Moonbog (28 page)

“Turn around, will yah?” Robbie said to Georgie.

Georgie quickly snapped his head forward, but his eyes strained to see out the corners. Sammy sighed deeply and shrank down into the back seat. He wanted to disappear.

Leah started the car and pulled out into the street. She drove grimly, but kept checking the two boys in the back seat to make sure they didn’t start anything.

“I said turn around,” Robbie repeated, making a threatening gesture toward Georgie. Georgie shrank back.

“And stop laughing!” Robbie said, louder.

“Quiet back there!” Leah snapped.

“I wasn’t laughing,” Georgie said, a pathetic whine in his voice. His grin widened.

“Well cut it out, whatever you’re doing.”

“That’s enough, Robert!” Leah said. She glanced at him in the mirror and saw the exasperated look that clouded his face. She was angry with them for fighting in front of the school, but as she drove toward home, she remembered the night before and was beginning to think she might
not
mention the incident to Les.

“Well, Georgie’s making fun of us,” Robbie protested.

“Yeah,” Sammy echoed.

“I was not,” Georgie said, sounding innocent. He put his arm over the back seat, tucking his chin into the crutch of his elbow so he could stare at Robbie and Sammy.

“Mom,” Sammy said, “tell Georgie to turn around.” He gave Georgie’s arm a poke.

“Hey!”

“You two better cut it out—and fast!” Leah said harshly.

“Well tell him to leave us alone,” Sammy said, and again he gave his little brother a push. The push—wasn’t much, but Georgie exaggerated and fell over in the front seat.

Suddenly, without a word of warning, Leah’s hand lashed over the back of the seat and caught Sammy on the side of the head. There was a loud crack that sounded like a gunshot. The blow wasn’t very hard or direct enough to hurt, but it caught Sammy by surprise and was hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.

“Don’t make me stop this car right here in the middle of town to give you both another licking!” Leah said.

Sammy sat back in the seat with a huff and focused a cold stare of hatred at his mother’s back. “You’ll be sorry,” he said, whispering so softly he could barely hear himself above the sound of the car.

“What did you say?” Leah asked. There was an edge to her voice that frightened Sammy. He looked over at Robbie, who was making a point of staring out the side window.

“Nothin’!” Sammy said, folding his arms across his chest. It was happening again; Georgie and Robbie start it all, and then when he gets involved with the scrap,
he’s
the one who gets the swat on the side of the head. He watched as his mother’s eyes shifted from
t
he mirror back to the road ahead, then he whispered again, “You’ll be sorry!”

VII

“Y
ou wanna’ go outside for the rest of the afternoon, Alf?” Marshall asked his cat. Alfie had just finished a bowl of milk and was sitting on the countertop lazily licking his paw. He paused and regarded the old man with a vague interest, then gave a faint meow.

“You can go out or you can stay inside ‘til I get back. I gotta’ go for a bit of a walk, you know?” He smiled as he rubbed his knuckles on the top of the cat’s head. “Well, why don’t you hold the fort for me. I won’t be long.”

He went over to the refrigerator and reached behind for his walking stick. For a moment, he regarded his sweater, hanging on a hook in the anteway, but then he decided that the day was warm enough to forego it; besides, he planned to be back before dark. He knocked the dottle from his crusted pipe, then slipped it into his shirt pocket along with a pouch of tobacco and his lighter.

At the door, he paused and stared back at Alf, who looked increasingly comfortable on the countertop. “You sure you don’t want—ah, never mind.” He flipped the door lock, took a step outside, and pulled the door firmly shut behind him. He stood on the doorstep, looked skyward, and inhaled deeply. He started toward the road.

At the end of his driveway, he paused again admiring the afternoon as he considered which way to go. Usually, on his afternoon walks, he headed downtown to pick up a copy of the evening paper. Maybe if he met one or two of the old fellas he worked with on the railroad, he would stop and chat, exchange pleasantries. There were fewer and fewer old-timers every year, and that thought always depressed Marshall.

