The Great Forgetting (15 page)

“This is nuts.”

“Clear your mind of any thought about us. If it hears you thinking, it will come down here and kill you.”

“I don't believe in this, Cole. I—”

“Do I sound like I'm making this up?”

No. He didn't. If this boy was crazy, his insanity was complete and total. Jack felt the first pangs of real fear, though he couldn't tell if he was actually afraid of the man in the Panama hat or if he was simply afraid that he'd allowed the boy to get too far into his head.

“How do I clear my mind?” asked Jack.

“A wolf, a goat, and a head of lettuce sit on the shore of a lake,” said Cole. “There is an island in the lake and a boat to take you there. If left alone, the goat will eat the lettuce and the wolf will eat the goat. How do you get the wolf, the goat, and the lettuce onto the island safely?”

For a moment what Cole had said was such a non sequitur Jack thought the boy's mind had finally broken. Then he understood. It was a logic puzzle, a way to keep his mind from forming any thought except for the solution.

“Come on, Jack.”

“Give it to me again.”

Cole did.

Jack pictured the problem. In his mind he saw a wolf, a goat, and a head of lettuce sitting on the side of Pymatuning Lake, a rowboat resting on the sandy shore. He pictured himself pulling the goat on board, rowing it to the island, letting it out to munch on the scrub grass, then returning for the lettuce. But when he dropped the lettuce off to return for the wolf, the goat ate it. He tried again, this time returning for the wolf, only to have the wolf devour the goat on the island. He'd never been good at these brainteasers.

Finally, Jack gave up and peered around the tree. “He's gone,” he said.

“Good.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“A Hound,” said Cole. “The Hounds are the security force for the Collectors. They're not human. Not entirely. They were created by that Nazi scientist Mengele.”

“Wait. Josef Mengele?”

“Right.”

“What do you mean, ‘created'?”

“I don't know the details. I just know they're called the Hounds. That's what my dad called them. He was a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and since those things' headquarters are in the Catskills, he called them the Hounds of the Catskills, after the book
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. He told me that in the book, people were being killed by a giant beast on the moor that they thought was a devil dog but it actually turned out to be an escaped orangutan. Funny thing is, he remembered it wrong.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The orangutan wasn't from
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. He got the story mixed up with ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' the Edgar Allan Poe story that
inspired
Sherlock Holmes. Anyway, he called them the Hounds.”

“You're asking me to believe too much,” said Jack. “It's too much all at once.”

“Everything will fit together soon,” said Cole. “I promise. Just have a little faith in the story I'm trying to tell you.”

“Back to the Gate House, then?”

“Not with that thing out there,” said Cole. “There might be more. Jack, it's like they knew you were coming.”

9
    Sam knew just by looking at him that Jack had lost control of the situation with the kid. His face was pale in the diffused lamp light of Nostalgia, his eyes shifty and bloodshot from too much thinking. It was a look Sam knew well. It was the same way Tony had looked the day he came home with sand on his shoes, the day he disappeared.

“I couldn't stay in your house,” said Jack, leaning against a framed Uncle Wiggily board game from the twenties. “It felt strange to be there by myself.”

Sam was behind the register, reading a crinkled copy of
The Long Tomorrow
she'd found hidden in the bottom of a box of tattered paperbacks. Gordon Lightfoot played softly from the overhead speakers.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” he said, too quickly. Then he shook his head. “It's just, I thought we were close to something today. Like maybe I was close to a clue about where Tony took off to. But it didn't work out.”

“What did you two do all day?”

“We talked about stuff like secret military codes on highway signs. Tonight he has me looking into something called HAARP.”

“Harp?”

“H-A-A-R-P.”

“What is it?”

Jack shrugged. His cell phone rang, a shrill chirping from his pants. He looked at the display, said, “One minute, Sam,” and walked out of the shop to take the call.

As Sam watched him go she was suddenly aware that she was in love with him again. Their love was not such a passionate thing. This was old love. Stronger, almost indifferent, like old magic. And with it came a quick forgetting of the span of years that had separated them, a conscious back-turning from the bad decisions that had kept them apart. And wasn't there was something magical in that?

There are days in everyone's life they would forget if they could. Days for do-overs. Days full of enough bad decisions to distract the course of a life forever.

For Sam and Jack and Tony, that day was the same day: September 11, 1999.

*   *   *

It was Virginia who called. When it was bad news it was always Virginia.

It was a Saturday morning. Sam lay on Jack, her head resting on his naked chest. They were sharing a twin bed in his dorm at Miami U. She had driven out to see him the night before and they'd stayed up past three watching cheesy horror movies and fucking. Fast-food bags and condom wrappers were strewn about the floor and the room smelled of delicious funk.

Jack reached behind his head and snatched the phone from its cradle. “'Lo?” he said.

“Johnny? It's Mom.”

He heard the panic in her voice. His first thought was that his father had died in a plane crash en route to La Guardia.

“What happened?” he asked. The tone of his voice alarmed Sam and she looked up at him, waiting.

“Huhhh,” Virginia sighed. “It's Tony. Tony's mother. She's in the hospital. In a coma. I think she's going to die, Johnny.”

“His father?”

“He beat her head in with a radio. Then he called the police and told them what he'd done. The cops found him on the porch, still holding the radio, rocking back and forth, repeating one word: forget, forget, forget.”

“Where's Tony?”

“Nobody knows. He hasn't called you?”

“No.”

“You better get home.”

