by Jon Cohen
A pudgy woman came out of the house. Wolf recognized her from all the news photos. Ginger Thompson. Wolf sniffed the air as he drove past.
Francine came out the door behind Ginger. They both stared, heads moving in unison.
“Did you see that man?” Ginger said.
“He was sniffing the air,” Francine said. “Like some sort of animal.”
“Ew,” Ginger said.
“Well, you do smell good,” Francine giggled.
“And so do you.” This morning FedEx had delivered two great big bottles of daringly expensive Clive Christian X Women’s Perfume Spray. Because, well, thought Ginger, yesterday on Amazon when she’d slid the cursor over to “buy” and clicked, money sure was no object!
* * *
The fourth bag of gold.
It was after supper. All concerned parties were gathered at the tree house. Amanda had instructed Oriana to apologize to Harry.
Oriana positioned herself in front of him, hung her head. “I’m sorry I took the coin,” she said in a small voice.
“It was our secret,” Harry said, wounded.
“I’m really sorry,” Oriana said.
On the opposite side of the moral equation, Amanda. “Oriana,” she said. “You do not keep secrets from your mother. Well, some secrets, obviously, little ones, but not huge ones like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Oriana said to her mother. Only it wasn’t fair, and it was too grown-up for her to fully understand—that she was supposed to keep secrets except when she wasn’t. But the coast seemed clear. Harry and her mother should’ve been much madder. Interesting.
“We’re disappointed in you,” Amanda said.
Again, Oriana’s internal radar beeped. We’re disappointed. We.
“But we forgive you,” Harry said. He patted her shoulder.
Oriana stood solemnly. Then a slow smile began to show at the corners of her mouth. “Were you scared when Brutus came after you?” she said.
“I was more scared when the pickup truck came after me,” Harry said. “And boy, when I saw your mom get out of that truck...”
Amanda blushed. “Okay,” she said. “Now it’s my turn to apologize.” She stood in front of him. “Harry. I’m sorry I slapped you.”
Oriana’s hand went to her mouth. This is so interesting.
Amanda turned to Oriana. “I was upset, but that doesn’t mean you hit another person. Ever. Harry did a very brave thing the other day. At Green Gables, out in the parking lot, Stu Giptner hit him. And Harry didn’t hit back.”
Harry cocked his head. How did she find that out? Boy, is it possible to keep any secret anymore?
Oriana glowered at Harry. Pointed to the fading bruise on Harry’s right cheek. “You said a tree branch did it. You lied.”
Harry stood before Oriana. “Oriana,” he said. “I apologize for lying.”
“Why did he hit you?” she said.
Amanda looked at Harry. Harry looked at Amanda. Oriana narrowed her eyes. “Is this a grown-up thing?”
Harry and Amanda nodded in unison.
“All right,” Harry said. “We’re all even now. Everybody’s sorry and everybody’s apologized. Shall we move to the next item on the agenda?”
Oriana got the map of Susquehanna County and spread it out on Harry’s cot.
Amanda stood behind Oriana and Harry. She stared at the open burlap bag of gold sitting on the kitchen table. She hugged herself and moved a little away from it. The inside of the tree house, so familiar to her, was a deeply unfamiliar place now. The wind carried the intoxicating scent of the forest. The flickering flame of the kerosene lamp sparkled off the gold, off the colored glass imbedded in the irregular windows of the tree house. All her life, she had avoided such sensations, the sense of the unreal hovering at the edge of real. Fairy tales. Magic. She always refused to entertain the possibility of impossibility. And now the impossible was right in front of her.
It was impossible that her daughter, lost so long in grief, was smiling now.
It was impossible that someone as seemingly insubstantial as Harry Crane was more solid than any man in the Endless Mountains.
This moment, Amanda thought, right here, right now—the magic is all around me. It’s around me, I can see it now. But I’m not in it. The world that Harry and Oriana inhabit so naturally, how do I enter into it?
She looked at the bag of gold. Oh, she thought. She sidled closer to the kitchen table. And a little closer. She made herself look into the bag. It cast a shimmering aurora borealis of golden light.
