13

Lise wanted to have the pork chops with sliced carrots for dinner, but Paul wanted spaghetti. He always prepared the dish by following a recipe he had long-since memorized. It was a meal that always seemed so hearty. “We don’t want hearty,” Lise said. “We want romantic.”

“What’s romantic about pork chops?”

“I don’t know. Just trust me.”

Paul zipped up his raincoat. Spaghetti was romantic, redolent as it was with those Italian herbs, and smacking of red wine. Pork chops were harmless, but uninteresting.

The rain continued, but Paul was determined to inspect the grounds of whatever place this was. He did not understand it, entirely. It was like a hunting lodge, or the weekend retreat of a prosperous but discomfort-loving businessman. It was well built. The stone walls were solid, and beautiful in this late-afternoon light. But it had an inhuman quality, as if it had erected itself out of the rock of the creekbeds without human assistance.

He walked behind the cabin, but did not get far. A creek, as loud and deep as any he had seen, ran behind the house. The cabin was on a sort of island, he realized. He followed the creek to the end of the island and stumbled over the roots of redwoods until he reached the bridge they had crossed. The Volkswagen made Paul laugh, it looked so out of place.

Everywhere the ground was tangled with roots, or heavy with half-rotted leaves. The bay trees of the creekbed were evergreen, in theory, but dropped many leaves in the autumn, and Paul gathered a handful to use in his spaghetti sauce. Fungus, which he imagined to be deadly, erupted from the bark of redwoods.

When he came upon them, they seemed to belong there, among the dripping fronds of redwood trees. He did not know what they were at first. Depressions in the earth, each the size of a narrow bed, like an army cot. Five of them, and only when he saw the headstones did he understand.

The headstones were wooden, and the words carved in them were worn invisible. There were mere indentations where there had been names, faint depressions in the harsh grain of the wood. The headstones were glazed green with moss. Paul was struck with a desire to pray.

His prayer would not be only for the dead. There was something shocking about these graves—their neglect, their solitude. Something bad, Paul thought.

Something bad had happened here.

He shook himself free of the feeling, but as he strode purposefully away from the graves, he could not help sensing that something should be done. Some act on his part was necessary; he could not guess what.

He was a great fool, he thought. He was so badly in need of a vacation, that once he began one he became preoccupied with half-digested fears. He and Lise were indeed isolated, but it was a charming isolation. The redwoods were magnificent, and if they needed to return to the civilized world for any reason, all they had to do was leap into the car and drive back across the bridge.

He entered the cabin, and did not move. Len was here, he could sense it! “Lise,” he called.

“I’m here,” she said, emerging from the kitchen, drying her hands on a piece of gray terrycloth. “What did you see on your walk?”

“No word from anybody?”

“No, nothing. Why?”

“I don’t know. I just felt suddenly—that Len must be here.”

“I’ll fry him a chop in case he shows up.”

“He could, you know. I almost expect him.”

“He’s probably back in the City visiting his mother.”

It was possible. He might keep an alternate toothbrush there. An alternate razor. It made sense.

“What are those?”

“Bay leaves. For tomorrow night’s spaghetti. The Turkish laurel is better. But the native will do nicely, if I don’t use too many. Maybe half a leaf. They’re full of resin. Smell.”

“Wonderful!”

The wet leaves reminded him of the five sunken graves, and he could not mention them to Lise. He did not know why. They seemed brutal, somehow, or obscene. He tried to convince himself that they did not bother him, but they might bother her.

She opened one of the bottles of sauterne, and now that it was well chilled he could swallow it without too much revulsion. “I love it,” she breathed, and dressed as she was in an apron she had dug out of a bottom drawer with SOUP’S ON printed on it in red letters, she was the most alluring woman he had ever seen.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. He touched a raw chop.

“I could stay in a place like this forever,” she said.

The sentiment shocked him. “Not me. Although it’s a pleasant place,” he added. “There’s just something about it I don’t really like that much.”

“How can you say that?”

How indeed? He swallowed some wine. “We’re on an island, really. A creek on both sides. I didn’t walk all the way around it. The island is shaped sort of like a bay leaf.”

“How wonderful!”

“Or, maybe more exactly, like an eye.”

“We’ll explore it together when it stops raining.”

The thought troubled him. “There isn’t that much to look at really. Even the creeks aren’t much. No doubt in the summer you can walk across either of them, stepping on the stones.”

They slept in front of the fire. It spat and sizzled, then grew quiet as the light from it died. Rain pattered on the roof high above them, and from time to time a tiny cone would fall from one of the redwoods, and roll down the slope of the roof.

This time the dream began like any dream. Paul stood alone in a friendly place. Perhaps he was getting ready to paint, or wallpaper. He was in a house that had suffered neglect. And only when the steps began did he realize where he was. It was the cabin, and he was in the downstairs bedroom looking at the tape recorder, and he could not move. He could not move his arms, or his legs, and when he tried to call out he could not speak.