The Northwoods Chronicles (12 page)

She felt like she had so much unfinished
business with Cook. What had their last exchange been? “You’re
leaving me? Go.”

Oh god, Cook, I’m so sorry.

Maybe there was a way she could bring some kind
of closure to the hell she felt burning inside of her.

She got up, showered with his scented soap,
brushed her teeth with his toothbrush, toweled with his towel,
combed out her hair with his comb, and then jumped back in the car
and headed north.

~~~

She walked through the field of dead flowers.
They were crispy and fried in the hot sun.

Cook, now completely turned to deadwood,
stretched over the path like a droopy dead snag. She had to look
hard to recognize him.

“Cook?”

No answer, of course.

“Oh, Cook, I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling
rational and in control. She realized she was in total control of
this dream, and that she could do whatever she wanted.

There was only one thing she wanted to do, and
that was to be in charge of Cook’s remains. To grow up, take
responsibility for herself and her actions, and do that one duty
for her dead husband that she ought to be doing, instead of leaving
that to his mother as well. His mother didn’t understand.

“I need a chainsaw,” she said, and in the way
things work in the dream world, a chainsaw appeared at her feet.
She cut down his tree, then cut it into short lengths. Funny, it
didn’t seem like Cook at all anymore. She piled it all up and lit a
match.

He went up with a whoosh, wood so dried out and
ready to burn that it took but a minute and he was nothing but a
pile of smoldering ashes in the middle of what had once been the
most beautiful meadow she had ever seen.

“I loved you, Cook, I loved you like nothing and
nobody else. Ever.” She reached down and picked up a handful of his
ashes.

When she woke up, she was shivering, still in
her car, parked in the parking lot of the Northern Aire where she’d
given into her exhaustion the night before. She hadn’t wanted to
wake Mrs. Atkisson in the middle of the night. It was still
night.

Her hand was full of ashes.

She didn’t know exactly why she felt better, but
she did, and she put the ashes into a tissue, and tucked it into
her purse. Then she started the little car and headed for home, to
work on fixing her life.

She thought she saw smoke in her rearview mirror
as she left, but chalked that up to dream residue. Two miles
further down the road, a half dozen fire trucks roared past, but by
then it was too late.

Just as well, she thought, and, with a newfound
confidence, she headed home to take care of her husband’s
affairs.

When Jimbo saw the lights still on at the police
station, he pulled over and killed the engine. Not much waited at
home except an exhausted Margie and her endless grieving, a son too
occupied with his computer to communicate with his parents, and a
house that was one son shy of a home.

He saw those lights at the police station and
hoped that it wasn’t Sheriff Withens in there burning the midnight
oil. Jimbo and the sheriff got along just fine, but it wasn’t the
older man’s company he wanted to keep. Jimbo thought that hefting a
few beers might be a good thing to do, and he’d like to do it with
Paulie Timmins. He hadn’t been out drinking with anybody, much less
Paulie, in what seemed like years. Jimbo was ready for a boys’
night out.

Paulie had been a fullback on the White Pines
Junction High School football team, and he hadn’t ever lost any of
that size. Nor, at thirty-three years old, had he put on any fat.
Jimbo didn’t know how Paulie did it, but then Jimbo sat behind the
editor’s desk at the newspaper all day now that he had a reporter
to do the running around, and he had definitely gained a few. But
Paulie, in his tailored police uniform, still looked fit and
trim.

“Jimbo!” Paulie looked up when he heard the door
open, and the smile on his face was genuine. Jimbo’s heart
immediately warmed. This was a good idea.

“Thought maybe you’d be up for a few beers,
Paulie,” Jimbo said. “It’s been too long.”

“Bear with me a few minutes while I finish up
this paperwork,” Paulie said, “and we’ll go do just that.”

Jimbo relaxed in Sheriff Withens’ big, loose
desk chair, and swiveled back and forth while Paulie shuffled
papers. He picked up the phone to let Margie know he’d be home
late, and left a message on the answering machine. He suggested
that she take Jason out for a burger or something so she wouldn’t
have to cook. He was still mindlessly swiveling back and forth when
Paulie spoke.

“You look bored and sad, my friend.”

Jimbo looked up and gave what felt like a wan
smile.

