Reprisal (9 page)

At dark, Charis reached into the VW'S glove compartment, took out a small penlight, some Kleenex, and the flat pint bottle of vodka, and locked the car.

Then she walked into the woods, unbuckled her belt, unzipped her jeans and pulled them down, pulled her panties down--and squatted, leaning back against a birch to pee.

She dried herself, tucked the used tissues under last year's fallen leaves, pulled up her panties and jeans, and began walking through the trees, working left along the lake shore. It was cool ... a cool summer night. The breeze was off the lake.

She used the penlight sparingly, and only for a moment each time. The woods and brush were thick along the water, the ground soft, soaked to puddles here and there.

Music. Choir ... a chorale came floating in the night. She saw house lights off to the right. They'd built on a low peninsula, cleared the trees. A few steps farther, and she could see the place, its lit windows. The music came from there, Benjamin Britten, or some modern romantic. ... Classical-music people on a blue-collar lake. They, or their parents, must have built here in the good old days, and been annoyed when the trailers and mobile homes began to accumulate around the shore. ...

Charis went carefully, quietly past, kept to the brush and trees--though these people hadn't had a dog when she'd been up before.

Then it was wet walking, her running shoes soaked squelching through puddles and muddy patches. The cool air smelled sweetly of pine trees and still water.

There wasn't wind enough to build small waves across the lake tonight. Other times-one other time--the wind had been blowing hard, noisy in the trees, and tiny waves had broken on the shore.

Charis could hardly hear the choral music anymore.--And just as that faded, she saw the old man's cabin. Small, much smaller than the other house had been. ... There was light through the living room windows. The bedroom window was dark and the kitchen window was dark. She doubted he'd eaten supper; she'd never seen him cooking any regular meals. Warmed soup, sometimes. She'd smelled tomato soup in the cabin, last time she was up.

An old man no longer interested in food. Eating and drinking his memories, and fading away. ...

Charis walked out of the trees and went along the cabin's back wall. She'd heard the old man on the phone the first night she'd come up--raising his voice, saying "What?" every now and then. So she didn't take care to step quietly.

She circled the cabin--paused by the side of the porch to be certain he wasn't sitting out there, which he rarely did after dark--then went on around.

She saw him through the first living-room window. He was sitting in the rocker, reading. Charis had never seen him rock back and forth. He just sat still, with his feet flat on the floor, and read. He had no television.

There was a long bookcase against the log wall behind him, a bookcase of fine cherry wood, furniture from the house he must have had with his wife. No way to tell the title of the book he was reading--not from outside. But later, when she went in, she'd see. Last time it had been Celine, in French. A tough old man reading a tough book. ... In a way, it would have been better if his wife were still alive. Then they would have tried careful trembling old sex, and Charis could have seen they weren't lonely.

She stood watching him read seven pages. He was a fast reader--it was the quickest thing he did. She watched him do that ... watched a little longer ...

then went back into the trees to sit and wait.

... The moon was up when the living-room lights were turned off. Charis stood and stretched. She was getting hungry, and chilly in the breeze coming off the lake.

She walked around the cabin to the woodshed's outside door. The woodshed was off the kitchen, convenient in hard winters. She opened the woodshed door--lifted it slightly as she opened it, to keep its rusty hinges quiet--then eased inside in darkness, used her penlight to manage along the narrow aisle with rough birch and alder rounds and splits stacked on either side. It seemed to her the old man must not trust summer anymore; he already had his wood in, ready for winter.

Charis moved carefully to the door into the kitchen, put her ear against it and listened. ... No sound. She put the penlight in her jeans pocket.

Then there was a faint noise--a chair or something being moved in the cabin

... in the bedroom. A chair. He'd be putting his brown corduroy trousers over the back of the chair.

