Glenn Armocida resides in western Pennsylvania. He was a finalist in the Rash Award in Fiction (2022). His recent work appears in The Broad River Review, Havik, and soon to be published in Black Moon Magazine.
Dale watched the geese approach the river, emerging from the wall of silver mist that rose from the water and filled the valley and veiled the sun, which was just above the mountains that sheared the eastern shore. The geese descended in an irregular V-shape of cupped wings and honking bills and webbed feet extended, as if to both embrace and attack the gray-green water. He felt the small rush that he always experienced when he saw these large, handsome birds make their splash down, navigating a thousand miles and winds, calculating the trajectory of dropping from ridiculous heights to the moving sheet of water without annihilation. The geese settled into their order near a silt island covered in low grasses and began to feed, dunking, dripping, feasting on the eel grass that they knew would be there, as it has been forever, as it has been in their blood since before they were hatched.
The men were fishing for smallmouth bass, their Tuesday routine since retirement. They had run their canoe onto a sandbar in the Allegheny River to stop their drift and hover in place while the water slid hissing by them. Dale unwrapped a cigar and enjoyed the burst of the earthy smoke, and another, then the jump of the nicotine.
“They do that so beautifully,” Calvin said. “Not a mishap.”
“Guess it’s the only way they know,” Dale answered, and tugged gently on his line to pull the baited crawdad into a rocky saddle in front of the canoe. “That youngster caught the sand in the shallow, rolled himself. He keeps twisting his neck to one side. Must be feeling that tumble.”
“Don’t we all?” Calvin said, and cast his lure upstream in line with the shore.
They fished and examined and admired the smallmouths that they caught, releasing the fish, telling them to come back when they had grown up into lunkers.
Calvin turned to him. “I ran a trotline at the mouth of East Sparrow yesterday. I want to check it.”
They reeled in and pushed off the sandbar. Moving downriver they angled to the far shore. As they approached the broad creek mouth, Dale pushed the paddle flat out to turn the canoe while Calvin stretched and peered, studying the shoreline, leaning out further, listing the canoe. Dale shook his head and relit his cigar.
“You trying to put us into the drink?”
“Let’s work up the creek.”
“Thought you wanted to check your trotline.”
“Let’s move upstream first, Dale. I’ll check it on the way out.”
“You looking for Bigfoot, Doc?
“Just…some holes. Jordan says there are good holes with big catfish along this creek.”
“Since when do you fish for cats?”
Calvin did not answer. He pulled a set of field glasses from his stained fishing vest and examined the shoreline as they hovered in place. They pulled on their oars and angled toward a giant willow tree that leaned out across the water and clutched the soggy edge of the bank with exposed roots, thick dark arms thrusting into the brown soil.
“Put us there, those roots upstream side.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
The canoe slid up and bumped the massive roots. Calvin looped the rope around them, then rocked the canoe as he crawled out, edging hands-and-knees along the moss-slicked root back and onto the bank, where he shoved aside a bush, then took a flashlight from his vest. Dale saw the large hole in the bank at the base of the root and his friend, on all fours, peering into it.
“Doc, these catfish that Jordan told you about, they live in the ground?”
Calvin returned and studied the root and then the canoe.
“I don’t know about this.”
“You don’t know jack-shit, old man,” he said. “And you sure as hell ain’t getting in this canoe the way you got out. I’ll have to look at your butt crack again and you’ll tip us for sure.” He moved up and undid the rope, tossing it to Calvin. “Pull it up the bank as far as you can manage. Then get in.”
“Let’s check that trotline,” the doctor mumbled. They pushed away and turned with the current, the water shimmering and whispering its morning elegy.
“No cats in that hole?” No answer. “Why the sour look?”
They cut the trotline, pulled up two small flathead cats and a large, hissing snapping turtle, which they cut free in the water. The other seven hooks were stripped of their bait. The sun was burning away the mist above while a light breeze swirled and shredded the silvery fog along the creek bottom. Calvin strung the catfish, wiped his hands on his vest, then packed his pipe and lit up, staring out across the water. They sat and smoked and tinkered with their fishing tackle.
“Doc. Doc. Hey, old man. What’s eating you?”
Calvin hung his head now, his pipe’s smoke running away toward the opposite bank. He waited and waited longer. They shared coffee from an old metal thermos.
“We could call it a day,” he offered. “Or not. I’m open except for a four-thirty with my aunt’s attorney.”
“Let’s fish more, please.” They looked at each other and neither one looked away.
“What is it, Doc?”
“My nephews.”
“What about them?”
“A few days ago, I was visiting, checking on them.” Calvin fiddled with his pipe, cleared his throat. “Jordan told me that Spencer wants to die. He’s been asking Jordan to make it happen.”
“Make it happen? Damn.”
“Yes. It’s a damned thing, indeed.”
“Has Spencer gotten worse?”
“I don’t know. He’s beyond my knowledge of such injuries. He moves in and out of reality, stays out of it for a day sometimes.” He paused. “When he’s in reality, he’s fine, a sharp young man.” A long pause. “But the other side is dark, indeed.”
“Jordan’s gotta' be rattled.”
“He’s exhausted. He needs a break. The only time he gets to himself is his work at the society.”
They sat at the mouth of the creek and finished their smoking. The geese honked and disputed on the distant island upriver. He watched Calvin turn away and wipe his eyes.
“Spencer doesn’t have the nerve. He’s told Jordan how to do it—when he’s lucid, of course. He said it would be an assisted suicide.” Calvin paused and filled his pipe again, leaned and spit into the water. “He said that Jordan could just hide his body somewhere, and keep collecting his checks. It’s a shameful thing.”
“Crazy talk is what it is. Murder. And welfare fraud. Spencer doesn’t have his right mind.”
“I can’t just…”
“Stay out of it, Calvin. Those boys are early forties, right? They’re men.”
Calvin shrugged and smoked. They watched a blue heron, all legs and bill, a slender bolt of feathers, glide in from the river, settle across the creek in a marsh, and begin its slow-motion hunt.
