Man in The Woods (15 page)

“Tarrytown,” Paul says. “I don’t know. I never go there.” He looks out the window over the sink to see what the weather is but the hard, moonless night turns the glass into a mirror. His own face is the last thing in the world he wants to see right now.

Casper gives Paul a lingering, questioning look, but then says, “Just point me in the right direction.”

“I’ll get you to the parkway,” Paul says, opening the door.

Paul gives the courier directions to the Taconic Parkway and walks him to the door to the black, icy night. Casper has left the engine of his Honda running; chalk-white exhaust rushes out of the tailpipe, and the headlights illuminate dashes and dots of slanting snow.

“Just a second,” Paul says, and reaches into his pocket, pulls out what feels like the newest and cleanest of the bills. It’s a fifty and it’s just as well. He hands it to Casper, who seems surprised, and uncertain about accepting it. He glances down, sees Grant’s melancholy, drink-blasted face.

“Much appreciated,” he murmurs.

As the taillights of Casper’s car swerve slowly up the driveway and out of sight, Paul continues to stand there, taking some comfort in the steady darkness of the cold, cold night. When he walks back to the kitchen, the light seems garishly bright and the sudden heat makes him feel as if he has been submerged in water.

Kate is trying to divert Shep’s attention while the dog, emitting a series of whines and warbles, his rump in the air, his tail twirling, claws frantically at the cabinet doors beneath the kitchen sink. “Stop it, Shep,” Kate is saying. “You’re wrecking the paint.”

“Shep,” Paul commands, clapping his hands, but the dog continues to worry the cabinet doors and now is lying flat on his underside and plucking at the doors with his claws, hoping to open them.

“Why’s he doing this?” Kate asks. “Is something in there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s just goofing around.” Paul crouches next to the dog and crooks his finger through the metal circle that tightens the choke collar—the one artifact from the dog’s former life. The moment Shep feels the collar tightening, he turns his teeth toward Paul’s hand with stunning speed. There is no measurement of time that can describe how sudden this move is, and all that saves Paul from being bitten is Shep’s stopping himself.

“Oh my God,” Kate says. “Are you all right?” She has backed farther and farther away from the sink.

“What are you doing, buddy?” Paul croons to the dog. “You going a little nuts there?”

Shep is panting, eyes flashing, his avidity masked as merriment. He seems reconciled to Paul’s grip on his collar, but when Paul pushes down on his rump and tells him to sit it is as if the dog’s skeleton is constructed in such a way as to make that position an impossibility. When Paul pushes harder, Shep’s front legs begin to slide on the kitchen floor and a low growl rumbles in the depths of him.

“Paul,” Kate says, her voice rising, “that dog’s going to bite you.”

To demonstrate how much he does not fear this, to show Kate, the dog, and himself, Paul cups his hand over Shep’s muzzle. The dog’s excited breath is warm and moist against his palm, and Shep’s normally peaceful brown eyes show a disquieting amount of white. Though the dog is not going to bite Paul, he is not going to be deterred from rooting out whatever is inside the cabinet beneath the sink, and as soon as Paul relaxes his grip, Shep scrambles to the doors again and begins scratching at them and whimpering.

“What’s in there?” Kate asks.

“I don’t know. Something. A mouse, a squirrel, maybe a snake.”

“A snake?” For Kate, this is the worst-case scenario, far more disturbing than Y2K.

“There are no poisonous snakes around here,” Paul says.

“All snakes are poisonous. They poison your mind. You experience such uncontrollable, piercing terror that the fear chemicals released in your brain turn you into a drooling idiot.”

“Here,” Paul says, “you take Shep and I’ll deal with whatever’s in there.” He leads Shep by the collar, though the dog is unwilling and Paul must virtually drag him across the kitchen to Kate. Just as the transfer is being made, Shep wriggles free and lopes across the room, back to the cabinets, and this time he has instantaneous success in plucking the doors open.

“Oh no!” Kate cries. Her hands fly up to her face.

It’s a rat snake, dull muddy gray and eight feet long. It has been enjoying the warmth of the hot water pipe, which the back half of it has been wrapped around. It drops to the floor and slithers slowly toward them. Its flat, rather small head is white on its underside; the black holes of its eyes are ringed in gray several shades lighter than the chain mail covering the rest of it.

