by Pete Hautman
“I was in the deadfall,” Stuey said.
“Oh, Stuey!” His mom hugged him, then let go when Stuey yelped.
“You might want to have a doctor take a look at those ribs.” The Mushroom Man picked up his basket. “I’ll be going now. Just wanted to make sure the boy got home okay.”
“Thank you,” she said. Stuey could tell she wasn’t too sure about him.
“Yeah, thanks,” Stuey said.
The man touched the brim of his camouflage hat and walked back through the orchard and into the woods.
On the way to the urgent care clinic, Stuey told his mom a version of what had happened. He tried to make it sound like no big deal, but of course she said, “You could have been killed!”
“I probably could have got out myself,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t true.
“No more going in that woods alone,” she said.
Stuey didn’t argue. It hurt his chest to talk, and at the moment he didn’t want to go in the woods ever again.
The doctor was the same one who’d seen him a year ago when he got the concussion.
“Another Tarzan mishap?” the doctor asked.
Stuey told him what had happened. The doctor examined him. They took some X-rays. It turned out his ribs weren’t broken.
“Just some nasty bruising,” the doctor said. “You’ll be sore for a few days.”
“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” Stuey said, even though it did.
The doctor laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be back to performing hazardous stunts in no time.”
That night his mom was getting ready to go to another preservation society meeting. They had succeeded in getting the construction delayed until next year — something about an environmental impact study — but the mall seemed to be inevitable. The meeting was to discuss future options. Nobody thought it would do much good.
“If I wasn’t the president of the society I probably wouldn’t go,” Stuey’s mom said with a sigh. “But I guess I have to go through the motions. Daddy would want me to. The truth is, I joined mostly because I thought it was what he’d want.”
“Do you think Gramps knows?”
“Do you mean is he watching from heaven?”
“Or someplace.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past him. If anything still connects him to this life it’s those woods. All the time I was growing up he talked about buying it back, but we never had the money.”
“Do you think Grandpa Zach is a ghost?”
“I think he lives on in our memories, and in the things he left behind.”
“You mean like his pipes?”
“All of his things — the trees he planted, the clothes still hanging in his closet, that book he was working on . . .”
Stuey had all but forgotten about Grandpa Zach’s book — the hundreds of yellow pages they had gathered up after the storm that had killed him.
“His Book of Secrets,” Stuey said. “Can I read it?”
She put down her fork and looked him right in the eyes. “Stuey, those pages were in pretty bad shape. I don’t even know why we tried to save them. Sometimes secrets are secrets for a reason — best to let them lie.” She looked at the clock. “I’d better get going. Are you going to be okay here for a couple of hours?”
“I’ll just watch TV.” Since he turned ten, his mom had been letting him stay home alone sometimes.
As soon as she left he went upstairs to his grandfather’s room and opened the door.
Grandpa Zach’s room had been untouched since Stuey and his mom had stored his papers there two years ago. Enough dust had sifted in through the cracks to leave a fine, whitish layer upon every horizontal surface. The spiders had been at work too — delicate, chaotic strands of webbing filled the corners and crannies, giving everything a soft, gauzy look.
Stuey stood in the doorway for almost a minute wondering if he really wanted to do this. It felt as if he was about to step inside the skeleton of his grandfather’s life.
He took a breath and went in. The cobwebs near him shivered. He saw no spiders — they had died off, or given up and left for lack of insects to eat. The silence pressed on his eardrums; the dryness of the air pinched his nose.
The Moroccan sword still hung on the wall above the bed. Black-and-white dead people stared out from the framed photos. On the bed, the cardboard box where they had put Gramps’s pages was covered with a fine layer of dust. Thin strands of frosted cobweb drooped from the edge of the box to the bedposts. Stuey brushed away the webbing. The brittle tape holding the box shut came loose with a dry crackle. He opened the flaps.
Inside, the top page was covered with black, powdery mildew. He picked it up and shook it. The resulting cloud of spores made him sneeze. He looked at the page. He could make out the ghost of Grandpa Zach’s uneven scrawl, but it was too damaged to read.
The next page was better, but he could only read a few lines. Something about planting apple trees. He leafed through the top several pages. Water damage, mold, and mildew had rendered them unreadable. He lifted the pile of papers out of the box and slowly went through them. Every so often he would find a page that was partially legible.
. . . that summer Mother met with the lawyers every day, or so it seemed. We’d let the grounds crew go, so it was just me and Chico trying to keep the course in shape. We closed the back nine that July. Membership was down to eighty-four. Mom said we needed twice that many members to stay in business. I suggested selling off all but nine holes and the clubhouse, but Mother was still convinced that Pop would show up someday and fix everything. Some nights I heard her in her bedroom talking. I think she was talking to Pop, asking him what we should do. If so, he didn’t tell her anything very useful, because by September of that year we had to close the course for good.
No secrets there. He found a page covered with numbers that didn’t make any sense at first. A secret code? After a few minutes he figured out it was just a list of dates and golf scores. No secrets there either.
A third page contained a legible fragment that made the back of his neck all prickly.