The railroad had been an important part of his life. He had first gone to work for Maine Central way back when he was in high school, as a summer job. Unlike his brother, Steward, he had always preferred working with his hands rather than his head. Steward had gone to college and had come back to Holland to work as the accountant at the lumber yard until it closed. Right after graduation from high school, Marshall had gone to work full time for the railroad, right up until his retirement four years ago. Now, both he and the railroad were suffering a gradual but steady decline.

Marshall finally decided that he could do without a newspaper this afternoon. He turned left and headed up the road a few hundred yards to where a path veered off into the woods toward the Bog. He ducked low as he passed under the thick growing trees and struck out along the path.

Once within the quiet of the woods, he let his mind focus on what he had been pushing back all day. He finally admitted to himself that it wasn’t just that there weren’t many old-timers to talk to in town, or that he didn’t really want a newspaper that kept him away from downtown today. It was something else. Today, June 7th, was
the
day—that day so long ago that had forever changed his life.

The early summer of 1949 had been one of the hottest on record. The winter hadn’t been particularly hard, but still, everyone was grateful when the trees filled with leaves, the days got longer, and life returned to the woods and fields. June 7, 1949 had been a scorcher. At four o’clock, after work, Marshall and several others had decided to meet at the swimming area, at a curve in the river just below the lumber yard. To Marshall, though, no one but Louise mattered. She had been the only reason Marshall had gone that day—he
had
to talk with Louise.

They didn’t get much of a chance to talk, though, not with a dozen or more people basking in the sun on the rocks beside the river or splashing in the water. After more than an hour, as the sun lowered toward the western hills, Marshall indicated his urgency to speak with her. They arranged to swim to the further shore and meet on the steep rock cliff just around the bend in the river, where the water turned to rapids. Marshall crossed over first and climbed up, breathless, halfway up the rock face. It wasn’t long before Louise joined him there.

They found it difficult to look at each other. Louise’s marriage to Marshall’s brother, Steward, had never been a marriage of love, just of circumstances. For several years she and Marshall had been having an affair, but as time went on, the strain of secrecy and guilt had put increasing pressure on both of them—especially Louise. She had been raised in a strictly religious household, and the guilt of infidelity and incest was becoming too much for her to bear.

Since Marshall had received the letter from Louise, saying that she just couldn’t continue to live two lives, that they should ask God to forgive them their sins, and that they would have to stop seeing each other privately, he had been anxious to talk to her. He was convinced that it was just social pressure, not Louise’s real feelings, that were pushing them apart. He wanted to ask her—tell her to get a divorce from Steward so they could be married.

Sitting in the shadow of the cliff, looking out over the river and the town in the distance, Marshall and Louise talked. What they said is forever between the two of them and the river. The golden glow on the further shore darkened, but their conversation was still unfinished. They agreed to see each other once more—
only once
, Louise insisted and decided to get back before someone noticed that they were missing.

Marshall dove into the water first and struck out directly for the other shore. The river turned into rapids just a little ways down stream, but the current wasn’t too strong, not for a good swimmer. He made the shore and walked back to where the group was gathered. As everyone was gathering their things together, someone asked where Louise was. No one knew.

Suspecting the worst, three of the men swam over to the other shore. People on both sides of the river began walking along downstream, scanning the shoreline in the gathering dusk for any sign of her. On the far shore, the party found her bathing cap on the rock cliff just a few hundred feet from where the rapids began. That was all.

That had been on Tuesday, June 7, 1949.

On Wednesday, June 8, five miles downstream below the rapids, late in the evening, a local fisherman found the battered, lifeless body of Louise Logan.

