People of the Dark (24 page)

She shook her head again. "I don't think so, Jack. I'm sorry if I've misled you. I think what I mean is"—a short, happy smile—"we're going to have kids," and her tone was precisely what it was when she'd said it the first time, as if she were making a surprise announcement, but one that was a surprise to her, too.

"
Who's
going to have kids, Erika?"

We were outside, in front of the house. I had my Nikon in hand because I was taking some pictures of the house. She held her arms wide, did a quick, graceful pirouette, and said, "
We
are!"

I got the distinct impression that "we" had nothing to do with me, which made me nervous and confused.

I reached out, tickled her at the waist; she's always been outrageously ticklish. She let her arms fall, stood quietly for a moment under the big window at the front of the house; I took a picture of her there, a Mona Lisa smile on her mouth.

"
We're
going to have kids, Jack," she said after the shutter clicked. "
We're
going to have kids."

W
hen I was twelve years old, I was walking the shores of Irondequoit Bay, near Rochester, New York, and I came upon the bloated carcass of a German shepherd that had apparently drowned several weeks earlier. I remember that I stood for a couple of minutes, several feet from it, staring at it. I didn't let my eyes wander over the body; I concentrated only on an area near the bottom of the ribcage, where there was a small, cream-colored hole. Someone had been poking the body there with a pointed stick. The stick lay nearby. After a couple of minutes I took a step forward, hesitated, took another step, picked the stick up—saw some fur clinging to the end of it—and then prodded the body with it. I poked at its belly. I think that somewhere inside me I expected that because it was so bloated, it might explode, and I thought that would be a terrific thing to see.

I had two dogs, myself, then. I had an Irish Setter and a black-and-white mongrel, and I loved them. What I was poking at didn't seem to be the same sort of creature. This creature was dead, most importantly. If it had once had a master who loved it and fed it and let it curl up at his feet, that was all behind it now. And it didn't
look
very much like a dog, either. It looked like the fat and grisly caricature of a dog. If I'd encountered it on the street just after it had been killed by a car, I would have had different feelings about it. Maybe I would have wept for it, stroked it.

I poked it with the stick for a good long time. I never got up the nerve to poke it hard enough to put a hole in it, and I envied whoever had been able to put that first hole in it. After a while I got tired of this game, threw the stick into the bay, and started to make my way around the body. I stopped. I had looked at the face before, of course, but now I studied it. The eyes were open and the tongue—big and white and bloated—filled its mouth. I thought that if I waited for a while, it would at last look like a dog and I'd feel sorry for it. That didn't happen. It was still just the fat caricature of a dog.

I had my first nightmare about the dog several nights later. I continued having nightmares about it for years.

I
t was a lot less tidy around Martin's house than I had imagined it would be. What I'd seen of it from the road had suggested money, which suggested neatness, but I was wrong.

A yellow Arctic Cat snowmobile stood near the house—to the right of the wide wraparound porch. Its hood was open; various tools were on the seat, and its right-hand tread lay behind it in the mud. A red Bombardier Skidoo, intact except for a missing headlight, stood at right angles to the Arctic Cat, as if someone had pulled up there to help out.

Another red Bombardier Skidoo—orange flames painted on the engine cowling—lay on its side twenty feet away, near a four-car garage. Snowmobile parts were everywhere around the garage—hoods, seats, engine parts, treads. Some of the smaller parts had been trampled into the mud by footfalls.

A battered and rusty Jeep CJ-5 was in the rear section of the garage, its right front tire gone, the axle up on cinder blocks. An ancient Dodge Dart, apparently in the process of being restored, stood next to it. Its driver's door was open wide, its hood up; a thermos bottle lay on its side near the left front tire—what looked like coffee had pooled around it.

Two overhead fluorescent shop lights were burning. The one above the Dart flickered occasionally.

It was clear that lots of things had been eaten in the garage: Frito's Corn Chips and Schweppes Ginger Ale, curd cheese, Snickers bars, Genesee Light Beer. Wrappers, cartons, and bottles littered the place. Like the snowmobile parts, they had been trampled underfoot, too.

Footprints were everywhere. The prints of boots and shoes, even the prints of small, naked feet.

There was a woman in the driver's seat of the Dart. I saw her first at an angle, from behind. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a delicate white flower print on it, and it was this dress and her calves and bare feet that I saw first. Her left arm hung at her side, fingers curled. I could see the side of her head, a mass of brown curls, a long, gently muscled neck. I said, "Hello?"—although I believe I realized at once that she was dead. "Hello," I repeated, then added, "Are you all right?" Something inside me—some comedian who's inside all of us and who surfaces at such times solely to keep us sane—said, "Of course she's not all right, asshole. She's dead!" I took a couple of steps to my left, so I could get a better look at her and keep her at a distance at the same time. "Are you all right?" I said yet again. The phrase gave me a little comfort somehow. "Do you need help?" I added. "Can I give you some help?" Martin's words—"You're fooling yourself"—came back to me.

I took a step into the garage then, closer to the woman in the Dart. "Huh?" I said to her, which was an extension of my question, "Are you all right?"

"Huh?"
Are you all right?
"Huh?"
Honey
, said the comedian.

The dress she was wearing was short-sleeved, puffed at the shoulders, 1940's-style, and her skin was dark, as if she had a good, even tan. "What are you doing there?" I asked her. Her head was tilted slightly to her right, and her right arm was on the back of the seat, as if she were in the process of putting her head to the side to rest. But her head had stopped halfway.