“When Jordan shared this, something didn’t sit well. He’d discovered that hole by the willow years ago, when we fished here. Before their accident. Last night I remembered that he’d said you could hide anything in a hole that deep and remote and nobody would ever find it.” Calvin turned to look up East Sparrow Creek to the willow tree.
“See what I mean? Shit like that. Stay out of it. You’ll get burned. Or blamed.”
“Stay out of it? That’s nonsense.”
“It ain’t, Doc…"
“Indeed, it is. They’re my sons now since my brother died.”
“Not if Jordan does what Spencer is asking. And if he does, he’ll go nuts. Or worse. Then what kind of family will you have?”
“You don’t understand. You can’t, I guess. Or won’t.”
“That’s below the belt.”
They sat and watched the last of the morning’s mist rise in glowing columns and chimneys disappearing into the blue sky. Calvin hung his head and coughed.
“I was out of line. I’m sorry.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Doc,” he said, watching the heron hold its position, statuesque, then striking its deadly bill into the marsh water. “Your brother’s boys and all. I wish me and Beverly had that blessing.” The two men looked at each other. “Let’s float more before those fish forget about us.”
They worked their way downriver to the next boat launch, loaded the canoe onto Dale’s truck, and travelled back to their starting point. He waited to make sure Calvin’s old truck started. The starter whirred and finally the engine turned over. A blue cloud popped from the tailpipe. Calvin leaned out the window with a triumphant smile.
“She’s just a bit irritable on these cool mornings,” he laughed.
“You should gift that thing to the museum.”
“I could do it.” Calvin said, his smile draining away.
“Like hell. You’ll be buried in that old rust bucket, you love it so much.”
“No. I mean, I could do it. For Spencer. Instead of Jordan.”
His own smile dropped away and he stared hard as his best friend chunked the truck into reverse.
“But you won’t.”
Calvin shrugged, tipped his soiled fishing hat, and chugged away in a haze of oily smoke.
***
The bronzing afternoon sunlight washed through the tall windows. Dale stared at the papers and map spread across the table. The attorney handed him a glass of single-malt Scotch whisky and they knocked them. His mind kept working Calvin into his thoughts.
“What did she want it for?”
“I was going to ask you the same question,” the attorney said between sips.
“I don’t recall ever talking about this. I met her a dozen times maybe. Birthdays. Christmas. My confirmation. The last time was my wedding to Beverly at St. Luke’s. She gave us a card with a ten. And a coupon for a lingerie store in Warren.”
“Tom Leueck, he has the feed store on Thirty-Nine, goes to St. Luke’s, too?”
“I know him.”
“His grandfather knew your great-aunt. Tom said his pap told him that she wanted to make a tourist attraction. An incline, like they have down in Pittsburgh, people ride up and down the slope.” The attorney looked over the rim of his whisky glass, his eyes distant. “She’d planned a sliding board or chute thing right down into the river, for the kids.” He paused and grinned. “And a skinny-dipping pool with a floating bar, swim right up to it in your birthday suit and order a beer.” His chuckle died in a snort.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. The railroad owns the tracks at the bottom and the rest down to the river’s edge, still running timber out of the forest.”
“Guess she never thought about that small detail.”
“Some would call her a visionary.” The attorney grinned again. Dale rolled his eyes. He sipped his whisky and sat down, looking over the documents. The attorney offered him a cigar. They sat smoking and examining the documents and exchanging looks as if they had discovered something mystical, a scroll from an ancient crypt.
“Why me?”
“Again, another question I was going to ask you.”
“I don’t know.” He thought about his Aunt Mae. “I liked her. ‘Accepted her’ is a better way to put it. All the family made fun of her.”
“She was an outcast?”
“She gave the town lots to gossip on.” He sipped and smoked. The golden light filled the room, the whisky improved that glow inside of him.
“Maybe you showed a kindness to your aunt?”
He worked his memory, age by age, teens, twenties, thirties, searching for something relevant. “I did change out her toilet for her, no cost, right after I started selling for Warren Ceramic. She was in a jam, I figured to go help.” Another sip. “I was about twenty-four, I’m thinking.”
“Well, you gave her a toilet and she’s left you two hundred-fifty acres. Not a bad swap.”
“What the hell am I gonna do with it? It can’t be timbered, too steep, and there’s no access top or bottom. I can’t drill for gas, the mineral rights don’t transfer, do they?”
“That’s right.” The attorney rose to draw the window sheers. “You could hunt it?”
“Sure. You and me. You’re first up the slope. It’s only a 60-degree angle.”
“You could donate it to the conservancy, get a tax write-off.”
He drove to his home half way up the mountain in East Sparrow and shared the strange bequeath with Beverly. They puzzled over it for days. On Sunday, Calvin called and, saying he was too worried about his nephews, cancelled their Tuesday fishing. Dale was having none of it and said there was not much on earth that compared to fishing to relax a man, and that he’d meet him at five-thirty sharp. The doctor capitulated with a grunt.
***
They put into the river at six-thirty under a flat, gray sky that promised neither rain nor sunshine nor much beyond a monochrome day. A bland mist suffused the river valley and the dew that it brought draped the trees with cool water, which fell from the leaves and branches like an indecisive rain, fat droplets plopping all around them. They worked down the ancient river through the long run of clustered, narrow islands and their dusky web of channels and pools, huddled under the looming, wooded river bank.
Approaching the slopes of West Sparrow, Dale guided the canoe to the last of the islands. They climbed out to stretch, bend, and piss out the coffee and sat on a large sycamore deadfall, smoking and watching the river slide away. A bald eagle cruised by, its enormous black body and white tail feathers bold against the rising mist, the eight-foot ebony wingspan jutting straight out, its blazing eye glaring at them.
