Under-Heaven Page 9

  I opted to take my bike this time. Though I hated the look of the new steel basket my father had bolted on a couple of months ago, it sure came in handy when you had a lot of stuff to carry. Whiskey waited in the driveway only long enough to see which direction I was taking before he dashed off toward the logging road that ran perpendicular to our gravel driveway. I’d only seen two logging trucks on the road all summer, but the big trucks had done a great job of breaking down the small saplings that might otherwise have been a nuisance. The logging road traveled all along the backside of Main Street. If only we could find a trail straight to the bait shop. Today, Whiskey and I would look harder.

  We were all the way to the huge, dead oak tree wider than my father’s truck when I stopped the bike. We had already passed the trail to the -ski’s motel, and I felt certain a trail veering off to the bait shop had to be nearby. .

  “Find a trail, boy,” I said to Whiskey. But instead of darting into the woods they way I’d hoped, he bounded further down the logging road. Suddenly, he stopped about fifty feet up the road and waited, amber eyes staring back at me.

  “Ruuff,” he said.

  “No, you’re too far,” I told him. “We need to find a trail in here,” I pointed into the woods beside me.

  He raced back to my side, but paused only long enough to paw my pant leg before darting back down the road again. He stopped and turned to look at me.

  Maybe he was trying to avoid wood ticks, I thought. We usually had to pick a half dozen off from him each time we wandered off the main trails. He barked several more times and waited.

  “No,” I called out. “We need to find a trail here.”

  He reluctantly came back but again pawed my pant leg and turned to face further down the road. This wasn’t like him.

  “What is it, boy?” I asked.

  He yelped and raced back to where he had been.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I pedaled to catch up and slammed on my brakes when it came into view. Just down over the hill, it was covered with feathers and blood, maybe from a dead chicken. The tattered netting and mended frame identified it as one of my father’s lobster traps. What made me nauseous was what sat inside: it was one of Vicky’s dolls, all covered with something sticky, something red, something blood.

  The trip to the store was forgotten as Whiskey and I raced home. When my father arrived late that afternoon, he found the door closed and locked. My mother had Vicky and me sitting beside her in the living room. Whisky was, of course, plunked down near my feet. My mother’s trembling hands were red from wringing themselves together. I had never heard her raise her voice so openly in front of her children, but my father barely had time to unlock the door and step inside when she made her proclamation.

  “Ben, we are packing our things and leaving here tomorrow.”

  “I’m not about to—” he began to say, but my mother cut him off.

  “My children will not live another day in this town. Your son found one of your traps down the western logging road, a road everyone in town knows he uses, just about a half mile from here. There was blood and the remains of a dead chicken all over it!" Her voice had risen almost to the point of yelling.

  “Karen,” my father said. His palms were facing out as though to ward off her verbal blows. “Traps can be fixed. It was probably just kids.”

  “That’s. Not. All,” she said, her words fired like blistering shots. She held up the bloodied doll. “Nate found this inside the trap.”

  My father’s eyes widened.

  “All the more reason to believe it was kids,” he said, but there was no conviction left in his voice.

  “Ben!”

  In that moment, I saw my father’s anger sink beneath his concern. He knew what that doll meant, and he knew a threat to Vicky was the last straw. The three oldest people in our house had come to a common understanding: the bloodied doll was an omen that none of us could ignore. My father met my mother halfway across the living room. She hugged onto him fiercely.

  “It has to be tomorrow,” she whispered though her tears. “It has to be.”

  My father’s eyes were also tearing.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “The flatlanders leave tomorrow.”

  I felt such a sense of relief that I almost wet my pants. It was amazing to think that we had been living in that town for over three years, and one single moment could change all of that. For my part, I had never formed any deep friendships in Maine so had nothing to regret by leaving. Once again, I had my dog to thank. Whiskey was my best and only friend, and that was the way I wanted it.

  I went upstairs to brush my teeth and when I returned, Vicky was sitting quietly behind the couch playing with one of her dolls. She spoke softly to the little brunette about some imaginary event. I would happily have gone to hug her the same way my father was hugging my mother, but there were some things a self-respecting boy just couldn’t do. Instead, I settled back onto the couch to enjoy the sounds of her imaginary conversation. I also watched my father stroking my mother’s hair and smiled.

  My dad was back.

  Whatever ill the locals had intended by stealing and abusing my sister’s doll, they had actually done us a favor. Not only had my father returned from the darkness that had enshrouded him for the last few weeks, we were also finally leaving this horrible place. I had not realized how much I wanted to leave until I my parents said it, but suddenly I was giddy with the thought of putting as much distance as possible between us and the town that we had called home for the past three years.

  In a display of family teamwork, my parents began packing things up while I worked indus­triously in my room and filled nearly three boxes of my own. Of course, Whiskey sat on the bed and oversaw the project. When I went down for a fourth box, I learned my efforts had been dwarfed by two mountains of packed boxes in the center of the living room. My parents had also packed a third pile high against the back door of the kitchen. Unfortunately, that also meant the boxes were all gone. We had used every box in the house, and even the few that had been stored in the shed.

