The Caretaker of Lorne Field (15 page)

“Do you think you broke it?” he asked.

“No, nothin’s broke.”

“Maybe I should take you to the hospital and have them check it?”

“Just sit down and finish your dinner.”

Durkin opened his mouth to argue, but instead sat back down. He halfheartedly continued eating. Lydia watched him for a while, then told him the lawyer was going to be stopping by soon to explain how they were going to turn their lives around. “You’re going to agree to whatever he says or so help me,” she said, her voice not much more than a snake’s hiss.

“I ain’t violating the contract.”

“You won’t have to.”

He nodded dully and went back to his food. He peeked at her a couple of times to try to figure how badly her hand was hurt and how he was going to get someone as stubborn as her to the hospital.

A few minutes before nine someone knocked on the front door. Lydia dumped the bag of half-melted ice into the kitchen sink then, before leaving to answer the door, warned her husband what she’d do to him if he ruined this for them. When she came back into the kitchen, she brought Paul Minter with her. He took a step towards Jack Durkin and then skipped to one side to avoid a piece of glass.

“You realize you have broken glass on your floor?” he asked Lydia.

“He’ll clean it up,” Lydia said, turning an angry glare towards her husband.

“The hell I will,” Durkin muttered.

Minter looked at both of them. “If this is a bad time . . .” he started.

“As good a time as any.” Lydia took her seat as stiffly as a corpse.

Minter gave them both curious looks again then, avoiding the broken glass, he made his way over to Durkin and introduced himself. Durkin grudgingly took his hand and muttered his own name in response. Minter carefully made his way over to Lester’s seat at the table.

“Mr. Durkin, it’s a pleasure meeting you.” Minter looked around the room smiling artificially. “Has your wife mentioned to you any of what we’re planning?”

“Nope. Not a word.”

Durkin snuck a quick look at his wife and couldn’t help worrying about how awkwardly she held her injured hand. He also didn’t think this kid sitting at the table with them seemed like much of a lawyer. He sure wasn’t dressed like one, wearing a polo shirt and short pants, and without anywhere near the imposing presence of someone like Hank Thompson. Durkin wiped his hand off with his napkin and watched as Paul Minter showed off a large toothy grin.

“Well, it’s really pretty simple.” Minter adjusted himself in his seat and took one more gaze around the room. “What we’d like to do is develop a theme park around what you do.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“We’re going to put this town on the map. Instead of people spending money to go to Salem, Massachusetts, for witch trials, we’ll get them to spend money here watching monsters being pulled out of the earth. Imagine this house being turned into a museum and gift shop—”

“Wait a minute. Where are we supposed to live?”

“We’ll build you a new house,” Minter said with a wide smile. “With the numbers the investors are tossing around, we should be able to build you something nice. Central air, central vacuum, gourmet kitchen, home theatre, pool and Jacuzzi in back. How does all that sound?”

“Sounds okay,” Jack Durkin admitted. “But it’s going to have to be close by so I can get back and forth to that field.”

“That’s not going to be a problem. There’s quite a bit of land deeded with this cabin for us to build on. Getting back to what I was saying, along with this house being turned into a museum and gift shop, we’ll offer tours to Lorne Field so people can watch you at work, and—”

“I ain’t allowing nothin’ that goes against the contract. No one’s allowed at Lorne Field but me.”

Minter forced his smile wider. “Contracts can be amended—”

“Nope. Not this one. It ain’t being changed. Not a word of it. Everything in it is written for a reason. You start messing around with it and we’re all lost.”

‘Please, Mr. Durkin, you need to be reasonable—”

“I’m not allowing a single word of that contract to be changed. Not a single damn word.”

“Is there anything in the contract against turning this home into a museum or gift shop?” Lydia asked.

Durkin thought about it and shook his head.

“How about against you setting up cameras down there so people can watch you work?”

Again Durkin ended up admitting that there wasn’t.

Lydia turned to Minter. “How about all that then?” she asked. “Would that be good enough?”

