Chapter 7
Dane Amleth The second floor of the Lodge was comprised of more bedrooms than the Amleth family could have needed--making the guest house, in Dane's opinion, a complete waste of time and money. Still, sometimes it was nice that there were so many rooms. Right now, for example, he could sit at the desk in his own room and stare vaguely into space, letting his mind wander and, when he grew tired of the view from the window that overlooked the road, he could go to a different bedroom and do the same thing, except from there. He looked down at the notebook in front of him. A habit he had developed in his first year at college, whenever too many thoughts were ricocheting through his brain, Dane would let his mind unwind on the page. He sometimes spent a specific amount of time--or a certain number of pages--to purge his discontent. Other times, he'd let his hand wander as much as his mind, which usually led to strange doodles or scribbles deep enough to tear through the paper. This time, he had written words, but he didn't recognize them: He'd written them without thinking, without guiding his hand. He'd written, Kill him. Revenge is no sin--and besides, you don't even know if you believe in that stuff. It's been four days since the funeral. The engagement hasn't changed. Get on with it. He slammed the book closed and shoved it away, his heart tattooing his ribcage with an unfamiliar staccato. Where had those words come from? He knew he'd written them--they were in his handwriting, and besides, he didn't believe in supernatural explanations--but…had he meant them? Kill Clawson? His innermost honesty said, "Yes," but he could quash that quickly enough. This wasn't some wergild in Nordic days. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." The world didn't work like that. Besides, what could he do? He'd found a strap for Dad's GoPro out in the forest. What did that mean? No one would see that and think, "Well, logically, some foul play is happening here. A cut strap? Clawson must be the murderer!" Even Harmony, when the initial shock that her hypothesis was correct had worn off, didn't think it meant much beyond circumstantial evidence. "You need something more," she'd said, and she was right. The previous pages in his notebook had a couple of his ideas scrawled down, including Beat it out of him and Get him super drunk and tape his confession. Nothing really clicked for him though; Dane had played football (in Noah, everyone played football) on the high school team and had kept up with his exercises. He wasn't a heavyweight champion of the world, but he could throw a few punches that his opponent wouldn't soon forget. Clawson, however, was significantly larger than Dane, and if Dane was right that his uncle had framed the murder as an accident, then Dane would be remiss to underestimate how committed Clawson would be to protecting his secret. No, he needed something more concrete. He needed… He didn't know. Something. Irritated, Dane stood up, glancing outside at the driveway up to the Lodge. To his surprise, Sheriff Madsen had pulled in and was now climbing out of the vehicle. No one was at home--his aunt-mother was in Provo, a good sixty miles or more away, looking at wedding-related purchases; uncle-father was in town with Marshall Roman to do something related to the Ranch's business; real-father was dead in his grave, possibly because of a brother's bullet. Madsen had nothing to do with being here. Except… Dane's heart plunged. He had done a lot of avoiding the painful topic of Gwen's sudden break up. He knew he shouldn't let it get to him, but it was one more thing when he really didn't need any more things at all. The day was cold and sunny outside, but he could feel the dark edges of depression creeping along the side of every thought. He sighed. The last thing he needed was to talk to Gwen's dad. Especially with the things he'd texted her after she dumped him. It was, for lack of a better phrase, a dick-move. Apologizing was necessary, but just the thought of taking up that difficulty was enough to make him want to crawl into bed and never get up again. "Man, this world sucks," he said to himself. Downstairs, the door rattled with an authoritative knock. Sighing, Dane started to move toward his bedroom door, then paused, frowning. He had pulled that strap out of the dead leaves, but as Harmony had pointed out, there should have been an entire crime scene set up there. At least some indication that Clawson's story was true. But there wasn't anything. Dane had found the strap, which Clawson probably accidentally left behind…which meant that no one went through at to piece together what actually happened. And one of Clawson's best friends was knocking on the door below--for a third time, now. Dane started to move. On an impulse, he snatched a novel as he rushed past the bookshelf next to his door. He didn't bother looking at the cover. "Coming!" he shouted, thundering down the steps as loudly as he could, his mind racing. He needed to figure out how deeply the conspiracy went. To do that, he needed Sheriff Paul Madsen to-- "Talk to me," Dane said, throwing open the door with such violence that Paul flinched. "Good Lord, boy, what are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?" Dane wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Seems like a bad thing to give a person. What can I do you