Cold Flat Junction

The Silver Pear is an expensive restaurant on what the Lake Noir people call the Lake Road, but which is actually just an extension of White’s Bridge Road. Maud says the Silver Pear’s food isn’t a patch on the Hotel Paradise’s; she says my mother could cook better blindfolded. Still, the restaurant is in a huge and pretty Victorian house with a wide, wraparound porch, where customers can eat in warm weather. It is painted a soft gray-brown, much like the bark of the trees that surround it. It blends into its woodland setting in much the same way as the Devereau house blends with the trees on the other side of Spirit Lake.

Since Bunny’s truck still sat in the driveway after I got out, I figured she wanted to see me safely up the stairs. So I climbed them and stopped on the porch to wave. Tables were set up on the porch and a few diners were observing Bunny and her truck, which looked out of place amidst all of the fancy foreign cars in the restaurant’s parking area.

But still Bunny didn’t leave, so, waving again, I walked through the open doorway. Was Bunny waiting to make sure my aunt was there? I disappeared from her view and stood by one of the side windows and watched her truck rattle down the gravel drive.

The voice made me jump. A man stood behind me with menus clutched to his chest. He was wearing a powder blue linen suit, and his hair was cut in a high silvery sort of pompadour.

I told him I was just watching for my aunt who was supposed to pick me up here. I didn’t want to say I was to meet her here or he’d go check his list of reservations. I know enough about how a dining room runs to figure that out.

If he was the headwaiter, why didn’t he get back to his customers? You wouldn’t catch Vera standing around in the dining room doorway gawking. And now here came another one. He was clutching menus, too, wearing a powder beige suit and his hair, similarly cut, was more ivory than silver. Then I remembered Maud had said their names were Ron and Gaby something. Something German, I seemed to remember. They did not look at all German. They looked more like the butterfly population out back of Dr. McComb’s house. They simply looked flyaway, and I wished they would, but they didn’t.

The first man explained to the second why I was there. I said I’d wait outside on the porch and thanked them. Did they watch me go as I’d watched Bunny? It was a peculiar feeling, imagining four eyes riveted on my back. But I couldn’t hang around so I just walked down the steps and out the gravel drive.

It was barely a quarter of a mile to White’s Bridge, which lay farther along the same dirt road, which I supposed to be White’s Bridge Road, although I saw no sign. The walk was truly pleasant, with the smell of pine needles mixing with the fresh breeze off the lake. I couldn’t see Lake Noir from here, but knew it was close by. It’s the popular, rich people’s lake.

Maud Chadwick lives in a small house on the lake, not far from Bunny. Maud’s has a long wooden pier out over the lake. I’ve never been there, but I heard she has a chair and a lamp (with a really long extension cord) on the pier and she likes to sit there reading and drinking cocktails. The Sheriff is always complaining about that extension cord and the lamp being so close to the water, but she pays no attention to him. Or maybe she just likes the idea of the Sheriff worrying about what happens to her. She keeps vodka out on the pier in an ice bucket. Mrs. Davidow described it all to my mother, both of them laughing fit to kill. Yet, it wasn’t unkind laughter; it was more appreciative. Anyway, Mrs. Davidow could hardly laugh unkindly at someone who spent her nights drinking martinis.

I thought about Maud as I pulled up a hayseed and chewed on it the way old-timers do. I pictured the lamp and the book and the bottle in the ice bucket, and wished I could go slowly by in a boat, for in my mind’s eye it was such a pretty scene: the lamp shining on the pier and spilling over into the black water. But, then, I guess what your mind’s eye sees is often better than the thing itself. I’ve never seen the Rony Plaza, after all. It probably looks nothing like what I imagine, nothing so grand. It may not be set among royal palms and poincianas, but still I see it that way.

