Dead Level (8 page)

“I mean—” Ellie pulled things at random out of the food satchel. “Pistachios? And a garlic press?”

“Well, I don’t want to be eating entirely out of cans while I’m here.” Crouching by the chimney, I opened its square, cast-iron cleanout hatch and angled a small hand mirror up into it.

Deviled ham on toast would be fun once or twice. But after that I meant to enjoy foods no one else in my family tolerated: a brussels sprouts quiche one night, for instance, rice with black beans another. Having to go back down that bumpy dirt road for a spice or condiment was not in my game plan, either.

“A nutmeg scraper,” Ellie said, marveling.

Tipping the mirror one way, then the other, I tried to look up the massive stone chimney the woodstove was piped into. But as I did, something fell
down
the chimney, landing on the ledge at the bottom of the hatch with a sooty thud.

“Uh-oh.” It was a dead bird.

Ellie knelt beside me to see, and I felt her recoil just the tiniest bit before she repressed a shudder, because of course she was not superstitious and neither was I, and never mind the odd, Victor-ish events that had gone on at my house that morning.

But anyone with half a brain knows dead birds are bad luck. I mean, have you ever looked at a dead bird—some poor floppy, limp-necked thing that’s smacked into a plate-glass window and bounced off, and now has two little cartoon x’s where its eyes used to be—have you ever looked closely at one of those and thought,
Oh, great, this means I’m in for some
good
luck
?

I lifted the thing from the cleanout hatch with a garden spade from the toolshed, and flung its sooty body into the trees where the wood ashes that permeated its feathers meant that it wouldn’t even get eaten by animals, or anyway not very soon. So I flung it
hard
, wanting its sad, forlorn carcass as far away as I could get it.

Just then another dragonfly zipped by, brushing me with its wings; from high overhead a woodpecker set up a fast, chattery rat-a-tat. A fish jumped, landing with an extravagant splash down in the lake, and the sweet, sappy-sharp perfume of fresh lumber drifted up, waiting for me and Ellie to get to work on the deck.

Off the end of the dock, a long ripple extended fast, heading for the other side of the lake. A small golden-brown head at the ripple’s tip belonged to a familiar creature:

“Hey, Ellie! Cheezil’s here!” I called. It was our name for the weasel-like animal—thus his name, Cheezil the Weasel—who lived down by the dock somewhere; we hadn’t seen him all summer.

Hurrying down the gravel path toward the dock, I watched him swim energetically away toward the far side of our small cove, feeling that the lithe, furry animal counteracted the dead bird’s influence at least a little bit. When he reached shore, I could just make out his slender form, scampering between the rocks and up toward a tiny log cabin, past a canoe that was overturned onto concrete blocks to keep snow from filling it up over the winter.

Then he was gone, intent on some wild, weasel errand that only
he knew; so maybe things weren’t so bad after all, I thought, and when I got back to the clearing Ellie was setting up the barbecue equipment.

“Lunch in twenty minutes,” she said. Lowering the truck’s tailgate, she arranged hot dogs, buns, and the barbecue fork in a neat row on it, then lit the grill. “I’m starved, aren’t you?”

And just like that, everything was all right again. We were here, we were fine, and I was going to get a lot done while also having a good time during my week of solitude, deep in the Maine woods.

And mostly, I was going to get the deck done. Dead bird or no dead bird, five-thousand-word essay or no five-thousand-word essay …

Victor’s ghost, I added firmly to myself, or no Victor’s ghost.

Harold got a motel room, then set about pursuing his hiking plan right away; after the long bus ride, his legs needed a good stretching out anyway, and the four or five miles the guys in the diner had described sounded fine to him.

So only a little over an hour after he’d arrived in Eastport, the same taxi driver who’d brought him there helped Harold unload his hiking gear from the trunk of the cab, then left him standing at the dead end of a paved road.

Ahead, a dirt track curved into the woods; the guys in the diner had said it led to a lake, and past that to an old dam and a granite quarry. Harold could hike in the two miles to the lake, they’d said, glancing without comment at his footgear—black socks and walking sandals that he’d bought especially for this trip—take a swim if he wanted, then continue on to the quarry and past it to another paved road leading back to the highway. If he started soon and kept moving right along, they’d told him, he could be in Eastport again by dark, and the cabbie had agreed.

