Authors: Robert Swartwood
Houses of all types are scattered throughout the hills and fields beyond Bridgton’s “Main Street”—homes ranging from three-stories down to one-story, and even double-wide trailers with the occasional unmowed patches of lawn and empty Rolling Rock and Miller Lite cans littering the backyard. Some have dogs chained up outside, while others just have chains. Some have tire swings hanging off the branches of maple and hickory trees, while others just have tires in the grass. Some have their cars and pickups parked in the spots they call driveways, while others just have them parked beside one tree or another, easy targets for birdshit and rust. Various NASCAR flags hang off porch overhangs, signaling the numbers of favorite drivers.
Bridgton has no schools, so its kids have to go into either Horseheads or Elmira for their education. It has no law enforcement either, and instead relies on the Chemung County Sheriff’s Department to provide an occasional deputy to keep the peace. My uncle, who was born and raised in Bridgton, is one of a few deputies assigned to this particular zone of the county.
If one were to know his way around the back roads off Route 13, and go maybe half a mile up the hill, one would find Keller’s Bait and Tackle, Bridgton’s only reputable business besides the ones on Mizner Road. It sells anything from fishing rods, to lures, to line, to even vests and boxes. A handwritten sign out front announces its ongoing special of two dozen night crawlers for three bucks.
A quarter mile away, on Half Creek Road which leads farther up the hill, is a two-story house with weather-worn shingles and peeling paint. Once, long ago, someone decided to turn the bottom floor into a used bookstore. A green sign outside, as weathered as the roof, reads SHEPHERD’S BOOKS. Another, smaller sign reading CLOSED, perpetually hangs below this. Its parking lot is gravel and always deserted, as the store itself never opens.
Less than a half mile farther up Half Creek Road is Calvary Church. It’s a tiny, whitewashed building that has everything but a steeple. It sits off to the left of the road in a wide clearing. Behind it, through a wall of pine trees and following a narrow foot-beaten path to an obscure and cramped clearing, rests a small stone house that once was the center of a lot of pain in the town’s history. Now it sits alone, idle, allowing nature to give it a slow and steady decay.
Continuing past the house, another narrow trail leads a little farther up the hill, past spruces and hemlocks, beeches and birches, to another clearing that overlooks the valley in which most of the town rests. Mobile homes have been situated around each other. All the locals call it The Hill—the T always capitalized, as if to give the area its due respect. There are less than twenty trailers in all, owned mostly by folks in their sixties and seventies who retreat to Florida in the winter to escape the snow. A squat cinderblock building, called the Rec House, sits at the entrance to this trailer park, a short in-ground pool with no water beside it.
Of course, when I first came to Bridgton, I knew none of this. All I knew was that it was where my grandmother and uncle lived, and where I would now be staying until the police managed to track down my parents’ killer. I wasn’t aware that unlike most small towns that try to hide themselves from the rest of the world, Bridgton was a sleeping giant.
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•
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T
HE
OVERALL
TRIP
from Lanton to Bridgton was supposed to take four hours. For us, it took five. Driving in my Cavalier, I followed my uncle down PA 72 through Manheim, up to Lebanon, until we eventually got onto Interstate 81. There it was continuous driving through the Appalachian Mountains. Green rolling hills on either side of the highway, an occasional town or city peeking up from a valley that could be glimpsed for only a couple of minutes as we were doing seventy or so miles an hour. Up past Wilkes-Barre, past Scranton, farther north until we exited Pennsylvania and entered New York. Once past Binghamton, my uncle merged onto NY 17, which we took all the way to Elmira.
Because of my grandmother’s constant need to stretch her legs every hour, we stopped at whatever rest area was closest for a couple of minutes. Then, in Great Bend, we stopped at a gas station for snacks. I went inside with my uncle, while my grandmother stood beside the Explorer. He bought some bottled water, a bag of pretzels, and then, at the counter, eyed up the cigarettes. He must have noticed me looking, because a grin broke out over his normally hard face and he said, “Gave them up three times already. This is my fourth. Been two months, and I keep telling myself this is it.” He ended up buying a pack of Pep-O-Mint LifeSavers instead.
By the time we finished with 17 and merged onto Route 13, it was close to eight o’clock. The sky was clear and purple, the sun nearing the ragged horizon. Then, ten minutes later, we arrived to Bridgton and the start of a new chapter in my life.
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•
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M
Y
GRANDMOTHER
’
S
TRAILER
was some luxury model very similar to everyone else’s on The Hill. In a very cramped space it included a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and living room. Outside my grandmother’s trailer was a wooden swing. It was set up so it faced down into the valley. This was where my grandmother and I sat that Friday evening around eight-thirty, watching the fading glow of the sun.
“Isn’t this nice, Christopher?” Her voice was deep and pleasant, almost somber. She didn’t wait for me to answer before saying, “I’m glad you came. I wish it could have been under different circumstances, but I’m glad you’re here. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you last.”
I didn’t say anything. There were questions I wanted to ask, questions I’d been holding back since I first saw her this week. Questions like where she’d been for the past ten years, did she ever think of me, did she even care.
My uncle had already left us, driving to his apartment in Horseheads. He wanted to get a few hours of sleep before starting his midnight shift. He had only one bedroom, or else I’d be staying with him. Instead I was being put up in one of the extra trailers The Hill’s owner kept around. Dean had called him, explained the situation, and the man was more than happy to let me stay there. It was much smaller than my grandmother’s trailer, much more cramped, with only a bed and a shower. Behind an overpowering scent of Lysol was the faint odor of mold and must. I had set my things down and walked the short distance up to my grandmother’s, where she told me she just put a frozen pizza in the oven. She suggested we wait on the swing, and now here we’d been sitting for almost ten minutes.
