Brian Freeman - The Bone House

Impatiently, Mark got out of his truck. His Explorer was the second vehicle in line for the ferry, and no one had pulled up behind him. It would be a quiet ride back to the island. He walked with his hands in his pockets down to the end of the pier, where he stared out at the white boulders of the breakwater and the choppy waves in the passage. The island wasn't even five miles away, but it was invisible on the mist-shrouded horizon. The afternoon sky was threatening and black. It mirrored his mood. The bright spirit in which he'd started the day, in Hilary's arms, had descended into a storm of depression.

He realized that he hadn't called Hilary yet to tell her what had happened between him and Peter Hoffman, but he wondered if she already knew. Their friend Terri in Fish Creek was a lightning rod for gossip, and if word of the fight had reached her, her first call would have been to Hilary. On the other hand, if his wife knew, she would have called him. His phone hadn't rung all day.

Things were going from bad to worse. Their lives were spinning out of control. He didn't know how to stop it.

Mark reached into the pocket of his jacket but discovered that his phone wasn't where he usually kept it. He patted all of his other pockets and couldn't find it. Thinking that he had left it on the passenger seat of the truck, he tramped back from the shore to his Explorer. He checked the front seat and the glove compartment and then under the seats, but his phone was missing.

He remembered that he'd dropped it in the farmers' market when Hoffman hit him. In the confusion, he'd never picked it up again. He cursed and shook his head. There was no time to drive back to Sister Bay. If he skipped the three o'clock ferry, the last ferry of the day wasn't for two more hours. He'd have to let his phone go until tomorrow.

He walked twenty yards to the ticket booth for the ferry. The crews on the boats and at the pier all knew him. In the old days, they'd shared jokes and talked sports with him while he waited, but not anymore. They were like everyone else now, believing the rumors. The fat man in the booth, Bobby Larch, slid open the customer window when Mark tapped on it. He was reading a copy of Playboy, eating fries from a styrofoam box, and drinking a bottle of Baumeister's cherry soda. His daughter Karen had been in Mark's English class during his first year teaching in Fish Creek, and Bobby had told Mark back then how much Karen had raved about his class. He was her favorite teacher.

None of that mattered now. In the days since Tresa, every parent looked at him as a predator.

'Hey, Bobby,' Mark said.

The man barely looked away from his magazine. 'What do you want?'

'Can I borrow your phone?'

'Why?'

'I lost mine,' Mark told him. 'Come on, Bobby, I want to call my wife.'

Bobby shrugged and dug in the pocket of his dirty jeans. He handed a Samsung flip-phone to Mark. It was warm and greasy.

'Thanks,' Mark said. He added without thinking, 'How's Karen doing? Is she in college now?'

Bobby didn't answer and slid the booth window shut with a bang.

Mark dialed his home number. The phone rang over on the island, but after four rings, the answering machine took the call. He left a message: 'It's me. I lost my phone if you've been trying to reach me. I'll be on the three o'clock. I'll see you soon.'

He decided to dial his own mobile number to see if someone had found his phone and turned it in at the market. He wasn't anxious to be showing his face in there again after what had happened.

Mark dialed.

A man answered on the second ring and said in a gravelly voice, 'Who is this?'

'This is Mark Bradley. I think you've got my phone.'

'Bradley,' the man said. 'I was wondering when you'd call me.'

Mark recognized the voice now. He wished he hadn't dialed the number. It was Peter Hoffman. The old man must have picked up his phone at the store and kept it. Instinctively, Mark's temper, which he'd tried to tame all day, flared again. He struggled to keep a lid on his emotions.

'Mr Hoffman, I'm sorry about what happened between us. Really. I hope you're OK.'

'Don't you worry about me, Bradley. I just hope that glass jaw of yours is broken.'

Mark didn't take the bait. 'I didn't call to pick up where we left off. I just want to get my phone back.'

'I've got it right here,' Hoffman said.

'I don't know why you took it with you. I wish you'd left it at the store.'

'I could have done that, but then you wouldn't have had to face me again, would you? If you want your phone back, you can come and get it.'

Mark checked his watch. The ferry was due in ten minutes. Hoffman's home wasn't far, but he doubted that he had time to go to the man's house and make it back to the port in time. He also didn't think it would be a simple matter of Hoffman handing him the phone. The man wanted another confrontation.

'I have a ferry to catch.'

'In other words, you don't have the guts to look me in the eye. I suppose tomorrow you'll send your wife to collect it.'

Mark grimaced, because that was exactly what he'd planned to do. Hilary wouldn't let him cross Hoffman's doorstep. Not with what had already happened.

'Good night, Mr Hoffman,' he said.

'Yeah, you hang up, Bradley,' the man cut in. 'Go back across Death's Door and get a good night's sleep. But let me tell you something. I already talked to that detective in Florida. He's coming to see me.'

'Good for you.'

'When he knows what I know, he'll be heading out there to arrest you, Bradley.'

Mark slapped the phone shut, cutting off the abuse from Hoffman's mouth. He got out of the truck. He smelled the approaching downpour in the thick air. He shivered and hiked to the ticket booth, where Bobby Larch slid open the window and took back his phone.

'Thanks,' Mark said.

'Whatever.'

'Is the ferry on time?'

'Bobby shook his head. 'Nah, it'll be ten to fifteen minutes late getting in.'

Mark returned to his Explorer. He switched on the radio, and the local rock station was playing a song by the Black Eyed Peas. That wasn't his kind of music, and he normally would have changed the station, but as he listened, the beat of the song thumped in his head. The refrain, repeated over and over, was the title of the song, and he found himself responding the more he listened to it.

Let's Get It Started.

That was right. He wasn't going to lie down for anyone anymore. Whatever happened would happen.

When Mark checked his watch, he saw that the ferry delay gave him time to drive to Peter Hoffman's home and see the man face to face. He pulled out of the ferry line, did a sharp U-turn, and shot through the flat ribbon of curves toward Port des Morts Drive.

The house was dead still, the way it always was.

Peter Hoffman sat at the butcher block table in his kitchen and drank whiskey straight from the bottle as he listened to the silence. His need for quiet was a holdover that he'd never been able to shake from his days in the war. He never played music. He rarely watched television. He wanted to hear exactly what was happening outside so that he could detect anything out of place. His ears were attuned to every sound that the house made, every trill of every bird, every shriek of wind, hiss of snow, and drumbeat of rain. There were times when his wife had insisted on playing symphonies on the stereo, but he'd found that he couldn't stay in the room with the noise. Since she'd died, he'd lived in silence, listening and waiting.

Forty years had passed, the war was long gone, and he still expected an enemy to come from somewhere. If they did, he'd hear them.

Hoffman had a map of Door County laid out in front of him. Next to it was the metal ring on which he kept his bulky set of keys. He held on to keys long after he didn't need them anymore, but he couldn't bring himself to remove them from the ring and throw them away. He still knew the lock associated with each one. His 1982 Cutlass. The strongbox where he'd kept his insurance and mortgage documents, when he still had a mortgage. Nettie's house, Nettie's garage, before the fire.