The Skeleton Box

EIGHT

The rusted metal step creaked as I lifted my boot onto it. I stopped and looked around, hoping I’d chosen the right trailer. Four were arranged in a ragged circle in the clearing that was home to Tatch’s camp.

The trailers sat amid oaks and beeches and birches on a flat interruption of an incline that rose from the lake’s northeastern shore. Soupy’s parents’ house, vacant since their deaths, sat just beyond the crest of the ridge, a few hundred yards up.

I heard something from the other side of the trailer where I was standing. There was a chugging sound, like machinery, and the clank and scrape of metal. Someone was clapping and shouting something I couldn’t quite make out.

“Hey, Gus,” Tatch called out. “Over here.”

I spun around to see Tatch waving from the trailer at my back. Through the stripped trees behind him I could see all the way down to the white lake.

“Hey, Tatch,” I said.

Like some born-agains, Tatch had become one after hitting bottom-specifically, the bottom of Dead Sledder Mile. Dead Sledder was a two-lane corkscrew of asphalt that spiraled between narrow gravel shoulders dropping off forty and fifty feet into thickets of merciless pines. The road got its nickname after a toboggan full of downstate tourists rode it into the grille of an oncoming semitrailer after a long night at Enright’s in the 1970s.

Tatch himself awoke one morning in August of 1999 lying between two roadside crosses garlanded in flowers, having been flung from his pickup as it careened off Dead Sledder’s last vicious curve. His truck was a steel pancake; Tatch was unhurt except for the hangover throbbing in his head. He swore as he lay there, regarding the markers of two less fortunate souls, that he would never take another drink and that he would seek the Lord as his savior. He would keep one promise more faithfully than the other.

None of it really surprised people in town. Tatch came from a family of devout Christians who read the Bible aloud before and after every meal and led the choir at the Church of the Messiah in Mio. His mother would bellow scripture at Tatch as he played goalie for the River Rats when we were kids, even when he was sitting on the bench and I was in the net. The team favorite was “Save with thy right hand, and hear me.” It was only natural, then, that adolescent Tatch would rebel in every way, seeking salvation in Southern Comfort, Stroh’s, red bud, and speeders. And it seemed just as natural, at least to the people of Starvation Lake, that Tatch years later would fall back on the only thing he’d ever thought he understood except partying and hockey.

Now Tatch had gathered people he had met at church services and at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, along with his jailed sister’s son, Tex, into a makeshift commune on twenty acres his dead parents had left him. I made my way to him across muddy snow pocked with hundreds of boot prints. Strewn along the ground were a playpen turned on its side, a hockey stick cut short for a little kid, a smattering of dolls in various stages of undress. Two pickup trucks and a Jeep were parked along the two-track road beneath the circle of trailers. Tatch offered his hand.

“Welcome to our little heaven on a hill,” he said.

I took his hand and he said, “Come on, buddy,” and pulled me in for a hug.

“I’m real sorry about Phyllis,” he said.

“Me, too.”

He stepped back. “She was all right. I liked them cookies she used to make us. May the good Lord be with her.”

“Thanks.”

“How’s Darl?”

“You know.”

Tatch and I had long been friends, but more than that, we’d been goalies who played alongside each other. Even though I had started many more games than he had, there was an unspoken agreement between us that we were equals. That’s how it was with goaltenders. It didn’t matter who supposedly was number one, because we were the only ones on the team who understood how alone we were between the goalposts.

I was the better skater, Tatch better at handling the puck. I had a quicker catching glove; he was more agile sliding post to post. You wanted me in the crease when the puck was lost in a scramble of players, but nobody was better than Tatch at stopping a one-on-one breakaway. Only one of us could play the games, though. That Coach chose me undoubtedly frustrated Tatch as much, at times, as it frightened me.

Yet if I had blocked the overtime goal that lost the Rats the 1981 state title, Tatch would have been the first one off the bench to tackle me in celebration. Instead, he was the first to find me on the ice and wrap an arm around me and tell me that I had played the best game I had ever played and I should never forget that.

