Long Chills Page 6

  And, more than likely, Karla would have a little too much to drink and be right in the middle of it all. At least until I hauled her drunken ass out of the water and took her home in the early hours of the morning.

  I was in a hurry to get there, but that didn’t mean that I was looking forward to it. I would have just as soon sat this party out, but that would have been unacceptable in

  Karla’s eyes. Our absence would have made her look bad in front of her co-workers… and her precious boss.

  Onward I drove. The stretch of dense forest along Tanglewood Road was about as abandoned and forlorn as you could possibly get. Tall stands of pine and cedar stretched on either side, their upper branches interlacing, forming an almost impenetrable canopy over the straight avenue of rutted dirt road. Shadow hung heavily across the bordering thickets of honeysuckle and kudzu that lined the roadway and, every now and then, a little sunshine would peek through overhead, dappling the wooded darkness with speckles of pale light.

  I looked over to where Midnight occupied the jeep’s passenger seat. He seemed to have gotten over the trauma of his visit to the veterinarian. The lab’s head hung out the open window, luxuriously enjoying the rush of the wind, his ears arched back and his tongue lolling from his mouth. The picture of canine contentment.

  When I turned my eyes back to the road, I cussed and slammed on my brakes. But it was too late. My front left tire hit a jagged tree limb lying in the middle of the road. I heard a loud thwump and knew at once that my intended shortcut had just gone straight to hell in a hand basket, as my grandmother used to say. I cut the wheel sharply to the right, avoiding running over the limb with my rear tires. But the damage had already been done. I drove a few more yards and felt that tell-tale limp of a fatally flat tire.

  “Damn!” I said and braked to a halt. I sat there for a long moment, hands clenching the steering wheel tightly, my eyes closed in disgust. Just what I needed… something else for my wife to bitch about when I finally made it home. Whenever that would be.

  I opened my eyes and looked over at Midnight. He looked back at me with that asinine doggy grin of his. What happened? he seemed to ask. Why did you stop? You know how much I enjoy that whole head-hanging-out-the-car-window thing. And you pull a stupid stunt like this.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said aloud. “Stand in line, buddy. Karla’s got first dibs at making me feel like dirt, okay.”

  Midnight simply wagged his tail as if in total agreement.

  I sighed and climbed out of the jeep. It was hot that July afternoon – muggy and swelteringly uncomfortable. It hadn’t seemed so bad, driving fifty miles per hour with the wind rushing through the windows. But now the oppressive humidity could be felt, full force. My T-shirt began to cling damply to my chest and back. It would only get worse when I set to the task of changing the tire.

  I could picture Karla in the living room, dressed and ready. Pacing the floor, calling me every nasty name in the book.

  Midnight hopped out of the open door and joined me on the deserted road. “Well, let’s get to it, boy,” I said. Together, we walked around to the back of the jeep.

  I was lucky that I had taken the jeep to the vet that day, instead of the Lexus. It sported a full-sized spare tire on a swing bracket on the back hatch, instead of one of those silly little donut tires that didn’t look like it would hold up a Radio Flyer wagon. I unfastened the tire, then opened the hatch and rummaged around for the jack and lug wrench.

  I found myself thinking about Karla and the love-making session we had shared early that morning. Sleepy two-spoons coupling had turned into amorous caresses and, eventually, intercourse. Even in the gloom of the bedroom, I could tell that Karla wasn’t completely with the program. Her body responded, but her mind was somewhere else. Or with someone else.

  Pushing the uneasiness from my mind, I tossed the tools that I needed in the dirt next to the flattened tire and went to work loosening the lug nuts. Midnight sat on his haunches and watched me curiously as I got four of the bolts loose and, of course, struggled frustratingly with the fifth and last.

  Then, suddenly, the lab’s ears perked and his head turned. He stood up on all fours and stared off into the forest.

  “What is it, boy?” I asked absently.

  Midnight took several steps toward the edge of the road, his gaze intense as he continued to survey the dark shadows of the deep woods to the left of the vehicle. Then he began to bark.

