The Silent Strength of Stones (3 page)

It came from the direction of the Lacey cabins.

The wolf dog, I thought.

Another howl rose and matched it.

Surely they had only had the one dog?

I had heard coyotes yipping, and dogs barking, but I’d never heard full-out howling before. It was less scary than just lonesome and sad, until I started thinking about wolves running loose around here. Bears were seldom things around Sauterelle Lake, but when one showed up the community response was slow-motion panic. I had heard that there had never been a documented case of a wolf attacking a human, but just the thought of some large creature with senses better than mine running through the night and maybe sizing me up as a meal was shuddery enough.

I could run home, or I could go up to Mariah’s. What if Pop had an unlikely interest tomorrow and took a break from the motel desk to work the store before Mariah came in? Every once in a while he did that, especially after trips to the valley. He usually stopped at other stores along the way home, looking for ideas, and then he had to run our store for a little while to make sure it was up to the competition. Better if Mariah and I got our story straight tonight.

I switched my flashlight on and headed up the path.

Now I found the howls reassuring. At least if they howled I had some idea of where they were, whatever the hell they were, and they were pretty far away.

The bushes rustled on the left and I jumped a foot. When I shone the flashlight over there, I found nothing but leaves, some still moving.

Stop it!
I thought.

By the time I reached Mariah’s house, though, I had a pretty good head of steam. I knocked. She opened the door. I pushed in.

“Nick? Nick?” she said, her voice jumpy.

“I have to talk to you,” I said. My voice had a trampoline quality, and I was having trouble catching my breath.

“Oh?” she said.

I looked around. Her house was log cabinlike, except that at one end where her studio was, the walls were windows, and I’d seen inside—just easel, canvases, paint, mess, table with paper cutter, mat boards. Stuff, not enough human attached to it to make it interesting.

This room I’d never seen; it was wide and windowless and had a big old bear skin, complete with growling, toothy head, on the floor in front of a river-stone fireplace. Above the fireplace loomed a glassy-eyed moose head. I could smell mildew and turpentine, moth balls, incense smoke, and boiled lentils. A small table stood across the room, with a kerosene lamp glowing on it. A doorway to the right had light coming through it, but I couldn’t see anything except log walls. I wondered where she slept.

“What, Nick? You’re interrupting me,” Mariah said, having finally found her irritated voice.

I could see papers spread out on the table by the kerosene lantern, and a jar full of dark water with brushes sticking out.

“You sold the creel,” I said.

Her outraged homeowner stance wilted a little.

“Pop told me I had to come up here and ask you who you sold it to, find out where he is, so we can get it back.”

“But—”

“You really shouldn’t sell that stuff, Mariah! It means a lot to us! Why did you do it?” I listened to my own wounded voice in horror. I had a plan, didn’t I? I was supposed to stay cool and crush her with logic. Why was I losing it this way?

“I couldn’t help it,” she said.

“How can that be? Can’t you just say something’s not for sale?”

“I couldn’t—it wasn’t like that. It was a man with burning eyes—”

“And sandy hair and a nice smile,” I said.

“No,” she said, her face tightening, her mouth twisting into a frown. “No,” she said, and this time it was a whisper. “A man with dark hair and burning eyes, and he spoke to me, so quietly, just telling me he had to have that creel and I had to give it to him and there really was no other way ... it reminded me ...” She broke off and looked toward the mantel. Following her gaze, I noticed a white ceramic unicorn with pink mane, tail, and hooves, and gold detailing. It looked weird below the moose head.

After a brainstorm, Pop had ordered a dozen of the unicorns, about two years ago, and nobody had wanted them. I had still been in supersalesman mode at the time. I really couldn’t stand them, and I unloaded them quick. I think most of them got used for target practice.

“—of why I don’t like to talk to you, Nick,” Mariah said.

“I haven’t done that to you since then, have I?”

“I don’t give you that chance,” she said.

“I don’t do that anymore,” I said. “If I did, I’d talk you out of selling the private stuff.” Maybe I should wake up that part of myself just long enough to do it. It had never occurred to me to use it for anything but sales.