I came to White’s Bridge, a plank bridge that rumbles whenever a car crosses it. I was still thinking about Maud, the lamp being the only thing lit against the black night and black water, this image soon surrendering to the one of Mary-Evelyn, floating on the surface of Spirit Lake, her white dress lit like a big candle, floating in the darkness of night, woods, and water. What I felt was what I felt about Maud on the end of the pier, though I could never have said why. It made me stop on the other side of the bridge and ponder as I chewed my hayseed.

And then an image of the Girl came to me, how I’d first seen her at the railroad station in Cold Flat Junction in her dress of such a pale blue it seemed faded out to more a memory of blueness; her hair as pale as moonlight, her strange stillness, so that it was almost as if she was disappearing as I watched. Then how I’d seen her when I was trying to catch butterflies around Spirit Lake. I looked across the lake to the Devereau place and there she’d stood, where nobody should have been because nobody lived there. To me, she was just “the Girl”; she was one more thing I hadn’t told the Sheriff about.

Two hours was how long I’d told Bunny I’d probably be (for she said she’d drive me back) and I’d frittered away nearly a half hour of it between the Silver Pear and stopping to think, so I put on a little speed for the last five minutes of my walk to Mirror Pond. It was a walk on soft marshy ground through leaves and branches that must have lain there since the year zero, so undisturbed did they look. But of course that was another illusion, for the area had been trammeled and sifted over by the police, and before that by Fern Queen and her killer two weeks ago.

The yellow tape that warned POLICE CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS had been taken down. This made me feel sad, for it was as if the place was being returned to its long-gone-and-forgotten self, as if nothing had happened here. And I was sorry too because that canary-yellow tape was bright and cheerful, no matter what its message. It leant the place an air of habitation, of people and strolls and picnics.

This was plain silly; people hadn’t picnicked here. I was wasting time. Yet, time, here, seemed meant to be wasted if it existed at all. It was the same sense I got about Cold Flat Junction.

Mirror Pond itself was not, as Suzie Whitelaw reported, clear and tranquil. It was overgrown with rush grass and weeds; you could barely see the water. It was the sort of place to sink a body in, though Fern Queen’s had simply been lying at its edge.

Now the place looked returned to itself as if a page had fluttered backward in a book to what I’d read once and now read again. The pond was in a clearing, and two dirt roads came together here, though the one that went straight on was little more than a trail. White’s Bridge Road, which I’d been walking on, turned to the right in the direction (at least I thought it was) of Spirit Lake. Going halfway round the lake is an old road no one uses anymore which passes the Devereau house and wanders off in this direction. It was this road Ben Queen must have driven his truck down when he went to the Devereau house that night, driving in on the other side of the lake, miles away.

I picked up a small, dry branch and drew lines in a patch of dirt at my feet, just to clarify this road business to myself. Where these two roads intersect, here, there’s an ancient filling station with two bubble pumps and a clapboard building where they probably sold oil and soft drinks and things like that. The name of the place on the sign above the door, weathered nearly to invisibility, was FRAZEE. It’s mostly faded out and hard to read, but there are a lot of Frazees around, so it’s a safe guess. There were signs in the one window that still had glass in it for Clabber Girl Baking Powder and Mail Pouch Tobacco.

I wondered how long it had been since a car had stopped here. And how could there have been enough traffic to keep the filling station going? Sunlight, in a sudden sweep across the clearing, speckled the glass of the one remaining window. Looking at the pumps, I grew more and more heart-heavy. It was just so deserted. I have this feeling for abandoned places: it’s as if they’re more real than the ones where folks hang out and the ones people flock to. The bench, the building—Frazee’s was like the ghost of Britten’s Market.

The old man—who I remembered from when Will and Mill and I came here—was standing less than ten feet away. He yelled—certainty louder than necessary—“Ain’t you the one came with them po-lice couple weeks ago?”

As if arguing this point, he said, “Hell, I live right down there—” He shook his black walking stick off in a direction behind them. “I been here for near ninety years. My name’s Butternut.”

