A Single Eye (46 page)
He turned onto the path beside the stream. My stomach lurched.
You've been in the woods twice today, once going, once coming back
, I reassured myself. But the first time I had been all but blindfolded as Amber led me along, and coming back I'd had my hands on Maureen's shoulders most of the way. Neither time had been in the same thick fog that coated woods of my childhood. Not for a moment had I been alone. Now, my body felt light with fear, as if any gust would blow me off. I swallowed hard and forced myself to keep moving. Roshi's lantern was growing dimmer in the distance.
At the Japanese maple I paused, as Roshi had. The rain had washed off its leaves and just the skeleton remained. Surprising myself, I bowed, walked around it, and stepped onto the path, into the woods.
My feet went numb; I could barely feel the ground. My breath stopped at my throat. My mouth turned sour with bile. I thought I would faint, or slip into the stream, or die. I couldn't move, couldn't go forward.
Just pretend you're in Central Park
, Gabe would have said.
“Central Park,” I murmured. “The boathouse. This is just a path to the boathouse.”
The bile welled. I was going to retch and keep retching till I chucked all my guts into the stream. This wasn't Central Park; it was
here
. The fog swirled in, around me. Roshi's light was almost invisible.
I was going to pass out.
Roshi was walking to his death alone.
His light was a speck far onto the path.
I grabbed onto it with my eyes and followed, looking neither right nor left, feet shuffling along the ground for balance. On my left the stream sputtered and sloshed; below, leaves and twigs crackled; above, leaves swished against other leaves. It all blended to one sound not as loud as the draw of my breaths. Ahead, the tiny lantern light flickered and was gone. I broke into a run. Then it reappeared, as if Roshi had swung the lantern in front of himself and back.
He moved ahead steadily, but ever more slowly, and I was afraid his own gait would falter. He only needed to lose his balance once to tumble down the embankment onto the rocks, into the river. Yesterday he had been too weak to sit up without help; this burst of strength couldn't last. It was all I could do not to grab him and drag him back to his cabin. But he'd just have set out again when I wasn't looking.
My brief run brought the feeling back to my feet and I walked more steadily, my gaze toggling from the light to the ground and back with every step. Condensed fog dripped off leaves and tapped on my forehead, and made a pungent potpourri of pine and damp earth. I may have walked for half an hour, or maybe it was five minutes. I was so intent on not losing Roshi and on staying on the path I didn't think about anything else, didn't see leaves, or trees, only the dot of light in the darkness.
The light went out again. Roshi was about thirty yards ahead. I walked on, feeling a great draft of aloneness, waiting for the comfort of the light to return. It did not flicker back on. Something banged, wood on wood. A gruff groan sawed through the still air.
“Roshi,” I yelled. “Leo, are you all right?”
There was another bangâwood on woodâlouder, sharper.
“Leo!” I ran, batting branches out of my way. My boot caught against a root or something. I lunged, grabbed a branch and twisted, landing on one knee.
Leo didn't answer.
Had he fallen in the river? Like Aeneas?
Oh, God, like Aeneas? The killer? Had the killer managed to get ahead of us? “Leo, answer me!”
The only answer was a metallic sound. An irregular clanking and the grumbling of a small motor, like the wee electric mowers New Yorkers use to mow their wee back lawns. Like a hedge clipper. Or a motor bike.
I stopped. The grumbling was steady, but the clanking seemed more distant. Two sounds? What did that mean?
The clanking was growing softer. But it was all I had. I ran toward it.
“Leo!”
Still no answer.
I almost fell over the source of the noise. If I'd come this far on this path earlier with Amber, I surely would have noticed the bottom of the pulley lift up to the fire tower. It was a big metal cubeâa generator, maybeâwith heavy wires leading upward. I squinted into the dark and thought I could make out the carriage box lurching upward. Maureen had been insulted at the idea of taking it down from the fire tower. Leo had to be in it now . . . unless it was a decoy to lead the killer uphill and let Leo get behind him. But Leo wasn't devious. He had staged this walk to draw the killer's attention. He was in that box, moving slowly up the hill, marked by his light and the rattle of wood and metal resounding through the forest. He couldn't be more exposed. All the killer had to do was cut the cables. They were sturdy wires, but hardly indestructible.
Or, easier yet, he could race up to the fire tower, tip over the arriving cart, and fling Leo down the hillside to what would look like the most unequivocal of accidental deaths: Sick Man Falls to Death Exiting Awkward Carrier.
“Oh shit!” That could be true, murderer or not. It would be one thing to stand at the edge of the widow's walk up there and haul a desk chair out of that cart, but a different and way more dangerous project getting yourself out of that swaying crate onto the deck with the wind gusting, smacking you and the cart.
I raced back till I found the cut-off up to fire tower, the tine, as Leo had called it when he told me about the fork in the road.
This was the steep part, I remembered that. I clambered up grabbing branches, yanking myself over bulging rocks, my feet slipping on leaves and twigs and loose pebbles. Fog floated down the hillside like gray paste, thicker with each foot I climbed ; it caught on the outcroppings, sagged wet on my shoulders. It pressed the branches and fronds into my face as it had done in Tilden Park or Muir Woods. My face was against the mountainside. I could barely make out the dirt and leaves and vines. I grabbed a branch, hoisted myself up, feeling for footing, finding none, sliding back down, hanging by my hands, my nose scraping against rock. I was going to throw up. I was going to scream.
