Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

“Bats?”

“Stand still a minute.”

The bats came in waves, just a few at first, zipping around my head and shoulders, using their amazing powers of echolocation to avoid colliding with one another and us. But I could feel the delicate tips of their wings inches from my skin, and I could hear their thinly pitched sonar squeaks. I don’t know how long it lasted or how many flew by us-hundreds, thousands-but it was like being surrounded and engulfed by a living, sentient cloud. The fear left me, replaced by an upwelling sense of wonder in my chest. I had an impulse to spread out my arms, wishing the bats might somehow lift me up and carry me off to some secret place only they knew about. Then, just like that, they were gone, and Charley and I were standing silently side by side on the benighted road.

“Happens every evening around this time,” he said in a hushed tone like one you’d use in church. “They fly up the lake, following this path in the woods, and then out over the water. Don’t have a clue where they go, but it’s a rare thrill to be standing here when they come past you in the dark.”

“That was amazing,” I said.

“It breaks my heart every fall when they migrate. I stand here waiting for them to come, but they’ve moved on. Ora says the first night without the bats is the official start of autumn around here.”

It was in that moment that I decided to tell Charley Stevens about my mother.

He didn’t press me for details. Charley’s preferred method of counseling was to let me say what I had to say, and if he thought I was being shortsighted or unreasonable, he might give me a gentle, usually humorous prod to remind me how irrational I was being. But what do you say to a man whose mother is dying, especially when it is clear that there are no longer any questions left to be asked, when the finality of the situation is all that remains? My friend, who had witnessed so many deaths, knew that all you could offer was condolences and the comfort of a listening ear.

After a few minutes, his German short-haired pointer, Nimrod, emerged from the undergrowth, his coat stuck all over with burrs and bits of leaves. Lacking a real tail, the dog wagged the whole back half of his body.

“I wonder if he found a bird.” I pulled a burdock from between his floppy ears.

“I’d thought of bringing my shotgun with me,” Charley said. “But I’ve killed more than a few partridge this fall, and mushrooming is a quieter pursuit.”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Of course, son.”

“Don’t tell Ora about my mom until after I’ve gone home tonight. I’m not sure I can tell it one more time.”

“She’ll sense there’s something worrying you,” he said. “The woman’s got a special insight into the human heart.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it right now, especially around…”

I didn’t have to say his daughter’s name.

I saw the shadow of his head nod and then felt the reassuring weight of his hand on my shoulder as we walked back to the house in the dark.

* * *

As we approached the Stevenses’ glowing home, I saw a porch light on outside the little guest cabin beside the water. Two vehicles were pulled up in front: a newly detailed Subaru Outback with a kayak roof rack and a black GMC Denali that I recognized as Matt Skillen’s. I hadn’t expected to feel any lower after my confession to Charley, but I found myself dropping through an emotional trapdoor.

At the top of the wheelchair ramp, Charley stomped his feet a few times to kick loose whatever mud had stuck to his boots, and I did the same. He opened the door, and we entered what was essentially a single enormous room that combined the kitchen, dining area, and seating area with a set of chairs arranged around the fireplace. Everything was a little lower to the ground than in a typical home, the countertops, the doorknobs: a concession to Ora’s wheelchair.

She was in the kitchen, peering into an oven, from which I caught the cinnamon and nutmeg smell of an apple pie.

“You’re back early,” she said, giving us a radiant smile.

“You know I can’t stand to be away from you, Boss,” Charley said, bending down to kiss her cheek.

“What did you find today?”

He patted my shoulder. “Aside from this lost soul? I found quite the treasure trove of fungi.” He emptied the dirty mushrooms into the sink. Ora had to raise her body in the chair to get a good look at everything. “Chanterelles, hedgehogs, matsutakes, and this whopper of a hen.”

“Oh, Charley,” she said. “Those are beautiful.”

He glanced farther into the room with a furrowed brow. There was a fire crackling in the fireplace. It threw flickering yellow light on the metal surfaces of the lamps and chairs. “So it looks like we have an extra guest for dinner,” he said.

“Stacey invited Matt.”

Charley pulled off his hat and hung it from a deer-hoof coatrack I recognized from their former cabin. His short white hair stuck up in all directions. “Where are those two?”

“Down by the lake, watching the sunset.” She wheeled herself to the refrigerator and pulled it open with her strong forearms. “Would you like something to drink, Mike? I made some sun tea, but we also have milk and orange juice and beer.”

I accepted a glass of tea-I was still on duty-but my throat ached for a beer.

“So where’s this new porch?” I asked. “Ora told me you were building her something special, Charley.”

“Come have a look-see.” He stepped behind his wife’s wheelchair without her having said a word and pushed her across the carefully swept floor. Ora seemed not to mind having Charley do things for her-push her chair, fetch fallen objects from the floor-that other paraplegics might have felt undercut their independence. Their relationship seemed not to involve any second-guessing.

The new porch was actually two connected porches-one half was screened and roofed, the other was open to the elements. “The bugs here are worse than back home,” said Ora, which was how she still referred to their lost property on Flagstaff Pond. “And I wanted to put plastic up and create a sort of greenhouse here in the wintertime.”

I inspected the joinery, as if I knew a thing or two about carpentry beyond how to hammer a nail. I was about to say something meaningless about the impressiveness of Charley’s work, when we heard a woman’s laugh down the hill and then the creak of footsteps on the zigzagging ramp that climbed from the lakefront up to the new porch. A moment later, Stacey slid open the screen door and stepped into the sheltered half of the porch, followed by her fiance.

She was wearing jeans and a bone-colored thermal pullover that showed what a string bean she was. She usually dressed in mannish clothing: a quirk that had given rise to some rumors about her sexuality when she’d first joined the department. I’d never once seen her in a skirt, I realized. But she had inherited her mom’s natural prettiness, which needed no help from mascara or lipstick to make her face look feminine.

Matt Skillen was dressed as if he’d just come from celebrating casual Friday at the office: crisp pink oxford shirt, open at the throat; unwrinkled chinos; wingtips. He, too, looked slim and athletic; you could picture them as one of those couples who run 10K races together on Saturday mornings. His hair was thick and wavy, as if he took pride in it and liked to leave it a little long. He was holding an open bottle of Grolsch beer.

“Hello,” said Stacey with a polite smile, neither friendly nor forced.

Skillen held out his hand, which was rougher than I would have expected. “Hi, Mike. Good to see you. I heard you were joining us for dinner.”