The Pines (10 page)

“Yeah?” Sunlight glinted off Barry’s dark lenses. “And what’s he gonna eat?”

Periodic cicadas had commenced their high-pitched, twitching whine, and the sound filled the woods, making them resonate, until the whole tangled structure of pine and cedar around the stream seemed to throb. And the air—the heavy liquid atmosphere of the summer afternoon—seemed to pulse as well.

Jenny floated. Though the creek’s level seemed low, such sunlight as filtered through the swath of red-brown liquid failed to reach the bottom, revealing only the tops of shattered tree trunks, ghostly in the murk.

“Isn’t this great?” Kicking sideways, Sandra swam over. “It’s deep over here!” Her tiny gold earrings flashed dully in the water as she sank to her chin, then bobbed up, large breasts just breaking the surface as she splashed. “Did you see the snake?”

“Snake?!”

“Alan said this great big copperhead went swimming by. I didn’t see it, thank God.” Turning from Jenny, she giggled and splashed back upstream, her pale buttocks visible through the dark water but the rest of her vanishing in the murk.

Diving from a rock, Casey splashed down heavily, drenching everything around. Everyone yelled. He surfaced, blowing like a whale, then tossed his head violently to clear his eyes. He’d finally put on his T-shirt, and it billowed up around him, holding air, his muscles knotting beneath it as he thrashed about.

Though she laughed with the others, Jenny remained tense. She sensed a…wrongness in making noise here. This place held silence, almost like a church. Wondering that the others didn’t feel it, she allowed herself to drift farther away from them, toward a bend downstream.

They were an intrusion. No question about it. She treaded water, and the murky warmth felt wonderful, soothing. Yet she kept peering up at the bank. The sun’s rays slanted low through the scrub above her, and deep shadows fell on the stream. Small insects flew drowsily, quietly, and the humid air seemed to press on the water.

A thick-bodied dragonfly hovered, iridescent wings glistening; then it thrummed heavily on, following the current. It made her think of jade. Emeralds. She watched it go. Green fire. She bobbed low. The current was sluggish but undeniably there, deep down, cool and heavy. She turned over to float on her back, and water dribbled out of her mouth, trickled shining down her chin and throat. Again she glanced up at the bank. Nothing moved, and she wondered what she kept expecting to see. All day, she’d thought these woods unutterably dreary and drab, but now in the lengthening shadows…

Sand and pebbles, late afternoon sun full upon it, the bank shelved steeply down to the murky current. Light striped the water but couldn’t penetrate. Bright bands of sediment eddied.

They kept clutching at her ankles—the black and twisted roots that grew out of the banks and deep into the water. And suddenly she recalled that Casey had mentioned giant snapping turtles. The voices of her friends drifted to her as she paddled against the stream toward them, her toes instinctively curled.

“…weird…no beer tabs or broken bottles.”

“Only because the water’s so dark, you know,” said Alan, lazing on the edge of the current. “Anything might be down there.”

“…use to think cedar water was just like weak tea, but this looks more like coffee.”

“Amelia, don’t you think you should get out soon?” Jenny stroked smoothly. “Before you’re permanently stained?”

“Oh, Mom!”

“While there’s still sun to dry off.”

“I’ll watch her, Jenny.” Sandra scissored past.

Turning her shining back to her mother, Amelia plunged at Casey, and he yelped as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, commanding him to carry her after Sandra. Watching their glistening limbs, Jenny suddenly felt drained, her leg muscles aching, feet throbbing from the day’s hike. Still, the warm water soothed; she wanted only to rest. Then an odd suspicion formed: the stream was attempting to lull her. Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs, and she wanted out.

She kicked toward the spot where they’d left their packs. A clenched mass of roots gripped the shore, and below her, the streambed sloped away sharply, sliding grittily underfoot. To steady herself, she caught at a root, and her hand slipped down it. Slimy as a water snake, it left a wet sheath of green in her palm. She floundered, with one leg sunk to the calf in clammy silt, the streambed tilting farther beneath her. Hardly able to stand upright, she felt herself being dragged back into the middle of the creek and again tried to haul herself out. Clutching, she got a foot up on the bank, but it crumbled under her, sliding into the water. Panic gave her strength, and with a springing leap, she cleared the side.