“I know what you need, and it ain’t no
beer.”

Jimbo raised an eyebrow. Paulie knew Jimbo would
never fool around on Margie, so it had to be something legal as
well as exciting.

“I’m going to change,” Paulie said, grabbed his
gym bag and went into the men’s room. When he came out, he wore
jeans and a gray T-shirt stretched tight over his muscled chest. He
picked up his car keys from the desktop. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll
drive.”

Paulie had a tricked-out muscle truck, a big
Chev pickup with plenty of horsepower and an oversized bed. He
popped in a CD of some new music Jimbo hadn’t ever heard, and they
headed out into the night. Jimbo felt young again. He felt the
years of responsibility, grief, and routine melt away. He didn’t
envy Paulie’s single lifestyle, but he realized he needed to
revisit those carefree days, if only for an hour or so now and
then.

Paulie took a few familiar turns out on the
county roads and then pulled inside the gate that never closed, the
one to the county dump. He stopped about fifty feet from the edge
of the debris, turned off the lights and engine, turned off the
music, and they sat in the quiet, in the dark.

“The dump? That’s what you think I need?”

“Not the dump itself,” Paulie said, and pulled a
gun case from behind his seat. “Target practice.”

Jimbo shook his head. It had been ten years,
maybe fifteen since he’d been shooting rats at the dump for fun. He
wasn’t sure he wanted to do it anymore. But he was along for the
ride, and what did it hurt?

The Vargas County Landfill was a sight to behold
in the daylight. It started out as an enormous pit, an acre or more
in size, and had been filled over the years to a gigantic mound.
The snow fences around it were covered with paper and plastic bags
that had been blown off the top of the stack. In the daylight, it
was full of crows and other raucous scavenger birds. In the night,
the rats ruled. Big as pups, they had been moving targets for
pubescent boys since probably long before Jimbo was born. But he
didn’t know that grown men still took pot shots at them.

Jimbo watched Paulie load the clip with a single
.22 round, talking easily the whole time. “The rats are smart,” he
said. “You won’t have a second chance.” He handed the gun to Jimbo.
“I’ll turn on the headlights, and you nail one. If you can.”

Jimbo opened his window and leaned out, feeling
the heft of the gun in his hand. It was a lightweight thing, surely
no kick at all. He’d been challenged. And he was up for a
challenge. Hey, he thought, this might be fun.

Paulie hit the headlights, and a thousand pair
of eyes turned to look at them. Jimbo took careful aim at the king
of the heap, a big fat thing, but he missed. He kept clicking,
wishing the clip was full. But it wasn’t. He had used up his
chance.

The gun emptied, the headlights went out, Jimbo
pulled back inside the cab and Paulie rolled up the window. “That
was pitiful,” Paulie said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jimbo said, feeling a little
adrenaline rush. “It was fun.”

Paulie nodded and reloaded one round. “How are
things at home?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess. We’ll get past it.”

“It’s been, what, a year since Micah
disappeared?”

“Seven months.”

“Takes a while,” Paulie said. “I guess.”

“Yeah.”

“Margie doing okay? You two getting along?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’d do without
her.”

“And vice versa, I suppose.”

“I hope. Jason’s doing better, too. We’ve all
got the guilt, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“What about you?” Jimbo asked. “Dating?”

“Nah. Think I’ll be single all my life. Don’t
think a woman is what I need.”

“Really?” Jimbo was amazed. “You gay?”

“Nope. Just not much interested.”

“Wow,” Jimbo said. “Margie’s my best friend. My
partner. I can’t imagine not having her. Or someone in that role.
You know. Cook. Sex. Laugh at
The Simpsons.
”

“Maybe if I had it, I’d miss it,” Paulie said,
“but I do all right on my own. Now watch.”

He opened his window and the dump smell came
back in. He turned on the headlights and popped a big rat at the
edge of the trash. Paulie smiled at Jimbo, turned off the
headlights and rolled up the window.

Instead of reloading, Paulie fired up his big
truck and slowly backed away from their target area.

“That’s it?” Jimbo asked, disappointed.

“That’s it.”

“I was just warming up.”

“Save it. We’ll do it again another time.”

