Now it was well above the tree, which meant he had been lying here for some time, perhaps an hour, judging by its position in the sky.
Slowly Warren sat up, his head aching as it always did afterwards. His hands and face were numb from the cold; both of his gloves had fallen off. He saw the ax lying beside him, its blade buried deep in one end of a maple log. A day’s worth of firewood, already split, lay scattered around him. It took him a painfully long time to register these observations, and to consider the significance of each in turn. The thoughts came to him with effort, as though dragged from a great distance, arriving tattered and in disarray. He was patient with himself; eventually it would all make sense.
He had come out soon after sunrise to split his wood for the day. The result of his labor now lay all around him. He had almost completed the morning chore, had just swung his ax into that last log, when the darkness came over him. He had fallen onto the woodpile; that would explain why some of the logs had rolled off the top. His underwear was soaked; he must have wet himself, as he often did during a fit. Looking down at his clothes, he saw that his jeans were saturated.
There was blood on his shirt.
He staggered to his feet and walked slowly back into the old farmhouse.
The kitchen was hot and stuffy from the woodstove; it made him feel a little dizzy, and his vision had started to fade around the edges by the time he reached the bathroom. He sat down on the chipped toilet lid, clutching his head, waiting for the clouds to lift from his brain. The cat came in and rubbed against his calf, meowing for attention. He reached down to her and drew comfort from the softness of her fur.
His face was no longer numb from the cold, and he was now aware of pain throbbing insistently in his temple. Clutching the sink for support, he rose to his feet and looked in the mirror. Just over his left ear, the gray hair was stiff and matted with blood. A streak of it had dried across his cheek, like war paint. He stared at his own reflection, at a face deeply etched by sixty-six years of hard winters and honest work and loneliness. His only companion was the cat, now meowing at his feet, not from affection but hunger. He loved the cat, and someday he would mourn her passing with tears and a solemn burial and nights of longing for the sound of her purring, but he was under no illusion that she loved him.
He removed his clothes, the frayed and blood-stained shirt, the urine-soaked jeans. He undressed with the same care he devoted to every other task in his life, leaving his clothes in a tidy heap on the toilet lid. He turned on the shower and stepped in without waiting for the water to warm up; the discomfort was only momentary, scarcely worth a shiver in the context of his cold and uncomfortable life. He washed the blood out of his hair, the laceration stinging from the soap. He must have sliced his scalp open when he fell on the woodpile. It would heal, as all his other cuts had. Warren Emerson was a walking testament to the durability of scar tissue.
The cat renewed her meowing as soon as he stepped out of the shower. It was a pitiful sound, despairing, and he could not listen to it without feeling guilty. Still naked, he walked to the kitchen, opened a can of Little Friskies chicken bits, and spooned it into Mona’s cat bowl.
She gave a soft growl of pleasure and began to eat, no longer caring whether he came or went. Except for his skill with a can opener, he was extraneous to her existence.
He went to the bedroom to dress.
Once it had been his parents’ room, and it still contained all their possessions. The spindle bed, the bureau with the brass knobs, the photographs hanging up in their tin picture frames. As he buttoned his shirt, his gaze lingered on one photo in particular, of a dark-haired girl with smiling eyes. What was Iris doing at this moment? he wondered, as he did every day of his life. Did she ever think of him? His gaze moved on to another photo. It was the last one taken of his family, his mother plump and smiling, his father ill at ease in a suit and tie. And wedged between them, with his hair slicked to one side, was little Warren.
He reached out, fingers touching the photo of his own twelve-year-old face. He could not remember that boy. Up in the attic were the toy trains and the adventure books and the brittle crayons that once belonged to the child in that photo, but that was a different Warren who’d played in this house, who had stood smiling between his parents for a Sunday photograph. Not the Warren he saw when he looked in the mirror.
Suddenly he felt a terrible longing to touch that child’s toys again.
