End of Story Page 6

  “I’m a little lost,” Ivy said.

  “Must be,” said the woman. She had eyes the same color as the lake behind her. “Where you trying to get?”

  “Dannemora.”

  The woman brought the ax down in a short smooth stroke, neatly splitting the log on the chopping block. “How are you at shortcuts?”

  “Not good.”

  “There’s just one tricky part, but it’ll save you an hour.”

  An hour? Had she gone that far wrong? Ivy checked her watch. She didn’t have an hour. “What’s the shortcut?”

  The woman came forward, drew a little map in the dirt with the blade of the ax. “Two miles back—this old lane, used to lead to a hunting lodge, long time ago. Hard to spot—go real slow after you start seeing a creek on your right. The lane’s about a hundred yards past that on the left here—look for a big rock with a flat face. Straight up for half a mile and straight down for half a mile more, but you come out on blacktop. Take a right and you hit 374 in five minutes, be in Dannemora ten minutes after that.”

  “Thanks,” Ivy said, taking one final look at those scratchings in the dirt.

  “Best of luck,” said the woman, turning back toward the woodpile.

  Ivy set her trip counter to zero, drove back the way she’d come. After a mile and a half, a creek flowed out of the woods, narrow and bubbling, and ran along beside the road; she rolled down her window so she could hear it. Seconds later she spotted the big rock with the flat face—the kind of smooth writing surface where you’d expect graffiti, but not here. Just beyond the rock lay a small opening in the woods, half-overgrown with weeds and vines. This? Ivy turned into the opening at walking speed.

  Ahead, with a little imagination, she could make out a two-rutted lane curving into the forest. She bumped her way along it, branches scratching at the Saab, a twilight gloom closing overhead even though it was still morning. More like a tunnel than a lane, really, boring through the woods. It began sloping steeply up, as the gray-haired woman had said. Then came two or three switchbacks—her tires spinning over mossy tree roots—and she reached the top. A small clearing lay on her right and on the edge of it something horrible and bloody was going on. At first she thought the huge guy bent over the ripped-open guy was actually eating him alive. Then the huge guy heard the car and looked up, eyes alert. A jolt of terror, the first real terror Ivy had ever felt, went through her. And then the scene straightened itself out and turned into what it was: a bear, not a man, and the victim, head now flopping over at an impossible angle, a deer. Somehow that—a bear, not a man—was less frightening. Ivy found that she’d stopped to watch.

  Outside of a zoo, she’d never seen a bear before—or a deer. Now that the killing part was over, this bear was in no hurry. It reached into the deer and raised a purple glob to its long muzzle—almost delicately, like a connoisseur. At that moment, Ivy understood what was wrong with the “Caveman” story. Why would Vladek necessarily fail to grasp the essential brutality of—

  Maybe the bear didn’t like being watched. All of a sudden it seemed to have forgotten about the deer, in fact was on its feet and coming her way, first in a kind of rolling walk, a bit like a sailor, and then in a loping run that covered amazing amounts of ground. Ivy wasn’t prepared for that, or for the intelligence apparent in its eyes. She stepped on the gas.

  Stepped on the gas, but the car went nowhere. She stomped on the pedal. Nothing, except the shriek of the revving engine. Oh God. Why wouldn’t—? Then she saw that the shift was in P. She jammed it into D and surged forward, just missing a tree. In her rearview mirror she caught a last glimpse of the bear up on its hind legs, head tilted slightly to the side. Twenty minutes after that she was walking into the library at Dannemora, right on time.

  Three students at the long steel table: Perkins on the right, El-Hassam in Morales’s old seat on the left, Harrow at the end.

  “Hi, everybody,” Ivy said.

  “Yo,” said Perkins.

  El-Hassam gave her a little nod.

  Harrow said, “How was the drive?”

  That bear, head tilted to one side: Harrow’s was like that right now. “Fine,” she said, and passed out the folders, fresh sheets of paper, pencils.

  “Drive from where?” said Perkins.

  “The city.”

  “What’s your ride?” Perkins said.

  “My ride?” said Ivy.

  “Your wheels,” said El-Hassam. “Your car.”

