He rode south over a series of hills until he came to a well-worn rut that turned out to be a trail. Changing directions, he followed it until he saw signs of human encampment. There was an enclosed colony up ahead, and he wondered if it was Sutter’s Fort. According to his map, that was still a day away, but the map had been wrong about almost everything so far, and he could think of nothing this could be except the fort.
Still, he approached slowly, unsure if he would be greeted as friend or foe.
He and his horses were spotted several yards away, and a sentry’s shout asked him to identify himself.
‘‘James W. Marshall!’’ he called out. ‘‘From Missouri!’’
He was waved on and made his way into the fort, where he was greeted warmly by men and women alike. Dismounting, he shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before leading his animals to the stable next to the smithy. As he was instructing the stableboy on the care and feeding of his horses and his mule, Marshall was accosted by a rather stern-looking man dressed in black. ‘‘Do you by any chance do carpentry?’’ the man asked.
‘‘I’ve been known to,’’ Marshall allowed.
‘‘We could use some help around the fort.’’
‘‘If you’re offering me work,’’ Marshall said, ‘‘I’ll take it.’’
The man held out his hand. ‘‘The name’s Sutter,’’ he said. ‘‘John Sutter.’’
Twelve
Andrew Bledsoe drove west on the interstate, ignoring the exaggeratedly loud conversation being conducted for his benefit in the rear of the van.
‘‘Max’s family has a DVD player.’’
‘‘Shelley’s has two. One in the front seat for her mom and one in the back for her.’’
‘‘It sure makes trips a lot less boring.’’
The talk went on in this way for several more miles, but when Andrew didn’t take the bait, Johnny asked him directly: ‘‘Dad, how come we can’t get a DVD player for the van?’’
‘‘Because.’’
‘‘Because why? Because we can’t afford it?’’
‘‘That’s right,’’ he lied.
‘‘Yes, we can.’’
He smiled, didn’t respond. Of course they could afford one. But he didn’t think it was good for the kids to have electronic stimulation every hour of the day, everywhere they went. So the rule in the car was no cell phones, no DVDs, no games, no iPods, no laptops, nothing but the car stereo and books. At the start of every vacation, they moaned and complained—as did Robin, to tell the truth—but he stuck to his guns, and after the first hundred miles or so they inevitably resigned themselves to the situation and settled into a comfortable routine.
That was what was wrong with families today. They didn’t spend enough time together. Even when they were physically in each other’s company, they were engaged in their own pursuits, emotionally cut off from one another, and it was sad to him that more parents didn’t realize how important it was to be with their children.
Nothing was more meaningful than family time.
It was why Andrew enjoyed taking trips so much and why he liked driving. Kids in the back, Robin next to him, Dave Alvin on the CD player, the open road ahead . . . there was nothing finer. He enjoyed his work, he liked his home, but there was nothing on earth he loved more than traveling with his family.
There was a pall over the trip this time, though. Bill Fields, one of his friends from college, had been murdered by his own father, who had also slaughtered his stepmother and stepbrother before going on a shooting rampage in a mall, ultimately killing eight people before being shot himself by the police. Andrew had read about it in the paper, seen it on television, and the news had stunned him. He hadn’t seen Bill in years—a trust-fund kid who’d been swept up into his father’s business, he ran in different circles now—but back then they’d been close, double-dating, hanging out, going to clubs and concerts. Once they’d even taken a road trip together, driving from St. Paul to Phoenix in a crazy nonstop beer-fueled frenzy.
He missed those days, and though he loved his family and wouldn’t trade his present life for the world, sometimes he wished that his college years could have lasted a little longer, that before settling down he could have had just a few more semesters of irresponsible freedom.
‘‘We can so afford it,’’ Alyssa said from the backseat. ‘‘He’s lying.’’
‘‘I know it,’’ Johnny said.
‘‘We should save up our own money, buy our own portable DVD player.’’
‘‘That’s a great idea!’’
But they soon started bickering about what movies they would watch and that led to a discussion involving their disparate taste in television, music and pretty much everything under the sun. By the time they reached Windom they were no longer on speaking terms, and all the way to Omaha, they sat silently in the rear, reading their own books, communicating with each other only through their parents. A swim in the hotel pool before a Burger King dinner, though, put things right, and the two of them were once again happy campers.
They were on a trip to California’s gold rush country. He thought it would be fun for the kids as well as educational, and it would be a nice time for him and Robin as well. He’d gotten the idea from an old Sunset guide to the region he’d picked up at a library buck-a-bag sale. He vaguely remembered taking a trip cross-country with his parents as a child, but as with so many of those vacations, the memories of it weren’t clear, and he had the impression that for some reason things hadn’t gone well—although that was true of most of the vacations they’d taken before the divorce.
By the time they finally reached Oak Draw, the small town that was to be their home base, they were all tired of traveling and were grateful to settle into their cabin, where they could unpack, relax and finally eat some home-cooked meals. Andrew had planned and booked several activities over the next week: a guided tour of some of the most important historical sites, a river-rafting trip, a gold-panning excursion. But there was also a lot of downtime built into this vacation, and he as much as any of them was looking forward to casual hikes and picnics and the ordinary sort of random exploration that usually ended up making family vacations memorable.
