The Silent Strength of Stones Read online

  She looked like a wicked angel.

  She smiled at me and rattled the doorknob. The door was locked. For a moment I just stood there, jaw dropped, and then I unlatched the door and let her in.

  “You ready?” she said.

  “I can’t,” I said, swallowed, and said, “go.”

  “What?”

  “I’m being punished. Gotta stay home and count stuff.”

  “Punished? What for?” She walked to the counter, jumped or floated up, and sat there, her hands quiet in her lap.

  “For taking a long lunch.” I turned away and counted decks of cards, foil bags of pipe tobacco, jars of pink salmon eggs. I glanced at her. She was still there.

  She cocked her head, staring at the wooden floor. Her brow furrowed. “Do you work here every day?”

  “I get half of Saturday off.” That had taken some real strong convincing. Weekends were our busiest times. Pop was still suspicious about why Saturday was my half day, and I thought maybe I should relax and let him pick some other day, like Wednesday. But there wasn’t as much going on around the lake most Wednesdays. Saturdays, people were always up to something interesting.

  “Six other days of the week you’re in this store?” Willow asked.

  “During the season. We open an hour later on Sunday, too. Oh, and at the moment, I get to take lunch, but that might change.”

  “But—” She frowned.

  “Sorry about our date,” I said.

  She drifted down from the counter and wandered around the store as I counted lighters and packs of cigarettes and sticks of beef jerky. After a while, she said, “You’re counting. You’re counting what’s here? And you’re in here every single day?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then you already know what’s in the store.” She came toward me, reached up, and touched my forehead. The tips of her fingers were cool. “Write,” she said in her velvet voice.

  I blinked and wrote, feeling four cold spots on my forehead and thinking about nothing at all. I flipped pages on the yellow legal pad and wrote more. My hand cramped, but I didn’t stop to shake it. Seven pages later I dropped the pad and pen and tried to flex my fingers. Man, they hurt.

  Willow stopped touching me.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. My voice shook. My fingers were twitching. Don’t do it? How had she done it? I had heard of hypnosis, but this was something else. The pain in my hand was real, and so were all the pages of scribbling. I looked at them because I didn’t want to look at her.

  Maybe I did know everything that was in the store. I might have listed things we had lost to pilfering. Or maybe I knew about those too, and didn’t know I knew.

  I could see me knowing everything. I couldn’t see her just kind of ordering me to make a list and me doing it. N-O. No.

  “No” hadn’t gotten me anywhere with disappearing Lauren, either.

  Something about this whole situation reminded me of my mother. Had she touched my forehead the way Willow had?

  Willow took the pad from me and dropped it on the floor, then gripped my hands in hers, and smoothed her cool, callused thumbs down over my fingers and palms. My left hand was curled with cramp from holding the pen. She took it in both her hands and worked it with her fingers, stroking along the tensed muscles, pressing her thumb against my palm. Gradually her fingers warmed against mine. I felt very strange, standing there while she massaged my hand. I could smell her—a wild animal scent, crushed herbs, musky warmth, the tantalizing smell of clean, glossy hair. “I’m sorry, Nick,” she said, staring down at our hands. Her eyes drifted shut.

  I closed my hand around one of hers. My fingers worked okay again. Willow sighed faintly and moved a little closer to me, and my arm slid around her shoulders without thought. Her warmth felt good against me. I remembered her standing in the water in the morning sun. I wanted to get really close to her and at the same time I wanted to stand there and not move because so far it hadn’t been a mistake, but once it turned into a mistake we’d never get back to here, where I could stand with her hand in mine, my arm around her, my cheek against her hair and her flowers, her breast nudging my chest, and all my ideas for what came next bright and untarnished.

  She tilted her head back. Her eyes were still closed, but her mouth was coming closer to mine. Her lips looked soft, dark pink like the inside of a cherry, and her breath smelled of honey. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, about to dive off, without knowing what was waiting for me when I landed. Fear heightened my awareness; all I could see was her face. Each dark eyelash, each smooth curved dark hair in her eyebrows; a gentle lace of golden freckles across her nose and cheeks, almost too faint to notice. I heard the breath moving in and out of her, and the thought of that intimacy of air was almost unbearably exciting.

