Lone Wolf

3

I RUSHED FORWARD, but moved aside for the older gentleman in the suit and tie, who creaked like an old door as he bent down to assist my father. Dad was on his side, his craggy face twisted in pain, raising himself up with one arm and reaching back with the other toward his foot, even though he couldn’t get anywhere close to it. “Shit,” Arlen Walker said. “Jesus, that hurts.”

“Don’t try to get up,” I said.

“No chance of that,” Dad said. “How ya doin’, Doc?” he said to the man in the suit.

“Just take it easy, Arlen,” he said. He glanced up at me. “I’m Dr. Heath. I’m your father’s regular doctor.”

“Hi,” I said, moving farther back so Heath and the ambulance guys could do their thing. I drew back up next to Chief Thorne, who was looking uncomfortable and embarrassed.

“I’m really sorry, Arlen,” he said. “It was an accident.”

“Sure, Orville,” Dad said, wincing. “I know. These things happen.”

“I was just trying to help,” the chief said. He suddenly looked very young to me, with soft white skin, a few freckles around his eyes.

The rest of the crowd was taking in the show. There was the sixtyish woman in the kerchief and hunting jacket, a guest I figured, her arm linked with a man of similar age, both of them on the short side. Her doughy face was clouded with worry, but he was a bit harder to read. Just watching. Next to him, only slightly taller, stood a man in a dark green felt baseball cap, with what looked like a basketball hidden under his unzipped windbreaker and striped pullover shirt. His clothes must have cost a bundle to make someone his shape look so good. Even in casual garb, he was the best dressed of all of us. I glanced back at the cabins, spotted a Cadillac STS parked at one of them, and knew that one had to be his.

Next to him, an old-man-of-the-sea. Tall, his face lined with deep creases, a toothpick dancing back and forth between his lips. He was dressed in olive pants and a plaid flannel shirt, and he smiled at me when our eyes met.

“Bob Spooner,” he said, extending a hand. I took it. “I’m glad your dad’s okay,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

I turned to Chief Thorne and said quietly, “Didn’t anyone call around to see if my dad might be in town? You two spoke to each other by first names, like you know each other pretty well. I had a two-hour-long heart attack driving up here, expecting the worst. You couldn’t have asked around?”

Thorne’s tongue poked around the inside of his cheek. He was taking his time to come up with an answer, like maybe he hadn’t expected this to be on the final. After a few seconds, he said, “We’re basically in the middle of our investigation here, Mr. Walker. Our first concern was finding out who this man over here is, and when we couldn’t immediately locate your father, well, you can understand why we were concerned.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Couldn’t you have made some calls?”

Thorne said, “We saw his vehicle over there, the boats were in, there was no reason to think he might be in town.”

“And why would he have taken a cab back?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t he have taken his truck into town?”

Thorne ignored that. A few steps away, on the ground, my dad said, “Christ on a cracker, that hurts!”

Thorne tipped his hat back a fraction of an inch and said to me, “I’m sorry if you’ve been inconvenienced, Mr. Walker.”

“Inconvenienced?” I said. “Inconvenienced? Is that what you call dragging me into the woods to show me a corpse I had every reason to believe was my father?”

The chubby guy in the nice threads said, “Orville, didn’t you call your aunt, see if she might know where Arlen was?”

Thorne coughed again. I said, “Your aunt? Why would your aunt know where my father was?”

I suppose it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to be as angry as I was. I mean, I’d just learned that my father was alive. I should have been relieved, perhaps even joyous. Leaping about, even. But instead I felt enraged at being made to look at that body hidden under the tarp, to have been led to believe by this incompetent rube, for however briefly, that it was my father, looking like he’d been fed through a meat grinder. Maybe, too, I was reeling from the shock of it all. Losing a parent and getting him back all within a matter of minutes. How often did that happen?

Whatever it was, I was losing my cool.

“Mr. Walker,” Chief Thorne said, trying to put some authority in his voice and placing a hand on my arm, “I think maybe you need to calm down and-”

“Get your hand off me,” I said, shaking it loose and-I honestly don’t know how the hell this happened-shoving Thorne away from me at the same time as he actually grabbed on to my arm, and his foot caught on a small rock, and then he was going down and taking me with him. The guy was a one-man tripping industry.

I was just going along for the ride at this point, but from Thorne’s point of view, I was attacking him, so he scrambled wildly to get out from under me, scurrying sideways like a crab, looking wild-eyed, his hat gone, and then, suddenly, there was a gun in his hand and he was shouting at me, his voice squeaking a bit, “Freeze!”

Well, I froze. Except for the parts of me that were shaking. I may not have actually appeared to be quivering, but I sure felt that way inside.

