“Just a little ways more.”
“No, and you’re scaring the shit out of me.”
“Smoke.”
“What?”
He snapped his head around. “I smell smoke.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
He walked a few feet into the dark. “There.”
In the distance was a dull orange glow. He looked back at her. She was standing with her hands clutched to her breast, her hair matted by the falling rain. She looked as if she had turned to stone. He went to her and held out his hand.
For a long moment she stared at him, then she put out her hand. They walked maybe another thirty yards, following his light.
“My God,” he whispered. “I’m home.”
86
“Is this it?”
Zack looked at the cabin with a shock of recognition. “Yes.”
He could barely believe what his eyes were recording. He hadn’t been here since he was a child, and the trees had probably increased their girth, but it all rushed back. The cabin—a dark brown box of vertical wooden planks, the pitched roof—the rough, thick tangle of woods, the old oak stump for splitting logs, a long-handled spiked ax embedded blade down, a sharpening wheel beside it, the stack of wood alongside the cabin. Also an artesian well his father had built, drawing water from an aquifer from the nearby creek.
To the right of the front door was a small window, glowing from interior light. Smoke rose out of a chimney pipe someplace in the rear. As he was taking it all in and trying to sort out recall from psychic flashes, Sarah whispered his name. He looked, and she was aiming her torch on something. He moved to her. Sitting in the circle of light was the same black van.
Zack moved to the front door and tapped. No answer. He tapped again. “Dad, it’s me, Zack.”
Nothing.
He tapped again. “Nick Kashian. It’s your son, Zachary. Please open up.”
Someplace in the distance a loon cried out.
“It’s locked,” Sarah whispered.
A stainless-steel combination lock hung from the latch. He slipped his fingers under it and held it up to Sarah’s torch. He tried the tumbler. Then, as if his fingers had a mind of their own, he turned it to the right three times to 24, then once left to 8, then twice right to 14, and the lock opened up.
“How did you know?” Sarah asked.
He shook his head. The numbers just came to his fingers. He removed the lock from the eyehole and pushed open the door.
The interior was lit by a single kerosene lantern. And the immediate impression was clutter. Stuff collected over years of occupancy. Empty plastic kerosene containers hung in clusters from a ceiling support beam maybe ten feet up. From another beam hung slabs of dark dried meat and fish wrapped in cheesecloth.
A makeshift bed sat against the left wall, a gray pillow and rumpled soiled bedding covering it. A small wood-burning stove sat at the far wall. He could feel its heat.
The air was laced with the odor of sweat, smoke, and musty wood. One wall held shelves full of canned goods, jars of food, cooking pots, a few hand utensils, dry goods. His father’s old Nikon. Telephoto lenses sat in cylindrical cases.
On another wall were three racks, two holding shotguns. Boxes of ammo sat on a nearby shelf. Near the door hung sheathed knives and a machete. And from wall pegs, hooded jackets, tops, and a pair of wading boots. A small workbench and chair sat in the rear right across from the bed. Several tools were lined up on a pegboard.
“Zack.”
Sarah shone her flashlight on some discolored photographs pinned to the wall above the worktable. Photographs of him and Jake or the four of them—the same family portrait that sat on his mother’s fireplace mantel. One of them was a shot of Zack as a young boy proudly holding up a brook trout nearly as big as he was, a body of water in the background. He’d never seen that photo. It had to have been taken someplace around here.
But what caught Zack’s attention sat on the wall over the bed. It was a water-stained drawing of Jesus preaching to his followers, below which in triptych was the Lord’s Prayer in English, some foreign script, and an alphabetic transliteration. Zack pulled out his cell phone and played what he had muttered in his coma.
Avvon d-bish-maiya, nith-qaddash shim-mukh
Tih-teh mal-chootukh. Nih-weh çiw-yanukh:
ei-chana d’bish-maiya: ap b’ar-ah.
Haw lan lakh-ma d’soonqa-nan yoo-mana.
O’shwooq lan kho-bein:
ei-chana d’ap kh’nan shwiq-qan l’khaya-ween.
Oo’la te-ellan l’niss-yoona:
il-la paç-çan min beesha.
Mid-til de-di-lukh hai mal-choota
oo khai-la oo tush-bookh-ta
l’alam al-mein. Aa-meen.
“Word for word,” Sarah said.
Zack nodded. “Except that’s not my voice.”
Before Sarah could respond, the cabin door slammed open and a figure stumbled inside.
87
He could barely recognize him behind the shotgun. “Dad, it’s me, Zack.”
His father’s face was shadowed under a gray hooded slicker. Stringy hair hung over his brow, and the bottom of his face was buried under a scruffy beard. But those eyes were the eyes of his father—piercing green gemstones that Zack had inherited.
He glared at Zack, the shotgun wavering at him.
“Dad, it’s me, and this is my friend Sarah. We’re here to help you.”
For a frozen moment, Zack could not tell if anything was getting through the wild glare in his father’s eye. He could be totally demented and blast them for intruding.
Some would say they be a little light on top—maybe too much isolation.… Whatever, we leave them alone, they leave us alone.
His father jerked the barrel upward toward Zack. Then Sarah. “Who’re you?” His voice was scratchy from disuse.
“This is Sarah Wyman. She’s a nurse. We came to help.”
He kept the shotgun barrel aimed at her midsection. He was wavering and grimacing, his mouth moving under the gray-and-black scruff as if he were carrying on a conversation inside.
He gaped at Zack, squinting and wincing as if trying to register recognition. The shotgun swayed from Sarah toward Zack, sending a shock to his midsection. He doesn’t recognize me, Zack thought. His mind is gone and he hasn’t got a clue who I am—just a midnight intruder here to rob him. In a chilled moment, Zack wondered if he had through some deep recall stumbled upon the demented, shabby remains of someone who used to be his father and who might turn the next moment into bloody mayhem. As he watched the black hole of the barrel jerk in the air between them, he considered making a grab for it. But if it went off, they could be hit by the blast. “Dad, please…”
Before he could finish, his father let out a pained cry and slumped to his side, landed on one knee, wincing and gasping. The gun clunked to the wooded floor. Zack caught him by one arm as Sarah took the other. Slowly they moved him to the bed. He groaned as they removed the slicker and raised his feet onto the bed. Gently they laid him on the mattress, a thin, stained pad that was sour with body smells. Sarah grabbed an old sweater for a pillow, and Zack lowered him onto it.
“Jesus,” Zack muttered. The right side of his father’s pullover was dark with blood.