by Sam Starbuck
The end result was, if not attractive, at least smooth enough to hold a few more coats evenly. Some day that poor sad piece of wood was going to crack from all the weathering and sanding and probably the bugs living in it, but it hadn't yet.
When I'd finished sanding, I wrapped my sore red hands in rags and reached for an empty bucket, pouring equal amounts primer and brand-new paint into it. Even watered down with grayish primer, the first layer looked nice against the previous year's old coat, streaked here and there where the wood showed through from sanding. I put the primer on with a roller, ignoring the door's little fiddly bevels and edges for now.
"How many times today has someone asked you if you're painting a door?"
The question came just before lunch time, as I was sitting on the ground with one leg splayed and the other drawn up against my chest, finishing off the bottom. Lucas, of course.
"Numbers untold," I answered. "Buy a book?"
"I own one already, thanks," he replied. He sat sideways on the steps, his back against the porch roof's support post. I looked at him over my shoulder. His eyes were a little less fever-brilliant and his nose was definitely closer to the right color.
"You're on the mend," I said.
"I am. The boy said the food was put on your account."
"I didn't think you had one," I answered.
"No...that would require speaking to the grocer," he said with a small smile. Two elderly women came up the walk and he drew his legs against his chest tightly, though there was plenty of room for them to pass already. They began to pick over the books on the shelves, glancing at me occasionally. They deposited a few dollars, took some dusty science-fiction novels, and waved as they departed.
"Is there any reason for such...meticulous caution?" I asked, when they were gone. Lucas didn't bother asking what I meant.
"Not what you could call reason," he said with a shrug. "I just don't like talking to people. Does the green help the door at all, or is it only decoration?"
"The paint helps, but it comes in a variety of colors," I replied. "I don't believe it has any particular qualities, green."
"It's unusual," he pointed out.
"It's cheerful. People like it," I said, spilling paint on the dropcloth under the door as I gave the edge one last swipe. I dropped the roller into a bucket of paint thinner, stretched, and stood up. My spine cracked, rolling up from hips to shoulders, satisfyingly loud and solid. The paint at the top was already drying, but it could wait a while before the next coat. "Is it time for lunch yet?"
"More or less." He held up an envelope and offered it to me without standing. He looked tense and uncertain, perched on the edge of the porch, not quite looking at me. "I estimated. If there's any extra, you could open an account for me here," he said, as I counted the money in the envelope.
"I'll find out – I didn't ask," I replied. "This is about right, probably. Come and have lunch, if you want."
"The cafe?" He looked apprehensively at the very crowded cafe across the street.
"No – I have food upstairs," I said. I left the books out but collected the money-tin, setting it on the counter inside. Lucas followed me upstairs, hands stuffed in his pockets.
"This is where you live?" he asked, as I stripped the rags off my hands, running them under the hot water for what good it would do.
"Home sweet home." I nodded at the room beyond the kitchen, which served as both living room and bedroom.
"I like it," he said.
"It works. I don't spend much time here."
"Why not? It's nice."
"It's small," I replied. "I like my store better. Besides, I can't really see people from here unless I look out the window."
"What's so awful about that?"
"I don't like looking down to people. It reminds me of the city. You probably understand that, don't you?"
He leaned against the counter. "I don't think you left the city for the same reasons I did."
"You don't mind looking down."
"I prefer not having to look at all."
I took out a package of turkey, setting it on the counter between us. "Sandwiches?"
"That sounds fine."
"There's bread in the cupboard on your left."
He turned to his right for a moment, then stopped and turned the other direction, finding the bread without too much difficulty.
"There isn't a tomato to be had at the moment, but I have onions if you want them," I said.
"Thanks."
"Slice the cheese?"
"Of course."
I watched his fingers wield the knife more skillfully than most, spread mustard on the bread, pluck shreds of turkey apart and layer them evenly. Two white plates, brown bread, end of an onion slice, the bright yellow tang of cheese. He didn't enter the other room until I did, and he kept his eyes on the table where we sat. He must have been curious, but I can imagine he thought it was rude to look around the single room I lived and slept in.
"So you came here," I said, swallowing a bite of food, "to escape people, then."
"I thought so," he shrugged.