  I closed my eyes and touched her lips with mine, and her lips touched back. Not like kissing Junie, who had been convinced sucking was important. A pressure, a softening, a moving pressure again, and the sweet taste of summer afternoon flowers. Heat and fear tremored through me. My pants were way too tight.

  Her free hand came up and gripped my head. I couldn’t think. All there was was pressure and heat and taste, discomfort and excitement, and something building.

  “Nick!” Pop’s voice.

  One word, and I jerked, feeling as though I’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen. Everything inside switched from desire to panic. My eyes were open. I was staring down into Willow’s left eye, looking into an eternity of gold around a deep well of darkness, fuzzy because it was too close to focus on. For a moment Willow’s hand kept my head down, my lips against hers. Her strength scared me. Then she let go, and my head snapped up.

  “Nick!” cried Pop again. “What are you doing?”

  My face heated. I felt wobbly. What did he think I was doing? “Inventory,” I said. It came out hoarse and scratchy.

  “You lie! You lie and lie! You lie to my face.”

  Heat flushed my back. He was tearing me down in front of My Girl. I stooped and retrieved the legal pad, slapped it on the counter in front of him. “Inventory,” I said. My voice was so cool and distant it tasted like it didn’t belong to me. “I’ve finished.” I crossed my arms, tucking my hands into my armpits. Willow stood silent beside me.

  He picked the pad up, his eyes wide, and flipped back through all the pages. After a moment’s study, he said, “But this takes both of us eight hours.” He turned a page, went over and opened the drawer where we kept spare sewing supplies. He counted needle packets, checked my list. His eyes narrowed as he glared at me.

  “What?” I said. “Is it wrong?”

  After a moment, he said, waving a five-pack of needles, “These are dusty.”

  “You didn’t say to dust. You said to count.”

  He counted spools of thread and checked my list. Willow leaned against me. She covered a small yawn with the back of her hand.

  Pop glared at me again.

  “I’m done,” I said, “and I’m taking Willow to the dance now.”

  “You’re grounded!”

  “Think twice,” I said. The words came from deep in my chest, in the voice of a stranger, dangerous and persuasive.

  Pop blinked three times, then said, “See you later.”

  The warm night smelled of lake bottom, dust, and trees. Somewhere in the distance a skunk had sprayed. Wind sent pine needles whispering against one another. Frogs chorused from the lake, and cricket calls punctuated the air from the roadside. Music left faint footprints on the air. From the motel building behind the store blue and pink neon flickered: VENTURE INN VACAN Y.

  Willow laughed. It was like hearing a lark at midnight. She hooked her arm through mine and set off toward Parsley’s Hall, tracking music to its lair.

  We had passed Mabel’s, Fortrey’s, the Lakeside Tavern, and Archie’s Boat Dock. I pulled Willow to a sudden stop in the darkness between two yard lights and listened. The music was louder now, almost masking the faintest of brushing and click
ing sounds from behind us. I turned back.

  The wolf was there, a dark shadow shape, his furred edges tipped with left-behind light. He lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. He looked completely wild and unapproachable. A growl spun in his throat.

  “Evan!” Willow said.

  Wind touched the damp on my forehead, chilling me, I squatted in the road and held my hand out to the wolf, wondering if night transformed him into some other kind of creature from the one I had touched and even hugged by sunlight.

  After a moment he straightened and edged close enough to sniff my hand. “Ruh,” he said.

  I leaned forward onto my knees and put my arms around him. “Thanks,” I whispered. “You scared me.”

  “Ruf!” He broke free of my embrace. “Uff,” he said on a breath, hanging his head and peering sideways at Willow.

