Carolyn walks with her head lowered against the cold wind whistling down Hemlock Lane, her thoughts testing solutions to the Joanie problem. She usually avoids Hemlock on her walks from cabin to river, and wonders what drew her on this late afternoon. The street is narrow, tunneled by overhanging fir bows, chilly even in summer, almost eerie in November.
Joanie, who has a new lover, wants to use the cabin Christmas week. She wrongly supposes Carolyn plans to remain in town to be close to The Judge who will experience his first holiday in the Alzheimer-care facility. Carolyn is planning Christmas as usual with her children and grandchildren at the cabin. She owned it before her marriage to The Judge, and kept it separate from their joint properties.
"We'll see about that," Joanie has said. Her new lover is an attorney. Joanie wants her inheritance now. She fears the facility caring for The Judge will consume all his assets. It's the first interest she's shown in her father in all the years Carolyn has known her.
A sound draws Carolyn's attention from the Joanie problem. A tree soughing in the wind? Deer browsing? The dogs who often follow her when she walks returning from chasing a deer? Movement pulls her eyes to the right. For a moment she thinks the tattered old man stumbling through the Oregon grape is The Judge, escaped from the care facility and gone completely mad.
"Can you help me? Can you help me?"
The voice, so unlike The Judge's, calms her enough to let her note what she sees. The man stands at the lane's shoulder, a stick in his right hand, his right foot atop the edge of the left. "Can you help me?" He pushes his left foot forward and stumbles, unbidden, into her arms. Has she opened them for him? As she tries to steady him and remove herself from his grip, he speaks again. His words seep through, past thoughts of Joanie and The Judge.
"There's two people dead in there."
She looks beyond the man she's separated from herself, sees only cedar and fir, and tangled underbrush. Her heart, which has become a somewhat unreliable organ, beats faster than she likes.
"Dead people?" She holds the man upright in the very middle of narrow Hemlock Lane.
"Yeah, dead for certain, two people, maybe three by now, the dogs too."
Carolyn lets her arms relax. She's just left the dogs. Unless he means other dogs. Could there be others? The man starts to collapse in her loosened grip, folding like an accordion closing. She finds a bony elbow in one of her hands, the elastic waist of shredded nylon warm-up pants in the other. His wet clothes exude an odd odor of sweat and camphor. He's thin, almost skeletal, and shaking. She helps him cross the lane, as though that will remove them from danger, and seats him on a rotting tree stump. Her chest aches, and her left arm and jaw. She's been advised to avoid stress.
The man sputters gibberish. His legs jerk; his arms flail. The sole of one worn shoe flaps. He swipes a hand across his mouth and tries again. Spittle gathers. He raises his head and looks at Carolyn with rheumy eyes. His cheeks are hollow, his skin whiskered and gray.
"Burglars killed 'em. They had masks." His voice rasps, words forced past the edge of laryngitis. Has he called for help, and not been heard?
"Burglars in the woods?" Her mind races. A meth lab, hidden back in one of the old trailers abandoned long ago when the river reclaimed some land? Turf wars, perhaps? A deal gone bad? The Judge has warned her over the years to stay in the open. Danger lurks in innocent forests.
"Woods?" he says, eyes and nose running, bubbles resting at the corners of his mouth. His head jerks into motion, left and back, right and back. "Not the woods. The house." He tugs at his stick, swings it to point toward a driveway, and whacks Carolyn's legs.
She jumps away from the flailing stick, almost pulls the trembling man from his tenuous perch on the tree stump.
"Over there." His stick arcs toward trees and ditch, and settles on a house in a weedy clearing. "My house. They're inside. Might be watching us right now."
Carolyn feels a deeper stab in her chest. Her mouth fills with the coppery taste of her nosebleeds, or perhaps her fear. She grabs the stick from his hands. They remind her of turkey's feet. She pulls him off the stump and drags him down the edge of Hemlock Lane..
"We're going for help. A phone. Do not look at the house. Lean on me and use your walking stick."
"No one home at the next place. They wouldn't help anyway, they know it's me. Don't mention it's me."