"But you haven't. If anything..."
"Yes." He laughed a little. "All I escaped was anonymity, which wasn't what I wanted at all."
"No more crowds to hide in."
"No. I never really know how familiar to be with anyone here. They all seem to know me much better than I know them. I think they pity me. Or they think I'm weird. That's what the boy says."
"Oh yes?"
"Well, not in so many words. People ask him about me."
"They've asked me too."
"I thought they would."
"I would think it would drive you back to the city."
"Oh, no. It's a small price."
"A small price for what?"
He didn't answer for a while. "Nothing. I mean. It's a lesser evil. I thought I wanted to get away from people – really I wanted to get away from people who knew me, and of course that didn't work. But...well, things change, don't they?"
It occurred to me, quite suddenly, that Lucas was once again hiding something from me. It wasn't my business – it wasn't as though he had made any kind of promise to be truthful to me. Still, it was unnerving. He hid from the rest of the world but the understanding I had of him, and thought he agreed with, was that he never had to hide from me and in return I would never give him reason to. I might scold or reprove him, because friendships can't exist with less. But I would never give him cause to be afraid to speak.
I wondered if Lucas had ever actually had the escape he so desperately wanted – not from people but simply from all of it. Did he want to crawl into a dark place and hide like an animal? Did he want a person who would be his harbor?
I didn't know what he wanted. Most peoples' wants are so transparent and so common that you hardly think about them. Some want fame, some want money, most want love. I couldn't puzzle out Lucas at all, though. Refuge is not something people want, just something they need because their other wants aren't met by the crowded heat of humanity.
"Christopher?" he asked, worriedly. "Did I say something stupid?"
"What? Of course not," I answered. "I'm sorry – the paint fumes, they make me a little dizzy. Is your sandwich all right?"
"It's good, thank you."
"You like it here in the country, don't you?"
"I don't suppose it's really a matter of like or dislike," he answered.
"Isn't it?"
"I hadn't thought about it."
"You can't be too unhappy, if you didn't think about it at all," I prompted. "If you'd hated it, you'd have left by now."
"I like my cottage. I spend most of my time there."
"You don't get lonely?"
He gave me a searching look. "I keep my own company. Do you ever get lonely? You live alone."
"In the middle of Low Ferry. I never have the chance."
"Loneliness isn't necessarily..." he seemed to be groping for words. "Some people are incapabl
e of being alone – you can't blame them for it, it's just the way they are, no different from having big feet or blue eyes. Some people like it too much." He glanced around quickly and pushed his plate away. "Thank you for the sandwich, but I should go. The boy will be expecting me and I have other errands to run."
"Of course," I answered, a little startled by the sudden change in subject. "I'll walk you out."
At the bottom of the stairs he stopped and turned, looking up at me where I stood a few steps above. He was frowning more in thought than in concern.
"I'm not fond of being alone. It's just necessary sometimes," he said. "You're welcome to visit whenever you want."
"I never thought otherwise," I reassured him, as he walked to the front door. "Are you enjoying your book, by the way?"
"Very much, thank you," he said. "It's an education."
"Oh?"
"I'm sorry, I really should go – thanks again," he called from the porch step. As he walked out towards the street I came forward and touched the door. It was dry at the top, only a little tacky at the bottom. Time to start painting again. I wanted to be finished that day, so that it wouldn't be on my mind on Halloween.
I picked up the bucket of paint, found a wide paintbrush without too many bristles missing, and set to work on the soothing, pleasing business of painting my door. I like using a paintbrush more than a roller; there's more weight to it. Besides, it's so much better for the fiddly bevels and edges.
Chapter FIVE
It could not be doubted that Low Ferry was devoutly and not very diversely religious. The one church was the center of many peoples' lives, particularly the older people and the farmers – sometimes it was the latter's only regular social contact with someone outside of their family from week to week. They drove in every Sunday when the roads were good, and when they were flooded out or snowed under they rode in on horseback, stabling the horses in the parish house's spacious garage.
Still, as with so many small towns where farmers have been the bedrock of the economy for generations – especially in Low Ferry, where most of the families had immigrated from Europe in the last two centuries – there were deeper currents below the surface. Christianity sat on the village like the snow and there was a great deal of brown, earthy tradition underneath. As their most recent immigrant I could see it clearly, but I don't know if those born and raised in Low Ferry even knew it was there.
