Fallen Mountains, page 20
“I haven’t been trapping since I was a kid, sixteen. I used to run lines with my grandpa when I was a boy, but I gave that up, long time ago. You know that, Sheriff.” He looked at Red. “But besides that, do you know what the odds would be of me being able to get another person to unknowingly step into one, to step their foot onto that small area, at just the right angle that he couldn’t get out of it?” Chase held out his hands, forming a circle. He shook his head. “It’d be put near impossible.”
Mick seemed to consider this. “Why do you think he was wearing camouflage?” Mick said, leaning close to Chase. “Why did he have two guns?”
Chase unfolded his hands and wiped them on his jeans. “Can I get a drink, please?” He breathed in deeply, placed his hands back on the table, and folded them again.
Red stood and grabbed a paper cup from the cupboard, then filled the cup with water from the sink and handed it to Chase.
Chase took a drink and placed the empty cup on the table. “It was turkey season,” he said, at last, then wiped his hands on his pants again. “It would appear that he was hunting.”
“Sure, the shotgun I understand. But that fancy pistol?” Mick said, studying Chase’s moves, glancing at Red. “I don’t know much about hunting, but I’m fairly certain most people don’t hunt turkeys with a .44.”
Note the anxiety, Red imagined him saying. He’s hiding something. Red could see it, too.
Mick frowned. “I mean, he didn’t have a license, but fine. Let’s say he was hunting. We found four empty shells at the scene, three from the shotgun and one from the pistol, but no dead animals anywhere near, and the .44 bullet in his head.”
Chase looked Mick in the eye. “My guess is that when the animals were pressing in on him, and he couldn’t keep them away no more, he shot at them.” He twisted his mouth to the side, swallowed hard and looked out the window again. “Saved the .44 for himself. I would’ve done the same thing.”
Red pictured how Transom must have struggled, how he must have come to terms with the fact that they would devour him eventually, the coyotes and vultures, the beetles and mice, maybe a bear. They would descend on his body, dead or alive, as he lay there, weakening as the blood gathered at his feet. He imagined the fear and anxiety Transom must have felt in his final moments. It had been ten days since he’d disappeared, but how long had Transom lay there, in the woods that he had both loved and destroyed, before he died?
Mick steepled his fingers on the table. “Here’s the thing I just can’t get my head around. Why couldn’t he have pried open that trap? He was a big guy, an athlete,” he said. “He should’ve been able to open it, right?”
Chase kept his hands laced together, propped his elbows. He began shaking his head, squinting. “Transom had a bad arm. Weak. Besides, that trap hasn’t been used for decades. Something could’ve broke, maybe a lever got rusty or something. A thousand things could’ve happened. How the heck would I know?”
The coroner had called in a trapping expert to have a look at the thing—there were two broken hinges and a faulty screw. Chase was right.
Mick noted something in his tablet.
Red looked at Chase, that posture of repentance, hands folded, head bowed. He seemed sorry, but maybe that was sadness he saw, not remorse. There was a fine line between the two, Red knew. A very fine line.
“You’re free to go, Mr. Hardy,” Mick said. He took out his phone, excused himself, and left the room.
Chase stood and nodded at Red. “Sheriff,” he said.
“Sorry for your loss, Chase. I imagine there was some tension, lately, with what happened at the farm, but I know you two were close, deep down. Like brothers, you two. That’s what Jack always said.” He thought of his own brother, ripping through McKee’s Rocks in their father’s Chevelle, punching Red in the face once for saying the Steelers sucked.
“It’s been a bad year.”
“What’ll you do now?” Red asked him. “You gonna stick around?” He’d been wondering what would happen to his old friend’s farm, whether Chase would stay or go. The oil company was finishing its compressor station in Maggie’s field, an enormous patch of cleared earth with a huge metal-sided building, two stories tall. Outbuildings, too, and some convoluted tan structure of pumps and cylinders that Red assumed to be the workhorse of it all. Trucks would come and go, hauling the extracted gas to be processed and then sent out again.
