“He’ll be later than he thought,” my mother said as she began chopping an onion in a neat flutter that she soon swept up with the flat edge of her knife and deposited into a spitting frying pan.
“Too much work, the crew too thin. Week after next, he promises.
“It’s just hard for him is all,” she said as she whirlwinded through dinner preparations. “Hard to get away, that is. And he knows we’re doing all we can here.”
Which, to be honest, was almost nothing at all. Uncle Lud had been clear in the beginning. He had only months and would not be a pretty sight. Bone and mash and yellow wasting, the skeleton claiming its place. Babble and drool, fetid breath—who knows, he told us, but that he might fill our house with moans and curses.
“No cures exist for this, Leo,” he told me. “Don’t even imagine that story.”
We all thought we knew what he was asking. Never mind that my father had already fought with him about doctors and hospitals and ever-new procedures. Never mind that in the end my father simply would not allow Lud to remain alone in the farmhouse but must bring him home to us. Uncle Lud begged our pardon for such an inelegant ending. My father, it seemed, could not abide the decision. He left Lud to us.
My mother, who daily shepherded the abandoned and the doomed, the never-found missing, didn’t pause. She squared her shoulders and drew up daily schedules, as if preparation would make our loss easier, a finish line we would all cross together.
In the past week or so, a change had occurred, Uncle Lud’s waking moments diminishing, and the weird thing was that even as he gave way more and more to the dream world that pursued him, his voice claimed more space in my head. I could feel Uncle Lud’s stories taking up residence within me, like an audience of fervent actors, ears cocked, eyes wide, chests puffed up with deep cleansing breaths, all those eager heartbeats, ready to pull in and adapt to whatever show would come next. And between them murmured Uncle Lud’s unasked request: Believe.
That evening, after I changed my burying clothes, I leaned against the half-open doorway of the bedroom where he slept. Under the steady whir of the fan, I could hear my uncle’s breath, not labored at all but low and whistling as if he were only lost in a daydream. In my head, I heard Lud’s good long, deep laugh, and not for the first time I was mad at him for leaving me behind with only a pile of stories dashed into notebooks meant for scientific equations or even childish poetry.
“You think this is funny?” I whispered.
I was shocked when, without opening his eyes, Uncle Lud replied.
“Not hardly,” he said.
“Bryan was here,” he went on, his eyes opening. “He has a plan now?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, he’s working on one at least.” Unease shot through me. I didn’t know, I realized, what Bryan was planning now.
“A good one?”
“He had a terrible one,” I said.
“You can stop him, Leo,” Uncle Lud said. “If he needs the interference.”
“Nothing will happen,” I said. “Flacker is pure evil, but Bryan doesn’t have a mean bone in him.”
“Oh, everybody’s got . . . a mean bone . . . or two, Leo. It’s a fact of life.”
The name of the latest girl gone missing suddenly came to mind as if Uncle Lud had placed it there: Carla. Her name was Carla, and her photo was on a slew of new billboards. It was as if she’d vanished and reappeared in black-and-white stills. Unlike a few of the others, no body had been recovered. She’d been hitchhiking from the tiny settlement where she’d ended up, a place with not a single grocery store. No car, not much money. Even if the Greyhound stopped at her door, a forty-dollar fare to buy milk and bread? Did she have a choice? She left a three-year-old son, who, according to his grandparents, kept digging up the yard, first to look for signs of his mother, then once a kind of understanding took hold, to bury her things—a shoe here, her hairbrush there, her favorite sparkly T-shirt in the ground outside his bedroom window, where he sung his good-nights to it each evening in toddler singsong.
“You don’t . . . believe . . . me yet, do you?”
I tipped my head to stare at Uncle Lud, but he kept his straight-ahead gaze, drooping eyes struggling to stay focused on the window. He was pushing back in the only way he knew how.
“Yes,” he said, as if I were no longer there. “Everybody’s got a mean bone. Some have a full set. Just needs someone to come along . . . and twang . . . remind ’em . . . it’s there, the same way folks work . . . so hard . . . to keep the good ones in motion.”