As for the return trip, just stick your thumb out when you get back to the main road, the cabbie had advised. Someone’ll be along. Hitchhike,
the driver meant, causing Harold to realize again how different everything was here. In the city, sticking his thumb out might’ve gotten him a ride, but it could also have (a) gotten him murdered, or (b) made someone else think they were in danger of being murdered, if they picked him up.

A chipmunk scampered across the road, pausing to rear up on its back legs to scold Harold. A bird sang; he didn’t know what kind, only that its song was about the prettiest sound he’d ever heard. When it stopped, the silence was so complete that his ears rang, and the smell of this place … pine sap, warm dust slaked with the recent rain, and some kind of pungently aromatic herbal fragrance. It gave him a burst of energy, just inhaling it.

He stepped onto the dirt road with his pack straps weighing pleasantly on his shoulders. A canteen of water, some sandwiches from the diner, and a chocolate brownie were in the pack. He’d bought a compass, too, and an emergency flare from the hardware store in Eastport.

Also, he had a gun, a .22 pistol he’d borrowed from behind the counter of the video store, on his way out. The owner kept it in case of robbery, but there hadn’t been one in all the time Harold worked there. He would return the weapon before the owner even missed it, Harold felt confident; meanwhile, he kept it in his jacket pocket.

A hundred yards in, the dirt road curved sharply again, so that when he turned to look back all he could see were the trees, some evergreen and others bearing reddish or silver-green leaves. He walked on, passing through a swamp where black tree skeletons jutted from black, algae-covered water.

Startled by his footsteps, a huge frog jumped from the road into the water with a plop that made Harold jump, too.
Silly. There’s nobody here. No one to be scared of, or mad at, to resent or be repulsed by
.

One thing about solitude, it didn’t make you feel as if you were being rejected. Like somehow, everyone else had grabbed a brass ring and you’d missed yours. Here, Harold felt … normal, as if he fit in, just another creature among many.

Like a natural man
, he thought, savoring the idea. Ahead, the road’s damp tan surface was a bright ribbon reflecting the sun. It was a lot warmer here than in Eastport, just the exertion of walking with the pack on making him sweat. He stopped to pull off his jacket and sweater, leaving on only his T-shirt.

God, it was beautiful out here. If he’d brought along his cellphone, he could’ve taken pictures with it, but he hadn’t; besides, he had no one to call: no relatives, a few acquaintances but no real friends … a loner even as a child, with his parents now passed away he had even fewer people to miss him.

None, actually, he admitted frankly to himself. When his bus had pulled out of Port Authority, he’d thought forlornly that if he never returned, no one would care. His boss would get a new guy to rent porn. Everything would go on as if he’d never existed. But now …

Suddenly, Harold didn’t feel lonely at all. This world, full of birds and trees, grasses and insects, a blue sky overhead, sun shining and a little breeze blowing so it wasn’t too hot … it was enough. He stopped, feeling his shoulders straighten pleasantly and the tension in his neck vanish.

More than enough. Maybe he wouldn’t even go back. It was just a thought, not a plan or even a real possibility yet. But hey, it was a free country.

A free world, and he was a free—a
naturally
free—man. Hiking the pack up onto his shoulders again—happily, he realized with a tiny shock of wonder—he looked down the road ahead of him, suddenly seeing something about it that he hadn’t noticed before.

There were marks in the damp tan dirt, not just tire tracks from whatever vehicles were sturdy enough to be driven in here—one set of those, he noted, looked quite recent—but a double line of smaller ones, too. Harold squinted at them, recalling a joke about three not-very-bright country boys out hunting, who’d fallen to arguing about what kind of tracks they were following.

Bear tracks, said one. Moose tracks, said his brother. Deer tracks, insisted the third stubborn hunter. And while they were arguing
over what kind of tracks they were, the train came along and hit them.

Pursing his lips thoughtfully, Harold began walking again. The marks went on down the dusty road for a quarter mile or so until they veered off onto an even smaller, grass-covered trail that led into the woods.

