Moonlight silvered the path threading along the ridge. It was a path known only to locals and seldom traveled, for all that. Reid had not walked this path for some time; his life had lately become circumscribed by work and no small bit of struggle in trying to make ends meet, which was no easy task in this year 1937, with the country nearly brought to its knees by the folly of the would-be wealthy, only now beginning to dig itself out.
But walking had its own rewards and he lost himself in the quiet beauty of it. The path—the remains, perhaps, of some ancient Indian trail—wound its way periodically through stands of trees that still bore much of their leaves, whispering drily to each other in the light breeze. It was chilly, this late into September, and soon enough these leaves would scatter on the winds and snow would blanket these gentle hills.
The full moon stood at his back, sending his shadow far ahead of him in a purplish streak of darkness.
Ahead of him, a family of foxes dashed across the path; one—a juvenile—stopped to stare at him until one of its parents chattered something to it and it slipped into the woods. He wondered if he might have been the first human it had ever seen. He wondered what it made of him.
He was perhaps two or three miles from home and warmth and the comforts of the familiar. This was an easy walk, luckily; ordinarily, he would have been in his little Pontiac coupe, puttering along the valley road that paralleled the river, but he had lent the car to his niece and her husband so that they might drive to the hospital in Morgantown. An uneasy pregnancy yielded at last to an equally uneasy and protracted labor and for the sake of both mother and child they decided that it would be better for a doctor to be there.
A distant, hazy, yellowish glow hugging the horizon was Laurel Gap, the small town in which he lived. There was nothing much to commend it; it did what it needed to do and little more.
—
As much as he would have liked to lose himself in the physical exertions of the walk, his mind could not help but turn to other matters. He was, now, thirty-seven years of age… not an old man, but no longer a young one. He stood on the threshold, he thought, of settling into an unwelcome bachelorhood, surrounded by his books and his writing and his art and his teaching. He was already regretting the unspent coin of his youth; he regretted the intransigence that had kept him here, holed up in the house his grandfather had built, a home he’d inherited upon the man’s passing, he himself a newly-minted graduate of the university in Morgantown. The gift had been a timely one; his parents had left the town for better opportunities in Cincinnati, leaving him in the lurch.
He knew that he, too, should have perhaps slipped away to a city, as so many in his generation had done, as many were forced into doing even now, but the teaching position at the college had proved too good to resist. He knew that he could have lost himself in such a city and perhaps found some kind of comfort in its anonymity, could have perhaps found some kind of companionship.
The hoot of an owl, lonely and sepulchral, rose and fell in the clear, cold air. He imagined that he could hear a diminution of the other little sounds of the night, as creatures who might have drawn particular attention from the owl hunkered down and offered their own little animal prayers to the night, ones that amounted to not tonight, please, not me, not now.
He wondered what his life would have been like, if he had said yes to the voice inside him and not no, had gone off to the city. He imagined that even Pittsburgh, to the north—its air clotted by the hellish smoke from its furnaces—would have had at least a handful of men like him numbered among its many thousands. But he felt trapped by his past—or had let himself become trapped by it, had let the wishes of his father and mother guide him. Care for your niece, they’d demanded of him. She needs someone, now that your sister has passed. Now, though, that niece, Olivia—he thought of her now as his daughter—was grown with a husband of her own to care for her and stood on the cusp of motherhood and its own set of responsibilities. He was free, by all rights, to do what he wanted.
The trouble, of course, was that he didn’t quite know what that was, or could be.
So here he was, teaching English and French and Latin and Greek to students who saw little use for any of them, his job safe enough from the vagaries of the economy even if the money to be made in it barely kept his head above water. He went to work dutifully each day, telling himself that his sacrifice was a noble one, giving up the sundry delights of his own body to the furtherance of the minds of others.
Even there, though, in the college, he imagined that there must have existed others like him, men who shared certain sensibilities. Certainly there was Tom McCullough, trim and wasp-waisted, handsome and affable, with a certain telling lilt in his tenor voice, responsible for the choir and drama students, a man who—also in his late thirties—was still untaken. Or Walter Ingram, a mathematician, shy and withdrawn, nearly sixty, stoop-shouldered and solid through the middle, hiding behind spectacles whose lenses were so thick they resembled the bottoms of soda bottles, but he was not unhandsome in his own right. In the hallways, in the courtyards, along the paths, they beetled past one another with a slight smile and an even slighter nod, afraid to say one thing or the other, always silent, tacit and taciturn, afraid of their own shadows, always conscious of how others might observe them.
—
He was brought back to the present with a single sound: the unmistakable scratch and slide of a footstep, somewhere behind him.
He was not alone, up here on the ridge.