for?" "Uh," said the sheriff, obviously thrown off his guard by both the response and the way Dane had opened the door. Inwardly, Dane smiled. He could use this. A plan was starting to form. Outwardly he said, "I'm fresh out of uhs, but I have a couple of ums lying around. Come in! I'll put some tea on." "I, uh…" Whatever Paul was going to say, Dane didn't hear. Instead, he skipped down the hallway from the front door. As he passed a low table, he reached out and, with a delicate flick of his wrist, knocked a glass vase to the ground. It shattered, spilling its crystalline guts all over the hardwood, with the fake plant that had lived in it for as long as Dane could remember, crumpled in a limp, pathetic pile. "Dane! What are you doing?" Dane stopped where he was, then turned slowly, giving Paul a confused look. "Getting you tea. Like you asked." "I don't drink tea." "Bless your heart! You finally converted! If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, those Mormons are conquistadors, you have to be careful lest they conquer you." "I'm not Mormon," said Paul, his round face hardened with his scowl. He wasn't wearing his sheriff uniform, sporting instead jeans, a yellow-leather jacket, and a baseball cap with the letter A on it. "Well, there'll be time for that after you die, if I understand their doctrine right." He tipped his head to one side and painted a vacuous smile on his face. "Care for that tea now?" Paul grimaced. They were still a good twenty feet apart, but Dane could see the sheriff's hands opening and closing as if he was trying to grab someone--probably Dane's neck. Best to keep a healthy distance. "I'm not here for tea, young man. I'm here to talk to you about my daughter." "Oh, good! I was just upstairs. You know. Alone. Reading." He held up the book, then glanced at the cover. "Well, would you look at that?" "At what?" said Paul, who had started toward Dane but was keeping his eyes focused on the glass shards on the floor. "It's the great millennial treatise." He tossed the book to Paul, who caught it instinctively. "You should take its advice." Paul looked at it, his face slightly empurpling. "No thanks," he said, setting down the copy of No Country For Old Men on the spot that the glass vase had recently occupied. "Not a reading fellow?" "I like what I like, Dane, but that's not what I'm here to talk to you about." Dane snorted, turning and heading for the back of the kitchen, the large doors through which he'd seen his mother and Clawson stumble two nights ago. "Well, no man should be faulted for liking what he likes, am I right?" "Look, boy, I'm tired of playing games--" "Uno?" The word drew Paul up almost as if he'd been slapped. "Excuse me?" "I think we have the cards around here somewhere…" "No, I don't want to play a damn game of Uno, son, I want to talk to you about my daughter!" "Wouldn't that make her my sister?" asked Dane as he breezed through the garden, flicking at the dead leaves that most tenaciously clung to the vines. "Bit of a Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia vibe, if you ask me." Paul continued to follow Dane, whose heart pounded hard while his mind worked harder. He needed to get something out of Paul without giving anything of his own, but that would prove difficult. Sheriff Madsen may be an idiot, but he wasn't stupid…though that thought made Dane start to giggle, which turned into full-bore laughter as he rounded the side of the Lodge and headed toward the driveway. "Enough with your stupid-ass jokes. Why'd you send those texts to Gwendolyn?" Dane stopped--he had to. He'd hurt Gwen. He had. And Paul was clearly there as a father, not a sheriff, anxious to help protect his daughter. Dane couldn't fault him for that, at least. "Well?" asked Paul, his hands out in the vintage expression of frustrated expectation. "Are you going to answer me?" Dane stared for a long moment. "What kind of man do you think I am?" "A punk-ass kid, who's been coddled his whole damn life and thinks he's better than everyone else." "Like my father?" "Pretty much." Dane closed the distance between himself and Paul until they were an arm's length apart from each other. "Which one?" It was Paul's turn to stare for a moment while Dane pinned him with a glare. Inside, Dane was trembling. His outside expression, however, was firm, cool, unflappable. He couldn't read the man's soul, but he thought he saw a phantom of confusion followed by an expression of satisfaction as he said, "The dead one." "Nah, the living one, I think. He's much more proactive, wouldn't you say? Someone to emulate." And there it was, so quick that had Dane not been trying to see it, he would have missed it. The slight emphasis he'd put on the word "proactive" had meant something to Paul. He'd reacted. It wasn't a lot. But it confirmed that Dane's suspicions weren't completely off the mark. At least, he hoped so. Paul glowered, then stomped toward his SUV, throwing his shoulder into Dane's and knocking the younger man back. "Stay away from my family, you hear me?" He yanked open the car door. "Sheriff's orders." He got in, slammed the door shut, and peeled out. The ghost of gasoline and a snarl of the engine accompanied him. Dane stood, watching until the sheriff had turned down the road that would take him into town, then slouched against the side of the house, his knees trembling. That was, he admitted to himself, a