. . . believe that every possible future exists and we all exist within a great tangled and frayed tapestry of potentiality. There are many worlds — as many worlds as there are thoughts. My father is playing golf in his world while in my world he is dead and gone. The question is, once one world becomes two, can the two worlds ever be brought back together? Is that what happens when I see you, Pop? Are you really there, or are you a figment of my imagination?
The rest of the page was too water damaged to read. Stuey went through the rest of the box. Only a dozen or so pages were legible, and most of those were about ordinary things: how many apple trees he had planted, part of a story about his dog getting sprayed by a skunk, and an account of his daughter Annie’s thirteenth birthday party. He had given her a Walkman, whatever that was, and a gift certificate to Dayton’s, a store Stuey had never heard of.
He found one more fragment of interest.
. . . is the truth more powerful than hatred and lies? If so, then shared truth must be more powerful still. Can the truth bring together that which is broken? Can it mend a shattered reality? I am too much the coward to ever know. I dared to record my secrets only because I knew they would not be read until I died, and perhaps not even . . .
Stuey sighed and piled the pages back in the box. If there had ever been secrets in there, they would stay secret.
On the morning of his eleventh birthday, Stuey was awakened by a series of loud, rhythmic bangs. He opened his window and stuck his head outside. The banging was coming from over by the highway, where a crane was driving steel pilings into the marshy earth. Much closer, from just the other side of the poplar grove, came the whining buzz of chain saws and the growling of bulldozers. Stuey dressed and went downstairs.
On the kitchen table was a frosted bran muffin with two candles stuck in it, and a card from his mom. The card had a drawing of a bright-red cardinal.
A word balloon coming from the bird’s beak read:
Below that was a note telling him that she’d run to the store and would be back in an hour. He sat at the table and ate the muffin and thought about the deadfall. It had been almost a year since he’d been there — the time he’d almost died. Since then he had hardly been in the woods at all. It was too depressing knowing that soon it would all be gone and he would never see Elly again.
Ever.
He was eleven now, far too old to believe in such things as fairies and ghosts and people who disappear. For most of the past year he had tried not to think about her, and when he did, it was like remembering a distant dream. Most days he thought he’d made the whole thing up. That was what his mom thought. It was what everybody thought.
Westdale was forgetting about Elly Rose too. Elly’s dad had stopped paying for the billboards. Elly’s picture was replaced by car ads. The Frankels put their house up for sale. They were moving to Atlanta. All anybody talked about was Westdale Mall, set to open next year.
Stuey finished the muffin, licked the frosting off the candles, and put the plate in the sink.
Most of the woods was gone already. The higher areas were being leveled and the low areas filled. Two weeks ago the bulldozers and earthmovers had arrived, eating away at the edges of the woods like ants attacking a cookie, moving in toward the center, toward the Castle Rose.
The main reason Stuey hadn’t been there was because he didn’t want to remember. Elly had left a hole in his gut, an emptiness that he could not bear to look at. He had new friends now — Deshan and Heck and Alison Quist and a few others . . . but it wasn’t the same. Not even close.
The first time he met Elly, she had told him he was shy. It was true. With Alison he always found himself looking off to the side, avoiding her eyes. And with Deshan and Heck he was always faking it, pretending to be more grown up than he felt. Elly had been different. He could look straight into her eyes and say whatever he wanted.
He didn’t want to think about Elly. Usually he could push her to the back of his mind, wall her off, build a hard shell around her. But not today. Today was her birthday too.
He went upstairs to his room and opened the desk drawer and found the compass Elly had given him. He hadn’t looked at it since last summer. He put his head through the shoelace and tucked the compass under his shirt, close to his heart.
Today, he would have to say good-bye.
The oak knoll had been sliced in half, right on the property line. Beyond, what had once been a rolling landscape crowded with trees was a flattened wasteland. Broken trees were piled along the far side, waiting to be trucked away. The only thing left was the deadfall, right at the center of the expanse.
An excavator with a claw bucket approached the deadfall. Its steel claw bit into one of the cottonwood trunks, shook it, and ripped it free. Stuey imagined the sucking sound of bone being pulled from flesh, like a vulture tearing at roadkill.
The deadfall sagged. The excavator swung the trunk onto the waiting flatbed truck.
Stuey raised his eyes to the fringe of trees on the far side of the devastation.
He could see a faint crease in the denuded hillside, all that remained of the ravine where he’d hit his head. He put his hand to his chest and felt the compass beneath his shirt.
It only took a few minutes for the excavator to load the last trunk onto the truck.
The guy on the excavator climbed off and walked over to where the deadfall had been. The truck driver joined him.
They were looking at the slab, Stuey realized. He wanted to yell at them to leave it alone, but they were too far away. He leaned forward and almost fell off the edge of the cut. Don’t be stupid, he told himself, backing away. If he ran out there and told them to leave the rock alone they’d think he was crazy. Maybe he was crazy.
It’s just a rock, he told himself.
The Castle Rose was gone.
Elly Rose was gone.
There was nothing he could do.
The two men stood over the slab talking. After a minute, one of them climbed back on the excavator. The other man stood back.