“I never tire of that, Dale. Such majestic creatures. The eagle decides which fish live and which ones will die.” Calvin puffed on his pipe, the dark aroma of the tobacco mingling with the pungent marine air. His eyes glassed over. “They are the gods of this valley.”
“There’s another sight,” Dale said, pointing at the tumbling slopes facing them. “Just last week, I found out I own that piece of useless land.”
“You own it?”
“I will. Sometime soon.”
“I know you did well in your career, but how much could you make selling toilets?”
“Doc, you can make lotsa' money selling the one thing everybody needs every single day of their life. And my financial guy has done well with the investments.”
“I’m happy for you, my friend.” He hunched over, stared at his boots. “My word, I’ve made mistakes. Especially with investments. I’ve had to reverse mortgage my home to supplement my income. What a fool I’ve been.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Doc. That’ll put you in an early grave. Then I’ll have to go fishing by myself and I won’t get to borrow your lures. Don’t do that to me.” He nudged Calvin’s boot with his and the old man smiled. He lit his cigar, watching the smoke slip away in the pale light. “But I didn’t buy that land. It’s a plum that fell into my lap.” He thought about this. “Or maybe a crabapple better describes it. My Aunt Mae, you remember her?”
“Who doesn’t? Such an odd woman. No offense intended.”
“None taken. She was the oddball of East Sparrow. She died last month. Aged ninety-nine. Diagnosed in June, dead by August. She refused treatment. She wanted to be done.”
“Too many people won’t accept when it’s their time. I saw that my entire career. Even worse, the family won’t let them go. We doctors can see it. We know.”
“Aunt Mae bought that slope seventy years ago with money she’d made timbering some other property, wherever that is, the attorney can’t figure that out.” He paused, the cigar smoke now swirling about them with the finicky breeze. “She’s left it to me. Two hundred-fifty acres of worthless, inaccessible land. And the annual property tax that comes with it.”
“What will you do with it?”
“I don’t know. Come to this island and look at it, I guess. Like we’re doing now.” He paused. “I’ve thought of donating it to the conservancy…”
“Hah. I’d like to see that. You’ve never dropped a dollar into the kettle at Christmas.”
“Hey, that hurts.”
“Oh, come on, Dale. You know you’re a miser. I don’t care. I still love you.”
“Miser? I drag your fat ass out here on my canoe every week, don’t I? And sport for breakfast at the diner.” He kicked the heel of his boot into the sandy soil, dropped his cigar butt into the depression, and covered it. “You can leave the tip today.”
“You’ve always been generous to me,” Calvin chuckled. “Don’t think for a minute that I don’t appreciate it. You just don’t have that philanthropic bent in you, that’s all I’m saying.”
He peered sideways at his friend. “Philanthropic? That’s a big word for an old quack.” He winked. “C’mon, let’s go show those smallmouths who’s boss.”
At the diner, they sat at their usual spot, ate the same breakfasts that they always ordered. The day remained damp and gray. He watched Calvin peck at his meal.
“It’s your nephews,” he said.
“It’s that obvious?” Calvin wrinkled his face.
“To me it is.” He pushed his plate away, drained his coffee.
“It’s the things they say. That Jordan has said. He might do it. He feels so guilty.”
“Oh, hell. They were what? Twenty?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Doing what most young bucks are doing at that age. It could’ve been Spencer driving and Jordan… shit happens.”
“But it was Jordan driving. No amount of reasoning alleviates his conscience. I’ve tried.”
They sat silently as the waitress cleared the table and refilled their coffees, dropping the check on the table with a smile, a ‘thanks, fellas, see ya next Tuesday’.
Calvin started for the tab but Dale intercepted him.
“Let me, this time.”
“No. I have a reputation to repair, Scrooge and all.” He decided to push things.
“What else?”
Calvin stared out the window. He started but went silent. The diner buzzed all around them, dishes and silverware clinking, laughter, greetings, Hank Williams filling the gaps. “I’m going to do this for Spencer.” He leaned into the table, his eyes shining. “It’s the only way. I know what to do.”
“Dear God…”
“Listen to me. Dale.”
“No.”
“It’s humane. For them both.”
“Humane? Killing him? It’s flat out wrong.”
“It would give Spencer the relief he desires. His suffering is grinding him away to nothing.”
“I believe it. That’s hard. But it’s still wrong, Doc.”
“And it would shelter Jordan from the grief and guilt if he messed it up. Which he would. He doesn’t know what to do.” The old man paused, lifted his head slightly. “I know what to do.”
“You’re serious? You are serious. Shit.”
He snatched the check and strutted to the counter. He went to the men’s room and rested his elbows on the sink and wretched up his breakfast. He put handfuls of cold water over his face, rinsed his mouth. In the mirror, he saw a gray-bearded face, no sign of the ruddy complexion, the blue eyes now bloodshot, the wrinkles suddenly deeper. He ran a comb through his thinning hair. He breathed deeply and righted his backbone.
They drove in silence up Route Thirty-Nine along the river where the mist was now gone, replaced by lifeless light, past the islands that ignored all who passed by and redirected the water and the wind as they wished, the river as old as the mountains from which it sprung and didn’t consider the current of time nor the span of a man’s life.
“You don’t understand, Dale…”
“I understand. You’re willing to kill your nephew.”
“Since the accident his life has been twenty years of misery and pain. And that’s what awaits him for thirty more years? He’s lost his mind. It was once such a bright mind, at that. And Jordan, he’s going out of his mind…”
“Well, when he does, he’ll find you waiting for him, ‘cause you’re out of your fuckin’ mind.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“How should I talk to you, Doc?” He grabbed his cigar from the ashtray and lit it while steering the truck with his knees. “You want me to say, ‘Killing your dead brother’s son, what a great idea?’”
“Do you think I’ve never had to deal with long-suffering patients, their families, everyone wretched? Sometimes it’s best to move it along.”'
“He’s not your patient. He’s your brother’s son, damnit.”
“What kind of life does he have? You tell me.”
