Juliette drove her bus with reckless abandon across ruts in the logging road that were bigger than she was. In fact, some of them were nearly bigger than the bus. The crown of Robert’s head was getting sore from hitting the cab roof and he tried putting his hand on the top of his head to shield it but he just scraped his knuckles the next time he bounced. “Are we there yet?”
“Almost, junior,” Juliette said, wrenching the wheel around hard to avoid a dead tree lying half across the road. “Another quarter-mile or so.”
“Why do you always call me ‘junior’? You’re not that much older than me.”
“Does it bother you?”
“You treat me like a kid sometimes. Yeah, it bothers me. Ow.”
“Scrunch down in the seat. It’s a term of endearment, Bobby, that’s all. It’s affection. Now don’t bug me while I’m driving.”
“You could slow down.”
She passed this comment by as if he were speaking Farsi.
“Why does Roger have to live way out in the middle of nowhere?” Robert asked, irritated. “What is he, a hermit?”
“He likes his privacy, Robert, that’s all. Now shut up and let me drive.”
The bus lurched around a final hairpin corner and abruptly entered a clearing in the dense wood. At the back of the clearing sat a rough, squat cabin that wasn’t exactly all right angles. In fact, if you were a carpenter it might take you the better part of an afternoon to find just one. As a cabin-builder, Roger Ellis made a good lawyer. The gaps between the window frames and the wall studs were particularly wide and had been stuffed with anything Roger could find – newspapers, old clothes, sticks of wood, spackle – to keep the winter wind out. It wasn’t pretty – hell, it was barely livable and only then if you weren’t too fussy about a definition for the word – but it sure was isolated, a major virtue as far as Roger was concerned.
“His truck ain’t here,” Robert pointed out with some satisfaction. “We came all this way for nothing. Happy?”
“Shit. Well, he doesn’t have a phone out here, not even a cell-phone., so how do you suggest I should have found out without coming?”
“If you had any patience, Julie – which you don’t – you could’ve waited ‘til tomorrow morning and went to his office in Tully which is where you would know he would be since he’s there every day. Or most days, anyhow.”
“His office. Of course. What time is it?”
“What’s with you and watches, anyway?”
“I don’t like them. Don’t be an asshole, Bobby, just tell me what time it is. Five? Five-thirty?”
Robert glanced at his wrist. “Pretty good. Quarter past.”
“Then he’s on his way home. We’ll wait.”
You don’t lock your doors when you live at the end of an old logging road in the middle of the woods. You could, I suppose, but it would be like a hooker hanging a big cross between her breasts to go to a Bishops’ convention – out of place and in questionable taste. It would suggest you didn’t trust your neighbors even though they trusted you. It would suggest you had something to hide. It would suggest you were really a city slicker. The door to Roger’s cabin was, therefore, open when Juliette pushed on it to let herself in. In fact, Roger’s door didn’t have a lock on it at all. Nor did any of the windows.
When you got inside you could see why: Roger had nothing worth stealing. Maybe in his office but not here. His tv was an old 16-inch black & white that you needed a screwdriver to turn on, his “stereo” was a hi-fi from the 50’s, his silverware was plastic, and the pictures on the walls had been torn willy-nilly from magazines that were probably older than he was – National Geographic, mostly. The furniture might have been worth something except for the holes, and otherwise you could search all day without finding anything a pawnbroker would look at twice without sniffing and going back to his copy of Hustler. Still and all it was comfortable and reasonably warm in the summer.
Juliette was making herself comfortable on Roger’s homemade couch when she suddenly stiffened and sat bolt upright. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Robert asked. “Did you hear something?”
“Would I be asking you if you did if I didn’t? Yes, I heard something.”
“What?”
“A noise,” Juliette said through her teeth. Old Robert really was a bit much at times.
“What kind of noise?”
“I don’t know. Will you –- “
“Well, was it an animal noise?”
“How should I know? It didn’t identify itself, Robert. It didn’t crawl over here with a big neon sign around its neck that said, ‘Hi! I’m an animal noise.’ Now shut up and let me listen.”
Then Robert heard it, too, a sort of rustling and bumping that was coming from the right.
“You hard that, didn’t you?” Juliette said in a harsh whisper.
“I heard it,” Robert whispered back. “You think it’s Roger?”
“If it’s Roger, why isn’t his truck outside?”
“That’s the bedroom, isn’t it? Maybe his truck is in the shop and he’s walking in his sleep.”
“Roger?” Juliette called. “That you? It’s Juliette Rose and Robert. We need to talk to you.”
A figure appeared from the bedroom wrapped in a towel, a figure that was most assuredly not Roger. “Oh, hello. He’s not here. I think he’ll be home soon though, if you want to wait.”
“Thanks,” Juliette said. “We will. Uh, who are you again?”
“Oh, sorry. I should have introduced myself. I’m DJ.”
“Juliette Rose. So you’re Roger’s…sister?”
“His sis–– Um, no, not his sister,” and she laughed, a deep, rich, full laugh that made her chest shake.
“Did I say something funny?”
“No, no, of course not. It’s just–– Well, if you knew–-“ And she laughed again.
You may have noticed by now that we haven’t heard much from Robert. There’s a reason for that. He was smitten.