The excavator eased forward. The claw bucket bit into the earth, wedged under the edge of the slab, and slowly raised it up. Stuey stopped breathing. The slab tipped up, slid off the bucket, and cracked in two.
The operator climbed off his machine. Both men ran over to look at what they had uncovered.
Stuey skidded down the dirt embankment and ran headlong across the field of dirt and mud and wood chips, leaping over shredded stumps and water-filled tractor tracks. He wasn’t thinking, he had no idea what he would do when he got there, no sense of why he was running. He only knew he couldn’t stand and watch anymore.
The men saw him coming and waved their arms, signaling him to go back. Stuey ignored them. Moments later he came to a stop at the edge of the rectangular depression where the stone slab had been. One of the men was yelling at him to back away. Stuey ignored him and tried to climb down into the depression. The man grabbed his arm and pulled him back, but not before Stuey saw what had been hidden beneath the slab — a layer of dirty white sand with black mud oozing up through it, and something else. He shook off the man’s grip and fell to his knees, his head spinning.
The truck driver said, “Are you all right, kid?”
Stuey shook his head and crawled toward the hole. The man grabbed him again.
“Son, you can’t go in there. The police won’t want you messing things up.”
“I have to see,” Stuey said.
“It’s just some old animal bones is all.”
But he had seen clearly, among the naked, yellowing bones, a crushed rib cage — and a human skull.
The truck driver was on his phone, talking excitedly. Stuey and the other man stood a few yards back from the hole. He couldn’t see inside, but he knew what he’d seen.
“Didn’t some kid go missing a few years back?” the excavator operator asked.
Stuey nodded.
The truck driver pocketed his phone and said, “Summer before last. I was out here searching for her along with half the town.” He shook his head. “Poor kid.”
“Wonder if that’s her,” the excavator operator said.
“Who knows?”
Stuey edged back toward the hole. The men didn’t try to stop him. He looked down at the rib cage and the broken skull. A shadow passed over the bones. He looked up.
Elly Rose was floating five feet above the hole, her legs out in front of her, as if she was sitting on an invisible magic carpet. She was wearing a puffy life jacket and holding a two-bladed paddle.
“Elly,” Stuey said. He started toward her, but it was hard to move. The air abruptly turned to water, neck deep, and he saw that Elly was in a small boat — a kayak. He pushed forward, splashing with his arms. The bottom dropped from beneath him and he went under. He clawed his way to the surface, coughing and spitting. Elly’s face was only a few feet away, looking at him wide-eyed. He reached out for her, but something grabbed his other wrist. He was being pulled back, then up, and suddenly he was on dry ground.
“What the heck, kid, are you crazy?”
He was standing next to the hole, dripping wet. The truck driver was gripping his wrist. The water was gone. Elly was gone.
“Look, kid, something bad happened here, and the cops aren’t going to want your footprints all over. What’s the matter with you?”
“What happened?” Stuey asked.
“You jumped in that hole, son.” The truck driver let go of his arm.
Stuey could see his footprints in the dirt — with the bones.
“He’s soaking wet, Bob,” the truck driver said.
“No kidding. How’d you get so wet, kid?”
Stuey looked around. Everything else was dry — including the two men — but he was completely drenched. His shoes were covered with sticky black mud.
“I have no idea,” he said.
The men stared at him, at
the water running off him, puddling at his feet.
“Weird,” said the truck driver.
That morning Elly had awakened to a familiar feeling. Her father was standing at the foot of her bed wiggling her toes. She groaned, pulled her feet back under the covers, and wrapped her pillow over her head.
“Up and at ’em, sleepyhead. Mom and I want to give you your present before I leave for work.”
“Present?” Elly peeked out at him.
“It’s your birthday, silly!”
Elly sat up. Her birthday! She hopped out of bed and dressed quickly. What had they gotten her? A new computer, maybe? Clothes? She hoped it wasn’t clothes — her mom always wanted her to dress like a little girl. Maybe they’d gotten her a kitten. A real one.
Her mom was in the kitchen making waffles. Elly loved waffles.
“Happy birthday, sweetie!”
Elly looked around for her present.
“Out on the patio,” her mom said.
Elly slid open the patio door. Her dad was standing beside a bright-red, eight-foot-long kayak with a giant pink bow around it.
“Happy birthday, sweetie,” her dad said.
“You got me a boat,” Elly said.
“A kayak!” her dad said.
Elly didn’t trust herself to say anything. She forced herself to smile.
“It’s great! You’ll love it!” He held up a two-bladed paddle and an orange life jacket. “For the new lake!”
“Oh.” Elly had been determined to hate the new lake and everything about it. “Um . . . thank you?”
“You’re welcome! I’ll help you lug it down after breakfast.”
“I thought you had to go to work.”
“Don’t worry, we have plenty of time.”
At first she stayed close to shore. Her dad stood at the edge of the lake and watched as she struggled to get the hang of the paddle.
“You got it,” he yelled.
She paddled backward on one side to turn the kayak. It was easier than she thought. The tiny boat was a little tippy, but she wasn’t worried about capsizing because she had the life jacket. She pointed the front of the kayak away from shore.