Glen Hoggarth

  “I've never felt better,” he replied.

  “Never better.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So cryptic all of a sudden.”

  “Just doing my things.”

  “At least pretend to be a grown up. If you wanted to choose the time and place to see me, you should’ve put yourself on a plane and come out to visit. That way you could have walked in on me while I was in the middle of something—I dunno, what are mothers supposed to be doing just before they're interrupted? Baking a pie perhaps.”

  Glen was at a loss. His mother was meddling in his life, wasting his time, while out in Whalley Doris needed his undivided care and attention. The situation there was still delicate.

  “Can't a mother inquire about her son's well-being? You never used to hide your aches and pains from me. Remember?”

  “I had a run-in with a woman.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “She hit me with a pot.”

  Martha pitched forward, laughing—the tinsel of saliva, her hair in wiry coils. “That'd be my boy,” she said, “or rather Colin's. Nobody's ever gotten the better of me, not in all those years dealing with rowdy tenants, staring them down one after the other. But your father was knocked down a flight of stairs once, and once someone belted him with a wine bottle. That man had a face that begged for punishment.”

  Getting the better of Martha was guaranteed to fail. A conversation with her typically went nowhere except the direction she wanted it to go. And she wasn't about to permit her son to waltz out the door and leave her sitting alone in the house.

  “I wish I knew what to do with you—and I know that sounds like any mother carping about her child, but you exasperate me. I can run a dozen buildings in three different cities, manage the lives of hundreds of tenants, but there’s just so much I can do for my one and only. Always too much boy in the man, no matter how hard I try to drive that little boy out.”

  In the dim light, Glen discerned the copper-necked lamp craning over the armchair and the curtains’ pleat-like creases. His father's oil painting remained cloaked in darkness; nevertheless, after all this time it finally began to address him. The recent serendipity of events, Russell and Doris, then Doris and him, his mother flying thousands of miles to arrive exactly when she did, to witness what she did: now the painting was proposing something still too nuanced for him to fully comprehend—but something about Adam and Eve, a vague, inchoate notion which had something to do with reversal.

  A barrier inside Glen lifted. He imagined a rage unfolding into a pair of room-wide wings that battered the air, swatted cups and vases off their surfaces, and knocked wall-bound objects askew. Each feather was a razor, double-edged, slashing whatever it grazed.

  This rage. It was freedom.

  Martha either didn't see the signs or she failed to acknowledge them. “I'm not going to be around forever to keep you in functioning order. You must see that.”

  “I'm not some broken machine,” Glen replied. “And lately I've started thinking you're more of a burden than anything else. I think I've finally outgrown you.”

  “You've no use for me, is that it? Then hand over my money.”

  “How does it feel? To be free of me.”

  “Like I'm talking to the little boy again.”

  Martha's inch-thick hide, it was impenetrable. “Look, I've been thinking about the ranch,” she said. “It's not a bad time to sell, and we could use the money as capital to get you started off. You'd just need to learn to deal with real estate people, but I'd help you with that. I could show you the ropes at first. It was probably a mistake to sell everything off like I did, and maybe I should've pushed you a bit more. But you're so damned fragile.”

  “I've already got a plan,” Glen said.

  “Let's hear it then. Tell me.”

  “I don't feel the need to run it by you.”

  “Well, he certainly talks like a man,” Martha sneered, and at that moment Glen crossed the room and drove the carving knife between her ribs—ribs thin and brittle, resembling the wicker grates of a bird cage. His mother expired in a soft, dry cough; Glen let her first tumble into his arms, then onto the carpet where she lay motionless like a dog curled up for a nap.

  The oil painting on the wall. Adam cowering under God's timeless fury, both apologizing and trying to pass the buck. Eve more resigned.

  It was just the two of them now.

  Chapter 21

  Glen had erected an upside-down pyre at the bottom of the swimming pool, and its smoke roiled upwards in a dust-devil swirl. Martha’s corpse lay buried under layers of burning oil paintings. Back and forth, Glen continued fetching the canvases from inside the pool house and going back outside to feed the flames. But all the while his thoughts dwelled on his lover asleep in bed. Doris was recovering her strength, he hoped. Steadily getting better.

