The Shack

18 OUTBOUND RIPPLES

And finally, as if from far away, he heard a familiar voice squeal in delight, “He squeezed my finger! I felt it! I promise!”

He couldn’t even open his eyes to see, but he knew Josh was holding his hand. He tried to squeeze again, but the darkness overwhelmed him and he faded out. It took a full day for Mack to gain consciousness again. He could barely move another muscle in his body. Even the effort to lift a single eyelid seemed overwhelming, although doing so was rewarded with screams and shouts and laughter. One after another, a parade of people rushed up to his one barely open eye, as if they were looking into a deep dark hole containing some incredible treasure. Whatever they saw seemed to please them immensely and off they would go to spread the news.

Some faces he recognized; but the ones he didn’t, Mack soon learned, were those of his doctors and nurses. He slept often, but it seemed that every time he opened his eyes it would cause no little excitement. “Just wait until I can stick out my tongue,” he thought. “That will really get them.”

Everything seemed to hurt. He was now painfully aware when a nurse moved his body against his will, for physical therapy and to keep him from developing bed sores. It was apparently routine treatment for people who had been unconscious for more than a day or two, but knowing that didn’t make it any more bearable.

At first Mack had no idea where he was or how he had ended up in such a predicament. He barely could keep track of who he was. The drugs didn’t help, although he was grateful for the morphine taking the edge off his pain. Over the course of the next couple days, his mind slowly cleared up and he began to get his voice back. A steady parade of family and friends came by to wish a speedy recovery or perhaps glean a little information, which wasn’t forthcoming. Josh and Kate were regulars, sometimes doing homework while Mack snoozed, or answering his questions that for the first couple days he asked again and again and again.

At some point Mack finally understood, even though he had been told many times, that he had been unconscious for almost four days after a terrible accident in Joseph. Nan made it clear that he had a lot of explaining to do, but was for the time being focused more on his recovery than her need for answers. Not that it mattered. His memory was in a fog and though he could remember bits and pieces he couldn’t pull them together to make any sense.

He vaguely remembered the drive to the shack, but things got sketchy beyond that. In his dreams the images of Papa, Jesus, Missy playing by the lake, Sophia in the cave, and the light and color of the festival in the meadow came back to him like shards from a broken mirror. Each was accompanied by waves of delight and joy but he wasn’t sure if they were real or a hallucination conjured up by collisions between some damaged or otherwise wayward neurons and the drugs coursing through his veins.

On the third afternoon after he had regained consciousness, he awoke to find Willie staring down at him, looking rather grumpy.

“You idiot!” Willie gruffed.

“Nice to see you too, Willie,” Mack yawned.

“Where’d you learn to drive anyway,” Willie ranted. “Oh yeah, I remember, farm boy not used to intersections. Mack, from what I heard, you should have been able to smell that other guy’s breath a mile away.” Mack lay there, watching his friend ramble on, trying to listen and comprehend every word, which he didn’t. “And now,” Willie continued, “ Nan ’s mad as a hornet and won’t talk to me. She blames me for loaning you my Jeep and letting you go to the shack.”

“So why did I go to the shack?” Mack asked, struggling to collect his thoughts. “Everything is fuzzy.”

Willie groaned in desperation. “You have to tell her I tried to talk you out of it.”

“You did?”

“Don’t do this to me, Mack. I tried to tell you…”

Mack smiled as he listened to Willie rant. If he had few other memories, he did remember this man cared about him and just having him near made him smile. Mack was suddenly startled to realize that Willie had leaned down very close to his face.

“Seriously, was he there?” he whispered, then quickly looked around to make sure no one was in ear shot.

“Who?” whispered Mack. “And why are we whispering?”

“You know, God?” Willie insisted. “Was he at the shack.”

Mack was amused. “Willie,” he whispered, “it’s not a secret. God is everywhere. So, I was at the shack.”

“I know that, you pea brain,” he stormed. “Don’t you remember anything? You mean you don’t even remember the note? You know, the one you got from Papa that was in your mailbox when you slipped on the ice and banged yourself up.”

