Salvage (41 page)

The old man screamed, his voice breaking. He wouldn't have the air to voice his cries much longer.

Lori held Owen's gaze a moment. It was difficult to tell, the way the dock rocked her up and down, side to side, but in that frozen moment, he could swear he saw her shaking her head. And the thought struck him like a bullet in the chest:
This isn't right
.

He turned from Lori. "Everett!" he shouted, his voice a whisper over the din. He swung the paddle, desperate to get Crouch's attention. "
Everett Crouch!
"

The creature's ferocious eyes snapped from his prey to Owen. The giant's torso sped toward him, the fist holding Howard remaining behind as the massive head came close to inspect the interloper.

"
YOU!
" it boomed, in Woodrow's Southern evangelical twang:
You-uh
.

Terror gripped Owen, but he wouldn't allow himself to flinch. His insides flooded with adrenaline. "You're not real, Woodrow!"

"
YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS HERE, BOY!
"

"It's
you
who's got no business!" Owen shouted, holding out the paddle in self-defense. "Get thee hence, Demon! Everett knows who you really are! You're a big white rabbit! A boogeyman! You aren't real! You can hurt me, but you can't hurt Everett anymore!"

Crouch's face reared away, a look of surprise in his features. Rage flashed again in his glassy eyes and he returned, licking his lips.

"
YOU'RE A LIAR! YOU STINK OF LIES, JUST LIKE THE BOY!
"

The colossal features shifted: rage, fear, anger, recognition, fury. The face rippled, widening; it shimmered and shook. And then it tore itself in two. Now the two men stood facing each other, up to their ankles in the churning froth: Brother Woodrow and Everett Crouch, separated at last. Behind them, the huge fist of their vengeance still held Howard, kicking and whimpering, a good ten feet above the storm.

"NO MORE!" Everett snarled. Thunder and lightning came in unison. A fork of brilliant white struck the church steeple and tore it to splinters. Both men ignored it, seeing only each other in their fury. Nail-studded planks rose up from the depths, floating around the congregation, who watched in anxious anticipation as the battle for control of their patriarch unfolded. The church was coming apart all around them, and none of them seemed to notice or care.

"
You need me
," Woodrow seethed, almost pathetically, nothing like the giant he'd been, while he moved so close to Everett his bushy red beard brushed against the other man's chin. "
You're
nothing
without me!
"

Everett seemed to weigh this. Then he shook his head. "
You're
nothing," he shouted. "A figment of my imagination, just like Owen said! My son…" He turned to bestow upon Owen a look of profound regret.

Woodrow's sneer rose, showing teeth, fists clenched at his sides. In the same moment, Everett reared back his head and snapped it forward, striking Woodrow's skull with a tremendous crack as loud as thunder. Shock and agony registered on Woodrow's face for less than a second. In the next, his body broke apart in a shower of wet gobs and splashed into the water below like red rain.

The lake calmed almost immediately.

Everett was smiling when he returned his gaze to Owen. The Blessed Trinity waded toward their Shepherd, trudging through the fragments of their ruined church. The giant's fist brought Howard, who lay limp in its grip, unconscious or already dead, back to the canoe, and laid him gently on the hull.

"Forgive," Everett said to Owen.

"
Forgive
," the others said in chorus.

Owen turned to Howard, finding himself relieved to see the old man take a shallow breath, and then another. He wasn't surprised to feel tears on his cheeks. He nodded. Jo, who stood on the dock with his sister, holding her hand, turned to her and smiled. Then the two women turned their smiles upon Owen.

"I love you," Owen said, his lower lip quivering, recognizing now what his life had always been missing: these people were
his tribe
. He'd grown up with them. He'd shared their joys, their triumphs, their hardships. He might not have experienced it in the same way, having been just a child, but then, nobody experienced anything the same as someone else; it was this fundamental difference that made us unique. "I love you all," he said.

"We love you," the congregation responded.

"
I
love you," Everett said. "You go on home now. Go home, and be with your mother. She needs you."

Lori nodded. It was enough for him to get moving.