"Right. No name. Come along now. Use your stick." She tries to force it into his right claw-hand while dragging him like she might a gunny sack of dis-jointed objects. "Take a step, now."
"Name's Fleming, Alvin Fleming, that's the name, you can call me Al."
"Al. Right foot first, Al." She grabs his right pant-leg and drags him past the house. She suspects dementia, and fears her floundering heart more than a murderer's bullet.
"Man and woman. Shot dead."
Al stumbles. Carolyn snatches a handful of pants by the waist, lifts and drags, and peers into waning light for the end of Hemlock Lane and a house with a telephone. Al clings to his stick; it skitters and skips along the blacktop. The bend onto Cottonwood lies ahead, the image of an unfired gun behind. Would the bullet strike before the sound? A fatal heart attack before the bullet? "Step lively Al, come on man, for the sake of all that's holy." The phrase puzzles her. What does it mean? Her concern of the moment has little to do with holiness.
Light shows through a window at the cabin back from the bend. Carolyn sucks in a lung-searing breath, pulls Al onto the drive, leans him against a rock the size of a pickup truck, and presses her hands against her pounding chest. Al slides to the needle-covered earth, and twists himself into a pretzel. One foot points to the sky, the other wedges between boulder and ground. Moisture runs from his eyes, and drips from both nostrils.
"Stay." It occurs to Carolyn, as she jogs down the drive toward the lighted window, both hands pressing hard against her chest, that she's spoken as if to a dog. Stay. She trusts Al will stay. Her hiking boots thud on the steps, the deck. She knocks on the door, yells, waits, knocks and yells again. As her hand tests the door knob, the door swings open, framing a young man. She spaces her words with deep breaths.
"Al Fleming. Lives over on Hemlock. Not well. Stumbles over his own feet. You know him?"
"Yeah?" The young man nods and yawns. "I've seen him."
"He's out there," she points down the drive, "by the big rock. We need help. He says a man and woman have been shot."
"Yeah?" The young man shakes his head–natural blonde hair, and rubs his eyes–blue-gray in the porch light and a bit delighted at the danger. He looks like her younger son. "Whoa, shot dead? He shoot 'em?"
"No. I don't think so. I don't know." Her heart's hammering while an adolescent boy is getting off on the potential excitement. "I need to use your phone. Mr. Fleming needs help. Are you here alone?"
The teen looks over one shoulder, then the other, uncertain.
"I'm Carolyn Johnson, I have a cabin on Cedar, I was out for a walk and this man, Mr. Fleming, stumbled out of the woods. Please dial nine-one-one, repeat what I've told you . . ."
"Right." He slams the door.
She's half-way back down the drive when he catches up with her, a blanket in his arms.
"I called. Said it was ol' man Fleming, said the rest. Woman who answered said stay put, stay right here, just keep him warm. She's sending an ambulance. Calling a deputy. And my dad. He's out somewhere, but he keeps his radio on. Hank Hayes, maybe you've heard of him, he's a cat-skinner, he keeps roads and power lines cleared. I'm Robert."
"Robert. Nice to meet you." She's about to say she knows only two or three names in the Upper Valley, when they come upon Al Fleming, unwound and crawling toward the house.
"Fell," Al says when she kneels beside him. "Not too steady no more. Got to get home now. That my place there?"
"Help is coming. An ambulance. A deputy to make sure your place is safe."
"Mail," Al says. "Need to check the mail. Waiting for my pills."
"Nothing like this has ever happened here," Robert says. "My dad will be on his way. I'm sixteen, got my own wheels, but we should wait for my dad. Out by the road."
Wait how long, Carolyn wonders, as Robert helps lift Al to his feet and turn him toward Cottonwood Avenue. For all his frailty, Al Fleming is difficult to steer away from the lighted windows.
A twig snaps somewhere in the woods. Carolyn gasps.
"Here they come, damn burglars, now they'll get us all," Al says. "Dogs too, damn things keep barking."
There are no dogs barking. Carolyn says as much, murmurs reassurances. Over her pseudo-calm voice Robert says, "Do you think we should just stand around here? I mean, if there's someone dead, then there's someone else who made them get dead."