He essayed a slight half-turn and there it was, some figure silhouetted against the moon. At that distance, he could not tell anything about the figure except that it was another person and not, say, a bear out on a lark, brought up here for one reason or another. He turned back; instinctively, his hand went around the handle of a penknife in the pocket of his trousers. It was not impossible that whoever was behind him was here for nefarious reasons, although he did not want to believe that and had nothing to offer to a would-be thief anyway. Crimes such as those were a rarity in their small community, but these were desperate times for many, many people.
He quickened his pace.
The figure behind him moved nearly silently, but then there was a clatter of stones… and it sounded much nearer. He toyed briefly with making a run for it, dashing off into the trees and hiding in the inky darkness, but that kind of cowardice was something he could not make himself want. And what if the mysterious figure sought to follow him?
He stood at the crest of the ridge; from this point onward the path proceeded down, down, down to the valley and the outskirts of the town and his own house. If he had to, he could run for it and let gravity assist him… but, again, he was a man of a certain age and his stamina, he knew, was not what it once was. And were he to trip on the path, his imagined pursuer would have been on him in a heartbeat.
He forced himself to calmness, pulled the knife out of his pocket, concealed it in the palm of his hand. His heart was pounding. He had never had cause to think he’d have to defend himself like this.
The figure was close enough now that he could hear the sound of the man’s—he assumed it must have been a man; what woman would be alone at night out here?—walking. It seemed a kind of loose-footed lope, not quite a run, made perhaps by someone tired and unable to curb his progress.
The figure was close enough, too, that he could see the man’s drawn-out shadow weaving to his left, could hear the ragged panting of his breathing which, too, sounded tired and labored.
And, then, the figure was here! right beside him and he edged slightly away and slowed his pace, hoping that the other man did not notice, could not hear the tocsin thrum of his heart, could not sense the nearly-abject fear that threatened to overcome him.
The figure continued onward, seemingly oblivious to his presence, until he heard a breathy “… evening…” come from him. As the figure moved away from him, he let himself relax, although he maintained the grip on his knife. To his right was a stand of trees and he considered slipping in their concealing shadows, but then the figure stopped and turned.
He, too, stopped, ran the edge of his thumb over the button that would release the blade, took a deep breath, prepared himself.
In the full moonlight, the figure’s face stood revealed and, to his surprise, it appeared to be that of someone almost still a boy: narrow and thin with a dark dusting of beard on the jaw and chin; large, liquid, dark eyes; narrow slash of a mouth; generous nose. All in all, a quietly handsome face, one full of character and a certain amount of charm.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” the man-boy mumbled. “I… well…”
“Yes?” Reid answered. Please keep going, he thought.
The boy hesitated. “Would you… well, would you let me walk with you a bit? I would appreciate the company.” The boy’s voice was hoarse and husky and quiet.
The boy’s request was no less unnerving than his presence. Reid wanted nothing more than to see the back of the boy; he gestured vaguely in the direction of the town. “I’m just going there.”
“Is that where you live?”
“Yes,” he answered, keeping his voice terse.
The boy smiled. “Well, I’m headed that way, too.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m Elias.”
The gesture hung in the space between the boy and the man, awkward for the latter, given that he had a knife in his right hand. He slipped it back into his pocket, hoping that the boy did not notice. He offered his hand. “I’m Reid.”
With that, the boy—Elias—turned and began walking; Reid moved to his left, making sure to keep a little distance between himself and the boy.
“Reid,” the boy repeated. “That’s a nice name.” Reid watched as the boy’s eyes flickered to his still-clenched fist, then came back to look at him. “I’m sorry. I… didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m not… well, I wasn’t going to hurt you, if that was what you were thinking. Although I can certainly understand why you would think that.”
Said the spider to the fly, Reid thought. He let out a breath. “You can’t be too careful, this time of night.”
“No, I imagine not,” Elias replied. “What brings you up here on a night like this?”
Reid explained to him the story of his niece and the baby, omitting some of the specific details. “Is the baby well?” Elias asked, when Reid was done.
“I… we don’t know, yet,” Reid answered. “In a few days, I imagine we’ll know more.”
“Well, I hope for the best, of course, I’m sure it will go well.”
Reid smiled. “It’s her first,” he volunteered. “I’ve heard that those can often be the most difficult.”
Elias said nothing that, and the two walked on in silence for a few paces. Finally, Reid felt he had to speak. “What’s your reason for being out here, Elias?”
Elias sighed. “Oh… this and that,” he equivocated, unwilling—apparently—to go any further.
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Oh, you’re not prying. I’m just… well, it’s… sometimes it doesn’t matter where you’re walking, only that you’re walking, if that makes any sense.”
