Chapter Twelve
Twelve
SATURDAY
The wipers whimpered with the sound of panic, losing ground against the wet flakes flying across the windshield, obscuring Johnny’s view of the two-lane road.
The road was white, almost an optical illusion.
When Johnny blinked, he had to reorient to discern the road from the shoulder.
His vehicle’s touchscreen map confirmed that they were a blue dot in a sea of white.
The chatter in the car had faded to silence.
Sharise was no longer narrating their journey, Imani had stopped playing videos she’d saved on her phone, and Tasha was sitting frozen beside him, her eyes on the road like she was the one driving.
No one had said anything, but they knew he wasn’t used to driving in this much snow.
He wished he’d paid more attention to the forecast back at the mini-mart, but he didn’t dare turn on his radio.
The noise from the chains was already a grating distraction.
Tasha let out a slow exhalation that told him she was breathing consciously to bring down her stress level, or her nausea. “Maybe we…” she began, her voice sad.
Johnny nearly let out a laugh. Too late to turn back now. He’d reached the point where he would rather make it to the lodge than return to town. He wouldn’t want to drive again until Monday, when they were ready to go home.
“We’re good,” Johnny assured her. “The turnoff is close.”
Unless he had already passed it. Unless he wouldn’t see it in the flurries.
“Is that it?” Sharise asked, her voice shrill with hope. She pointed over Johnny’s shoulder, toward the left. Johnny hadn’t realized how far Sharise had scooched herself up behind the front seat to be a third pair of eyes.
“Is your seat belt on—?” Tasha said.
“Where, Sharise?” Johnny interrupted Tasha. He didn’t see a break in the trees.
“Right after that tree that’s bent funny?” Sharise said.
Yes, Johnny realized. In rows of straight trunks, one ahead was twisted in a strange S shape he remembered from childhood.
At the time, he’d never seen a tree grow that way.
The turnoff was ten yards beyond it, a white trail in a narrow gap.
A portion of long-rotted wooden fencing dangling from its post confirmed that there was, indeed, a road.
When he first visited here, the fence had stretched a long way down.
How had Sharise seen the turn coming from such a distance?
He liked to think he wouldn’t have missed it, but he wasn’t sure.
“Thanks,” he said. “Your mom’s right—seat belt.”
Sharise slid back in her seat. Johnny slowed, but waited to hear her seat belt click before he made the turn.
He remembered ditches on either side of this road, and he didn’t want to make it this far only to get stuck—or worse, flip over.
The RAV’s rear tugged against the chains as he turned, wanting to go its own way, but his tires stayed gripped far clear of the road’s edge.
“Great job, Daddy!” Imani said. Warm relief was growing in the car. Tasha patted his knee, echoing Imani’s praise.
“Should be less than a mile from here,” Johnny said.
“I walked to this road from the lodge once.” He had run to this road, actually, before Uncle Ricky drove to catch him in his VW Beetle.
Johnny could still see the cold exhaust pluming from his uncle’s car, painted red from the taillights, wreathed around Uncle Ricky like mist when he climbed out to try to coax Johnny back.
Johnny shook away that memory like the wipers shoving aside the snow.
“A sign!” Imani said. Her face was close to her window behind Tasha.
There it was, same as ever, his grandmother’s wooden sign: BEAR CREEK LODGE. And the new sign Johnny had asked Dick Hollman to put up reminding drivers that the road was private. The snowfall was slowing, the lodge was close, and relief resurrected the chatter.
“We’re in the real woods!” Imani said. “No more fake woods.”
“What do you mean ‘fake’?” Tasha said. “We’ve been to the woods—”
“She really lived out here?” Sharise asked. “Why, though?”
“Hey—guys?” Johnny said. “I’m still trying to stay on the road. Save it, please.”
They fell silent again, barely restrained. Imani rocked in her seat, eager. “Yes, yes, yes…” she whispered to herself, her voice softer than the chains’ rattle.
Johnny was the first one to see the Jeep.
Instinct made him nudge his brake to slow their approach. The white Jeep seemed randomly parked at first, until he noticed the fencing just beyond it with the welcome sign. Someone had beaten them to the lodge. Could it be Dick Hollman after a change in plans?
But Hollman drove a red pickup truck, not a white Jeep. It wasn’t Hollman.
“Are we here?” Imani asked.