  “A Saab,” said Ivy.

  “Sssaaaaab,” said El-Hassam, like it was a strange foreign word, which of course it was.

  “An old one,” Ivy said.

  “What year?” said Perkins.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t know what year your Sssaaaaab is?” said El-Hassam.

  “It’s very old,” Ivy said, giving El-Hassam a quick look. Was he in a bad mood? “I just got it.”

  “How much you pay?” said Perkins.

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “How many miles on it?”

  “I’m not sure of that either,” Ivy said.

  “Sssssaaaaab,” said El-Hassam, a hiss this time, snakelike. His serene features, so difficult to reconcile with his poetry, were a little distorted today.

  Silence. Then Harrow said, “Are cars the only topic of discussion in this class?”

  “Somethin’ wrong with cars?” said Perkins.

  “Yeah,” said Harrow. “They’re boring.”

  “You sayin’ cars is boring?” said Perkins.

  “You got it,” said Harrow.

  The two men looked at each other, very quick, their gazes intersecting for a split second. The atmosphere changed, as though two live wires had touched.

  “From a writing standpoint,” Ivy said, “anything can be interesting. All depends how you handle it.”

  “You’re saying cars can be interesting?” Harrow said.

  “Sure,” said Ivy.

  Perkins smacked his huge hand on the table in triumph.

  “The way you yourself wrote about those worn tires proves that,” Ivy added quickly.

  “What tires?” said Perkins.

  “In Harrow’s story,” said Ivy.

  “A story?” said Perkins. “I thought we was supposed to write poems.”

  “Or stories,” said Ivy.

  “You never said that,” Perkins said.

  “Sorry,” said Ivy. “How about if Harrow reads his?”

  “Out loud?” said Harrow.

  “Or we could pass your copy around,” Ivy said.

  El-Hassam, sitting rigidly upright, eyes closed, said: “Take too long.”

  Another silence. Perkins cleared his throat, a deep tectonic rumble.

  “Okay,” said Harrow.

  He opened his folder, took out Ivy’s neat typescript. “‘Car Wreck,’” he began. “‘There were two funny parts about the ice storm that killed my daughter. The first was how much she loved all kinds of weather. The second was…’” Harrow read in a flat tone that grew flatter, if anything, but somehow increased the power of his prose, as though a mighty engine was being throttled way down. From the very first sentence, everyone in the room was rapt; a unison Ivy could feel, like a moment in church. And they could have been in church, or anywhere else, the actual world fading away, replaced by the story world—Ransom Road, bouncing curls, ice storm. Ivy studied Harrow’s face as he read, trying to see some physical link to what she was hearing. She saw intelligence, strength, self-possession, even a certain detachment, but nothing that suggested the link she sought.

  Harrow came to the end: “‘Glass on glass, if you see where I’m going. Never would have passed the inspection if I hadn’t…’”

  Ivy, following along from her copy, wondered whether it would be a good idea to have each of them spend the rest of the class finishing the story in his own way. Or would it be better to let a discussion happen and just see where it led? And shouldn’t Perkins and El-Hassam get to read thei
r poems? She couldn’t make up her mind.

  But it didn’t matter, because when Harrow came to that last unfinished sentence—Never would have passed the inspection if I hadn’t—he just kept going, reading in that flat tone without even a pause after hadn’t; although reading was surely the wrong word, the rest of the page being blank.

  “…slipped the mechanic a nickel bag. Always a safe bet with mechanics—the best ones are all stoners, helps them focus on little things.”

  Perkins, so softly Ivy almost didn’t hear, said: “Shi’. Never knew that.”

  El-Hassam, eyes still closed but face serene again, nodded.

  “One other funny connection,” Harrow went on. “Now that connections are in the air. This one’s about weed. Not the weed the mechanic got, but before that, when one day I came home to find my girlfriend passing a joint to my little daughter. You know the way sometimes your brain won’t believe what your eyes are seeing? Got to fight that, of course, make it all line up, but I was just a kid myself back then.

  “‘She likes it,’” my girlfriend said.