"I had the same thought, but logic tells me that anyone in that house is long gone."
"I'm not so sure about logic. If there's a killer."
Carolyn isn't either as she assumes the role of calm reasonable adult, a role she practiced with The Judge as he moved ever further into Alzheimer's.
"Listen," Robert says, "there's my dad."
She doesn't hear a sound until seconds before an open Jeep shoots into the drive and stops just short of hitting them. A man climbs out, looks them over, fishes a handgun from under the seat, tucks it into the waistband of his Levis. "Stay here, stay right here," he says, and leaves them. He moves through the woods without a sound, remarkable considering his size and the weight of his work boots. Minutes tick by an hour at a time. Al doesn't like waiting; he keeps them busy–Carolyn talking, Robert holding him in place.
Hank returns, shakes his head. "One doe browsing out back of the place. No other sign of life. No evidence anyone's been there. No trampled grass, no one inside. Radio's blaring, that's all." He checks his gun, sticks it back in his waistband. "Come on, Al, we'll take you home, we'll call the fire department again." He lifts the grinning, drooling old man into the Jeep, tells Robert to keep him anchored, tells Carolyn to climb aboard. The trip by car takes a minute or so.
"My mail," Al says. "Gotta get my mail."
"Get his mail, son." Hank clamps an arm around Al's waist, and carries him, Al's toes dragging, to the cabin. "You," he calls over his shoulder to Carolyn, "make some coffee."
Carolyn, who's given thought to leaving Al to father and son, follows. Dusk is settling, drawing the trees closer. "Carolyn Johnson," she announces to Hank's back. "I have a cabin on Cedar. Tea would be better than coffee."
A board on the rotting porch breaks under Hank's weight as he crab-walks Al toward the door. Inside, he settles Al in a chair at a cluttered table, switches on a ceiling light, crosses the room in two long steps, and grabs the phone.
Hank's gun dredges up thoughts of Sam, Carolyn's first husband, a policeman killed when he responded to a domestic dispute. Years of unease follows her into Alvin Fleming's cabin. Her eyes sweep the compact room. Kitchen counters lay buried under small appliances, dish draining rack, stacked paper plates, an embroidery project in the works. She finds tea bags in a canister, mugs in a cupboard, and puts an old whistling tea kettle on to boil. Al stays put at the table, perhaps accustomed to being served. Robert comes in with the mail.
"A couple of bills," Robert says.
"You got my pills there?" Al asks. "I'm looking for my pills."
Robert shakes his head. Carolyn counts eighteen pill bottles stacked three-high on the table. She reads bottle labels and examines contents. Dates on some go back five years; most hold a mishmash of tablets and capsules in assorted colors and sizes. Hank cusses, slams the phone, jerks the gun from his waistband, hands it to Robert. "Don't let anybody in, I'm going out to the main road. Goddamn ambulance won't come in without a deputy, and he's to hell and gone the other direction."
Robert clutches the gun too tightly. Carolyn, who knows the uncommon strength those with Dementia can muster, sends Robert and gun to the porch to keep watch. She needs to keep Al calm.
In a voice meant to convey tranquility, she says, "Tell me about these pills, Al. Do you have Parkinson's?"
"Nah, I lost my legs in the war, pills are for pain, that's all."
Hairy skin and bony knees show through tears on his nylon pants. Not attractive legs, but real enough.
"Really. Tell me more about that."
"Right there, front of the stove, that's the dead woman, right where she fell when the bullet hit her." Al chortles. "And that chair, the one with the cushions, that's the man, died of starvation, but he outlasted the woman, heh heh heh. Means his kinfolk inherit. Back behind me there, in the other room, them's the dogs, dead in their tracks."
Carolyn looks beyond Al to the shadowed room overfilled with sofa, recliners, ottomans, stacked newspapers and magazines. She studies the chair he indicates as the one with the dead man–an old ladder-back with curved arms. Seat and back cushions are tied in place with faded blue grosgrain ribbon. Spools of new ribbon, red and blue and green, line the window sill behind the table. An odd sensation, a memory from another time, prickles Carolyn's back, neck, and arms. She experienced such feelings as The Judge slipped away from her and someone unknown moved into his body. She doesn't know Al and wonders why she feels someone dancing on her grave.