“He has the life God gave him. And you don’t have the right to take it, even if he begs…”
“You think it’s black and white…”
“Life can be made better. You can’t improve on death.”
“It’s complicated, I tell you.” Now Calvin grimacing, his hands wrestling each other, sweat forming across his brow. “Ever since Jordan’s shared this with me, I don’t like how he looks at me, the things he says. He regrets telling me. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll call the police. Maybe he’s thinking he has to do something about that.”
He shut up and drove his big truck, accelerating, the V-8 growling. What about Jordan, what is he capable of, he mused. A chill rushed his spine. He tossed the cigar and pressed the button for the seat warmer, the heat quickly rising through the leather and into his back and bottom. His soul and mind chewed away at each other. You think you know someone until you don’t. The day was just a fishing day. Now it was festering and squirming. A day to face Death, his foul odor, and he couldn’t avoid it or wish it away. He turned into the parking lot and alongside Calvin’s old truck.
“Look, Doc. I don’t like this one bit. But I don’t want us on the outs over it.”
“Neither do I, Dale. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well, you did. And I disagree. You were there for me when I had the vertigo and couldn’t walk a straight line ten feet. And the whole kidney thing, you were right and the specialist was wrong. It’s my turn to help you.”
“No, I can…”
“I have a two-o’clock with my aunt’s attorney tomorrow. Then I’ll meet you at your nephews’ house and we’ll talk. Figure this out. And what you’ve said about Jordan…”
“This isn’t necessary…”
“It is necessary, Doc. You need some help with this shit show.”
***
He parked in the wandering gravel driveway that faded into the yard. Calvin’s truck sat ticking and hissing in the late September afternoon. Blazing red leaves from a sugar maple drifted onto the truck. The house was a spreading ranch, two additions over time, gray siding then white and then blue. Jordan opened the door before he could knock, a tall, lanky man with long dark hair slicked back to his shoulders, a thin mustache, and dark eyes with a deep well of fatigue. Jordan guided him to the living room where Calvin sat in a rocking chair, then excused himself to the kitchen to finish making coffee. The house was spare, the furniture old, everything in its place, the smell of pine and mothballs. On the fireplace wall was a framed photograph, a summer-fresh young couple, arm-in-arm, smiling through their long hair, a corn dog in his hand, a fluff of blue cotton candy in hers. They were leaning against an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight sedan. In the background a Ferris wheel towered above them.
The rush surprised him, clipped his breath. He suddenly knew everything about the moment collected in that frame, the cicadas whirring in the humid early evening, the jangle of laughter and rides, the jazz of Beverly tight against his side, the sense that he captured eternity that summer, his own summer, replicated in this photograph that he was seeing for the first time.
“That’s Mom and Dad,” Jordan said, setting the pot and cups on a scuffed coffee table. “At the county fair. I took that photograph. An hour later they was dead when lightning struck the big wheel. Their favorite ride.” A long pause. “I never used that camera again. I opened it last year, found the film still in it.”
Sorrow welled up in Dale, his own summer night’s carnival ride decades ago was so different, and later the ride home was electricity-shot-through and pulsating, love consummated, and again, yet always unfruitfully. Not so for this couple smiling through the years.
“Dad loved that car. He bought it used, had it over twenty years.”
“It looks early seventies?”
“Yeah. Seventy-one. He reupholstered the interior with gold plush velvet. He said we’d never be homeless, we could live in it if we lost the house.”
They sat and Jordan poured coffee and offered cream and sugar in pewter service. They small talked and stirred their coffee in between and fidgeted.
“How’s your brother?”
“He’s sleeping. No need to whisper. We had a tough morning.” He paused. “When these…events happen, he sleeps hard afterward for a spell.” More uneasy silence.
“What brings you here?”
“Your uncle shared with me what Spencer has asked of you.”
Jordan turned on Calvin, his eyes piercing, then closing, a long sigh. He shook his head. “Well. Shit. I wish he hadn’t a’ done that. It’s family. Not meaning to be rude, but what business is it yours?”
“We’ve been friends forever. He’s my doctor…”
“That’s nice. What do you want?”
“To help Spencer. Help you.”
“Where do you think you fit in, Mr. Spendle?”
“Call me Dale. We’re all grown men.”
“I’ll call you Mr. Spendle. So, tell me.”
“I know some folks down in the Pittsburgh hospitals. Management types. I sold them a lot of bathroom fixtures every time they built a new hospital. I could worm my way in to see someone who could possibly help Spencer.”
“The doctors at Warren Regional said there’s nothing more can be done.”
“Jordan, those folks are good. But the city hospitals, people come from all over the world to get treated there. Maybe I can get some of those specialists to look over Spencer. Before you… do things.”
Jordan rose and went to the window. Calvin rocked slowly and sipped his coffee, exchanging looks with Dale. A radio in the kitchen purred a talk show.
“Our finances ain’t much, Mr. Spendle. Spencer gets relief from the state. Medicaid pays the doctors. The county sends someone twenty hours a week to give me a break, so I can work some.” He turned and looked at Dale. “I don’t earn much.” There was only hard simple truth in his gaze. When Jordan turned toward Calvin, his look soured.
“Well, I can help some, the money end.” He felt his stomach tighten. He saw Calvin eyeing him. Call me a miser now, old man, he thought. “There’s twenty ways to skin a cat. We’ll figure out something.”
Jordan sat again and the three talked over coffee. Dale worked his idea as if it were the biggest sale of his career. Jordan agreed, bit by bit, to accept the help.
“But what I want ain’t the issue, so you know. It’s my brother.” He quieted. “If it weren’t for me…” Another silence. “Anyway, he gets his say. And I’m not promising anything.” He raised his eyebrows. “About anything.”
“Understood.” He reached out his hand. Jordan looked at it and slowly took it in his own. Dale felt the cool clamminess of it and the cold determination of the younger man in his grip.
