You won’t understand. At least not right away. And that’s okay. You may even think I’m a liar, and that’s okay too. All I ask is that you listen until the very end before passing judgment. I have a story to tell you. Of a place under a mountain. Of the minds of men. Of what it means to be human, to make a home out of a place where one should not exist. And of what the future holds. For you. For me. For all of us.
He sang along with the radio.
Something about taking a sad song and making it better.
After, he laughed until he could barely breathe.
He crossed into Douglas County just before another song ended. There was a news break at the top of the hour, every hour.
A singer named Selena had been shot at a hotel in Texas. He’d never heard of her before.
TAROM Flight 371, leaving Bucharest and heading for Brussels, crashed shortly after takeoff. All sixty people on board died. An investigation was underway. Terrorism was not suspected at the moment.
The comet discovered last year, Markham-Tripp, was getting closer. Already it could be seen if you knew where to look, but no worries, folks. It’s going to swing right by us before heading back out into the great beyond.
And there was still no official word on the helicopter that went down outside of the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Northern California last week. The cause was still under investigation, though it was implied it was related to that big storm that blew through the area. Officials weren’t saying if there were any fatalities.
And now for the weather. It’s gonna be a beautiful day, would you look at all that sunshine, can you just believe it?
It was March 31, 1995.
He continued south.
The air outside grew cooler the farther he went into the mountains. The sun warmed the hand he hung out the window. The blue sky stretched on and on. There were clouds, but only a few.
Nice day, he thought. Of course it is. That’s the way things go.
He hit the town in late afternoon. There was a sign, old and faded. It’d been there since he was a kid and his parents had taken him up to the cabin for a few weeks during the summer. It said:
Roseland, Oregon Pop. 827 Established 1851 Elevation 2345 ft. Gateway to the Cascades!
He passed by a diner. A church. Shops on either side. Some of them were open. The town wouldn’t hit tourist season for another month or two, but they’d be ready. People driving up from the bigger cities looking for an escape from the heat and grind would spend their money, take their photos, and then disappear back from where they came.
The air was filled with the scents of pine needles and earth. It was like he was ten years old again and his mom and dad were still in love, love, love. They would laugh and sing along with the radio. They would play road games. I Spy. Twenty questions. The license plate game where you’d try and get all fifty states. He’d learned early on that that was impossible. The most he’d ever gotten was seven. That had been a good day. One had been Maine, an impossibly faraway place.
He saw the sign for the gas station before the gas station itself. It spun lazily, but not before he caught the words BIG EDDIE’S GAS AND CONVENIENCE. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to see that some things remained the same. Even after everything.
He pulled in, the tires of the truck hitting the thin black cord. A bell dinged somewhere inside the station as he stopped next to the pump. He turned off the truck, listening as the engine ticked.
He ran a hand over his face before opening the door, setting his feet on the ground. He stretched his back, hearing it pop. He was only twenty-seven years old, but gone were the days when he could sit in a car for hours without a problem. His muscles pulled. It felt good.
The glass door to the gas station swung open and a large man walked out, wiping his hands on a rag. If it wasn’t for the smile on his face, the man would have been alarming. He’d never seen anyone that size anywhere else. Must have been the mountain air.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Big Eddie Green said, his voice a deep timbre. “Nate Cartwright, as I live and breathe.”
Nate forced a smile onto his face. “Big Eddie. Good to see you’re still running this dump.”
“You watch your mouth,” Big Eddie said, but he was still smiling, his teeth a little crooked but endearingly so. He held out a large hand streaked with a bit of oil. Nate didn’t mind. He held out his own. Big Eddie’s grip was firm, but he wasn’t trying to be an asshole about it. He wasn’t like that, at least not that Nate knew. He hadn’t seen Big Eddie since he’d turned twenty-one, the last time he’d been up to the cabin. And it wasn’t like they were friends, though Big Eddie could make friends with just about anybody he set his mind to. There was something about the way he smiled that put Nate at ease. It was familiar, this. Heartbreakingly so.
“Heading up the mountain?” Big Eddie was already moving to the pump. “Unleaded okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Nate said, leaning against the truck. He glanced inside the gas station window. There was a kid inside bent over the counter, scribbling furiously on something, his tongue stuck out between his teeth like he was concentrating really hard. “Jesus, is that Benji?”
Big Eddie laughed. “Yeah,” he said, and Nate could hear the fondness in his voice, rough and sweet. “Sprouting up like a weed. His ma and me can barely keep up with him. More than a handful. Crazy, right?”
“It is,” Nate said because he was supposed to agree with it. That was how conversation worked. That was how people talked to each other. He wasn’t so good at that. And now that he was running away to the middle of nowhere, he didn’t think he’d get much more practice at it than this.
The gas pump hummed.
Big Eddie whistled as he looked in the bed of the truck. “Quite a few supplies you got back here. Planning a long stay?”
Nate shrugged. “A while, anyway.”
The smile softened. “Real sorry to hear about your folks. That.. well. I don’t know much else to say beyond that. Must have been tough. I can’t imagine what that’s like, so I won’t insult you by pretending to.”
Nate wasn’t sure what to say to that. Tough, sure. Oh yeah, it’d been tough. Murder-suicides usually were. His father had come to his mother’s house, feeling hurt and ornery like he usually did when he drank. There’d been a fight. Neighbors said they heard shouting but thought it was the TV or just a regular old domestic that they couldn’t find the wherewithal to get involved in. Nate didn’t blame them, especially when his father had gone out to the very truck Big Eddie and Nate were leaning against, grabbed his shotgun, hoofed it back inside, and blown his ex-wife away before turning it on himself.
It’s hard to do, the detective had told him, sounding soft and worn. Committing suicide by shotgun. But Nate’s father had found a way. Sat in a chair, propped it between his legs. The barrel had gone under his chin, and he’d used his big toe, of all things, to pull the trigger. It’d been a mess.
At least Nate assumed it had been. He hadn’t been inside his mother’s house after. His brother had taken care of all that. There are services, his brother told him over the phone. It was the first time he’d spoken to his brother in years. They come in and clean up crime scenes. They charge you out the ass, but they take care of what they can. They can’t get it all, of course, but that’s what contractors are for. They’d fix up the house before it got put up for sale.
And later, they’d spoken one more time. Dad left you the truck, his brother said. Mom left you the cabin.
Oh was all he could say. Oh.
What he’d wanted to say was how could this have happened? How did it get this far? Sure they’d had their problems—they were divorced, for fuck’s sake. But his father had never raised a fist. Not to anyone. He hadn’t been the nicest guy, but he’d never hit them. Or her. Not once. That wasn’t who he was.
“Yeah,” Nate said to Big Eddie. “Tough.”
Big Eddie nodded. “You get the water turned on?”