Harry and Oriana were watching her now. Amanda took a deep breath and seized a golden coin. She shivered and stared in amazement.
Yes, last night, she’d held in her hand Oriana’s stolen coin. But this coin was something entirely different. By freely accepting into her hand a piece of the grum’s gold, she accepted the reality of the grum.
“Whoa,” she whispered. “Heavy.”
“Very,” said Harry.
Oriana couldn’t believe how cool and wonderful this was. She took her mom by the hand and gently led her to the edge of the cot.
“I feel a little queasy,” Amanda said. “Maybe I should sit down.”
“No, no. You’re doing great, Mom.”
“All right. Okay. So I throw this thing at the map?”
“No, no,” Harry said. “You flip it into the air and let Fate take hold of it.”
“Oh my God,” Amanda said.
“Mom. Just toss it up and let it land.”
Harry stood just behind Amanda, as she held the coin out over the map. He closed his eyes and breathed her in.
Amanda put her thumb under the gold coin and flipped it into the air. It was a meteor, a shooting star soaring over Susquehanna County.
The coin landed on the map, rolled, settled.
And with that, Amanda Jeffers, and Fate, decided on the destination of bag number four.
* * *
Wolf, meanwhile, was concerned with bag number three. He was like a tuning fork, his body vibrating with the craziness that had happened here in Wynefield.
I see you, Brutus, Wolf thought. I see you lurking in the dark. And you are one humongous beautiful bastard of a dog.
And Brutus saw Wolf, standing on the sidewalk. Brutus’s black nostrils flared, his red tongue licked across his black muzzle.
Brutus, you tried to eat Harry, didn’t you? I sympathize with the urge, Wolf thought. Harry imagined he had found a nice house with a nice big tree, but he didn’t notice the nasty big doggy, did he, Brutus?
Wolf approaching steadily in the dark. “Why aren’t you growling, Brutus?”
Brutus’s muzzle-flaps puffed in and out. He wheezed and squeaked with muffled rage, his throat gulping and gasping.
Wolf cocked his head and studied the dog. All the while, advancing. “They did that terrible thing to your vocal cords, didn’t they?” Wolf said. “Your lovely voice, silenced.”
The dog seemed to nod.
“Grrrrrrr,” growled Wolf. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
It was a meeting of two like beings. Large, wounded, frustrated, a communication between species. Between brothers.
“Grrrrrrr,” Wolf said. “By the way, my name is Wolf.”
Brutus pounced.
And Wolf opened his arms. Brutus slammed into him and licked Wolf’s face, his neck, his hands. They wrestled each other happily in the front yard.
“Yeah, boy. Yeah, Brutus. Who’s the good boy? Who’s Wolf’s good boy?”
Brutus’s stub tail wagging at a million miles per hour, a supercharged bliss-o-meter. He bounded away from Wolf and circled the big tree in the front yard. Around and around, then, for a moment, he disappeared on the other side of the tree.
Wolf saw chunks of dirt flying in the air. Brutus came
into view again and charged right up to Wolf, his paws and muzzle muddy.
“What the hell, Brutus?”
Brutus went up on his hind legs into a beg. Wolf knelt, and the dog pressed his muzzle into Wolf’s big hand, opened his mouth and spit out a gold coin.
Wolf stared. Stunned. The weight of it in his hand. The blindy shine. Gold!
Brutus cocked his head.
“Oh God.” Wolf stood and held it to the night sky. To hold the gold in his hand. It was electrifying. It was everything he wanted and more. It was just like in the fairy tales. If you touched a piece of gold, you had to have more. And more.
Wolf laid his big hand on Brutus’s head. “You did good. You are such a good boy.”
Wolf turned in the direction of Wilderness Tract A803. Out there in the unseen distance. The forest.
Brutus nudged him forward, then went up on his hind legs, barking at the top of his lungs, but emitting only an impotent squeak.