Kate is virtually paralyzed with fear. As much as she wants to put distance between her and the rat snake, she is equally afraid to be alone. “What’s that bulge?” she manages to say.

“I guess he just ate a mouse,” Paul says.

“Oh fuck,” whispers Kate, as if there simply could not be worse news. She covers her mouth and nose. “It smells like a horrible cucumber.”

Shep, seeing now the bewildering nature of the noise from beneath the sink, has decided the best place for him is at Paul’s side. He leans against Paul’s leg and watches as the snake slowly makes its way across the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” cries Kate. “You’re just standing there!”

“Don’t worry,” Paul says. “I’m going to get it out of here.”

Whatever the snake has swallowed seems still to be alive. It pulsates in the snake’s digestive tract, as the nutrients are slowly and inexorably juiced out of it. As it is replenished, the snake is moving toward the kitchen table, and Paul quickly puts himself in its path, and stamps his foot to redirect it. The snake stops, lifts its head, surveys the terrain. With increasing speed, it winds its way toward the door to the cellar, where there is, in fact, a space between the door and the floor that is large enough for the snake to squeeze through and make its way to the bowels of the house, where it may have been wintering all along.

“Get it before it goes down there,” Kate says.

“I’m trying,” Paul says, his temper rising as his heart sinks: a part of him already knows he is going to kill this snake.

He takes quick strides toward the retreating rat snake and tries to step on its tail to stop it, but it feels as if the tail of the thing actually
shrinks
once it feels the pressure of Paul’s shoe, and now, with the snake just a moment or two from the space at the bottom of the cellar door, Paul grabs the thing—it feels as hard and alive as a garden hose through which cold water surges—and flings it, hoping it will land near the back door where he can eventually shove it out into the night. But the snake is heavy, ungainly, and it lands in the middle of the kitchen, where Shep, whose instincts have been reignited by the commotion, lunges upon it and sinks his teeth into its body, roughly midway between head and tail. Kate has her hand over her mouth, hoping her muffled cries will not awaken Ruby. Paul is trying to get Shep to drop the snake, which he is now subjecting to rapid-fire shakes, hoping to snap its neck. The snake, however, is far too pliable to be killed like this; indeed, its head has turned now and even as it is caught between the dog’s jaws, its mouth is open and its tongue is flickering. Shep by now has gotten a taste of what he has bitten, and by the look of him he finds it repulsive; he draws himself up to his full height and his mouth slowly opens and the mangled, bleeding snake drops wetly to the floor, though it continues to swerve, this time in the direction of the kitchen cabinets, which still are wide-open. Shep watches the snake, his head cocked to one side, in a pose that might be mistaken for adorable. While he is still tonguing the taste of the snake out of his mouth, the snake’s movement makes it irresistible to Shep and he gives every indication of getting ready to attack it again. In the meanwhile, however, Paul has grabbed the teakettle off the burner, and he uses it as a cudgel, slamming the bottom of it hard against the snake’s head, stunning it, and then slamming it again, finishing it off.

“Is it dead?” Kate asks.

Paul, looming over the now-inert creature, watches it for signs of life, and Shep, standing between Paul and Kate, looks first at the snake and then at Paul, and Paul, his chest heaving from the exertion and the emotion of the kill, wonders if the dog is remembering what he is remembering.

Paul takes the dead snake outside and throws it in the tall brown grass along the driveway, where crows will find it and pick it to pieces. He stands there for a few extra moments and looks at the moon, his thoughts rapid and indecipherable. At last, he comes back into the house, where Kate has been mopping up the smear left by the snake.

“Well, that was like having two hundred and fifty cups of coffee,” she says, throwing away the paper towels and running the base of the teakettle under the hot-water tap.

“Are you okay?” Paul asks.

“Needless to say, I am not a big fan of the snake.”

Paul slumps into a kitchen chair, but when Kate is finished cleaning the teakettle, she comes behind him and makes an effort to lift him out of his seat. “Let’s go to the dining room,” she says. “I need to share something with you. Plus I can’t believe I said ‘share.’”