He climbed the steps to the attic and dragged the old blanket chest under the light. With the bare bulb swinging overhead, he lifted the chest lid. Inside were treasures. He took them out one by one and set them on the dusty floor. The cookie tin with all the Matchbox cars. The Lincoln Logs. The leather pouch of marbles. At last he found what he’d been looking for: the set of checkers.
He lay out the board and set up the checkers, red on his side, black on the opposite.
Mona came padding up to the attic and sat beside him, her breath smelling of chicken. For a moment she regarded the board with feline disdain. Then she tiptoed over to it and sniffed at one of the black pieces.
“Is that your first move then?” said Warren. It was not a very smart move, but then, what did one expect from a cat? He moved the black piece for her, and she seemed satisfied.
Outside the wind blew, rattling loose shutters. He could hear the branches of the lilac tree scratch against the clapboards.
Warren advanced a red checker and he smiled at his companion. “Your move, Mona.”
At six-thirty, as she did every weekday morning, five-year-old Isabel Morrison crept into her older sister’s bedroom and climbed under the covers with Mary Rose. There she wriggled like a happy worm in the warm sheets and hummed to herself as she waited for Mary Rose to wake up. There would always be a great deal of sighing and moaning, and Mary Rose would turn from one side to another, her long brown hair tickling Isabel’s face. Isabel thought Mary Rose was the most beautiful girl on earth. She looked like the sleeping Princess Aurora, waiting for her prince to kiss her. Sometimes Isabel would pretend she was Prince Charming, and even though she knew girls weren’t supposed to kiss each other, she would plant her lips on her sister’s mouth and announce: “Now you have to wake up!”
One time, Mary Rose had been awake all along, and had sprung up like a giggling monster and tickled Isabel so mercilessly that both girls had fallen off the bed in a duet of happy squeals.
If only Mary Rose would tickle her now. If only Mary Rose would be her normal self.
Isabel leaned close to her sister’s ear and whispered, “Aren’t you going to wake up?”
Mary Rose pulled the covers over her head. “Go away, pest.”
“Mommy says it’s time for school. You have to wake up.”
“Get out of my room!”
“But it’s time for—”
Mary Rose gave a growl and lashed out with an angry kick.
Isabel slithered to the far side of the bed, where she lay in troubled silence, rubbing her sore shin and trying to understand what had just happened. Mary Rose had never kicked her before. Mary Rose always woke up with a smile and called her Dizzy Izzy and braided her hair before school.
She decided to try again. She crawled on hands and knees to her sister’s pillow, peeled back the sheets, and whispered into Mary Rose’s ear: “I know what Mommy and Daddy are getting you for Christmas. You wanna hear?”
Mary Rose’s eyes shot open. She turned to look at Isabel.
With a whimper of fear, Isabel scrambled off the bed and stared at a face she scarcely recognized. A face that frightened her. “Mary Rose?” she whispered.
Then she ran out of the room.
Her mother was downstairs in the kitchen, stirring a pot of oatmeal and trying to hear the radio over the screeches of their parakeet, Rocky. As Isabel came tearing into the kitchen, her mother turned and said, “It’s seven o’clock. Isn’t your sister getting up?”
“Mommy,” Isabel wailed in despair. “That’s not Mary Rose!”
Noah Elliot did a 360 kick-flip, popping the skate-board off the curb, into the air, and landing it neatly on the blacktop. All right! Nailed it! Baggy clothes flapping in the wind, he rode the board all the way down to the teachers’ parking lot, ollied the curb, and came around again, a sweet ride all the way.
It was the only time he felt in control of his life, when he was riding his board, when for once, he determined his own fate, his own course. These days it seemed too many things were decided by other people, that he was being dragged, kicking and screaming, into a future he’d never asked for. But when he was riding his board, with the wind in his face and the pavement streaking by, he owned the moment. He could forget he was trapped in this nowhere town. He could even forget, for one brief and exhilarating ride, that his dad was dead and that nothing could ever be right again.