“You mean like with the Church?” I asked, thinking ruefully of my mother’s Quest for Good, her contorted Catholicism.
“Sometimes, the only way . . . to beat the . . . devil is to become one . . . yourself.”
“But . . . ,” I began.
“Look at that light, will you, Leo?” Uncle Lud motioned toward a proud pinch of yellow glossing up a nearby ridge. “Don’t you wonder . . . what it feels like up there . . . right now?”
This was the way it was with Uncle Lud since he got sick. He had always been the most considerate of companions, asking me what I thought, worrying about interrupting me, a kid. But whether as a result of his medications or a sea change burrowing within him, Uncle Lud now drifted from one conversational thread to another as if his illness had unmoored him. I was about to sneak away, let my young uncle return to dozing, when he reached out to hold me back.
“Wait a minute, Leo,” he rasped, and I knew he was readying to offer the next story no matter what it cost him.
“Do you remember,” he said, “do you remember . . . the door . . . in the mountain?”
Sure I did. Uncle Lud’s version of a Pied Piper, the devil arriving in town in one of his many guises. Uncle Lud had personalized this tale—he’d made it true, I thought—aimed the devil right at one of our own, GF Nagle’s milder younger brother, Markus.
Uncle Lud waited. Of course, of course, I leaned back with him—and began.
A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN
A man came out of a door in the mountain. An ordinary door that opened and closed and could be left slightly ajar, propped open with a square black rock to allow eventual reentry.
A man came out of a door in the mountain, a flawless leafy camouflage of earthen color and sun splashes, a door so deep within the brush and swallow of forest and rock, creased and folded and bent into seemingly impassable shape that only the most practiced eye could discern the deception.
A man came out of a door in the mountain. But no matter how hard you were looking at the time, you wouldn’t have seen him. A whiskered light, a torqued shadow, he set off without a moment’s hesitation. His feet found (or conjured) a path that joined an old moose trail. He slipped easily, like spring melt, down the trail’s crevices as if on horned feet, winding an ancient switchback, a dizzying course until he crossed first one, then another, of the oldest most neglected logging roads. He had a map in his pocket, but, truthfully, it was unreadable, having been drawn with a charcoal stick still half ablaze so that lines were smudged and instructions greatly muddled. Nonetheless, his fingers consulted the blind, warm paper in his pocket, and he did not waver as he sharply turned right and continued down the hill to the famous highway.
A man came out of a door in the mountain and journeyed downward, through the maze of trees and brush, through slurries of gravel and the timber graveyards, grayed to ash. If passersby noticed him, a single fellow paused on the wrong side, the sloping untraveled edge of the highway, they would not have had a moment’s wonder at first. He was an ordinary-looking fellow of a reasonable height and slight build in unremarkable clothes. So nondescript, he simply disappeared against the landscape as if he were another scrub tree. Only later, deep in their sleep might the nagging image return: a figure on the far side of the highway, waiting. A sober man, no car in sight, no thumb outstretched, eyeing
the town below as if he owned it and was on his way to collect rent.
A man came out of a door in the mountain. He might have been unkempt, sure. Smelly and a little ragged—well yes, he could have been. There was a good chance he carried visible scars along his face and neck as if the shadows of tree boughs that played across his whiskered cheeks in the forest had etched themselves to his tough skin and marked him like the others. In short, he must have looked like any one of dozens of fellows that lived in the mountain or worked the backwoods, except for his hands, which were smooth and white as if he soaked them in milk each night.
A man came out of a door in the mountain. No one would remember the exact day he appeared or the season. It might have been the cusp of winter, the light beginning to slant in weak white-gold streaks by midday. Or he may have arrived with the spring on the very day the snow shifted into faltering sun-blown rain and great ruts of mud appeared to hold them tight in an utterly different way.
It was high summer, Uncle Lud told me with certainty.
