The Silent Strength of Stones Read online

  “Mariah told me who she sold the creel to, but I haven’t had time to track him down,” I said.

  He looked at his watch. “Okay. It’s nine o’clock now. I’ll watch the store. Put the MANAGER IN STORE sign up in the motel office window, then go out and find the man, get the creel. Be back here by ten.”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets so he wouldn’t see the clenched fists. I could hardly tell him that the man who took the creel came from a family that practiced a weird religion, hypnotized you with a glance, and could disappear from sight. I was having a hard enough time believing my own eyes. Pop was never any good at taking no for an answer, no matter what the reason, and he had trouble believing me sometimes, maybe with reason. So I just said, “I need twelve dollars. That’s what he paid for it.”

  He got twelve dollars from the register and tossed it at me. I picked it off the floor and left.

  This time I approached the Lacey cabins from the road, like other people, but on foot, unlike most. Pop had taught me to drive the truck, but he never let me take it out for frivolous reasons, only for pickups and deliveries. I went to the front office and talked to Adam Lacey, the son of Frieda Lacey, who had started the business back in the forties and brought her three children up in it.

  “Old black Ford pickup?” Adam asked. “Sure, I rented the cabin to ’em before I saw their transportation. Might have had my doubts, otherwise, but it was real money they gave me, so I can’t complain now. They don’t socialize much, anyways, aren’t bothering any of our other people.”

  “What’s their name?”

  “Come on, Nick, no reason for me to tell you that. Why you want to know?”

  “They bought something I need to get back.”

  “Like bad tuna or something?” Adam got worry rowels across his forehead. “You had a recall on any canned goods?”

  “What do you care—you buy from the city,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. The Laceys and their Culinary Institute chef had produce and meat trucked in from wholesalers in Portland. They never even bought so much as a toothpick at Pop’s store; but they were our neighbors, and I wanted to get along with them. Sometimes the Laceys gave me work.

  “I need to warn my lodgers, don’t I?” he said. All the cabins had kitchenettes, and some people bought food from us. Others brought gourmet stuff with them. I remembered some of their garbage fondly, mostly for the wild ingredients and multi-ethnicity of the labels on the cans and boxes.

  He had a point. “Nothing like that,” I said. “They bought something that wasn’t for sale.”

  “Well, that’s your problem, then,” he said. “I won’t tell you their name, but I’ll tell you their cabin number, since you could find it out yourself anyway. It’s number five.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Lacey.”

  “Don’t tell ’em I told you.”

  “I won’t.”

  Having spiked his curiosity about why I might be wandering his grounds openly (I hoped he didn’t know anything about my peripheral paths, even though he was almost as much of a sneak as I was), I strolled over to cabin five and knocked on the door.

  Nothing happened.

  I waited.

  I knocked again, louder and a little longer.

  The door eased open as if the wind had blown it. Standing in the narrow gap was the redheaded woman, scowling. The air coming from the cabin smelled like burnt spices. The woman was wearing a thin white ankle-length dress I could see through, and nothing underneath, so after a first startled glance at her breasts I kept my gaze fixed on her face.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  She jumped, her eyes widening. “We left instructions not to be disturbed,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Up at the office!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not on staff here and I didn’t know.”

  “Well, whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any.”

  “Actually it’s about something you bought. Or maybe your husband bought it? At the store?”

  She stared into my eyes. Her own were light green-gray, and I wondered if she could convince me of anything, the way the man had convinced Mariah she had to sell him the creel. I wanted to look away—but at what? I looked at her mouth. It didn’t change from its narrow frown. She wasn’t wearing lipstick. She had no brackets beside her mouth, which made me wonder how old she was; she sure didn’t give off any kid vibes. After a couple uncomfortable minutes she closed the door in my face. I heard her faint footsteps moving away.

  What now? It would have helped if I knew whether she was coming back. I didn’t feel like knocking again, but if I left without even news of the damn creel Pop would get on my case. I looked at my watch. I had half an hour.

