Root (45 page)

“
Coffee … and a full Scottish
Breakfast, please,” I said to the waitress.

***

It was filling, to say the least. It came with
two eggs, fried mushrooms, a black thing that looked like a hockey
puck and tasted like liver, some kind of fried mashed potato
concoction, a sausage, a hunk of smoked pork and a soggy tomato.
Not quite what I expected, but it hit the spot and corrected any
calorie or protein deficiency I might have acquired since
Rome.

I made some friends, too. Most importantly,
with a grizzled old guy with fly-away sideburns who happened to be
driving a weather-beaten truck loaded with splits of apple wood. He
was headed for Inverness, and was happy to give me a ride, and I
didn’t even have to help unload as the folks on the other end would
take care of that.

The bumper sagged and almost dragged over the
bumps. I winced when the scraped, imagining the sparks that were
flying, and fully expecting the exhaust to go clanking off. Even in
the lowest gear, we were lucky to hit 10 mph up the steeper grades.
We were lucky to keep rolling.

“
Trekker, are ye?” he finally asked
after a good half hour of talking about himself and the
weather.

“
Yep.”

“
I’ve done some trekking in my time.
Marrakesh. Mauritania. Even Katmandu, though that was with a gal
who left me in the lurch. I’d rather not think about that one. Did
Burma and Bhutan by motorcycle with a couple of chums. That was a
memorable one. I was in my twenties. Hard to believe, is it? I was
once young like you?”

“
I believe it.”

“
Life is a flash in the pan. Blink
and a whole decade goes by, I’m telling you. Keep those eyes open.
See as much as you can, while you can. Go wherever you can, as soon
as you can. Trekking is the only way to avoid being cheated by
life. It’s a shame … most of the folk around here never been out of
Scotland, if you can believe it.”

“
I believe it. It’s the same way in
Florida.”

“
Florida, huh? Where else have you
been, boy?”

“
Well … I’ve been mainly doing
Europe,” I said. “Mainly.”

“
I’ve been some places no northerner
ever gets to go. Some places you wouldn’t recognize the
name.”

“
Same here,” I said. “I’ve been
places hardly anyone ever gets to see, northerner or
not.”

“
Like where?”

I looked him in the eye. “Have you ever wanted
to kill yourself?” I asked because I wanted to see if we had Root
in common or not, but he took it the wrong way.

“
What? Why would you say such a
thing? What’s wrong with you?”

I thought he might pull over and kick me out
of his cab, but he kept rolling along, it’s just that the
conversation stopped, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I
appreciated the spell of peace and quiet.

We topped a rise. A city became visible in the
distance. “Is that … Inverness?”

That got him started again. “Certainly is …
and that moor you see on your right? That’s Culloden field where
the Jacobites met their downfall. You’ve heard of the Jacobites,
haven’t you? Bonnie Prince Charlie?”

So I let him tell me all about it, although my
eyes and heart were focused on that city by the fjord that was
beginning to reveal itself in bits and snatches in the near
distance.

We picked up speed going downhill. That meek
little bird called hope began to call again from its
cage.

Chapter 41: No. 6
Ardconnel Terrace

His name was Cullen or Colin or something like
that, and he was a biker. He proved hard to ditch, expressing
extreme reluctance to just drop me off on the curb without any
arrangements for further contact. I had no phone number to satisfy
him, so I promised to meet him in a pub for dinner later that day,
though I had no intentions of following through. Maybe that was
cold of me. He was just some lonely guy in full mid-life crisis who
thought he had found a sympathetic ear, but my own obsessions and
priorities called louder.

Through a series of bus maps and passersby I
located Ardconnel Terrace on the fringes of the town center, where
the residential neighborhoods began to blend with the industrial
zone. A zig and a zag, a dash across a busy street and I was
there.

It turned out to be a narrow, curving lane,
packed cheek by jowl with townhouses, scarcely an alley between
them. The other side was bounded by a pit of a fenced and gated
private garden that descended down the side of a wooded
gully.

Each home was poorly marked, as if the post
men had every unit and number consigned to memory. I deduced fairly
quickly which home was number six and took a position between a
black-painted shed and a row of dumpsters across the
street.

I studied the continuous wall of stone and
brick, trying to deduce something about the status of their
residents. They seemed well kept—nothing crumbling, no peeling
paint. Those who lived here were not exactly poor but I couldn’t
call them well to do. Toys left on the little stoops and nooks
suggested that a fair number of young families lived here. This was
not the monstrous lair I had imagined for Edmund and his
brood.

Not much happened over the first hour. A few
passersby made their way down the walk, but I heard nothing and saw
no action from the dwellings themselves. Not surprising, it was a
work day after all, and these were working class abodes.

I tried summoning the courage to go up to the
door and knock, but I couldn’t get myself to budge. I suppose it
made sense to be patient. Karla had a reason for not wanting to be
found and I needed to know more about why that was before barging
into her life. I hadn’t come all this way to toss away what might
be my only opportunity.

My dirty face, greasy, scraggly hair and clown
clothes would not make the best impression, to say the least, on
whoever it was who opened that door, particularly not the kind of
dad who associated cleanliness with godliness.

A police car surprised me when I wasn’t paying
attention to the road. I thought for sure the gig was up; that
someone had phoned in a report of some lurker, but I lucked out. It
kept on motoring down the lane.

And then the door opened. I hunkered down
behind a dumpster with an open lid, peeking through the gap between
the hinges. A man in a grey tweed suit stepped out. He had piercing
eyes and a full and blocky beard with a white skunk strip running
down the middle of his chin. There was this hawk-like and feral
nineteenth century look about him that reminded me of a PBS show
about the abolitionist John Brown, the guy who had tried to lead a
slave rebellion before the Civil War.

