The Pines (9 page)

He stared at his soiled hands—rough and callused, creased and cut with lines like tooled leather. Not moving away, he wiped them on himself, leaving smears of bark rot on his pants.

“Is that a buzzard circling up there?”

“We’re doomed!”

The heavy pack caused sweat to gather in the small of Jenny’s back, and her hot T-shirt clung. A thorny, tentacular vine caught at a sneaker and tore her ankle, and every step stirred swarms of gnats from the undergrowth. The terrain never varied. “Some vacation. It wouldn’t be so bad if I felt like I was getting someplace.” She sighed. “Whose idea was this again?”

Casey plodded ahead, his heavy hiking boots clunking along the trail. Above white socks, rolled fat at the ankles, his hairy legs were thickly muscular, and above the frayed belt loops of his cutoffs protruded the graying waistband of his jockey shorts. Sweat streamed down his back and sides. A T-shirt, bunched up and stuck in his backpack, trailed out, waving to the others like a white banner.

“I see some more deer tracks,” announced Amelia. No one responded to the child—they’d all gotten pretty bored with deer tracks. “They look sort of funny though.”

Incredibly, the heat increased. Soon they passed a stand of scrub cedars, a welcome break from the pines, but the gnarled trees looked drained, blighted. Webbed with vines, they seemed to huddle together against the surrounding conifers. “Oh my God.”

Casey turned back. “What is it?”

Stretched between two cedars was a huge cobweb, a small bird lodged firmly in its center. There came the barest hint of a breeze, and the desiccated creature swayed in a sad parody of flight.

Alan leaned closer to the web. “Is anybody home? You know, I bet there could be spiders out here as big as a house.” The laugh didn’t quite come off. “What’s that noise?”

“Catalpa.” Casey pointed to a twisted tree among the pines, the source of a whispering rattle. “The bean pods are dried out from the heat.”

“They’re not the only ones,” muttered Jenny as she moved away from the web. The straps chafed her shoulders, so she slipped the pack off and sat on it. “Who’s got water?”

“You know, if that spider is really big, he’s liable to creep down and…carry off Amelia!” Alan pounced on the child and tickled, and she collapsed in laughter and squeals.

“Stop it, Alan. You’re scaring her.”

“She doesn’t look scared to me, Jenny.”

“Look, Sandy, you’re not the one that has to sit up with her when she has nightmares.”

“Well, if she has one to night, I’d be only too—”

“Say, Casey,” Alan interrupted loudly. “I meant to ask you before—I see a lot of these trees are all black at the bottom. They burnt or something?” He smiled to himself. Casey, a sort of perpetual grad student, could usually be cued to provide a safe, distracting lecture, and they clearly needed one.

Nodding, Casey turned away from the cobweb and, with a motion that seemed almost a caress, drew his large hand across a pine trunk. “Dwarfism might have something to do with fire,” he said, fingering a bit of scabrous bark. “Or it may be the soil.” His voice stayed calm and measured as he knelt in the sand. “Here—take a look.” Pinching out a piece of turf, he held it up.

As he dutifully inspected the plant, Alan saw that it grew everywhere around them—he even stood upon it—and he’d never noticed. Leave it to Casey.

“You could scour pots with this stuff.” Jenny kicked at a loose patch of lichen.

“The glands—the red spots—are sticky,” Casey pointed out, “for trapping insects.”

“I wish they’d trap some of these.”

He gave her an indulgent look. “There’s an almost complete lack of nitrogen in the soil.” Pausing for them to appreciate that, he smiled his slow smile down at Amelia as the child fearfully examined the pale bit of mossy green. At nine years old, she seemed a nut-brown miniature of Jenny, the dark eyes, now lined and nervous in the mother, adding an unusual depth to the child’s face. “That means the plants have to eat bugs to live,” he explained.

Jenny sighed laboriously at the lecturing drone.

“It’s going to be a long week,” Sandy muttered.

“This place…” A note of awe entered Casey’s voice, and he stood up, brushing damp sand from his sweating legs. “Think about it. A forest this size in the middle of the most heavily industrialized state in the Union!” He shook his head in wonder.

Grinning to see his taciturn friend so animated, Alan nudged Sandy.

