The Northwoods Chronicles (6 page)

Sheriff Withens.

Panic welled up in her, but she smiled and
waved, and gave him the “just a minute” hand sign. Then she made
herself look busy for ten seconds while she got her breathing under
control.

Relax. Relax.

She unlocked the front door and let the sheriff
in, an old, rugged man with a face she had grown to love over the
years. She didn’t like the fact that he was suddenly the enemy.
“Hi, Sheriff.”

“Kimberly,” he said gravely, and closed the door
behind him. “How you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Had a good day?”

“Not bad. Why? What’s up?”

“You know Cousins has been paroled?”

Kimberly felt the blood drain from her face. She
felt the sheriff’s warm hand on her arm. She felt the floor rock
gently beneath her feet.

“Come on, now, let’s sit down.” He led her to
the chair designated for bored husbands.

“I guess I knew it was coming up,” Kimberly
said. “Is he here?”

“The prison notified me that he was released
yesterday. You haven’t heard from him?”

“No. But I suppose I shall.”

“You two haven’t been in communication?”

“He writes to me, but I don’t write back. I
don’t want to have anything to do with him.”

“Is it his intention to come back here?”

“I think it is.”

“Well, I’ll be looking out after you, Kimberly.
Don’t you worry about that. If you see him, you let me know, so I
can keep an eye on him, okay?”

“I’m so sorry, Sheriff. I feel like I’ve brought
bad blood to White Pines Junction.”

“Things happen, Kimberly. You were young then,
very young. You were what, nineteen?”

Kimberly nodded.

“Nobody begrudges you a bad decision in your
youth. Especially since you’ve turned out so good. Just keep in
touch with me, okay?”

Kimberly nodded, feeling herself back on
somewhat solid ground. “Thanks for coming by.”

She saw the sheriff out, locked the door, and
decided to put the cash report off for another day. She went out
the back way, locked it up and went home to the last of the Jack
Daniel’s and a hard, dreamless sleep.

The morning dawned with a low dark ceiling of
clouds and the scent of storm on the air. Kimberly had to turn
extra lights on at the shop to make it look pleasant, but business
was brisk, as it always was on a stormy day. Thoughts of Cousins
were far away, as if it were all a dark fantasy. Life returned
almost to normal, with few thoughts of him, and those that came
were benign, like when he had been safely locked away.

The rain that had threatened all day began just
as she totaled the day’s receipts. By the time she locked the door,
she had to run to her car. The sky darkened to midnight
prematurely, with a strange greenish cast to the horizon where the
sun ought to be setting. Big storm. She went home, laid out the
candles, made a fire in the wood stove and put the teakettle on it,
then put on a sweatshirt and sweatpants and waited for the
maelstrom. She wished she still had the dog. Someone to cuddle with
on the couch.

Natasha.

Nope. Don’t even think about it.

She sipped her tea and listened to the wind
beginning. The rain was blasting the north side of the house, and
the wind was coming up hard.

The truth was, she would have left the
northwoods years ago, right after Cousins went to prison, if it
hadn’t been for Natasha, and the friendship she offered. Kimberly
was in love with Natasha, enough so that she would never declare
her feelings. Natasha would be horrified. And besides, Natasha was
a married woman. Kimberly tried to like men, but they just weren’t
her passion. Natasha was her passion, and if she couldn’t have her,
then she would be content to be near her. Nothing thrilled Kimberly
more than Natasha stopping in at the store, buying some
outrageously New York item that Kimberly had ordered, knowing it
would achieve perfection on Natasha’s tall, lean, ebony body.

But Kim had to be careful. She didn’t want to
lose the friendship by taking an inappropriate step.

And Natasha had gone to the mat for her, too.
Participated in Cousins’ removal. They were sealed together for
eternity by that act, one that could never be mentioned ever
again.

Two weeks. Two weeks, less two days, and she
would be home free.

The wind picked up and started throwing stuff
around outside. Kimberly went to the window and checked on the
greenhouse, but it was fine.

