The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) (16 page)

22

Joe brewed coffee and brought in wood for the fire long before dawn. Tucked beneath the quilts, I traced the hand-stitched patterns with a lazy finger and sipped the steaming coffee he served me in bed.

As he slipped into his coat, he said “I’ll let you know how it goes with Karla and her sister. Hopefully, she’ll be gone very soon.”

My emotions were still conflicted, so I nodded.

“Stay home today,” he said as he sat on the edge of the bed. “The forecast is for bad weather. Most folks manage the snow, but if there’s ice beneath it there will be accidents.”

“I have to write today.” It was true—I needed to spend hours pounding on my dissertation—but my plan for the morning was already laid out in my mind.

“I’ll give you a call later,” he said. “Don’t take up with any strangers.” He kissed my forehead and then my lips, his scruff zinging the tender skin of my face.

He left as the sky lightened from black to gray. Thick clouds obscured the light and warmth. It would be bad weather, as he’d predicted. I showered and dressed to go out. After a breakfast at the inn, I had research to do. Unfortunately, it wasn’t on my dissertation but on the scrimshaw I put in my jacket pocket along with the pepper spray Dorothea had given me.

Joe intended for Karla to leave, but that didn’t mean she’d cooperate. If she stalked and cornered me again, I’d make certain she never forgot the encounter. My cousins had taught me a few important things about dealing with crazy people and drug addicts. They didn’t give up. The only solution was to hurt them so badly they
couldn’t
come after me again.

The aroma of bacon hit me as I entered the dining room. Dorothea indicated I should pick my own seat while she checked out two customers. Her smug expression told me she knew Joe had spent the night and approved. I could only hope I’d put my fling with Patrick in the past, where it would never surface.

She served me hot coffee, cranberry juice, flapjacks with maple syrup, and crispy bacon—a breakfast fit for a lumberjack. And I ate every mouthful.

“Worked up an appetite, did you, girl?” she asked.

“I did.”

“That Joe, he’s a fine catch. You with your fancy degree and teaching in college. Maybe he’ll return to what he loves best.”

“He loves being a ranger.” I couldn’t say why the thought of Joe returning to teaching troubled me.

“Teaching was his first love. You know how it is.” She swept my plate up in her capable hands and was gone.

I put on my coat, hat, scarf, and gloves and set out for the gift shops in town. Whaling wasn’t the focal point of Concord. This area had another bloody tourist trade, the Revolutionary War. Still, there were several art galleries, and local artists tended to know each other.

While my dissertation languished, I pursued the riddle of the girl in the red hooded cloak. Mischa Lobrano. And I had to be careful what I asked.

My first three stops yielded nothing. The fourth business was an artsy shop that featured prints of local artists, some sculpture, and depictions of historic events in ceramic and bronze. Some of the work was quite good, and other pieces were clearly targeted for the tourist market.

The man behind the counter was thin, balding, and in his seventies. Perfect. He might know a few things about events from a decade past.

“May I help you?” he asked.

My finger traced the image of the girl carved into the tooth lying snug in my pocket. “Do you have any scrimshaw?”

His expression shifted from helpful to disinterested. “You’ll find a better selection in New Bedford and communities with historic ties to the whaling industry. The older pieces are valuable; ivory is illegal to purchase now. Endangered species.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Are you looking for something in particular?” he asked.

“An expert to tell me about a piece. And about the process of scrimshaw.”

He came out from behind the counter and went to a back shelf. After rummaging for a moment, he handed me a pamphlet. “I have this, a history of the art. Through the years, I’ve had a piece or two of scrimshaw, but not many. A few years back a local young man wanted me to carry some pieces. He’d worked up Revolutionary War scenes on whale teeth.”

My frown made him laugh.

“Exactly my reaction. An unhappy marriage of Concord history with the whaling industry. I put a couple of pieces in my cabinet but they never sold.”

“What happened to them?”

“He came by and picked them up. Said he was heading back to the sea, leaving Concord behind.”

“Was he a local man? Maybe he’s still carving.”

“Let me see. Let me see.” He went behind the counter and brought out a receipt book. “Sailors with nothing to do carved scrimshaw on those lengthy whaling voyages. Pretty much a lost art.”