She sets a steaming mug on the table."Here's your tea, Al. It needs to cool a bit. Do you use sugar? Or honey?"
"Whiskey," Al says. "Pour in some whiskey."
"I already have." Carolyn's fib is a gamble against time. "What have you eaten today, Al? What did you have for lunch? I'll look in the refrigerator, see what I can find to go with your tea. First I'll open the door so we can hear Mr. Hayes's Jeep." She moves slowly, announces each action, a habit she developed with The Judge.
Robert startles like a deer when she opens the door.
"Cereal. I eat my cereal," Al says.
Carolyn tells him that's good, tells Robert they want to listen for the Jeep, tells him more with her eyes. He searches the distance. Their view is blocked by towering fir and cedar that provide each cabin privacy.
"I'm on my way to the refrigerator now, Al. How about some cheese?" She pulls out a loaf of cheddar, finds a knife in a drawer, cuts off a hunk, rinses and dries the knife and returns it to its place alongside others. In her head Sam says, Keep yourself between Al and the drawer.
Al takes the cheese with both hands. His fingers are bent, shaky, their nails yellow. His sleeves slip back. Faded bruises the colors of the faded grosgrain ribbons circle his wrists. He stuffs cheese in his mouth. Bits tumble out, fall on his chest.
The Jeep's engine drowns another voice in Carolyn's head, one saying the bruises are from someone grabbing Al and pulling him to his feet. That's all, just someone pulling him to his feet. Hank shoves the cabin door open and stands aside while a stocky woman carrying an infant enters.
"This is Glenda," Hank says. "She's a nurse practitioner, acting on her own so's not to make trouble for the ambulance folks. Damn rules"
"Hi." Glenda hands Carolyn her baby, and finds a pulse point on Al's wrist. Over the next several minutes she asks him about his pills, gives up when his answers make no sense, takes his temperature, and cusses right along with Hank Hayes about rules keeping the ambulance and fire fighters at bay. "Punch in redial and give me that phone," she says. "This is Glenda Sanchez, I've got a patient that needs medical attention, I'm bringing him out."
Al and the baby both start to fuss. Carolyn, with the baby on her shoulder, paces in front of the counter while Glenda goes deeper into the cabin, returns with a jacket and blanket for Al. She sweeps all the pill bottles into a plastic bag, hands it to Carolyn, and retrieves her fussing infant.
"Hank, shove that gun somewhere out of sight and pack Mr. Fleming into the Jeep. You," she points at Carolyn, "steady him so he doesn't tumble out. And you," she points at Robert, "come along with us. There's a whole caravan of volunteer fire fighters out there on the highway. You can keep some of them busy telling your side of the story while I get my patient tucked into the ambulance."
Nearly three hours after he had called out to her, Carolyn watches a volunteer firefighter close an ambulance door on Alvin Fleming, asleep on a Gurney, and a paramedic upright in a jump-seat. She's answered the same questions more times than she can count, once into a tape recorder while holding Glenda's baby against her breast. The baby's closeness slows her heart rate. The ambulance makes a wide U-turn. Cars follow. Hank waits beside his Jeep.
"Figure you need a ride. Darker than Hades out here. Climb in." He holds the front door open for her. Robert waits in the back.
"Thanks." She's anxious for solitude.
"The Johnson place on Cedar, right? New roof a week or two back?"
"Yes." She has never in twenty years of marriage to The Judge considered the cabin the Johnson place. In her mind it's the Dolan place. She, Sam, and their two boys built it. The Judge has never liked the cabin. He's a city man.
Hank clears his throat to get her attention. "Hope you won't be offended if I offer some advice. You need help up here, anywhere this side of Stone Bridge, you call nine-one-one, you don't say dead, you say emergency."
"Even if someone is dead?"
"Especially if. I've told Robert again, call me first if there's ever trouble up here. He's got every number I use, but he called the damn fire department dispatch first."
Over Robert's protest, Carolyn says, "That's my fault. I told him to do that."
"He shoulda known better."
