The Underneath Read online

  Ammon must have seen her in his rear-view mirror, yet he made no effort to evade her. After several miles on the mountain road, he turned left onto a side road, and after another mile through hay fields, veered right down a wooded track. Here, Kay had to drive slowly, the low-slung undercarriage of her rental car jarring and grinding against the potholes.

  After several hundred meters, the track opened into a small yard. Ammon’s old truck complemented the rest of the rusting, decaying junk: long-defunct snow mobiles, a log splitter, aluminum livestock troughs, haphazard piles of wood, steel, plastic. There were also two constructions, like gallows, slung with chains that Kay guessed were for hanging dead animals—deer, bear, coyotes; and not far, a steel cable slung between two trees for the drying coyote skins.

  A farm house reared out of this debris—more concept than form, as if the wind had spun around one day and thrown bits of plywood and old, broken windows together. A blue tarp comprised the roof; the siding was gone along the north exterior wall.

  The door was open.

  In the back of the car, Tom and Freya slumbered on. Kay got out, picked her way across the grass and up the rickety steps. There was an animal stench coming from the occluded interior. She entered.

  “Ammon?”

  In a dim corner, an enormous mound moved and grunted. “Mind ’im,” Ammon said and dipped an empty coffee tin into an open bag of cat food by his chair and chucked it in that direction.

  It was a pig. Bloated, vast, and tusked, the pig shuffled toward the scatter of cat food. “He can move faster than ya think if ya piss him off,” Ammon warned as he opened himself a beer and leaned back. His chair was a recliner covered in a hide-all-sins brown corduroy. Kay noticed the dainty chintz print of the sofa and scanned the room for a sense of Ammon’s history. Who, for instance, might have been responsible for the chintz? Every surface and inch of the floor was obscured by an accretion of litter, including—from the smell—pig shit; so opposite to the Wilsons, that it almost became the same thing: a purposeful obliteration of anything personal. She wondered, now, if this said something about Ammon himself: that his scruffy varmint was not default, but a careful obfuscation.

  She also wondered about the pig. SQUEAL SQUEAL.

  Ammon lifted his beer to her. “I got the traps.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So ya can piss off.”

  “I want to know about ‘The Owners.’ About Frank.”

  Ammon’s blue eyes glittered. “Frank?”

  Kay knew she was here only because he’d let her follow him; he wanted to talk, he had something to say. So she kept going. “About his family. Where are they?”

  “Ya nosey, hey.”

  She took a $50 bill out of her wallet. It worked with customs agents and soldiers in Africa, why not with Ammon? For a long moment, he stared at the money, almost disbelieving. Then he leaned forward and grabbed it, slipped it into his shirt pocket.

  “Frank’s wife was a wetback. Had enough and took the kids back to where she came from. Build a wall, I say.”

  “Had enough of what?”

  The pig grunted, shuddered and Frank pelted it with another round of cat food. “Frank’s a leaker.”

  “What’s a ‘leaker’?”

  “Had some weakness in his structure. Leaker, leaky boat. His father was a mean fucker.”

  Kay tilted forward, flattering him with her attention.

  “State took him away, gave him back, took him away. Back an’ forth. Could say that made it worse.”

  “You know Frank well, then?”

  “Well enough.”

  She watched him, he watched her, both trying to see in.

  “And the house, that’s the house he grew up in?”

  Ammon nodded. “Back since his mother’s family had it for Christmas trees, 1940s, thereabouts.”

  “The Québécois?”

  “That’d be them.”

  “She had a cabin, too, his mother. Do you know where that is exactly?

  “Ya investigatin’ Frank, then?”

  “Just trying to find him.”

  The pig snuffled while Ammon ruminated his answer. Kay wondered who decided that pigs go “oink.” Perhaps dainty pink pigs did. This one spoke from deep inside; it would roar if it could. It regarded Kay with tiny bright eyes, pin-pricks of reflective light in the dark cavity of its corner. The writer in her considered the pig must be a metaphor, but for what she was not yet sure.

  “That boyfriend of yours. Ask him.”

  “What boyfriend?”

