Jack Pine, page 25
He held onto the dock and looked at his hand.
“After seven years of cutting trees, I discovered I wasn’t my father.” He squinted across the lake. “It wasn’t enough. I suppose I still wanted to right some wrong.”
“The wrong done to your father maybe…”
“Mom!”
Patricia turned back to the cabin.
“I’ll be right there, Kurt,” she called to the boy in his underwear on the porch. “Put something on…you’ll catch a terrible cold.”
“Hey, Reuger!”
He waved to the skinny boy with the big smile. She turned around, and their eyes met. Reuger looked at the boy again and then his mother. He smiled slowly.
“Light of your life… huh, Patricia?”
“You betcha.”
55
A YOUNG WOMAN came to the screen with eyes suspicious and blue. Reuger took off his hat and looked through the screen door.
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you, Annabel,” he said, nodding slightly.
Her eyes narrowed in. “Ya, what about?”
Reuger paused.
“I think you know.”
“Oh,” she nodded. You want to talk about it now, then?”
She stayed behind the screen, eyes burning blue. Reuger saw she had come a long way since that night. She wasn’t the girl he saw working in the lodge anymore. She was a beautiful woman with shining blond hair and an ample figure.
“I’d like to talk about it now. Your father around?”
“He’s at work.”
Reuger stepped back from the door.
“Why don’t you come on out”
She paused then let the screen slam behind her and squinted out from the porch. Reuger saw a rose tattooed on her left ankle and remembered again the small figure in the headlights struggling down the logging road. She sat in the swing of rusted chains and sagging boards and flicked her silky hair behind her shoulder. Reuger leaned against the porch railing and felt the heat at his back.
“Your father’s gone then?”
“I told you he’s at work.”
Reuger held his hat between his knees.
“Is that an engagement ring, Annabel?”
“Ya,” she nodded, fingering the small diamond. “Carl Hibbing and me were engaged last week.”
“Congratulations.”
She touched the diamond again and flexed her fingers. She was wearing a halter-top with tight brown shorts. A light talcum smoothed her thighs.
“We’re going to move down to Minneapolis. Then I can get away from this fucking town here.”
Annabel fingered the ring again and touched her eyes. She looked up at Reuger with the flawless skin of a newborn.
“You been in an accident or something?”
“Might say that,” he nodded.
She dropped her hand.
“Now, tell me what you want here.”
Reuger squinted out to the drooping trees.
“I need your help with something, Annabel.” He turned in. “You know about the girl raped at Pine Lodge.”
She jumped up and pulled the screen door open. Reuger slammed it shut. She shook her head.
“I don’t want to talk about it!”
“I know you called Bruce Anderson,” he said in a measured tone. “I know you want to stop him and so do I. Things have changed now.”
She swung on him.
“Ya, you were only too happy to have me not say anything about the little prick before. What now? Yer conscience get you? Well it’s too late now, and I’m out of here, so you can just forget it. Now let me go.”
She opened the door, then slammed it. Reuger knocked on the door again and waited. The door opened suddenly.
“You want me to say something here!” Her eyes were red and tearing. “You want me to tell you how he pinned me down in the back of his truck and ripped my bra in two and then tore my shorts down and pushed my face into the hay and shit in the back of his truck there…” She wiped her eyes again and pinned his arms. “And how he held me like this and fucked me then!”
Annabel squeezed his arms so hard he flinched, then turned away with her back heaving and shaking her head.
“Is that what you want…you…you who didn’t want to hear what fucking happened,” she sobbed.
Reuger still felt her hands and stood like a man submerged. He then picked up his hat from the porch and walked to the edge. Annabel wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. He hesitated then spoke.
“I need this girl to tell me what happened.”
She pulled her hair back and sniffed, wiping her eyes again. He saw the pink watch on her wrist and nails bitten down. She turned with sun creasing her eyes like small jets.
“So? She’s not from here then—why doesn’t she just say it’s him!”
He looked at her and she turned away.
“Fuck…” Annabel shook her head. “Another month and I would have been gone from this town.”
She shook her head slowly.
“Fuck!”
* * * *
A cottonwood dropped gossamers on the jeep until it looked like snow from the porch. The muffler popped and contracted in that old CJ7. They sat like a couple with platinum slinging off the smooth fall to her shoulders. He looked like a cowboy.
“Won’t have much time,” Reuger said getting out of the jeep.
They crossed the street smelling of kerosene onto the porch with hydrangeas in copper pots. A scent of lemon oil was rubbed on the chairs and rich brown chests in the foyer. A woman with curly white hair and granny glasses stood behind the turn of the century post-office desk. Reuger opened his wallet.
“What can I do for you, Deputy?”
“I need the key to Dana Reynolds room.”
“Well let’s see here, they moved her to room 215. Oh, here you go,” said handing him the key with the green plastic ring. “But the Reynoldses just left you know, although I’m not sure I saw their daughter.” She leaned close. “Terrible thing that happened to her. Those damn Indians…”
“I’ll check the room,” he nodded.
They climbed the stairs then walked the narrow hallway of lacquered doors. Reuger counted off the doors then knocked lightly.
