A Winter Haunting

TWENTY-NINE

ON the third day, I rise again and leave this place—the hospital, the farm, the county, the state.

But on the first day I almost do not wake at all. Later that evening, the doctor confides in me that they were concerned, that my vital signs showed someone slipping more toward coma than wakefulness or recovery, and that they do not understand, since my injuries had proved essentially superficial and had been dealt with during the night. I could have explained the near-coma state to him, but would probably have found myself in a straitjacket. On that first day and evening in the hospital, Deputy Brian Presser and Deputy Taylor were there, and together they irritated the doctor by insisting on taking a videotaped statement from me, as if I were on the verge of death after all. I told them the truth, mostly, although I said that I could remember nothing after the first explosion of the combine.

When it is my turn to quiz them, I ask, “Did anyone die?”

“Only Old Man Larsen,” says Taylor.

For a second I must look blank, for Deputy Presser says, “Bebe Larsen, the guy they commandeered the Chevy Suburban from on the day before Christmas Eve. Derek and one of the other kids confirmed that the five of them were pretty pissed when they hiked out from the quarry that night. They roughed the old man up a bit before tying him up and sticking him in the back of the truck. He was dead when they got to one of the other kid’s sister’s house in Galesburg.”

“Heart attack,” says Deputy Taylor. “But the skinheads didn’t know that.”

“Lester Bonheur?” I ask. My hands are bandaged for burns. My right side and right arm hurt from where they removed bits of buckshot, and I have stitches holding my scalp in place on that side. My eyelashes and eyebrows have been burned away, my hairline has receded three inches because of the flames, and I have goopy salve over much of my face. It all feels wonderful.

“Bonheur’s still alive,” grunts Deputy Presser, “but he’s burned all to hell and gone. They’re transferring him to the St. Francis burn unit in Peoria tomorrow morning. The docs think he’ll live, but he’s going to have a shitload of skin grafts ahead of him.”

“Hey, Professor,” says Deputy Taylor, referring to something he had asked earlier during the taped interview, “who was that other guy there at the fire. . . the one the kids say they saw? The one who looked like he was dead?”

I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.

On the second day, Sheriff McKown shows up with some magazines for me to read, a Dairy Queen milkshake for me to drink, and the ThinkPad computer. “Found this in the chicken coop,” he said. “I assume it’s yours.”

I nod.

“We didn’t turn it on or anything, so I don’t know if it still works,” says McKown, pulling a chair and settling into it rather gracefully. “I presume there’s no evidence on it. . . at least none relating to this weird series of events.”

“No,” I say truthfully. “Just one bad novel and some personal stuff.” Including a suicide note, but I do not say that.

McKown does not pursue it. He ascertains that I am healthy enough to answer a few more questions, takes out an audiotape recorder and his notebook, and spends the next hour asking me very precise and logical questions. I answer as truthfully as I can, providing often imprecise and rarely logical answers. Sometimes, though, I have to lie.

“And those rope burns on your neck,” he asks. “Do you remember how you received those?”

I automatically touch the torn tissue on my throat. “I don’t remember,” I say.

“Possibly something when you were crawling through that tunnel,” says McKown, although I know that he knows that this is not the case.

“Yes.”

When he is finished and the notebook is put away and the recorder is off, he says, “Dr. Foster tells me that you can leave here tomorrow. I brought a present for you.” He sets a single key on the moveable tray hanging over the bed.

I lift it. It is darkened with carbon and the plastic base of it has melted slightly, but it looks intact.

“It still works on your Cruiser,” says Sheriff McKown. “I had Brian drive it over. It’s in the lot outside.”

“Amazing the key survived the fire and that you found it,” I say.

McKown shrugs slightly. “Metal’s like bones and some memories. . . it abides.”

I look at the sheriff through my puffy, swollen eyelids. Not for the first time am I reminded that keen intelligence can be found in unlikely places. I say, “I imagine that I will have to stay around here for quite a while.”

“Why?” says Sheriff McKown.

I start to shrug and then choose not to. The bandages are very tight around my right side and ribs, and it already hurts a bit to breathe deeply. “Arraignment?” I say. “More depositions? Investigation? Trial?”

McKown reaches over to where he has set his Stetson on my bed, lifts it, and unnecessarily re-creases its crown. “One more interview this evening with Deputy Presser,” he says, “and I think we’ve got all the information we need. You won’t be needed for the kids’ arraignment and I doubt if there’ll be a trial. . . about the burning of the farmhouse and their attack on you, I mean.”

I sit in my hospital bed and wait for more explanation.