Jimbo smiled. Paulie had been right. He felt a
hundred percent better, and he was ready to go home to Margie and
Jason.

The next night, Jimbo just happened to drive by
the police station, and was disappointed when he didn’t see
Paulie’s truck out front. The office was dark. Jimbo was surprised
at how disappointed he was. He thought about going out to the dump
himself. Maybe Paulie was out there.

Nah. He’d better go on home. They’d do that
again some other time.

The next night he stopped in again, but Paulie
didn’t seem interested. He was preoccupied, and Jimbo felt silly
for even suggesting such a juvenile pastime with such
earnestness.

That night, too, he went home, but when Margie
reached for him in the dark, he had nothing of himself to give her.
He was busy thinking about all those rats and how he wanted to nail
just one. Just one.

The next day, he took a walking lunch break and
wandered on down to Doc’s. Doc had the tackle shop, and in the back
he sold a few weapons. A couple of handguns, a couple of hunting
rifles, a couple of shotguns was all he had, but he could order
anything.

“Thinking about a .22 pistol, Doc,” Jimbo said.
“Been wanting to do a little target practice.”

Doc locked up the cash drawer and Jimbo followed
him through the store, past the mounted Muskie in a glass case,
past the rows of tackle, past the live wells full of bait fish, to
the door marked “Office.” Inside, Doc dialed the combination on the
big steel safe, opened it and brought out a blue plastic box with
S&W embossed on its top.

“Semi-automatic, perfect for target practice.
You going to be taking Jason out?”

“Yeah,” Jimbo said.

“Perfect gun for a kid to learn on.”

“Smith and Wesson, eh?”

Doc nodded.

Jimbo ran the action back and forth a few times,
figuring how it all went together. “Great,” he said. “I’ll take
it.”

Doc closed up the safe, and they went out in
front to fill out the requisite paperwork. Jimbo bought a couple of
boxes of rounds, and when he left the tackle shop, he had a very
scary feeling of power in his gut.

Back in his office, he loaded the gun and put it
in his desk drawer, just like in the movies. He had a loaded gun in
his desk. It kind of scared him. All day long it pulled at his
consciousness. He was never unaware that he had a loaded gun within
reach. He liked the eerie feeling.

He called Margie and told her he’d be home late,
and then fabricated work to do until the sun went down. Then he
took his loaded gun out of his desk drawer, stuck it in his jacket
pocket, got in his car and headed for the dump.

Paulie’s truck was parked where they had parked
before.

Jimbo turned off his headlights a fair distance
away, coasted to a stop and turned off the engine. He walked over
to Paulie’s truck, but there was nobody in the cab.

It was creepy, being out there in the silent
dark, the night obscuring the stench of the garbage. He heard the
rustling of the vermin in the acre of trash, and didn’t know what
to make of Paulie’s disappearance.

And then Jimbo saw him, by the light of the
moon, just standing, bent like an old man, head down, a good
hundred yards away, and a fair distance into the dump itself. He
walked over, and Paulie didn’t twitch a muscle, not until Jimbo got
right next to him and said, “Paulie? What’s up?”

A rat lay dead at Paulie’s feet, a small rat.
Paulie nudged it with the toe of his tennis shoe.

“Got’cha one, eh? Good going,” Jimbo said,
mystified at Paulie’s behavior.

“Yep,” Paulie said. “Got me my quota.”

They stood there for a long moment, then Paulie
lifted his head. “Gotta go,” he said, “gotta go see my sister.” And
head still down, he walked back toward his truck.

Jimbo watched him go, watched him fire up his
truck, watched him drive slowly through the gate and on out to the
road. Paulie was a strange duck, that was for certain. Enthusiasm
dampened, Jimbo went home too, his new gun still pristine.

The next night, though, as the moon came up,
Jimbo felt the urge and followed it all the way to the dump. He
pulled up to where they had parked before, and took a deep breath.
Then he rolled down the window, clicked off the safety, turned the
headlights on and blasted away. He got three big damn rats with the
first clip. He turned off the lights, rolled up the window, and
reloaded.

One box of rounds later, he figured he’d nailed
a bunch. What a feeling! He was high, his blood pressure was down,
he felt as if he’d just had the best sex of his life.