  I finally got the last lug nut off and pulled the wheel off. I stood and looked off in the direction that seemed to hold his attention. Frankly, I could see nothing that would get him so riled up. Maybe he had caught a glimpse of a jackrabbit or a tree squirrel. Living in the upscale subdivision that Karla and I occupied, Midnight didn’t come across such woodland creatures very often. We’d had a raccoon that had gotten into the trash cans late last summer, but he had taken his leave when our garbage hadn’t suited his dietary needs.

  “Don’t let those critters spook you, Midnight,” I told him.

  But the lab continued to bark. I reached out to run a comforting hand across the back of his head, but abruptly he was out of reach. He took off like a black torpedo, leaping into the thicket and heading into the patches of shadowy darkness amid the pines.

  “Come back here, Midnight!” I called to him. But he would hear none of it. He bounded through the deep kudzu and, soon, was completely out of sight.

  I stood there for a moment and listened. I recognized the type of bark he was unleashing now – the high-pitched, frantic barking he emitted when he came across a bitch in heat. I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Go on and get you some, you horny bastard,” I said beneath my breath, then turned back to the job at hand.

  I rolled the spare into line and struggled to position the wheel on the front rotor. When I finally got the right bolts in the right holes, I reached for the lug nuts. My hand stopped short of the first nut when Midnight let out a shrill yelp.

  I stood up and turned around. “Midnight?” I called out.

  Another yelp… this time full of confusion and pain.

  “Boy? Are you okay?”

  I was answered only by silence. I peered into the forest, but could see no sign of the black lab that had been my bosom buddy since college.

  What have you gotten into? I thought to myself. Disgusted, I left the jeep and, stepping into the thicket, began to carefully make my way toward the woods.

  It took me several minutes, but I finally found where Midnight had gone to. I picked my way through a dense clump of blackberry bramble and found him in a small, grassy clearing. The lab was lying on his side. His breathing was shallow and his paws twitched spasmodically.

  “What’s wrong, old fella?” I said softly as I knelt next to him. There was a strange cast to his normally bright eyes. They seemed glazed and out of focus.

  What happened? I wondered fearfully. Did a snake bite him? I looked around, but saw no sign of a copperhead or rattlesnake. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been bitten by one though.

  I tugged gently at his collar. “Come on, boy. Let’s get you back to the jeep.”

  Midnight simply lay there, though, whimpering like a whipped puppy.

  I was wondering exactly how I was going to get him back to the road, when I heard a faint sound behind me. The tiny noise of a footstep snapping a twig in half.

  Startled, I jumped up and turned around.

  For one long moment, I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at.

  It was a boy, perhaps nine years of age. He was lanky, with spiky red hair, blue eyes, and freckles on his face and arms. He wore an orange Tennessee Vols T-shirt and denim shorts, and a pair of ragged sneakers on his feet.

  I couldn’t help but take a step backward, nearly tripping over Midnight in the process.

  It was a boy I had known a very long time ago. A boy from my childhood.

  A boy who had been dead twenty-two years come this August.

  His name was Joey Messner and he had been m
y best friend. I painfully recalled the accident that had taken his life. We had been climbing a big oak tree that was in his father’s cow pasture. Joey and I were racing to the top, recklessly, laughing all the way, when Joey’s footing gave way and he fell. I still remember that sickening crack as the back of his head struck a lower limb, snapping his neck. I’d hurried down as fast as I could and found him, crumpled and dying, on the ground below, his eyes wide with confusion and his mouth working silently, like a fish gasping for sustenance. I ran to fetch his father, but, by the time we got back, Joey was dead.

  And now here he was, after all these years, standing in front of me.

  “Hiya, Robbie,” he said. He lifted his hand from his side and gave me that secret salute we came up with that summer – a thumbs-up, followed by an immediate thumbs-down.

  I felt disoriented. What’s happening? I thought to myself. This isn’t real.

