Prophecy (7 page)

Now. a few hours before his departure to Maine, he felt he was close to being ready. The books would

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provide the rest. He’d start studying them on the plane.

Closing his suitcase, he sat for a moment on the bed, listening to Maggie play. He often envied her her occupation because it brought her peace instead of frustration. When she played the cello, she was able to express feeling simply, directly, and with immense clarity. She was a gifted musician.

Rob rose from the bed and walked to the open door, gazing in at her. She was facing him, and caught his eye.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

She responded with a nod and continued playing.

“Brahms?” he asked.

“Schumann.”

“Lot of cello.”

“He loved the cello,” she answered as she continued to play. “He said it was the one instrument that can be embraced like a lover.”

“It’s kind of quiet over dinner, though,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

He saw it in her eyes again. The accusation that he had failed her. He moved inward, sitting on the arm of her chair.

“You know … if this job is something I like … you’ll have me around the house again.”

“Will I?”

“Um-hm. Trees don’t get sick in the middle of the night, I’m told.”

“Bet they do. They just can’t tell anybody.”

Rob was seated just behind her. He was taken with the tilt of her neck and the fragrance of her hair. Tentatively he leaned down and kissed her shoulder.

She stopped playing but didn’t turn; the music on the tape recorder continued as she gazed forward.

“What is a boreal forest?” she asked.

Rob was stopped for a moment, then remembered he had called out the question from the bedroom. “You heard me.”

“Uh-hm.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

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“Can’t shout when you’re playing ‘Schumann.’”

“A boreal forest … is something that hasn’t been touched since the beginning of time.”

She lowered her head, not answering.

“That make you sad?” he asked.

“I guess.”

“Why?”

“Because I can relate to it.”

He touched her and she turned to him.

“What is it, Maggie?” Rob whispered.

Her eves misted, and she turned away.

“Just blurt it out.”

“I can’t do that,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not that simple. It’s … complicated. It’s not just something I can say.”

She searched his eyes, trying to make him understand. “I need hours. I need days. I need to be with you. Feel close to you. I need the kind of time we don’t seem to have.”

He drew her gently to him, her head pressing against his chest.

“Remember how we used to sit and talk?” she asked sadly. “Just … endlessly? Just say whatever popped into our minds? My God, we used to sit up all night drinking wine … and when morning came we’d pull down the shades … and before we knew it, it was night again.”

He nodded.

“Why don’t we do that any more?” she asked plaintively.

“We’re two busy people, Maggie.”

“One of us is lonely.”

Rob slowly shook his head. It was an expression of helplessness.

“I don’t know what to do, Maggie …”

“I know how you feel about your work, and I admire that …”

“It’s more than my work …”

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“Exactly. It’s as though you had a mistress. At least if it were a mistress, I could compete.”

“I don’t have a mistress,” Rob said softly.

“Of course you don’t, but …”

“Do you?”

The words had come out before he could stop them.

“Do I what?”

“Have a lover?”

She was taken aback. “Of course not.”

He studied her expression carefully. “You sure?”

“Well, if I’m not sure, he couldn’t be much of a lover, could he?”

“I’m serious.”

She couldn’t help laughing, but she stopped when she saw how pained he was.

“I’ve only loved one man in my life,” she said quietly. “Isn’t that a silly thing at the age of thirty? If I admitted that to any one of the girls in the orchestra, they’d laugh me off the stage. Do you know, there’s a girl there who-” She stopped herself, suddenly bursting into laughter.

Her abrupt shift of mood was so inappropriate that Rob was disoriented by it. But he couldn’t help laughing with her.

“There’s a girl there who … what?” he asked.

“For starters, she plays the clarinet. If you get the symbolism.”

“Yes.”

“Well, she doesn’t like pills or diaphragms. The pills make her sick and the diaphragms aren’t a hundred percent effective. I mean, people do get pregnant even when they use diaphragms.”

“Not usually.”

“But it does happen, am I right?”

“In theory.”

Rob maintained a smile, but there was something wrong with the conversation. Maggie was babbling.

“Well, anyway, she thinks you can get pregnant with a diaphragm, and so she buys these … you

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know … what do you call them? For a man? Condoms?”

“Um-hm.”

“She goes to the university dispensary and gets them by the dozens. I saw them. She keeps them in her purse. They come all connected together in plastic, like machine-gun bullets or something, in a long chain, and she orders a hundred of them at once, and she just opens her beach bag and they feed them in over the counter.”

She stopped and suddenly laughed again, slapping her hand to her mouth. “Can you imagine?”

“Nope.”

“You know how many men she’s slept with? Between five hundred and a thousand. That’s what she told me. Can you imagine? That she’s not sure about a mere five hundred?”

It was so bizarre that Rob began to laugh again.

“Who is she?”

“I’m not going to tell.”

Their laughter faded and they sat gazing at each other, the classical music still playing softly in the background. Their eyes held, the mood softening to the moment when one of them had to speak. But neither wanted to.

“Do you know what just happened, Rob?” Maggie whispered.

“What?”

“You and I laughed with each other. How long has it been since we did that?”

Rob nodded in saddened agreement. “Long time.”

“That’s what I need, Rob. To feel easy with you. And free. And relaxed. If I could just have some time for that, then I could say everything that’s on my mind.”

“What is on your mind, Maggie?”

She stiffened, feeling her toes curling in her shoes. “Ymi’re leaving in three hours. I need more than that.”

“Come with me.”

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“I can’t.”

“We’d have two weeks, Maggie. No telephones. No emergencies. They’re putting me in a log cabin. On an island. In the middle of a lake. Nothing around but trees and water.”

“How can I do that?”

“How can you not?”