Minter pursed his lips as he considered it. “I think that would work,” he said. “We could clear out some land behind this cabin and recreate Lorne Field. It might even be better that way. It would both add to the mystique of the actual field and give us more control. And people wouldn’t have to traipse miles through woods to get there. I’d still like to have a supply of weeds that we could laminate and sell as souvenirs.”

Durkin’s jaw dropped as he digested what the lawyer was suggesting. “W-what do you want to do?” he stammered out, not sure he believed that he had heard right.

“We could make a small fortune selling those weeds.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Okay, okay.” Minter held out a hand to stop him. “I just thought I’d ask. The marketing potential could be huge for something like that. But it’s not a deal breaker.”

“So we’re all set?” Lydia asked.

“Well, we’ll see. The investors I talked to so far are excited, and I think I have the support of the town council. So as long your husband doesn’t have any further objections . . . ?”

Durkin glanced at his wife and saw that her eyes were fixed on him. He also saw her still gingerly holding her injured hand. “As long as it don’t violate my contract, you and my wife can do whatever you want.” He cleared his throat. “What would be in the museum?” he asked somewhat sheepishly.

“Quite a lot, actually. A complete history of Lorne Field, the legend of its monsters and, of course, paintings and sculptures of them, along with portraits and a short biography of each of your ancestors who’ve been Caretaker and, as your wife brilliantly suggested, video monitors so people can watch you at work. You are going to continue weeding the field, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I’m just asking.”

“I’ll be weeding the field until my eldest son takes over. As required by my contract.”

“That’s good,” Minter said. He was still smiling broadly, but it was beginning to lose some of its luster. “It will give the whole thing an air of realism. Kind of a Colonial Williamsburg-type vibe. And of course the centerpiece for the museum will be the Caretaker’s Contract and Book of Aukowies under a glass display.”

“How do you know about my book?”

“Your wife told me about it.”

Jack Durkin shifted a suspicious glance towards Lydia, then grunted as he pushed himself away from the table.

“Let me get it for you so you can see it for yourself,” he said. “And the contract, too.”

Durkin left the kitchen, careful to avoid the broken shards of glass littering the floor, and hobbled down the narrow basement steps. He stopped when he found the two loose stones. They weren’t pushed back as deep as they should’ve been. He knew he didn’t make that kind of mistake and guessed that either Lydia or Bert had found his hiding place, knowing that Lester wouldn’t have had the initiative. It was too bad. The hiding place had been used by the eldest Durkin ever since the cabin was built, but he decided it no longer mattered. The whole damn place was going to be made into a freak show soon anyway. But at least it would get Lydia off his back. And with video cameras at Lorne Field, people would see what the Aukowies really were. They’d all learn soon enough that this was no joke.

He took the contract and the Book of Aukowies out of their hiding place and brought them back upstairs. He dropped them in front of the lawyer and told him to feel free to take a look at them. With the cursory glances the lawyer gave them, Durkin knew he had seen them before, which meant Lydia had found his hiding place. He felt better knowing that. He would’ve hated to think Bert would’ve been so sloppy as to leave the stones pushed only three-quarters of the way in.

“Why don’t you read the contract more carefully,” he suggested. “I got some questions for you about it.”

Minter showed him a puzzled smile. “What questions?”

“Let me show you.” Jack Durkin took the contract in his hands and ran a thick index finger down the vellum paper until he found the clause he was looking for. “About what it says here—” Durkin stopped for a moment to squint hard at the paper, then he read out loud: “No person may interfere with the Caretaker from carrying out his sacred duties.”

“Yes?”

“Can that be legally enforced?”

“What do you mean?”

“Jack,” Lydia interrupt, “don’t bother Mr. Minter with this.”

He ignored her and went on. “I think Sheriff Wolcott is planning to arrest me.”

Minter blinked stupidly, but kept smiling. “Why is he planning to do that?”

“He’s claiming I cut off my son’s thumb.”

Minter’s face fell. “What?”

“There was an accident today,” Lydia said. “Jack took our oldest boy, Lester, to that field to teach him how to weed and there was an accident.”