I was close enough now to see that there were keys in the ignition. "Were you going somewhere?" I asked and felt foolish saying it because I could dimly see the reflection of her face in the windshield and I could see that her mouth was open slightly; her eyes, too. I could see, also, that she looked quite a lot like Erika. I thought she was Erika, in fact, and I panicked. I ran to her, leaned over into the car, put my hands on her shoulders, started babbling at her, "Erika, oh my God, Erika," again and again. I stopped when I saw that the woman was not Erika. I backed out of the car, hit my head on the top of the door frame, backed away further, into the Jeep CJ-5. I saw myself doing all this and I thought it was comical in a grim way, a very grim and slapstick sort of way, so of course, I started laughing. I heard myself laughing and through it I said to myself, "Stop it,
goddamnit
!" several times, until I finally did stop.

The woman in the Dart had fallen over in the seat. I came forward and reached into the car, as if I intended to sit her up again. But I backed away. Squeamishness, I think. Mundane and reasonable squeamishness. I muttered to myself something about good sanitary habits, and it brought a small, self amused grin to my lips. I fought the grin back, reached to my left, took hold of the car door, leaned over again. The Dart was a two-door and I saw that the other door was locked. I locked the driver's door, closed it gently, tried it. It wouldn't open. I smiled and nodded, congratulating myself for my presence of mind. No one would have an opportunity to tamper with the body until the authorities arrived.

M
artin's house stood on what was apparently a man-made plateau jutting out of the side of the mountain. Nothing had been planted on this plateau except grass, and it was in sore need of cutting; it crowded up to the sides of the garage and the gravel driveway, and had all but overgrown several fieldstone walkways.

I heard rock music coming from inside the house as I approached it, an old Blood, Sweat, and Tears recording, "God Bless the Child," and I listened to it a moment.

It wasn't piercingly loud, but it was loud enough that I'd have to knock very hard. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to knock softly because the thing I had to say was very somber—"I'm afraid there's a dead woman in the car in the garage"—a thing that required quiet and thoughtfulness and tact.

I was twenty feet or so from the house when these thoughts came to me. In hindsight I realize that the reality of the situation was almost cloying—I see the snowmobile parts lying about, the remains of quick lunches trampled underfoot, I smell the faint and unmistakable odor of the cedar logs that the house was made of, I hear "God Bless the Child," I feel the brisk, chill air. And I think how terribly
motionless
it all was, as if it were some gritty and depressing piece of art I'd gotten caught in.

The music stopped abruptly, before the end of the song. I said to myself,
It'll start again
, so I yelled, "Hello? Martin?" I waited for an answer, got none, took a few steps closer to the house, stopped again. "Martin? It's Jack Harris, your neighbor from across the road." The music started at the point it had ended—"God bless the child who can/stand on his own"—and I cursed, glanced back at the garage, at the Dart, at the litter, at the snowmobile parts, the winking shop light, the footprints everywhere. "Martin?" I yelled louder, to be heard above the music—"God bless the child who can/stand up and say/'I've got my own . . .' "—"Martin, it's Jack Harris from across the road." I wanted to go back to my house. The woman in the Dart was none of my business. Erika was my business. I wanted to go back to the house and wait for her.

The music stopped. I stared dumbly at the house for a moment, called "Martin?" again softly, hesitated at the bottom of the steps, climbed them, crossed the porch to the front door, knocked. "Hello?" I said.

The door was made of cedar, like the house itself, and had a small, round window in it. I stood on my tiptoes, peered through this window, through the lace curtain on the inside, at what I supposed was the living room.

I heard rifle fire from well behind me. Across the road, I thought, and to the south.

T
he second time I lost track of Erika it was several weeks before my accident. We were on another walking tour of our property, had wandered wherever our feet wanted to take us, and they had taken us north, down the wide grassy path that had once been Goat's Head Road, then to the dismal log cabin that sat close to the path. We began discussing again the idea of burning it down. To my surprise, Erika's feelings about that had changed. She didn't want to burn it down; she wanted to leave it just as it was.

"Why?" I asked.

"For anyone who might need it," she answered.

"Who, for instance?" I paused. "Whom," I corrected.

"Me," she answered.

We had been standing in front of it; I'd been leaning this way and that to look into a small, bare window,
sans
glass, in the front. The place intrigued me. I'd wondered more than once who might have lived in it. Clearly, someone had.

Its front door was open, hanging inward. Erika went to it, through several yards of stunted quack grass, and walked in.

I called to her, "Don't go in there, Erika. For God's sake—"

She called back, "I already am in, Jack."

I grimaced. I felt certain that the place was alive with insects and spiders and snakes—perhaps even a rattlesnake or two—and I didn't care for the idea of walking through it.

"Be careful, Erika."

"I'm always careful, Jack."

I waited outside that cabin for several minutes. I heard Erika moving about inside it, heard her say, several times, soothingly, "Oh, hello," and I assumed that she'd found a chipmunk, or a mole.

"Why don't you come out now, Erika?!" I called at last.

"Yes," she called back, "in a minute."

So I waited a minute and called to her again. I got no answer. I called again, "Erika? Are you in there?" Nothing.

I screwed my courage up and went inside.

The walls were fashioned from bare logs; no attempt had been made at plastering them. Here and there, wide cracks between the logs let sunlight in, so there was a random, horizontal crisscross pattern of yellowish light on the north and east walls, and near-total darkness on the south wall. A short doorway led into the back room, and the random pattern of light made a sharp downturn there because the door was partway open.