Maggie knew she was trying to avoid the inevitable. She was subconsciously doing what Dr. Hamlisch had warned her not to-trying to avoid the subject of her pregnancy until it was too late. If she went with Rob, it would have to be revealed. And she would have to face the conversation that she most feared. But perhaps, in that setting, it could be handled. If it could be handled anywhere, that would be the place.

“How cold does it get?” she asked.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I did. I want to know what to pack.”

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6

The morning sun was muted by a cloud bank that hung low over Manatee Forest. The humidity was rising and there were distant rumbles of thunder across the mountainous horizon. The voices of two loons on Mary’s Lake resounded within the cloud-lidded enclosure as animals of all sizes and shapes trundled out from the tree line to go through their early-morning rituals of washing, drinking, and feeding at the lake.

Up in the mountains, at the foot of a cliff, a family of raccoons tasted human flesh, snarling and fighting over the bits and pieces of decaying meat strewn across the ground. The body of a man suspended above them, his neck tangled in a leash, created no fear in them. The uniquely human smell had departed within hours, leaving just the stench of a rotting carcass, tantalizingly out of reach of the ravenous raccoons.

On the plateau above them, a chewed leash tied to a tree was all that was left of the one bloodhound that had survived the massacre. He had gnawed through the thick tether and followed his nose back to the nearest point of civilization. There, at a forestry station, a ranger had summoned the sheriff, whose men repeatedly attempted to entice the dog into leading them back into the forest. But the animal refused. He would not even turn his head in the direction from which he had come. Two days had passed with

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no sign from the rescue team. In another few days it would become evident that they were never going to return.

The sheriff of Manatee County was making every effort to keep the new disappearances quiet, but there were certain people who were privileged to the information. One was Bethel Isely, the managing director of the Pitney Paper Mill.

Isely was forty-four years of age, born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, schooled in public relations, hired just six months ago to bring his wife and three children from Atlanta and work for the Pitney Paper Mill. Though he knew little about lumbering, he was an expert in the art of swaying public opinion. Under his auspices there had been two barbecues for the townspeople, and a large grant of money dispensed to the three local churches. The few dissenting voices initially heard in regard to the paper mill’s planned expansion had been smothered beneath a cascade of literature on the positive effects of culling and harvesting trees.

Isely took his job seriously, and believed what he had to believe. There were good arguments to be made both for and against timber cutting, and he could righteously argue the side that provided him with his livelihood. The fact that his livelihood had never been better added to his conviction. The Pitneys had given him a house, two cars, and a salary of seventy thousand dollars a year.

He knew, however, that it would all be in jeopardy if the man who was arriving today from the Environmental Protection Agency filed a negative report. Taking every precaution, he had put in extra hours, researching every aspect of timber cutting that he could think of. He even researched the man himself, discovering that Robert Vern was an M.D. and had a wife named Maggie who played the cello. Leaving no stone unturned, he even learned a thing or two about cellos and symphonies. He hoped that Vern was bringing his wife, for then Isely could more easily

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convince him to turn the visit into something of a vacation.

Isely was well prepared, ready to answer any question, willing to make himself available to Vern full time. The Pitney Paper Mill was a model of efficiency and high standards. He could truly be proud of what he had to show.

As he dressed to go to the airport, he glanced out the window to check the sky. By the look of it, the spring rains were about to begin.

Not far away, John Hawks was making plans, too. But not for the arrival of Robert Vern. He did not know that the man from the Environmental Protection Agency was arriving today; even if he had, it would not have altered his course of action. The barricade was going back up. From this day on, no vehicle from the lumber company was going to be allowed to use the main road into the forest. Hawks knew they could ferry their men in by boat along the Espee River, or fly them by float plane into Mary’s Lake. But it would cost them time and money, and substantially cut into their efficiency rate. The road blockade would squeeze them into taking the Indians seriously.

Hawks had been in the forest for only twenty-four hours, having gone directly to the village and summoned an army of ten able-bodied men. It was different now than it had been seven years ago. The Masaciuoddy had finally gotten angry enough to fight. They were being victimized from all sides; accused of being murderers when they were not, of being drunks when they were not.

Hawks had had little time to digest the mvriad problems that besieged the villagers, but had listened with concern as they told him of the katahnas, the seizures that struck without warning, confusing the minds and bodies of their people. They showed him a man who was in the throes of it. He was racked with fever and raging with hallucinations.

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At this particular moment, the katahnas were not widespread. Fearing contact with the lumberjacks or townspeople, the Indians had stopped going to their fishing nets, and were living within the confines of their village, subsisting on whatever small game they could catch and their surplus of canned goods. As mysteriously as they had come, the katahnas had suddenly tapered off. Only one man in the past three weeks had been affected.

Hawks did not know what to make of the strange affliction and, because it was in a period of recession, failed to understand its alarming proportions. He would investigate it another time. On this day his priority was the blockade.

With his army of stalwarts, he now moved through the forest toward the main road. The men ranged in age from sixteen to thirty; none of them in their lives had ever stood up to a white man before. Hawks had cautioned them to leave all weapons behind. They would defend the forest with their lives, but they would not be accused of threatening life. The only semblance of a weapon among them was a long-handled ax, brought for the purpose of making shelter in the event of rain.

As they moved silently through the forest, they passed close to the encampment of the old man, M’rai. Hawks could see the crossed poles of his tepees protruding through the tops of the trees. When he first arrived at the village, Hawks had inquired about the old man, and was told that M’rai, too, was suffering frequently from the katahnas. They said his mind had grown dim and he often hallucinated, wandering alone through the forest at night, and spinning tales of the beast Katahdin, who, he claimed, came to drink at the shores of his secret lagoon.