Lost Man's Lane, page 24
“I’m on a redshirt year,” he said when I asked. “They have too many seniors playing my position. It wouldn’t make sense for them to waste me.”
I thought that a redshirt was still allowed to work out with the team, and said as much, but Weller cut me off.
“It’s very complicated shit, Marshmallow. You don’t know the first thing about the NCAA.”
I didn’t press him. It was none of my business, and besides, I liked having him around the HPER. He was someone to talk to, a nice source of distractions, keeping my mind from my struggles at school, from ghosts, from snakes, from a dead man who’d arrived on my front porch.
He wasn’t enough of a distraction, though. Nothing was. Even the one great distraction I’d counted on that September—the ballyhooed Hoosier Rap Daddy ’99 concert—didn’t deliver. Monroe County officials canceled the show after some people in Bloomington protested that the rap concert was too big, too dangerous, too violent. Nobody said too Black, but the county had just held a large concert in a similar field for Kid Rock in the spring, and if local hero John Mellencamp had wanted to play in the same space, he’d have been greeted like the pope. A homeowner’s association filed a legal challenge of the concert, and the county commissioners said their hands were tied because the temporary permit code limited acceptable events to such things as yard sales, carnivals, and religious tent services.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Kerri said. “We can have a tent revival but not a rap concert? Isn’t this supposed to be a hip college town?”
Eminem gave an interview to the Herald-Times, which pleased Kerri to no end.
“The people who protested are probably just old people who don’t know what’s happening,” he said.
They still had the show, but it was moved to Indianapolis, and my mother wouldn’t let me make the drive. Too dangerous, she said of the same drive she made five nights a week.
So much for Snoop Dogg.
I turned seventeen. September ended. The long nights were fading, and I had to run earlier, and run alone, because Kerri was in cross-country season. Once, I’d been excited about my mother working nights because she wouldn’t know what friends I was out with; now I was relieved because she didn’t know that I was never out with any. I’d blast the stereo while doing homework, then head to bed, door locked, lights on, grateful to have the dogs in the house with me now. I did not see Noah Storm, and I did not dream of a weathered barn in an empty field. For a time it seemed the past was escapable. I would change what I could about myself, and I would trust time to do the rest.
It’s good that we can fool ourselves.
Sometimes it’s the only way to move ahead.
The problem is that the past calls you when it’s ready, not the other way around. And so it seemed all too appropriate that when I most desperately wanted everyone to focus on the future, the same librarian who’d told me what was happening at Columbine High School in April brought me a note that said Noah Storm was trying to reach me with urgent news.
2
I WAS STACKING RETURNED books on the shelving cart, alone in the library office while Kerri put up a sign on the front wall, when Mr. Doig entered with a note in his hand.
“Marshall? Do you know a Noah Storm?”
I set the books down slowly. “Yeah. Why?”
“He called the office trying to reach you. There’s a number here.”
I didn’t need the number, but I took the note anyhow. I was trying not to look scared, but Mr. Doig saw something in my face.
“Do you want me here or would you like some privacy?”
“Privacy. I mean, it doesn’t matter, I guess. I don’t know what’s up.”
Mr. Doig studied me, then pointed at the phone on his desk. “I’ll be out here if you need me.”
He slipped out of the office and shut the door behind him. I held the note, which was nothing more than Noah’s name and phone number, but somehow it reminded me of the speeding ticket that had gotten it all started. Part of me wanted to throw it in the trash and return to shelving books.
But I called. Of course I did.
He answered on the first ring. “Storm Agency.”
“It’s Marshall.”
“Marshall! I’m sorry to trouble you at school, but I wanted to give you a heads-up before you heard the news from anyone else.”
I glanced at the door. Mr. Doig was hovering just outside. “What news?”
“Meredith Sullivan’s body has been found.”
I stiffened. “Where?”
“Lake Griffy, not three miles from where you saw her last.”
I didn’t respond to that because I couldn’t speak. It felt as if something were loosening deep inside me, unknotting.
“The police are on the scene now,” Noah said, “and I’m sure the media won’t be far behind. I wanted to let you and your mother know so you weren’t blindsided.”
“Okay. Thanks. Was she… I mean, how did…”
“I don’t know the cause of death yet,” he said gently. “I anticipate the autopsy results take a few days.”
“All right. Sure.” My mouth was dry, my heart racing. The news was both awful and validating. I’d wanted to be proven wrong by Meredith Sullivan appearing healthy and well and with her own story to tell, but I’d never believed that would happen. I’d known she was dead longer than almost anyone, I think. I remembered her face in the mirror, the tear on her cheek, the rage in Maddox’s eyes. I closed my eyes, my hand tight on the phone receiver.
“Do you know how they found her?” I asked.
“A private company using side-scan sonar.” For the first time, Noah seemed rattled. “It’s sophisticated technology but it’s… it’s a slow process. She was in twenty feet of water and there’s heavy timber on the bottom out there.”
I opened my eyes, saw Mr. Doig watching me through the transom window beside the door, and tried to force a smile onto my face. He turned away.