  “Oh ya had him runnin’ to whine to me pretty quick.”

  “Ben?”

  “Mum!” A panicked wail set upon the air. Ammon raised his beer to her as she turned out the door.

  Tom was standing by the car, tears streaming down his face, Freya’s arms around him in comfort. Seeing Kay, he rushed to her, simultaneously hitting her and hugging her. “Where were you where were you?” He was breathless, sobbing with genuine terror at the coyote skins, the chains, the animal gallows. “I woke up and you weren’t there, I was shouting for you and you didn’t answer, where were you where are we where are we what is this place?”

  *

  Freya was quiet and compliant for the evening, kind to Tom, reading him a story and helping him with a jigsaw puzzle. As a reward, Kay let them watch a heart-warming movie she’d saved on her laptop about a rescue dog and a little girl who’d lost a leg in a car accident. As soon as the opening credits began to roll, Freya and Tom leaned in, open-mouthed, beguiled. They’d been without TV for two weeks.

  She kissed their heads and took the phone to the upstairs bathroom.

  Phoebe answered after the first ring.

  “Phoebe, hi, it’s Kay Ward, Freya’s mom.”

  “Oh, Kay, yes, thanks for calling. How is Freya?”

  “She’s fine, a bit quiet.”

  Freya had hit another child in the head with a full juice bottle. Phoebe hastened to add that the child wasn’t hurt—it was just a juice bottle, but she was concerned about “the tenor and intention of the attack.”

  Kay took a breath, answered carefully. “I’m not excusing her behavior, but was there any provocation?”

  “The other child can be challenging, and it’s likely she said something to Freya. But Freya hit her really hard. I think she would have kept on hitting this other girl if one of the counsellors hadn’t intervened.”

  Oh, Freya.

  Kay looked out through the window at the gauzy green evening. “Maybe there’s some adjustment issues. It’s so different here to London.”

  “Sure, I can imagine.”

  “What do you want me to do? Should I withdraw Freya?”

  “No, no, that’s not necessary. I think she was a bit shocked herself. However, if there’s an escalation, we’ll have to revisit the issue.”

  Even before Kay hung up she was aware of Freya on the stairs, about halfway up. She could just see her shadow, and how it hovered, well in earshot, then stepped carefully back down three stairs. Kay put the phone away, flushed the toilet and washed her hands. As she came out of the bathroom, Freya was making a show of trotting up the stairs.

  “Oh, hey, Mum, Tom has a piece of popcorn stuck up his nose.”

  Kay regarded her daughter’s innocent face, seeing both the innocence she feigned and the innocence that was real.

  “Does he? Silly boy. Let’s get it out then.”

  23

  SHEVAUNNE SPRAWLED ON THE SOFA, kicking back a 24-ounce mug of Dunkin’ Donuts pumpkin spice iced coffee. Jake’s face was about two feet from the TV screen, angry people shouting at each other, the swear words bleeped out, so their argument was just a series of bleeps, incomprehensible. Ben walked over.

  “Don’t you dare,” Shevaunne shrieked. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”

  He turned it off. “Where’d you get the coffee?”

  She threw it at him, hitting him square in his chest, the cold, sticky, stinking liquid splattering his face
and arms. He stepped toward her, but she was already up, off the sofa, moving with speed and urgency.

  “I’ll call the cops,” she was yelling. “Jake, call the cops, Mommy’s in trouble. 911, baby, 911.”

  Ben watched her scrambling toward the door, her pink jeggings and fuzzy slippers, despite the heat, and he watched Jake, eyes shifting from him to her, and back again. Not a question of love or loyalty, merely a calculation. Whom did he fear less?

  And he chose his mother, he ducked and ran to her and clung to her thigh. Because deep down and against all experience, he still believed there was a lever in her soul, and if he pulled it enough times she’d love him back, she’d protect him, her most basic duty. He was like one of those tragic little monkeys in an animal experiment that keeps pressing the red button for the nuts even though it gets a shock instead.

  “Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt my baby!” Shevaunne cowered, and Ben saw that she believed her own drama, she infected the boy with it. Even though Ben had never, never, ever hit or tried to hit. But he was a man—Jake had known Shevaunne’s other men.