They sit across from each other at the dining table. The ring of moisture left by the platter holding tonight’s roasted chicken is still visible. Kate is holding the letter from the radio programmers. She moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue, takes a deep, steadying breath.

“‘Dear Ms. Ellis,’” Kate reads. “‘As you know, we here at Heartland Radio are huge fans of you and your work.
Prays Well with Others
has been a company favorite since its publication and we have also followed with keen interest your numerous public appearances, in person, on television, and on radio.’” She suddenly puts the letter down. “Okay, I’m not going to read this letter after all. But long story short? They want me to have my own show. Once a week, it would go out to about two hundred of their stations.” She smiles. “I used to think this concentration of ownership and the whole media conglomerates situation was a bad thing for our culture and democracy, but now I have entered the Tour de France of backpedaling and I think it’s all good.”

Paul rests his chin in his hand, struggling to be a part of this conversation. “It sounds good,” he finally says.

Kate gives no indication of finding his response tepid. “I don’t know,” she says. “They don’t mention money, maybe it isn’t even worth that much. And I have no idea what it will do to my writing. I don’t want it to all fizz out as a bunch of radio talk.” She picks the letter up again, glances at it, places it carefully on the table, smoothes it down. “What would you think about that? Me on the radio? Do you think that would be, I mean something you’d be all right with, I mean does it strike you as a good idea?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never thought about being on the radio before. Do they want you to talk about the Bible?”

“I’m not a theologian—and I’m not going to play one on radio. I don’t really know the Bible all that well. So many real estate deals and so much revenge.”

“So what would you do?”

“Just talk. About…” She flutters her eyelashes, places her hand over her heart. “…
moi
. The same as my book, the same as every one of my events. All I know is what I know. The story of finding a little bit of grace in a life that is otherwise pretty crazy.”

“I’ll sure listen.”

“This is making me so frightened,” Kate says. “I’m used to things being a certain way, and now everything’s changing.” She reaches across the table, takes his hand. “Everything’s so different now—and it’s all so much more than I ever expected. Sometimes I don’t recognize myself. It’s as if I woke up one morning and I had red hair and was six feet tall. I mean it’s interesting to be so tall and have red hair—but what happened to
me
? Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Paul says. “But we have to be willing to change,” he adds, somewhat tentatively.

“I know,” she says. “Life on life’s terms. Okay, I’m in. Deal the cards. Right? You want to know what I know? I know that our lives are unfolding under God. He’s really there, in the most primitive and absolute way. Just the way people thought thousands of years ago, all those people who didn’t know shit, they knew that, and they were right.”

“But no one can see him,” Paul says.

“Of course not,” Kate says. “Can you imagine how boring everything would be if you could see God the way you can see Cleveland or a box of paper clips?”

Kate gets out of her chair, walks over to Paul, and leads him out of the dining room, up the staircase, into their bedroom. They are still clothed but she gets on top of him, aligns herself just so. “How much happiness can one woman stand?” she asks. She glances up quickly, to where God might be, and then lowers her eyes gently, covering Paul with her gaze as if it were a soft blanket. “Am I freaking you out? It’s too much, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head, not daring to speak. Somewhere out in the night, in that vast, cold wilderness between the treetops and eternity, a small plane drones, its engines straining. He imagines the pilot, rigid with fear as the plane loses altitude, and he imagines the plane crashing through the roof, its lethal propellers cutting through the fragile flesh of them. Kate arches her back, presses herself against him, and as she continues to gaze at him she moves her head so the ends of her hair trail lightly over his face.

“All right,” she whispers, “I’m through talking, it’s a moratorium.” She lowers her face to kiss him, and Paul holds her by her hips, to stop her, but she misinterprets his touch and presses her pelvic bone into him. He increases the strength of his grip, holding her fast, an inch or two away from him.

“But one more thing?” Kate says.

“Okay,” he says. “You can say as many more things as you want. I love when you talk.”

“You really do?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“All right, that settles it,” Kate says. “We have to get married. I need to put this whole thing in writing. I need it signed, sealed, and delivered. I need the law on my side.”