Jordan went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of bourbon and three water glasses, set them on the coffee table and arranged them in a triangle, adjusting their distance from each other and then again. He looked this over and made one more alteration. He poured and sat down and nodded to Dale, then to Calvin. He raised his glass and they touched together.
“Uncle Calvin said you’re coming into some land along the river?”
“That’s right. And your uncle tells me you know something about local maps.”
“A bit.”
“Don’t be so humble,” Calvin protested. He smiled and stretched to make eye contact with his nephew. “In all of the counties in this forest, nobody knows maps like Jordan.” Jordan looked down, studying the thin carpeting. “He’s re-organized the collections at the historical society and added to them substantially.”
“Past twenty years I’ve gone to most every estate sale hereabouts and sometimes I get lucky, especially with the loggers and gas men, find some old ones.”
“Well, maybe you should take a look at something,” Dale said. He went to his truck and returned with his brief. He set the tax and other maps the attorney had given him on the table. “My aunt died and she’s left me a portion of the West Sparrow slopes, directly across from the last island in the cluster…there.”
“I know that spot. I’ve fished there some when I was younger. Lotsa smallies off that point,” Jordan said and freshened their drinks.
He sat back, sipping the bourbon and watching this rail of man inspecting the maps, nodding, spreading his fingers across the documents to measure. Jordan pulled a magnifier from his jeans pocket, took the maps to the window, placed them on the glass, and worked the magnifier. When he returned Dale saw a brightness in his eyes.
“There’s some bad maps of this area,” Jordan stated, a lift in his voice. “I’ve done a lot of correction work at the society, some of the maps over that side the river. Moses Baxter, he worked in the county records office from 1880 until he kicked in the ‘forties. He held charge all the maps. He loved the mapping.” He smiled now. “He loved the ‘shine, too. He got it from a man named Silas Ember up the hollar beyond Cemetery Hill. Everybody assumed Moses was doing right.” He sniffed. “I’ve found mistakes.”
“Maybe you could look these over, see if they’re accurate?”
“Sure. It’ll be a week or so. I’m on a project.”
“First things first, though. Talk with Spencer.”
“Yeah. I’ll need time. It’s never a direct road with my brother.”
“No hurry. We’re headed to Florida tomorrow to visit my wife’s parents. I’ll be in touch.”
***
For the first time Beverly didn’t dodge the idea, or poke fun of it. For not the first time, he had proposed buying a second home on the southwest Florida coast. He knew it was her parents’ decline, so apparent on this trip, that opened her mind to it. They looked around Boca Grande for fun, but knew they’d have to buy on the mainland to afford anything. He wasn’t going to spend all that he had and take on a mortgage to buy a vacation home. But his spirits ran high and he even danced with Beverly one balmy evening at an outdoor club, and relished the nostalgia the dancing summoned of his courtship with Beverly; he pulled her tighter to his body. He fished with her father and the easy life on the Sun Coast infused his soul. He returned with real estate pamphlets and a restless desire, a bright anticipation.
He called Jordan. The historical society was based in a grand three-story Victorian, a microcosm of the history of the county, the mammoth forest itself. Jordan led him to the maps room. He showed his work on the legacy collections and his own growing assemblage. The tall windows gathered the late October sunshine and bathed the room in the light of the ages, illuminating dust eddies that swirled through the aroma of parchment, paper, wood. They settled at a large oak table. Jordan had Aunt Mae’s map and papers arranged in the center of an arc of a half-dozen other maps and documents.
“Mr. Spendle, your map is flawed. Badly. This map here,” he pointed to the smallest browned document, “contains what I reckon to be the rest of your aunt’s properties. The other two. Besides the West Sparrow slopes.”
“Properties?” He studied Jordan’s face and then the map where the young man’s finger rested. “There’s three properties, you’re saying?”
“Way it looks to me.”
He squinted over the old map, found the river, the islands, the useless slopes, followed the lines and lot numbers.
“This’ll help.” Jordan handed him a magnifier. Now he could see the individual fibers of the paper. He examined the dimensions data. The steam radiator clicked and hissed through its cycle. He looked up into Jordan’s bottomless eyes.
“Twenty-five hundred?”
“Yes, sir. They’re both…”
“This is twenty-five hundred acres, you’re saying. Not two hundred-fifty.”
“Yes, sir. Each of them two. Here’s the other.” He moved his slender finger to the adjacent shape. “The slopes plot, that’s two-fifty. But that map she left behind is wrong. She…”
“This property…this is part of the plateau below the top of Mount Springer …there’s Henry Shick’s property below…here’s the back end of it…the slice that goes up the left side of Ember Road…”
“That’s right. You’re good with a map, Mr. Spendle.”
“Long time ago, I hunted grouse up there with that crazy som’bitch Shick. Once.”
“He’s a piece of work, for sure.”
“Twenty-five hundred acres.” He whistled low and long. “You sure about this?”
Jordan straightened to full posture, his nostrils flared. “Swear an oath on it. Here’s my case,” he stated, pointing to the semi-circle of maps and documents. “Looks like old Moses Baxter strikes again. The way I make it, you’re getting this piece, not the slopes.” He slid his finger back to the first block. “This’n.”
“It’s been fifteen years since I hunted that land,” he said, gazing out of the window into the gathering autumn evening and back through the gallery of his mind. “I recall there’re two good-sized stands of pine, the rest is hardwoods. Oak, cherry, maple. Some walnut.”
“They say money don’t grow on trees,” Jordan sniffed. “They’d be wrong.”
Primed from forty years in sales, his mind reflexed into calculations of the timber’s worth. Two million? he guessed. Three? His heart raced, trying to keep up with the vision of a Boca Grande winter home with a boat slip blossoming in his mind. Maybe four? he speculated, giving in to the lottery feeling.
“Would you mind sitting down with my aunt’s attorney, show him your work? He’s two blocks down. I need him to understand this.”
Jordan looked away and bit his thumbnail. The table vibrated as the young man’s leg jittered up and down. He turned back, raised his brow, cocked his head, a mixture of eager eyes and a set jaw. “Once you get a’movin’ on your end. For Spencer. I need to show him something right soon. That you’re serious.”