  Hurriedly, I tugged at Midnight’s collar, bringing him shakily to his feet with some effort. Slowly, I retreated and steered the black lab back through the blackberry bramble, toward the road. Joey simply stood there and grinned that lopsided, mischievous grin that was his trademark. The grin that no amount of mortician’s cosmetology could duplicate during his visitation at the funeral home.

  We were back through the tangle of underbrush and nearly to the road, when Midnight shuddered and collapsed. The dog was big – well over a hundred pounds – but I managed to carry him the rest of the way. I dumped him into the passenger seat of the jeep, then turned around. Joey stood next to a mossy deadfall, giving me the live-or-die salute again.

  “Hey, Robbie,” he called to me.

  I knelt beside the front wheel and quickly began to fumble for the lug nuts. Despite the heat of the summer afternoon, I felt chilled to the bone. I shuddered as I worked, wanting to tighten those lug nuts back into place and then get the hell out of that place.

  I was down to the last two, when Joey’s voice came again, this time only inches from my right ear. “Remember me?”

  It startled me so, that the lug wrench slipped, skinning my knuckles and bringing blood. I cussed and glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see him there, only a few feet away. But he was still where he had been before, standing beside the deadfall. This time, however, his head was lolled unnaturally backward, so far that I could only see the tip of his chin above his shoulders. He waved at me.

  “Come on, come on!” I hissed beneath my breath. Finally, I got the last nut on. I released the jack, tossed the tools and flat in the back of the jeep, and hopped inside.

  “Robbie,” called Joey from the edge of the woods. “Where ya going, buddy?”

  I started up the jeep and took off. I didn’t want to, but I glanced in the sideview mirror when I’d gotten a few yards down the lonesome stretch of Tanglewood Road. Joey Messner still stood there, his head back in its proper place now. A peculiar expression had replaced that silly grin of his. An expression that I could only describe as disappointment.

  The party at the lake had been the social disaster that I had expected it to be.

  We had arrived an hour and fifteen minutes late, a fact that Karla reminded me of constantly during our drive to the lake house. Once there, my time had been divided between putting up with Karla’s annoying co-workers and trying to keep my wife in line.

  Karla was bound and determined to be the life of the party, however. Too little food and too much to drink had turned her into a loud, obnoxious tease, and she made the rounds with the men in the crowd, joking and flirting.

  I would have been terribly embarrassed by her behavior, if my thoughts hadn’t been preoccupied with what had happened earlier on the old back road. I mostly stuck to a neutral corner that night, nursing a club soda with lime and trying to rationalize it all.

  The thing with Midnight was pretty much clear cut – either he had reacted negatively to his shots or he had been bitten by a poisonous snake. I had insisted that we rush him back to the veterinarian, but Karla had shot that idea down quickly. “I swear, Rob, sometimes I think you love that damn dog more than you love me,” she had snapped.

  Sometimes I wondered that myself.

  The incident with the boy who looked like Joey Messner was what troubled me the most. Leaning against the railing of the boat, with music blaring and people enjoying themselves to the max, I began to wonder if I had simply imagined the entire episode. Perhaps I had been so distraught over Midnight’s condition that I had imagined the entire thing. But why? I hadn’t thought of Joey in years. Why would he suddenly resurface at such a strange time and place, in the way he had?

  Am I going nuts? I couldn’t help but wonder. Has Karla finally pushed me over the edge?

  A burst of loud, lustful laughter from my wife jolted me from my thoughts. My suspicions had been correct. She had already shed her clothes and was in the lake, along with several others. Among them was the boss man himself. He and Karla swam away from the others, suspiciously and inappropriately close, as I watched.

  We got home around two-thirty the following morning. As I suspected, I’d had to fight to get her to leave. Karla had cussed and belittled me in front of her friends as I escorted her down the dock to where our car was parked. Phil Jenson had watched us, with an amused smile on his tanned face.

  When we got home, Karla was totally out of it. I left her to sleep it off in the Lexus.

  I found poor Midnight lying on the garage floor, dead. He was curled up in a fetal position and his pitch black coat had turned snow white in color.

  A couple of months passed.