“Some of the work is beautiful.”

“I never sold any of his, but I might have logged it into inventory.” Pages fluttered as he perused the book. “Let’s see. Here’s something.” He pointed.

Leaning over the counter I read the name Roger Brent. “Is that him?”

“Ayuh. Roger Brent. My memory’s coming back. Tall young man. Thin. Lived at the end of Yerby Lane. Well, the only building on Yerby. Roger Brent. He was sort of a history and nature enthusiast. Liked to hike.” He nodded as he talked. “A loner type. Said Thoreau had it all figured out. Man did best on his own, he said. Solitude brought wisdom and all that crap. Brent was all caught up in the talk about the new century. Polar fields shifting, Y2K, all of that foolishness. If he was here now, he’d be ranting about solar flares or some going-up-in-the-rapture foolishness.”

“Is the invoice dated?”

He pushed pages back to reveal a blurry date.

“Would you recognize his style of scrimshaw?”

“Nope. Never that interested. Put the pieces in the cabinet to shut him up. He was a kook. I wondered how he kept body and soul together, and now that I think about it, he surely didn’t eat regular. Musta been mental, you know.” He tapped his temple. “I should have tried to help him. Back then, though, he was just another person with a strange twist. We attract a few of them here. Folks who read Emerson and Thoreau and want to live in the woods. Danger now is they aren’t just recluses but those crazy survivalists. Any dern fool in the country can own an assault weapon or buy the goods to make bombs.”

“Where did you say he lived?”

“Yerby Lane. Not so far from Walden Pond. Never been paved. The lane goes back to an old shack.” He held out the pamphlet of scrimshaw history. “Take this. Might be of interest to you. Take it as a gift.”

I thanked him and reached into my pocket. “Does this look like Roger Brent’s work?”

He scrutinized the tooth. “The work is good. Whoever did this used a combination of needle and small blade. Depth of cut is used to give the image a three-dimensional quality. This could be quite valuable.”

“Does it look like Brent’s work?” I asked again.

“Can’t say for sure. Where’d you get it?”

I wasn’t about to tell him that the ghost of a little girl left it for me. “I bought it at a junk shop in Rhode Island.”

“You have quite an eye.” He took it to the light from his front door for a better view. “Unusual treatment of the child’s eyes. Never seen anything quite like it.”

“I noticed that.”

“It’s the only sign of amateur craftsmanship I can detect.” His finger gently tapped the carving. “If you want to sell it, I’ll put the word out.”

“No, it’s not for sale. Can you tell how old it is?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have the experience. The substance used in the cuts seems to be gunpowder, which might date it, but you’d need an expert to tell for sure. Maybe someone at a university. The archeology departments should be able to help you.” He held it out to me.

“Could the young girl depicted be local?” I asked. “Maybe she modeled for him or was a relative.”

That stopped him. “I can’t say.”

I pointed to the writing on the furled banner.
Praeterita est numquam mortuum
. “What does that mean?”

“It’s Latin, I think, but I can’t say the meaning. Like I said, your best bet is a university.”

I took the tooth and returned it to my pocket. “Is Yerby Lane in walking distance?”

“Ayuh. But there’s nothing there. I doubt the shack is still standing.”

“Thank you,” I said as I headed for the door.

Snow hadn’t begun to fall, but the sky was leaden and heavy. The clouds looked ready to really cut loose, but the forecasts promised the weather would hold until tomorrow. I had plenty of time for a hike.

I took the route toward Walden Pond. I wasn’t certain where Yerby Lane might be, but I needed to move. Whenever I stopped, images from the past two days caught up with me. Patrick’s body in the glow of the fire, Joe asleep in my bed, the thud of fist on flesh in the darkness, and the flash of red through the woods riding on the giggle of a child.

I couldn’t really say how far I’d walked or how long it had taken me, but I stood at an intersection. The lane leading west wasn’t marked, but it fit the shopkeeper’s description of Yerby Lane.