“Dana, it’s Deputy Sheriff Reuger from Pine Lodge.”
He could hear the television.
“Go away! I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
He keyed the door to the smell of cheese popcorn and dirty clothes. Dana Reynolds was on the bed in pink sweats. Her suntan had faded to a sallow hue and bandages wrapped her wrists like a boxer. Food wrappers littered the floor. Newspapers and tabloids and teen magazines were strewn on the bed.
She jumped forward.
“Hey! You can’t just come in here, I’m going to call the police!”
“I am the police,” he nodded, motioning Annabel to a chair.“I’m the one who found you when you slashed your wrists.” He leaned back against a mahogany desk. “I want to talk to you about what happened in that woodshed.”
She scowled and switched channels. “Ask the guy in the uniform with the mustache. He spits those seeds everywhere. He’s been here about twenty times.”
“Riechardt?”
“Whatever his name is,” she muttered.
The pale flickering washed over her. Game-show laughter, rock videos, weight-loss gurus. “Why don’t you tell me why you cut your wrists?”
“I felt like it,” she muttered.
“Felt like killing yourself then?”
She stared at the television. Reuger pulled up another chair and straddled it, holding his hat over the back.
“You have something pushing against you, and you don’t know which way to go,” he began in a low voice.
“You better get out of here right now!”
Dana flicked channels faster. Reuger walked to the door and motioned with his hand for Annabel to come in.
“Dana, this is Annabel—”
“Yeah, so.”
“She has a story to tell you—”
“I don’t want to hear her fucking story,” she mumbled.
Reuger put a micro recorder on the bedside table and turned it on. Annabel took off her dark glasses and set them down with a trembling hand. Dana’s eyes flicked over then back to the television.
“Dana, about a year ago I went to a party…”
She stared stonily at the blue screen. Annabel leaned forward with her blond hair draping her knee.
“A senior party out in a field here…”
Dana continued flipping through channels, staring straight ahead into the TV. Annabel wiped the tears away silently. Reuger glanced at the turning tape recorder. Annabel Günter looked out the window with the light bleaching her cheek. She tilted her head and looked at the girl in the bed with the bandages on her wrist.
“My date was Cliff Johnson.”
The blue screen was gone, and they were three people in the middle of the day in a hotel room. Dana straightened her legs, and Annabel sat clutching the seat like someone ready for a ride.
“We laid down in the back of his truck and he pinned my arms and started tearing at my clothes…”
Dana closed her eyes then and saw the glaze of night in the woodshed. She smelled pencil shavings. The moon was in the saw chains over the workbench and flat and wet in the windowpanes. She stared at the woodworking table and the axes and cut boards and drifts of sawdust.
“…I couldn’t stop him…” Annabel wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “He tore my panties in two and pushed my legs apart with his knee and kept his hand on my mouth.” Annabel wiped her eyes, smearing mascara like soot on an orphan.
Dana stared at the table in the center of the room. It was the table in the woodshed with sawdust scattered over the surface. She took another step, walking slowly toward the table of sawdust. He had been so nice to her again at the campfire. She had been walking by the shed after the fire. She heard something behind her and turned but saw only the pale road.
Annabel stared at her and told her how Cliff Johnson turned her over in the back of his truck. She told her how she struggled, and then how she felt it was her fault. She said she felt she had brought it on, and that no one would believe her. She said Ben Johnson employed her father and most of the town, and no one would convict the son of Ben Johnson.
She paused and shook her head. “He raped me in the back of his truck, and if he did something to you—you should say something…”
Dana stared at her, then she was standing in the door of the shed. She heard footsteps. A hand clamped her mouth, and she was moving into the shed like she was flying through darkness and the door slammed behind her. She slammed down on the woodworking table in the sawdust and smelled alcohol on labored breath and the sticky scent of perspiration. Muscles strained against her thighs and rough calluses bruised her face. The hand pressed her mouth while another ripped her shirt up then plunged down between her legs. Her thighs spread as her sandals clopped the floor.
Air washed her body like cool water. She smelled oil used for chain saws; much like bicycle oil and the bark of trees and the needles of Christmas trees. Gasoline was in her mouth. The rag was suffocating her. She couldn’t scream and felt sawdust sticking to her body then the pushing between her legs. He was splitting her apart. His face was wet above her and his eyes glittery. Someone was holding her arms, and she felt something cool inside her leg then blood trickling down her thigh. He grunted loudly and drove into her thighs again and again. It felt like he was cutting her in half. She cried with the rag in her mouth. He was off her, and she fell off the table onto the rough plank floor.
Annabel and Reuger watched the motionless woman. She was sitting in the bed. Annabel stood up wearily.
“There, I did it. Can I go now?”
Reuger nodded slowly, staring at the girl on the bed. Annabel crossed the room. She reached the door and pulled it open.
“You’re a whore!”
Dana said it like someone waking up from a long sleep. Her expression remained unchanged, but Annabel stopped like someone had jerked her back. She turned slowly to the bed.
“What did you say?”
“I said you’re a fucking slut,” Dana nodded, stabbing the television back to life.
