The Northwoods Chronicles (18 page)

It was temporary. She’d find them another place
to live, and she’d do it right away. Some place outside of Vargas
County, before Marcy found work, the boys got settled in school and
all. She’d get them out. They’d only stay with her for a little
while. Just a little while.
Just a little while.
They’re
not really residents. Just guests. Temporary guests. Surely they
can’t be subject to the house take.

But as Julia pulled into the driveway of her
beautiful waterfront house, her mind busy with who would sleep
where, whether or not the beds were made up, and if there was
enough food in the house for breakfast, she very clearly heard the
sound of a quarter dropping into the slot.

The day that Recon John lost
his lucky jawbone was the first time since Vietnam that he was
afraid for his life. It was the jawbone from a monkey that took a
bullet for him by jumping on his back as he stood on top of his
tank just as a sniper fired from the outside limit of his rifle’s
range. The monkey hit John hard and just as he grabbed at it to
toss it off of him, he felt the slug, heard the monkey’s “oomph,”
as the breath was knocked out of it, then it went slack. A moment
later, it fell from him, eyes wide with wonder, arms and fingers
working weakly, grasping at nothing. The bullet had stopped in its
spine. A buddy stepped on it and finished the job the sniper
started, and John had cut out its jawbone to take as a
souvenir.

Those were rougher days.

But in the thirty years that followed, he’d
taken that small polished piece of jawbone with him everywhere, and
he had always got along well in life. It was as much a part of his
gear as his toothbrush, dental cleanliness being the only aspect of
his personal hygiene that John was truly fastidious about.

Accordingly, he hung the jawbone on the birch
branch where he kept his toothbrush, and he kissed it every morning
after his breath was minty fresh, and said his thanks to the god
who made that monkey act in such a strange manner at such a crucial
moment. It started his day out right, thinking about the curious
drift of things and how little control mortals had over their
lives.

John lived in the woods and fended for himself,
denying the government and bureaucracy any illusion of control over
him. His one nod to civilization was dental floss, toothpaste, and
a fresh toothbrush every year on his birthday.

So when his jawbone went missing, John went
through what he later considered quite a strategic series of
emotions.

First, he got mad. Who came to his place and
messed in his stuff?

Then he got scared. He must be letting his guard
down. If somebody could find his place, they could find him, and
being found was not one of his favorite things. The last time he
was found, there was trouble in town, and he didn’t want any part
of anything like that, ever again.

After anger and fear came the feeling of
vulnerability, and that both scared him and made him mad. If he
didn’t have his lucky jawbone, he wasn’t invincible.

But of course that was crap. It was just a bone.
It had no power. No real power.

And after that series of emotions came the
question, the most important part of the process. What did the
universe want to tell him, teach him or prove to him? Taking that
important memento, that piece of bone that was nothing in and of
itself, was a radical act, and only the universe knew what it meant
to him. Whoever took it didn’t know that sometimes he sat for
hours, looking at the lake or the sky or the woods, rubbing his
thumb across the mandible until it glowed with a patina from the
oils in his skin. Nobody else knew that he understood that piece of
monkey jaw the way few people understood anything in their lives.
In the Zen of it all, he not only
knew
the bone, but many
times he
was
the bone. It was everything and it was nothing.
John knew it was just a stupid bit of animal that he had to smuggle
out of Vietnam, but it was the one irreplaceable artifact in his
cache. An important factor when trying to second-guess the gods and
their inscrutable methods.

He had to look beyond the camouflage.

He began his search, of course, right under its
perch, then knowing the ways of squirrels, chipmunks, rats,
raccoons, porcupines and the like, enlarged his search in a
widening spiral. He was able to set aside the more philosophical
aspects of the situation as he conducted a thorough reconnaissance.
The snow actually made it easier, because the bone had been there
on its perch the day before, and it hadn’t snowed since. He didn’t
bother with the undisturbed white stuff.

By the time John got to what he considered the
perimeter of his camp, he was back to considering the metaphysical
implications, because the jawbone was flat-out gone.