The cabin was not log but still rustic, and the kids were happy to find that it came equipped with satellite TV. With two bedrooms, a loft, a combination living room/kitchen and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, it felt far more homey than the cramped hotel rooms of the past several nights. There was even a neighborhood of sorts: six other cabins, all arranged in a semicircle around a central lodge. The lodge, they were told when they first checked in, played host to different nature programs, and though Johnny and Alyssa complained that they wanted to stay in and watch The Simpsons, after dinner all four of them trekked down the dirt path to watch a slide show on predators of the Sierras.
In the daytime, the cabins had felt isolated, as though they were far out in the wilderness, but they were only a block off the town’s main drag, and at night the lights of the business district were visible directly on the other side of a sparse line of planted ponderosas. In fact, the illumination from an adjacent miniature golf course lit their way as they marched single file up the dirt track to the lodge. From nearby came the sounds of music and crowds, and Andrew recalled seeing a fair or carnival set up on a vacant lot next to a grocery store.
Inside, the lodge was surprisingly crowded. They passed through the lobby into a large multipurpose room outfitted with wooden benches facing a raised stage and screen. A slide projector on a metal cart sat in the center of the room. Many of the attendees, it turned out, were camping on the grounds rather than staying in the cabins, and they sat next to a family from Nevada with an anal-retentive patriarch whose stated goal was to take his kids to the site of every major gold, copper or silver strike in the West by the time they graduated from high school.
After the presentation, they walked back to their cabin in the dark, accompanied part of the way by the family from Nevada
. The dad was a real jerk, and Andrew was happy when they said their good-byes and walked down separate paths to their respective cabins. Tomorrow they were taking a guided tour by bus to the American River and Sutter’s Mill and several other famous sites of the gold rush, so he told the kids to get ready for bed.
‘‘It’s only nine o’clock!’’ Johnny complained. ‘‘And we’re on vacation!’’
Andrew grinned. ‘‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’’
‘‘You can make us go to bed,’’ Alyssa said. ‘‘But you can’t make us sleep. I’m staying up until midnight.’’
‘‘I hope the monsters don’t get you.’’
‘‘You better not scare me,’’ Alyssa warned.
He cackled maniacally.
‘‘Mom!’’
‘‘Don’t scare the kids,’’ Robin said.
‘‘Now I’m staying up until one!’’ Alyssa announced.
But when he checked on her in her bedroom and on Johnny in the loft less than ten minutes later, they had both fallen fast asleep.
Robin lay in bed next to Andrew, staring up at the ceiling, her mouth still filled with the comforting, salty taste of his semen. The television was on, but he was dead asleep, breathing evenly, reassuringly, his body contorted into one of those awkward positions that he seemed to find the most comfortable for sleeping. She looked at him, touched his bristly cheek. How did a summer turn into a lifetime? she wondered. She’d met Andrewin college while working as a counselor at a camp for underprivileged kids in the summer between her freshman and sophomore years. He’d been a counselor there as well, and they’d connected almost immediately. For both of them it was supposed to have been just a summer fling, a little fun before school started again. But things had turned serious before the beginning of August, and by Labor Day they were exclusive. Now they had kids and a house, two cars, mutual funds and 401(k)s. That cute guy she’d seen at the end of the pier one Sunday afternoon teaching kids to dive was now the husband she had recently seen inducted with much civic fanfare into the St. Paul Silver Circle Club.
Time flew.
But in some ways . . . it didn’t.
She took a deep breath, trying to quiet her nerves. Just because the present was here and the future was on its way didn’t mean that the past was over and done with. Sometimes the past remained alive no matter what a person did to kill it off.
She got up carefully and began pacing around the bedroom. She should have told Andrew about what had happened to her, should have insisted that they vacation someplace else. It was eerie, in a way, how they’d ended up here. When Andrew had first suggested that they go to California, she’d said yes because she’d thought there was no way possible they’d end up anywhere near the spot where she and her classmates had gone all those years ago. What were the odds? Then, after he’d picked up that used guidebook, done some more research online and decided that it would be fun to tour the gold rush country, she still said okay because of course they’d go to Coloma or Sonoma or one of the historically important cities, not dumpy little out-of-the-way Oak Draw. By the time he informed her of the great deal they’d gotten on a cabin through an Internet hotel broker,it was too late to register any objections. And if she’d told him the whole story, it would have seemed like she’d been keeping secrets from him.
Which she had been.
She’d never told Andrew about the rape.
She’d never told anyone.
In her mind, they were monsters, the rapists. Not monsters as in horrible people, but monsters as in monsters. That couldn’t be true, of course, but everything was all jumbled in her mind, and the only images she could conjure from that experience were horror-show creatures of fur and scales, with great bulging eyes and terrible pointed teeth. She’d been a child when it had happened, and obviously her brain had dealt with the trauma by converting it to a fantastical symbology. Still, the recollection seemed so real, so true, the faces of the beasts as clear to her as those in a photograph.