23

The first flakes drifted down as I turned onto the trail. Thick and heavy, they stuck to leaves, limbs, and eyelashes, and accumulated immediately on the ground. The snow fell so dense and fast that visibility was only twenty yards. Looking down the rutted dirt trail, I guessed no one had recently traveled this path. It was isolated, as the shopkeeper said. The wisest move would be to head back to the inn and return another day when the weather was better.

My impatience wouldn’t allow retreat, though. I’d be home in an hour. There was plenty of time to finish my exploration. I trudged down the lane wondering how far it was to artist Roger Brent’s former cabin. A shack ten years ago, according to the shopkeeper. Would anything of the structure remain?

Instead of lightening the sky, the onslaught of snow seemed to pull the gray clouds lower until it felt as if they rested on the tops of the bare trees. Suffocating. I struggled for oxygen as I pushed on down the path.

The trees pressed closer and closer the deeper I went. The path was not wide enough for a vehicle now, barely accommodating a human. The woods were alive with the sound of small limbs snapping beneath the weight of the snow. Scuffing through it, I realized how wet and heavy it was. Joe was right. If the temperatures fell another few degrees, the terrain would be layered with ice beneath the snow, a dangerous condition.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed the temperature was dropping. Maybe it was only the damp snow. Still, my fingers, in warm gloves, and my toes, nested in heavy socks and leather boots, had numbed out. Even protected by a scarf, my ears ached from the cold.

Pulling my collar higher, I pushed on. The adversities only made me more determined. Granny Siobhan called it the “bitch in the ditch” syndrome. It was a famous Cahill trait based on some distant relative who’d wrecked three cars trying to get a load of moonshine down the mountain to what turned out to be an under-cover revenuer.

I could still hear Granny’s voice. “Providence stepped in three times to prevent Mare from delivering the ’shine. Three times she climbed out of the ditch, shook her fist in Fate’s face, borrowed or stole another vehicle, and continued. In the end, she was carted off to jail for her troubles.”

Cahills were known for hardheadedness. Chances were, if Captain Ahab could trace his lineage, he would discover he had Cahill blood. No one but a Cahill, fictional or not, would chase a whale around the world just for the pleasure of trying to kill it.

The thought of the Great White made me reach into my pocket for the whale’s tooth. My gloved fingers surrounded it, too numb to truly feel, but I knew it when I touched it. The canister of pepper spray was also there. I felt a little less vulnerable when I held it.

At last a shack came into view. It stood, if one could call two timbers holding the whole thing upright standing, like the ghost of a house long dead. A good wind, or a heavy snow on the roof, would send it toppling. Today might be the day.

I scrabbled onto the tiny roofed porch so I could shake the snow out of my hair. Coming here had been a mistake. Admit it now or suffer later.

My cell phone was fully charged, and I decided to use it. Joe would come and get me. Or Patrick. If I called the inn, Dorothea would send Patrick for me.

“Shit.” I shook the phone. No reception. The damn thing was useless in Concord. It didn’t work at the cabin or in the woods. The first tingle of unease pricked my spine.

The five-by-five-foot porch barely covered my head and shoulders, so I pushed at the front door. It swung open without complaint. A great reluctance tugged at my feet, warning me not to step inside. It wasn’t trespassing that worried me—it was something far more frightening, though I couldn’t put my finger on what.

Falling snow obscured everything, even the tree line, which was no more than twenty feet away. The cabin might be my only chance at survival. I’d never make it back to the road around Walden, and it was another three miles home from there. I was stuck. Either the cabin or the woods. Not much of a choice.

I crossed the threshold.

The cabin was dark. No windows, but that also meant at least a bit of insulation from the wind. I couldn’t see much, and with each step inside, I wondered if my foot would go through the flooring. A gash or twisted ankle could prove fatal under these conditions.

Feeling my way, I groped across the top of a table. As I patted the surface, I found an old oil lamp. Beside it was a book of matches. I stopped. I had the sense I’d stepped into some awful fairy tale where things had been put in place especially for me. As if someone knew I would come here.

Granny Siobhan’s stories frequently featured malicious fairies and elves, changelings and gremlins. She’d read to me, and one story that never failed to frighten me was
Vasilisa the Beautiful
, about a young girl sent into the woods to find firewood. She stumbles upon a witch’s house and her life changes dramatically, and not for the better.