She grabbed a pillow and blanket and decided to
sleep on the couch in front of the fire.

~~~

Bright morning sun shining through the living
room windows woke Kimberly. Storm was over. She got up, stretched,
put the kettle back on the stove, noted that the power had never
gone off, strangely enough, then looked out the back door to check
the greenhouse. What she saw made her knees go wobbly again.

The island. The bog island, the island with
Cousins’ body buried deep within it, was outside. Her pier and the
little boat tied to it had been pushed aside and washed up on the
lawn, and the island had been blown up alongside of it.

This happens, she tried to tell herself. It was
not Cousins coming back to haunt her. It was not. She had heard of
these islands blowing about in windstorms. One time, an island blew
across a channel inlet and fishermen had to be rescued by
helicopter. That had been a big island; nobody knew it was a
free-floating thing until that storm. This was a smaller island,
maybe fifty yards across, but big enough to house pine trees and
bushes. Big enough to walk on. To tether one’s boat to, to sunbathe
nude on, to bury one’s husband in. It had every right to be blown
around the lake.

Cousins was not driving it; Cousins was
dead.

Kimberly stuck her feet into gum boots and went
outside. The earth had been turned in the storm and it still
smelled a little wild.

The island had beached itself right at the edge
of her lawn. She stepped onto it from the yard, gushed around a few
steps, and then found firm footing. She walked, with trepidation,
toward the middle of the island, toward the bog.

And there he was, floating in the middle of the
small, green-black pool of slime. The bamboo pole was still there,
so with heaving gasps and sobs, Kimberly picked up the pole and
shoved Cousins back under the grass. It took a long time to get him
entirely underneath the island, as things were surely churned up
under there, but, eventually, it was done, and she was sweating and
boggy and crying and a mess.

She didn’t even know if there were any turtles
under there to do away with him anymore. She ran, as fast as she
could under the circumstances, back to the house, and against her
will, dialed Natasha’s number.

“Kimberly, hi! Some storm, eh?”

“Natasha, the storm blew the island into my
pier. It’s in my backyard!”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, and he was out! I had to push him back
under with the pole.”

“We’re not talking about that, Kim.” Natasha’s
voice was muffled as if she had turned away from Mort and held her
hand over the phone. “Deal with it.”

“He’s in my backyard!” Kimberly heard a shred of
hysteria in her voice and she didn’t want to let it get a handhold
on her. She stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“We’ll talk later, okay?” Natasha said.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Bye now.”

Kimberly hung up and looked out the window. She
felt as though a demon had started to stalk her and she didn’t know
what to do. Sheriff Withens? No. Pastor Porter? No. Margie?
Definitely not. She’d just deal with it. Like Natasha said. Deal
with it.

And deal with it she did. Every morning she had
to poke him back under the bog. Every morning when she went out
there, the island, like a huge white elephant, was there, and every
morning, she found Cousins floating in the black goo. Every
morning, like a mantra, she would pick up the bamboo pole and push
him under. It was a chore she added to her daily routine, like
watering the growing bamboo and ordering new stock for the
shop.

But it took its toll.

Every day she was surprised, all over again, to
see the island outside, nudging her broken pier. Each day she
walked down the lawn, stepped onto the reedy mass and walked
through the swampy undergrowth, and each day she saw Cousins’ stark
white shoulders floating still, like bleached bones on black
macadam. Each day she picked up the bamboo pole and shoved him,
each day with more and more vehemence, until his sorry carcass was
out of sight. Then she’d slog home, crying more often than not, to
her little cottage and her other life.

Why weren’t the turtles eating him? Or the
crawfish? Why wasn’t he decomposing? Too ornery, she supposed. He
probably tastes bad.

And then one day, at least three weeks after the
storm, long after Cousins should have been completely recycled,
Sheriff Withens paid another call on her at the store.

At closing, like before.

“See you’ve got yourself a permanent resident,”
he said.

Kimberly, nerves strung to the shrieking point,
reacted too fast.
“Resident?”

“The island,” Sheriff Withens said. “You’ve got
yourself some additional real estate there, free of charge.” He