  “Goddammit, Shevaunne. I’m not going to touch you.” He kept his voice low, he barely moved, he tried so hard not to be frightening.

  But Shevaunne sank to the floor sobbing, wrapping her arms around Jake. “Jake, Jake, my baby, my boy, don’t worry, Momma’s gonna make it okay, Momma’s gonna make it all better.”

  And Ben remembered the sour smell of his own mother, her unwashed hair and body, she was lying on the bathroom floor, arms flaying like a beached octopus, “Benben, I love you my little Benben.” He felt acid swirl in his stomach and scorch up his esophagus into his mouth, and he thought: this is what I taste like, inside.

  He forced himself to look away, out the window, the last light gleaming through the birches, flickering, diffusing. He could see Ed’s hay fields, unmown, the timothy about to go to seed. He wondered if Ed was having trouble with the baler again, and should go and help him fix it, and he drank in this thought to slow him down. The baler, the hay, the baler, the hay.

  Shevaunne was whimpering, weeping, mascara dripping down her face so she looked like a sad clown, and he saw that Jake had crapped himself. “I’m not going to hurt you, Jake, or your mother. Ever.” But he thought he might; he felt the capacity. So he stepped past them, out the door.

  The evening was warm and soft, the light gone creamy. He should go back in and help Jake into a clean pair of pants. But what if he could never make it better for Jake? What if the scared boy grew into a scared man? The many ways fear twisted you, mutilated, amputated. Ben got into his truck.

  As he pulled out he heard Shevaunne calling after him, a plaintive wail—“Ben! Ben!”—that morphed into, “Fuck you, asshole!”

  He turned on the radio. He turned it off. He was thinking, where’d she get the coffee, who brought it to her, who’s been in my house, or did she go somewhere when I was out? Because all of these options were bad, all of these options took her away from his control. He felt his perimeter fraying. He’d been so careful, so closely held in. So clenched. He stepped on the gas, the tires ripping up the dirt. He wanted to burn down his house, burn them both and then he would be clean; they wouldn’t exist anymore and he’d no longer have to try.

  Buying a six-pack of Bud at the Gas n’ Go, he was nicely buzzed by the time he reached Island Pond. Few things in life are better than drinking and driving on a summer evening. He drove on north and east, the land flatter, wetter, so it seemed altogether another country. Different trees, different way the road moved across the earth, as if this were Canada already. The sky, for lack of bordering hills, arched into a high bowl, and he could see the sunset in all dimensions: the red and orange glow in his rear-view mirror, inky dark seeping up in the east. A scattering of early stars winked down.

  He remembered Slim’s little bonus from months ago, and had a hankering. He pulled over. He’d stuck it in a groove behind the ashtray—not failsafe, and he’d been careless to leave it there so long. All the better, therefore, to get rid of it now. He stuck his finger into the baggie and rubbed the white powder on his gums. Good coke, that’s for sure. “Dessert,” Slim called it, what junkies with extra cash took to top off their high. “Would you like dessert?”

  Scrounging around the seat and, finding a plastic spoon from an ice cream he’d bought Jake, Ben tipped the coke into the spoon and sniffed. His brain lit up with Christmas lights, pretty, bright colors, some flashing. Better, sharper. He did another snort, then resealed the bag, took a long sip of his beer, and drove on.

  Out here, there were no road signs. Either they’d been stolen by bored kids or there had never been any. No one complained, because locals knew the way, and if you weren’t local and you didn’t know the way, you shouldn’t be out here. He was going slowly on account of moose and deer and his being increasingly wasted. But it felt good, his bones soft inside the casing of his body, almost as if he was blurring with the cool air coming in the window.

  There were headlights in his rear-view mirror. He’d noticed them miles back, but he now realized they were still there, neither turning off nor speeding up. Going the same speed, on the same lonely road. Briefly, Ben imagined another man out for a drink and a drive. Then he imagined the man in the Subaru: his face was different now, not attending liberal talk-show chat—That’s an interesting question, Terry—but intent as a predator. Kay, instead of the dog, sat in the seat beside him, a badge of some kind where she should have a heart. Do you know Frank Wilson? Where is Frank? Is he at the cabin? And so she was out here trying to find the cabin.