That’s when the penny dropped and the disjointed story began to crystallize in Mack’s mind. Everything suddenly made sense as his mind began connecting the dots and filling in the details-the note, the Jeep, the gun, the trip to the shack, and every facet of that glorious weekend. The images and memories began to flood back so powerfully that he felt like they might pick him up and sweep him off his bed and out of this world. And as he remembered he began to cry, until tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Mack, I’m sorry.” Willie was now begging and apologetic. “What did I say?”

Mack reached up and touched his friend’s face. “Nothing, Willie…I remember everything now. The note, the shack, Missy, Papa. I remember everything.”

Willie didn’t move, not sure what to think or say. He was afraid that he had pushed his friend over the edge, the way he was rambling on about the shack and Papa and Missy. Finally he asked, “So, are you telling me that he was there? God, I mean?”

And now Mack was laughing and crying. “Willie, he was there! Oh, was he there! Wait till I tell you. You’ll never believe it. Man, I’m not sure I do either.” Mack stopped, lost in his memories for a moment. “Oh, yeah,” he said at last. “He told me to tell you something.”

“What? Me?” Mack watched as concern and doubt traded places on Willie’s face. “So, what did he say?” Again he leaned forward.

Mack paused, grasping for the words. “He said, ‘Tell Willie that I’m especially fond of him.’“

Mack stopped and watched his friend’s face and jaw tighten and puddles of tears fill his eyes. His lips and chin quivered and Mack knew his friend was fighting hard for control. “I gotta go,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’ll have to tell me all about it later.” And with that Willie simply turned and left the room, leaving Mack to wonder, and remember.

When Nan next came in she found Mack propped up in bed and grinning from ear to ear. He didn’t know where to begin, so he let her talk first. She filled him in on some of the details he was still confused about; delighted that he was finally able to retain the information. He had been almost killed by a drunk driver and had undergone emergency surgery for various broken bones and internal injuries. There had been a great deal of concern that he might lapse into a long-term coma, but his wakening had alleviated all the worry.

As she talked, Mack thought it indeed strange that he would get in an accident right after spending a weekend with God. The seeming random chaos of life, wasn’t that how Papa put it?

Then he heard Nan say the accident had happened on Friday night. “Don’t you mean Sunday?” he asked.

“Sunday? Don’t you think I’d know what night it was? It was Friday night when they flew you in here.”

Her words confused him and for a moment he wondered if the events at the shack had been a dream after all. Perhaps it was one of those Sarayu time-warp displacement thingys, he assured himself.

When Nan finished recounting her side of the events, Mack began telling her all that had happened to him. But first, he asked for her forgiveness, confessing how and why he had lied to her. This surprised Nan, and she credited his new transparency to the trauma and morphine.

The full story of his weekend, or day as Nan kept reminding him, unfolded slowly, spread over a number of different tellings. Sometimes the drugs would get the better of him and he would slip off to dreamless sleep, occasionally mid-sentence. Initially, Nan focused on being patient and attentive, trying as best she could to suspend judgment but not seriously considering that his ravings were anything but remnants of neurological damage. But the vividness and depth of his memories touched her and slowly undermined her resolve to stay objective. There was life in what he was telling her and she quickly understood that whatever had happened had greatly impacted and changed her husband.

Her skepticism eroded to the point where she agreed to find a way for her and Mack to have some time alone with Kate. Mack would not tell her why and that made her nervous, but she was willing to trust him in the matter. Josh was sent on an errand, leaving just the three of them.

Mack reached out his hand and Kate took it. “Kate,” he began, his voice still a little weak and raspy, “I want you to know that I love you with all my heart.”

“I love you too, Daddy.” Seeing him like this had evidently softened her a little.

He smiled and then grew serious again, still holding on to her hand.

“I want to talk to you about Missy.”

Kate jerked back as if stung by a yellow jacket, her face turning dark. Instinctively she tried to pull her hand away, but Mack held tight, which took a considerable portion of his strength. She glanced around. Nan came up and put her arm around her. Kate was trembling. “Why?” she demanded in a whisper.

“Katie, it wasn’t your fault.”

Now she hesitated, almost as if she had been caught with a secret. “What’s not my fault?”