When we were kids, Soupy had dubbed him Tatch, short for attachment, as in vacuum cleaner attachment sucking pucks into the net. It was hardly flattering as goalie nicknames go, but Tatch painted it in blood red on his goalie mask and had a shoemaker stitch it into his leg pads. Once he was Tatch and not just Roy Edwards or Roy-Roy or Roy Toy, he let his hair grow out and his sideburns go bushy, and the next thing you knew, he was getting hand jobs.

I held up the pair of hockey skates I’d brought. Freshly sharpened Bauers, size 9.

“Tex around?” I said.

Tatch held his hands up. “I ain’t touching those. Bad luck.”

“Where were you last night? The Picks aren’t much good with you, but they really suck without a goalie.”

A semicircle scar creased the skin above his left eyebrow, the mark of a goalie-mask screw pounded in by a slap shot. Tatch treasured the scar as much as his nickname.

“Aw, jeez,” he said, scratching the salt-and-pepper scraggle on his chin. “Had some family stuff.”

“You sure?”

“Sure about what?”

“Family stuff.”

Tatch screwed his face into a question mark. “Why?”

“Dingus was asking.”

“The sheriff?”

“You know any other Dinguses around here?”

“He ain’t got better things to do?”

I really didn’t think Tatch was capable of breaking into someone’s house, especially my mother’s. But he also wasn’t telling me everything.

“Just letting you know,” I said. I looked up the ridge. “What’s going on up there? You building a church?”

Tatch looked relieved that I’d changed the subject. “Got a project going.”

I counted three men and five women scattered across the wooded ridge. They were digging, throwing aside the two feet of snow and jabbing the blades of their long-handled spades and pickaxes into the stubborn winter soil, their faces ruddy with exertion. All around them the ground was torn into shallow gullies that wound between potholes blackening the snowy surface. A backhoe scooped dirt onto snow-flecked mounds. In the middle of the action stood a thin man clapping and shouting orders over the chuffing machine. I didn’t recognize him.

“Busy bees,” I said. “Digging for gold?”

Tatch chuckled again. “Not quite. The good Lord blessed us with an early snowfall, insulated the ground so it ain’t impossible to get in there.”

“But what are you doing?”

“Can’t really talk about it.”

“It’s a secret?”

“You ought to hit the drain commission meeting tomorrow.”

“Why?” I watched the man giving the orders. He was facing away from me now, still clapping his hands in rhythm with the clank of the shovels. “This got something to do with your tax issue?”

After Tatch had planted the trailers on his land, removing the wheels and setting them on cinder blocks as if they were permanent, Echo Township had doubled his assessment, thereby doubling his property taxes. Tatch went before the county tax appeals board in a paisley tie dangling down a yellowed dress shirt he’d probably worn to high school graduation. “Ain’t fair to crank up my taxes just ’cause of crummy old trailers,” he told the board. “I ain’t got that kind of money.” Getting wound up, he went on to insist that he shouldn’t have to pay taxes at all, as his Christian camp was a religious organization protected by the Fourth Amendment. I think he meant the First. The appeals board members, seeing a scarecrow of a man whom they thought of as better than average at blowing smoke rings, assured Tatch they would consider his request. A few weeks later, Tatch’s tax bill showed up, doubled.

From what I saw, I couldn’t imagine how someone could justify the hike, especially given how tough things were in Starvation. But it was easier to shake down Tatch than some company that could afford a court fight.

“Can’t say,” Tatch told me. “Show up tomorrow.”

Drain commission meetings weren’t one of my favorite things to cover. “Gotcha,” I said. I held up the skates. “You want to take these?”

“No way, buddy. Tex’s got to take them hisself.”

“His first superstition,” I said. “A sure sign of maturity.”

Helpful assistant coach that I was, early in the season I had done Tex a favor by taking his skates to be sharpened. The next day, he scored four goals and assisted on two others in an 8–2 River Rats’ win over a team from Alpena.