They left Sam's car at school and raced back to Franklin Mills in Jack's rickety Rabbit, its muffler kicking against the carriage. By the time Jack got there the Captain was back with some new information: doctors at Robinson Memorial were saying Tony's mother would likely survive but there would be significant brain damage. Tony's father, meanwhile, was confined in a straitjacket in the county jail. “His mind just broke,” the Captain said. Virginia sat with Jean at the kitchen table, their eyes puffy.

“I'm going to look for him,” said Jack, pulling Sam by the hand toward the door.

“I've been all over Franklin Mills,” the Captain said. “He ain't here, man.”

“I can find him.”

For the next five hours, until the sun was a memory on the westerly clouds, Jack and Sam drove over the quiet roads of Portage County. They tried everywhere they'd ever been: the movie theater, the arcade in Kent, the nudie bar in Rootstown, the bowling alley. But no one had seen him or his ridiculous BMW.

A quarter moon peeked through the treetops by the time they returned to SR 14. Instead of pulling into his family's driveway, Jack continued on to Porter, hooked a right, and drove up the access road to Claytor Lake. There, hidden in the waist-high goldenrod, was Tony's car.

“You don't think he killed himself?” whispered Sam.

Jack shook his head. In fact, that's exactly what he thought.

In the moonlight Jack could make out the dark liquid glass of the water's surface and the hard edge of the earth around it. They searched the shadows of the shoreline. There, a silhouette against the stars. Tony stood atop a sandstone boulder on the ridge to their left.

“Whatcha doing, Tony?” he asked.

Tony shrugged. His face was slack, devoid of emotion. There was less than an inch between his feet and the drop-off.

Jack leaned against the boulder, beside an Iroquois petroglyph that resembled an aspen leaf. He watched his friend sway slowly, like he could hear music they could not.

“I told everybody. I told them he was sick. Nobody believed me.”

“I know, man. I know.”

“I've been standing here all day. I don't want this memory, any memory from this day. It's too much. Don't want it. I should kill myself, I think. But I can't. I'm too scared. I'm a coward.”

“The hell you are.”

Tony shook his head. “I don't know what happens next. I don't have a family anymore. Not really.”

“You have us, Tony,” said Sam.

He looked up and held her gaze.

“Come down,” said Jack.

“It feels like giving up if I come down now.”

“So jump,” said Jack. “The water's nice and cool. Jump and I'll come in after you.”

“Good fucking idea,” said Tony. He stepped off the boulder and fell ten feet to the water below. Jack was a second behind. He swam underwater to his friend and grabbed him by the shoulders, hugging him closely as they rose to the surface.

“I can't feel my legs,” Tony said.

“It's okay,” said Jack. “I got you.”

Jack started laughing. It was a hysterical laugh, full of relief instead of joy. He laughed so hard he struggled to breathe as he pulled Tony to the shallow end. Sam was in the water, too. She'd had time to strip down to her cheap cotton underwear. The water was icy but refreshing. The three of them rested in the shallows, bouncing against the sandy ledge.

Jack hugged his friend.

“Get off before you give me an accidental boner,” said Tony.

Jack backed away and Sam swam to Tony and hugged him. Then she laughed. “Not a moment too soon,” she said.

Sam looked at Jack. She was seventeen now. A young woman who'd kicked off her fears in the years since the county fair and that scorching August when they were kids. There was a question in her eyes, and they were so close in so many ways she didn't need to voice it. Jack nodded, smiled, and drifted on his back toward the beach. Sam turned to Tony and slipped her legs around him. She leaned forward and brushed her chest against his.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

“Making you feel better,” she said. She took his right hand and placed it on her left breast. Then she moved up his body and placed her mouth on his. His lips were softer than Jack's. Almost feminine. He broke away to look for Jack, but he was stepping out of the water already, giving them privacy. “It's okay,” Sam assured him.

In a moment Tony was tossing his clothes away. And then he was inside her, she was around him, and when he came, he bit her lip and she moaned softly.

They took Tony back to Jack's dorm at Miami U and later that night the three of them climbed under the flannel blankets of the narrow bed. Tony kissed Sam as Jack spooned up to her from behind. They made love like that, each in turn. And when they were finished they slept through the morning.

It became routine. Every week when Sam drove out to visit Jack, Tony rode with her. They'd watch TV, drink beer, and inevitably end up naked in bed together. Jack was never suspicious of their time back in Franklin Mills. He trusted them. But who did Tony have anymore other than Sam?

Jack didn't understand when Tony arrived alone one weekend.

“I didn't mean to, Jack. I didn't. It just happened,” Tony told him.

They were in love. Sam was moving in. There was a ring. Not an engagement ring, but a ring. This was happening.

“We don't want to lose you,” said Tony.

Jack had pointed at his dorm room door and that was the last time he'd seen his old friend.

*   *   *

A few minutes later, Jack came back inside Nostalgia. He looked frazzled, manic.

“Who was that?”

“Cole,” he said. “I have some more work to do. Meet you back at your place?”

“Home,” she said, kissing him. “I'll meet you at home 'round eight.”

Jack smiled. “See you at home.”

10
    “I wouldn't call if it wasn't important,” said Cole. “That Hound followed you back to Franklin Mills.”

Jack paced back and forth in the gravel lot outside Nostalgia, his phone pressed to his ear. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw it drive by Haven in one of those weird cars. It parked outside, looked at my window. I could see its funny hat.”

“Cole, that man I saw at the park was some surveyor or something. He was mapping the lake or taking a water sample. That's what he was doing with that GPS or whatever it was in his hands.”

“I think we need to step up your learning curve,” said Cole. “We can finish the gradient tomorrow, if you're up to it.”

“I am,” he said.
More than ready to be done with it
, he thought.