The Orchard (24 page)

He lay back, then sat up. “Wait a minute.”

“She’s right,” Carolyn said, picking up his chart and tucking it under her arm. “I think …” She put a finger to her lips and looked at the ceiling. “No, I think not.”

“Well, why the hell not? Jesus, do you know, do you have any idea what the hell I’ve been through tonight? Christ, I’ll be lucky to get any sleep at all here.” He lifted a hand, pounded it angrily on the mattress. “First thing tomorrow, I’m checking myself out.”

Carolyn shook her head.

Janey waved a
careful
finger.

“Why not?” he demanded, feeling heat on his face, feeling his heart racing. “Is it the leg? I don’t have to walk. I can stay in bed there just as good as here? Medicine? Aspirin, that’s all. The stuff you gave me sent me into orbit.”

“Michael,” Janey said sternly.

“No,” he said. “I am not going to stay.”

“Oh, yes you are,” Carolyn said. “You’ll stay until I’m good and ready to let you go.”

He couldn’t believe it. He’d just been in and out of hell, and they were scolding him, actually scolding him as if he’d stolen cookies from the kitchen or tied a can to the family dog. It was nuts. And he told them so, and told them further he’d be damned if he’d see either one of them again.

Janey laughed.

Carolyn laughed.

He clenched his fists and held his breath, determined not to lose the rest of his temper. ”All right, then,” he said when he knew he wouldn’t shout. “All right, doctor, why can’t I leave?”

Janey left, and he heard her still laughing, softly now but laughing.

“Doctor?” he said again, as coldly as he could.

“You can’t leave because you’re not finished.”

“Oh, really? Not finished with what?”

“Michael,” she said as if he should have known. “Honestly, Michael, when are you going to learn?”

And she switched off the light over his bed, walked out, and closed the door behind her. He gaped at the knob, the jamb, and floor, and his fists; he slapped aside the covers, and when he couldn’t find the crutches, he swung his legs over and inched his way along the mattress until he reached the bottom. He waited, listened, narrowed his eyes, and counted. When he hit ten he pushed forward and caught himself against the wall.

“Not bad,” he said grimly.

And opened the door.

“Oh, my god.”

The white was gone, and so was all the light.

The corridor was dark, unrelievedly black, and not even his memory could tell him where he was, where the elevators were, the nurses’ station, the fire exit, the opposite wall.

“Oh, my god.”

Nothing but the black, and step-tap and scratching, and the flap of leathered wings and the hiss of scaled limbs and the murmuring of voices, rasping and cold.

As slowly as he could, not thinking, barely breathing, he closed the door and hugged the wall, waiting until he was sure he wouldn’t ruin it by screaming.

Then he reached behind him for the bed, found it, felt it to be sure and finally climbed into it, quietly, so quietly, so he wouldn’t attract them, so they wouldn’t know he was here, all alone in his room.

Deep breath, he told himself; deep breath, don’t panic, don’t panic, you’re all right.

Freezing when the sheets rustled
don’t panic,
breathing through his mouth as he pulled the sheet and blanket to his chin,
don’t panic you’re all right,
ignoring his aching legs as he slipped down, slipped under, pulled the covers over his head and closed his eyes, and waited.

Praying for Rory to wake up, or for Janey to come and save him, or for Marc to give him a call, or for Carolyn to take him home where everything was safe and everything was fine and Jesus, Dear God, he thought as the headache returned, suppose it isn’t the kid, suppose it isn’t him.

And when he heard the door open, and when he felt the bed move, there was nothing more to do but open his mouth and start screaming.

Michael screaming in the dark.

And no one left to hold his hand.

Epilogue

I
t was evening, in November, and I should have been cold.

Perhaps I was, but I held it at bay with a roll and lift of my shoulders while I watched that old man sift through the orchard like a black ghost on a black night seeking its grave. Pausing. Touching a branch, stroking a bole, putting a hand to his stomach when the coughing was too great. Looking up at the stars, at the slow rising moon, his lips moving slowly, his right foot marking time to a tune I couldn’t hear.

I knew what he was doing.

He was saying goodbye.

I didn’t want that, of course. I didn’t want him to leave me to face the winters on my own, to walk ahead of the shadows with no one beside me, to dial his number and have no one answer but a recording that told me he wasn’t there, and would not be.

I also needed him to tell me that things were still perfectly normal in the Station, the way it was everywhere else, that it was only my imagination that gave it the masque out of which stared a scream. And to be honest, I’ve often wondered how much of what he gave me was a wink from a New Englander to a gullible child in man’s clothing.

But on the other hand, there is always that damned other hand.

Judge Alstar and his wife, for example, still live over on Raglin, and though I’ve shared an occasional drink with them at the Mariner Lounge, they don’t talk about the nephew who some say is dead and others say has run away and still others whisper has a home in an asylum. What he does talk about is the tomb the boy made out of a block of solid wood, the promise and talent it exhibits, the uncanny way it has captured the image of a girl the boy loved and lost. He won’t show it to anyone; he keeps it in the cellar.

I went to Amy Niles’s funeral because she was one of the few in the village who knew my work and read it, and I was saddened by her passing and by the closed coffin at the viewing. Brett was there, too, with his second wife, Victoria, and the day after the service he handed in his resignation and they moved back to her home, someplace in Vermont.

Les, I understand, is on a scholarship at Yale.

One of my closest friends here is Callum Davidson—close because we’re neighbors, and friends because we share a similar love for old and new movies, primarily the bad ones he shows late Friday nights for a group of like-minded fools who love to laugh at disasters and beautifully bad lines.

The night of the storm that knocked the power out of the village for almost eight hours he closed the theater after the first show. Two days later, Iris and Paul Lennon, the owners of Yarrow’s Bookshop, advertised in the
Station Herald
for a new manager, and the day after that, Melody Records and Tapes had a new clerk behind the counter.

I shifted the papers from one hand to the other, caught a sheet as it slipped out, stuffed it back, and shook my head.

Marc and Natalie Clayton were the ones who brought me to the Station over a decade ago. I remember him telling me about this overaged kid he’d hired for the newspaper last summer, an old friend who was in need of a good boost in morale. The day before Abe called me, I met Marc on the street and he told me that Mike Kolle had run away again. That’s the way he put it, and he sighed, because Mike had been running most of his life.

Rory Castle and his pals play in my front yard now and then.

I don’t know.

But I’m cold.

And I can’t see Abe now, back there in the orchard, and I think I’m never going to see him again.

Nevertheless, it’s still a long way back home, and I’m moving as slowly as I can in case he wants to catch up. In the dark. Under the moon. With the lights of Oxrun Station barely visible through the pines, and the crack of brittle weeds snapping under my heels, and the shadows, always the shadows, that pace at my side and whisper without words and touch without feeling.

I suspect that when I get to his house, he’ll be standing in the kitchen with that bloodhound under the table and he’ll grin at the surprised look on my face, point at the files he gave me, and grant me a rare laugh.

But I know that when I get there, I won’t find anything at all.

He’s gone; and I never said goodbye.

He’s gone; and I only shook his hand.

Leaving me alone in the field, watching the stars and the moon, and listening to the sound of hoofbeats behind me, quiet and soft, listening to the
step-tap
of something moving on my left, listening to the
scratch
of something moving on my right.

And there’s someone over there, standing by the brambles, the shadow of a young girl untouched by the moonlight and unruffled by the wind and reaching out her hand to give me an apple.

There’s nothing to say.

All I can do is keep walking.