3

Owen tied the canoe to the back of the boat and towed it home. Howard had come back to consciousness somewhere along the way, and sat up, looking around himself in bleary-eyed relief.

Back on the dock at Fisherman's Wharf, Owen pulled the canoe up so Howard could climb out. The old man was still wet and jittery from fear. He thanked Owen humbly and stepped up onto the dock. He wouldn't meet Owen's eyes as he slipped past him and headed for shore, but then he stopped at the foot of the ramp and turned, eyes downcast. "Will you drive me to the police station?" he said. "I think it's high time I confessed."

Owen nodded. "I think that's a good idea."

4

Howard remained silent all the way to town. As they pulled in to Beau's gas station, he turned. "That scar on your forehead," he said, pointing a finger at his own eyebrow. Owen noticed the old man's hand no longer shook, as if unburdening himself of his secret had stopped his tremors. "You remember where it came from, don't you?"

Owen looked at him. The old man was smiling wistfully out the windshield. Owen turned back to the road, feeling the resentment curl in his chest.
It's a hard thing, to forgive
, he thought.
Sometimes it's harder than anything in the world.
"No," he said.

"We were on our way up the hill, you and your mother and I," Howard said. "I must confess, I felt a little like Lot, fleeing Sodom with another man's wife and child. Only
you
couldn't stop yourself from looking back, ever hopeful your father would be along soon. I told you to let it alone, to turn around and face the front, face the
future
, or you'd turn into a pillar of salt. But you wouldn't listen, and what did you get? You banged your head on the window frame, just like I'd said you would." He chuckled and shook his head, smiling at the memory.

Owen reached up and touched the scar on his eyebrow.

"And here you sit," Howard said, "not a child anymore, but a grown man. Still as cheeky as that boy who'd refused to listen."

Owen scowled, wishing he could turn the old man's volume down. In the garage, Beau stood up from a lawnmower and wiped his greasy hands on a rag.

"And do you know what? You were right, Owen. I was wrong. Always keep looking back. Bury the past, and the past will surely bury you." A small smile crossed his lips. "I know that now. I've done a lot of drinking to keep myself from truly understanding that. The past doesn't die."

"'The past is a bright and shining beacon, lighting the way home,'" Owen said, quoting words that had suddenly sprung to mind, words his sister had written to him.
About
him.

"Who wrote that?" Howard wondered. "Fitzgerald?"

Owen grinned. He felt Beau's presence in the window before he saw the man's shadow there. Beau knocked on the glass. His knuckles left a black smudge. Owen rolled it down.

"Fill 'er up, sport?"

"That'd be great, Beau," Owen said, pronouncing it Bew, like the man had told him.

Beau grabbed the nozzle and pushed it into the tank. He stood for a moment squinting out at the clouds, still retreating from the afternoon sun, while the gas pump ticked away. "Don't suspect we'll see another storm like that for some time," Beau remarked.

"No," Owen agreed. "I don't think you will."

Beau considered Owen's reply, and bounced on the soles of his boots. "Some fella or another said the ol' church finally bit the biscuit. Wouldn't that-a been a sight?"

Owen turned to Howard. The old man shrugged. "I'm sure it's been a long time coming," Owen said to Beau.

"You got that right," Beau said, and spat in the dust at his feet.

5

Constable Selkie led Howard back to the interrogation room, shooting Owen a look over his shoulder that said he thought the old man had finally lost the last of his tiddlywinks. Owen wished the two of them good luck, and returned to his car.

He sat behind the wheel for a long moment before starting the engine. There were miles to put behind him yet, but he thought he might go back to the house, and take one last dip in the lake.

He threw the car in reverse, and drove the cottage road back to Hordyke House. Once his things were packed into the car, he headed down the old stone path. At the water's edge, he rolled up his pant legs and stepped down onto the cement dock, into the cool, refreshing water. Minnows circled his bare legs.

This was paradise. An Eden among the trees—and like Eden, Owen knew he would never return.

BACK TO THE CITY
, and back to the grind. Avery was glad for his return, and the two of them greeted protestors at the job site every day. Even the man with the spooky eyes and his STOP GREEN FASCISM sign was still around, though when Owen said hello on his first day back at the future site of the Jackson's Creek Wind Farm, the man he'd attacked didn't seem to recognize him.