Thorne’s gun was visibly shaking. He put a second hand on the gun to help steady it, both arms outstretched, and there was something very Barney Fife about him at that moment. Not as thin and spindly, but equally erratic. He might not intend to shoot me but end up doing it anyway.

“You just hold it right there!” he shouted, glancing at me and then over to his hat and then back to me.

“Don’t worry,” I said, a bit winded from the fall. I shook my head back and forth slowly, raised both my palms to suggest a truce.

“Christ, Orville, put that fucking gun away!” my father shouted from the ground. “That’s my goddamn son, for crying out loud!”

“He started it!” Orville Thorne whined.

Even with a twisted ankle, my father had the energy to roll his eyes. “Orville, for God’s sakes, put that thing away before you hurt yourself.”

Thorne got to his feet, lowered the gun slowly and slipped it back into his holster, brushed himself off. I went over and got his hat and handed it to him.

“Sorry,” I said.

Thorne snatched the hat away and put it back on, shielding his eyes, unwilling to look at me after being scolded by my father.

“Yeah, well,” he said.

“It’s just, I thought my dad was dead. And then he drove in. I guess I went a bit crazy, having just seen that body and all.”

“Sure,” he said.

I stuck out a hand. Without being able to see Thorne’s eyes, I wasn’t sure he saw it, so I took a step closer.

“Go on, Orville,” said Arlen Walker. “Shake his hand.”

He took my hand, half shook it, then withdrew. We both had reason to be embarrassed, I guess, but Thorne looked particularly red-faced.

“Okay,” said my father. “Now that that’s settled, could someone tell me what the hell is going on around here?”

Bob Spooner spoke up. “Arlen, there’s a body in the woods. A man’s body.”

“Jesus,” Dad said. “Who is it?”

“We don’t know,” Orville Thorne said. “It’s no one from here. Now that we’ve found you, everyone from the camp here’s been accounted for.”

“For a while,” I said, “everyone thought that it might be you.”

“I wasn’t here,” Dad said matter-of-factly. “I got a ride into town last night. I’d had a bit of wine with dinner so I didn’t want to drive.” That would be Dad. As long as I’d known him, if he had so much as a drop of wine, he wouldn’t get behind the wheel.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Where were you going? Who gave you a lift into town?”

He was up on one foot now, an ambulance attendant on either side of him, about to lead him in the direction of the ambulance. He winced instead of answering.

“I bet I can guess,” said Bob, a sly grin crossing his face.

“Bob.” My dad glared at the man, said his name like a warning.

Bob seemed unafraid. “I’m just saying.”

I noticed that the older woman and her husband had slipped back into the woods. I could just make them out, standing by the tarp. Then I noticed him holding up the tarp at one end so that his wife-I guessed she was his wife-could take a closer look.

Ghouls, I thought.

“Hey, Doc,” Dad said to Dr. Heath as the paramedics moved him closer to the ambulance, “couldn’t I just go lie down and put an ice pack on it?”

“Arlen, just come in to Emerg. We’ll get an X-ray, make sure nothing’s broken, confirm that it’s just a sprain.” There was a small hospital in Braynor, I remembered.

“But I gotta run this place,” Dad protested. “I’ve got boats to get ready, firewood to cut. Place like this doesn’t run itself, you know.”

“You’re not gonna be putting any weight on that ankle for a few days,” Dr. Heath said. “Longer, if it’s broke.”

Dad closed his eyes and grimaced. “That’s great,” he said. “That’s just great.”

The words were coming out of my mouth before I realized it. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll look after things. Until you’re better. I can get a few days off.”

His eyes settled on me, weighing this offer. “It’s a lot of work,” he said. “It’s not sitting around on your ass in front of a computer all day.”

Well. He likes my offer so much, he’s going to butter me up to make sure I don’t withdraw it.

I ignored the comment and instead returned his stare, waiting for an answer. He drew in air quickly, like the ankle was flaring with pain, and looked away.

“Fine, okay,” he said.

“And I’ll come to the hospital with you.”

“No, no, no, stay here. I’ll just be sitting around for hours down there. You look after things here, I’ll give you a call when I’m done, you can pick me up.”

I nodded my assent as they put Dad in the back of the ambulance. They said that once they had Dad admitted they’d come back for the body, which they’d now been cleared to remove, the coroner having had a chance to give it the once-over. The light on top was flashing, but the siren was off. We all watched as it went up the hill and went round the bend in the driveway.

“Well,” I said, standing next to my new friend Chief Thorne. “I guess that just leaves one thing.”

“What’s that?” said the chief.

I pointed back into the woods at the body. “Who the hell is that?”