“What’s really incredible is that nobody even realizes it’s out here. What do people see from their cars? Trees on the side of the road—just the tip of the iceberg! Most people have to think, a few yards in, there’s another road or some houses. They can’t grasp it! Can’t conceive of—”

“Ugly. Ugly little trees.” Jenny stood up and pinched sullenly at the sides of her binding jeans, while Alan helped her struggle back into her pack. “Trees should be pretty. You look at these, and all you’re aware of is their miserable little struggles to survive.”

“Yeah, it’s like they’re alive or something.”

“They are alive, Sandy,” Jenny sighed.

After passing around the canteen, they started moving again, at first plodding along in a tight clump, but quickly resuming the old formation with Casey pulling ahead. For the first time, the air began to stir noticeably about them. As he walked, Casey scuffed at the sand with his boots, the gesture oddly proprietary.

The things he could tell them. For instance, they were crossing the bed of a vanished ocean, an ocean sixty million years gone. The breeze had grown, and he savored the fleeting coolness. He listened as the gentle current of air stirred a strange whirring out of the pines, a low moan like the ghost of a lost sea, and it swept his memories to all those distant Sunday afternoons when, shin deep in collapsing mud shoals, he’d dug for fossils not all that far from here. The mud banks would crumble with soft splashings, and icy waters would ooze, bubbling up around his ankles, trickling down to join the creek, washing away the sediment of shell particles, millions of years steadily melting away beneath his feet. Innumerable generations of monsters had hunted these waters, and the denizens of the ancient seas had left their bones and shells and marks.

The rest of the group pumped along behind him, chattering among themselves, and he moved still farther ahead of them, the familiar thrill of wonder, almost of reverence, coursing through him. He discovered, somewhat giddily, that if he squeezed his eyes half shut the blurring pines resembled a prehistoric landscape. A hairy tentacle clung to a nearby tree, the dark rootlets of the parasite vine, biting deep into the bark, coiling like some obscene, furred serpent up and around the cedar.

Unnoticed, a moth the size of his hand settled weightless on his shoulder.

“…had to work, and I swear to God that’s the truth. Athena?” Barry depressed the speak button with his thumb. “Athena?” He glanced up as Steve returned to the car. “Damn, that radio of theirs is a real piece of shit.”

“Watch yourself. You’re broadcasting.”

“Huh? Yeah, sure.” At forty-three years old, Officer Barry Hobbs was a large man, almost burly. Though the scar that slashed the bridge of his nose was the sort that fossilized a wound and kept it perpetually on display, the lines of his face, the wide, square jaw, still showed firm and handsome. Until a few years ago, he’d been a state trooper—discharged for reasons he never cared to discuss.

“You were gone a long time. You sick or something?” While critically eyeing Steve, he continued trying to raise the ambulance. “What in hell did you do? Fall down and roll in the mud?” His own tailored uniform was immaculate. His wife pressed it every morning.

Steve slumped brooding in his seat while static and the ghost of Athena’s voice drifted from the radio: “…and profuse bleeding…”

“Goddamn, she’s on a call.” Barry lit another cigarette, and Steve watched, envying his steady hand. Noting the attention, Barry yawned ostentatiously. “Yes sir, real heavy night last night.” He smirked, waiting.

Steve turned his head away, killed another warm beer and stared resolutely into the woods. A slight breeze stirred the pines. Still smiling, Barry tapped cigarette ash on the windowsill.

Steve crumpled the empty can. “So, uh…you were with Athena last night?” he asked, trying his best to pretend only casual interest. The attempt was pathetic.

Barry sneered in triumph. He took a drag on the cigarette, slowly exhaled, and finally started to talk. Steve gazed into the pines, letting his eyes drift out of focus.

“…then she sort of turns on her hip and wets her fingers and…” Barry’s words drilled into his skull, stuck there and festered.

“…holds on to it, you know, and puts her leg around…”

Steve’s headache intensified in direct proportion to the straining against the front of his pants. He sank farther into his seat, banging his knee against the dashboard.

“…and then she sort of reaches behind to…”

Stop.
He breathed heavily, sweat trickling down his neck.
Make him stop.
He glanced at his watch. Incredibly, only minutes had passed, but the pressure grew unbearable. “Did you check in?” he blurted.

Barry’s big face split in a victorious grin, and he eased off. “Say, I was running a little late this morning.” He grinned again, and for a moment, Steve thought he might wink at him. “Did you get a chance to…?”