  I wondered if Willow had ever reappeared. I glanced toward the inlet, but trees screened it from sight.

  Heavier footsteps approached the door. I watched the knob turn, then looked up into the face of the man who must have been driving the truck the other day, the one I hadn’t gotten a very good look at. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, but somehow they didn’t look like regular clothes, more like counterfeits made by an alien. He was pretty bulky around the shoulders. He had long dark hair. I could see what Mariah had meant about burning eyes. I couldn’t even tell what color they were, because there was this layer of silvery flickers around the irises. I stared at his mouth, until he lowered his face to look into my eyes.

  “Yes?” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

  I blinked and licked my lips. “Did you buy a fishing creel from the store yesterday?”

  “Yes?” he said, but I couldn’t tell if it was an answer or if he was just ignoring the fact that I had spoken.

  “It was my grandfather’s, and it wasn’t for sale. I need to buy it back.”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at me. It was unnerving having conversations with people who refused to talk.

  “I mean,” I said, “what would you want with it? It belonged to my grandfather. He used it for years. It has memories for him. We’d like to have it back. I brought you a refund of your twelve dollars.” I held the money out to him.

  The flickering in his eyes had changed from white to a sort of blue-green, with tiny gold and silver dots mixed in. I could feel my attention heightening. I wanted to see where the next flicker of gold would show up, whether the next green would be forest or olive. At the same time I felt a gathering heat behind my eyes, like a headache, only intoxicating.

  Then I was walking away.

  I didn’t wake up until I was already on the road away from Lacey’s, heading toward the store. Somebody in a maroon Mercedes drove past, scattering gravel. The airwash off the car startled me awake.

  I glanced back at the car. It was turning into the Lacey’s driveway, five hundred feet behind me. I tried to catch up to myself. What had happened? Why couldn’t I remember?

  I looked at my watch, and that brought me back. I had five minutes to get to the store. I started running.

  “He burned it,” I said to Pop.

  “He what?”

  “He burned it. I can’t buy it back. He burned it.” I dug the twelve dollars out of my pocket and put it the counter in front of him. “It’s gone.”

  “Gaw damn it, Nick! This is some story you made up, isn’t it? Always making things up, you sly little—gaw damn it!”

  I said, “You go ask him.”

  “Why would anybody burn it? It was beautiful! Useless, but beautiful.”

  “I don’t know. He wasn’t very talky.”

  “I’ll get it out of him,” he said. “Where is he?”

  I told him.

  “You stay here. Get us our groceries. Granddad’s like to start gnawing on the furniture—you better make him some toast. Make sure you keep a list. I’ll be back.”

  The day was shaping up for hot. A lot of people wanted ice and soda for their coolers, and some strangers came in wondering where to rent a boat. I directed them to Archie’s Dock and sold them
sunblock, sinkers, and fish hooks. The Coke vendor stopped by, and I gave him an order. The chip guy came and restocked chips and beef jerky. Between all this I assembled groceries—bread, cheese, lunch meat, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes, bananas (gave one to Granddad), cookies, chips, rice, noodles, jars of spaghetti sauce, cans of beef stew, chili, soup, milk, cereal (gave Granddad some Sugar Pops, too)—and wrote a list of them. I tossed in some Twinkies and a few licorice whips and some beef jerky, just so Pop would have something to cross off. I tried one week not adding unnecessary extras, and he crossed off three cans of stew. I had to shop twice that week, which he hated.

  Having finished his breakfast, Granddad came out and sat by the stove, watching people come and go. He got one young woman to stop long enough to listen as he talked about pets he’d had sixty years earlier. I leaned on the counter and listened again to the tale of Buster, the cat who ate peanuts, and Brownie, a dog who could chew through any rope you tied him with, and no matter how many times you whapped him with a newspaper he just wouldn’t mind. I found these stories eerie in the extreme. People’s attitudes toward pets used to be much different. I couldn’t imagine beating a dog—not that Pop had ever let me have one.

