The Winslow Incident (39 page)

Pard Holloway had paid him a visit
earlier. Today? No, yesterday. He’d made accusations.

Zachary had protested, “How do you
know it’s not your beef that’s making people sick?”

“So what if it is? Six of one,
half dozen of the other, wouldn’t you say?”

Zachary had nodded, having no idea
what Holloway meant.

“Don’t you worry, Rhone,” Holloway
had assured him, “the one responsible will get his due before this is through.”

Again Zachary had nodded, this
time with understanding. And fear of being found out.

But Holloway wanted to keep it
quiet. He’d told him, “Let’s keep it between us.”

Or else
, Holloway didn’t say, but Zachary had heard it loud and
clear all the same.

After Holloway left, Zachary felt
as though he’d bought a pig in a poke. Like he hadn’t been quick enough on his
feet and Holloway got what he came for but left nothing in return.

The blue eye flashed; red
splashed.
Don’t think about it.

Zachary never expected it to turn
out like this. When he’d finally taken a good look—after the baking,
after the delivery, after everyone had already eaten the bread—the flour
looked off. Only slightly, but what a difference that made. So he’d cleaned it
all up and pretended it never happened because by then it was too late.

And now I’ll be shunned like my
father. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Eyes searching the black orchard,
he realized,
But apples don’t fall from these trees. Did they ever?
Not
since his father was sent away.

“Shut up! Shut up and focus!”

It’s that boy’s fault
, he reminded himself. Zachary loved his family, would
never hurt his family the way his father had hurt them.
My sister, poor
Missy.

So it was the boy’s fault then.
Why
didn’t Sean tell me the flour was off?
It had to be his fault.

Zachary should’ve never hired him,
should’ve never given that rotten apple a chance. But he’d felt sorry for Sean
when he came looking for work, pitied him because his old man was a drunk.
I
know what it’s like to be ashamed of your father.

Then Zachary wondered where his
daughters were.

The eye stared; the sheets
stained.

“Are you hiding from Daddy?” he
spoke to the orchard. “Are you ashamed of me? Because of what happened to
Mommy?”

Think about Sean, don’t think
about that. Think about hunting him down and making him pay for the loss of
your family and your mind.
Zachary’s rage
against Sean flared anew. “I’m going to find you, and when I do, you are not going
to like it. No sirree.”

H
afta stay hidden, hafta mind Violet,
no getcha gotcha. What daddy do to mommy why daddy do to mommy? Dark can’t see,
but oh Hawkin Rhone’s gonna getcha, he’s gonna getcha! Don’t be ascaredy-cat .
. .

S
ean found himself lying next to Three Fools
Creek, not sleeping really.
Just resting
, he thought,
waiting out the
dark.

The sounds of water streaming over
rocks and hemlocks shedding their needles to the forest floor kept him company.
He gazed up through a break in the tree canopy: still dark, still night.

He rolled over and sat up. Taking
in the woods, the creek, the moon, he suddenly felt as if he were living a
fairy tale. That at any moment an ogre or witch or talking wolf would emerge
from between the trees and take him on a journey beyond his
imagination—one he hoped would end with a kiss from a princess instead of
his head in an oven.

In the moon shine, the surface of
the water undulated like quicksilver. He got down on all fours before a small
pool and drank and drank like a dog, and when he got up his belly sloshed. He’d
been doing a lot of that: drinking and pissing, his body trying to flush out the
poison.

It was coming and going enough now
for him to realize it comes and goes.

He stood up on the bank and moved
forward a few steps to plunge his bare feet into the cold water. The shock
succeeded in bringing him to full alert.

Okay—think now while it’s
gone. Think back to before any of this started.

The water rushed strong against
his calves. He watched a school of tiny silver fish swarm around his right
ankle, trying to take bites out of him with their miniature mouths. No fools
bobbed along the creek, but a two-foot section of branch journeyed past,
knocking into rocks, becoming wedged before popping back out to continue
downstream. It reminded him of chopping firewood on the stump behind the hotel and
then loading the logs into a linen sack and delivering them to the ballroom
fireplace like a bundle of severed arms.

Sean wondered if he was starting
to come out of it or if he was just getting used to feeling this way and
learning how to function in it. He stared into the water at the fish. His focus
seemed less swimmy than it had been, and his legs felt less noodley.

Maybe I’m getting better
, he thought and his spirits lifted. He raised his eyes to
the crooked cabin across the creek, where on the porch Hawkin Rhone was busy
skinning a raccoon.

His focus sharp now, Sean smiled
to himself.
Yeah,
I’m definitely getting better.

Feeling relieved, he shook his
head, tried once more to concentrate.

Okay. I was in the bakery
Saturday morning
, he remembered,
when
Hazel came in with Jinx. But what was I doing before that?
He rubbed his
temples hard as if the gesture would gather his thoughts.
I tried to tell
Zachary about the flour, that the bread didn’t turn out right.

“He wouldn’t listen to me,” Sean
called across the water to Hawkin Rhone. “Told me to taste it. Told me to get
in that delivery van. And later accused me of making time with Melanie.”

Sean kneaded the sore muscles of
his arms and felt thirsty again already. Why did Zachary think he was after
Melanie, anyway? She was the one always ogling
him. I don’t go for rodeo
queens.

Leaning down, he cupped his hand
and scooped more water into his mouth. He remembered being here with Hazel
Sunday afternoon, back when Hawkin Rhone was still in his grave. And he remembered
hugging her, jokingly begging her to protect him. And she’d been scared of
Bigfoot in the woods. Sean couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t love Hazel
Winslow, and he wondered why she was always so scared of that too.