McKown shrugs and taps the brim of his hat against his knee. The crease in his gray-green trouser material is very sharp. “Derek’s and Toby’s and Buzz’s confessions pretty well agree that they came to burn you out and hurt you on New Year’s Eve. And you didn’t use any sort of deadly force. . . all you did is try to run. It’s not your fault that Bonheur was such a moron that he drove Mr. Johnson’s combine into the fuel tank.”

I nod and say nothing.

“Besides,” continues the sheriff, “the real crime here is the death of Bebe Larsen. But I don’t think that will come to trial either. Three of the boys are juveniles, they’ll get plea bargains and spend some time at a juvenile center and then waste my time on probation around here. And the other two will cop to lesser charges rather than face murder. If Bonheur lives, and I guess he’s going to, he’ll be going away again for a while. Can I ask you a question, Professor Stewart?”

I nod again, sure that he is going to ask about the extra figure the skinheads say they saw struggling with me in the light of the fires, even though I’ve stated in all the interviews that it was Bonheur who tried to choke me before collapsing again.

“The dogs,” he says, surprising me. No one has mentioned the dogs in all the formal interviews during the past twenty-four hours.

“A lot of people and vehicles stomped that snow down before daylight, but there were still a few paw prints,” he says and settles his Stetson on his knee and looks at me.

I suffer a shrug. I think, Homage to thee, Oh Governor of the Divine House. Sepulchral meals are bestowed upon thee, and he overthroweth for thee thine enemies, setting them under thy feet in the presence of thy scribe and of the Utchat and of Ptah-Seker, who hast bound thee up.

Why had a lonely nine-year-old boy on an isolated Illinois farm in the late 1950s chosen Anubis to worship, going so far as to learn the ancient deity’s language and ceremonies? Perhaps it was because the boy’s only friend had been Wittgenstein, his old collie, and the boy liked the jackal god’s head and ears. Who knows? Perhaps gods choose their worshipers rather than the other way around.

The question had been whether to tell Dale that he was never at risk from the Hounds. The Guardians of the Corpse Ways, like jackals cleansing the tombs of undeserving carrion, are protectors of the liminal zone at the boundaries of the two worlds. Like phagocytes in the bloodstream of the living, they are not just psychopomps, protectors of souls during the transition voyage, but scavengers, seeking out and returning souls who have crossed that boundary in the wrong direction and who do not belong on the east bank of the living, no matter how terrible the imperative of the torment that has brought them back there. But who is to say that Dale had not been at risk? He had, after all, volunteered to travel to the west bank necropolis in attempting to kill himself, and in that sense at least, summoned Osiris to weigh his heart in the Hall of the Two Truths.

“Professor, you all right? You seem to have gone away for a minute there.”

“I’m all right,” I say huskily. “Tired. Side hurts.”

McKown nods, lifts his Stetson, and stands. He turns to go and then turns back. Columbo, I think, remembering Dale’s earlier thought. Instead of asking some final, insightful, damning question, McKown gives me information. “Oh, I looked through Constable Stiles’s files for 1960–1965 and found something interesting from 1961.”

I wait again.

“It seems that Dr. Staffney, Michelle’s father, the surgeon, called Barney Stiles in late March of that year and demanded that C.J. Congden, his old henchman Archie Kreck, and a couple of other local thugs be arrested. . . for rape. According to Barney’s sloppy report, Dr. Staffney said that these boys—well, Congden was seventeen then, so not quite boys—these punks had taken his daughter for a ride, driven her out to the empty McBride house—Mr. McBride had moved to Chicago and the place was empty then before his sister moved in—driven her out to the empty McBride place, and raped her several times. Did you know anything about this, Professor?”

“No,” I say truthfully.

McKown shakes his head. “Dr. Staffney dropped the charges the next day, and as far as I know neither he nor Barney ever mentioned it again. Michelle was only in seventh grade then. My guess is that J. P. Congden, C.J.’s father, threatened the good Dr. Staffney.”

Neither of us speaks for a moment. Then Sheriff McKown says, “Well, I just thought I’d let you know.” He walks to the door, his hat still in his hand, but pauses a moment. “If you’re not needed around here, I imagine you’ll want to get going when you’re released from the hospital tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Heading back to Montana, Professor?”

“Yes.”

McKown puts his hat on and tugs the brim down slightly. His light eyes look intelligent but colder with the official hat on. “And if there’s no trial or anything, you’re not planning to come back this way, are you?”

“No.”

“Good,” says McKown, adjusting his hat again before leaving. “Good.”