  I thought about that wolf dog in the back of the black truck. With a dog like that, I could go roving all over the country and never have to look in a back window again. He would be a friend. We would explore. We could trap and hunt and live off the land and never have to come back to civilization. We could be desperados in the wilderness…

  I glanced toward the door, then noticed that the white wolf dog was in the store, sitting there big as life in the middle of the floor, staring at me with yellow eyes, silent as something dead. Granddad’s voice was droning, and the woman was still smiling at him, and there was this wolf sitting there.

  I went around in front of the counter and hunkered down, holding out a hand to him. He sniffed it along the top and along the bottom, then gave me a grin, his tongue curling up between his teeth, and I reached to pet him. “Ruh!” he said. He let me scratch the base of his ear.

  Then I thought, This is crazy. Pop will shoot him.

  “I don’t know how you got in, but you better go,” I said.

  “Ruh!”

  I heard Pop’s truck pulling up. “Right away,” I said. I scrambled to my feet. The door bells rang fiercely. The wolf darted around back of the counter. Pop stood in the doorway, steaming.

  I went behind the counter. The wolf was lying there, but I still had enough room to stand at the cash register. How had he gotten in? I hadn’t heard the bells ring between the time the woman had entered and when Pop came in. Maybe the wolf had followed the woman in?

  “Lies!” Pop said to me, then noticed we had a customer. The woman stared at him. He throttled down his temper. “Howdy,” he said, smiling, his face crimson.

  She patted Granddad’s hand and darted out the door.

  “Lies!” Pop yelled.

  “Why, what did the man tell you?” I asked; My voice had a wobble in it.

  “There wasn’t even a family in cabin five!”

  Breath left me suddenly. For a solid half minute, I wondered if I’d hallucinated everything that had happened. Worked for me. Willow, talking about words that tasted like fresh bread. A whole family standing in the sunlight summoning light. Willow, vanishing. A man with silver fire in his eyes. Sure, I made up stories, especially when I had run out of books to read.

  Like I had made up the story about the wolf.

  I glanced down. The wolf laid his muzzle on my foot, and his yellow eyes stared up at me. I could feel the warm weight of his nose, the tickle of his whiskers against my bare ankles above my tennis shoes, even smell his dogginess. If I was making this up, my powers of imagination had increased about a thousand times.

  “Did you ask Mr. Lacey about that?” I said to Pop.

  “What? Lacey? No, I just went over to the cabin, and there was no truck there, and nobody in residence. I went around back and looked through the windows. No sign of occupation.”

  “But Pop, they were there just”—I checked my watch—“forty-five minutes ago.”

  “You’re protecting that damned Mariah woman, aren’t you?” he said.

  “No, Pop, honest! They were there!”

  He stared at me, his gray eyes blank. Gradually his face turned from bright red to its normal ruddy color. Without a word, he stalked past and headed to our living quarters.

  Sweat eased down the gulley of my spine. I reached to straighten the TV Guides and saw that my hand was shaking. I looked down at the wolf.

  “Ruf,” he said, more a breath than a sound.

  “You better go,” I whispered. I glanced toward the back door, listened for Pop. Nothing. I walked around the counter and over to the front door, held it open just wide enough so that it didn’t set off the bells. The wolf dog trotted out the door. Through the glass I saw him cast one look over his shoulder before he melted into the woods.

  “Nicky.”

  I turned to Granddad.

  “You’re a good boy, Nicky.”

  “Thanks, Granddad,” I said; I was never sure how aware Granddad was of what went on between me and Pop. He never talked about it, just sat and watched everything, or sat and smiled. He could tell stories, but it was hard to have a conversation with him. I figured he was sort of like a tape recorder with a bunch of different tapes. Press the play button and out would come some anecdote, but not a whole lot of new stuff.

  “Good boy,” he said again. “A boy needs a dog.”

  I stared toward the woods where the wolf had disappeared, and sighed.

  “Boy needs a dog,” he said. He stood up and shuffled over to join me. “Good dog,” he said, but his eyes didn’t look focused; the pupils were pinpoints.