High summer, early evening, not even a glimmer of dusk, when the man crossed. The highway still so hot the tar road sucked at the soles of his shoes. He kept to the cinders as he wended his way down the steep entryway to town and once he reached the end of Fuller, rounded the corner without pausing and strolled the four blocks to The Landing as if he’d lived and worked here all his life and had, every evening, this singular routine: an hour or two at The Landing, whiskey with a beer chaser.
Not yet six o’clock, but The Landing was nearly full, it being a Friday and a payday and a scorcher at that. Fans beat in every corner and gave the illusion of a thin breeze, the whomp-whomp of the blades keeping time with each heartbeat so that the very air seemed to engulf each customer in familiarity. The fellow slid into the last available stool at the bar, right next to Markus Nagle, GF’s younger brother, a Flacker goon-in-training. He signaled to the bartender, who was agreeable, having the vague sensation that he knew the man and held him in some regard. The fellow offered two low words to the bartender, and a beer bottle and whiskey shot glass were placed before him while beside him Markus observed.
On any ordinary night, a fight would likely have been picked, Markus offering a disparaging remark about the way the newcomer drank his whiskey or the too-familiar manner in which he appeared to be observing the pool game in which GF was clearly cheating or the way the rancid stink—like that of the old pulp mill—emanated from the stranger’s unfamiliar skin. Misunderstandings would have swiftly ensued; ultimatums would have been laid; threats made and happily carried out. Markus, nursing along his buzz, reached the backwash end of his beer and his mouth twisted in readiness. The insults were burbling up when the bartender interrupted by setting a fresh beer in front of him. At Markus’s quizzical look, the bartender offered a curt nod in the stranger’s direction.
“He owes you, he says,” the bartender said.
The fellow was occupied with a wooden bowl half-full of peanuts, cracking each shell in one fist and picking the nut out whole with two practiced fingers, and Markus nursed a moment of doubt before his thirst got the better of him and he raised the icy mug.
“We’re even then,” he tried.
The stranger—but he wasn’t really a stranger, was he?—nodded agreeably, and Markus noted the fellow’s overlapping incisors, his familiar snaggletoothed grin, and felt the slightest edge of discomfort. Yeah, sure, he knew the fellow, but he couldn’t quite remember from where or how they’d left things. Had there been a fight? Well, probably. Fistfights that led to broken bottles and a boot-fucking in a parking lot. That was the way most things ended for him and GF. Who had won? Likely he had if this guy was buying.
Or maybe the fellow beside him had accompanied the two brothers on one of their road trips, the details of which always faded since those jaunts usually began and ended in a hazy oblivion. Often, he had only bruises and a few oddball acquisitions to tell him that they’d been away. The last time, he’d ended up with a black eye, a pink mitten, and a vague memory of puking his guts out beside the open door of an orange Matador while the Brit, GF’s newest buddy, made disparaging remarks in that irritating lilt. This fellow hadn’t opened his mouth yet, but Markus didn’t think he was related to the Brit whose wiry arms were tattooed from knuckles to elbows. Nah, this fellow’s hands were remarkably smooth, as if he were a doctor or a priest. Markus squinted at him but could not recall making confessions of any sort to the man beside him.
Then, again, he felt a little itch. He harbored secrets, like burrs under his skin. Secrets he worried over, scenes he replayed, including the ones in which his own brother promised to kill him if he ever opened his goddamned mouth. The stranger beside him wasn’t even looking at him. He hadn’t said one word, but as he shoved the peanut bowl a few inches in Markus’s direction, a creaking noise began and Markus realized it was coming from him as if a shuttered window had come unhinged.
“You’re . . . ?” he began and promptly stumbled. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” the stranger answered pleasantly. “You and I, we’re old friends.”
Was his name Courtney? Clifford? Something like that. Markus tried a string of them, and to each the man answered. Eventually, Markus settled on Clark, half-introducing his new friend to the bartender, who shrugged.