smiled, and Kimberly wasn’t sure if he was being nice or toying
with her like a cat with a mouse.

“Wrecked my pier,” she said.

“Know what we call that island? Dead Man’s
Float. It’s been around for a hundred years, probably. Broke off
Castle Point long before my daddy used to take me fishing out on
that lake. Sometimes it floats free, sometimes it takes up
residence for a time, until another wind storm blows it off to a
new locale.”

“Dead Man’s Float?” Kimberly divided store
receipts into nonsensical piles and kept clipping them together
with paper clips in nonsensical order.

“Don’t know how it got that name. Funny, how
things are named around here. Anyway, you okay? Heard from
Cousins?”

“
Cousins?
Is this a joke?” She’d had
enough of the sheriff’s games. If he had something to say, he
needed to come right out and say it.

“No, darlin’, not at all. I just figured he’d be
coming up here to see you, is all. I’m wondering if it isn’t a
little strange that he hasn’t showed.”

“He’s got no business with me. We’ve got nothing
to do with each other. I never want to see him again and I think I
made that quite clear to him, and to you. I’m not expecting to see
him up here. I don’t want to see him up here, and if he comes up
here, I will not see him.”

The sheriff cocked his head and looked at
her.

“Is that clear?”

“Yes indeedy, Miss Kimberly. You’re doing okay,
living out there by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“And the store?”

“Fine.”

“Keeping up with your, you know, your
chores?”

“Okay.” She threw down her receipts in angry
exasperation.
“Okay!
Come and look. I’m sick of it. I’m sick
of it all. I’m sick of the work, I’m sick of the worry, I’m sick of
. . . I’m just fucking sick and tired of
it all!”
She
grabbed her jacket and headed out the back door. “C’mon, then,” she
said to him, impatient, suddenly, to have the whole thing done
with, get her butt in jail, and begin the rotting process. One of
them was going to rot in jail. If it wasn’t going to be Cousins,
then it might as well be her.

The sheriff followed her out, then got into his
own car and they proceeded the half mile to her little house. She
left the car door open when she got out, and kicked off her
high-heeled pumps halfway down the back lawn. She didn’t even stop
to take off her panty hose or worry about her expensive dress. She
didn’t look behind her to see if the sheriff was following. She
just stomped down the lawn, stepped onto the island, and sloshed
her way across it to the bog.

The sheriff was behind her, she could hear
him.

The bog was empty. No body floating. No Cousins.
No nothing, but the nice, long, straight piece of timber bamboo
that had served her in this strange capacity since that first
night.

“Almost forgot about this bog,” Sheriff Withens
said behind her. “It moved here with the island intact, eh? Odd
stuff, that.”

“He comes out of there every morning,” Kimberly
said.

“He? He who?”

“Cousins.”

“Comes out of the bog?”

Kimberly nodded and then started to cry. “I poke
him back under with that pole,” she said, and then collapsed
against his ample chest and began to sob.

The sheriff put big arms around her and held her
for a long moment. “What if I took over that chore for the next
week or so?”

“Huh?” She swiped at her runny nose.

“Let’s you go into the house and get a nice cup
of tea, Kimberly. I think I’ll call Doctor Sanborn and see if he
can come by to see you. Meanwhile, don’t you come out here on this
island until I tell you it’s okay. I’ll take care of poking Cousins
back down under the bog.”

She nodded. It didn’t make any sense to her that
the sheriff would help her hide the evidence of her murder, but
what the hell. If he wanted to come out here and poke Cousins back
down under every morning, it would be a big load off her
shoulders.

She let the sheriff take her back home, and he
put the teakettle on while she sat on the sofa and listened to him
talk on the telephone to Dr. Sanborn’s wife who agreed to have the
doctor phone in a prescription. She felt such relief she could
barely believe it. And she hadn’t said a word about Natasha. She’d
go to jail by herself for this crime. When the sheriff left, she’d
call Natasha and tell her that she was going to prison. Taking
Cousins’ place.

But Natasha’s line was busy, so Kimberly just
went to bed.

In the morning, the sheriff’s car pulled deep
into the drive. He got out, wearing gum boots, opened the trunk and
hauled a long bundle out, hoisted it on his shoulder, where it bent
in a very convenient way, and then made his way down the lawn and
onto the island. It was heavy, she could tell by the way he
staggered under its weight.