  It was a Friday evening and I was returning home from work. I was particularly stressed that day. The marketing presentation I’d made earlier that morning hadn’t gone as well as I had expected, after weeks of preparation. And Karla was on my mind. She was out of town on business. Attending a sales conference in Memphis… with Phil.

  I wasn’t in any particular hurry. I could have taken the normal route home. But I chose to take the shortcut instead.

  It was late September and the leaves were just beginning to turn. The sun was setting and narrow streaks of the day’s last light beamed through the treetops along the rural lane of Tanglewood Road. I knew my reason for wanting to go there. I wanted to try to locate the spot where I had had the flat tire. The place where Midnight had suffered his downfall. The place where a long-dead pal from my childhood had come back to haunt me.

  At first, I had difficulty finding the place I was looking for. Then I spotted the mossy deadfall sixty feet or so off the roadway. I parked the jeep and got out. The evening was cool and I pulled my jacket closer around me. Then I started through the heavy carpet of kudzu toward the deadfall.

  I was halfway there when I spotted movement in the shadows just beyond the fallen tree.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Who’s there?”

  They didn’t answer. Just moved further into the woods.

  I hesitated for a moment. Just get back in the jeep and go home, I told myself. Fire yourself up a frozen dinner and brood over Karla all you want. Just get the hell out of here.

  But I wouldn’t listen to myself. I ducked past the deadfall and continued on into the thicket. I caught a glimpse of the person ahead, moving into the dense tangle of the blackberry bramble. They turned and looked at me, then disappeared from sight.

  My heart began to pound in my chest. No, it couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t be who I thought it was. It was impossible. More than impossible.

  My pace quickened. I plunged into the blackberry patch, ignoring the pull and tug of the thorns as I fought my way through. Then I reached the edge of the bramble, stepped through, and everything changed.

  I found myself standing on a sandy beach in the height of summer. The waves of the Atlantic crashed a few yards away, the surf rolling in, washing upon the sand with salty foam. Seagulls flew lazily overhead. I turned to the right and saw what I expected to see. The tall white column of a lighthouse stood atop rocky cliff.

>   I had been there before as a child. My family and I had taken a vacation to South Carolina one year, to Myrtle Beach and then down the coast toward Georgia. The lighthouse was located somewhere between Charleston and Savannah. My sister and I had been bored to tears, but my mother had loved it. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a place like this? she had said, her eyes closed, smiling as she breathed in the ocean air.

  My mother.

  I stared at the base of the lighthouse. She stood there on the rocky ledge, waving at me.

  “Robbie!” she called out.

  Oh dear God, I told myself. It’s happening again.

  I found myself walking, then running toward the lighthouse. Soon, I was scrambling up the rocky embankment to the front stoop of the tall structure. My mother had gone inside. As I entered the column of the lighthouse, I could hear her footsteps on the risers of the iron staircase that spiraled upward. I hesitated at the bottom, then carefully made my way to the top.

  When I finally got there, I discovered that the beacon apparatus of the lighthouse had been removed and the circular room had been glassed in and converted into a breezy Florida room, complete with potted palms and white wicker furniture. An easel sat to one side, boasting a canvas with a half-finished seascape. I recognized the style of the brushstrokes immediately.

  “Mom?” I called out.

  “I’m here, Robbie,” came her voice from a door that opened onto the outside railing.

  I saw her standing there then, healthy and vibrant, not sunken and drained of life by the horrible battle she had waged with cancer. Her face was rosy and her auburn locks were long and luxuriant, a far cry from the loss of hair and dignity she had endured during her long sessions of chemotherapy. She wore the outfit she had during that distant vacation. Sandals, white Capri pants, a white and navy stripped top, and that garish sunhat with the colorful flowers and plastic lemons and pineapples around the brim. It was a hat that had been a running joke among my father, my sister, and I during that entire trip along the Carolina coast. I remember saying that, if the car broke down, we could live off Mom’s fruit salad hat. Mom had simply laughed along with us, unaware that she would be diagnosed with ovarian cancer a month after our return home.