Another ritual—keeping Barry informed about reports and directives he never bothered reading. It was a small thing. Steve shrugged. Back in Trenton, he’d always been so conscientious, so eager—a real pushover for this sort of maneuver. “Mister Nice Cop,” Anna used to call him. Always doing favors. He’d been an honest cop too, and remained one still, save for occasionally covering up for his partner’s philandering. He lied to Barry’s wife about night duty, lied to the boss, sometimes even patrolling by himself while Barry screwed around. And there were other things. Small things. “They found that little girl’s clothes—the one disappeared from Marston’s Corner. All bloody and shredded. No body yet, though.” He mopped his neck and face with a crumpled handkerchief.

“Sex maniac, got to be,” Barry pronounced.

“They’re talking about putting dogs on it. You remember that bulletin a couple weeks ago? About that guy escaping?”

Barry looked surprised. “From the penitentiary?”

“From the asylum at Harrisville. Anyway, turns out he’s a killer—took his whole family out in Camden. Hospital tried to keep it quiet.”

“Well, then there’s your sex maniac. I bet somebody’s gonna lose a cushy job over that.”

“I doubt it.” The throbbing in Steve’s brain receded. Talking shop like this, they almost sounded professional, and he sat up straighter, his vision even clearing a little. This was as close as he ever got to the way he used to feel, back in the days before his most important duty all week might involve a broken garage window. “We should make our rounds.” He took out his pipe, then felt his other pocket and muttered, “Stop at Brower’s, I want to get some tobacco.”

Barry emitted another loud yawn.

“You want me to drive?”

The expression on Barry’s face spoke volumes about his opinion of his partner’s driving. He put on his sunglasses and checked himself in the rearview mirror.

“Those shades make you look like some kind of giant bug.”

Barry switched on the ignition, and they lurched forward, slamming Steve against the seat. As the car swung onto hot dirt, Barry kept his foot on the gas. Scrub pines flashed past as the car accelerated, and the sand road emptied onto asphalt.

“Wait a minute! Slow down!” Steve twisted around in his seat. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Back there.”

“Not that kid with the bandages on his head again?” he asked, not slowing.

Steve peered out the back window. “You know him?”

“Billy Mills picked him up a couple times last week. He’s a retard. Just goes wandering the woods. Father died in a car crash. Athena was telling me. Lives with an old aunt or something. She don’t want him. If he gets picked up again, probably going to wind up in Harrisville.”

Already, they’d left the boy far behind them.

Steve mulled it over. In one flashing glance, he’d observed the dirty bandages, the outstanding ears, the lost look. Yes, probably a defective. Certainly, there was no shortage of them around here. “You’re driving too fast,” he said with considerable force. “Have you ever seen inside of Harrisville? Poor harmless half-wits they lock up, but murdering lunatics walk.” With the wind in his face, he just stared out the window: the pines, a house, another, a half-plowed field. The homes looked like converted farms now. Up ahead, a pregnant woman in a halter top reclined in a beach chair. She glanced up without interest and then continued smearing her arms with suntan lotion. Barry slowed slightly and muttered a comment.

“I hear Larry Jenkins is working with the ambulance now,” mentioned Steve. “He’s good friends with your buddy Jack, isn’t he?”

“Jack Buzby ain’t no friend of mine. Damn!”

“What’s the matter?”

He drove one-handed. “A splinter or something.”

“How you do that?”

Barry sucked noisily on his finger.

“It’s a good thing Athena’s not here.” Steve grinned. “She’d have wrestled you to the ground by now, been giving you heart massage, maybe mouth-to-mouth respiration.”

A sly look came into his partner’s eyes. “Yeah,” he slurped. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He took his finger out of his mouth. “You’d like to see that.”

Steve went rigid. Suddenly, his back felt soaked against the seat, and he looked away, tried to pretend he hadn’t heard. “Christ, it’s hot.”

Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Barry cleared his throat. “They’ll catch him.”

“What?”

“The escaped loony. They’ll catch him.”

“Maybe.”

“Come off it, Steve. Soon as they put the dogs on him, they’ll get him.”

Steve popped open the last beer. “If he makes it to the northern quarter…”

“You’d better hide that. We’ll be in town in a second.”

A distant look on his face, he didn’t respond. “I hear there’s stretches out there, forty thousand acres, some of them, without a living soul. If he wanted to, seems to me a fellow could stay lost for a long, long time.”