The Great Forgetting (22 page)

“I'm Tony Sanders's wife,” she told the security guard at the front desk. “Could you please find someone who knew my husband?”

The guard disappeared through a set of double doors and was gone for a long while, leaving Sam to read the awards of recognition on the walls above the gurgling electric waterfall. Tony's name was on some of them.
In recognition for years of service
, read one from the local Freemason society.

“Mrs. Sanders?”

A woman stood in the entryway to the common room. She was a tiny thing in a lovely blue dress, her hair dark and short, eyes no bigger than dimes.

“I'm Kimberly Quick,” she said, motioning Sam inside. “I worked with Tony for some time.”

They walked into a high-ceilinged room where a dozen wards played table tennis in front of a large window. A skinny black man counted out by threes in the corner.

“We met once, at one of Frazier's fund-raisers,” Quick said.

“I don't remember.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Sam followed her into the dormitories. Immediately to the right was Quick's office. She shut the door behind them and they sat in chairs in front of her desk.

“I thought about driving out to your place after Tony disappeared. To bring a casserole or something. But I didn't know what was appropriate.”

“Tell me about Cole Monroe,” said Sam. It was direct, and she tried to gild it with a casual tone, but it still sounded accusatory.

“I can't discuss patients with you,” said Quick, glancing toward the door.

“This isn't about patient confidentiality,” said Sam. “I need to find them. Before anyone gets hurt. Tell me what you know about where they went.”

Quick folded her hands in her lap. Then she stood, stepped to the door, locked it, and walked to a minifridge in the corner. She reached in and brought out two bottled iced teas, handing one to Sam. She sat on the lip of her desk, gathering her thoughts.

“Samantha, did you ever hear Tony talk about a place called Mu?”

8
    An overturned semi full of snack cakes kept them out of the city until late that afternoon. For three hours I-80 was a snarling carbon generator three lanes wide. By the time the city came into view over a sweep of green hills it was after four and Jack realized they would have to hole up for another night.

Jack took the Holland Tunnel and ditched the car at a pricey garage off Twelfth Street. It took some convincing to get the Captain into a cab (“You know how often they clean those seats? About as often as you cleaned the fish tank when you were a kid”), but eventually they got him in and directed the driver to a Marriott ExecuStay in the financial district. Jack paid the clerk in cash for two days, plus 20 percent. Cole collapsed in the bed, but the Captain nudged him off with a rolled-up brochure. Jack skipped through news channels on TV. CNN had it near the second bump. Seeing his face, that rushed DMV photograph, made him blush. He was so overcome with dry terror that he couldn't immediately process what the anchor was saying and he had to rewind the DVR to catch it.

“A manhunt is under way this evening for high school history teacher Jack Felter. According to law enforcement, Felter is the focus of a murder investigation in the small town of Franklin Mills, Ohio. Felter may be traveling with his elderly father and an underage male companion.”

The screen switched to a shot of the Franklin Mills town hall, where Jack had attended middle school dances. That detective with the chop-top stood on the steps and addressed a few reporters. “Mr. Felter is wanted for questioning in the death of local resident Mark Brooks and the abduction of a teenage boy.” Cole's class photo from Pencey, three years old, flashed on-screen. “We ask anyone who may have seen Felter or this boy to call the FBI immediately at the number listed below. Please do not attempt to apprehend Felter on your own. He may be armed and dangerous.”

9
    There was this funny show on the Food Network Sam used to watch,
How to Boil Water
, which taught you to cook even if you didn't know where to start. In reality, Sam was amazed by how difficult it was to boil water. The problem was she needed a lot. Jack had only ever made enough for himself, day by day. Sam wanted gallons. She was going to set out to find Jack and she didn't know how long she'd be on the road. And if they'd boiled their water, she was going to boil hers.

She'd learned once, in some rudimentary physics class in high school, how long it took water to boil and how, when you increased the volume of water, that time increased exponentially. Something to do with calories of energy. It was too much time. She could feel her window of opportunity closing, threatening to separate her from Jack forever.