  I offered to help my mother finish cleaning out the cabinets while my father drove to the general store to see what he could find. When he returned, it was with his truck bed nearly filled with folded cartons of every size. We immediately set to work trying to fill as many as possible. By midnight most of the small items had been packed and my parents agreed we should all get some sleep and finish the rest the following day. My attic room had long since been transformed into four walls, a bed and six overflowing boxes. I had even packed up my sheet and blankets, but I left my sleeping bag out on top of the mattress. Whiskey and I would make do with that.

  My sister’s room downstairs was the only one left untouched. My parents had decided it would be just as easy to pack her things up at the last minute and save her the confusion of a bare room that night. She’d been asleep for hours.

  Though none of us knew what would happen tomorrow, it seemed to be enough to know we were leaving that wretched place. Both my parents were smiling and relaxed when they came into my room and kissed me goodnight. My father also gave Whiskey a good scratch behind the ears. After my mother shut off the light and closed my door, I contentedly and rolled onto my side and listened to her and my dad’s muffled footsteps recede down the stairs.

  To notice the little things that would have been so easy to change but you can never change is perhaps the worst part of remembering any horrific event. I suspect my parents wanted private time to talk when they chose to close my door all the way that night, something they had never done before. None of us could have known that it was just another tiny event in a much larger stream of events that would comprise the nails of a very large and very bloody coffin.

  I fell asleep.

  Whiskey was snarling and tearing at the door with his claws when I came to. I snapped awake with full knowledge that my Whiskey wouldn’t act like that for anything short of a full disaster. I struggled to pull my
legs free of the sleeping bag, adding precious seconds to my response time. I heard a series of three loud crashes downstairs.

  “I’m awake, boy!” I yelled to Whiskey.

  He stepped aside long enough for me to yank the door open but then—a reddish, yellow fury—he bolted in front of me and down the stairs.

  Terrified, I raced toward his snarls and snaps as fast as my nine-year-old legs would take me. The living room light was off, but moonlight from two windows and a narrow shaft of light from the kitchen revealed two shadows shifting back and forth beyond the stacks of boxes that occupied the middle of the room. Man grunts came from that direction. Glass shattered. I snapped my gaze toward the kitchen and heard two dull thumps come from beyond the partly open door. As I leapt the last two stairs to the living room floor, the light from the kitchen illuminated the wrestling shadows.

  One of them was my father!

  The other was a much larger man in dark clothing, which I though was perfect for sneaking around at night. My father’s forehead and right ear were coated with blood. The other man had some kind of black paste on his face so it was harder to tell if he, too, was bleeding. Horrified, I raced across the room, intending to jump at the intruder’s back.

  “Your sister!” my father hollered to me. “Get your sister out of the house!”

  There was a sickening snap as the intruder bellowed in pain. My father roared and twisted away from the heavier man. Whiskey was snarling and snapping like a rabid dog in the kitchen. More glass crashed, metal screeched and thumps reverberated from beyond the half-closed door. I raced toward my sister’s room, but a second man swarmed at me from somewhere near the basement door. As he crossed in front of the shaft of kitchen light, I could see his face was also greased in black. He was short and stocky, easily three or more times my weight.

  I tried to veer around my mother’s rocking chair, but he blocked my path to Vicky’s room.

  “Do yourself a favor and go back upstairs, kid,” he snarled.

  I darted to the side, but the man moved to block me again.

  “Jesus Christ, Green!” he called out. “Finish that mur­dering bastard and let’s get to hell out of here!”

  I glanced backwards. If he’d been talking to my father’s attacker, his words were wasted. Though bigger than my dad, the first intruder had fallen limp to the floor where my father’s shoe was making wet potato mashing noises as it struck his face again and again.

  I feared my father had just killed his second man in less than three months.

  “Get your sister,” my father gurgled through what sounded like blood-soaked loose teeth. He finally stopped kicking the first man. There was something feral and not quite human about him as he staggered toward the second intruder.

  “Ted,” the man yelled. “Ted, do something!”

  The body on the floor didn’t respond.

  “Holy shit!” the stocky man said, and backed toward the wall.

  I was in the grip of a terror I had never known. Willing my body to move, I gave the remaining man a wide berth, moved to my sister’s door and twisted the handle. Much quicker than he looked, the man lunged, grabbed my arm and yanked. I might have passed out from the pain when my shoulder dislocated, but fear for my sister kept me on my feet. At some point, I realized the blood-curdling wail that filled my ears was coming from my own mouth.

  Suddenly, like a creature from nightmares, whiskey’s angry snarls grew louder. A man screamed. Then I heard gasping followed by the thump of a heavy body hitting the floor.

  “Grrrrr, ruff!”

  His fight won, my Whiskey was coming for me.

  The stocky man spun me around, sending fresh shards of pain into my shoulder, and hauled me tightly up against his rounded stomach. He had one arm around my neck, and the other gripped my chest. I couldn’t breathe, could barely think. I watched the man I had once known as my father stop about three feet in front of us. Even the blood smeared across his face couldn’t hide his rage. The memory of his eyes and that terrible expression would have stayed with me for the rest of my life—had I been destined to live.

