The Night Remembers

14

Snow was more obvious in the hills where the horses ran, large white patches of it over the land brown with winter, and on the roofs of the farm houses that hugged the land sloping up to the timberline. Even on overcast days the land holds a severe beauty, milk cows plodding the fallow fields along the fencing, farmers tossing handfuls of yellow feeder corn to hogs like nuggets of gold, the fat lone snowman in the front yard with a green John Deere cap tilted across its eyes of coal, clean winter wind whipping in the bare black trees on the edge of a hill.

David Pennyfeather took the Amana exit, going west as soon as he reached the arterial highway, a two-lane strip of blacktop that skirted the original Amana colonies where the black-clad locals had until a few decades ago rolled back and forth to town in heavy farm wagons and buggies.

I hung back a quarter mile, afraid that he might get suspicious. At a sandy road veering sharply off the highway, he took an abrupt hard right. He must have known the road reasonably well because he didn’t slow down at all, taking the first turn around a stand of firs at sixty miles per hour.

When I reached the same spot a few minutes later, I saw that below this road ran another, a narrow, angling devil that led deep into a forest of pines and high red clay cliffs. If he suspected I was following him, he could easily pull off the road, stop his car, and wait for me in a blind.

I had no choice but to go ahead.

Ten minutes later, coming to a stop on the edge of a clay cliff, I saw finally where he was headed.

Below lay a cabin on the edge of the river. In summer, when it was surrounded by blooming trees, you would not be able to see the place. Even now it was hidden behind a windbreak of pines. I’d sighted it only because I’d seen the blue of his Volvo flashing on the other side of the trees as he pulled up to the cabin.

I backed my car off the road, locking everything up, and got out. From here I’d have to do everything on foot.

The first thing I checked was the cliff. It was a sheer drop and I didn’t think I could make it down that way. At my age you minimize your risks.

I took the road, which was little more than a winding dirt path that allowed for one car to pass. Arced across the gray sky was a silken pheasant enjoying itself now that hunting season was over. Just around the bend that pitched down to the cabin a fox glanced up from its feast of a dead squirrel, eyeing me cautiously but not threatened enough to move. My feet crunching tiny pieces of ice, I finished the rest of the walk with my collar turned up, a pair of green earmuffs riding my head. My nose felt like an ice cube.

The cabin was a large and fancy affair, built of logs to give it a rustic look but enhanced with housing shingles on the roof, a small satellite dish, and a screened-in porch large enough to seat at least a dozen people comfortably. In addition to the blue Volvo there was a new Cadillac Seville, in dark papal colors, and a small silver Porsche.

There was no point in trying to sneak up and eavesdrop. The best way in was the most obvious way. I went up to the screened-in porch and opened the door, walked across a floor covered with dark green indoor-outdoor carpeting, and stepped over to the front door. There was a large black gas grill on the far side of the porch. You could still smell the summer’s burgers.

I knocked.

Instantly, you could hear voices cease their talking, and shushing sounds being made as they tried to figure out who was on the other side of the door.

Moments later, David Pennyfeather appeared.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked when he saw me.

I looked beyond him to where his mother and father stood in the center of a large room with a beamed ceiling, next to a fireplace crackling with pleasantly smoking logs, a tall stack of which lay next to me near the front door.

“I wondered if I could speak with you a minute, Mrs. Pennyfeather,” I said, ignoring David entirely.

He shoved me hard enough to push me halfway back across the porch.

His mother and father shouted for him to stop. They came running. Carolyn, taller than anybody in the family except David, seemed to appear from nowhere and grabbed David’s shoulder. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Right now, David! Do you understand?”

“He followed me!” David said.

George Pennyfeather, small and quiet, said, “Let him come in, David. He’s only trying to help.”

David Pennyfeather took three threatening steps onto the porch. I could see now how bad his temper was. He was having a difficult time getting control of himself. From the weary pleas of his family, it was also easy to understand that they’d had to deal with his anger for many years.

Carolyn Pennyfeather pushed herself ahead of him on the porch. She slammed her hands flat-palmed against his chest. For the first few seconds he managed to push her back but then she dug in with surprising strength and slowed him down considerably. “You stop it, now, do you understand? Do you understand?” She might have been talking to a dog she could no longer control.

Knowing there was no way I could hold my own in a fight with him, I’d picked up a log, wielding it as impressively as possible. He didn’t even seem to notice.

“Why the hell did you follow me?” he said. He was still angry, but he was no longer acting irrationally.

Carolyn, still between us, said, “Let’s invite him in and sit down and talk. All right, David? All right?”

You could see him collapse inside his expensive gray suit. Miserably, he said, “He’s your problem, then, Carolyn. And you deal with him.”

She looked back at me anxiously and said, “I will, David. I will. Now you go back in there and sit down. And right now. Right now.”

He glared at me once more and went back inside.