In the end, she settled on four two-gallon pots on separate burners, cranked to high. Eight gallons didn't seem like enough, but it would have to do.

While they cooked, Sam rummaged in the basement for Tony's Boy Scout backpack, a metal-framed contraption with space for a rolled sleeping bag on top. She scooped out the dead silverfish and filled the sack with a few items she thought might come in handy if, as Dr. Quick had suggested, Cole really was leading Jack to Alaska in search of a lost continent. She raided the Twinings tea tin behind the flour, where she kept the money that was supposed to go toward a new roof. A little over seven hundred dollars.

When the water began to bubble she clicked off the burners and placed each pot next to an AC vent and waited for them to cool. An hour for eight lousy gallons of water.

By the time the car was packed, it was dark and a half-moon was low on the edge of the world. The spring peepers were terribly loud that night. She wanted nothing more than to sit on her porch with Jack, listening to the frogs in the woods make love by starlight. She wanted to tell him that she was three days late and a little afraid.

One more stop.

The Driftwood was dead. Even the juke was silent. Shelly was washing pint glasses in the sink.

Sam knocked on the bar with a bronze key held tight in one hand. Shelly came over wiping her hands on her jeans. “How're you holdin' up?”

“Mmm,” said Sam with a shrug. She handed Shelly the key. “Going out of town for a bit. Can you collect the mail at Nostalgia while I'm gone? Keep an eye on the place? Thermostat's wonky. Needs to be turned down at night.”

Shelly nodded. “You coming back?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Hiya, Sam,” said a familiar voice.

She turned to find Nils May slumped in a booth, back to the wall, his smelly sneakers resting on the vinyl seat cushion. He held a pint of Guinness against his gut. Sam walked to him. He looked like he hadn't slept in a while.

“Debbie turn you out?” she asked, meaning it as a joke, but she could tell she'd hit the nail on the head by the way the Viking's eyes got all watery.

“She'll get over it,” he said. “But she's meaner'n a coon in a cage when she wants to be. Goddamn, Sam. I didn't even do nothin' this time. Not that wasn't right, anyhow.”

“Give her some time.” She patted his hand, like petting a mastiff. “I gotta jet.”

“Where you going?”

“To find Jack. Try to, anyway.”

Nils scooted to the end of the booth, set down his beer. He shook his head. “I don't think that's such a good idea. Not with the FBI after them. Did you see them swarming around the town hall this morning? Couple of 'em come in here about an hour ago, looking for food. Poor bastards.”

“I'm done waiting.”

“But where you going to look?”

“The detective said something about Pymatuning. I'll start there.”

“What if Jack doesn't want to be found right now? I mean, maybe he thinks you're safer here.”

“I don't give a flying fuck what Jack thinks. And what if Jack is the one who needs help?”

Nils started to say something, then shut his mouth. His cheeks flushed, but he clamped his jaw tight.

“What's wrong with you?” she asked.

“Nothin'.”

“Out with it.”

He sighed.

“Nils May,” she said, “you know something about this? You got that look on your face like you do when you call your wife and tell her you're still making pizzas when you're in here chugging wheat beer with your buddy Berman. I'm no dummy.”

He put a finger to his lips, peering around to see if Shelly was eavesdropping. But she'd gone around to the kitchen.

“Fuckin' what?” said Sam.

“I seen Jack last night,” he whispered. “Gave him my truck. That's why Debbie's so miffed.”

Sam folded herself into the seat across from him. “I want to know everything you know.
Everything.
”

10
    After she put Paige to bed, Jean walked to the toolshed, where the Captain kept his rowboat. It was dark and there was no electricity out here, but Jean had a flashlight. She opened the door and stepped inside. The air was stale and heavy with the scent of petrified grass clippings. The cops had searched here, but not well. They would have never thought to look inside her dad's rusty screwdriver anyhow.