He felt the freshmen girls watching him. They were standing in a tight group behind the trailer classrooms, glossy heads bent close together as they made giggly girl sounds. All their faces moved in unison as their eyes tracked Noah on his board. He rarely talked to them, and they rarely talked to him, but every lunch period, there they’d be, watching him as he worked through his repertoire.
Noah wasn’t the only skateboarder at Knox High School, but he was definitely the best, and the girls kept their focus on him, ignoring the other boys whizzing around on the blacktop. Those boys were just posers anyway, dudes pretending to be skaters, all dressed up in gear straight out of the CCS catalogue. They had the uniform down right—Birdhouse shirts and Kevlar shoes and pants so big the cuffs dragged on the ground—but they were still posers in a hick town. They hadn’t skated with the big boys in Baltimore.
As Noah circled around to make his return run, he noticed the gleam of blond hair at the edge of the track field. Amelia Reid was watching him. She stood off by herself, cradling a book as usual. Amelia was one of those girls who seemed dipped in honey, she was so perfect, so golden. Nothing at all like her two jerky brothers, who were always hassling him in the cafeteria. Noah had never noticed her watching him before, and the realization that her attention was at this very moment focused on him made his knees go a little wobbly.
He ollied the board and almost lost it on the landing. Focus, dude! Don’t bite it. He zipped down to the faculty parking lot, spun around, and came rumbling up the concrete ramp. There was a handrail on one side, slanted downward. He spun around, and popped up onto the railing. It would’ve been a sweet slide all the way down.
Except for the fact Taylor Darnell chose just that moment to walk in front of him.
Noah yelled, “Outta the way!” but Taylor didn’t react in time.
At the last possible instant, Noah rolled off his board and tumbled to the pavement. The skateboard, its momentum established, slid all the way down the rail and smacked into Taylor’s back.
Taylor whirled, yelling: “What the hell, man? Who threw that?”
“Didn’t throw it, dude,” said Noah, picking himself up from the ground. His palms were both scraped, and his knee was throbbing. “It was an accident. You just got in the way.” Noah bent down to pick up the skate-board, which had landed wheels up. Taylor was an okay kid, one of the first who’d come up to say hello when Noah first arrived in town eight months ago. Sometimes, they even hung out together in the afternoons, showing each other new skateboard tricks. So Noah was shocked when Taylor suddenly shoved him, hard. “Hey! Hey, what’s your problem?” said Noah.
“You threw it at me!”
“No I didn’t.”
“Everyone saw it!” Taylor looked around at the bystanders. “Didn’t you see it?”
No one said anything.
“I told you, it was an accident,” said Noah. “I’m really sorry, man.”
There was laughter over by the trailer classrooms. Taylor glanced at the girls and realized they were watching the exchange, and his face turned a furious red. “Shut up!” he yelled at them. “Idiot girls!”
“Geez, Taylor,” said Noah. “What’s your problem?”
The other skaters had popped up their boards and were now standing around, watching. One of them joked,
“Hey, why did Taylor cross the road?”
“Why?”
“Cause he got his dick stuck in the chicken!”
All the skaters laughed, including Noah. He couldn’t help it.
He was unprepared for the blow. It seemed to come out of no where, a sucker punch to the jaw. His head snapped up and he stumbled backwards and fell, his butt hitting the blacktop. There he sat for a moment, ears roaring and vision blurred as his shock gave way to hurt rage. He was my friend, and he hit me!
Noah staggered back to his feet and lunged at Taylor, tackling him head on. They both sprawled to the ground, Noah on top. They rolled over and over, both boys flailing, neither one able to get in a decisive blow. Noah finally pinned him, but it was like holding down a spitting cat.
“Noah Elliot!”
He froze, his hands still trapping Taylor’s wrists. Slowly he turned his head and saw the principal, Miss Cornwallis, standing over them. The other kids had all backed away and were watching from a safe distance.
“Get up!” said Miss Cornwallis. “Both of you!”
