Mr. Was (22 page)

“I guess it doesn't matter.”

She slid behind the wheel and put the big car in gear. We rolled out of the driveway onto the dirt road.

“Where are we going?”

“We're going home. I live in the Caribbean now. No more winters.”

“And what then?”

She shrugged. “And then we live for a while. At least twelve more years. I want to see my daughter one more time.”

“And then?”

“Eventually we die.”

I nodded. It made sense. I sank back into the leather seat and watched the trees flashing in the headlights. After a couple miles, she stopped.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Watch.” She turned off the engine and the headlights. The moonlight was so bright, we could see shadows. A few minutes later, a figure emerged from the darkness, walking down the opposite side of the
road. A girl with long hair. Even from a distance I knew who she was by the way she walked. The young Andie. She seemed to be holding something in her right hand, but there was nothing visible there. Nevertheless, I knew she had someone's hand. I could still feel the pressure of her fingers.

“I can see you,” said my grandmother.

“I can see you,” I said.

As I watched, the girl stopped. She turned toward our car, pointed. Andie let the clutch out and the car moved along the shoulder, passing the girl and her invisible companion. I looked back. She was staring at us, her eyes wide, a hand pressed to her slim white throat.

In 1942, Andrea Skoro and Jack Lund bought a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico, where they resided for the next ten years. On September 5, 1952, though both Andrea and Jack appeared to be nearly eighty years old, the pair decided to journey to Skokie, Illinois.

The Lunds traveled in their yacht, the
Andyjack,
from their island toward Miami, where they had reservations on an airliner bound for Chicago. The yacht launched in perfect weather. The sky was impossibly blue and beautiful, the waters glittered in the Caribbean sun. Their last decade had been peaceful and good and so, they believed, their lives had been worth the living. This trip was a lark, in a sense. Andrea Lund had remarked to neighbors that she was going to visit her daughter, who was about to give birth.

Somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, the
Andyjack
may have encountered a bank of low clouds that the weather service had not predicted. Their radio may have failed to operate. Their compass may have spun crazily. If they emerged from the strange cloud, there may have been nothing to see. No earth, no clouds. Nothing but the sky and endless ocean.

The
Andyjack
was never heard from, never recovered, and never explained. Her two passengers are presumed dead.

Elizabeth Skoro was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, at 5:09
A.M.
on September 29, 1952, weighing seven pounds, nine and one half ounces.

• • •

On February 1, 1994, Mr. Robert (Bobby) Dennison approached the registration desk at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans and discovered that his wallet was missing from his jacket pocket. Seconds later, he was approached by a man who identified himself as an attorney with Givens, Hoist, and Wellcott. The attorney handed Dennison an envelope containing five thousand dollars in crisp, 1942 series one-hundred-dollar bills. The attorney then left without answering any of Dennison's questions, having completed the task assigned to his firm more than fifty years before.

Bobby Dennison went on to have the time of his life. Over the next two weeks, he spent every last dime, returning home to Virginia broke but elated. None of his friends believed his story, though he told it at every opportunity.

In August of 1998, an abandoned property was put up for sale by the Goodhue County in southeastern Minnesota. Jimbo Bobick, a local real estate agent, was asked to find a buyer. Because of the property's unhappy reputation, he despaired of selling it to any of the locals, and so he advertised only in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Madison newspapers. Much to his delight, he got a nibble the first week.

The man who called said he had been searching for just such a country retreat where he and his wife could raise their children in a safe and healthy rural environment. Jimbo assured the caller that this was the perfect property, and that the price might be negotiable.

The buyer showed up the next morning. He was a tall man with a strangely trimmed black beard, an odd cut of clothing, and a strange way of talking that was not quite like anything Jimbo Bobick had ever heard before.

He introduced himself as Mr. Boggs.

Through a computer search of real estate records, I finally located Mr. Pincus Q. Boggs in December 1999 in a southeastern Minnesota town called Sand, which I now believe to be the town referred to as “Memory” in the notebooks. I do not know why Jack chose to conceal the true name of the town. It may be because when he wrote his story, many of the events described had not yet occurred. I was hoping that Mr. Boggs could explain it to me.

Mr. Boggs agreed to meet with me at his home in Sand. I made plane reservations and flew to Minneapolis the following morning. I called Mr. Boggs from the airport to confirm our appointment, then drove the seventy-odd miles south to Sand, on the western shore of Lake Pepin.

It was easy to find Boggs's End. All I had to do was follow the smoke.

I watched as the last few timbers crumbled into ash.

The cause of the blaze remains, officially, a mystery.

Pete Hautman

Charlotte, NC

December 31, 1999

PETE HAUTMAN
is the National Book Award-winning author of
Godless.
He is also the author of
Invisible, Hole in the Sky, Sweetblood,
and
Mr. Was,
which was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Golden Valley, Minnesota.