The old man had four pairs of corduroy pants--two brown and two black. He wore them winter and summer when he was at the lake, and washed them and his shirts and underwear in a tub over a fire behind the cabin. Really primitive and silly, because she'd watched him, one spring evening, try to wring a pair of those pants out, and he wasn't strong enough to do it right--so he'd hung them up, dripping, on his clothesline. It was sad, really, but it was his choice, since he'd been a lawyer and had had a practice and an office and so forth, and at least a little money. ... An old man living in the past, every way he could. Eccentric, was the word.

Charis stood listening at the door to the kitchen, listened for a long time, and heard no more sounds at all but the soft mutter and tick of the woodstove in the living room.

Then she took the big Shrade jackknife out of her back pants pocket, opened it, slid the blade through the crack between the wooden door and jamb--old and shrunk to a bad fit--and carefully eased the latch hook out of its eye. She opened the door, lifting it slightly for silence, walked into the kitchen and stood by the refrigerator, listening, smelling food cooked a while ago ...

oatmeal ... smelling the smoky odor of the living-room stove, the log-cabin smell of damp wood and old tree bark.

Charis opened the refrigerator. There wasn't much in it--half a loaf of whole-wheat bread; a glass bowl of what looked like mashed potatoes, with a plastic cover on top; a half-gallon container of milk; and some slices of salami on a small white plate. There was a big wedge of rat cheese in plastic wrap ... and that was that.

She had never eaten any of his food. But now it made no difference. She took the bread and rat cheese out and put them on the kitchen table, then chose two pieces of bread by dim light from the open refrigerator--some of the bread was stale--and used the Shrade to cut a thick slice of the cheese for a sandwich.

There was no mayo or butter in the refrigerator, so it would be a simple sandwich. ...

Charis walked carefully to the door to the living room--avoiding two places in the plank floor that she knew squeaked--and stood in the doorway for a while, listening, and eating the sandwich. It was good, even without mayo.

When she finished, wasn't chewing anymore, she could hear the old man breathing in the bedroom. Not snoring as Royce Langenberg used to snore, but only heavy breathing ... sounded like work.

She walked into the living room--dark, except for the Franklin stove's dull, flickering light --and went across to the bedroom door. Wasn't much of a bedroom, probably had been a storage space or spare room, ten feet square with a little half-window. The cabin's big loft was where people had slept. But the steep steps must have started to hurt the old man's knees. ... She stood by the half-open bedroom door, listened to that slow, harsh breathing.

She slowly pushed the door open, stood watching as the old man slept. He lay on his side in soft moonlight shining through the half-window. Lay curled under his quilt like a child. He looked smaller than when he was awake and outside, working around the cabin. The moonlight was shadowed on his face. ...

Charis watched him for a while, then carefully closed the bedroom door and walked back into the living room. He'd left his book by the armchair, on the lamp table.

She took the penlight out of her pocket, held it in her mouth for light. It was a novel by Larteguy, in English translation. She leafed through the book, stopping to read here and there. She read for a while, several passages. ...

The central characters seemed to be foolish French army officers, all with beautiful-sounding names. No question French was lovely, when officers' names sounded like music.

She closed the book and put it down, didn't bother to keep the old man's place. Then she went to the Franklin stove, bent, and opened one of its small iron glass-windowed doors.

There was a long-handled ash shovel in a wrought-iron stand beside the stove, and Charis used it to scoop up a small heap of live coals, pulsing arterial red. She shook some onto the metal safety sheeting beneath the stove front ...

then scattered the rest out onto the pine-plank flooring.

She put the shovel back in its stand, left the stove door open a few inches.

Then she stood well back, took the pint bottle from her windbreaker pocket, opened it, reached out and poured the vodka onto the floor ... over the spilled coals.

A blue flash softly thumped and exploded several feet high and almost caught her--then hissed and ran out in blue and red runners along the planking.

Charis stepped back and went to the bedroom door again. She put her ear against it and heard the old man still sleeping, breathing his difficult breaths. Then she turned in brightening light to watch the fire exhaust the alcohol, turn it to fumes and gone ... then learn to do without it ... learn ordinary burning along the wooden floor.