At once Noah released Taylor and rose to his feet. Taylor, his face by now almost purple with rage, screamed: “He shoved me! He shoved me and I tried to defend myself!”
“That’s not true! He hit me first!”
“He threw his skateboard!”
“I didn’t throw anything. It was an accident!”
“Accident? You liar!”
“Both of you, be quiet!” yelled Miss Cornwallis.
There was shocked silence in the schoolyard as everyone stared at the principal. They’d never heard her yell before. She was a prim but handsome woman who wore suits and low heels to school and kept her blond hair neatly tucked into a French twist. To see her shouting was a revelation to them all.
Miss C. took a deep breath, swiftly recovering her dignity. “Give me the skateboard, Noah.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t hit him.”
“You were pinning him on the ground. I saw it.”
“But I didn’t hit him!”
She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Noah walked over to his board, lying a few feet away. It was well-worn, one chipped edged crisscrossed with electrician’s tape. The board had been a birthday gift when he turned thirteen. He’d added the decals underneath it—a green dragon with red fire shooting out of its mouth—and had broken in the wheels riding the streets of Baltimore where he used to live. He loved this board, because it reminded him of everything he’d left behind. Everything he still missed. He held it for a moment, then, wordlessly, handed it to Miss C.
She took it with a look of distaste. Turning to address the other students she said, “There’ll be no more skating on school grounds. I want all the skate-boards brought home today. And if I see any boards tomorrow, I’ll confiscate them. Is that clear?”
There was a silent nodding of heads.
Miss C. turned to Noah. “You’re in detention until three-thirty this afternoon.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“You come to my office now. You’re going to sit and think about what you did do.”
Noah started to argue, then swallowed his words. Everyone was looking at him. He glimpsed Amelia Reid standing by the track field, and his face flushed with humiliation. In silence, head down, he followed Miss C. toward the building.
The other skaters sullenly parted to let them through. Only as Noah was walking away from them did he hear one of the boys mutter:
“Thanks, Elliot. You screwed it up for the rest of us.”
If one wished to take the pulse of the town of Tranquility, the place to go was Monaghan’s Diner. This was where the Dinosaur Club met every day at noon. It was not really a club, but a coffee klatch, six or
seven retirees who, for want of a job to go to, hung around Nadine’s counter, admiring the pies under the plastic bells. Claire had no idea how the club got its name. Her guess was that one of the men’s wives, in a fit of pique over her husband’s daily absence, one day blurted out something like: “Oh, you and that bunch of old dinosaurs!” And the name stuck, as good names do. They were all men, all well past sixty. Nadine was only in her fifties, but she was an unofficial Dinosaur because she worked behind the counter and had the good humor to tolerate their bad jokes and cigarette smoke.
Four hours after the thigh bone was found, Claire stopped in at Monaghan’s for lunch. The Dinosaurs, seven of them today, all wearing blaze orange over flannel shirts, sat in their usual place, the far left barstools near the milkshake machine.
Ned Tibbetts turned and nodded as Claire came in the door. Not a warm greeting, but gruffly respectful. “Mornin’, Doc.”
“Morning, Mr. Tibbetts.”
“Gonna be a mean wind blowing in today.”
“It’s already freezing outside.”
“Coming out of the northwest. Could have snow tonight.”
“Cup of coffee, Doc?” asked Nadine.
“Thank you.”
Ned turned back to the other Dinosaurs, who’d variously acknowledged her entrance, and were now back in conversation. She knew only two of them by name; the others were merely familiar faces. Claire sat alone at her end of the counter, as befitted her outsider status. Oh, people were cordial enough to her. They smiled, they were polite. But to these natives, her eight months in Tranquility was but a temporary sojourn, a city girl’s fling with the simple life. Winter, they all seemed to agree, would be the test. Four months of snowstorms and black ice would drive her back to the city, as it had driven off the last two doctors from away.
Nadine slid a steaming cup of coffee in front of Claire. “Guess you know all about it, don’t you?” she said.