“Leaving a bad situation,” Reid prompted.
Elias gave Reid a sidelong glance. “Something like that.”
“Well… where is it you want to end up?”
“I don’t know, Reid,” Elias answered. “I just… I’ll probably walk until I don’t feel like walking any more.”
There was such a note of pain and sadness in his answer that Reid had no immediate response. They walked on for a bit, with the town revealing itself in increments slowly in front of them. Reid could see the dark, sinuous curve of the river sliding like a snake through the dim lights of downtown. He cleared his throat. “How… how long have you been on the road, Elias?”
Elias said nothing for a moment. Then, “Oh, I don’t know. Not long. Maybe a couple of days.”
Not a long time, Reid thought… but he wasn’t sure if he himself could have done as well. He wasn’t sure how long two days’ worth of walking might take a person. It took him perhaps twenty minutes to walk a mile, but that wasn’t a pace he could easily maintain throughout a day of walking, especially in late autumn days like this, with chilly nights. And, of course, there was the rest of it: keeping oneself clean and fed, trying to find a place to sleep, perhaps avoiding the prying eyes of the law. “Where did you come from?”
“Near Mace. Just this side of it.”
Almost forty miles total, Reid figured. “That’s a long way.”
“Is it?” Elias asked. “I suppose. But I just couldn’t…”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Stay. There.”
“Bad?” Reid asked.
“Yes. Very bad.”
Reid couldn’t imagine any kind of situation whose best—only?—solution was to just slip out the back door and start walking and never look back. He understood that, all things considered, he’d had a very good life, one that he had no real complaint with, even if most of it had been led privately and—largely—alone. “Is it something you can talk about?”
Elias looked down at his feet. “Not yet,” he whispered.
—
Shortly, the trail became a series of switchbacks as it came down off the ridge and into the valley. At the end of it, the outskirts of the town began with solitary houses perched on hillsides. Reid’s own house sat among them; even from this distance, he could pick it out.
The two men walked silently as they negotiated the path, much of which now lay in shadow. At one point, Elias slipped and Reid’s arm shot out, automatically, to steady him, knowing that one misstep meant sliding off the path and down the hillside to fetch up in trees or against a rock.
“Thanks,” Elias whispered.
After that, the path leveled out and ended at the edge of a road. There was, Reid knew from experience, little chance of traffic at this time of night and the two of them had the asphalt to themselves. They passed the homes of people Reid had known almost all of his life: the Starrets, the Pierces, the Lawsons, the McGuires, others. Some of the families had children Reid had taught over the years… those few of them who managed to get to college. As always, he wondered what those families made of him, but it was a thing they never talked about. Anything and everything was possible as long as one did not try to fence the truth in with words.
Reid stopped in front of a simple wood-framed house painted white and whose somewhat fussy, gingerbread-y style reflected the tastes of another age. He turned to Elias. “I… well, this is me,” he said.
Elias looked up at the house. Reid could see something in his face, some kind of longing. Elias looked back at Reid. “Thank you for taking me this far, Reid.” His voice was small and quiet.
“Where are you going to go from here?” Reid asked.
Elias sighed. “I… I don’t know, honestly. I haven’t figured it out.”
Reid gestures at the ribbon of asphalt. “Well, if you keep following this, you’ll end up in Morgantown.”
“How far away is that?”
Reid thought. “Mmm… a fair distance. Sixty, seventy miles at least.” He knew that he could drive this distance in a couple of hours… but it could take Elias several days to finish it. And, at the end of it, he might be no better off.
Elias essayed a brave smile. “Well, maybe I could find something there.” He turned to go; Reid started up the flight of stairs leading to his front porch, then stopped.
Reid took a deep breath; he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, but he knew that he would be angry with himself for not trying. “Elias…” he started.
Elias stopped, turned. “Yes?”
“I… look. It’s late and I know you have to be tired. Why don’t you… well, why don’t you at least stay the night here? You can rest up, get some decent food in you, clean up. I have a spare bedroom you can stay in.”
Elias shook his head. “You don’t have to do that, Reid. I’m fine.”
Reid sighed. “I know I don’t have to do it, Elias. I want to do it.” At Elias’ hesitation, Reid went on. “Look, you have to sleep somewhere. It might as well be here.” Reid wasn’t too sure why he wanted to do this, but he knew the answer was there if he chose to find it.
He could see a hint of relief in Elias’ face. “I don’t want to be any trouble…” the boy started.
“You won’t be.”
Elias looked down the road to the distant lights of town. Reid could see him doing the calculus in his head. He looked up, smiled, took one step towards Reid, and then another, and followed Reid up into the house.