simultaneously terrifying and thrilling experience. Dane's life had never been one of immense rebellion or attitude. He'd normally done what he needed with as little attention brought to himself as he could--his dad was Dane Sr., which was enough attention already. Still, there was an illicit joy in what he'd just done, a recognition of his own self. Standing up to Paul, even hiding behind the erratic behavior, had been liberating in a way that few things had been. Idly, he wondered what it was that had made Paul feel that Dane wasn't worth the effort any more. The vase? The book? Confined to his thoughts, Dane almost didn't see the car--a rust-and-red Honda Civic from the end of the last century--until it pulled into the driveway. He felt his face grow hot. "Hell's bells," he said under his breath. "Like I need this." The reflection of the trees that lined the approach prevented him from seeing who drove, so it wasn't until the doors popped open almost simultaneously that he could tell who was there. His jaw slackened. "Ryan? George?" The first--a redhead with a splash of freckles that went from his hairline to below his blue polo shirt's collar--simply laughed, his teeth almost as white as his skin. The second--the one who'd been driving--giggled as he tugged free a worn leather jacket and slipped it on. He shook back his long hair, which went about to his shoulders, then faced Dane, a smile parting his pimple-free face--which was a large departure from what Dane remembered. Walking forward, he clasped first Ryan and then George in sharp hugs--with a mandatory double-slap on the back--before stepping back and saying, "Wow. I was not expecting this! I…" He shook his head, mind reeling. A small part of his mind itched discontent, but he ignored it. Old friends, unexpected or not, were a welcome distraction from the darkness in him that kept waiting to pounce on him again. Having George and Ryan back--the Three Amigos, they'd been called by good old Ricky J, back before Ricky had wandered free of mortality--was just what he needed. "Well, hey, we just, y'know, happened to be passing by…" said George with his attendant giggle--sounded the same to Dane's ears, even though years had passed since they'd last seen each other. "Right through town," said Ryan, jumping onto his friend's words as if George couldn't finish a sentence on his own, "you know, like--good old days, remember?" "That's what I said to him," said George. "Right. We were like, 'Hey, let's go see what Dane is up to!' And George was all, 'Sounds good, man, we got some time.' So we headed up the Bends." Ryan held out his hands, indicating as much themselves as the Lodge and all of Elsinore Ranch. "It's great that you dared coming to hell, then," said Dane, the itch returning, albeit small and easy to dismiss. "I'm quite flattered, honestly." "Hell?" asked George, his smile wilting at the edges. He fired a confused look at Ryan, who said, "What do you mean?" "You've heard the idea that the mind's its own place and can there make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…surely you've…" Dane held his hands out toward his friends, who gave him bemused looks. "No, well. Think a thing and that's how it is. Feels like hell here. You want to come into my inferno?" He gestured to the Lodge. "I've got the place to myself. Just like old times." "Of course," said George, and the three of them went in through the front door. "What happened?" asked Ryan when they entered and were greeted by the smashed vase. "Oh, my dad died, I don't know if you heard, and--" "I meant about this," said Ryan, pointing. Dane turned and saw the expression on both Ryan's and George's face. They were shocked, it seemed, but not at what Dane had just said. The vase mattered more to them… The itch flared and, for a moment, he indulged it. Did they already know about his dad? That wasn't so strange; it was important local news. They didn't live far, did they? Now that he thought about it, he had no idea what they did for their careers. He'd gone off to college, but they were going to stay in Noah for a year or two. Did they ever move on? But if they did know about his dad, why had they waited for so long to come over? And they'd said that they'd "happened to be passing by"; so if they knew about Dane Sr., why say that this was happenstance? He shoved the itch away. He'd scratched it. Fair enough. There was no need to dwell on the questions. People did things--random things, sometimes, out of character things (hadn't he knocked over the vase and insulted the sheriff?)--all the time. It didn't mean they were… Spies …doing anything wrong. He forced a frown onto his face and said, "Oh, that? The wind, I'd guess." "The wind?" asked Ryan, clearly incredulous. "It was a bit of a blowhard," said Dane, waving his friends in. "Come in, come in. Let's not stand in the entryway. Do you want something to drink? We've beer, some soda, I think there's maybe some apple juice if you really wanted…" He trailed off as he led them through the front room and into the kitchen beyond. When they arrived, he gestured at the barstools that sat beneath the kitchen island. "I can maybe find something sharper." "No," said Ryan, his normally pale face slightly flushed. His ears almost glowed with red straight up to the tips. "No, we're good." "Yeah," said George, nodding. "We're good." "You don't mind if I do, do you?" asked