Chapter twenty-four

After lunch I went out to the backlands. I went out to see the inn. It was on the side of town opposite Yardley’s place. I took the highway, then turned off, and off again, onto smaller and smaller roads. The trees seemed to accumulate at the edge of the pavement until the land around me was forest. There were wooden signs with burned letters pointing the way to Jackson Lake. I followed them. Soon I saw the water gleaming through the trees. I parked the car on a dirt shoulder, got out and followed a footpath into the woods.

The forest was cool and quiet, streaked with the early afternoon sun. I heard loons laughing on the lake below me. When I reached the edge of the water, I could see them gliding on the surface of still water, making the reflection of the trees and the misty sky shimmer beneath them. It was a large lake, running out of sight around bends to my right and left. There were one or two boats sailing out there, far away. There was an island of trees at the center, a rising hill of trees on the opposite shore. Yardley had told me the inn was there, on that shore, but I couldn’t make it out. I went back up the path to my car.

I drove around the lake, trying to keep close to it, losing it sometimes behind the trees. Finally the hill was directly to my right. I watched for the inn. I still didn’t see it.

Then I spotted the driveway. Or what was left of the driveway. The macadam was crumbling. Vines and shoots and grass pushed through the holes, covering the chunks and pebbles. Trees had stretched their branches out over it. Deadwood had fallen across. The forest’s uncontrolled growth cast a shadow over the entrance; the presence of decay cast a pall. I wrestled the car through the debris and began to make my way.

The drive climbed the hill for about half a mile. It was half a mile of hard going. Logs blocked the path, broken stones rattled the tires, sudden pits made the steering wheel jump in my hand.

Slowly, I came around a bend. The inn was there.

It was set back in the trees, and the trees had folded in around it. It seemed weighed down by the naked branches that bent over its roof and clustered around its walls. Those branches streaked the place with shadows—shadows that reached and wavered in the breeze—and their movement made a steady whisper, a nearly human murmur of complaint.

The inn itself was a broad-faced old Victorian, two stories and a large front porch with gingerbread trim. It was all in ruins: sagging weatherboard and shattered windows. It had the hapless stare of the dead. Shrubbery, grass, trees, and wildflowers: everything was rotting around it. It brooded in a field of gray.

In the dead yard behind was the little stream I had remembered. The maple tree too, though the swing was gone. I stood there for a long time, looking. I didn’t move forward. I didn’t want to.

I just wanted to stand there. I just wanted to have been standing there all those years. I wanted things to be the way they should have been, instead of the way they had been. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to talk to my father.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry about Susannah. I hadn’t known, I would have done anything to have known, to have kept it from happening the way it had. I wanted to explain to him that it had happened because I loved her so much and I hadn’t known. I wanted to tell him that I could not live without her; that her hands were always busy with things but her eyes were steady and spoke her mind; that her smile made her face lopsided. I wanted to tell him what a great team the Mets would have this year, and ask him if he’d ever read Herodotus and wasn’t he fine. I wanted to tell him that I was going to nail the scarred man, and that Nathan Jersey would not die and that I knew how to make a stand, too, and even Scarangello couldn’t push me around.

“He’s a gangster in New York,” I whispered.

I heard a noise behind me: a footstep on the forest bed.

I turned slowly, naturally, as if I hadn’t heard anything at all. I swept the woods with my eyes. Many of the trees up here were new growth with slender trunks. But there was one big red oak on the edge of the driveway, a few yards down the hill. A man could have hidden behind that one.

I started down the drive at an easy pace. I reached the oak and made my move. I feinted to the left, then came around the right side of the trunk fast. I had one hand extended, the other cocked at my shoulder, ready to go for his eyes. He broke toward me, and I had him. I grabbed him by the throat, brought up my knee and struck with my clawed fingers. Nearly killed him before I realized he was eight years old.

“Aw, Jesus, kid,” I said.

I dumped him on the ground. We spent the next few seconds trembling in unison. When I finally looked at him, I saw a red-haired kid with a pug’s face: a tough guy in jeans and a plaid shirt. I helped him to his feet. He dusted himself off.

“The place is haunted,” he blurted out. His face was pale beneath his freckles.

“Yeah, by you. What do you want?”

“I just wanted to see who was coming up here. My dad owns the Lake Motel nearby. I saw your car. No one ever comes up here.”

“Because it’s haunted.”

“Yeah. So I wanted to see.” He waited, belligerent, his hands hooked in his pockets. “Well?” he said.

“Well, what?”

“Well, so what’re you doing?”

“Oh. I was thinking of buying it.”

“Oh, heck, mister, you can’t buy it. It’s haunted. I just told you.”

“Yeah? How’s it haunted?”

“Just is. There was a murder there. Long time ago. Before I was born. Three people shot dead just like that. Guy’s gonna fry for it next week too. My brother told me.”

“Yeah? So? What do they do, these ghosts? Come back and chant or something?”

“I don’t know. All I ever seen ’em do was just moving around.”

“You’ve seen that.”

“Me and Freddy both. Saw them pacing around up on the second story. Middle of the night. Could hear them too.”

“When was this?”

“Anytime. Saw it a couple of times.”

His eyes were wide. He hung toward me, eager for me to believe him. I didn’t believe him.

“Well, thanks for the tip,” I said. “And be careful next time.”

“Okay. I sure will. ’Bye.”

He started to run off into the woods. I called after him: “Hey!”

He stopped, turned.

“What’s it like?” I asked. “Growing up around here?”

He considered it for a few seconds. Then he shrugged. “It’s regular,” he said. “It’s just regular.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

He disappeared among the trees.