Although Tex had the speed and size and smarts to score four goals and two assists in almost any game, he convinced himself that his big night had nothing to do with the talent that was luring college scouts to River Rats games, but with the fact that I had taken his skates to be sharpened. From then on, I always took his skates. Usually I gave them back to him at the rink, but today we had a pregame skate I wasn’t sure I’d make, so I’d brought them out to Tatch’s camp.

“Did I hear my name?”

Tex bounced out of the trailer behind Tatch in sweats and high-top sneakers, unlaced. He slapped Tatch hard on the shoulder. Tatch lurched forward and I caught him with one hand.

“What’s up, Coach?” Tex said.

Tatch twisted around to look at the boy. “You trying to kill your uncle?”

Tex grinned. “Sorry, old man.”

“Got your skates,” I said.

On the trailer, a shred of cardboard duct-taped over a cracked window waggled in the breeze. I smelled something wafting out, at once acrid and sweet, maybe canned beans burned onto the inside of a pan. A preacher’s voice tinned through a transistor radio: “There is no ice in hell…”

Tex squirmed past his uncle, towering over both Tatch and me, pale biceps bulging against the threadbare sleeves of his gray Spitfires T-shirt. “Thanks,” he said, taking the skates. One by one he turned them over, shut one eye, and peered with the other down the length of each blade. Each time, he nodded and said, “That’s it.” Then he looked at me. His hair, black as a puck, was matted on one side. He’d been napping.

“Who’s Mic-Mac’s guy again?” he said.

“Holcomb,” I said. “Pinky Holcomb. Number nine.”

“Pinky? The guy a fag?”

“Be tolerant, son,” Tatch said.

“You don’t want to mess with Pinky,” I said.

Mic-Mac’s captain and top scorer had gotten his nickname after dropping his gloves in a hockey fight and having his left pinky severed by a skate blade in the melee. He wasn’t the most skilled player, but he played with unrelenting fire, a little cannonball who would skate through a brick wall for a stray puck.

“Well, only wimps wear nine,” Tex said.

I hesitated because Gordie Howe, the Red Wings great, had worn number 9.

“Right,” I said.

Tex’s eyes focused behind me, his smile fading.

“I’m out of here,” he said. “Thanks for the skates.”

“Hey there, Mr. Breck,” Tatch said. “Was just about to come up.”

I turned around. Standing before me was the clapping man from up on the ridge. He wore a long denim coat and a wool cap tight on the back of his head. His too-small wire-rim glasses pinched his face in a way that made him look like a sallow John Denver. I felt unsure that I would like him. He smiled and offered his hand. I took it.

“Mr. Gus Carpenter,” he said. “Of the Pilot. ”

“That’s me.”

“I am Mr. Breck.”

“You’ve seen my byline?”

“Some, yes. Forgive me, but I find that newspapers offer little of value. There is no salvation to be found on the sports page.”

“Hard to argue with that.”

“What brings you here?”

The way Breck had commandeered the conversation, with Tatch just standing meekly by, made me wonder if Breck, not Tatch, was actually in charge.

“Brought Tex his skates,” I said. “He’s a little superstitious.”

“Matthew,” Breck said.

“Matthew.”

“He’s got a warm-up skate before the game on account of it’s a playoff tonight,” Tatch offered, sounding apologetic.

Breck folded his arms and looked at the trailer behind Tatch. “We need his strong shoulders on the hill. Everyone’s working hard. We cannot count on the county to do the right thing. We will have to force their hand.”

“I’ll get him going,” Tatch said.

“Thank you, Mr. Edwards.”

“What about the county?” I said.

Breck turned back to me. “Your town,” he said. “You come looking for a boy to bring you a trophy so you can hoist it high over your head.”

“Excuse me?”

“You ask a boy to carry your town on his shoulders.”

“Actually, I just did him a little favor.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Carpenter, you did yourself a favor.” He smiled again. “You have a mistaken idea of what a messiah is. You and everyone down there.”