Dane, reaching into the fridge and grabbing the first thing that came to touch his fingertips. "Not at all," they said in chorus. George laughed and Ryan worked in a smile. Popping open the top of sparkling mineral water (which Dane detested, but he'd picked it and he wasn't about to stop drinking it now), he sat across from them and spun the bottle cap on the granite countertop. "Man," said Ryan, looking around at the gleaming silver appliances and the white-and-brown motif of the kitchen. "It's like we never left." "Right?" said George, giggling at the end of the word like a verbal question mark. "Remember that time that old…what was his name? The Mexican. He worked here for, like, forever?" "Ricky Jimenez," said Dane, somewhat surprised to hear they remembered the old farmhand, too. "He'd been one of my dad's first employees. By the end, he stayed in the guest house." "The end?" asked George. "Yeah, at the end of high school was when Ricky J got…what was it, Dane?" "Cancer." "Right. Cancer." Dane swallowed some water. "Of the jaw." He gestured with the bottle. "Too much chew." George shook his head. "Man, rough way to go." "He was laughing to the end, though," said Dane. "Having a laugh at the expense of death. Something poetical about that, I'd say." George giggled. Ryan looked slightly embarrassed. "But what were you saying?" asked Dane, eager to get them talking again. Every time the conversation felt like it was going to stall, the itch in his mind grew. "About him?" "Oh, yeah, the time that we…" George cleared his throat. "I guess remembering a prank we pulled on Jimenez now that he's dead is kind of in bad taste. I don't know." "No, it's fine," said Dane, waving a hand. "We only ever distract ourselves from the certainty of death. No worries. Remind me what we did." "Well, we found that beehive, remember?" asked George. "Out by the Butte?" Ryan lit up at the comment, his face splitting into that same all-toothed grin he'd managed earlier. "Oh, yeah!" Dane nodded. He didn't remember the details, but this sounded familiar. "And, well, we wanted to slip it into his locker, but he had the key on his keyring all of the time." As the memory returned, Dane laughed--to his ears, a too-sharp, too-jovial sound, but it seemed to encourage George's story. Ryan slapped the table. "That's right! We distracted him with…what was it? Like, a glue or something?" "No, that was a different time," said Dane. "I remember it specifically. The glue was an April Fool's joke." George nodded, picking up the narrative. "Right. We had to get him away from the keys. You--" and he pointed at Ryan "--waited until he was at the padlock when you came up, frantic, saying that…" He hesitated. "I don't know, something like…" "That you fell and maybe had broken your leg." "Right." George twitched back his long hair. "Right, so I was there, by the tree--" and he pointed at the backyard's orchard "--and you two came running up while Dane here--Captain Dane to the rescue!--came in and filched the keys that Ricky-Ricardo left behind." George snorted. Dane laughed, though it was more qualified than it had been before. It was a good trick--the beehive had fit inside of Ricky's locker without any problem, and no one got hurt. George was still narrating. "When he opened it up, he started swearing up a storm--" "'¡Hijos de puta!'" said Ryan in a surprisingly accurate Mexican accent. He and George fell into gales of laughter, throwing more ranch-hand familiar words. That observation made the itch flare again. Dane sipped his water, thinking. "He ran around like a madman, howling and slapping at himself," said George, his laughter fading into the conversation. "Aw, man. That was amazing." "It worked like a charm, too, my man," said Ryan, tapping the counter in front of George and drawing Dane's thoughts out. "The way you played it as if you were really in trouble. He totally bought it. Good, good stuff." "Yeah," Dane said, his mind rolling about. "Say, guys…It's great that you did this for Clawson--" Ryan and George's laughter died immediately. Their faces were as clear and open as if they spoke: Dane's assumption was right. "We didn't--" "No, it wasn't--" They stuttered as they spoke over each other, looking abashed and embarrassed. Ryan's redheaded-flush returned. George's giggles kicked into overdrive. Dane held up a hand. "You're here. I know Clawson sent for you. What I don't know is why you're bothering to come by." The two of them shared an uncomfortable look. Ryan quirked his eyebrows at George, who said, "He was worried about you. He wanted us to come and distract you." "Distract me?" said Dane, to himself but the others heard him. "Yeah," said Ryan, "just to…take your mind off of things. You've been having a hard time." "Distraction…" whispered Dane, no longer paying attention to what George was saying. That was what he needed. That was the piece he'd been missing. He needed to get in touch with Harmony. "Guys," he said, stopping George mid-excuse. "Thanks for coming. I just remembered something that I need to do. So, I have to go." He stood. "Um…bye." Despite their protests, Dane left them in the kitchen and headed out of the Lodge toward his car. It was still early in the day, but if he wasn't mistaken, she could be found at the real estate office… As he drove away, he could see Ryan and George, standing on the edge of the driveway, watching him in mute dismay. |