On the third day, they wheel me to the door of the hospital—hospital policy, it seems—and let me walk to the Land Cruiser. The day is cold but absolutely cloudless. The sunlight and blue sky suggest the possibility of spring even though it is the first week of January. Deputy Taylor has brought by a red wool mackinaw for me to wear, since my coats had burned in the farmhouse with my other possessions, and I appreciate it as I walk the chilly hundred yards to where the SUV is parked. I wonder for a minute if the taxpayers had paid for this largesse, but the coat hangs on me, two sizes too large, and I guess that it’s a castaway from one of the bigger deputies.

Unable to resist, I drive the Land Cruiser back to The Jolly Corner by way of Old Catton Road, bypassing Elm Haven. There is no crime scene yellow tape at the entrance to the drive, so I turn into the lane.

It is shocking to come down this familiar long driveway with no farmhouse at the end. All that remains of The Jolly Corner is the brick and stone foundation, a four-foot-high remnant of one charred wall of the kitchen, and the tumbled, burned mass of debris falling into the open and black basement. The fire was quite thorough, and I am amazed that they found the key to the Land Cruiser.

Snow in the area all around the ruins of the house has been trampled down by emergency vehicles and footsteps. Far out behind the chicken coop and other sheds, I can see the black, skeletal-steel remains of the old combine. Numerous vehicles have plowed channels through the snow coming and going from there as well. The big barn looks vulnerable with its giant door missing.

I do not even consider getting out of my truck.

Driving back down the lane, I am slightly startled by the sight of a sheriff’s car turning in from County 6. I pull to the right to let it pass and roll down my window when the car stops and Deputy Presser gets out. He peers into the front of my vehicle with the professional curiosity of any cop during a traffic stop.

“On your way out, Professor?”

“Yes.”

“I see your laptop’s working.” He nods toward the ThinkPad, open and activated on the passenger seat, its screen saver cycling.

“I was never any good at folding road maps,” I say and touch the computer’s Pointing Stick. The screen saver disappears, and the Rand McNally road map of the United States is on the screen. My route from the Midwest to Missoula is highlighted in bright green.

Presser chuckles and then lifts a long, canvas-covered object. “Sheriff McKown said that I might catch up to you here. He said that you might want this.”

It is the Savage over-and-under, of course. Probably freshly cleaned and oiled, if I know McKown at all.

“No,” I say. “I won’t be needing it. Give the sheriff my thanks and tell him to donate it to a department yard sale or something.”

Presser looks doubtful for an instant but then salutes me with a tap to the brim of his Stetson, sets the weapon in the backseat of his vehicle, and drives on to The Jolly Corner to turn around.

Idrive south along County 6, past Uncle Henry’s and Aunt Lena’s old place, up the first hill, and past Calvary Cemetery. A single figure stands far back there in the snow amidst the headstones, and there is no car parked outside the black iron gate. The figure seems to be wearing olive or khaki and a campaign hat. I give him only one glance. If there are other ghosts here, they are not mine.

At the intersection with Jubilee College Road, I consider driving into Elm Haven a final time but then dismiss the thought. Elm Haven itself is a sort of ghost in this new century, and I will spare no time for it.

I drive ahead down the cutoff road toward the interstate. Less than a mile later, where I must cross 150A, I have to wait a minute for several trucks heading toward Peoria to rumble past.

The black screen on the computer blinks.

>A long time, do you think?

The road is clear now, but I wait to reach over and type—

>No, not long. I’m sure of it.

I have no specific plan for the coming weeks or months. However long Dale needs to recuperate and recover, to become one again, is however long I will. . . not possess, never possess. . . but do my best to maintain life’s forward movement for him.

I suspect I will see Anne and Mab and Katie some time after I return, and I hope that I do something to help and nothing to hinder Dale’s intentions in that regard. I do not know his precise plans.

Sometime in the coming week or so, I will call Princeton, talk to some people, and then wait until I hear Clare Hart’s voice on the line before I hang up. He has no urge to speak with her, but it may allow Dale to sleep better when he returns if he knows she is alive and well.

If the gift of these weeks—and it is a gift, deliberately given to me, just as I have twice given Dale the gift of another chance—if this gift stretches to a month or two, I think that I will resume work on Dale’s novel. The truths of sunlight and summer and childhood friendships in it are real enough, but it is all too earnest and serious of purpose and artsy, I think. Perhaps I’ll add playful elements as well as the darker secrets and silences that Dale had been too fearful or hesitant to face. Perhaps I’ll have fun with it—turn it into a horror novel. Dale can always change it later if he insists on committing lit’ra-chur. Or together he and I can twist reality like the Möbius loop it is.

I cross 150A and turn right down the interstate access ramp at the KWIK’N’EZ without looking back. Sheriff McKown has topped off the tank and even with this gas-guzzling monster, I can be to Des Moines or beyond before I have to think about stopping.

Once on I-74 the way goes on ahead open and free to the west, and so do I.