Elizabeth Hand - Errantry - Strange Stories

“Did you talk to him? Did he say anything?”

“Yeah.” Tommy turned to look at me. He grinned, that manic School’s Out grin that still made everything seem possible. “I asked him how he did it, how he made everything. And he said, ‘Everything fits. You’ll figure it out.’”

“‘Everything fits, you’ll figure it out?’” repeated Angus. “Who is this guy, Mr. Rogers?”

Tommy only smiled. I leaned forward to kiss him, while Angus shook his head and we drove on.

We headed north on the old Brandywine Turnpike, a barely maintained road that runs roughly parallel to Route 22, and connects Kamensic via various gravel roads and shortcuts to the outlying towns and deeper woodlands that, for the moment, had escaped development metastasizing from the megalopolis. The boulder-strewn, glacier-carved terrain was inhospitable to builders, steeply sloped and falling away suddenly into ravines overgrown with mountain ash and rock juniper that gave off a sharp tang of gin.

There were patches of genuine old-growth forest here, ancient towering hemlocks, white oaks and hornbeams. Occasionally we’d pass an abandoned gas station or roadhouse, or the remains of tiny settlements long fallen into ruin beside spur roads that retained the names of their founders: Tintertown Road, Smithtown Road, Fancher’s Corner. It was like driving back in time into the old Kamensic, the real Kamensic, the place we’d mapped through all our various lovers and drug dealers and music gigs over the last thirty years.

Only of course we were really driving away from Kamensic, slipping in and out of the town’s borders, until we reached its outermost edge, the place where even the tax maps got sketchy.

This was where Muscanth Mountain and Sugar Mountain converged on Lake Muscanth. The mountains weren’t mountains really, just big hills, but the lake was a real lake. In the 1920s a group of socialists had established a short-lived utopian community there, a summer encampment called The Fallows. Most of the cabins and the main lodge had rotted away fifty years ago.

But some remained, in varying states of decay—Angus and I first had sex together in one of these, in 1973—and two or three had even been renovated as second homes. Zoning covenants designed to protect the wetland had kept the McMansions away, and some of the same old hippies who had taken over the cottages in the 1960s and ‘70s still lived there, or were rumored to—I hadn’t been out to the lake in at least a dozen years.

“You know, this is going to totally fuck up my alignment.” Angus swore as the car scraped across the rutted track. To the right, you could glimpse Lake Muscanth in flashes of silvery-blue through dense stands of evergreen, like fish darting through murky water. “Damn it ! Tom, I’m sorry, but if we don’t find this place soon I’m—”

“Turn there.” Tommy pointed to where the road divided a few yards ahead of us. “It should be just past where it curves.”

Angus peered through the windshield. “I dunno, man. Those branches, they look like they’re going to come down right on top of us.”

“That’s where the place is, dude,” said Tommy, as I stuck my head between the two of them to get a better view.

Angus was right. The narrow road, barely more than a path here, was flanked by thick stands of tamarack and cedar. They were so overgrown that in spots above the road their branches met and became tangled in a dense, low overhanging mat of black and green. Angus tossed his cigarette out the window and veered cautiously to the right.

The effect wasn’t of diving through a tunnel; more like being under the canopy of a bazaar or souk. Branches scraped the car in place of importuning shopkeepers grabbing at us.

Angus swore as tiny pinecones hailed down onto the roof. “I’m going back.”

Tommy looked stricken. “Hey, we’re almost there.”

“It’s a company car, Tommy!”

“I’ll pay to have it painted, okay? Look, see? There it is, that house there—”

Angus glanced to the side then nodded. “Yeah, well, okay.”

There was no driveway, just a flattish bit of ground where broken glass and scrap metal glinted through patchy moss and teaberry. Angus pulled onto this and turned the ignition off.

“So did this guy give you a phone number or something?” Angus asked after a moment. “Are we expected?”

Tommy sat with his fingers on the door handle and stared outside. The place was small, not a house at all but a cabin made of split logs painted brown. It wasn’t much bigger than a motel cottage, with pine-green shutters and trim, a battered screen door that looked as though it had been flung open by someone who’d left in a big hurry and a bad mood. A sagging screened-in porch overlooked the lake. Stones had come loose from the fieldstone chimney and were scattered forlornly beneath the pine trees, like misshapen soccer balls. A rusted holding tank bulged beneath a broken window that had been repaired with a square of cardboard.

“Nice,” said Angus.

No one got out of the car. Angus shot Tommy a bitter look, then took a roach from his pocket, lit it and smoked in silence. When he held it out to me and Tommy, we demurred. I’d become adept at fine-tuning the cocktail of drugs I needed to filter out the world, and Tommy’s school job mandated random drug testing.

“So Tom.” Angus replaced the roach. The hand he’d kept on the steering wheel relaxed somewhat. “Where’s your man?”

Tommy stared at the cabin. His face had that expression I loved, unabashed wonder struggling with suspicion and a long-entrenched fear of ridicule. It was a slightly crazed look, and I knew from long experience what could follow. Weird accusations, smashed guitars, broken fingers. But the alcohol and Xanax had done their job.

“I don’t even care if he’s here or not,” said Tommy lightly, and stepped outside. “Remember when we used to come out to the lake all the time?”

“I do.”

I hopped out and stood beside him. A warm wind blew off the water, bringing the smells of mud and cedar bark. A red-winged blackbird sang, and a lone peeper near the water’s edge. Tommy put his arm across my shoulder, the Folding Man’s map still in his hand. A moment later I felt Angus on my other side. His fingers touched mine and his mouth tightened as he gazed at the cabin, but after a moment he sighed.

“Yeah, this was a good idea.” He looked at me and smiled, then knocked Tommy’s arm from my shoulder. “No hogging the girl, dude. Let’s check this place out.”

Tommy headed towards the front door. Angus walked to the side to check out the broken window.

“Hey.” He grabbed the cardboard by one corner and tried to wrest it from the window frame.

I came up alongside him. “What is it?”

“It’s an album. Well, an album cover. Watch it—”

The cardboard buckled then abruptly popped out from the window. Angus examined it cursorily, slid his hand inside the sleeve and shook his head—no vinyl—then held it up for me to see: a black square with an inset color photo of two guys in full hippie regalia and psychedelic wording beneath.

“Is that T. Rex?”

He grinned. “I always, always wanted this album. I could never find it.”

“You could probably find it now on eBay.”

“I never wanted it that much.” He laughed. “Actually, I totally forgot I wanted it, till now.”

I took the cardboard sleeve. It was damp and smelled of mildew; black mold covered Marc Bolan’s face and cape. When I tried to look inside, the soft cardboard tore.

I handed it back to Angus. “Is it worth anything?”