“Fair enough.” He reached into his coat pocket. “Watch the master at work, Jordan.” He opened his phone, scrolled, pressed the screen.
“Steve? This is Dale Spendle. Warren Ceramics? Hey, I’m good. And you?” Five minutes later he turned to Jordan.
“We’re all set for next Tuesday.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Damn right. Given what I’m asking my contact to do for us, having Spencer’s devoted brother with me is the leverage we’ll need to make it hard for anyone to say ‘no’.” He winked. “Spencer’s the steak. You’re the sizzle.”
Jordan stared and then grinned. “Always told Spencer he’s a meatball.”
***
The late November storm swept the plateau in a series of chastening squalls that forced them to stop, hunker face down over the warmth of their ATVs, and wait out the whiteouts. Seven-plus hours of this left them frosted, stiff, and relieved to load his quads onto the trailer. Inside Dale’s truck they sifted through photographs on the forester’s camera, and shared a thermos of coffee. They watched the sun blaze down to the opposite ridge and dissolve the horizon sky in the palette of fire.
“Well?” he asked, tamping down his eager heart as he lit a cigar.
“Oh, it’s worth doing a selective cut,” the old forester replied, looking at his notes. “You saw the stumps. I figure that’s a cut from a dozen years back. No more’n fifteen.”
“I hunted here fifteen years ago. It wasn’t cut then.”
“Not long after then. That’s a fact. Those ain’t fresh stumps. But real nice work.” The forester opened a pouch and plugged tobacco into his cheek. “Let’s call it thirteen.” He thumbed through his notepad. “I’ll find out once I make some calls. I’m guessing Wade Haller’s outfit did that cut, by the looks of those roads and the cut intervals. He does real nice work. Leaves the land clean, the remaining timber in good shape.” His face turned down. “Not like those land-raping Amish clear-cutters. Looks like a tornado ripped through when they’s done.” He lowered the side window and spit a brown stream into the snow.
“I won’t clear cut it.” He looked out over the land. His land. He found it awkward to think of it that way. “But I could do a harvest right off, you’re saying?”
“Sure. Take what’s ready now, bank some money.” He paused, rubbed his beard. “Wait eight, ten years, do a second.” He spit again. “If’n you’re still breathing in twenty years, do a third.”
“How much on the first cut?” He felt like a schoolboy asking a girl to a dance.
“That’ll require some cipherin’ to get exact.” Another brown stream. Dale hoped this old woodsman was clearing his truck door. “Shootin’ from the hip, I’ll say seven…eight hundred thou, clear to you. But number two cut’ll be the bigger payday. That’s a fact.”
Dale handed him an envelope of twenties and they set a January date to review the forester’s harvest plan. That night, on the sofa by the fireplace, sipping a deep glass of bourbon with Beverly curled against him, he shared the blustery day. They embraced the glow of the fire. The next day he called the real estate agent and put an offer on a Florida waterfront bungalow with a boat slip.
***
The third trip to Pittsburgh was to review the surgeons’ plan for Spencer. The hospital’s medical team was optimistic that three surgeries would relieve Spencer of the spells and the pain, giving him a normal life. The estimated cost silenced Dale; Jordan sucked in a breath; Calvin studied his hands. Spencer brushed by that directly to the risks. The doctors, clear-eyed and clinical, said sure, things could happen, there was a slight risk that he could die during this type of surgery.
When they had returned to the nephews’ house, Calvin made a run for pizza. Jordan nodded Dale into the kitchen, said he needed to return a call to the social worker that might take some time, and would he mind hanging out with Spencer.
“You saw, today’s a good ‘un for him,” Jordan assured. “You’ll be fine. No weird stuff.”
“Weird stuff?” Dale squirmed against the kitchen door. “What’s that?”
“Well.” Jordan pawed the linoleum floor with his boot. “On a bad day, my brother’ll talk about…things. Sometimes there’s a thread. Sometimes not.”
“Such as?”
“Well. Yesterday, he started on about some ancient Egyptian sex god named Min, always had a hard on. Then he switched to something called random walk theory.” He paused. “That somehow led to John’s Book of Revelation, the seven churches of the apocalypse. Then how worms fart.” He grinned. “Go figure.”
“I see.”
“It don’t matter. Today’s a reality day. I’ll be in the back room if’n you need me.”
Spencer was in the rocking recliner chair, working his hair into a pony tail. Dale sat on the couch and fiddled his hands. He coughed. Spencer looked up.
“Mr. Spendle. You’re a good man. Means a lot what you done today. Thank you.”
“Sure, Spencer. It’s a start.”
“That’s a mighty big hospital.” He finished his tail. “Some pretty nurses there,” he grinned.
“No doubt. And top-notch doctors. They can help you.”
Spencer rocked in the recliner, his eyes fixed on Dale, the same deep dark eyes as Jordan’s, and he smiled so purely, so unrestricted, that Dale couldn’t help but smile, too.
“I don’t know that anyone can help me. It’s been a long time since I gave up on that idea. But I’m glad you think so.”
“I do think so.” He felt a shift in the quiet that settled between them, something peaceful.
“How old are your kids?” The question didn’t surprise him, he’d heard it so often.
“We don’t have kids, Spencer. Can’t. God didn’t allow it, for some reason.”
“He didn’t want me and Jordan to have parents, either. Odd how that works out, ain’t it.”
“It is.” He reclined deeper into the couch and crossed his feet, grasped his hands behind his head, as he would at home with Beverly. “You miss them, I’m sure.”
“Every day. Every night. And the next day.” The young man looked right into him. “You miss those kids you didn’t have, don’t you?”
“I gave up on that idea so long ago, I’m not sure how to answer that. But, yes. I do.”
“Seems we both gave up on things we can’t have and we both miss things we don’t have.”