She looked at me, her eyes full of darkness, and I thought that was a stupid idea and I better forget it. She said, slowly, “Well, it was just like that. He stared into my eyes and talked to me, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I took the creel down and sold it to him. He even told me the price.”

“Did he tell you his name?” I asked. Even if I knew, would I go after this guy, given what Mariah was telling me about him?

“No,” she said, “but I saw him drive away. It was in an old black truck like the one in
Paper Moon
.”

I stumbled down the hill, my flashlight making a circle of light on the path, but my feet stepping into darkness. In Mariah’s parking lot I paused again. The wolves weren’t howling anymore. I wanted to go to Willow’s cabin, found I didn’t really care what anyone else on Earth might be doing except for Willow and her family, no matter how many times I told myself my interest in everything was all embracing.

Instead, I went home, and hungry to bed.

The next morning I started my route at Mabel’s Backwoods Cafe, which was across the road from the Venture Inn and depended on out-of-towners for its existence. I bought myself coffee and a side of greasy hash browns. Mabel was so surprised she kept staring at me from her position by the grill. Pop had drummed into me that we didn’t eat out when we could fix for ourselves much more cheaply. Somehow I didn’t want to face our kitchen, and maybe Pop, that morning, though.

After breakfast I started my route in the direction away from Lacey’s, but then I decided that was stupid; what could have changed since last night? If people were driving up from the city, it would take them two hours to get here, and it was only around seven-thirty.

I could check back for new people on my evening rounds.

Besides, I didn’t fear the wolves in broad daylight. I eased the other direction around the lake to scope out the Lacey’s.

I stopped first at the tiny indent of lake just below the Venture Inn and dipped fingers into the cool water.

On the way over to Lacey’s I saw a bald eagle flying low above the other side of the lake and decided that on my half day off on Saturday I’d try tracking him to his nest, if nothing else was going on.

I was almost to Willow’s cabin when I heard a splash from the little inlet a stone’s throw from the cabin. I veered, walking quietly, and dropped down behind bracken and a fallen log, then peered between fronds and saw Willow naked and beautiful in the water. Where she stood, close to shore, the water only came up to her knees. She dipped both hands in, scooping up water, carrying it above her head, then tilting her hands. The water traveled from her hands to the lake in a way I had never seen before: in silver threads instead of droplets. Morning sun snagged in the water threads as if they were dew-pearled spiderweb. Willow murmured something. She lifted more handfuls of water and let it run down her body as she sang.

I watched and imagined I was the water, sliding down her body in the closest possible embrace. It got tangled up in a winter memory I had, of a time just after Mom left, me going out on the lake after it had frozen, lying down on it, taking off my mittens, jacket, shirts, and freezing my upper body to the ice, except I had felt heat from the ice, warmth and comfort like I was feeling now, only now I felt even warmer and not so comfortable. Icy heat against my skin, water against Willow, and the lake, talking to each of us, talking to both of us, tasting us.

I tried to stop thinking about it because there wasn’t much I could do to ease myself, but it was the most  amazing thing I had ever seen, how the sun touched the wet edges of Willow and glowed, how free and comfortable she was out there in the open air, no selfconsciousness, confident in her aloneness, how she was talking to something or someone who wasn’t there, but it didn’t matter. How wrong it was for me to watch her when she couldn’t know I was there.

What a weird thought. I thrived on invading people’s privacy. If they wanted to do interesting things where other people could see them, was that my fault?

The hairs were prickling on the back of my neck. Maybe she really wasn’t alone. Maybe somebody else was watching me. I glanced behind me. Nobody.

I should leave
, I thought. I could always watch Willow some more when she had clothes on. I pushed up, ready to climb to my feet as quietly as possible and sneak off, but I couldn’t resist one last look.

Willow still had her back to me, but now her arms were stretched straight out toward the rising sun. Light glowed around her hands, spun around her body like liquid tinsel. She turned, still singing, her wet hands weaving in the air about her, and she flickered and was gone.