“Is that true, Mr. Durkin? Your son had an accident today?”

“Yep.”

“How—I mean, what happened?”

“My son lost his thumb.”

“Yes I know, that part I heard. How did it happen?”

“An Aukowie chewed it off.”

“What do you mean?”

Durkin shrugged. “Just what I said. Lester put his thumb too close to an Aukowie and it chewed it off.”

Minter looked from Durkin to Lydia hoping to see that this was some kind of joke. All he saw in Lydia’s face was resignation, and in Durkin’s a stubborn earnestness.

“You’re serious?” he said.

“That’s what happened.”

“And this is what you told Sheriff Wolcott?”

“It’s what happened.”

Minter looked back and forth at them. His wide apple-cheeked face pinched in concern. “I’ve put in a lot of time already talking to these investors and the town council. Not only that, but my reputation . . .” he started, his words choking off.

“I’m just telling you what happened.”

“Has your son told his side of the story to the authorities yet?”

“No. Sheriff Wolcott told me that the doctors want him to wait until tomorrow to talk to Lester.”

“Have you talked to your son yet?”

“Not yet. He was crying too much after it happened and I was just trying to get him home before he bled to death.”

Durkin wiped a hand across his jaw, then tugged at his grizzled chin as he thought about Lester and what had happened. “I’m planning to go to the hospital after dinner to see how he’s doing.”

“They won’t let you see him,” Lydia said.

Durkin stared at her as if she were crazy.

“Neither of us are allowed to see him,” Lydia repeated dismally. “Not until Child Services finishes their investigation.”

“That’s not right—”

“What will your son say about what happened to him?” Minter asked, cutting him off.

Durkin looked dumbly at the lawyer as if he had forgotten who he was. “He’ll say the same as me. That one of the Aukowies chewed off his thumb.”

Minter lowered his head into his left hand and squeezed his eyes as if he had a migraine.

“To answer your earlier question,” he said, “that clause would not withstand scrutiny by the courts. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can be arrested and sent to prison.”

He stopped squeezing his eyes and stood up abruptly. He nodded to Lydia and Durkin. “I’ll be speaking to you soon,” he said to Lydia, then to Durkin, “If you’re arrested call me immediately. From this point on if Sheriff Wolcott or any other official asks you what happened to your son tell them it was an accident. Or better yet, don’t say a word and have them talk to me instead. And most importantly, do not make any videotapes of those weeds. Keep a low profile, do not do anything to call further attention to yourself, and do not, I repeat, do not make any videotapes of those weeds. Do we understand each other?”

Durkin stood glumly with his arms crossed and his stare cast down to the floor.

“Mr. Durkin, am I getting through to you?”

Durkin nodded slowly.

“Good.” He sighed heavily. “Right now I’d better go and see if I can have a talk with your son. Mrs. Durkin, what hospital is he at?”

“First Baptist.”

Minter nodded, repeated that he’d be speaking to them soon and headed towards the front door. Glass crunched under his tennis sneakers. He didn’t seem to notice. Lydia yelled out to him, asking whether this was going to change their plans.

Minter stopped and gave her a tired look. “I hope not,” he said. “No, it shouldn’t. If it was an accident like you say, then it shouldn’t matter. It might make our investors skittish for a week or two, but that will hopefully be the extent of it.”

He nodded once more to them and then hurried from the room. They heard the front door open and close only seconds later.

Lydia sat frozen, her small wrinkled face twenty years older than earlier that evening. At that moment Jack Durkin had a good idea how his wife would look on her deathbed. It also made him think of a magician’s trick. Lower the curtain and raise it a second later to reveal that the middle-aged woman volunteer has been replaced by her elderly mother. She stared straight back at him without appearing to notice him. Slowly recognition seeped into her eyes.

“You’re not going to ruin this for me,” she said in a quiet, dispassionate voice. “Not just for me, but for Lester and for Bert. Do you understand that?”

“Look, I haven’t done anything.”

“I asked if you understand me?”