Mr. Butternut looked up at the blank, cloudless sky. He seemed to be waiting for God to second what I’d said. “More’n a hunnert years, you’re right. See down there?” Again, he took up his stick and pointed off down the road. “My house’s down there. Lived in it all my life long. So did my daddy before me. My daddy’s name was Lionel. Lionel Butternut lived to be a hunnert and one. I’m the last.”

Mr. Butternut wasn’t much taller than me. Age must’ve been shrinking him down and maybe instead of dying, he’d just disappear, blow off like puff ball filaments. Then I remembered Mr. Butternut had told Will (who’d said he and Mill were policemen) how he heard a car or a truck up here the night Fern Queen was murdered.

“Ain’t no ‘exactly,’ I just did. I was asleep and it woke me up.” Impatiently, he said, “I done told all that to them lawmen. That there skinny po-liceman thinks he’s God. He said I better tell ‘em ev’rthing I seen and heard. Well, a’course I did, why wouldn’t I?” He spat another stream of tobacco against a rock. “They was out here and down the road lookin’ for tire tracks, they said.”

I gritted my teeth. The Sheriff had to go through this all the time with witnesses. How did he stand it? I meant to ask him, whenever we were friends again. I was seized by a sudden and terrible breath of cold as if all around it had turned winter. Would there ever after be a rift, like the water between a drifting boat and the shore? Would there always be a distance in our friendship?

For a long moment he said nothing, just looked off down the road to his house. Then he pointed that way with his briar stick. “Randalls lived down there further along from me. Bud Randall, he up and died like four, five years ago. Then there were the ... what the jumpin’ Jesus was their name? Lived here a long time.”

I wanted to shake him hard. But then I recalled the Sheriff once telling me you should never hurry a witness, unless it meant someone might die because the witness was too slow giving up the information. Witnesses have to find their own way, he’d said. That if you try to yank back from the path they want to go on down, they’ll forget something important. Happens all the time, the Sheriff had said.

“Frazee!” he exclaimed. “That’s the next house, about a half mile down there. Frazees owned that fillin’ station”—he pointed his stick in that direction now—“but that was when there was lots of summer folks lived around here.” He was lost again in thought. “There’s a old summer cottage back in there, back from the road, but there ain’t no path to it no more, it’s been so long somebody ever lived in it. Calhouns did once. But you ain’t goin’ back in there, no ma’am.”

Whether I did or didn’t, he turned and walked back down the road. I looked at my watch. More time gone and I still hadn’t found any new information. I supposed he’d already told the Sheriff or Donny about the car and truck. Yet, Mr. Butternut might still be the most likely source of something new coming to light. If I could just remember to let him find his own way to it. Which I doubted.

For all the Butternuts who must have lived in it, his house was small. It was also cold. In the cold fireplace sat an old potbellied stove. Mr. Butternut opened the little metal door and looked in. “Thought so. Them coals is nearly ashes. But we’ll get ’er goin’ in a minute.” He shoveled coal from the bucket through the opening and then took the bellows to it with a lot of enthusiasm. He must have been one of those people who get a kick out of fires. “There goes. Room’ll heat up in no time.” He stood and watched the black stove, looking satisfied. It was surprising how soon the coals started burning. I could see the flames’ reflection on his face, turning it several shades of pink. It was almost sinister.

“Cocoa, you said.” He didn’t answer. Pretended, probably, that he hadn’t heard. I was sitting at a long wooden table that was probably where all the Butternuts had eaten for a hundred years. Mr. Butternut got a fire in the cast iron stove going; it was a coal or wood-burning one, the kind we had in the little kitchen. This was the kitchen we used when we stayed at the hotel in the cold months. I love that stove. You lift the four black tops off with a special handle. Sometimes I cook mushrooms right on the surface without a pan.

Mr. Butternut muttered as he got the Hershey’s cocoa tin out of the cupboard and lined up the sugar and pan and other things he’d need. He was talking to himself as if no one were here at all, which I thought pretty much wasted the visitor experience. I doubted he had many of them. But, then, I don’t know—maybe if you’d lived nearly all your life alone, just having someone there wandering around might make you less lonely. Talk wasn’t even necessary.