  “Nick!” said Willow, her voice light with stifled laughter. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” I jumped up and dusted off my knees. I suddenly realized I was wearing dirty jeans and a dust-streaked black T-shirt with the logo of a valley country music station in white on the front. I had expected to spend the whole evening in the store counting things. There was no actual dress code at the Friday night dances, but I had planned a better outfit when I still thought I was going—wanted to look good at my first dance of the summer. Who knew who might be there?

  Though Willow didn’t seem to care how I was dressed, and it didn’t feel so important to impress Kristen anymore.

  Willow said, “You were hugging Evan.”

  “It wasn’t his idea. I just…”

  “Just what?” she said after a moment, her voice soft as warm chocolate.

  “Just always wanted a dog,” I said before I could stop the words. I remembered looking out the door as the wolf vanished into the woods, and Granddad telling me a boy needed a dog.

  “Evan’s not exactly a dog,” Willow said. Some of the dance had seeped out of her voice.

  “I know that,” I said. “He’s wild, and he owns himself. Anyway, Pop would never let me have a pet.”

  She slid her arm through mine again. We walked without words toward the hall. The wolf wisped along beside us. He licked my hand once, a brief damp contact, then darted a few feet away as if to pretend he hadn’t done it.

  Cars were parked haphazardly all around Parsley’s Hall, staggering across grass and gravel parking space, huddled in under the skirts of trees. The night smelled of stale cigarette smoke and crushed grass. Orange lights on poles copper-edged the big summer leaves of maples, copper-sheathed the pine needles. Moths surfed the air currents near the lights. The hall’s open double doors spilled yellow light and bright music out into the road. Fiddles wailed, an amplified voice sang garbled words, and shoes shuffled on the rosin-dusted wooden dance floor. Beyond the small high curtained windows, shadows moved.

  I took Willow’s hand. We both looked at Evan.

  “RooOoOOoo,” he said softly, and faded off into the forest.

  “Did you put a spell on him?” Willow said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Evan hates everybody. He was so angry when the family sent us to live with these cousins, he’s been resisting everything ever since. How come he likes you?”

  “Cousins,” I said, letting the word curl upward at the end into a question. I wanted to ask her about spells, Evan, everything she had just said, but decided to start small. I had thought maybe Lauren was Willow’s sister.

  “Oh, I guess I haven’t explained any of that. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to marry one of them.”

  “What?”

  “Probably Joshua. He’s only a year younger than I am. But there haven’t been any definite signs about it, not since the night Aunt Agatha threw the bones. And all that told us was that I belonged with this family for now. Joshua doesn’t even like me yet.”

  “What?”

  She looked up into my face and laughed, then pulled me along into the light coming from the open doors.

  Friday night dances at Parsley’s Hall brought people out of the woodwork. The dances were the equivalent of a weekly newspaper; for locals, it was the best way to get news and to make news. Parsley scheduled a break in the middle of the evening for public service announcements, birthday and anniversary best wishes, and a raffle. Even though there was a private rec hall at Lacey’s, a lot of the Lacey’s guests came to the dances, and people from all the other rent-a-cabins or lodgings who were starved for entertainment came too. Musicians drove up from the valley and down from the hills to jam just for fun, but they always played danceable stuff with a strong beat, whether they played well or not. Kids came with their families, and old folks came with their spouses or alone. A coffee can with a slot cut in its lid stood by the door for donations for hall upkeep. Other than that, there was no charge.

  The front hall was mostly dance floor, with benches along the side walls and a sound system set up at the far end in front of a stage nobody used except as a place to park instrument cases. The back room had long tables lined up and surrounded by unfolded metal chairs, and a kitchen complete with a counter where Parsley’s wife and sister sold fair to middling slices of pie for a dollar each and coffee from a twenty-five-gallon pot for fifty cents a Styrofoam cup. They also sold weak punch to younger people.

  A lot of the musicians were old-timers from other states who had ended up here. Many of them were men. While they played music their wives sat in the back room playing cards and telling tales.