Dale’s throat tightened and he looked away, the room blurry now and his heart aching. The furnace cycled on and soon warm air swooshed through the floor vents, calming his mind. He turned and met Spencer’s gaze, they both smiled, and he felt the earth move inside of his soul.
“I ain’t ashamed to say that I’m scared, ya know?”
“I guess it’s to be expected, and who can blame a man for that?”
“If I die while they’s cuttin’ on me, I won’t know it. That I’ve figured out. I’ll just pass on and Mom and Dad will be waitin’ on me. That’s not so bad, I guess.”
“Spencer, that won’t happen…”
“I ain’t had a girl in so very long, I forget what it’s like.” Now the young man turned his head and palmed his eyes. “Haven’t worked a job. Or fished. Or anything.” Now a long sigh.
Dale’s heart swelled and he looked away again. He never felt a parent’s love before and now he knew something of it and the mix of love and sorrow burrowed deep inside of him and through his entire being. He thought of Beverly and wished that she knew what he knew now. He heard Calvin’s truck grinding the snow-covered gravel of the driveway.
“Hey Spencer?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll have your chance. A gal.” He paused. “C’mon, let’s get some of that pizza.”
After dinner, Jordan put Calvin and Spencer to work undecorating the Christmas tree and then walked Dale to his truck.
“Mr. Spendle, what you’ve done for my brother,” Jordan began. “it’s right good of you.” A pause now, watching the falling snow melting on the windshield, biting his lip. “But I’m afraid of Spencer getting too hopeful and…well shit, what they said today, about the insurance coverage. Even what we’d owe on that payment plan they offered…that’s thirty years of my salary.” A longer pause. “And Uncle Calvin, he’s out of pocket.” He covered his face and mumbled, “Can’t trust him, anyway.”
Dale let that pass. “That’s beyond my means, too.” He felt a movement, a twitch, across his mind, his heart. Now the wind buffeting the truck. In the darkness beyond the house a coyote began yipping and then another and then the whole unseen pack wailing and protesting the frigid nighttime forest. “I committed to help with some money…” Saying it aloud put a lump in his throat.
“I know. But not that much.”
“It’s a start.”
“Today was good. I just don’t know what we’re gonna do.”
“Look, we have a plan. So, that plan you and your brother talked about…”
“Well.” Jordan turned away, his jaw firm and angular. “That’s still a plan, too.”
“One that’ll put you both in deep shit. Especially you.” He recalled their first meeting on that bright September day. Then his mind flashed the call to the real estate agent in Boca Grande in November, then the sales agreement he signed just last week to close the bungalow deal.
“I’m stretched.” Jordan dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “Can’t see the end for the beginning.”
“It’s always that way.”
“Well. I’d better get Spencer into his night routine. I’ll figure out how to explain the money thing to him.”
Jordan offered his hand and Dale looked at it, then slowly pressed his hand into the shake. The cool dampness stayed on his palm the entire drive home and the strange inner movement, the twitch, pursued him.
***
The river flowed its determined course through the million-acre forest and received the relentless January snowfalls with the same indifference it held to all things breathing and inanimate. Dale and Calvin surrendered to winter, but kept their Tuesday diner breakfasts, connected in their lives like the forest and river. The doctor begged off the Tuesday following the hospital excursion and the following week he didn’t show.
Calvin didn’t answer his call, so Dale skipped breakfast and stopped by the museum to catch up with Jordan. The manager said she hadn’t heard from the quiet mapper the past two weeks. He suppressed his budding anxiety and visited the attorney’s office to conclude taking ownership of his aunt’s land. He accepted the celebratory Scotch and allowed his heart to run free to his new Florida home. He called Calvin; again, no answer, nor the next three days.
Beverly was visiting her sister in Warren and he paced the house alone. Another call and no answer. When he arrived at Calvin’s home at dusk the house was dark, the old truck not in its usual spot, and the deep snow on the driveway unmarked. Down the road, the cousins’ patchwork ranch was the same. Now he allowed worry off its leash and it bore ferociously into his mind. The cost scared them, he feared, and they did the other plan, holy shit, now they’re hiding? Please no, Spencer.
He lit a cigar and headed to East Sparrow Creek. With both hands on the wheel and the cigar in his teeth, he four-wheeled his truck along the old river road sporting a bed of virgin snow, a rutted gravel track that went right to the creek’s bank upstream from the big willow tree. The marauding truck’s headlights turned the falling snow into a blinding, shifting curtain. An errant gust through the open window swiped his eyes with the cigar’s ashes, searing his vision and the truck tilted up, then down, his surprise turning to fear in one throat-clogging heartbeat. He jammed the brake pedal. The squealing grind of the truck’s chassis on the creek bank’s lip filled his heart with terror and then relief. He had not rolled into the black ice water but was dead stuck.
He viciously cursed his stupidity, the old road’s deception, the snow that he knew never fell on Boca Grande. He beat the steering wheel with both fists, then embraced it, resting his head on his hands, and vented two weeks of unanswered calls, the growing anxiety that snaked his thoughts daily, the gruesome fears that harangued his mind. He righted himself and eased out of the truck. His toolbox flashlight lit briefly and then died. More cursing. He launched the flashlight far into the creek, the splash mocking him. He donned a heavy canvas hunting suit, strapped on his mudder boots, and made for the willow tree.
The creek’s bank broadened into a long crescent, a jumble of hardscrabble, boulders, and debris. The big willow marked the curve’s midpoint. The terrain tortured his ankles, pulling him down twice. He spied boot prints in the muddy pans of the washout and accelerated his pace. At the bush that covered the hole he regained his breath and thoughts.
He used his phone’s flashlight to search the hole. He sprawled on the rocky ground to stretch his arm deeper into the odorous pit, lighting every angle and the side tunnels, the water droplets on the walls like a sparkling treasure. Nothing except gravel, sand, mud. A long sigh poured from his gut. “Thank you,” he croaked to the sky. The fear of what could have been slouched away. “But where the hell is Spencer?” he asked the pungent soil.