I gave Tatch a who-the-hell-is-this-guy glance. “Well,” I said, “I’m not sure what to say. It’s just a game.”

“Indeed,” Breck said. “You, of all people, should understand that.”

Tatch touched my elbow. “Mr. Breck’s been a good friend since he come to us a few months back. Met him at a Christian convocation down to Monroe. He’s helping us out with our tax issue, the legal stuff.”

“Have you told him?” Breck asked Tatch.

“No,” Tatch said, looking guilty nevertheless. “Told him he might want to attend that drain commission meeting tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“You from around here?” I said.

“I am now,” Breck said. “We are building a Christian community. I’m sure it doesn’t look like much to you. But we are working hard. Our faith sustains us.”

“And a backhoe?”

Breck twisted his glasses off and turned and pointed them at the ridge. I saw shovels flinging dirt and the backhoe shuttling backward and up. Many a developer had begged Tatch’s father to sell the land, but he refused to do anything but put his trailer and a pole barn on it.

“The Lord helps those who help themselves,” Breck said. “Do you see that line of trees there, the one that tops out with the oak on the ridge?”

I looked up. I felt my breath catch. I hadn’t noticed before. The trees were filled with crosses. Christian crosses. Dozens of them. Small ones made from two-by-twos, larger ones from two-by-fours. Painted black, white, red, gold. Nailed into the tree trunks at twenty, thirty feet above the ground, out of reach without a ladder. Some facing down on the clearing, some facing up toward the sky.

“Mr. Carpenter?”

“Yes,” I said. “I see.”

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged,” Breck said. “Where I’m pointing approximates the property line on the western edge of the Edwards’s parcels. On the other side of that line is land owned by your friends in Pine County.”

I was less interested in the property line than in those crosses on the trees.

“The county purchased it in the nineteen-seventies when the economy was poor and the land could be had cheaply,” he said. “Of course the people who run the county could never decide what to do with it, so it sits.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Long ago, a handful of homes once stood there, and beneath them a septic field. We believe it to be leaking.”

“Thus the backhoe and the shovels.”

“It’s bad enough, wouldn’t you agree, that the county wants us to eat their property tax crap.” He glanced at Tatch. “Please forgive the language.”

“They just want us out of here,” Tatch said.

“Mr. Edwards.”

“Praise Jesus,” Tatch said.

“If the land is so polluted,” I said, “who would want to buy it?”

“Hard to believe in this country, but there are motives aside from strict financial enrichment,” Breck said. “Perhaps we’re mistaken about the septic matter, but if we’re not, well, we may have to take the matter up with the drain commission, or the county itself, or whatever collection of cronies currently mismanages things. Perhaps we’ll need to avail ourselves of the courts.”

“So you’re a lawyer?”

He fitted his glasses back on, adjusted his cap. “I apologize for my earlier stridency. We actually would just like to be left alone.”

“Until there’s a fire in one of the trailers, or rain washes out that two-track. Then you’ll be calling for help.”

“We have work to do.” He looked at Tatch. “Please get Matthew.”

Tatch shifted uneasily in the mud. “I think he’s resting up.”

“For what? His warm-up? Why must he play twice in the same day?”

I wanted to tell Breck that lots of teams had pregame skates, but I thought I might get Tatch in more trouble than he was already in.

“I’ll get him,” Tatch said. “Take her easy, Gus. God bless.”

He went into the trailer.

Breck said, “Why are you running errands, Mr. Carpenter, bringing skates to boys?” He nodded in the direction of the town. “Don’t you have more pressing matters to attend to?”

“I do.”

Breck turned and started to walk, then jog, toward the ridge. He resumed the clapping as he disappeared behind a trailer. The women and men seemed to shovel harder. He was an interesting stranger, this Breck who’d come to Starvation not long before the break-ins began. Maybe his arrival was mere coincidence. My gaze drifted up to the crosses. I felt myself shudder as I turned away.