Then when he’d been hunting for
Hawkin Rhone that afternoon, Sean saw Hazel climb on the back of Tanner
Holloway’s motorcycle on Park Street. He’d watched as they rode out of downtown
together toward the bridge, thinking,
She won’t come back.
Why would
she?

He missed her already, felt as
though he’d been missing her his whole life.

Somehow the creek bed shifted
direction beneath his feet and he swayed to keep upright. Then he sank back
down to the ferns and dirt, curled up into a ball, and buried his face in his arms.
The loneliness felt spiky.
Are we the last ones here?
he wondered with
sure dread. He wished he had his shirt.

“Them bones, them bones gonna walk
around,” Hawkin Rhone sang across the creek, “disconnect them bones, them dry
bones.”

Sean knew the headstones for Hazel
and Aaron in the Winslow family graveyard weren’t real, that it was just his
mind playing tricks on him. But these tricks were punishing. Not that he didn’t
deserve them. Hazel might be sick by now. Aaron and his mom definitely were.
Patience Mathers, Melanie Rhone and the little girls, and everybody else in
Winslow for all he knew.

I deserve to be punished.

Sean sat up again—it
wouldn’t let him rest—and looked back at the cabin. Maybe he’d just stay
here forever, thinking about what he’d done. He only hoped the animals wouldn’t
get at him like they’d gotten Hawkin Rhone. Then he realized he’d probably
starve to death before that happened.

The old man kept singing while he
scraped meat off Bandit’s carcass. “Head bone connected to the neck bone . . .”

Except for his creek-numbed feet,
Sean hurt all over and wondered if he’d been beat up or hit by a car.
I’d
remember that, wouldn’t I?

Staring into the dark driving
water, he smelled trout.
Try to concentrate.

He remembered being completely
pissed at Zachary Saturday morning. Remembered the smell of bacon frying when
Zachary slammed the door in his face. Saw himself removing the hotdog bun bags
from the large drawer where they store the pink bakery boxes, saw himself
standing and staring at a loaf of bread and thinking,
So what?
The flour
was a little sticky and gray. Sean didn’t know what that meant. How could he
have possibly known?

Then when I rolled in there on
Monday, Zachary was in the bakery and he barked at me to go home and it was
clean and nothing was baking.
So it was that
morning that Sean had realized the bakery was responsible for the food
poisoning going around town.

Zachary had then told him, “Don’t
say anything to anybody.”

And Sean thought that sounded like
a pretty good idea at the time.

Only that was before things got
worse . . .

Then it hit Sean like a ton of
bricks. He gasped, held it, slowly exhaled.

It was clean.

Abruptly he stood.

The bakery was clean like I’ve
never seen it before and he wasn’t baking any bread.

And finally Sean understood:
Zachary
knew.

Zachary knew
even then
that
it was worse than food poisoning. He knew even then that things were about to
get so much worse than mayo left out too long in the sun.

Sean shoved his wet feet into his
tennis shoes and left Three Fools Creek, heading down the dark trail toward
town, back to the bakery to find Zachary Rhone.

F
inding Sean was the only thing Hazel allowed
herself to think about.

Leaving her father and uncle and
the carnage at the Rhone house behind, she forced herself to focus on just one
thing: finding Sean before Zachary Rhone did.

Her stomach was in turmoil at the
thought of him sick and alone.
Does he even know he’s in danger?
She
remembered him driving the bakery delivery van Saturday morning, the sunlight
pouring through the windshield lighting his eyes and kissing his hair.

She would not let herself cry. She
would not fail him again.

With nothing to go on except what
Patience had told her in the park, Hazel decided to follow the path of the
ghost hunt and was resigned to sweep the whole mountainside with her flashlight
if that’s what it took.

First stop: church cemetery. The cow
was gone, Hazel noted with odd disappointment. The wrought iron fences looked
shiny in the beam of her flashlight, the headstones dull and cold. She turned
in a slow circle, cutting swaths of light through the area surrounding the
cemetery, and recalled Rose Peabody saying in a sermon on tolerance that at one
time those deemed not respectable weren’t allowed to be buried here. Instead,
their bodies were taken to the woods and buried in graves with no markers.

There was still activity up at the
church—she could hear the organ and see figures moving in the light of
the candles—but she had no intention of going in there again and knew
Sean wouldn’t either. He never went to church even if Honey begged. When he was
little she’d bribe him with the promise of ice cream afterward but that hadn’t
worked for a long time.

He’s not here
, Hazel determined and moved on.

She hurried up Civic
Street—barely registering the wreckage of dented trucks and downed street
lamps along the way—and turned onto Ruby Road. Near the end of the street
she passed beneath the glare of The Winslow. All four floors of the hotel blazed
with yellow light.
Don’t even look
, she told herself.
I am not going
back there—I am never going back.

She ducked into the woods and
found the trail that would take her away from the hotel and east to the Winslow
family graveyard, a path so familiar she could easily navigate it under the
light of the moon.
Don’t be scared. Don’t think about things in the woods. There’s
nothing here. But even if there is, you’ll brain it with your flashlight. Don’t
be scared . . .

Yet she couldn’t help but think
about the Sasquatch bigfooting it around the woods at Three Fools Creek Sunday
afternoon. There had always been a lot of talk about the creature lumbering through
the forests of the Pacific Northwest. And a lot of replay of the Patterson film
showing the half man/half ape strolling—sorta
casually
, in Hazel’s
opinion—between the trees. Though she had never thought he looked
particularly threatening, right now she was scared as hell because whatever had
been in the woods with her both Sunday and yesterday afternoon was not
shy—reputedly Bigfoot’s most endearing quality.