He heard the muffled buzzing first. The serpent’s black-and-white delta-shaped head had already emerged from a side hole, it’s cottony mouth open, and he first saw it clamping its orange fangs into his sleeve. He recoiled, the phone slipping from his hand, and the demon stuck to his suit. He could not pull his arm from the hole. The phone lay on its edge on a rock, spotlighting the massasauga, the swamp rattler. His heart pummeled his chest.
The viper’s black and gray stout body was stuck in the hole’s opening, the front end stuck to his sleeve, the venom-filled fangs inches from his quaking wrist, embedded in the thick canvas fabric. The rattle, hidden in the side hole, buzzed again. The vertically elliptical pupils narrowed to slivers of ebony hatred. The deeply set pits between its snout and eyes were bright green invitations to scorching death. They stared at each other for what seemed to Dale his entire lifetime and the end of it. The creature pulsated; he sensed its desire to strike but it did not move. Its nostrils flared slowly and receded even slower. The exposed portion of its body throbbed but remained motionless. The eyes closed in slow motion. The viper’s winter dormancy resumed. He waited.
He dared to move now, slow measured action, lifting his head to search the ground nearby. A thick branch was out of his reach. He groped the rocky, wet soil with his right hand in an arc from above his head to his hip and then back. On the second pass, further from his body, he felt cold metal rake his palm. He ran his fingers along the object. It was a piece of rebar jutting from the gravel. He grasped it and prayed that it wasn’t embedded in a lump of concrete. He pulled and felt the give but it took back. He looked in the hole; the snake remained comatose. He grabbed a rock and began to scrape around the iron rod. He grasped and pulled again and now it gave way, emerging from its years in this resting spot to his summoning for a new purpose.
He dragged the rebar closer. Holding his breath, lifting his right shoulder to bend his arm, moving in small increments, he positioned the rod at the hole. He studied the serpent, planned his move. Now another silent supplication: Lord, help me get this right. Sweat rolled down his cheeks, the reek of earthworms filled his breathing. He slid the iron bar to his wrist and stopped at the rattler’s nose, calculating the angle, recalculating. A deep breath, holding it, then thrusting, the rod rammed under the serpent’s snout into its unholy mouth, down its throat, the creature’s eyes electrified now, wide with black fury, its thick body writhing, shuddering, the hidden rattle buzzing. He dug his boots into the ground to leverage his weight forward, pushed the bar deeper into the snake’s mottled body. The fangs remained caught in his sleeve, and the harder he pushed on the bar the more the sleeve pulled down his arm. The serpent gurgled and hissed, its forked tongue flailing rapid fire, and then a tearing sound as he thrust once more, bellowing, the latent warrior from deep in his soul raging now, and the ripping sound of flesh torn asunder as his right arm jerked suddenly deeper into the hole, the iron rod plunging the rattler’s body backwards into the hole, the severed head still gripping his sleeve, the eyes dimming and opaque.
***
The truck’s heater and seats roasted him. He struggled to steady his hands as he lit a cigar. The viper’s fat head rested in a plastic bag on his dashboard. Two holes glistened on his left sleeve where the fangs had been, inches from reversing the outcome of the confrontation. The snow ceased; the clouds separated in horizontal ribbons. Beyond the creek bottom, the waxing gibbous moon rose over the mountain into the bands of clouds, divided in bright slices, a rhythm of cold piercing light.
His eyes returned to the serpent. All of his plans, he ruminated, the remaining years with Bev, the Florida home now under contract, his efforts for Spencer, all could now be locked inside his frozen body under the willow tree. He figured this was as good a time and place as any to talk with his creator. The conversation turned onto Jordan and Spencer and the response was the same inner movement, the twitch, across his mind and soul, that had persisted the past two weeks. The moon ascended, animating the creek bottom, brightening the truck’s cabin, the snake head gleaming. A clarity filled him.
His phone chirped. Calvin’s name glowed on the screen.
“Yeah.”
“Dale, it’s Calvin.”
“That, I know.”
“I realize it’s late. Did I wake you?”
“No. I’m just fixin’ to go for a walk.”
“Now? It’s eleven o’clock…”
“I need to clear my head.” He paused. “Where in hell are you? I’ve been calling you…”
“I figured that,” the old man stammered. “My flip phone’s battery died and we had to buy a new charger. They’re not easy to find…”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Doc. I’m not in the mood for it.” A long silence, the old man’s breath huffing his ear. “Let’s start over. Where have you been? Your nephews?”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone but you. It’s all been shameful.” Now a sigh. “But I couldn’t say no.”
“Say no to who?”
“Spencer. And Jordan.” Now the doctor’s voice trembled. “We’re in Pittsburgh. I came here to ask a relation for money. To help with Spencer. She was as generous as she could be.”
“What’s shameful about that? That’s what family does, help each other.”
“That’s not it, Dale. It’s what happened afterwards. Spencer wanted to do some things with the money.”
“What things?” He sat forward now and puffed harder on the cigar. “Doc?”
“He fears the surgery. The worst outcome. I tried my best to reassure him that it was highly unlikely and these are excellent surgeons, one of the best hospitals in the world. But he didn’t want to miss out in case things… went poorly.”
“Miss out on what?”
“Women. There it is, now it’s out, the sordid mess.”
“Spencer wanted to buy hookers, you’re saying.”
“He’s not been with a woman since their accident. Twenty years. Same with Jordan. Spencer wanted to… before the operations. Just in case. That’s what they’ve been doing. Oh, it’s all so debased.”
“Look, my battery’s low and I need this walk. Get home. Tell your nephews they’ve feasted long enough. I’ve got a solution.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain the details when I see you. Just get your ass home. If’n you can pry those boys off them hookers.”
He locked the truck and walked the long, silent snowy road, striding in his truck’s tire tracks, the serpent’s head in his breast pocket, the full moon illuminating the night.
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