  “She had real bad judgment, the girlfriend. That time it cost her a couple teeth. Then I opened the windows. The smoke made curling patterns on the way out, settled everything back down.”

  Perkins grunted. A little smile appeared on El-Hassam’s face. Ivy had never seen him smile before. He looked like a sweet old man.

  “But so much for connections, which is the whole point of this story,” Harrow continued. “They say life is all about connecting, like that’s a good thing. But when brain and eyes are lining up you know different. And what did my eyes see as I drove down Ransom Road in the ice storm, glass on glass?”

  The rapt feeling in the room was growing and growing; and Harrow’s eyes had a look of rapture in them, too, like he was just another listener. Ivy began to get an idea where this was coming from.

  “A world turned to crystal, tiny rainbows everywhere, cold cold heaven. The door of the double-wide opens up and out comes my daughter wearing pink pajamas and boots with Goofy on them. Waving and waving, big grin. I toot the horn a couple times—she likes that. Then I touch the brake, just slowing down for that long curve into the driveway. But glass on glass, right? The car starts spinning like a helicopter with the blades shot off. My daughter—I can read her mind—thinks Daddy’s playing one of his jokes, actually claps her little hands with delight. You know kids.”

  Harrow stopped speaking, looked up.

  Silence. It built and built, became unbearable.

  “And then what?” said Perkins.

  “The end,” said Harrow.

  El-Hassam opened his eyes. “That’s the end of the story?”

  Harrow nodded.

  “But what happened?” Perkins said.

  “End of story,” said Harrow, the rapt look draining from his eyes; and gone.

  “Why did you choose to end it there?” Ivy said.

  Harrow turned to her. “Is it a problem?”

  What had Professor Smallian said about endings? Always leave ’em wanting more.

  “No,” Ivy said. “I was just asking how you made the decision.”

  Harrow shrugged.

  “But what happened, man?” Perkins said.

  Harrow closed his folder. “What happened after the end of the story?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Perkins.

  “Nothing happens after the end of a story,” Harrow said.

  “Come on, man,” said Perkins. “What about the little girl?”

  Harrow was silent. The skin on Perkins’s face tightened.

  “Maybe nothing happened to her,” El-Hassam said.

  “What you talkin’ about?” said Perkins. “You even listenin’? Fuckin’ car’s spinnin’ out, glass on glass.”

  El-Hassam sat back in his chair. “I’m listening, Perkins,” he said, pronouncing the name with careful distaste.

  Perkins rose, not quickly, but with enormous power, like something volcanic.

  El-Hassam reached inside his shirt.

  At that moment, Ivy amazed herself. She leaned forward, touched Perkins’s hand and said, “I think El-Hassam is saying it could be a made-up story.”

  A long pause. Ivy felt a worm-size vein pulsing in the back of Perkins’s hand.

  “We’re already down to three,” she said. “If you kill each other off, I’ll be out of a job.”

  They all turned to her. Harrow started laughing. El-Hassam took his hand out of his shirt. Perkins sat down.

  “That it, man?” said Perkins. “A made-up story?”

  Harrow stopped laughing. There were tears in his eyes. “What difference does it make?”

  “Make a big difference,” said Perkins. He turned to Ivy. “Don’t it?”

  “That’s a big question,” she said. “I—”

  Moffitt poked his head in. “Time,” he said.

  The men got up. “Sorry we didn’t get to the poems,” Ivy said. “Next week.”

  They started filing out, El-Hassam first, then Perkins, and Harrow, coming from the end of the table, last. As he went by, Ivy said, “Have you done much writing?”

  “No.”

  “Any?”

  “No.” He tilted his head slightly to one side, watching her. “Why?”

  “Because your story’s good,” she said. “Really good.”

  “Yeah?” he said, and kept going.

  On the way out, Ivy stopped by Sergeant Tocco’s office. “Those records you talked about,” she said. “The inmate histories.”

  “Jackets?” said Sergeant Tocco.

  “I’d like to see Harrow’s.”

  “Right on schedule,” he said. He rubbed his jaw, fingers rasping on stubble. “You authors.”

  “Unless it’s against the rules,” Ivy said.

  “What rules?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “Violation of privacy?”