She tried to extract an authentic memory from the chaos of her perceptions, but no matter how hard she attempted to translate the events into a convincingly factual narrative, the scenario always remained the same: She was ten and on a weekend field trip. It was before Detroit and before Minneapolis, when they still lived in San Francisco. Along with her friends Maria and Holly and a bunch of other high achievers from their school, she took a bus to a camp near Oak Draw. Teachers were there, along with several parent chaperones, but her own mom and dad had been too busy or too disinterested to come.
The first night had been fine. But on the second day, she, Maria and Holly had decided to go for a hike instead of staying at the camp and making an art project. Although she wondered now how they could have been allowed to do such a thing. On a field trip, didn’t everyone have to stay together? And why hadn’t a teacher or parent come with them? It didn’t make any sense.
But from here on in, nothing made any sense.
She remembered the three of them walking up a steep trail—
And then the monsters jumped out. They were vaguely humanoid—two arms, two legs, head and torso—but they were hairy and scaly, as though half fish and half bear. They didn’t roar but whispered, and their faces were like something out of a horror movie. She saw vampire teeth and witches’ noses, bloodred eyes and Peter Pan eyebrows, all of it configured in such a way that the totality gave an impression of pure unadulterated evil. A man’s hands with scraggly fingernails reached out from a furry body and grabbed her arm.
This was the part that didn’t seem to be in order. Her memories were clear but disjointed, and try as she may, she could not seem to put them into even a semblance of coherence. What she remembered was: watching a plant grow from a seedling to a bush; chanting nursery rhymes; painting Holly’s face with mud; the pain of the actual act; folding clothes; the smell of flowers; crying; laughing; hot wind; screaming; rough hair; slimy skin; a hole in the ground.
Then they were headed back down the trail toward camp, dressed and cleaned up as though nothing had happened, nothing was wrong.
They’d never spoken of what had occurred. In fact, soon after that, the three of them began drifting apart. Although she hadn’t put two and two together at the time, she realized now that it had been the memory of the attack they’d been trying to avoid—not each other— and it probably would have been better for them if they could have shared their feelings so they wouldn’t have had to deal with the nightmare all by themselves.
Andrew stirred in his sleep, flopping over, and Robin stopped in midstride, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked haggard and stressed, although whether that was due to her inner turmoil, the late hour or the bad light from the television she couldn’t say. She certainly felt horrible, and she wondered if it might not be better to level with Andrew and tell him everything.
Did she really want to go through that, though? While they were on vacation? Did she want to put on a happy face for the kids and then rehash the worst trauma of her life ad infinitum? Because she knew Andrew, and she knew he would make her describe every little detail, relay every single thought, go over the episode with a fine-toothed comb until he was satisfied that they’d made some acceptable emotional progress. He wasn’t a shrink, but he’d seen them on TV, and that, combined with his misguided belief that he was naturally empathic and had clear insights into the heart of every matter, made him feel as though it was his duty to dispense advice and set everyone right.
She loved him, but there were definitely certain aspects of his personality that she would change if she could.
No, confiding in Andrew was not an option. She would just have to grin and bear it.
Robin looked at herself in the mirror once again. There were women who’d gone through far worse than she had—men, too, for that matter. She could handle being here for a few days.
She went into the bathroom, got a drink out of the faucet, then turned off the tele
vision and returned to bed. It took a while for her to fall asleep, and when she did, she dreamed of a black mountain honeycombed with caves, where snakelike monsters with shiny white penis heads popped out and screamed at her, their voices those of Holly and Maria and herself.
Thirteen
‘‘I’m glad you could come,’’ Jillian said. ‘‘I . . . I didn’t know what to do.’’
Brian walked into his mother’s house and gave his sister a quick hug. He was dead tired. Jillian had called at the end of a long, grueling day that had capped a long, grueling week, and Friday traffic had ensured that he had not made it to Bakersfield until nearly midnight. She’d said it was an emergency, so he hadn’t stopped off for dinner, and now he was tired and hungry.
‘‘Mom’s been out of her mind. I don’t know what to believe and what not to believe. She seems to think Dad’s come back and is, I don’t know, stalking her. She said she’s seen him a whole bunch of times and he’s threatening, and . . . and she’s just very scared.’’ Jillian paused. ‘‘She got another one of those letters, too.’’
That perked him up. ‘‘Can I see it?’’
‘‘I think you should see Mom first, let her know you’re here.’’
Brian looked at his watch. ‘‘She’s still awake?’’
‘‘I don’t think she’s slept in days.’’
Their mother was at the kitchen table, reading the Bible. She looked awful. She was wearing torn pajamas and a bathrobe, her hair was wild and her face was puffy, her eyes as red as an alcoholic’s after a particularly bad bender. He was shocked by her appearance but tried not to let it show. Just a few weeks ago, she’d been her usual prim and perfectly coiffed self; now she looked like a completely different person.
‘‘Hi, Mom,’’ he said.
She ignored him, kept reading.
‘‘Jillian says Dad came back again.’’ When she didn’t respond, he continued. ‘‘Do you have any idea why? Do you think he wants something?’’
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