  Quite unexpectedly, she hadn't rejected the idea of driving to an unknown destination in the middle of the night. From what Glen could tell, Doris’s irrational fear of unpredictable catastrophe, and not being able to return home safely, had switched off—maybe only temporarily or only as long as other matters preoccupied her. In any case, she had napped peacefully in the car all the way to the ranch and upon arrival hadn’t even asked where in the world she was.

  Back inside, Glen picked up two paintings and held them at eye level. A couple of Renaissance masterpieces, one by the famous Caravaggio, the other a lesser talent; a classic still life and a Cupid asleep on silken bedcovers. Both destined for the fire.

  But he lowered the canvases with a groan—a sandbag seemed to have been launched into his stomach. Russell, his best friend, dead. That bizarre reality. Impossible. Doris’s confession that morning had constituted more of a rant than a clear disclosure of facts. Yet, from the sounds of it, she had actually been pretty fond of Russell. She definitely hadn't hated him.

  Murderess—the word crept up on him.

  In the firelight, the smoke's sinewy trail vanished in the pitch dark, like an eel slithering through a bog. His mother’s corpse had been as light as a bail of dry hay. In the end, Martha had been easy to cast aside. What a surprise: yet another surprise to come to grips with. And now he had blood on his hands too; Doris better not think him a pushover. She had better think twice.

  Glen turned towards the pool house once more. Doris appeared in the doorway. Her breasts and round belly, her heavy hips tapering down to thighs and sturdy calves.

  “Someone could see us out here,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. Not a chance.”

  She held Glen around the waist. They gazed at the fire.

  “We’re in plain view, aren't we?”

  “The woods surround the clearing.”

  Doris squeezed tighter. Glen rested his hand on her hip—bare skin as smooth as the sight of it promised. The warmth from the bed covers would soon be shed.

  “How about joining me?” she asked.

  “You mean strip?”

  “Come on, let’s see you.”

  “It's bloody cold.”

  “I'm not cold. There's the fire.”

  But Glen knew he’d be cold.

  Fuck it! Salvation was his, right here and now. Only there was the small matter of paying for it. Not today and not tomorrow, but sooner rather than later. He removed his sweater and shirt. Doris snatched the clothes and flung them on the flames, the sag on her arms and breasts shimmering in the hot glow. Her eyes flashed with wild humor.

  “Let's take a good look at you.”

  “Those are my good jeans!”

  “Better say bye-bye.”

  He rescued his wallet. Just barely.

  They cried in laughter, loudly,

  And from the unbroken trees nearby,

  The ancient lovers beckoned.

  Chapter 22

  Glen raised the flashlight and beamed the swimming pool. Its interior had been scorched black, as if a fireball blazing down from the stars had burst upon the now charred flo
or. Tipping the flashlight upward, the light struck a pair of slippered feet—upright, side by side, heels and ankles. Doris Keppler stood gazing at the clearing. “It’s lovely here,” she said.

  Ghosts and bad omens. The smell of burnt flesh—and yet lovely, Glen agreed. Because none of those things were right now. None defined the present.

  They went back inside the pool house, closing the door on the cold, quiet night. There was only the bed. “They’ll be coming you know,” Doris said.

  Glen, sitting on the bedcovers, looked up. “What do you propose?”

  “Be happy until then.”

  “Be happy, that's all?” He regretted sounding dubious.

  “We need to be able to manage that.”

  “Just stay put like a couple of sitting ducks?”

  “Where else is there to go?”

  “Nowhere that I know of this moment.”

  Doris wore her pajamas and a fluffy terrycloth robe. Her calves tautened as Glen ran his palm up her leg, smooth as polished stone. Clutching his shoulder she pressed down—and he flinched in pain. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Your shoulder.”

  “It's alright. No worries.”

  “Glen, I hurt you.”

  “Seriously, it’s nothing.”

  “Are you still suffering?”

  “It’s better now.”