Puckerbrush, the taxi man had called the thick undergrowth between the trees. Don’t get lost in it, the driver had advised, and Harold had promised not to. Now he crouched, peering at the marks where they left the road.

But then it hit him, how ridiculous he was being. Who did he think he was, anyway, Daniel Boone? The only tracking he’d ever tried doing was of customers who didn’t bring video rentals back on time, via the phone numbers (usually fake) and email addresses (likewise) they’d given at the time of their first transactions.

Even Harold could identify these tracks, though. He followed the grassy trail with his eyes until it bent between an enormous tree stump, twenty feet tall at least, and a moss-covered boulder that was even bigger, lunging up from the earth.

Then he eyed the marks in the road again, seeing that they obscured small, round pockmarks and runnels that must have been left by last night’s storm; the cabdriver had talked about it. And these other prints he’d been following were on top of the storm traces; that must mean they were more recent.

From this morning, then.
Huh
, Harold thought, a prickle of unease shifting the hairs on his neck. He wasn’t as alone out here as he’d thought. Because these prints leading off into the woods weren’t deer tracks, or moose tracks, or even train tracks.

They were boot prints.

Marianne …
Striding down the trail just off the dirt road leading to the lake, escaped prison inmate Dewey Hooper scowled ferociously as the thought of her hit him yet again.

She’d put a spell on him, that was the trouble. A hex that kept him thinking about her. Back in prison, he’d been crazy with it: her name, day and night, filling his head, drowning all other thought. Writing it down helped, like emptying a pitcher.

But it always came back; that, and the memory of her face … He shook his head angrily, forced himself to think of something else. Like freedom, for instance: now that he wasn’t locked in there like some zoo animal, things would surely be better.

As if to prove it, his right palm began itching. That was a good sign; everyone knew an itchy right hand meant you were going to get money. He was right-handed, too; that doubled the luck and was appropriate for him, besides.

Right for spite, the old saying went, and he was full of that, wasn’t he? Always had been, but at the moment just being free felt so good, he wasn’t dwelling much on that, either.

He spotted an acorn on the leaf-mold-covered earth under an oak tree and snatched it up. An acorn in your pocket brought long life, and if, as he fully expected, he found a place to sleep indoors tonight, it would keep lightning out. Now if he would only see two crows, or three butterflies …

He’d always been superstitious. Even in prison, if anyone spilled salt in the lunchroom, Dewey got some and flung it over his left shoulder. It drove the guards nuts, because some of the guys were so strung out, they’d go off on you for looking cross-eyed at them, never mind taking what they imagined belonged to them, even salt.

A grin twisted his lips as he continued along the trail, still thinking of them back there: the night-shift guards, their skin the color of dried paste and their guts hanging over their belts on account of all the junk food they gobbled, the sunlight and fresh air they never got. The dayshift officers, stringy as beef jerky and doing their time just as surely as the inmates were, ugly and dead-eyed.

And the support staff; oh, they were the worst. His smile tightened to a grimace as he recalled the parade of mealymouthed social workers,
pinch-faced nurses, and snot-nosed so-called teachers, all bent on improving Dewey whether he liked it or not.

Scowling at the memory, he spied some apples dangling from an old tree. The land around here had been hardscrabble farms once, small homesteads each with a herd and a henhouse, hayfields and a garden, plus an orchard for pies and applejack. Here and there you’d find a row of those trees still standing, but mostly now it was only a singleton that survived, like this one here.

He climbed the tree, snatched one fruit plus another for his pocket, and jumped down. The apple in his hand was wormy but what the hell; biting into it, he imagined turning a flamethrower full blast on the prison social workers, crisping them where they sat.

When he first got there, he’d have done it if only he’d had the flames. But soon he’d had something better: a plan, which he’d begun working on constantly, in part to try keeping thoughts of Marianne out of his head. Meanwhile, he’d been careful to keep his good luck polished up, too, always choosing the chair that was facing a door, for example, stealing a bit of parsley for his pocket when the cooks weren’t looking—by then, he had a kitchen job—knocking wood every chance he got.