2. Disappearances

I dropped down behind the log and shook my head, then slapped my cheek to see if I’d wake up at home in bed, wondering what the symbolism of this dream was. All that happened was my cheek hurt. I lay listening to birds and trees and the rev of somebody’s motorboat from across the lake, a noise like a far-off lawnmower in need of a muffler. The air tasted fresh and cool and wide awake. Gradually I realized something: it was Friday, and Willow, the girl I had just seen naked, seen vanish, was going to come by the store and pick me up tonight at seven-thirty for the dance. Unless she was just fooling with me.

I closed my eyes a moment, then opened them and stared at the water, wondering if Willow had dropped under the surface without a splash and would come up any minute now, gasping for air.

Nothing.

Maybe I made the whole thing up? When time stretched or I was feeling especially trapped, I did make things up. I knew I was making them up, though. I didn’t think I was inventing this one.

I watched the water unblinking until my eyes hurt from staring at reflected sunlight. No splash. No Willow. No sense.

Finally I climbed to my feet. The back of my neck still felt like static was attacking it. I glanced around, but not a leaf or pine needle twitched. I shook my head and eased away without looking back.

I had stocked the till from the safe box, switched on the lights, and was just turning the OPEN sign in the door around when Pop came downstairs. “Well?” he said.

“We need more groceries,” I said.

“Make up the list and stock the cupboards and the fridge while there’s no one in the store,” he said impatiently. We had a jingle of bells hanging above the door that sounded whenever someone came into the store, which helped when I had to do back room stuff. “Don’t eat anything until I have a chance to approve the list. You know what I want to know, Nick.”

“Mariah told me who she sold the creel to, but I haven’t had time to track him down,” I said.

He looked at his watch. “Okay. It’s nine o’clock now. I’ll watch the store. Put the MANAGER IN STORE sign up in the motel office window, then go out and find the man, get the creel. Be back here by ten.”

I shoved my hands into my pockets so he wouldn’t see the clenched fists. I could hardly tell him that the man who took the creel came from a family that practiced a weird religion, hypnotized you with a glance, and could disappear from sight. I was having a hard enough time believing my own eyes. Pop was never any good at taking no for an answer, no matter what the reason, and he had trouble believing me sometimes, maybe with reason. So I just said, “I need twelve dollars. That’s what he paid for it.”

He got twelve dollars from the register and tossed it at me. I picked it off the floor and left.

This time I approached the Lacey cabins from the road, like other people, but on foot, unlike most. Pop had taught me to drive the truck, but he never let me take it out for frivolous reasons, only for pickups and deliveries. I went to the front office and talked to Adam Lacey, the son of Frieda Lacey, who had started the business back in the forties and brought her three children up in it.

“Old black Ford pickup?” Adam asked. “Sure, I rented the cabin to ’em before I saw their transportation. Might have had my doubts, otherwise, but it was real money they gave me, so I can’t complain now. They don’t socialize much, anyways, aren’t bothering any of our other people.”

“What’s their name?”

“Come on, Nick, no reason for me to tell you that. Why you want to know?”

“They bought something I need to get back.”

“Like bad tuna or something?” Adam got worry rowels across his forehead. “You had a recall on any canned goods?”

“What do you care—you buy from the city,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. The Laceys and their Culinary Institute chef had produce and meat trucked in from wholesalers in Portland. They never even bought so much as a toothpick at Pop’s store; but they were our neighbors, and I wanted to get along with them. Sometimes the Laceys gave me work.

“I need to warn my lodgers, don’t I?” he said. All the cabins had kitchenettes, and some people bought food from us. Others brought gourmet stuff with them. I remembered some of their garbage fondly, mostly for the wild ingredients and multi-ethnicity of the labels on the cans and boxes.

He had a point. “Nothing like that,” I said. “They bought something that wasn’t for sale.”

“Well, that’s your problem, then,” he said. “I won’t tell you their name, but I’ll tell you their cabin number, since you could find it out yourself anyway. It’s number five.”

“Thanks, Mr. Lacey.”

“Don’t tell ’em I told you.”