Two Graves

24

THE CABIN DIDN’T BELONG TO HER FATHER AND NEVER had. Jack Swanson wasn’t really the kind of person who actually owned things. He talked his way into borrowing them, took them over, and then over time acted as if they were his own. As was typical of Jack, he had somehow stumbled across the run-down tar-paper shack years ago, in timberland owned by Royal Paper on the New Jersey side of the Delaware Water Gap. The story Corrie heard was that he’d made friends with some Royal Paper executive he’d met on a fishing trip, who apparently agreed that if Jack wanted to fix the place up he could stay there whenever he wanted as long as he kept a low profile and didn’t make a nuisance of himself. Corrie was sure the transaction involved many beers and fishing stories, and a big dose of her father’s apparent charm. The cabin had no heat, water, or electricity; the windows were broken and the roof full of holes; and nobody seemed to mind that Jack went up there, slapdashed the shack into something barely habitable, installed himself as its proprietor, and used it as a base for occasional fishing trips to nearby Long Pine Lake.

Corrie had never seen the place, of course, but she knew it existed, because her mother complained bitterly when she discovered that his “fishing cabin on the lake in New Jersey” did not actually belong to him when it came time to divide up their (nonexistent) assets in the divorce.

The cabin, Corrie felt sure, was where her father had holed up. He didn’t own it, so officialdom couldn’t trace him there. And she was pretty sure news of his seamy little bank robbery would not likely have traveled very far from Allentown, certainly not up into the little hamlets about the Worthington State Forest of New Jersey.

How many Long Pine Lakes could there be in that area? According to Google Maps there was only one, and Corrie sure as hell hoped it was the right one as she got out of the horribly expensive cab she’d hired from the bus stop in East Stroudsburg, which had taken her to a country store known as Frank’s Place in Old Foundry, New Jersey, the closest commercial establishment she could find to Long Pine Lake.

Counting out a hundred and twenty bucks, she paid off the cabdriver, then sauntered into the store. It was just as she’d hoped, one of those cramped places selling fishing lures, bait, cheap rods, coolers, boating supplies, bundles of firewood, Coleman fuel, and—of course—beer. An entire wall of beer.

Just her father’s kind of joint.

As she walked up to the counter, a silence fell among the beer-guts hanging out around the cash register. No doubt it was her purple hair. She was tired, she was irritated, and she was not happy to have spent a hundred and twenty dollars on a cab ride. She really hoped these good old boys weren’t going to give her a hard time.

“I’m looking for Jack Swanson,” she said.

More silence. “Is that right?” came the eventual response from the apparent self-appointed clown of the group. “What… Jack knock you up or something?” The man guffawed and looked to his friends, left and right, for approval.

“I’m his daughter, you mentally defective asswipe,” she said in a very loud voice that reached to the farthest corners of the store and brought a sudden hush to the place.

Now the laugh came from the friends. Beer-Gut colored deeply, but there wasn’t much he could do. “She got you that time, Merv,” said one, a little less simian than the others, nudging his pal.

She waited, arms crossed, for an answer.

“So you’re the kid he’s always talking about,” the less simian one said, in a friendly tone.

This business about her father always talking about her surprised Corrie, but she didn’t show it. She didn’t even look at Merv, who was clearly hugely embarrassed. “So—you all know my father?”

“He’s probably up at his cabin,” the nicer one said.

Bingo, thought Corrie. She’d been right. She felt a huge relief this hadn’t been a wasted effort.

“Where’s that?”

The man gave her directions. It was about a mile up the road. “I’d be happy to give you a ride,” he said.

“No thanks.” She hefted the knapsack and turned to leave.

“Really, I’d be happy to. I’m a friend of your dad’s.”

She had to stop herself from asking him what he was like. That wouldn’t be the way to go about it—she had to find out for herself. She hesitated, gave the man a once-over. He looked sincere, it was freezing outside, and her knapsack weighed a ton. “All right. As long as Perv, I mean Merv, here doesn’t tag along.” She gestured at Beer-Gut Number One.

This elicited laughter.

“Come on, then.”

She had him drop her off at the spot where a shortcut trail to the cabin left the main road. It was just a steep track in the pinewoods, which started out in a big puddle of mud she had to skirt around. She had what looked like a half-mile walk to the cabin, and as she went along the track—now and again crossing one of the switchbacks of Long Pine Road—she felt herself start to unwind, to really relax, for the first time in ages. It was a typical early-December day: the sun was shining through the branches of the oaks and pines, dappling the ground around her, and a smell of resin and dead leaves hung in the air. If ever there was a great place to hide from the cops—or Nazis, for that matter—this was it.

But as she thought about her father, and what she would say to him, and he to her, her stomach began to tighten up again. She could hardly remember him physically, had no real idea of what he looked like—her mother had thrown away the scrapbook of pictures of them together. She had no idea what to expect. So, he was now a bank robber? God, he might be an alcoholic or a drug addict. He might be one of those criminals full of whining self-pity and justification, blaming everything on bad parents or bad luck. He might even be shacked up with some horrible sleazy bitch.

And what would happen if he were caught, and there she was living in the cabin with him? She had already looked up the federal statute on the web, 18 USC § 1071, which required them to prove she’d actually harbored or concealed him and had taken steps to prevent his discovery or arrest. Just living with him wasn’t enough. Still, how would it affect her future law enforcement career? It sure as hell wouldn’t look good.

In short, this was a stupid idea. She hadn’t really thought it through. She should have stayed back in his house where she was perfectly safe, and let him live his own life. She slowed, stopped, shrugged off the knapsack, and sat down. Why had she ever thought this was a good idea?

What she really should do now was turn around and go back to Allentown, or rather West Cuyahoga, and forget all about this bullshit. She rose, slung the knapsack back over her shoulder, and turned to leave. But then she hesitated.

She had come too far to run away. And she wanted to know—really wanted to know—about those letters in the closet. The postmaster at Medicine Creek was about as dumb as they came… but she didn’t think he was that dumb.

She turned around and trudged on. The shortcut trail left the road for good, went around a bend, and there, in front of her in a sunny clearing, was the shack, all by itself, no other buildings even remotely nearby. She stopped and stared.

It was not charming. Tar paper had been tacked on with irregular strips of wood. The two windows on either side of the door were curtained but broken. Behind and through the oaks she could see an outhouse. A rusted stovepipe poked up through the roof.

The yard in front, however, was neat, the grass trimmed. She could hear someone moving inside the house.

Oh, God, here we go. She walked up to the door and knocked. A sudden silence. Was he going to bolt out the back?

“Hello?” she called, hoping to forestall that.

More silence. And then a voice from inside. “Who is it?”

She took a deep breath. “Corrie. Your daughter. Corrie.”

Another long silence. And then suddenly the door burst open and a man tumbled out—she recognized him immediately—who enveloped her in his arms and just about crushed her.

“Corrie!” he cried, his voice choking up. “How many years have I prayed for this! I knew someday it would come! My God, I prayed for it—and now here it’s happened! My Corrie!” And then he dissolved into great hiccuping gusts of sobbing joy that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been so completely flabbergasted.