It took a while. But finally the pine planks began to chuckle, smoke, and char in a large and larger circle. And when flames came up together, low and rolling, a gorgeous carpeting wave across the floor, Charis went back to the bedroom door, carefully opened it only a little--then walked back into the kitchen and out through its woodshed door. She closed that behind her, then went through the woodshed and on outside.

The night was cooler now, the breeze blowing stronger off the lake. She was glad she'd brought her windbreaker.

Charis walked around the cabin to the bedroom's half-window, and stood listening. She heard the old man still sleeping, breathing noisily. There was no other sound from the cabin. And outside, in the night, only the soft sweeping of the lake wind through the trees.

She stood by the window for a while, then walked around the side of the cabin to a living-room window. She saw blazing at the window's glass before she looked in--and there was no living room. Now it was a coiling furnace, and she could hear it. The Franklin stove, that had held fire captive for so many years, now squatted in the midst of fire that rolled free from wall to wall, and climbed the walls to follow its smoke. The smoke was black and slow as the fire was bright and quick. It made a rich contrast. ...

Charis walked back around to the bedroom window and heard the old man calling.

Definitely awake, now. She couldn't tell what he was calling. Maybe for help.--It was a sort of shouting.

She stood by the half-window, but not too close because smoke was coming out.

It was pouring out of the window like black coffee poured from a pot. The old man was shouting in there. Charis supposed he must have opened the bedroom door and seen the living room was all fire, and no way out.

"Get out ... get outside!" That's what the old man was shouting. She could hear him through the little window. He was shouting as if he were calling to somebody else. Charis stood away from the smoke coming out, and listened. "Get outside!" was what he was yelling in there. Instructions to himself. Then he called out something in French, and she couldn't understand it.

Suddenly, the window screen came out, was broken and fell out, and startled her so she jumped back--and the old man was there at the half-window, staring out through the smoke. The smoke funneled past him, made a billowing dark halo around his face. Charis saw the old man's white face in the middle of moving black smoke that made his face whiter. It was the moonlight that was showing him to her. His face was nested in the smoke--and she saw him see her.

He put his arm out through the little window, his left arm, and she could see he was making small jumps, small hopping jumps in there to get up to the half-window, get out through it, somehow. She could see an edge of the fire behind him; it had come through the bedroom doorway like an animal made of gold.

He was reaching out with his left arm, and he got his head and left shoulder out of the window in stirring, roiling smoke. He was looking at her, and his mouth was moving but he wasn't shouting, anymore. He was trying to get through the window, but the window was much too small. He was wrestling in the window frame, his mouth open, breathing in smoke.

He stretched his arm ... his hand out to Charis as if she could pull him free--and before she thought she reached up and took it. His hand trembled, big, soft, and cold. She held it--then suddenly let go when he screamed. The fire had found him.

Charis stepped back and stepped back again. His screaming was pushing her back. His mouth had become most of his face, a stretched black oval, and he screamed as if he were young again, making that terrific noise.

The old man seemed to shake and shake in the window frame--stuck half in and half out. There was brightness and blazing behind him. He breathed in smoke and shrieked it out--and in the smoke, Charis smelled cooking.

She turned and ran away as if he might get out after all, and come chasing her on fire ... trailing fire after her through the night.

She ran by firelight, then by moonlight, ran through the woods hearing shrill failing noise behind her ... then choral music ahead, sounding faintly from the house she'd passed before. So never in silence for a moment.

The first day and night had gone very well. Joanna had mapped almost two miles of passages no one had ever seen--low-ceilinged, wet, and tortuous ways winding beneath each other. She'd done a decent job of mapping--used the tape, inclinometer, and Suunto compass, made some small hasty sketches, too. A pretty good job of mapping to be working alone, with no one to run the tape end out and hold it, or anchor it with a stone.

The first day and night had gone well. This second morning would be more difficult--though she still felt at home, still was happier here, farther from Frank and his death than she would be anywhere else. But she was tired this morning, colder, weary with scrambling and climbing rope pitches, sore from stone bruises and cuts.