Riders on the Storm

21

The night, as I knew it, vanished.

The houses, the stoplights, the store lights were gone as soon as I found the turnoff Donlon’s map led me to. The road was gravel and tall summer corn walled me in on both sides. The quarter-moon hung low and stark. The day had cooled sufficiently so I kept my window down. I also kept the radio off. On the passenger seat were a cop-sized flashlight and my dad’s forty-five.

I thought about Karen. The affair Will had had with Cathy Vance had made me think even more of her and less of Will. She was apparently able to justify it to herself because of his terrible experience in Nam. I tried to do that, too, but somehow I couldn’t. Then I smiled to myself. Monsignor Sam McCain was doing it again, judging people from on high. I was in no position to judge Will. Not after what he’d been through.

A sudden wind tasted and smelled of impending rain.

The intersection of rural gravel roads I was looking for was several yards from a narrow wooden bridge that spanned a ravine. I found it and turned right.

More walls of corn, more gravel banging off my car.

Ahead I saw the silhouetted line of trees that marked the long area of woods I wanted. Hidden somewhere in there was Anders’s cabin. I sped up.

A few times I glanced at the forty-five. Would I actually shoot and maybe kill somebody?

One more turn and I was facing the narrow lane almost lost in the barrier of looming pine trees. I cut my headlights.

To reach the cabin you traveled a dirt path that was potholed as if by intention. I had to slow to under ten miles an hour to keep from being bounced to the ceiling and cracking my head. My window was rolled up again. Mosquitoes dive-bombed in squadrons.

Donlon’s map indicated that this dirt lane was approximately a quarter mile from the cabin. I kept close watch on my odometer. When I’d covered about half that distance I swung off the road and parked in an open area just wide enough to accommodate my car. I grabbed the gun and the flashlight, then got out. I locked my car and set off.

The woods provided a cacophony of sounds, some sweet, some vulnerable, some threatening. Animals of various kinds prowling, feasting, hiding.

Even among the cathedral-like trees the scent of rain was still sharp. The other sharp smell came from the pine trees.

Just before I reached the cabin I came to an open area in the woods. The grass had been mown for one thing and for another there was a green, white-trimmed wooden gazebo sitting arrogant and citylike in the middle of this nowhere.

The “cabin” lay to the right of the gazebo and it was not a cabin at all. It was a summer home, of course, two stories of wood and stone with a long, screened-in porch covering the front. The people who owned expensive places like these liked to take pleasure in dubbing them “cabins.” Rustic, you know.

As soon as I reached the clearing some cosmic force threw the switch on my paranoia. I felt observed. I started studying the darkened windows under the dormered roof. They reminded me of the paperback gothic novels my sister was always reading. Ominous, rife with suggestions and secrets. Her husband joked fondly that she bought them four and five at a time.

The quarter-moon provided enough light that I didn’t need my flashlight even as I got within a few feet of the house. I stood and listened for any sound I could hear above the familiar sounds of the wooded night.

I walked to the side of the house. I’d wondered how you got vehicles in and out of here. The din of a highway explained it.

Behind the house another wide dirt path began. It ran across a stretch of meadow leading to and over a hill on the other side of which was the access road. Two ways in and out.