People met and talked all the time.They worked things out.They said what needed saying, then everyone went back to their lives.That was how decent people handled trouble.Warren had spent most of the afternoon repeating those words as if repetition made them true.He’d been a real estate expert for so long, he prized making deals.But this deal was more important than all the others.
The woods opened on the right.
Through the break, the hunting lodge appeared at the end of a narrow track, sitting in the last of the evening like something the county had forgotten to finish tearing down.One story.A sagging porch.Three front windows, one of them cracked at the corner.The roof had lost shingles in patches, leaving darker squares where rain had worn at the boards beneath.A rusted stove pipe leaned from the rear side as if tired of holding itself upright.
Humble.That was the word Warren’s father would have used.
Warren had other words for it now.
The lodge had once belonged to a hunting club that had more members than money and more pride than sense.Men came there every November with rifles, cards, coolers, and stories that got bigger each time they were told.Warren had first slept there at eleven, wrapped in a plaid blanket on a narrow cot while the older men laughed in the next room.He had woken before dawn to the smell of frying bacon and gun oil, convinced there was no better place on earth.
For a moment, parked memories stirred in him.His father is cutting apples with a pocketknife.Men arguing over who had missed what and by how much.Rain ticking on the roof.A fire in the black stove, all orange mouth and heat.
Maybe a little of that luck had stayed in the boards.
“God knows I need it,” he said.He looked to the empty passenger seat next to him for a moment.It somehow glared back, the emptiness of it.All that money.All those deals he’d made.And here he was.Lonely.
Warren turned off the road and guided the truck up the track.
The pickup rolled to a stop near the porch.Dust caught up with him and drifted past the windows before thinning into the trees.
Warren left the engine running for a few seconds, listening to its rough idle.No other vehicle sat in front of the lodge.No voices came from inside or light showed in the windows.The lifeless sight of it affected him in uncertain ways.For the first time since he was a kid, he suddenly realized how eerie the place was out there in the countryside, far from prying eyes.
His watch read twenty minutes past the hour.
“Wonderful.”Maybe he’d missed them.But if he was lucky for once, maybe they were late, too.Either way, he had to hang around to find out.If they had left a number, he would have called.But that wasn’t how blackmailers worked.It was all anonymous.They held the cards.He was just waiting to see what the buy-in would be.
After killing the engine, Warren sat without moving.The sudden quiet made the small sounds sharper.A bird is calling once from the tree line.Wind touching leaves.The tick of heat fading under the hood.
Somewhere far off, he heard another sound.An indecipherable noise that sounded almost bird-like.It amazed him that even after all these years, there were things in the woods he couldn't identify.He laughed for a moment, thinking of his dad's pal, Buck.Buck told stories of Bigfoot and how he'd seen one once, and that it chased him out of an area he intended to never return to.Warren was almost certain that story was just made to scare him when he was a kid.But that little slither of doubt made the woods keep their mystery and hold his interest even now as he entered the later chapters of his life.
He opened the door and stepped down.
The ground felt dry under his boots.Fine dirt clung to the leather at once.He shut the door, then walked around to the truck bed and checked the deer.The animal lay stiff and heavy, its head turned at an awkward angle, glassy eyes fixed on nothing.The ropes had held, but one had loosened near the rear leg.
Warren tugged it tighter and made a sound of irritation.
“I’ll be processing you by midnight at this rate.”
His voice came out louder than expected.That glassy eye kept staring.Kept looking.If Warren didn’t know better, it felt like it was looking right at him.
“Hello?”he shouted just in case.
No answer came from the lodge.
Warren looked toward it, waiting.The front door was closed but not latched all the way.A thin black line showed between the door and the frame.
He removed his cap, ran one hand over thinning hair, then put the cap back on.Sweat had dried at his temples, leaving a gritty feel against his skin.The summers were so humid that he could feel his vest under his clothes was saturated.
The porch boards complained under his weight.Near the steps, weeds had grown through gaps in the planks.A wasp nest, old and papery, clung beneath the eave.Warren paused by the door and listened.
Nothing.
He knocked once.
The sound was flat.
“Hello?”