He began to make plans to: A. move; and B. watch
his ass like never before, because sure as that monkey had saved
him and kept him all these years, there was just no telling what
was about to happen without it.

But before he did anything, he needed to relax
and consult the inner self.

So he rolled a joint and sat in the center of
his place next to the fire pit and took a deep, cleansing
breath.

Then he contemplated smoking the joint, but
decided it would leave him too vulnerable, so he set it on a rock,
and felt mildly resentful that he could no longer relax.

He tried to be calm. He tried hard.

But calm was as elusive as the jawbone, and John
had the jangles, so he put a fresh T-shirt on over his dogtags,
shrugged back into his fatigue jacket, brushed his teeth, set his
snares, booby traps and trip wires, and went to town. There was
only one place he could find some calm today, and that was at
Doc’s.

The tackle shop was empty when John peered
through the glass door, then he gently opened it to keep the bells
tied onto the handle from rattling.

Doc, half glasses set on his nose, was grinding
his teeth over some bookwork and stabbing at a small calculator
with the eraser of a pencil.

“Doc,” John said.

Doc looked up, started to smile, then frowned
instead. “What the hell?” he asked. “You look. . . .” Words failed
him.

“Jawbone’s gone,” John said, and to his
surprise, he felt like crying.

“Whoa,” Doc said, and dropped his pencil.
“Coffee.”

John nodded and watched as Doc put the “Be Right
Back” sign in the window, then the two of them walked in silence
across the street to the diner.

Doc had been a young lieutenant working with the
medical unit when John showed up in Nam. They met hard and fast
under terrifying, screaming circumstances. When it was all over,
John arranged to get out at the same time and followed Doc home.
Doc had people, had a place, eventually had a wife. He also had
demons, but only John knew about those.

Doc knew John’s demons—could call them by name
if he wanted—and that’s why John could never go back to Cincinnati.
So he lived in the woods and he counted on Doc for more than the
occasional odd job for extra money. Sometimes he just needed
somebody.

Now and then Doc came out to his place, too, and
the two of them would smoke a joint and stare into the fire for
hours in silent companionship. Like they had when Sadie Katherine
left. That time Doc had brought Jack Daniel’s. John, who didn’t
drink, watched Doc drink, cry, fall asleep, and then in slow
motion, fall off the rock he’d been sitting on. John covered him
with a sleeping bag, and, in the morning, Doc’s equilibrium seemed
to have returned.

Margie had coffee set up for them in a corner
booth when they walked through her door.

John put four packets of sugar in his, Doc used
one and some cream.

“You look like hell,” Doc said.

“I can’t think.”

Doc nodded and stirred.

A few minutes later, Margie refilled their cups
and set down a sugar dispenser.

“Sandwich?” Doc offered.

John shook his head and watched the white
granules stream out of the dispenser and into his cup. “Shit’s
gonna hit the fan,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Doc nodded and stirred.

“Might move,” John said.

Doc nodded.

“Who stole it, do ya think?”

“Don’t know,” Doc said. “Shit happens.”

John nodded and added more sugar to his coffee
syrup.

The bell on the door dinged, and John tensed. As
he did so, the top of the sugar dispenser fell off, splashed into
his cup, and the whole cylinder of sugar followed.

John stared at the white mountain for a long
time before he righted the empty glass dispenser and set it gently
on the table. Chills ran up his spine as he read in the spilled
sugar, as sure as any gypsy read in a cup of tea leaves, that this
was only the first instance of his bad luck run. He looked up at
Doc, but Doc didn’t get it.

Didn’t matter. The message was for him,
anyway.

Margie rushed over with a damp white towel and a
tray and scooped the mess off the table, all the while chattering
about her carelessness and mumbling I’m sorries. John tried to
smile kindly at her to show her there were no hard feelings,
because he knew it wasn’t her fault. He saw Doc make small talk
with her while he wondered where he could go to hide so that the
bad luck couldn’t find him.

Nowhere, he decided. Just go home and ride it
out.