  Sergeant Tocco laughed, a quick bark. “They’re felons. They got no privacy.” He tapped at his keyboard for a few moments. A nearby printer whirred to life. Sergeant Tocco pointed to the pages coming out. “Enjoy,” he said.

  Eight

  Ivy drove out of Dannemora, Harrow’s jacket in the writing folder beside her, still unread. In a cartoon, wiggly red lines would have been rising from it, like there was radioactive material inside. Was it crazy that she’d never asked what any of them—El-Hassam, Perkins, Morales, Harrow—had done? But why? How was it her business? She was the writing teacher, period.

  While Ivy wrestled with all that, the car-driving part of her was having ideas of its own. It didn’t seem to want to go home the normal way, was choosing the shortcut instead. Ten minutes on 374, five on narrow blacktop, and then the rutted lane, half a mile up—no sign of bear or deer at the top—and half a mile down. At the bottom, Ivy turned right onto the dirt road, passed the flat blank-faced rock, tried and failed to think of something good to write on it, and a few minutes later again dead-ended at the Wilderness Lake Cabins.

  Ivy got out of the car, knocked on the door of the first cabin. The gray-haired woman opened up. She had her hair in a ponytail now, must have been stunning when she was young. Ivy smelled gin; she worked in a bar, could smell distinctions between some of the tough ones like scotch and bourbon. Straight gin was easy.

  For a moment the woman didn’t recognize her. Then she did. “Couldn’t find it?”

  “Oh no,” Ivy said. “I found it, thanks. Your directions were perfect. I’m back.”

  Behind the woman a fire burned in a stone fireplace. Music played: opera, about which Ivy knew nothing.

  “And where do you want to go now?” the woman said.

  Ivy laughed. “Nowhere. I want to rent a cabin for the night.”

  “This time of year?” said the woman.

  “You’re closed?” Ivy said.

  “Not formally,” the woman said. “I’ll have to charge you.”

  Ivy had assumed that, of course. Was the woman drunk? Ivy also excelled at
detecting grades of inebriation, but not this time. All she detected was that the woman’s eyes were darker than they’d been in the morning. But, through the cabin window, so was the lake, meaning they were still the same color.

  “How much?” Ivy said.

  “Depends whether you want me to run the generator,” the woman said.

  A rifle—no, shotgun, with the double barrels—stood in one corner. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Can you get by without electricity for a night?”

  Why not? Her laptop was charged and Bruce had left a flashlight in the glove box of the Saab. “Sure.”

  “Can you keep a fire going?”

  “Yes.”

  “And remember to flush only once, before you go?”

  “Okay.”

  “Then you don’t need the generator,” the woman said. “Ten bucks.”

  Ivy handed her the money. “Ivy Seidel,” she said.

  “Jean Savard,” the woman said.

  They shook hands. Jean’s was cold and clammy.

  “At the top of the shortcut,” Ivy said, “I saw a bear.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Jean. “Enjoy your stay.” She handed Ivy a key with 4 on it.

  Cabin four was the last one, farthest from the office. Ivy unlocked the door and went inside. Cold, but perfect: knotty-pine floors, brass bed with clean white pillowcases and a rose-colored duvet, a simple desk and chair by the window overlooking the lake. Plus a stone fireplace like the one in Jean’s cabin, firewood and kindling in place. Ivy opened the flue, found matches by the poker stand, soon had a nice fire going. Way out on the lake something rippled.

  Ivy sat at the desk, took Harrow’s jacket from the writing folder. At the top of the first page, a full name from the last-name zone: Evan Vance Harrow.

  Then came fingerprints, both hands, fingers and thumbs. Ivy found herself examining them closely, as though they could tell her something. There was a kind of beauty in all those black whorls, reminding her of a photography exhibit about shadows and sand dunes she’d seen at the Queens MoMA. Plus wasn’t there something a bit moving in the knowledge that every single human being that had ever walked the planet shared these tiny markings? Whoa. Sometimes she was an idiot: the whole point of fingerprints was difference, not community. Was there anything different about Harrow’s fingerprints? Not visible to the naked eye, of course, or at least not to hers.