  “Poor you, anyway.”

  “That’s all in the past. Leave it there.”

  The flaming meteor Glen had imagined exploding in the swimming pool had in fact blown apart his life—his old life, blasted to rubble and dust. He knew the trajectory of this devastating good fortune had originated at an impossible-to-imagine distance, and one didn’t take those odds for granted. Glen stood up and they fell onto the bed together.

  Chapter 23

  Strolling through the cedar and Douglas fir, Doris hugged Glen’s waist while he rested an arm over her sloping shoulders. Every couple dozen steps she tugged him close again and Glen communicated his thrill with a gentle squeeze—as their hips grazed, as she slipped her hand into his back pocket joy infuse his whole being.

  “We can move out here,” Doris said. “Out here in the woods.”

  Glen smiled: her exuberance didn’t seem out of place here in the middle of nowhere, and he felt it too. Go ahead, Doris, say whatever crosses your mind. Speak, talk, anything, that's what we’re about, isn’t it? He wanted them to give in to small and big emotions.

  “We’ll need a big tent. It’s chilly,” he said.

  “A tent—lovely idea.”

  “We could build a log cabin. We have trees galore.”

  “A nice warm fireplace.”

  “Us roasting on a bearskin rug.”

  Their old lives had been reduced to cinder. The clothes on their backs all that remained. Doris had even stopped smoking, not lighting up once since coming to the ranch, and her queerly cadenced, stilted manner of speech had become more natural-sounding. As for himself, Glen felt grown up, a man, for the first time in his life. Both parents had had to burn up for that to happen. Fire to destroy the past, fire to make love to—more idle thoughts.

  The woodchip trail sank underfoot. The sibilance of the trees—panting gusts rustling branches and twigs—evoked an image of rodent legions scurrying over the leafy ground. Glen's waist-length jacket left his legs exposed, and his blue jeans didn't stand up well to the wind. Doris, on the other hand, wore only a cotton track suit with a thin sweater over top.

  The last row of trees gave way to the dome of the night sky and vast countryside. Ahead, fields divided by wire fences, then more fields—the neighbor’s farmland, pasture, some horses and cows—stretching towards the flicker and blink of the distant highway. That was where their troubles lurked, pacing back and forth like hungry tigers. Only the gridlock of necessity and leaden, plodding cause and effect was keeping those monsters at bay. For the time being.

  The highway served to remind Glen. The ranch, with its acres of tranquility, was hardly hidden away; the sense of remoteness created by the fence and trees along the road, and the space between the houses, deceived you. Hiding right under the nose of the police might be a better description of their present circumstances. So, what to do next?

  Doris had hinted in a thousand subtle ways that she didn’t care to address the matter. She was happy now—somehow, for some reason, some way or another. The ranch made her happy.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” Doris said.

  “That must be the fourth time you’ve said that today.”

  “Well, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “I nearly didn’t. It was a spur of the moment thing.”

  “Then luck favored me for once.”

  “At first I was planning to take us to Mexico.”

  Doris reached for Glen’s hand. “Only time goes by so fast here. That's the only thing.”

  “Does it?” Glen said. “I haven’t noticed.”

  “Two days already—let’s not think about it.”

  “Okay, you got a deal.”

  “Not Mexico. Not what's out there. Not tomorrow.”

  Chapter 24

  Their lawn chairs had been positioned to face the daylit clearing. Doris rose from her chair and wandered off, embarking on another of her mini-walkabouts. This time, after nearing the ranch house and peering in its tall windows, she ambled towards the horse stables. Judging from appearances, she didn’t seem to have a worry in the world—a far cry from the ranting, panic-stricken wreck she had been a short time ago, Glen thought. Surely, the anguish was still there. Had Doris really been able to bury it in some deep vault somewhere, then forget about it? Glen yearned to do the same with the fright and memories plaguing him.