Annabel walked across the room. She faced Dana, standing between her and the television.
“I’m not a slut!”
Dana shrugged lightly, a small smile creeping over her face.
“You knew what he was going to do.”
Annabel turned and stormed to the door then stopped. Reuger watched and didn’t move. Annabel turned around to the girl in front of the television. Dana flipped the channels. Annabel shook her head slowly, walking across the room.
“You think you’re too good for someone to rape.”
She tore the remote from Dana’s hands.
“Give that to me!”
Annabel held it over her.
“Let me tell you something, bitch he raped me in that truck there like he fucking raped you in that shed!”
Dana reached up and slapped her with her open hand. Annabel shook her head. “Go ahead and slap me again, bitch. You’re hoping it will go away,” she nodded. “If that would do it, you could slap me twenty times, but it’s not fucking going away!”
Dana raised her hand again, but Annabel slapped her first. She fell back to the bed holding her cheek with the silence in the room. Reuger saw the first dark spots on the sheets. She wiped her eyes quickly but the tears came faster. Dana put the palms of her hands against her eyes. Annabel sat down on the bed next to her.”
“Ya. Go ahead and cry.” She pulled out a cigarette from her purse. “God knows I cried my eyes out.”
56
THE SHERIFF STOOD with his hands behind his back, flecks of aluminum glinting in his hair. The soup can was on the desk with seeds in a brass tray. An American flag drooped next to a silver edged frame of the Marine Corps motto. His desk mirrored a woman and a girl with hairstyles from 1985. On the center of the still pond was the micro recorder.
“Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?…Think you can walk in here and fuck me over here.”
He turned like an old photograph with light on half his face. Reuger watched the man chewing slowly. Phsit-pop. He nailed the metal trashcan.
“I fought off a whole unit of Viet Cong. I can handle twenty of someone like you. You think you’re some kind of cowboy running around out there trying to right the wrongs of the world. You better think about what the fuck you’re doing here.”
Reuger nodded. “Ben still has you by the short hairs.”
“He has you too, Reuger, you just don’t know it!”
“How about I play that recording for her parents?”
The sheriff squinted toward the door.
“Who called them down here?”
“They want to hear about the break in the case.”
Riechardt glanced at the black recorder.
“He said, she said, Reuger. Doesn’t change a damn thing here.” He sat down quickly and picked up the soup can. Phsit ping! The Indian did it—Tobin, he did it! You better quit fucking around here when you’re not even on the force…”
Reuger slammed his hand on the desk and leaned forward. Riechardt’s face was a study in craggy lines and acne scars and missed whiskers.
“You bullied that girl into lying, and now you’ve got a lawyer outside your door. Get in my way again, and I’ll have Bruce Anderson empanel a grand jury for obstruction of justice. You’ll be bent over in your favorite Marine Corps pose for the next thirty years.”
The sheriff held the soup can like a gun.
“No one will testify against Johnson’s son.”
Reuger stared at the man holding onto his desk for support. “It could have been your daughter in that shed. It could have been your daughter crying for help in the darkness with that psychopath on top of her.” Reuger nodded to the picture on the desk. “Your flesh and blood in there in the sawdust, getting torn open with a rag in her mouth. Your little girl getting fucked…”
The sheriff jumped up and turned to the window. Reuger stared at the starched green uniform and waited.
“I need my job,” Riechardt said in a low voice. “He employs the town. We lose Johnson Timber, and we’re finished.”
“The price is too high, Sheriff.”
He turned and sat down at his desk. “So what do you want?”
“My badge.”
The sheriff looked at him then turned and opened a drawer and threw the silver badge on the desk.
“Your guns are in evidence, I’ll call Hector.” He paused. “As of now—well, you just get them and tell him to call me if he has any questions. As of now, you’re back on the force.”
Reuger cupped the badge and sat down in the chair. He realized then this was the payoff as far as the sheriff was concerned.
“Now get out of here,” he muttered, beginning to write on a document.
Reuger put the star on and felt the pull on his vest. He looked at the man behind the desk. A single lick of hair sprouted from his part and jumped slightly.
“Now tell me to go arrest Cliff Johnson.”
The sheriff looked up slowly, his eyes flat as nickels.
“You’re crazy.”
“Tell me to arrest Cliff Johnson the way you told me to arrest Tommy Tobin. And I’ll give you time to explain all this to the parents out there.”
“You aren’t going to…” The sheriff reached across the desk and Reuger scooped the recorder.
“This isn’t going away this time.”
He stood up. “You’re a goddamn fool, Reuger.”
“Maybe, but you have to make a stand at some point.”
The sheriff looked old. The phone rang and ricocheted around the room. The two men stared at each other. The phone rang three more times then stopped. Reuger opened the door and looked back.
“You’ll land on your feet, Sheriff.”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
57
REUGER WALKED THE white hospital corridor with the gun slapping his thigh. Several people looked at the man in the big green hat with the Colt on his leg and the tan vest and cowboy boots. A man with a black crew cut and olive skin glanced up from emptying trash. Reuger turned into a room where a big man read Sports Illustrated with wrist tubes.