“How did they know where to look?” I asked.
Pause.
“A tip, I understand. One that I supported because it was in the direction where Maddox was taking her the last time you saw them. I knew the police hadn’t searched the water with divers, so I… nudged a little with the sonar approach.”
He’d believed my story. Kept believing it. I remembered him the last time I’d seen him in the office, blood on his face, bullet hole in his forehead.
My reputation had been cleared by a dead man.
“All right,” Noah said. “I’ve interrupted your school day long enough. I needed to tell you she was found and that you pointed people in the right direction. Remember that. I’m sorry it took so long, and I’m sorry it ended like this, but it’s… it’s some kind of progress.”
“Sure.”
“If you need me,” he said, “you know where the office is. You’ve still got a key.”
“Sure,” I repeated, thinking that I both badly wanted to return to his office and never wanted to see it again.
“Take care of yourself, Marshall,” he said without waiting for my answer, and then the line was dead and he was gone.
I put the phone back onto the cradle and methodically folded the note Mr. Doig had given me and put it in my pocket.
She was in twenty feet of water and there’s heavy timber on the bottom out there.
It’s some kind of progress.
I walked out into the library. Kerri was standing on a stepstool, stretched up on her tiptoes, taping up the last letter of a sign that said BOOKS ARE PORTABLE MAGIC. She heard me approaching and turned without lowering her hand and saw something in my face that froze her. She stayed on her tiptoes and kept her hand extended when she said, “What happened?”
“They found her,” I said. “They found Meredith Sullivan. It’s done, Kerri.”
Of course, only half of that was true.
That night, Kerri and I sat with Jerry Flanders and watched the news report from Lake Griffy. The Sullivan family offered a statement but did not appear on camera, and I was glad for that. The end of the search meant different things for different people.
They aired the police sketch of Maddox again that night. It was the first time I’d seen it in months. It hadn’t gotten any more accurate.
“I hope they catch the bastard,” Jerry Flanders said. He was only half watching, though. He was distracted by the roll of heavy, clear plastic that he was trimming and taping across the top of a fifty-gallon drum, part of a homemade cistern that he was using to trap and store rainwater. We were only three months away from the millennium New Year, and as he told us frequently, he had no sympathy for anyone who’d been told that Y2K was coming and didn’t prepare for it. His latest project was something called a “pit house,” which he promised would be an emergency shelter warm enough for survival during the worst of the winter.
At his feet was a coiled bright blue static line that Kerri had told me was an extremely expensive rope. Why did Jerry need an expensive rope? Because you had to prepare for the unknown.
There was always more gear and always more fear. One fed the other.
While the Y2K stuff sounded crazy, another branch of his growing paranoia had been validated. General Electric, Bloomington’s last large-scale factory, had announced they would be cutting the workforce by at least half. A double-door refrigerator called the Millennium Model that was supposed to save the plant would be manufactured in Mexico. The layoffs were the town’s third gutting: first at Otis, then Thomson Electronics, and now GE. It was, Jerry claimed, precisely the reason he hadn’t looked for a job at any of the big plants. What was the point of picking up a grenade, he said, when you knew the pin had already been pulled?
Now I watched him seal another layer of plastic across the big drum, his craftsman’s hands moving nimbly and surely. It was almost as bad as looking at the sketch of Maddox.
Almost.
“I hope they catch him too,” I said, staring at that awful depiction of the man I’d seen twice—once behind the wheel of the police car that had driven Meredith Sullivan to her death, and once inside a limestone house in the heart of town, where he’d murdered Noah Storm.
The same Noah Storm who’d just located Meredith Sullivan’s body.
The news segment didn’t mention Noah. They gave full credit to the police, who in turn referenced an anonymous tip. The private detective who’d delivered results went unnamed.
“Will you talk to him again?” Kerri asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s done,” I said. My mantra for the day. Repeat something enough times and you can make it real, right? It worked all right that day, and the next, and the next. It stopped working on the fourth day, when I came down for breakfast and saw my mother reading the newspaper with a horrified expression.
“They released the autopsy results,” she said in a soft, sickened voice. “I don’t even want to know exactly what happened to that poor girl, Marshall. I truly don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was killed by snake venom,” my mother said, pushing the paper away as if she could no longer bear its presence on the table. “They don’t know if it was from a true bite or some kind of poisoning. They just know that it stopped her heart.”
3
IF NOT FOR THE SNAKES, I might have been able to move on.
Things were better at school. Validation helped stem the tide of mockery. Part of my story had been proven true—a small part, sure, but it was something—and people took note. Even Leslie Carter sent me an instant message.
Looks like you saw Meredith after all.
Yes, I had seen her.
What did that mean about Maddox, though? About Noah Storm? I didn’t know, and I told myself that I didn’t care. I tried to be the bystander that fall.
The problem was the snakes.
They formed a bridge between things real and imagined. The vision—or nightmare?—I’d had of the battling snakes in front of the old barn merged with the very real snake that had entered my own home in the spring. I couldn’t dismiss Meredith Sullivan’s cause of death as a reasonable coincidence.