  Then he turned to me and his pupils flared wide, opening dark tunnels straight to his mind. He patted my shoulder. “Good dog,” he said. “Good dog.”

  My throat closed up. He was old and couldn’t even keep track of his words any longer. He didn’t know what he was saying. He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant.

  The hairs on the back of my neck were prickling, and my scalp shivered.

  Pop came out from the back with my list in his hand. He had, as expected, crossed off the jerky, licorice, and Twinkies, and he had them in a bag. “Put this junk where it belongs! Straighten those magazines!” he yelled. “Stop standing around. There’s work to be done!”

  I went to work. Granddad got a red lollipop from the penny candy jar and went back to sit by the stove, even though it wasn’t lit. He sat with his booted feet propped on the stove, sucking the candy, the loop of stem sticking out of his mouth. Pop stared at him a moment, made a sour mouth as if he had sucked on a green lemon, and made a note on the inventory sheet.

  Three people came in wanting to talk about the merits of various fishing rods, which kept Pop busy for a while, and I finished straightening and rented an X-rated video to old Mr. Fortrey.

  I moved stock up to the fronts of the shelves, closest expiration date nearest the front. Having finished with the fishing rod people, who hadn’t bought anything, Pop stood with his arms crossed, staring at the antique fishing equipment on the wall back of the register. He hit the counter with his fist. “Nick, take all this stuff off the wall and put it in the attic!” he said. “Put some of those movie posters up here.” He disappeared toward our living quarters again.

  I knew Pop was gnawing at it, looking for truth. He didn’t believe me. I bet he was trying to figure out why I was lying or where the lies would serve me. I wondered myself about the wolf. If he could understand human speech, he knew I had tried to betray his family. Pop had mentioned cabin five, so, if the wolf knew English, he knew…

  I remembered how scared of the wolf I had felt last night, and thought, Now he’s smelled me, and my dream is that when I go out to the woods tonight he’s waiting to join me. I can show him some of the places I know, maybe even Father Boulder. Or maybe the
wolf would lie in wait and attack me for telling Pop which cabin to go to. I felt this heat in my chest, a yearning for the life where a wolf waited to walk with me and be my friend.

  I got pliers from the toolbox under the counter and pried out the staples that were holding a fishing net to the wall. Granddad’s old fishing hat came down next, its band alight with feathered flies. I blew the dust off them and glanced at Granddad’s gnarled hands. He didn’t have much fine control anymore. I had never seen him tie a fly, but I knew he had done these, and they were like little jewels. Granddad had been a lot more present when I was small and when Mom was still around and we lived in the valley. Pop had worked construction then, and Granddad and Mom had been the most important adults in my world. I remembered Granddad teaching me how to tie knots in rope and how to play gin and casino and hearts. He had tried to teach me chess, but checkers was more my speed when I was seven, and by the time I was interested in chess. Granddad had gone away in his head, too far away to play cards or anything else.

  I took the hat over and showed it to Granddad He accepted it and stroked a finger along the feathers of one of the flies, avoiding the hook. He smiled, staring down at the hat in his lap.

  I finished dismantling the fishing display and stapled up some of the movie posters we had rolled up under the counter, sent to us when we ordered the videos: Terminator II, Roger Rabbit, Moonstruck, Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was putting the last staple in when Mariah spoke behind me.

  “I’m sorry, Nick,” she said in a small voice.

  I put the staple gun in the toolbox. “Why?”

  “I liked having the fishing things up.”

  I shrugged. “Anyway, it was like you said. Those eyes…”

  “You saw them too?”

  I hesitated. “The next thing I knew I was walking away. I never got an answer from him at all.”

  She hunched her shoulders. “So now you know how it feels.”

  I considered that. Had she come into the store three years ago, her mind on what she was intending to pick up, and then woken up halfway to her house, the stupid ceramic unicorn gripped in her hand? “But that doesn’t make sense. I just thought I could convince people they liked things. It didn’t seem like—”