Unlike Chicago, with its spook stories about poisoned candy and very real stories about kids getting hit by cars, there wasn't much to fear on Halloween in Low Ferry. Nobody was even in a car after dark on October thirty-first. The only reason that the church held a Halloween Party every year, really, was because we all needed somewhere to gather. It might as well be under the wide ceiling of the cavernous church basement, close to the cemetery. It gave the adults an excuse to dress up, at any rate.
I planned to dress up myself, that year, in my Dottore mask if nothing else. I didn't really have anything to go with it, but when you're wearing a handmade replica of a seventeenth-century costume prop there's only so much you really need.
As I stepped into the street I ran into Carmen and her boyfriend coming out of the cafe, and joined them for the short walk to the church. Clara, toddling along between them, was dressed up as a kind of elaborate combination of dinosaur and unicorn, some of it already smeared with chocolate.
"She did it herself," Carmen confided. "I asked what she wanted to be, and she said she wanted her dinosaur pajamas and her unicorn hat."
"It's not a bad look," I said, waving to Jacob as he passed. Others were streaming up the street, the families coming from trick-or-treating, the older kids from god-knows-where. The single adults in the village, like myself, exchanged sheepish what-are-we-doing-here looks as we went.
"Aren't you cold?" Carmen asked, pointing to my scarf, wrapped around the mask I carried instead of around my throat.
"It's not so bad out," I answered. "Bracing, that's what it is."
"You sound like Charles."
"May I live to be his age," I intoned, and Carmen laughed.
"Hello Paula!" she called, as the door to the hardware store opened and Paula emerged. She was certainly...shiny, in a heatproof silver welding-apron and a headdress made out of bolts and needle-nosed pliers. "What are you?"
"The spirit of industry," Paula replied. "You?"
"The parent of a unicorn-saur," Carmen said.
"Christopher?" Paula lifted an eyebrow at my clothes -- plain black denims and a black jacket. "Johnny Cash?"
"I haven't put mine on yet," I said.
"Fair enough. Be my date tonight?" she asked, offering me her arm.
"Never happier," I replied, and took it as we continued up the street.
The church was dark for the most part, but lights blazed around the back-entrance, down a narrow road that divided the church from the cemetery. Carmen chased after Clara, who was running on ahead, while I stopped to greet a few farmers and say hello to Bert, who owned the grocery store.
"Christopher!" Charles called from the doorway, where he was wrestling one of the coffee urns into submission. "Come inside, son! Aren't you cold?"
"Not much," I answered, but I joined him inside and caught the top of the urn as it began to slide off. I carried it after him down the half-flight of stairs and into the basement. The warm lower-level, below the sanctuary, smelled like dust and stale tea, coffee, pastries, and chafing-dish fuel.
"Care to help me?" he asked, setting the urn down, and I nodded and trailed after him deep into the forbidden depths of the basement, through a couple of unmarked doors and into the kitchen's storeroom. He deposited a tray full of chipped mugs in my hands and picked up another urn.
"Don't know that I told you," he grunted, as he hauled the large cylinder along, "but we've got a new Sweeper this year for the festivities. New Fire Man, too."
"Oh?" I asked, elbowing a door open for him. "Well, don't spoil the surprise. Are you Straw Bear this year?"
"Of course," Charles said. "Here, put the mugs down."
I obediently set the mugs on the counter with my mask on top of them and helped him hold the urn while it filled with water from a high tap. When it was done we eased it back against his shoulder.
"So," he continued, as he carried it out into the larger room where the partygoers were, "you don't look like you're in costume, Christopher."
"Right here," I said, picking up my mask and unwinding the scarf. I turned away from him, pulled it over my face, tied the straps in the back, and turned around – eyes now framed by circles of copper wire, thin nose protruding, bushy eyebrows caught permanently mid-waggle. Charles laughed.
"Oh, that's wonderful," he said. "Did Lucas make it?"
"You know him?" I asked, surprised, and then felt stupid. Of course he knew him -- even those who hadn't met Lucas knew at least about the peculiar recluse at The Pines.