  I gasped for air.

  “Let him go,” my father gurgled. His devastated mouth was identifiable only by its location. Blood ran in clots down his chin.

  Suddenly, the kitchen door burst all the way open as Whiskey tore into the room. Still ten feet from me, he leapt over the nearest pile of boxes, his teeth and claws directed at the face of the man who held me. I yanked my head out of the way as my dog flew past and tore the throat from my attacker in a single bite.

  I nearly passed out from the agony in my shoulder, but somehow staggered forward as the man behind me slid lifelessly to the floor. My father reached for me. I saw his eyes roll up into his head. When I reached for his swaying body, my shoulder ignited with blinding pain. With my remaining good arm, I tried to hold him upright, but my single hand did no more than slip along his bloody forearm as collapsed.

  Suddenly, the front door exploded inward. Yet another man dressed in black stood there. I recognized him, even through the grease. It was Tommy Edds’ father, the man who pulled in the largest lobster catches, sometimes four and five crates a day. Everyone knew Casey Edds, the highliner of Coldwell Bay.

  He surveyed the demolished room, the bodies of three men lying on the floor, then me and my dog.

  I heard a low growl beside me. I didn’t have to look down to know my Whiskey was injured. If he had been able to fly across the room, he would already have been tearing into this new intruder.

  Tommy’s father walked into the room and knelt down to press a finger to the throat of the first intruder. He shook his head. Then he stepped over to the kitchen door and glanced in.

  “Jesus,” he said softly.

  I guessed it didn’t require a pulse check to know Whiskey’s first victim was dead.

  “Out of the way,” Casey Edds said, moving around the stacks of boxes to get to my dog. I could see the muzzle of his gun rising.

  Whiskey growled menacingly. I saw him drop into a crouch. Injured or not, he was ready to fight.

  I wasn’t going to let anyone kill my dog.

  “Get the baby out!” I yelled to Whiskey as I shoved him towards her door and dove the other way behind our overstuffed chair. A shot was fired. Plaster exploded above my dog’s head.

  Agony shot from my shoulder to my brain as I landed on the floor and rolled to see Whiskey’s amber eyes. They were not the eyes of a dog: they were the eyes of a friend, a best friend. I glanced behind him and thanked God that I had succeeded in getting Vickie’s door open, if only a crack. She was crying.

  “Do it, Whiskey!” I screamed. “Get Vicky out!”

  Those amber eyes said I love you and I won’t leave you, but Whiskey’s obedience to my wishes won out over his need to defend his friend. Whiskey spun, nosed the door open and raced into my little sister’s bedroom.

  Tommy Edds’ father aimed for another shot at Whiskey.

  “No!” I screamed. I struggled to my feet and charged him with my one good arm. I tried to punch his groin, but the butt of the gun slammed into my forehead. Quick like a snake, the man reached down and grabbed me by the hair before I could fall.

  “Please,” I managed to say. I wanted to plead for the safety of my mother and sister, but I suddenly remembered all the noise from the kitchen where there was now only silence. If she had any breath remaining, she would have been protecting her children. Whiskey had bested her attacker but must have been too late to save her. My mother was dead. I knew it as surely as I knew my own life would soon be ending.

  Another shot exploded in my ear.

  I heard Whiskey yelp.

  “No, Mr. Edds!” I pushed with my legs and drove my head into Casey Edds’ stomach.

  “Oomph!”

  Tommy’s father yanked me up by the hair so I was forced to stare at his grease-coated face.

  “God damn it, kid! How the fuck did you recognize me?”

  I heard Vicky’s w
indow crash. My God, he was doing it, Whiskey was saving her!

  The sound had barely registered in my ears when—with a twist and a jerk from a forearm that had pulled thousands of lobster traps from the briny ocean—Casey Edds, the highliner of Coldwell Bay, snapped my neck.

  My soul fled that accursed house before my thin body even had time to drop to the floor.

  11

  Second Chances

  Jesse had been grinning so often for nearly two days that his friend Storm teased him about it all throughout their day of school. Jesse never explained why because he didn’t want to jinx anything. Storm was still trying to find out what was going on when his father picked him up at the end of the day. Jesse smiled, shook his head and made the mouth-zipped motion as Storm slid into the backseat of his father’s fancy black car. Of course any car that was not covered with rust and dents seemed pretty fancy to Jesse. During his own bus ride home that day, he was so excited that he could barely keep still in his seat.

  His father was coming over.

  But this wasn’t just any visit, and it wasn’t one of the crazy plans that he and his dad had tried to cook up. No, this time he had a deal with his mother. This was the first visit of that his mother called a “’speriment.”

  Just thinking about it made Jesse giddy inside. He had been working at it for what seemed like a lifetime and had finally gotten his mother to give his father another chance. As long as things went okay—not even great…just okay—his mom said his father could move back in. Jesse ignored the older girl sitting in the seat across from him. Just like Storm, she obviously could tell something was up. Well, she could think whatever she wanted, because Jesse was about to be part of a complete family again!