He dropped a letter in his mail slot and
turned to look up and down the street, almost as if he could smell
my presence. Even from across the street I could the web of red
blotching spreading from his nose, and the weepy, inflamed eyes
that were sure signs of an alcoholic.

Instead of going back in, he came down the
stoop and strolled up the walk to the bigger street around the
corner. He had a weird, lurching gait, more a hitch than a limp,
and his hands trembled when he paused. He looked my way more than
once. I thought for sure he had spotted me, but he kept on walking,
out of sight.

I was huffing like a demon by that point,
tingles spreading down my arms, my heart barely contained. Edmund
was gone. There was nothing between me and Karla now but a knock on
the door.

I scurried out from behind the dumpster, as
wary as a rat, trotted up the landing and rapped my knuckles on the
red-painted wood. My synapses buzzed with nervous energy as I
waited, my head swiveling every which way.

But no one answered. I tried again, and when
again there was no response, I retreated off the stoop and started
down the walk in the opposite direction that Karla’s dad had taken.
There was nothing to be done but maybe getting a cup of coffee and
trying again later. I wondered if there was a pub nearby where
someone might be able to tell me a little about the
Raeths.

I had to keep tugging up my pants as I walked
because I didn’t have a belt. I must have looked pretty ridiculous.
My own clothes were stuffed in the bottom of my pack, sopping wet.
I turned the corner at the end of the lane and looked around for a
laundromat. It sure would be nice to have my own clothes clean and
dry.

A young woman came my way down the sidewalk,
clutching a bag of groceries in both arms. Her clothes were so
quaint and conservative, like some villager from Eastern Europe. A
plain, dark dress stretched all the way down to her scuffed brown
flats. She wore a flowered blouse, buttoned up tight to the hollow
of her neck, cuffs fringed with simple lace, baggy sweater that
flowed and swung with each step.

I stopped and waited for her to approach,
gripped by a paralysis of fascination. A large kerchief restrained
shoulder-length hair, wavy and black as coal. A loop of hair swung,
screening her face. She stared at the ground, not glancing up, not
acknowledging my presence any more than she would a trash
bin.

After all my disappointments, this moment
seemed impossible. Could it really be?

“
K-karla?” I said, her name catching
in my throat.

Chapter 42:
Rejection

Her eyes went wide as hen’s eggs and she
almost dropped her bag of groceries all over the pavement. That
scar. That chin. This was Karla, alright. Except for the smarter
outfits and perkier hairdos, the version I knew in Root was
unadulterated from the truth. If I had grinned any wider, I would
have lost my jaw.

“
No!” she said, as if she were
hissing a curse at me.

“
What? No hug? You’re not even gonna
say hi? What’s wrong?”

Her eyes narrowed back down into slits as
narrow as coin slots. “You shouldn’t have come here! I told you not
to.” She glanced behind and flinched as if she expected to be
whipped. “How did you find me?”

“
I had a little help from your
Grandpa.”

“
Grandp—Luther?”

“
His real name’s Arthur, actually.
But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Her chest heaved. Her face twisted in
anguish.

“
Are you … okay?”

“
No, I am not okay! I cannot be seen
talking to you. Go! Go away!”

“
How about later? Can we meet …
later?”

“
No, we cannot. We can never meet.
Never again. Not ever.”

I felt things collapsing inside me. “I don’t
understand.”

“
You are a curse, James. You have
trapped me here. I could not go back to Root.” Tears gushed down
her cheeks. “And now you have only made it worse … by coming …
letting me see you here. You should never have come!”

“
Karla, please! I don’t understand.
Why are you acting this way?”

“
Get it through your skull!” she
shouted. “I cannot be seen with you. My father … he has friends in
the Order who live nearby. Now go! Go away! Before someone sees
us.”

“
Now, wait a minute. I didn’t come
all this way just to turn around. Please … can we just talk … just
for a minute?”

Her eyes flitted in every direction. Her
anguish had turned to frustration. If this had been Root her glare
would have turned me into cinders. She fished in her purse for a
key. “Come,” she said. “Follow me. We can talk. But only for a
minute. Then you promise you will go.”

***

Karla led me back around the corner to
Ardconnel Terrace, to the gate of the private garden. She unlatched
the hasp and stepped aside to let me pass. For a moment I thought
she might lock me inside and run away, but she followed me in,
pulling the gate closed behind her.

We went down three flights of stairs to the
bottom of the ravine where a path of faux concrete flagstone led us
to a little glade in the back corner, hemmed in by beech trees and
ferns. She took a seat on a little bench. I sat down next to her,
barely restraining my urge to take her into my arms.

“
I’m going to tell you this once,
James and that is all,” she said, in a calmer voice. “You are to go
away and never return here. Do you understand?”

“
No. I don’t get it. And no way can
I promise such a thing.”

“
But you must! I cannot be allowed
the tiniest shred of hope that I will ever see you again. Why can’t
you understand?”

“
I don’t know, but I don’t,” I said,
my eyes starting to sting, my nose getting all stuffy. “How could
I? I came all this way to see you. You don’t know what I’ve been
through.”

She sighed with aggravation.

“
It is my little sister … Isobel.
She is having a very hard time with my father … now that she is
almost twelve. I suspected … before I met you … that she was on the
brink of being visited by Root. But now I am certain. The little
she talks to me, she tells me of her dreams. But I cannot help her.
I cannot save her, because I am stuck here … because of
you.”

“
Because of me?”