Somewhere behind us, in one of the trailers, a window was open. The sound of
Wheel of Fortune
could faintly be heard.
Beside me, my grandmother made a noise. It was the kind of noise a person makes when she’s thinking of something happy, something fun, and starts to laugh but then stops.
“You probably don’t remember,” she said, “because it was so long ago, but one Christmas your parents brought you up here to visit. This was when we lived in our old house. You were six, I think. Your grandpa told you Santa Claus was coming to see you, and you got all excited and—and your face was just so precious. Your smile, I mean.”
I watched her as she spoke, noticed how her jaw worked and how her eyes stared down at the grass, as if back in time.
“So Christmas Eve came, and there was this knock at the door. You started running around trying to find your grandpa because you knew, you just
knew
, it was Santa. Your father answered the door, and sure enough, there he was. His suit wasn’t the best quality, not like the kind you see those men wearing at the mall, but it was red and the old man inside had white hair and a long beard.
“Well, you just couldn’t believe it. Like your grandpa said, Santa Claus was here. He came into the house and sat down, and you got right up there on his knee. He asked whether you’d been a good boy, and you told him yes you were, that you were a very good boy. Then he asked what you wanted for Christmas. And everything you asked for, Christopher, he pulled right out of his bag.”
She smiled.
“I can still remember that costume. Your grandpa’s beard kept coming off, and he kept putting it back in place, but you never said anything. Your father and uncle had to leave the room, they were laughing so hard. And your mother, she just smiled and kept taking pictures. Then when he had given you all your presents, he left, and five minutes later your grandfather
without
his suit came in. He said he had to go into town for some milk, and when you told him he’d missed Santa, he acted so upset. He asked you to tell him everything that happened, and you did. You told him everything.
“And watching you, I wondered if you knew. As if the entire time when your grandpa came in with that red suit and beard on, you knew it was him, but didn’t say anything. You just went along like it really was Santa Claus, because you wanted to make him happy. You wanted to make him think that he was actually doing something you’d love him for.”
She looked at me.
“Did you?” Her voice had become a whisper. “Did you know the entire time?”
I remembered what Steve had told me earlier that day, how time changes things, that people get over stuff. And as much as the memory meant to her, as much as the whole thing seemed so important, I shrugged with an I-can’t-remember expression on my face.
She stared at me for a moment, then smiled. “It doesn’t matter anyway, I guess. Just something I thought about, no big thing. But Christopher, I’ve only been in love twice my whole life. Once when I was just a small girl, and it was really nothing more than a hopeless crush on a man twice my age. The other was your grandpa, and it was true love because he was also in love with me. And when two people are in love with each other, they share a special bond that nobody else can touch. So believe me when I tell you, your grandpa did love you. I don’t care what everybody says he did, you were his only grandchild and he loved you more than anything. You have to believe that.”
I smiled but said nothing. I couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear, because I didn’t want to lie to her. And as much as I wanted to believe it, to believe my grandfather had actually been sane and loved me, I simply couldn’t.
•
•
•
M
UCH
LATER
THAT
night, Mrs. Roberts—my grandmother’s good friend who lived two trailers up the drive—stopped by. Nancy, she wanted me to call her, but I wouldn’t. She was seventy-something, a few years older than Grandma, and it didn’t feel right calling a stranger much older than myself by her first name.
“Christopher,” she said, shaking my hand, “it’s very nice to meet you.”
She smiled and adjusted the dark glasses on her face. She had a severe form of meningitis, my grandmother had told me, which caused photosensitivity to her eyes. Lately the condition had worsened and the antibiotics she normally took had begun failing, so her doctor suggested she keep her glasses on all day and even at night.
I told her it was very nice to meet her too.
It was almost ten o’clock, and I was ready to head back to my trailer. The pizza had been good though a little burnt, and the discussion minimal. For the past hour we’d just been watching whatever few stations Grandma’s little Magnavox—with rabbit ears antenna, both stretched wide—picked up. I’d wanted to leave sooner, but didn’t want to hurt my grandmother’s feelings. Now I had my way out.
I gave my grandmother a hug, told her I’d see her in the morning, and wished both ladies goodnight. Then I was out the screen door and headed down the dirt drive. My pace was fast but then quickly slowed, until I was standing still. Around me, the night was alive with insects, the wind, the sporadic traffic down on 13 that could faintly be heard up here. Many of The Hill’s residents had gone to bed, because there was hardly any noise coming from any of the trailer homes. In fact, only a few had lights on inside.
For a moment I felt as if this might work out after all. That I could stay up here while Steve and the rest of the police force conducted their investigation and then captured the son of a bitch that killed my parents. For a moment, I actually felt safe.
Then I had the feeling I was being watched.
My body suddenly tense, I turned my head slowly, first to the right, then to the left.
A tall figure stood off in the darkness, right in front of an RV parked across the lane. The figure had a cigarette in its hand; I could see the red of the tip clearly, first at the figure’s side, then lifted up to the figure’s face.
I don’t know why, especially because it was so dark, but I forced a smile, gave a quick wave.
The figure didn’t return either. It just stood there another moment, taking one last drag, before dropping the butt to the ground, then turning and opening the door of the RV, the hinges on the screen door rusted so badly that in the dark silence of night it sounded like they were screaming in agony.
Chapter 5
E
arly that morning it had begun to rain. I lay awake in bed—which was nothing more than a moldy mattress covered with fresh white linens—for close to an hour, staring at the picture of my parents that I had fastened into the ceiling. Above me, the rain tapped out an irregular but consistent beat on the aluminum roofing, until about nine o’clock, when it stopped completely. Then I waited another half hour before taking a quick shower and dressing into jeans and a T-shirt.