Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

As I pulled in beside the trailer, a sharp-faced black dog barked at me from the far side of the yard. It was tied to the bumper of a vintage Chevrolet, though the bumper didn’t look secure enough to prevent the critter from breaking free and charging for my jugular. Up in the mountains, wind rolled like a thousand drums.

Earl walked out the front door just as I got out of the car. He wore faded jeans, an open-throated flannel shirt, and brown forester’s boots, all of which seemed two sizes too large for his frame. He raised one hand in welcome, then shouted something at the dog, which quieted the mongrel as effectively as if he’d whipped it with a birch branch.

I slammed the car door and crunched through the snow, a backpack over my shoulders. I held two of my writing notebooks under one arm, the third one having vanished, one might surmise, into thin air.

For the past two days I’d searched the entire house from top to bottom for the missing notebook but couldn’t find it. I’d pestered Jodie about possibly misplacing it, but she swore she hadn’t seen it. I dug through all the boxes in Elijah’s bedroom, which had become my writing office as well, on the off chance that I’d accidentally packed it away with some of the boy’s stuff. While bent over one particular box, I thought I heard footsteps . . . then someone breathing down my neck. I spun around, expecting to see Elijah, blue-skinned and bloated, muddy water pooling on the cement floor about his feet, standing an arm’s length from me in the half dark. But there was no one there; I was alone.

Earl nodded at me as I approached. “Snow’s thinned out some. How’s the driving?”

“They’ve got much of downtown cleared up, but it’s still a bit treacherous here in the hills.”

We shook hands. Across the yard, the large black dog started barking again.

“Come on inside,” Earl said, turning and pushing the door open. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit out here.”

Inside, I was treated to wood paneling and startling neon carpeting, a sofa that looked as if it had been salvaged from the set of Sanford and Son, and garish prints of hunting dogs, cattails, and bulging-eyed bass leaping out of rivers. Mounds of clothes seemed to rise from the floor and move when you weren’t looking directly at them, and empty beer bottles and pizza boxes were placed almost strategically throughout the cramped interior. Despite the amassment of television antennas on his roof, Earl’s tiny, prehistoric Zenith worked off a pair of rabbit ears capped in aluminum foil. It was the den of a career bachelor, that wily and elusive animal who has never been scolded to pick up his socks, iron a shirt, or wash the dishes.

“I warned you the place was a mess.”

I followed him onto an elevated section of the floor, where the shag carpeting gave way to crude linoleum, and stood shifting from one foot to the other while Earl cleared half-eaten Chinese food containers and stacks of newspaper off what I construed to be the kitchen table. With some humility, I noticed a stack of my paperback novels on one of the countertops, the top one splayed open and upside down to save his page.

His arms laden in refuse, Earl nodded toward two lawn chairs folded against one wall. I put my notebooks on the circular table, then set up both chairs around it. A single paper lantern hanging from a cord above the table was the only immediate source of light. I sat in one of the chairs as Earl returned with an accordion folder and two bottles of beer, caps off.

He handed me one of the beers, proclaimed, “Cheers,” and clinked the neck of his bottle against mine. Then he sat down heavily in his chair and placed the accordion folder neatly at the center of the table. “Before we begin, I want your word that much of what I show you tonight stays between us.”

“I’m not even sure what this is all about, but okay. You’ve got my word.”

Earl motioned to my notebooks. “What are those?”

“Notes for a new book.” After a pause, I said, “But I think they’re more than that, too.”

He said nothing but watched me as he chugged his beer.

“It sounds stupid, but I’ve been plotting out this story based on what I already know about the Dentmans,” I said, sensing I needed to explain myself. “I’d been suffering this lousy writer’s block, and it wasn’t until I learned about Elijah’s drowning that my creative spark returned. I’ve been writing like a madman for the past couple weeks.” Almost apologetically, I added, “There’s a third notebook but I must have misplaced it.”

“I’m a wannabe reporter for a small-town community newspaper, so I won’t pretend to comprehend the inner workings of a genuine creative mind,” Earl said. “But do you mean to tell me you’re actually writing a book about the Dentmans?”

“Not exactly. It’s difficult to explain.” For a moment I felt myself on the verge of telling him about Kyle—a realization that shook me to my foundation, because not even Jodie knew the truth, and I’d just met this man two days ago—but chickened out. “It started that way, but then the story turned into something else. The characters took on lives of their own based on the parameters I’d set. But now . . .” My voice trailed off. I didn’t know how to finish the thought.

“The following is based on a true story,” he said, chuckling. “Names have been changed to protect the innocent and all that jazz . . .”

“Exactly,” I said, but oh, did I feel like a heel lying to this old man: I hadn’t changed a single name; my notebooks were rife, were polluted, with the good citizens of Westlake, Maryland. Even down to Tooey Jones and his gut-wrenching tonic.

Earl exhaled heavily out of flared nostrils. “Before we get into this, I want to show you something.” He shuffled over to a credenza overburdened with stacks of papers and unopened mail. Humming beneath his breath, he sorted through one of the piles, his back toward me.

I was startled to spot an Irish wolfhound lounging silently beside the credenza, shaggier than the carpet itself and roughly the size of a grown man. From beneath its fringed bangs, it eyed me with soulful black eyes. Somewhere in the shadows, a space heater whirred to life.

“Ah, here it is,” Earl said and returned to the table. The sound he made when he dropped into the chair was like an old bicycle horn.

He handed me a grainy photograph of a man in cutoff jean shorts and a tank top, dragging a washrag across the windshield of a yellow Firebird. The man was perhaps in his midforties, although the picture was somewhat out of focus, making it impossible to tell for sure.

“Who’s this?” I said.

“My son.”

I had no idea where this was going, so I slid the picture back to him without saying anything.

“A careless affair in the days of my youth,” Earl said, taking the photo from me and looking at the photo with what I assessed to be a mixture of longing and regret. “It’s not necessary to go into that. I just wanted to show it to you because, for whatever reason, you sort of remind me of him. Not that you look anything like him, and to tell the God’s honest truth, I’ve never spent any time with the boy to know if you two share any of the same mannerisms. I guess maybe you’re how I sometimes think he might be.” He set the photo on the stack of papers atop the credenza. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I told him, though I still had no idea why he’d showed me the picture.

“That was my roundabout way of explaining why I’m about to show you this stuff. Because I feel a bit of a kinship to you, I guess, which means I trust you not to exploit me. You say you’re writing a book, and that’s just dandy, but I can’t have what I’m going to show you go beyond these walls.” He rattled a cough into one fisted hand before resuming. “I know you’re a stranger to me, and I may just be an old fool, but something is telling me I can trust you to keep that promise. That internal voice ain’t never steered me wrong in all my years. I hope you won’t be the one to prove it wrong.”