  I’d been hearing the music here half my life. It had all been brand new to me when I was eight, just up from the valley, where Mom had listened to classical music and I had listened to rock like the kids I knew in school. At first I had thought this new music was strange, weird, and stupid. I had never heard any of the songs on radio or TV. Now they were more familiar to me than any other music, and there were enough different songs that they didn’t get old and irritating, just familiar and comfortable.

  Jake was singing “Storms Never Last” when we stepped into the hall, and lots of couples were two-stepping around to it. Kristen, Paul, a dark-haired girl I’d never seen before, Jeremy, and the tennis-whites guy sat on the bench to the left, holding cups of something and talking with their heads together. Kristen’s parents were dancing with each other, and didn’t look as though they had even a bit of a buzz on. There was the usual assortment of women in blouses and frothy skirts and men in cowboy boots, jeans, belts with big buckles, cowboy shirts with embroidery on the yokes, and cowboy hats. Mabel had on her dancing sandals, which were studded with sparkly fake jewels. Then there were other people wearing jeans and tennis shoes, shorts and halter tops and sandals, relaxed and not out of place.

  I wished I had washed before I’d left the store, but all in all Willow and I looked like we could belong if we wanted to. Jeremy glanced up, smiled, and beckoned us to join them. Clutching Willow’s hand, I edged around dancing couples and went over to him.

  He, too, had done some growing during the winter. He was now tall enough to play basketball without embarrassment, and on him it looked good. “Hi, Nick,” he said. His voice had dropped and stabilized into a warm bass.

  “Hi, Jeremy. This is Willow. Willow, Jeremy.”

  His smile stretched wider as he took her hand. He wasn’t in any hurry to let go.

  “Willow,” I said, after a minute during which her smile tightened, “this is Kristen, Paul—hi, Paul!—and who?”

  Willow slipped her hand out of Jeremy’s. It looked like an effort.

  “Ian,” said Kristen, waving at the big blond tennis-whites guy (actually in dark slacks and an alligator-emblem shirt at the moment), “and Megan,” gesturing toward the brunette, who looked relaxed and wore jeans and a green shirt. Kristen’s smile looked real. We shook hands all around. “Nice to meet you, Willow. Good to see you, Nick,” Kristen said.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling very conscious of how messy my clothes were and how pristine she looked, all in wh
ite. “Good to see you, too.” Then suddenly it was awkward. I had no more words for them, and they didn’t speak either.

  “Let’s dance,” Willow said.

  I straightened and looked toward the musicians. Holly Waggoner stepped up to the microphone, fiddle tucked into the crook between her chin and shoulder. I grinned. She had taken some second and third places in the state fiddling contests. “’Scuse us,” I said, and led Willow away from the others. I slid my arm around her waist and took her right hand in mine. Holly played “Chinese Breakdown” with verve and style.

  Willow, it developed, did not know how to dance at all. I could feel from the way she swayed in my embrace that she understood rhythm, but she didn’t seem to know what to do with her feet, and she put her left hand first over my arm, then gripped my arm, as if afraid I would let go of her. “Rest your hand on my shoulder,” I whispered. She did. Her fingers were kind of tight. She kept glancing around, looking at what other people were doing and trying to imitate them. Since the tune was a fast one, I wondered if we wouldn’t be better off sitting this one out, or at least heading outside to practice where we could still hear music but not be seen.

  Willow muttered something in her velvet voice, and suddenly we were dancing just fine, her steps matching mine with a prescience that was eerie. I felt peculiar, as if I had four legs, four arms, two hearts, and an imperative: music was the brain that governed my actions. So I didn’t really need to think; but I felt sweat on my forehead, upper lip, back, and the back of my neck, and as we danced heat generated in my chest until I was sucking in breaths to try to blow the fire out.

  When the tune ended I rubbed my forehead on the arm of my T-shirt, even though Willow’s and my fingers were still intertwined. “Don’t do that,” I said, my voice ragged.

  “What?” She stared at me, wide-eyed. All around us couples were breaking up, walking to the side, matching with others, wandering off for punch, and we still stood in dance pose, attached to each other, encircling each other. I felt fear flare through her, a cold creeping fire where the one in me had been hot.