Chase leaned against the filing cabinet. “I thought about leaving. Thought about it ever since Jack passed, to tell you the truth. Sell the place, cut ties, go somewhere new. Out West, maybe. One of those big states where there’s more wildlife than people. But I don’t think that’s what Jack and Maggie would’ve wanted, do you? My parents, too.” He looked at Red, his blue eyes searching.
Red shook his head. “That’s not my call, son. You know that.”
“I think they would say, if you love something, you love it no matter what. You find the good in it and you work at what’s not good. They all used to say that.” He took his hat off and ran his hands through his thick hair. “So that’s what I intend to do. I’m gonna walk the place with garbage bags, and piece by piece, clean it up. I’m gonna take my front loader out and push the logs into piles, cut the stumps low. They’ll come back, the trees, the woods. Not in my lifetime, not in my kids’. But someday.” He nodded. “Someday, that place could be beautiful again.”
Red knew Chase understood that the oil company would always have a presence there, that every time Chase looked out his front window, or worked in Maggie’s old garden, the compressor station would loom in the distance, a constant reminder of what used to be, and he admired Chase’s optimistic perspective. “You let me know if you need a hand. I might be getting old but I can still run a chainsaw and pick up trash,” Red said with a smile. In a matter of weeks, he’d have a lot more time on his hands, and working to clean up Jack and Maggie’s place would be the perfect way to spend it.
“Appreciate that, Sheriff. I’ll give you a ring.” Chase turned to go but then stopped. “Oh, I wanted you to be the first to know. I’m gonna ask Laney to be my wife.”
Red smiled and extended a hand. “Congratulations,” he said. “I’m happy for you.” He paused. “Your family, they’d be happy, too.”
Chase nodded. “I know.”
Red had three things left to do. First, he had to arrange a time for Teresa to come into the station. He’d already called her to tell her what they’d found in the woods, what the coroner had said. He’d already explained, in the gentlest way he could, that, no, she didn’t need to come in to see Transom’s body—he’d been positively identified with the tattoo, the number 7 on his shoulder clearly visible once they’d cleaned him up, and there was no need for her to put herself through the agony of seeing him— and that, yes, she should go ahead and make arrangements for a funeral. But he felt that she should know about her fiancé’s plans, too. He would give her the packet with the wedding plans and plane tickets from the Sea2Sea Travel Agency in Pittsburgh. As painful as it might be, Red felt she deserved to know that she’d been right, after all. Transom hadn’t left her.
The second task was one Red handled with delight. He took out the envelope from his desk drawer and laid it on Leigh’s desk, where she would find it the following morning. He would go out on patrol first thing, maybe nab a few frackers flying toward town on 28, bring in a couple tickets for her to process so that she had some things to do and didn’t spend the day fussing over him and making a big deal about his retirement. It was a job for a younger man, this work, taking care of a town, watching over everyone, especially now that things were changing, moving faster, new people and new problems drifting in. He laid the envelope on Leigh’s desk with a sense of intense relief, gathered his hat and his lunch bag, and locked the door of the police station behind him. Keys in his pocket, he walked over to the Jimmy and began pumping the pedal.
One thing left.
Red pulled into the small patch of gravel and parked between the trailer and storage unit. He wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief, sweat trickling from him. He climbed out of the vehicle, smoothed his shirt. Knees creaking, he struggled up the stairs to Possum’s stoop and knocked on the door. He saw Possum watching him through the curtain, then heard footsteps crossing the trailer. His heart thundered in his chest.
Possum cracked the door. “Sheriff?”
“Sorry to bother you, Tom,” Red said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “You got a minute?”
Possum opened the door wider and stepped out onto the stoop. He looked beyond Red, squinting his big eyes, suspicious. “What’s up?”