Again, it took effort to get the words out but she clearly heard. “That we lost Missy.” Tears rolled down his cheeks as he struggled with those simple words. Again she recoiled, turning away from him.

“Honey, no one blames you for what happened.”

Her silence lasted only a few seconds longer before the dam burst. “But if I hadn’t been careless in the canoe, you wouldn’t have had to…” Her voice filled with self-loathing.

Mack interrupted with a hand on her arm. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, honey. It’s not your fault.”

Kate sobbed as her father’s words penetrated her war-ravaged heart. “But I’ve always thought it was my fault. And I thought that you and Mom blamed me, and I didn’t mean…”

“None of us meant for this to happen, Kate. It just happened, and we’ll learn to live through it. But we’ll learn together. Okay?”

Kate had no idea how to respond. Overwhelmed and sobbing, she broke free from her father’s hand and rushed out of the room. Nan, with tears trailing down her cheeks, gave Mack a helpless but encouraging look and quickly left in pursuit of her daughter.

The next time Mack awoke, Kate was lying asleep next to him on the bed, snuggled up and safe. Evidently Nan had been able to help Kate work through some of her pain. When Nan noticed that his eyes had opened, she quietly approached so as not to wake their daughter and kissed him. “I believe you,” she whispered, and he nodded and smiled, surprised by how important that was to hear. It was probably the drugs that were making him so emotional, he thought.

Mack improved rapidly over the next few weeks. Barely a month after he was discharged from the hospital, he and Nan called Joseph’s newly appointed deputy sheriff, Tommy Dalton, to talk to him about the possibility of a hike back into the area beyond the shack. Since everything at the shack had reverted back to its original desolation, Mack had begun to wonder if Missy’s body might still be in the cave. It could be tricky explaining to law enforcement how he knew where his daughter’s body was hidden, but Mack was confident that one friend would give him the benefit of the doubt regardless of what happened.

Tommy was indeed gracious. Even after hearing the story of Mack’s weekend, which he chalked up to the dreams and nightmares of a still-grieving father, he agreed to go back up to the shack. He wanted to see Mack anyway. Personal items had been salvaged from the wreckage of Willie’s Jeep, and returning them was as good an excuse as any to spend some time together. So on a clear, crisp Saturday morning in early November, Willie drove Mack and Nan to Joseph in his new-used SUV where they met Tommy and together the four headed into the Reserve.

Tommy was surprised to watch Mack walk past the shack and up to a tree near a trailhead. Just as he had explained to them on the drive up, Mack found and pointed to a red arc at the base of the tree. Still walking with a slight limp, he led them on a two-hour hike into the wilderness. Nan said not a word, but her face clearly revealed the intensity of emotions that she battled with each step. Along the way they continued to find the same red arc etched into trees and onto rock faces. By the time they arrived at a wide expanse of boulders, Tommy was becoming convinced, perhaps not in the veracity of Mack’s wild story, but that they were surely following a carefully marked trail-one that could possibly have been left by Missy’s killer. Without hesitation Mack turned directly into the maze of rocks and mountain walls.

They probably would never have found the exact spot if it hadn’t been for Papa. Sitting at the top of a pile of stones in front of the cave was the rock with the red marking turned outward. To realize what Papa had done made Mack almost laugh out loud.

But they did find it, and when Tommy was fully convinced at what they were opening up, he made them stop. Mack understood why it was important and, though a little grudgingly, agreed that they should reseal the cave to protect it. They would return to Joseph where Tommy could notify forensic specialists and the proper law enforcement agencies. On the trip down, Tommy again listened to Mack’s story, this time with a new openness. He also took the opportunity to coach his friend on the best ways to handle the grilling he would be soon getting. Even though Mack’s alibi was flawless, there would still be serious questions.

The following day experts descended like buzzards, recovering Missy’s remains and bagging the sheet along with whatever else they could find. It took only weeks after that to glean enough evidence to track down and arrest the Little Lady-killer. Learning from the clues the man had left himself to find Missy’s cave, authorities were able to locate and recover the bodies of the other little girls he had murdered.