J. Lennon - Castle

For all that, however, I never truly felt I understood my father. I do not fully understand him today. There were, however, times when I felt like I was my father, when I could sense his blood flowing through me, his expressions on my face, his anxious, hangdog stance in my bones.

But now, ironically, he felt very distant. And when I returned to myself from my reverie, and looked around at the gray skies and muddy ground, I could sense my memories draining away, pouring through me like rain off a mossy roof and into the earth. I was no longer sure about where I was standing — perhaps this wasn’t the former site of our house, after all. Perhaps we’d lived closer to the swamp — or maybe farther in the other direction, nearer to Main Street. In any event, it was all mud and weeds now.

I returned to my car and drove away. And after several false starts, I was able to find the municipal cemetery where I had last seen, and argued with, my sister, before her recent appearance at my house. It was at the edge of town, on a woody rise around which the county highway curved. Unlike the church cemeteries that dotted our town, this one was ill cared for, the grass long and gone to seed, the ground littered with dead branches and trash blown from the road. The headstones leaned, and the graveled paths were cut through by runoff. It took some searching, but I was able to find my parents’ graves. They were not buried together. My mother’s bones lay beneath a willow tree. This is not as idyllic as it sounds, because the tree was old and half dead, having apparently been split decades before by lightning; and just beyond it ran a low, cracked, graffiti-covered cement wall, over which the road could clearly be seen and heard. Her stone was simple, bearing only her name and dates: 1937–1981.

My father was buried behind the crumbling cinderblock bunker where the groundskeeper, if there even was one anymore, kept his supplies. His grave was marked only by a cement slab, half-buried in the ground. The dates were identical to my mother’s.

I did eventually discover what was inside the mysterious wooden box. The police found the box standing open on my father’s workbench in the cellar. It was lined with velvet, and bore a depression the precise size and shape of the pistol that killed my parents.

As I drove back to the hill, rain began to fall in torrents; but by the time I got home and unpacked the car, it had ceased, and the sun emerged. The ice that had covered the trees that morning was gone, melted away in the warm rain. The front that brought the storm was balmy, and by the time I was ready to go outside again, the temperature had risen to nearly sixty degrees.

It was 2:00 p.m., leaving me time enough before darkness fell to perform an exploratory walk around the edge of my property. I recalled having been hungry before my unanticipated trip to Jefferson Street, but oddly my hunger had passed, and so I left at once, loading a few light provisions in my pack. I wore a thin waterproof jacket, a pair of running shoes, and a baseball cap; a pair of binoculars hung around my neck. It would be an easy walk, as I planned to stick to the roads, searching carefully for any former trail that could lead me to the rock.

The first leg of the walk was downhill. I left the lot in front of my house and took Lyssa Road in long strides, keeping to the northern edge, my feet crunching in the gravel. I could hear water bubbling in the ditch on the other side. A hawk circled overhead once, twice, three times, then moved on. And once I saw the face of a doe peering out from the trees to the south.

But mostly I kept my attention on my own property. I was looking for any evidence that a path once existed, some entryway to the interior that I could trace on my upcoming venture. I kept in my mind, as I walked, some sense of the location of the rock, relative to where I stood; and, given my long experience in the area of land use, I believed I had a very good sense of its direction at all times. Every once in a while I peered into the woods, or took a few steps beyond the treeline, but I found nothing on Lyssa Road to suggest there was a clear route. The deadfall, as on the hilltop, was barely penetrable, and I could see patches of wet, glistening marsh in those few places where no branches lay. The storm, no doubt, had made even worse what was already a nearly insurmountable problem.

I reached the end of Lyssa road quite promptly, and made a left turn onto Minerva. My experience there was more of the same. No paths, and no clear forest floor. I did pass a roadkilled squirrel, its snout dark with blackened blood, lying on the shoulder, and I pushed it into the dirt with my shoe, so that nature could reclaim it more quickly.

Soon Minerva Road began to climb, and I passed over the creek that cut off the corner of my property and ran underneath the pavement. Thus, it was not long before I arrived at Nemesis Road, which I turned onto with a renewed sense of purpose. The road ran downhill for a time, crossing once again over the creek, and I made my way deliberately to the lowest point, diligently checking for anything remotely resembling a footpath. Once again, there was nothing.

It wasn’t long before I reached the road’s lowest point, and it was here that I felt despair begin to seep into my body. My legs and back were aching, my head had started in with a gentle pounding, and my mouth was dry. I had foolishly neglected to bring a bottle of water with me, and so couldn’t eat the jerky and trail mix I had packed.

Worse, the entire endeavor — trying to find the rock — suddenly seemed childish, idiotic even. What, after all, would I do when I got there? Climb up it, yes, but then what? I would stand atop the rock, and look out at the same view my bedroom window offered, except not quite as dramatic. Then I would climb back down and go home. And after that? I would just… live. In solitude, and to no particular end. In that moment, my entire existence seemed utterly futile, and I saw for the first time just how aimless, how pointless, it had become.

I don’t know where this train of thought would have taken me, had I not then heard a noise from the road before me. It was a vehicle, coming up over the rise, a pickup truck. It coughed and wheezed, as if having to struggle to make it to the top — and then, as it crested the hill, it roared to life and came rolling toward me.

I moved onto the shoulder to allow it to pass, and then began to trudge up toward the intersection. The truck was about a hundred yards ahead, and picking up speed. And then, without thinking, I stopped.

For my work, specifically my often tense interactions with other people, I had been compelled to develop a sixth sense. Not an actual sixth sense, of course — rather, a heightened sensitivity to the information I gathered through the five normal senses. A careful observer, I discovered, can learn to predict what another person will say or do; and with practice, one can steer that person’s thoughts and actions in beneficial ways. I don’t know what it was about the driver’s face that alerted me — he appeared in every way to be the typical resident of the area, with a filthy “trucker” style cap shading sallow, thin cheeks and a long drooping mustache — but I was suddenly wary, my muscles tensed.

And then it happened — just as it was about to pass me, the pickup swerved, barreling straight toward the verge where I stood. I leaped off the road surface and into the trees, where I tripped on the deadfall and crashed to the ground. From behind me I heard tires squeal and gravel spray, and the high, mad cackle of the vile redneck driver. I lay there, my hands scraped, my ribs bruised, and listened as the pickup struggled up to the corner of Nemesis and Minerva. I cursed under my breath, and then louder, and that’s when I heard a twig break, and I looked up, into the forest.