"Sorry," Robert says, in the tone of one who's already said it several times.
Hank pulls a card from his wallet. "Keep this handy. I'm never far. The boy and I live up here year-round, unless the snow gets too bad. He stays in town then. I'm the one keeps the roads cleared above Stone Bridge. About the only one to winter through these last two-three years. Try to keep an eye on the cabins for town folks."
"The Flemings . . . what do you know about them? About Al's wife?"
"They come up in the spring, stay until first snow. She goes off most every weekend to some bar or another. See her driving off, pass her out on the highway. As for Al, I only see a glimpse of him once or twice a year."
"Will you stop back there, at the Flemings, to leave a note? About Al?"
The idea seems to surprise him. "Yeah, guess I ought to do that."
Carolyn opens the Jeep door. "Thank you for the ride, and for taking over earlier."
"Welcome," Hank says.
"And Robert, thank you for helping. You settled my nerves."
"S'okay," Robert says.
The next day Carolyn calls the hospital where the ambulance transported Al, and learns only that he's comfortable. She tries to reach Mrs. Fleming at the cabin, and later leaves a message with the hospital nurses station. She never hears from the woman.
Through the rest of November and early December she hears reports of heavy snows closing roads in the Upper Valley. She calls Hank Hayes at his shop, and learns all is quiet at River Bend, with snow hip deep on him, and only snow mobiles going in to the cabins. "No one's coming up for the holidays, no sign of life at Fleming's cabin," he says. "Other than a few deer and an elk herd, there's no sign of life above Stone Bridge."
That's just a saying, Carolyn reminds herself in late March, when she's able to make it in to the cabin. She needs a break from Joanie and the attorney–from their constant barrage of legal actions to learn the value of The Judge's estate, and to stop his drain on it.
Carolyn opens the cabin for the season, scrapes stubborn icy patches off steps and deck, uncovers the old outdoor fireplace, and carries dry wood to the indoor one. Sun find its way in through the trees a few hours each day, reducing the remaining snow to mini-streams that freeze up after dark. She walks to the river early afternoons, but avoids Hemlock Lane. Still, it calls to her. After several days, she turns onto Cottonwood when she comes off the river, and strolls past an alder grove, branches red with spring tassels. All is quiet at the Hayes home at the bend, but a comforting ribbon of smoke rises from the chimney and encourages her to go on. She turns onto Hemlock and hikes to the Fleming's drive. Her heart-rate shoots up, though all is quiet. No tire tracks, no sign of life.
No sign, but a curtain edge caught in the window above the kitchen sink. A voice tells her to leave it alone. She ignores the voice, turns into the drive. A white cat darts out from behind a pile of rotting wood, arches its back, hisses, dashes back into hiding. A doe browsing at the edge of the clearing behind the house looks up, tips her head, chomps off new vine maple growth. Carolyn takes a few more steps, pauses, forges ahead to the window she sees is broken, a long sliver missing.
Why is she doing this? Why does she peer in past the curtain's dirty edge? Why, but to put end to a drama her brain plays dark winter mornings, wakening her with gasps and racing heart? There it is, the drama's final scene. A woman's body by the stove. A blood-stained floor, the stain brown with age. Al's body in the chair near the table. Grosgrain ribbons, red and blue and green, holding his wasted body to the chair. Bright red and blue and green ribbons around his faded shirt, and around old bruises banding his wrists. No gun visible.
Carolyn stumbles back, trips, plops into deep grass. Slushy snow creeps in at her waist, up under her jacket, down into her jeans. She pushes herself up and runs. Hiking boots, sixty-five years of age, stitch in her side–none slow her. She doesn't run to the Hayes home with the friendly smoke plume, but to her own cottage, her own phone. She dials Hank's work number, gets an answering machine, leaves a message. Then she dials 9-1-1.
"There's an emergency on Hemlock Lane, at River Bend," she says to the operator. She breaks the connection before the woman can ask a question. She unplugs the phone, pours a glass of wine to steady her heart, and settles in her favorite chair by the fire. Burning logs shift on the grate; sparks rise and fade.
© 2011 Jan Walker