She clambered onto the sand as a big hunk of the bank fell away. “Oh!” She crawled faster. At last, breathing rapidly, she sat on a flat rock, well away from the edge. The sun slanted down on her, and a column of midges whirled in the light over the water. “Amelia?” Anxiously, she watched the others, as moisture spread around her on the rock. “Aren’t you tired yet?”

Long-shadowed birches crowded near the creek, and tufts of pointed grass covered the sand hills. Beyond the bank, scrub merged with unbroken dwarf forest.

She dried quickly. As she rubbed her naked body, beads of water rolled off, leaving a smooth residue, like a fine powdering of rust. Slowly, her muscles relaxed, yielding to the sunlight.

Something fat and black glistened like a garden slug on the back of her ankle.

Behind her, somebody spoke. “There’s a leech on you, girl.”

They were making their final rounds of the day. The road between Chamong and Hobbston bent around a cranberry bog, where red and green mats of vegetation lay thickly on the water. They rounded another curve, and dogs filled the road.

“Jesus Christ!”

More than a dozen mongrels scrambled madly as Barry gunned the engine, whipping the wheel hard over. The car barely clipped a collie mutt, knocked it tumbling over the sand. Barry hit the brakes, and the police car scudded, plowing deep furrows in the road. Revolver drawn, he leaped from the car.

Frozen, Steve gaped in disbelief.

Most of the dogs had already scurried off, disappearing into the pines. Except for the straggler—a runty shepherd mongrel, tail between its legs. A moment before, it had been secure in the midst of the pack. Now, looking around in confusion, it just stood in the middle of the road.

Flushed with excitement, Barry fired three shots, two of the bullets whipping harmlessly into the pines. One caught the animal at the base of the spine.

The dog screamed. It bounded, then sprawled in the sand, blood bubbling from its rump when it tried to get up and run. The oversize paws splayed all over the road, and the dog tumbled in panic, collapsed, kicking spasmodically.

Barry approached. The beast tried to crawl away from him, eyes rolling in terror, but its hind legs wouldn’t move at all. By desperately wriggling and clawing at the sand, it managed to writhe from side to side, feebly inching toward the woods.

Steve got out of the car, stood watching.

The dog bared its fangs, whined and then growled again as Barry stood over it, taking careful aim for the head.

Steve caught a flash of yellow movement in the trees.

“Behind you!”

A thick-furred pregnant bitch tensed to leap.

Barry whirled around, firing several shots. The animal bolted for the woods. A bullet buzzed past Steve as he ducked behind the car. Knocked sideways, the bitch never slowed but vanished into the trees, leaving only a smear of blood on the ground.

Barry looked around, then walked back to the wounded cur. His long shadow densely black before him, he took aim again. He pulled the trigger, and the revolver clicked. “Shit.” He stared in disbelief for a moment, then his booted foot lashed out again and again.

As he walked back toward the car, he wiped his boots in the sand as best he could. Behind him, the dog looked like road kill.

Steve closed his eyes. “It was just a puppy. You can tell by the size of the paws.” A headache gnawed his brain.

“I winged the other one.” Barry sounded pleased with himself as they got back in the car.

Steve nodded with a whiny grunt. He needed a drink.

“What do you think? Should we go after it?”

“We’d never find her.” Steve turned away and gazed toward the woods. “Not out there.”

Sunset was a lava flow along the horizon.

Ancient, rusted tin cans lay scattered about the clearing. As the last redness drained from the sky, the sand grayed, and colors shifted to darker hues. Shrilling with cicadas, the slender trunks of the surrounding trees grew indistinct.

“Was this really the bottom of the ocean?” Amelia’s eyes held a fearful wonder. “Is that why it sort of looks like the beach with trees?”

“That’s why”—rolling the last of several logs into a rough circle, Casey spoke between grunts—“everything’s so flat.”

From the clearing’s edge, he was closely watched.

Sitting on a log, Jenny randomly traced mystic-looking symbols in the sand…and sneaked a glance at the stranger.

Pallid and handsome with coarse red hair, he couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. The bright hair accentuated his unhealthy paleness; sharp cheekbones showed like ivory through white skin. He hardly spoke, as though a long illness had left him sullen and shy, wasted. Yet there was a furtive sexuality about him, the powerful shoulders seeming out of place on his emaciated frame. He wore a soiled shirt, and dirt had worked deeply into the folds of his neck and arms. He’d told them his name was Ernie and that he was a camper, out here alone. Periodically, his body would heave with a tubercular-sounding cough.