She found it hanging on the plywood wall where she'd left it. It was one of those screwdrivers you can unscrew, the kind with all the extra Phillips heads in the hollow body. Except, there were no extra Phillips heads in this one. Inside this screwdriver was a plastic baggie filled with green meth.

Jean took it inside. She set it on the kitchen table. She sat and stared at it. Her whole body shook. Craving. This would take away her pain.

*   *   *

When Paige was three, she'd nearly choked to death on a crayon. Jean was tweaking at the time, so focused on peeling away the old wallpaper in the kitchen, bit by bit, so she could put up a new border, that she'd forgotten, just for a moment, that Paige was sitting on the floor, drawing with crayons. She felt a hand on her leg and looked down from the stepladder.

Paige stared up at her with a purple face. Her mouth was open but no sound was coming out. From where she stood above her, Jean could see the end of a pale blue crayon lodged in her daughter's windpipe.

Jean jumped down and snatched up the little girl. She pounded Paige on the back. But that didn't work. And so she tried to reach in for it. But she reached in too fast and pushed the crayon deeper. Jean screamed. But then Paige's color came back. She was breathing. She'd swallowed it.

Jean sank to the floor and gripped the girl tightly in her arms and cried. When Paige fell asleep for her morning nap, Jean made herself snort a spoon of the stuff Mark had left behind and then she lay down on the porch and waited for the Captain to find her. He needed to see her at her worst so she could never lie her way out of it again.

*   *   *

Jean wiped away a tear. That was a memory she could not afford to forget, even if this stuff promised relief. She walked the baggie all the way to Claytor Lake and then emptied its contents into the water.

There were other ways to survive.

11
    “There's dangerous men out there, Sam,” said Nils, jogging out the big oak door of the Driftwood after her. “People worse'n your dad and brother. You can't go alone.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, climbing into her car.

Nils kicked some gravel, then climbed into the passenger seat. “You never even been to Pymatuning. It's empty country. Kind of place serial killers hide out. All they got is serial killers and fishermen and you can't tell those kind apart.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm coming with you, I guess. Debbie's angry enough. Don't matter if she's a little madder, right? Can't sleep at home tonight anyway.”

Sam leaned over and kissed the Viking on his hairy cheek.

“That'd make her terribly mad,” he said.

In a moment, they were heading east at sixty-five miles an hour. Neither Nils nor Sam noticed the cruiser pull away from the bar and follow at a prudent distance.

 

THREE

A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

1
    The plan, if that's what you called a vague idea and wishes, was this: hang out by the elevators and wait for someone to come down from the thirteenth floor.

Jack wanted to leave Cole and the Captain at the hotel, but the old man wasn't having it. “Your mother, she had this habit of always asking me some stupid question during the best part of a movie,” he'd said. “Right when the action was picking up, she'd say some shit like, ‘I'm going to the store tomorrow, should I grab some prosciutto for homemades?' No. Fuck that. You drag me all the way to New York, I'm going to see the action. Besides, I'm better in a pinch than you. You wouldn't know what to do if things go south. You're not a fighter. It's my fault for letting you drop out of wrestling in fifth grade.”

There was a wooden bench in the elevator alcove. Jack and the Captain waited there while Cole paced the wide, open lobby. The Captain read the
Times
while Jack watched the archaic dials above the doors, waiting for one to park in the empty space between twelve and fourteen.

“We're a blurb on page seven. Not even a picture,” the Captain said. Jack was unsure if he heard relief or disappointment in his father's voice. Probably a little of both.

By eleven, Jack was beginning to rethink their plan. Maybe they should try the stairs. His eyelids kept closing. Forcing them open again, Jack noticed elevator two had stopped in that special, empty space.

How long had it been there? He suddenly couldn't feel his body. Everything felt too cold. The arrow drifted down.

“Here we go,” he said to the Captain, who was leaning against the granite wall with his eyes closed. The old man popped up, fully alert. His father had learned to catch z's when he could, in the bush.