I walked around the room that served as dining and living space-the kitchen was off to the right. There were two big easy chairs near the stove, gathered there for warmth and firelight. They were covered in a faded sprig-patterned muslin. The arms wore those separate little sleeves of the same material to keep the upholstery from rubbing too much. I took one off and the material underneath showed its little flower sprigs in blues, pinks, and yellows so much brighter you’d think a garden might have bloomed there on the chair arm.

To his back, I said, “I told you I wasn’t part of the police. Anyway, I’m not searching, I’m only looking.” He said nothing to this, and I would have said he watched too many police shows, but I didn’t see a television set anywhere. Around the walls were stacks and stacks of magazines, mostly Time and National Geographic. Probably he just looked at the pictures, like I did. I didn’t see many books, only six or seven in a small green-painted bookcase. This stood at one end of a camp bed against the rear wall. A gooseneck lamp sat on top of the bookcase positioned for reading in bed. There were other rooms I could see through the door of this one; there must have been a bedroom back there, but maybe when it was cold, Mr. Butternut slept out here, to get the benefit of the potbellied stove.

The camp bed was covered with a light blue chenille bedspread, the kind that I’ve always loved. I sat down on it and ran my hand over the little tufts of cotton that crossed one another in a diamond design. I wondered what it would be like to be completely alone, like Mr. Butternut. I tried to picture myself here, lying at night on the bed with the lamplight falling over my shoulder onto the pages of a book. I looked in the bookcase: Hiawatha was there and a book called The Yellow Room and some mysteries. I imagined myself reading and listening to night sounds—which I had to make up: whippoorwills, maybe; tiny branches scratching and tapping against the curtained window; a bark, a howl.... When the howl overtook my imagination, I snapped my eyes open.

He had risen to get a box of saltines, which he put on the table. We sipped in silence for a few moments. It was not unpleasant, but I was disappointed I hadn’t found out more than I knew when I came. Except, of course, what cottages sat along this road and back in the woods.

Things. He had said there were “things” down the road. Probably, he was just making it up. I looked at my watch and saw less than an hour before Bunny was to return to the Silver Pear and pick me up. “What did you mean about ‘things’ happening in that house?” He better not ask “What things” again.

“There’s nothing so strange about that. Maybe it was a flashlight or a lantern.” I was pleased with myself for coming up with this reasonable view of a presence in the woods.

He pursed his lips as he set down his mug. “Some time ago, but I don’t attend much to time. There’s things happened yesterday that seems like they did a year ago. And vice-y vers-y.” He chuckled.

It was then it occurred to me: Mr. Butternut had been in the road when Will and Mill and I came that first time. He’d been there this time, too. So why not nearby the night of the murder ? But he’d already told Donny he neither saw nor heard anything suspicious, except for the vehicles. “Are you sure you weren’t—?” No. “Do you think maybe something else happened, something you saw or heard and just forgot?”

“Well, now that’s kinda dumb. Ain’t you asking me do I remember something I forgot?” He dropped the spoon he’d been fooling with back in the mug. “I’m havin’ more o’ this cocoa. Want some? I’ve only got but one marshmallow, though. ”

“Same difference. If a ‘coon run by me and I didn’t know it was important then, how would I know it was important now, ’less you told me a ’coon shot that woman?” He thought this was really rich and laughed the milk into the pan and the pan onto the stove.

“I will then.” No, I wouldn’t; you wouldn’t catch me going into woods I didn’t know. But I got up and pushed my chair back. My resolve must have been serious, to make me give up a second cup of cocoa. But I wasn’t going there alone. “I’ll go by myself, then.”

He made a disagreeable noise in his throat. “Guess not. Well, okay, then.” He pushed the pan away from the burner. His briar stick was leaning against the counter, and he took it up. “Guess I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”