As the remembrance of things that had happened almost thirty years ago filled his mind, Marshall breathed deeply and shook his head from side to side. After walking a half mile or more, he stopped beneath a tall pine tree. Using his walking stick for support, he slowly lowered himself to the ground. In the moist shadows, mosquitoes buzzed, straffing his ears. He patted his pipe and tobacco in his pocket, but was still so lost in thought he never got around to filling and firing the bowl. Besides, a pipe is for when you’re sitting, relaxing; the thoughts that occupied him now were far too unsettling.

The sunny afternoon wore on as Marshall sat and thought, not even bothering to shoo the mosquitoes away from his face. He tried to think more about what might have happened instead of what
did
happen.

The official police report had listed Louise’s death as accidental drowning. That was fine, Marshall thought; it helped everyone, especially his brother, who had lost his wife, cope with the tragedy. There was talk going on around town that Marshall only caught in brief snatches. For a few of the local busybodies, the gossip continued for years. The talk was that Louise Logan had not drowned accidentally—that she had committed suicide.

After all these years, Marshall still didn’t know what had happened that late June afternoon twenty-eight years ago. He knew what he
suspected
and he knew what he
wanted
to believe, but he also knew that he would never
really
know. He dismissed the vague promise held out by the church that he would meet Louise and find out. But if there was a Heaven, he was sure Louise was there. He, on the other hand, had led a life he judged neither good nor bad. A life made so hollow with loss and grief that he felt more and more that he had led no life at all.

A sudden snapping of branches startled Marshall. He tensed, craning his neck to look around behind him along the path. The sun was still shining, but closing shadows filled the dense woods and underbrush. Footsteps and voices were approaching.

Marshall didn’t want to see or be seen by anyone, but he realized that whoever was approaching was too near for him to be able to find a hiding place in the brush— at his age he couldn’t move that fast.

There was another loud, crackling sound, and this time when Marshall heard it he knew he had mistaken the static on a walkie-talkie for the sound of branches snapping underfoot. Through the screen of pine boughs, he heard a deep voice say, “Virgil, you there?” Over.”

After a brief moment of static, a faint reply came. “This here’s Jack and Carl. Over.”

A crackly voice that Marshall could barely recognize as Shaw’s replied, “Roger, Jack. Where you located? Did you find anything?”

Another crackle. “Nope. Negatory. We’ve circled up around the checkpoint at the bend in the river and are now heading southwest. We’ll come up along the edge of the Bog and then double back. Should be back at the rock in, say, half an hour, forty-five minutes at best. Over.”

“Keep your eyes peeled, boys. It’ll be gettin’ dark soon enough, and in the deeper woods it’ll be easy to miss something.”

As they spoke with Shaw, the two men drew closer to where Marshall was sitting underneath a pine tree. They must have been more intent scanning the sides of the trail than in front of them, because they were only ten feet away from Marshall when they noticed him. They drew up short, surprised.

“You fellas still on?” Shaw’s voice asked from the small black box Jack was holding close to his ear.

Jack snapped to attention and put the walkie-talkie close to his mouth. Speaking in a hushed tone, he answered, “Uhh, yeah. We’re still here.” He looked in confusion from Marshall to Carl and to Marshall again.

“Roger. See you fellas soon. Over and out,” Shaw’s voice said, then there was just the sound of static coming over the walkie-talkie. Jack slowly turned the volume down and the sound faded.

“Afternoon,” Marshall said, looking up at them with a straight, sober face.

“Uhh . . . hello, Marshall,” Jack sputtered. He shifted from foot to foot and fidgeted with the walkie-talkie.

“What ‘cha boys doin’ out here?” Marshall asked, squinting his eyes suspiciously.

Jack slid the walkie-talkie into his pocket, then squared his shoulders. “We’re . . . uhh . . . we’re looking for that missing kid.”

Marshall nodded his head thoughtfully. “This here’s private property, you know? ‘S posted ‘n everything. Legal and all. Maybe you should call up Chief Shaw on that little black box you got there and see if I could arrest you fellas for trespassin’. Huh?”