“Sure,” he said, “I knew that.”
Clark was a town boy, wasn’t he? Or had been. He’d been away. Most of them had been, if just for a few months. Youthful indiscretions, the Nagles’ grandpa insisted to his friend the judge. Local lockup was all Markus had seen. There was that smell coming off him, faintly sulfurous, that now reminded Markus of the night he’d received a constellation of scars on his own forearm, a lit cigarette jabbing, emphasizing each demand in a deal gone bad. All those little scars, usually dull and flat, seemed to glisten a little in this particular bar light.
The evening blurred for Markus. Perhaps it was the drink. GF ducked outside with the squirrelly Brit as if they were after someone. Normally, he might have followed, gotten a stake in whatever deal was going down. But tonight he was content to sit at the bar, listening to his old friend Clark recite a tale Markus had not heard for years (he didn’t think), and when his buddy rose to leave, he clambered to his feet as well. GF was not in sight. Usually, he would wait for him, sure GF would return by closing to cuff Markus on the side of the head, pour insults and beer dregs over him, and empty his pockets before pushing him out the door.
Tonight, Markus didn’t feel like waiting. He rambled down the Fuller Street sidewalk as if he were being pulled along with a leisurely string into an ever-expanding universe. The air had cooled considerably, the streets in their midnight vacancy had grown wide as city avenues, and stars jammed the upended bowl of the sky. What an enormous world this night was! He felt stoned. The nighttime edges crinkled with static, but he could not remember drinking more than a few beers. Coins shone from the gutters, and Markus swooped down on them before Clark could move, waggling his head a bit in triumph as he deposited a tiny bounty in his pockets. The sidewalk seemed the cleverest invention he’d ever seen, the way it dodged the brown grass and chipped curbs and leaned ever so slightly toward the storefronts as if to encourage visitors. If any shop or office had been open, he would have tilted against the door and entered as if on cue. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself. But the sidewalk even seemed to know that wasn’t likely this time of night and instead led him neatly from the Landing to the curb to the corner of Crest and Fuller and the Craig Hotel.
“You staying here?” Markus asked as they paused.
“Should I?” Clark asked.
He shrugged. “The P&P’s cheaper. You could crash with us, you know, but we’ve been crashing ourselves at a buddy’s house. Your family don’t got room?”
“The P&P sounds fine,” Clark said. “Dwindle, Peak, and Pine,” he half sang, somewhat mystifyingly, as if telling himself a good
joke.
A good enough answer, Markus thought.
Yet they didn’t go straight to the P&P, did they? First, there was the distraction of the cat, an old tom with a piercing, insistent yowl, who continually darted in front of Markus as if trying to turn him around. Twice the damn thing nearly tripped him up, breaking the fine job of the ribbonlike sidewalk so that he stumbled into dirt and gravel. He swore at the creature, causing his friend Clark to briefly flash that snaggletoothed grin.
“Annoying, isn’t he?” Clark said.
They’d crossed the street. They lingered by the summer-deserted school. Markus had despised this place and he could feel his old hatred greet him. The building’s nighttime walls had borne so much of the rage he couldn’t have exhibited during the days. Even in the dark, the unlit crevasses, he could see nicks and slashes, the ghosts of graffiti curses he was certain were his own. He couldn’t count the number of windows he’d smashed here or the times he’d pissed on the door handles and chipped thresholds. But then he’d finally peeled free of the place, an institutional boot on his ass, and gradually it had become something less powerful, another place to slow before and spit toward out the car window, another place not to belong anymore and not to give a goddamn fuck either. Hurrah.
And yet, Markus and GF didn’t fully avoid the place. They trolled here occasionally. It wasn’t uncommon to come across kids hanging out in the dugout behind the baseball diamond with its sagging net, drinking vodka or Flacker moonshine, keeping time with their own private furies. Some girls there, usually. Young, but willing enough. He tried to lead Clark in that direction down behind the parking lot across the weedy playing field.
A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain Page 11