No! I was not four years old, not now. I clamped my mouth shut, forcing myself to stare down at the ground, to stay in the present. Had I missed the path entirely? I couldn't bear that thought. I climbed again, grabbing, yanking, planting my feet and grabbing before they had time to slip. Bile filled my throat, sweat coated my face; I saw the walls of the canyon in Tilden Park the day when I was four; I heard my brothers laughing while I screamed and screamed and screamed. They laughed, softer, softer, and then there was nothing but the cold fog and the side of the canyon and the dark.
My tailbone slammed against something, slamming me back into the present. The pulley scraped louder. The carriage banged high above my head.
I could hear Roshi groaning.
“I'm coming,” I yelled.
I scrambled hand over hand, feet barely touching the hillside, not thinking, just moving. When I reached the uphill path, I ran, slipping on the scree of pebbles, leaves, and twigs. I grabbed branches and kept pulling myself forward. My breath was short, shallow, my lungs banging against my ribs with each gasping breath. I rounded a switchback, and another. Everything looked the same. Was Roshi still calling, moaning? I couldn't hear anything over the branches snapping underfoot and my own gasping.
Where was the carriage? I looked up, squinting into the foggy night for wires, for the box. I smacked into a branch, something sharp piercing the corner of my eye. Blinking madly, I rushed on. The danger would be at the top.
I was gasping for breath, my throat raw, my mouth dry as incense powder. I couldn't go another step.
I had to keep going. Just take this step. This step. This step.
The stairs to the fire tower erupted out of nowhere. I almost flung myself down on them with relief. The cable screeched next to me. The clanking of wood on wood sounded like a hundred pairs of clappers calling me to the zendo, to the fire tower, on up all four flights of steps.
The carriage was above me, inching toward the widow's walk.
The stairs rose, endlessly. My legs wavered and I could barely breathe. I thoughtâI stopped thinking and stepped, and stepped. I didn't call to Leo anymore. I had no breath for that.
I lifted my foot for a step that wasn't there and almost toppled onto the platform, the first landing. Grabbing the rail, I muttered, “Keep going. Step!”
My head swirled. I was gasping with every footfall, pressing on feet I couldn't feel. I cleared the second landing and it was all I could do not to collapse across it.
“Step.”
Wood thudded above. The carriage hitting against the docking.
Stay where you are, Leo!
I was desperate to yell, but couldn't. I could only keep moving. There was no rush, I told myself; he would let the carriage settle into place before he tried to climb out. Or he wouldn't wait. He would stand up. He would wave his lantern. He would leap over the edge.
I forced myself up, hands shaky on the railing, yanking myself upward. The wind snapped my jacket like a flag, whipped my hair against my face.
Step!
I pulled myself up, and up again.
A noise came from the widow's walk. I shoved my feet down, pressed harder, and climbed. It was only when I cleared the top and looked right over the planking of the widow's walk that I saw the cart waving in the wind and a figure bent down beneath the windows waiting.
I
froze against the fire tower stairs, my head just about the level of the planking on the widow's walk. The fog was thicker up here, sucking a dimension out of everything, leaving the fire-watch room and the figure huddled beneath its windows flat sketches of grays. I stared at the form, unable to judge size or intent.
A gust shook the stairs as if they were four stories of toothpicks on the top of the mountain. The pulley carriage swayed. I strained, desperate to make out Leo still in it. A second gust jostled me loose. I grabbed for the post.
The huddled figure had moved away from the wall, closer to the pulley carriage.
Covered by the cacophony of sound and shaking from the next gust of wind, I swung around the railing, up onto the walk and in one leap was next to the figure, arms extended, hands clasped like a baseball bat.
“Stop!” Roshi sputtered, and sank to the flooring.
I just caught myself in time. “Roshi! Omigod! However did you manage to get yourself out of the carriage?” My words were lost in the wind. I half lifted, half dragged him around the corner and inside the fire-watch room. The room was almost as icy as the outside. I spread out the sleeping bag, helped him onto it, and pulled the other side over to cover him. Then I pulled off my coat and made a pillow to keep his head off the hard wood floor. It was a sign of how wasted he was that he didn't object.
“The lantern,” he said.
It was outside, standing next to the wall by the carriage. The rough trip should have broken the globe or sloshed out the kerosene, but Leo must have focused his whole attention on protecting it. Old and dried out as the wood was up here, that lamp could have sent the whole fire tower up in smoke.
Leo looked spent. Like Maureen he had used every bit of energy on the trek. I tucked my coat sleeves around his shoulders and fussed with squirming nylon sleeping bag trying to create a cocoon for him.
“Oh, Leo,” I moaned, wishing for words for the amalgam of love, frustration and fear I felt for this man.
After a while he said, “Put the lantern on the cabinet over there.”
“What about the skull?”
“Stick in inside.”
I must have gasped or something, because Leo actually laughed.
“Darcy,” he said, “it's just a piece of plastic.”
“Plastic!” I held it to the light. It may not have been bone, but it was a very good likeness. “Maureen saidâ”
“Maureen chooses to imbue it with spiritual meaning. That meaning is her illusion, in her head. Not in the plastic.”
“Suppose it was a statue of the Buddha, would we still plunk it inside like a disused ashtray? Would it still be just plastic?”