Jenny didn’t care for the way he never took his eyes off Casey. She didn’t care for the way he just sat there, indistinct in the fading twilight. A childhood memory scratched elusively at the back of her mind, and then she had it: he reminded her of a stable hand she used to see during summer vacations. She remembered there’d been some problem, something the adults whispered about, some reason she hadn’t been allowed to talk to the unwashed boy. As though aware of her attention, Ernie looked over, and she caught another glimpse of those sickly, bloodshot eyes before quickly turning away.

“Somebody gather some wood,” Casey called to the group. “You ever…Ernie?” He sat on a log and mopped sweat from his forehead. “You ever catch any fish in that stream?”

After their swim, they’d hiked another hour before making camp, partly pressed on by Casey’s timetable, mostly in hopes of shaking their new acquaintance.

Ernie choked on phlegm, spat thickly. “Can’t eat the fish.” Raising his shoulder, he wiped his mouth on the shirt.

“Why’s that?”

“Full of worms.”

Jenny grimaced. Almost the first thing he’d said to them was that someone had recently drowned in a canoe accident right about where they’d been swimming.

“There must still be wet ground nearby,” said Casey, waving at insects, “a pond or something.”

Ernie nodded.

“Maybe we ought to move.”

“But it’s almost dark,” Jenny objected. “Besides, I’m awfully tired.” She immediately regretted her words—if they moved they might finally get rid of Ernie, who presumably was only hanging around in hopes of being fed. After all, he wouldn’t even speak to anyone but Casey, and then only to exchange boring wilderness lore.

“Could somebody help me?” called Sandy, gathering firewood in the scrub. “Alan? Jenny, are you doing anything?” she asked in loud, sugary tones. “Shit!” The log in her hand had released a cloud of flying insects.

“Must we have a big fire?” Jenny sighed again, her vision already blurry with perspiration and humidity. “I’m smothering as it is. How come it gets hotter at night? We should have stayed by the stream. Amelia, don’t go too far.”

Chasing lightning bugs, the little girl paused to watch a bat, wings pinkish and translucent against the evening sky as it darted after moths. “Eww!”

“What is it?”

“Something flew up my nose!”

Having scooped out sand in the middle of the circle of logs, Casey meticulously finished stacking branches, using small twigs and dried pine needles for kindling. “Where are the matches? Oh.” Once lit, the fire only served to make the woods darker. Only the nearer trees remained visible, and they seemed to waver as the firelight now caught them, now let them go.

Casey dug out the supplies—plastic forks, fruitcake remnants, half a loaf of bread, smoked hot dogs, canned corn. “Who the hell packed this?” he muttered under his breath. Canned goods, no less—no wonder it weighed a ton. He wished his friends could grasp the difference between backpacking and picnicking. “We’ll need more wood,” he called, sharpening sticks with a pocketknife with a mother-of-pearl handle.

“Nice knife.”

Casey looked up to find Ernie standing right beside him.

“You’ll stay and eat with us, won’t you?” Alan asked, smoothing his mustache with a comb.

Insects descended in a vampiric swarm. The mosquitoes, wet and bloated but still feeding, surrounded them. Conversations in the clearing became peppered with slaps and curses.

Flames licked up around the pine chunks. Because the smoke kept away some of the bugs, they all sat close to the fire, in spite of the heat. When Alan passed around insect repellant, Ernie declined wordlessly. Jenny rubbed some into Amelia’s small back, already covered with bites, and the oily scent mingled with the odor of smoke. Smelling the food, they sat in relative silence, while corn slowly heated in a pot perched among the coals, and hot dogs sizzled and blackened on sticks.

Ernie drooled. Jenny stared—she’d never seen anything like it before. Shocked, she turned away. Finished with Amelia, she rubbed repellant on her own legs and arms. It stung a spot on the back of her ankle, the spot where Casey had burned off the leech.

Scorching their fingers and mouths, all ate ravenously, jaws and throats working rapidly.

Amelia turned to her mother. “I don’t like him. He smells bad.”

“Amelia!”

Ernie froze. A hunk of bread halfway to his mouth, he peered through slitted eyes as though afraid someone might try to take the food. Jenny stared at the grease around his mouth.