“Dad—whose car is that?” Sharise said.
Tasha gave Johnny a look with the same questions.
“I’m not sure,” Johnny said. “I’ll take a look. You all stay inside.” He put on his hazard lights and jumped out of the idling car, closing his door to cut off Imani’s whine over the delay. This was a private road without a neighbor in sight, so why was somebody parked here?
As he approached the driver’s door, Johnny noticed that the Jeep was coated in a thin layer of snow.
Tasha noticed the same time he did, her window whirring down.
“That’s been parked there a while,” she called.
He heard her unspoken message: It’s nothing to worry about. She sounded as impatient as Imani.
Still, Johnny reached into his pocket for the pen he always carried: It was an arty wood-carved ink pen on one end; the other end a sharp, fortified tip he could use to break glass or take out an eye.
He had bought the pen for Tasha and the girls too, insisting that they always had a way to defend themselves.
He gripped his with the sharp tip out as he walked past the heat of the RAV’s hood toward the Jeep on the side of the road.
The driver’s-side window was also coated in snow. He knocked on it twice. “Anyone there?” His voice was pleasant, but his message was firm. “This is private property.”
No one answered. Johnny bit down on the pen while he pulled his gloves out of his jacket pocket. He’d been warm in the car, so he’d unzipped his jacket, but now the cold nibbled past his T-shirt where his chest was exposed. He didn’t want to get his hands wet. He hated being cold.
Once his gloves were on and he’d safely transferred his pen back to his right hand, Johnny wiped away the snow and frost from the driver’s-side window.
No one was inside the car. A wire-bound notebook was on the passenger seat, a label he couldn’t quite make out scrawled on the cover.
A coffee cup from Joltz with a lid sat waiting in the cup holder, any remnants long frozen by now.
Something red dangled just beyond his vision; he shifted his head and noted the San Francisco 49ers key chain dangling on the other side of the wheel.
The keys might still be in the ignition.
Johnny checked the door: unlocked. He tugged it open. Snow fell away in clumps.
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Imani called to him.
Johnny peeked in just far enough to confirm that the keys were in the ignition. The faint scent of spicy tobacco smoke made him feel repelled by his intrusion into a stranger’s life. He backed away and closed the Jeep’s door.
Something rustled from the snow and brush on the other side of the Jeep, and Johnny listened a long time for footsteps in the snow.
A familiar maw of terror made his blood feel watery.
He could be thirteen years old again. He peeked over the Jeep’s hood at a mound of snow near a gap in the lodge’s rail fence.
He expected the heap to start moving. Was that where the sound had come from?
Sometimes the imagination is a tricky bitch, Uncle Ricky had said.
“Hel-lo?” Imani called, and the awful sensation passed. The day brightened, clouds drifting beyond the sun. Johnny felt silly for imagining his childhood phantoms already.
He grabbed the key ring in his back pocket with his keys to the gate, the front door, and the slope gate.
Dick Hollman had organized the keys and made him a new set.
His feet sank into three inches of fresh snow as he walked to the driveway gate to unlock it.
The snow gave resistance as he pushed the gate open, but with a little exertion, his breath puffing in clouds, he widened it enough to fit the RAV.
Three faces watched him from inside the warm car.
“Keys are right there in the ignition, so they plan to come back,” he reported after he returned to the car. “Might be campers on a ski trip.”
“Or hunters,” Imani said, intrigued. A not-so-subtle reminder that she wanted to hunt, an argument waiting to unfold.
He wouldn’t have mentioned hunting with his uncle if he’d known Imani would expect lessons too.
He hadn’t liked hunting then—and he would hate it now.
You gotta take your shot, boy, Uncle Ricky had scolded when he’d failed to shoot a hare.
Johnny didn’t like having a stranger’s vehicle in front of his house in such a remote location, especially strangers who might have rifles.
He glanced at Tasha, and she was frowning too.
But Imani was right about one thing: Uncle Ricky’s hunting rifle was still in the coat closet.
And the box of cartridges was still on the shelf above it.
At least he knew how to load and aim it.
“Let’s see if someone drives off in it today,” Johnny said. “If not…” He hated to say the next part. “… I’ll drive back to town and arrange to have it towed. Tomorrow.” Maybe the snow would let up by the morning. But that’s not what the radio was saying, is it?
“If no one claims it, can we keep it?” Sharise asked.