The Caretaker of Lorne Field (29 page)

She bit her lip and nodded, fighting back her tears.

“Lester’s waiting in the car,” she said. “I’ll send him in here to see you. You take care, you old fool.”

Hiding her face from him, she rushed out of the visitor’s area.

Lester wore a despondent look as he entered the room, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He nodded towards his father, kicking at the floor as he walked over to his chair.

“I’m sorry, dad,” he said.

“I know, son.”

“I’m sorry for throwing those tomatoes at you.”

“Were you the one who hit me square in the nose?”

Lester nodded solemnly.

“You have a good arm. You almost knocked me to the ground.”

“I’m sorry, dad.”

“No more sorries, okay?”

Lester shook his head. “I still got to say how sorry I am for telling people you cut off my thumb.”

“It’s over, Lester.”

“I’m still so sorry. You lost our house because of that. And everything else that happened . . . to you . . . to Bert . . . It was all my fault. I just couldn’t remember anything about what happened to me, and when they asked me to say those things I went along because I didn’t want to be Caretaker. I’m so sorry, dad.”

“So you don’t remember Aukowies biting off your thumb?”

Lester shook his head.

“You just said that to help me out?”

“Yeah.”

“Son, come closer.”

Lester wiped a hand under his nose and hesitantly stepped forward. Jack Durkin grabbed him and hugged his son close to his chest. He let go only when he realized Lester was struggling to maintain his composure and would be bawling soon.

“Okay, son,” he said, “you better go back out with your ma. Take good care of her, okay?”

Lester nodded morosely, his mouth forming a tiny circle on his pale face. Durkin watched him leave and wondered why he was so disappointed. If Lester had truly seen the Aukowies bite off his thumb, then the world was damned. As it was, there was still a glimmer of hope his psychiatrist’s angle on it was right—that the Aukowies existed only in his mind. At least he could hope for the best.

Spring thaw occurred on March twentieth the next year. Every day after, Goldman came to see Jack Durkin to tell him nothing was growing on Lorne Field. That the place was still as desolate as the moon. He seemed disappointed, almost as if he was hoping to see monsters there, or maybe for some reason he didn’t want to accept a solution as mundane as Durkin just being insane.

During the months leading up to his trial, Durkin hoped that Wolcott’s body would be found. If that happened, then he could accept that he was in fact insane and at least be assured that the world would be safe. But as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t shake a growing uneasiness that his memories were real. That he was not brainwashed. That he was not the victim of collective hysteria. That he didn’t have the psychotic breakdowns that his psychiatrist insisted he did. That the Aukowies were real, and that his violations of the contract had irrevocably altered the equation with them. He couldn’t shake his uneasiness that burning them alive was the final straw and that they were no longer playing by the rules that the contract governed.

 

Everything in that contract is written for a reason
, his pa used to tell him.
You have to cherish it, treat is as the most sacred document on the planet . . .

 

Instead he had violated it. Over and over again. If the Aukowies were real, how could burning one generation stop all those other generations from pushing their way up? If they were real, then somehow he had damned the world . . . If they were just weeds, then none of it mattered.

He prayed that they were just weeds. As much as he didn’t want to be insane, he prayed that he was. He wondered whether someone insane would feel as he did.

During those winter months, Durkin read every book he could get his hands on. His lawyer helped him by bringing in stacks of books every time he visited. Homer, Steinbeck, Twain, Plato, Dickens, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes—he found himself particularly drawn to
Don Quixote
. But it was Dante’s
Divine Comedy
that made him tremble as he read it. As a kid he never bothered to read books, since he knew from the start what was planned for him, and later, after he became Caretaker, he was either too tired during the months between spring thaw and first frost, or simply needed to rest during the winter months to regain his strength. Now, though, he read insatiably and continuously as if he were trying to squeeze in a lifetime of reading. Even though Lydia’s book made the New York Times bestseller’s list, his lawyer never brought it, and he never asked for it.

Eventually his trial came. His lawyer had blown up drawings from the Book of Aukowies to postersize and introduced them as evidence to show the jury how Durkin had been indoctrinated in support of his temporary insanity defense.

On the first day of the trial, he whispered to Durkin how they were going on day twenty since spring thaw. “I’ve been out there every day, and nothing’s growing,” he said, his grin strained. There was an edginess to him, a discomfort. Durkin knew that the lawyer had read both the contract and the Book of Aukowies carefully, and as much as he wanted to believe that it was a simple matter of Durkin having a psychotic breakdown, he had his own doubts. He mentioned to Durkin several times over the winter how he couldn’t fathom Durkin cutting off Wolcott’s foot with a single slice of the machete. He told Durkin how he had bought the same brand of machete and tried himself with a watermelon and couldn’t cut it through with one strike. “We’re talking a watermelon, Mr. Durkin. Somehow you were supposed to cut through a leather boot and bone. I don’t see how you did it.” When Durkin found himself thinking about it, he couldn’t see how he could’ve done it, either. But he tried not to think about it. He tried to think that it was a simple matter of that psychiatrist being right. Or maybe somehow burning a field of Aukowies alive ended them forever. Maybe that was it. Except everything in the contract was written for a reason. His pa said so. So did his grandpa. And his great grandpa before him . . .

Durkin had trouble paying attention to his trial. He was too distracted to understand what people were saying. He was too uneasy. He could tell his lawyer was feeling the same way, but it didn’t stop Goldman from whispering to him that they were going on day twenty-three . . .

It was on the fourth day of his trial when he heard the screams, along with everybody else in the courtroom. They were short-lived and followed by a weird kind of popping noise—kind of like an amplified bug zapper. People in the courtroom rushed to the windows, then started screaming themselves. Durkin sat where he was. His lawyer just stared at him, his grin folding into a frightened grimace.

It didn’t take long for the Aukowies to bust through the walls. Seconds maybe. They were exactly as in the drawings. Nine feet long with evil horned faces and fangs everywhere. One of them hovered in front of Durkin, its open jaws unhinging inches from his face. It recognized him, and he knew he would be saved for last. Instead it buzzed through Goldman, turning his lawyer into nothing but pink spray. Durkin felt bad seeing it. Over the last several months he had grown to like him. As much as he wanted to kid himself otherwise, he had known all along what had happened. When he burned the Aukowies alive he changed everything. Instead of coming up in Lorne Field, they chose someplace else. Someplace quiet. Maybe it took longer, twenty-three days to be exact, but at least they wouldn’t be burnt alive where they pushed through the ground.

Unless he truly was insane.

He closed his eyes and wished that that was the case. That the screams and popping noises he heard were the sounds that an insane man would hear. That the moist spray hitting his face was just the sensation that someone out of his mind would imagine. He prayed that that was what it was. After he was done praying, he begged for forgiveness.

I’m so sorry
, he thought.
Lydia, Lester, I’m sorry for what’s going to happen to you. But it wasn’t fair. It just isn’t right to put this kind of burden on one man’s shoulders. You had no right doing it.

With a smile, he realized how crazy that was. A man bitterly complaining to a God he didn’t believe in. It gave him some hope. But under no circumstance was he going to open his eyes.