Red could feel the words catching in his throat, anxiety pulsing through him, making him light-headed. He wrapped his fingers around the metal railing, steadying himself. “I owe you an apology,” he said, and he couldn’t help it—his grief began to spill. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “What happened all those years ago out at the shale pit, it was wrong of me. There were things that went on, things you didn’t know about, but still—I should’ve come back like I said I would, I should’ve gotten to the bottom of it and set things right, whatever it took, and I didn’t.” He paused, shuffling his feet. “I mishandled it, I let you down. And I know it’s awfully late but I wanted to apologize.”
Possum swallowed, looked past Red like he wasn’t even there, watching a big truck with fracking fluid drive over the bridge, the tires roaring across the metal.
Red wiped his forehead with his handkerchief again. “I know that don’t make up for the wrong I done. I just needed to say it. I need you to know: I’m sorry.”
The wind picked up and the geraniums in a pot shivered. Red tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket and sighed, a great sense of relief sweeping over him. In the days since Transom had disappeared, he’d realized his father had been right. The past was never dead; it was never past. But it didn’t have to own you, either. It didn’t have to be all you were. He hobbled down the steps, and walked back to his truck.
“Sheriff?” Possum called out.
Red turned.
Possum gripped the railing of the stoop and looked at him, lip quivering. Red waited for him to say something, but Possum just stood there, face twitching hard. Red could see it: the boy who, long ago, had smashed his stepfather’s face, who’d been folded in a trunk, who’d been dealt so many ugly things but who had, in the end, survived. After a long time, Possum dipped his head and nodded.
Red held his gaze. “You take care of yourself, son,” he said.
BEFORE
It was Memorial Day and Possum was thrilled because he’d just scored a pair of French porcelain compotes in perfect condition for twelve bucks at an auction. He was sure he’d turn a good profit on those, and he might even have enough to pay off the plane ticket to Moscow he’d bought for the end of August. Alla was going to show him some hand-painted lacquer boxes by a Fedoskino artist she’d been collecting, each worth thousands. They were going to discuss antiques. And other things, too, he hoped, though the truth was, he still wasn’t convinced it would happen—the flights, the visit, meeting Alla. It seemed too good to be true.
On his way home from the auction, Possum stopped to hunt for mushrooms. He’d finally found a route to his best morel spot, the place on the Hardy farm where the elm trees grew, a course through the national forest that took him nowhere near the farmhouse or barns. The fancy restaurant eighteen miles west had just requested more, and Possum figured it was worth the risk. A lodge it was, technically, a place where rich city people came and paid a mint to fish or hunt, depending on the time of year, and then have whatever they harvested cooked for them by a professional chef that night. It was, Possum had often thought, one of the most laughable and ingenious ideas he’d ever heard of. Justin, the chef there, paid him twenty bucks a pound for morels, and Possum had promised him three pounds by Thursday—some big-time clients in from D.C., Justin said, and based on the poor performance at the shooting range and their complete lack of dexterity at the lake, the morels might end up being the main course.
Possum parked in the small national forest lot and tucked his keys in his pocket. He loaded his mesh bags into his Adirondack pack basket, walked past the metal trash cans, overflowing and reeking, and headed into the woods on the worn trail. He hunched over, ducking through the thick mountain laurel. About a half mile in, he veered off the trail to the right, where he knew the terrain changed a bit, dipping lower and opening up to more sweeping woods, larger trees, oak and elm. He crossed into Transom’s property, marked by the No Trespassing signs, and his heart began to thump.
At last he came to the elm trees, their bases dotted with morels: large and yellow, miniature Christmas trees, they looked like, cut from a thick industrial sponge into cone shapes. The air warm and heavy with the sudden heat wave, the trees swaying, a nearby maple showering hundreds of double samaras around him, helicoptering their way from above. As a kid he used to love finding them, throwing them up and watching them spin round and round, back to the ground. Whirligigs, his mother called them.
He kneeled and removed a mushroom, pinching carefully at the base and then placing it into the first mesh bag. Close by, there were more, and he gathered them, too, plucking them one by one and putting them into the heap. Later, Justin would soak these in water to clean off any dirt or bugs that were inside the folds, then he’d sauté them in butter. Possum had taught him the whole process.