* * *
Lenox was hardly a town at all, and that was just fine with Harry. A diner, a closed gas station, five streets, no SUSQUEHANNA SANTA PLEASE STOP HERE! signs in front of the bedraggled houses. Thank you, Amanda, for choosing such a quiet place. It was a bit of a cheat, but he drove a little past Lenox, and looked up into the hills. There, in the moonlight—a glimpse of double-wide trailer. He turned off the paved road, cut his headlights and drove a few hundred yards up a gravel road. And as for a good tree, the omen that this was a proper house to make a gold drop? It was half forest. There were a lot of good trees.
Harry got out of the car and slung the burlap bag over his shoulder. He inched up a winding drive, listening every step of the way for Rottweilers. All he heard were whip-poor-wills and owls, benign lovely creatures on a lovely night. He came around a bend. Stopped short and let out a small yelp. Which, if he hadn’t been so frightened, would have been a full-bore scream.
In the clearing in front of the double-wide trailer, a dozen twenty-foot tall, jagged-jawed, flesh-tearing dinosaurs stood on their hindquarters in the moonlight, claws flexed, ready to pounce. But they didn’t pounce. They didn’t move. They were rusted in place.
Harry advanced. The dinosaurs were sculptures made out of old farm equipment, and tractor and car parts. And they weren’t arranged in postures of ferocious attack. Quite the opposite. Harry smiled. They were dancing, claw to claw, jaw to jaw. It was the strangest and most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Dinosaurs dancing in the moonlight. Clustered around their feet were smaller dancers. Little rusty robots and dwarves and bug-eyed badgers and long-beaked flamingos.
There was one more figure in the moonlight, too, standing directly behind Harry. A tall, wiry middle-aged man, wearing pajamas and holding a pitchfork. Harry moved silently through the dancing dinosaurs. The man moved even more silently, shadowing Harry.
Harry stopped, looked over his shoulder. Saw nothing. When he advanced again toward the front steps of the trailer, the man stepped out from behind a dinosaur and moved with Harry, close enough to reach out and touch him. Or stick a pitchfork in him. Harry eased the bag of gold off his shoulder and placed it on the top step.
When Harry took off through the dinosaurs, running to his parked car, Hoop did not follow him. He stood pondering the bag. With the tines of his pitchfork, he carefully lifted away the edges of the burlap and peered into the bag. A golden, moonlit glow lit Hoop’s weathered face. Most men would smile and let out a whoop of elation at the sight of $300,000 in gold.
Hoop sighed.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, Hoop was standing at Cliff’s door. It was two in the morning. Cliff stood in his boxers shivering in the spring cold.
“Hoop, what the heck?”
Hoop, looking beleaguered, lifted the burlap bag into view.
“Is that...?”
Hoop nodded.
“...what I think it is?”
Hoop continued to nod.
“Holy cow!” Cliff said. As if on cue, a faint moo from the distant dairy barn. “Well, where’d you get it?” Even though there’s only one place he could’ve gotten it.
“That Santa fellow.” It embarrassed Hoop even to say the word “Santa.” Hoop gripped the bag as if he was holding a chicken by the neck. He handed it to Cliff.
Cliff let out a laugh at the jingling of the coins. At the weight of them. And when he opened the bag and looked inside, the glow hitting him in the face like a beam from a golden flashlight, he laughed again. “Holy crappin’ cow!”
When he looked up from the bag, Hoop was walking away. Cliff trotted after him, clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Slow down, Hoop, whoa. What are you doing?” He tried to hand the bag back to him.
Hoop leaned away. “Nope.”
Of course, thought Cliff. Hoop was not a man to participate in the outside world. And this would be more than participating. If the world found out about this gold, it would besiege Hoop.
“I get it, buddy.” Cliff had always provided Hoop safe haven. That’s what this dairy farm was. A place where the cows mooed dependably, the grass grew slowly, the seasons came and went with regularity. Hoop was already the richest man in the world—if wealth could be counted in the accumulation of quiet days.
The two friends stood in the dark, the fields and the barns around them.
“You gotta help me out here, Hoop. We got to sit and figure.”
Hoop looked at him. “It’s for you. For all you done.”