But I also couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
I kept to my routine: school, running, lifting. I’d gone from 140 pounds at the start of summer to 152. Still thin but not skinny. There was a difference. One day Sean Weller slapped two ten-pound plates on beside the forty-fives, watched me do a set on the bench, and said, “You can finally lift more than you weigh.”
He’d been teasing me, but the observation lingered. I could take all my weight and push it away. I liked that.
Kerri stopped teasing me about my running times and told me that I should consider track in the spring.
“I don’t want to be on the track team.”
“Then what is the point, Marshall?”
“Exercise. Maybe you haven’t heard, but it’s healthy.”
She didn’t smile. “You’re kind of OCD about it. I just figure there must be a goal?”
There was a goal, but not one I could articulate—certainly not in front of her.
I wanted to be a different person. One who was less afraid. The physical challenges were easier to meet than the mental. I could force myself to do an extra rep, or sprint when I felt like jogging, or jog when I felt like walking. I couldn’t force my way to an explanation of Noah Storm’s continued existence.
I also couldn’t forget him—or the snake, or Meredith Sullivan’s face in the mirror. She’d been found but Maddox was still out there.
In October, I parked the Oldsmobile below the dam at Lake Griffy and walked the trail that ringed the water. The leaves were starting to fall, not yet in the beautiful peak colors of red and orange, but more browns and greens.
Snake colors.
I walked to the place where Meredith Sullivan’s body had been found. It was at the far end of the lake, closer to the boathouse than the dam, and on a summer day the stretch of trail between the two would have been busy and there would have been boats on the water. Today, on an overcast weekday edging toward fall, it was a lonely place. There was a single canoe on the water, a man and a woman paddling, and I could hear their voices but not the words. I’d made it about a quarter mile, walking along the shore trail with my head down, focused on my feet because of all those leaves, when I heard a soft whistle behind me.
I stopped and looked back. No one was there. A light breeze stirred the branches overhead and sent a single oak leaf pinwheeling down at my feet. I was about to turn when I heard the whistle again, a low double note. A man in a blue shirt appeared far down the trail, descending the same hill I’d just come by, with the dam on his right and the woods on his left. He had his head down and tilted and was peering behind him. He whistled again and tugged on something in his hand, then turned and watched as something rustled past him, and I let out my breath, realizing it was just some guy walking a dog on a long leash.
I was scared to be alone out here—scared to be alone anywhere, almost—and I hated that.
I watched as the man with the dog walked, head down and whistling occasionally, the way you do when you’re both following the dog’s lead and trying to guide it simultaneously—no don’t sniff that, let’s go, buddy. Out on the lake, the couple in the canoe laughed, everyone able to enjoy their day except for me. Why had I even come here? I knew only that I wanted to see the spot, as if it might tell me something.
I turned and walked ahead. I wasn’t sure of the exact place to look, of course, but the newspaper photos had given the general area. The trees packed tightly around the narrow dirt path at the top of a shallow rise that gave me a decent view. I stared into the dark water and saw my reflection and was pleased by it, maybe for the first time ever. The weight room work was evident. I was an inch taller and fifteen pounds heavier than I had been in the spring. When reflected in the ripples and dimmed by the shadows, I could almost be confused for a man.
This is what I was thinking when I heard the rustle in the leaves behind me. I nearly cried out and spun toward it. So much for manliness. I managed to hold my ground, well aware that the sound was simply the man with the dog approaching. I could hear his footsteps behind the dog’s rustling, and that low two-tone whistle broke the stillness once more. I was standing just off the trail, giving them plenty of room to pass by. I’d keep my back to them, I decided, because the last thing I needed was for anyone to recognize me out here.
The wind gusted and dropped off, and an acorn fell into the water with a splash that seemed too loud. Ripples spread out from where the acorn had vanished, and I had a sudden, terrible image of Meredith Sullivan waiting below, hair fanned out in the water, eyes upturned at the surface, staring through the expanding ripples and right at me.
I shivered. Behind me, the rustle continued, but the footsteps did not.
A prickle crawled along my spine.
You’re fine, I told myself. You are just fine. Let them by.
The sound behind me wasn’t one of approaching feet, though. Not a man’s, not a dog’s. No one could walk this quietly. There was no more whistling, nor any panting from the dog. The only sound was a soft whisk, like fine-grit sandpaper rubbed very lightly and slowly over rough wood.
And it was not stopping.
I turned and saw the snake.
It was coming right down the trail, following every bend, moving with a strange formality down the middle of the path, utterly fearless. Its black-and-white body slid over the dirt, arched over a root, and undulated across the scattered leaves. There was something hypnotic about its motion. It was fifteen feet away, and if it held to the trail, it would soon head uphill—and right toward me. My back was to the lake, and the brush was thick around me, so running away meant going down to the trail, temporarily closing the gap with the snake.
I looked back at the water. The canoe was out of sight, its paddlers silent.
Jump, I thought. Get in the water!