He was gently pulling at a big one when he heard the sound: an animal noise, something suffering. In his pack basket, he had the .44 from JT, which he always kept with him in the woods for spring foraging, just in case he were to stumble upon a black bear, up from a winter’s nap and hungry.
Again, the sound.
A fawn, maybe, newborn and helpless, a high-pitched scream of agony, something killing it. Perhaps a bear. Possum winced at the thought of a spindly-legged deer, spotted white and beautiful and pathetic, dragged from its mother through the woods in the jaws of some predator. At the same time, he knew better than to try and interfere.
Help.
Was he hearing things? He dropped one more morel in his bag and then stood, frowning, forcing his ears to work their hardest. Had someone called for help? A samara spun down and he reached out and caught it in his palm: delicate, feathery thing.
Help.
He began walking, up and up the ravine and then across its top and then down, faster and faster, the morels rolling about the mesh bag, the voice a coiling scream now, louder and more animal-like. He began to run, sliding his pack around to his front as he moved, pulling out the .44. Half the morels tumbled out but he didn’t stop.
As he descended into another valley, he realized he was moving deeper and deeper into Transom’s land, and he worried that he could lose track of where he was, but someone was hurting, someone needed help, and he’d figure that out later, how to get back to his truck in the parking lot. He’d find his way.
He heard a jangle of metal, heavy and dull, like the sound of a chain being dropped to the ground, and then ahead, in a tiny clearing, he saw movement, a person on the ground, stretched out and writhing and weeping and he moved quickly now, closer, stumbling through the stumps and debris but he froze because the person pointed to the sky then and shouted, “Don’t! Don’t you dare. I’m still alive, dammit. I’m still alive!”
The voice. He recognized it, the threats hissed through the door of the janitor’s closet, the words just before the trunk of the car had closed. You’re gonna burn. You’re gonna feel the heat coming at you but I don’t want you to be afraid. Possum looked up and saw two large birds, perched on the branch of a tree, way up. Vultures, sensing death, waiting. He eased down, tucking himself behind a thick stump, an ugly remnant from some magnificent tree, and watched.
Transom’s leg was caught in something, the sound of the metal thrashing against the ground and ringing through the woods. A trap. He reached down and tried to pry it open, spilling a horrible sound that made the hair on Possum’s arms rise when the trap didn’t budge. Silence. Then Transom was struggling again, rolling and twisting and swearing and crying, and sometimes, he would call for help again. For one tiny spark of a moment, Possum pitied him, lying there, bleeding, unable to free himself, the scavengers looming overhead.
Possum watched and watched. He grabbed a morel and ate it raw but it was no good without the butter and garlic soaked in and, unwashed, the dirt from it crunched between his teeth.
All those years. He could still feel Transom’s strong shoulder slamming him hard against the lockers like a hockey player checking an opponent; he could still hear the metal juddering through the halls of the school. He could still smell the dank gray of the trunk of the car. He turned away and rested his back against the stump, and although he knew they were toxic raw, he ate another mushroom, the sun high in the sky now and the air hot and still. Pondering what to do, he closed his eyes and listened as Transom lashed about.
Possum took a rag out of his pack basket, a piece of cloth he used to brush dirt off the mushrooms. He wrapped it around the pistol JT had given his mother a long time ago, and began rubbing it carefully. Over and over he went, starting at the muzzle, working his way back with an intense precision, swirling the rag in tiny buffing circles, covering every centimeter of the weapon, pressing the cloth into each nook. When he was finished, he did it again and then again. Next, he used the rag to remove the five bullets, then cleaned one carefully, and loaded it.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, sweat sliding down his brow, his back drenched and his throat parched but finally, he slid out of his boots and stood and walked in his socks toward Transom, who lay bloody and limp on the ground, flies swirling at his leg. White pills lay scattered beside him in the dirt, a brown bottle with the cap removed, a shotgun, too—all out of Transom’s reach. Transom looked up, his face drained of color, his lips cracked from sun. He blinked.