Cliff looked at Hoop. Hoop, he thought. You are my friend and you are my burden. I will know no other life than cows and you. Neither of us is real good at navigating the unruly waters of existence. I stupidly show you pictures of naked Amanda Jeffers. You come to me in the middle of the night with a bag of gold. We are two strange men. You in your trailer surrounded by your rusty dinosaurs. Me sleeping in my parents’ bed. We will never escape this friendship or our odd, particular lives. Nor do we want to.
“I haven’t done anything for you that you haven’t done for me, Hoop,” Cliff said. He put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “Come inside. Dumb to go home. Two hours it’ll be milking time.”
In the light of the kitchen, Cliff dressed now, the bag on the table before them. It seemed larger and more urgent. And definitely out of place. They had gone back and forth, discussing it—that is, Cliff discussing it, and Hoop nodding and offering the occasional monosyllabic response.
There was a lot Cliff could do with the money. Roof the barn, upgrade the milking machines, buy a little more pasture. But you know, things were okay as they were. There was nothing, really, that a bag of money—because that’s all it was if you took the Susquehanna Santa craziness out of it—could buy.
The two men couldn’t express it, but they sincerely believed that although the bag had come to them, it did not, in the grand scheme, belong to them.
Cliff ruminated over this thought, cogitating to the point of breaking a sweat. Working to articulate within himself the opportunity that sat before him in a burlap bag.
“Why did Susquehanna Santa deliver this bag of money to Hoop?” he said.
“And Hoop deliver it to Cliff?” Hoop said.
The answer was sitting right there in the middle of both of their sentences.
Deliver. Deliverance.
The two men looked at each other. Coming to the same thought, together. So many years together, so many seasons, working through problems. Out in the fields. In the barns. Pushing at a thing until they got it right. Now, in this kitchen, they’d pushed and pushed, until at last they divined a good and practical solution for the gold that also solved a very personal problem of a moral nature that had been deeply upsetting to Cliff. In truth, it hadn’t been bothering Hoop to the degree that it bothered Cliff. But it did bother him that it bothered Cliff. Whatever it took to get things back to normal, that’s what Hoop was for.
&nb
sp; “Hoop, I know what to do with the money.”
“Yep,” Hoop said.
Deliver. Deliverance.
31
Harry came through the woods into the backyard. Oriana opened the kitchen door and ran out on the deck. Amanda, in her nursing scrubs, waved to him from the kitchen window. Now that handing out the gold was a team venture, the other members wanted to hear the details. They’d texted him, inviting him for pancakes, a quick breakfast before Oriana went to school and Amanda to work.
“Do you think they found it yet?” Oriana called to him.
Harry came up on the back deck. “It’s not even six thirty.”
“But everybody around here gets up early.”
Harry could see that. Cars and pickup trucks were zipping by on the gravel road in front of the house. Amanda stepped out on the deck, followed his gaze. “We’re the shortcut to the high school. Dummies drive too fast.”
“Last year, Teddy Bale hit a tree in front of our house and broke his arm,” Oriana said. “Mom had to take him to the hospital.”
“Teenagers want to die,” Amanda said. She looked at Oriana, her future teenager. “If you ever text while you drive, I’ll kill you.”
“You have an impressively direct parenting style,” Harry said.
“She’s not as mean as she sounds,” Oriana said. “Except sometimes.”
They went into the kitchen.
“So, tell. Where did my coin flip take you?” Amanda had been awake half the night. She was as excited as a child, and a little scared, being involved in such an enterprise. It felt surprisingly like breaking the law. The law of probability, perhaps? What were the odds that Amanda Jeffers would be aiding and abetting Susquehanna Santa?
Harry was having his own nervous thoughts about aiding and abetting. If he had drawn back from Amanda—and he definitely had—then why was he sitting in her kitchen about to enjoy a casual breakfast? What were the rules of disengagement? Because that’s what was coming. He had just successfully delivered bag four. After tomorrow night, the gold would be gone, the adventure over. Oriana was almost out of her forest. And with Oriana rescued, Amanda could move on, too. Everybody settled and moving on.