  Doris crossed the mucky grass to the opposite side of the yard. After wiling away a few minutes at the edge of the underbrush, she perched herself on a fence post to contemplate the heavens. Whether trying to decipher the cloud patterns or lose her way in their widespread spatter, she appeared engrossed. Glen mused: Doris was no toughened cowgirl striking a pose, no farm gal with calloused hands and a sunburnt brow; rather, she was a soft-bodied woman who couldn’t be less suited for a ranch setting. Yet, here she was making the place perfect for herself.

  The walkabout over, Doris jogged back to her lawn chair. Her breasts slung up and down in rhythm with her steps, she gathered her long hair and flung it over her shoulder, and then came the bone-crushing embrace Glen had hoped for. She was going to break his back one day with the wrestler's arms she threw around him. Let her never stop giving me these.

  Life was simple here. Affection unencumbered.

  Chapter 25

  Leaving the canopied shelter of the woods, they strolled into the weak sun. Doris declared, “I’ve never been in so much nature,” and at that moment Glen’s love for her seemed to bump up yet another notch. The wonderment in her voice moved him almost to tears.

  But a stab of sober reflection followed—the grim truth of her words. For Doris hadn’t had the same opportunity as most people to enjoy the great outdoors—the outdoors, freedom, quietude, or anything else good for that matter. First there had been the years spent stuck in a compound surrounded by a fence too high to see over. And afterwards, Doris had lived most of her life enshrouded by a growing psychosis. With good days and plenty of bad days.

  “It’s just a few acres of trees,” Glen said.

  “It’s so beautiful. Beautiful.”

  “The trails are actually meant for horses.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Not a horse person?”

  “I’m a you person.”

  Glen squeezed Doris’s hand and gave her forehead a kiss. He marveled again at the change in her. The newfound trust and warmth which was both endearing and infectious.

  Rounding the trees to the muddy tractor road, they looped past the stables and entered the clearing from a direction they had never come from before. Glen stopped to try the old pump near the fence gate. Working its wooden handle
for close to five minutes, well water—clear, without a speck of dirt, and icy cold—spluttered out of the cast iron spout. “I’m so glad you have this place,” Doris said, testing the flow. She slurped a drink from a cupped palm.

  “Our place, you mean. It’s nothing without you.”

  “Our place. It's our hideaway.”

  Glen reflected on Doris's choice of words. He wondered how much weight she attached to the idea of a hideaway, which might mean a nice, secluded vacation spot or be a place where murderers and bank robbers hid from the police. Which was it for Doris?

  Often it was hard to tell how seriously Doris took their predicament, or how much her comprehension was to some extent delusional. However pleasant the peace and quiet on the ranch, Glen felt they needed to be realistic. Staying here much longer was probably a bad idea.

  The ranch had cast a spell on them both. Either that or he and Doris were casting a spell on each other. The dreadful recent past had receded into the background; in the here and now, a fragile serenity presided. But Doris’s equanimity was bound to fade sooner or later. Then the fears haunting him would converge on her and when they finally did—he had already witnessed her collapse in the throes of despair once. When Doris fell, she fell hard.

  “Can we explore the main house?”

  “Go in, you mean?” Glen asked.

  “Have you ever been inside?”

  “A few times. But I didn’t bring the key.”

  “No spare under the doormat?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “No viewing the house then.” Doris smiled but sounded wistful.

  “Hold on,” Glen said, “we’ll find a way inside.” He picked up a heavy stick and rammed one end through the backdoor window. The act felt illicit, criminal, but Glen figured if you couldn't break into your own house what was the point of owning one?

  “Are you sure that was a good idea?” Doris asked.

  “It was my best idea,” Glen said.

  In the various rooms, cardboard boxes sat discarded where the ranch house’s former tenant—the famous TV producer from Los Angeles—had dropped them. How odd that the producer, or the studio he worked for, hadn’t arranged proper clean-up. An example of big studio arrogance? It was probably cheaper to dump the used stuff here and purchase anew when the time came. Glen ripped open a few of the larger boxes—shoes, coats, scarves, enough to dress an army. Ponchos and parkas for the rain, and footwear of all kinds. The gear had no doubt been worn by cast and crew while filming in the area. Until the never-ending wet weather chased the production company to a location in California.