  Abruptly, he veered off the road, a rough logging track, and cut the lights. He was sweating, regretting the coke, and now thinking how he needed to get rid of the rest of it. If he threw it out the window, they might easily find it, a little baggie smeared with this fingerprints and DNA. He certainly couldn’t be caught with it in the truck. He stuffed it deep inside a beer can, and tossed that out, no one would give a roadside beer can a second thought. Then he hunched down, eyes on the side mirror. Moments later, the car cruised past. He couldn’t determine the make, it was too dark, but the driver was in no hurry.

  Ben waited for an hour to see if the car would come back. He drank the rest of the beer, the coke losing its edge to a meaner beer buzz. At last, he started the engine again, backed out onto the road. He was feeling more confident now. Even if Kay and Subaru Man found the cabin—even if, through the maze of tracks—they would not find Frank.

  But no one was following him. No car from the darkness lurched out.

  The darkness enfolded him, velvety and kind, and he drove by instinct, one road to the next, each one a narrower, rougher capillary, until he was on a grass track. And then the wide, black lake stopped him, almost a surprise.

  When he got out of the truck, he swayed and righted himself. He could still hear the engine rumbling in his ears, but as it faded out, the insistence of peepers and woodcock faded in. It was cool here, chilly, and he should have brought a sweatshirt. He rubbed his arms and walked to the lake’s edge, smooth and still and inky black.

  “Hey, Ben.”

  Ben turned toward the voice in a kind of ecstasy, and in the moment of turning, he knew no one was there, Frank was not there, Frank was not there with the kerosene lamp and some hot dogs for the grill. Frank, like an old woman, chiding, “Ben, don’t put the spoons in with the knives!” Frank, wiping the faucet with a cloth so that it shone like new, Frank admiring all they had created with scavenged wood and stolen time, a couch found on the roadside. They had been friends for so long, so deeply and intently, there was hardly a time before Frank.

  The cabin was dark, sealed up; inside, the pans and plates, the cutlery and cups neatly put away as Frank always left it.

  “Frank?”

  Ben spoke the name aloud, absurdly, for he already knew Frank would not answer. Ben was hearing things, he was speaking things that were no longer. Those summers were gone, the boys they had been here amid the
hills, the thickets and brambles, the silver lake smooth as mercury, the mornings they swam into, laughing, prevailing. They’d believed that even Ammon couldn’t take it away from them.

  He shut his eyes, and, tilting on his axis from too much beer, steadied himself against the truck. Was it better with his eyes closed or open? The squealing pigs, high-pitched, were moving about in an unnatural way.

  “Frank.” No question now but a sob through his teeth. And the glorious summer night abloom with stars that doubled on the black water, and underneath trout and pike nosed among the drifting weeds.

  24

  She got out of bed, she could not sleep. She made for the bathroom, flipped on the light. The light was too bright, the walls too white. Were the Wilson boys afraid of the dark? Was that why Frank painted everything white—an antidote to the dark? The cans in the basement, the bootie was for painting, Frank and Maria put booties on to protect their shoes from the paint, and having painted their house they had gone to Alaska. Camping. Or Maria had taken her sons back to Mexico.

  Was it Frank who feared the dark? He was a leaker, he’d been taken away from his parents, who could imagine why. Fear of the dark is the first fear, never quite relinquished. She remembered Freya, all her terror of dark rooms, dark spaces. “There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, sweetie,” Kay would say, Michael would say, turning out the light. But Freya was sure of what the dark contained, and how the boogeyman folded up like a lawn chair when you turned on the light. You could not see him, but he was there.

  Perhaps Maria could not sleep, Maria running a bath in the middle of the night, Maria staring at her face in the mirror, nowhere to hide in the blast of 100 watts. Look at yourself, who you are, what you’ve become for your husband, your children. Maria, alone on the hill with her boys and Frank. “Hard in the winter,” Alice had said, the house bound in by walls of snow, too deep for the plow, this foreign cold Yankee country.