Owen began visiting his mother once a week. On his return visit, he'd sat her down on the sofa and read Lori's journal to her. Margaret Saddler had turned off the TV. She wept at first, then smiled, and found herself laughing uproariously, often through her tears. He laughed with her. He joined in her tears. They hugged, with Lori's journal between them on their knees. The remaining Saddlers let themselves grieve. At times, it felt as if Lori might be standing over them, watching them, laughing with them. But the room was always empty when Owen turned to look.

After his mother had gone to her room and shut off the light, Owen sat on Lori's bed and rummaged through her box of things. He rifled through her wallet, the one she'd made at some summer camp out of duct tape and plastic thread. He found black & white photos of people she'd seen around Chapel Lake: Beau, and Skip, and Pete Jebson, and Jo Dunsmuir. He'd laughed at some of their expressions, and he'd held Jo's photo, with her thin, grim smile, for a long time, looking into her dark, cheerless eyes. Less than a week later, Owen learned that Jo's body had been found very near where they'd found Lori, washed up on the shore among fragments of the old church. In the meantime, OPP divers made the discovery of dozens of human bones in the same area, and forensics determined they'd been dead as long as thirty years. Howard Lansall II, who had confessed to the murder of the eight remaining Blessed Trinity members and their pastor, Everett Crouch, and to the recent murder of Lori Saddler, would stand trial for his crimes in September. He was expected to plead guilty.

Owen drove up and attended Jo's funeral the following Saturday. Dozens of people showed up at the cemetery, surprising the hell out of him. Now that the church was gone, the town seemed to have forgiven the small part Crazy Jo Dunsmuir played in keeping it alive in their memories. Many of them wept, and a few of them, especially Skip Wickman, wore smiles. He'd seen the Mystery. Death was not the end, just the beginning of some new journey, another bend in the long road home. The minister, who'd driven out from Locust, assured them so in his choice of verse. Owen waited until the gatherers had dispersed, and placed Howie's wooden frog on Jo's headstone.

A week later, Owen found himself in another cemetery: St. John's Norway, very near the neighborhood where he and Lori had grown up. He worked his way through the tombstones, past garish mausoleums and stone angels and monuments flat against the earth. Lori's stone, dulled a little since the last time he'd seen it, still glimmered under the hot sun. He stood before it, remembering her funeral, his bitterness, and the pocket full of smooth dirt he'd fingered, pretending it was ash. He'd come a long way since then. With Lori's help, and Jo's, and the people of the Blessed Trinity, he'd finally become the man he was meant to be.

He felt a presence behind him, and turned, expecting to find the two of them there, Lori and Jo, perhaps holding hands in the grove of bright-green cedar. It was neither. Gerald Kinsman reared back behind a tree. He seemed to realize he'd been caught, then, and came out from hiding.

"Why are you hiding back there?" Owen said.

Gerald's face reddened. He wringed his hands. "I didn't want to disturb you," he admitted.

"Hanging back there like a ghost is disturbing. Why don't you come join me?"

A hopeful look crossed the old man's face. Uncertainty followed it. "You're sure I won't be interrupting?"

"You've got just as much right to be here as I do," Owen said. "You're her father."

Gerald smiled, a goofy sort of smile that was kind of loveable, in Owen's opinion, and he hurried over to Owen's side. He smelled of aftershave and fresh cut grass. Owen remembered his mother had said Gerald was doing yard maintenance now, hard work that kept him in the sun and kept his mind off the booze. They stood in a reverent silence a moment, while the trees blew and the birds chirped and the sun beat hot on their scalps.

"She really loved you, you know," Gerald said.

"She loved you, too. She told me that once."

Gerald nodded, looking down at the stone. "We were trying to reconnect."

"She told me that, too." He let the silence hang a moment, wondering how to start the conversation. Finally, he said, "I never gave you much of a chance in the past. I'm sorry for that."

Gerald shrugged it off. "I gave you plenty of opportunity to dislike me. I just hope you can forgive me, too."