Margie brought fresh cups of coffee and a big
peanut butter cookie for each of them, but John had no appetite.
Doc ate both cookies and drank his coffee, then said, “Come stay
with me at the house for a night or two.”

It was a good idea. John didn’t want to visit
his bad luck on Doc, but he didn’t think that was part of the deal.
The bad luck was his, not Doc’s. He nodded and, having accepted,
felt a little bit more at ease. Somehow the bad stuff was easier to
handle when there were two to share it. At least Doc’s company
would help ease him into his new life of living doom.

~~~

Natasha looked at the timer on the bread machine
for the fourth time in two minutes. It had eight minutes to go, and
she had nothing to do but wait for it, so she tapped her long nails
on the old Formica counter and waited for the red numbers to count
down. Eight minutes, it turned out, was a long time.

But when the machine beeped, she took out a
sweet-smelling loaf of wheat bread and set it on the counter to
cool. Then she cleaned the bread machine, wiped it dry, wiped down
the countertop and sat on a stool, looking around her perfectly
groomed kitchen and felt a gnawing hunger inside her that homemade
bread would never satisfy.

Worse than that, she knew exactly what she
needed, and she hated the thought of it. She hated what it did to
Mort when she satisfied her cravings, but she was as subservient to
her hormonal needs as he was to his appetite for food. They had
come to an understanding over the years, and he had accepted the
inevitable terms of their unconventional relationship, maybe better
than Natasha had. She wished the restlessness would just go away,
but it wouldn’t. And she’d rather bed some local and just get it
over with than to let the restlessness run away with her, all the
way to Nashville, or San Francisco or something, somewhere far away
from Mort, whom she loved and cherished above all else.

So now it was eleven o’clock in the morning, and
all she had on her schedule was to make dinner. All that free time
was trouble. Maybe she better take care of the problem before it
took care of her.

She’d keep her eyes open, but White Pines
Junction was a tiny place, and she couldn’t afford to ruin Mort’s
reputation. Discretion was everything, and that was part of the
problem. Desperation didn’t honor discretion.

~~~

Waiting for Doc to close the tackle shop and go
home was excruciating for John. To kill some time, he left the
diner, went back to his campsite, tucked his toothbrush in his
pocket and looked around. No sign of the jawbone. All his traps and
snares were intact. The bad luck didn’t seem to want to get him
there. He wrapped his rifle in his waterproof poncho and buried it
under the tent where the ground wasn’t frozen solid. He walked
carefully, warily, stepping lightly, nervousness in his stomach,
through the woods to the road, feeling as if there were a sniper
around every tree. He walked a mile down the road, dodging into the
woods whenever a car went by—an old habit he saw no reason to
break—then walked through the woods again to the lake shore, and
there he sat to contemplate life and luck and to wait for the shop
to close.

That night, Doc broiled summer trout and corn on
the cob from the freezer and mashed up some potatoes, and the two
of them sat at the little kitchen table to eat. John felt better
just having a heartbeat within speaking range, though they didn’t
talk much.

“I think it’s a wake-up call,” Doc said around a
mouthful of potatoes. “I think you’ve been leaning on that bone
like a crutch and now you’re well and don’t know it.”

John thought about that. He was well? He didn’t
know he’d been sick. Had he been sick? Doc seemed to think so.

“I think you will come to find that losing that
jawbone is the best thing that ever happened to you.”

John hadn’t known Doc to be capable of such
psychobabble clichés, but it felt good to hear him talk. It felt
good to be considered. It felt good to be counseled. “Think?” he
said.

“Yep.” Doc wiped the corn off his face and threw
his napkin and his paper plate into the garbage, then opened the
door and tossed the corncob to Cane, who scooped it up and happily
trotted off with it.

“So what now?”

“Coffee,” Doc said.

John was sad that Sadie Katherine wasn’t here to
be serving the coffee with her own brand of corn muffins and some
of that homemade cranberry jam from Babs Van Rank’s Tickled Bear on
them.