligatory monogamy, of ownership of one person’s body by another. The issue was that he had lied to everyone about it, and had insisted that Doe cooperate in the lie. It was the lying he was on trial for and, in the end, found guilty of. The decision that came near one in the morning was unanimous—Lazy Elk was no longer welcome at New Hope. So the next day, Mark Lubofski packed his clothes, his table, and his jewelry-making supplies into his VW bus and got an apartment in town. No one was sure why he hadn’t gone farther. He wanted to be close to the baby, some speculated. He still loved my mother and hoped she would take him back, was what a few murmured to one another.
I subscribed to the latter theory. In the days following his banishment from the hill, I would ride my bike into town and circle around his apartment building. Once, I caught him watching me from an upstairs window. I signaled for him to come down, and he just gave an awkward wave, then closed the curtain.
Before Lazy Elk moved out of the tepee for good, I stole something from him. It was a necklace he’d made from bits of carved wood, beer can pop tops, and a shotgun shell. I kept it under my pillow, my own talisman for calling him back to us.
Just days after Lazy Elk left, my mother took New Hope’s youngest member (not counting myself and baby Raven)—nineteen-year-old Zack, the college dropout—as her lover. My mother was forty-one, the same age I am now.
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