Applewood (Book 1) Read online

  Maneuvering down the crumbling street, Dugan watched with growing unease as the overgrown woods on either side closed in. At their thickest, he cringed to hear branches scrape against both sides of his car. A nervous few seconds later, the road widened ahead of him and the woods began to recede. As he emerged from the dark tunnel, he caught his first glimpse of the overgrown lawns and abandoned houses.

  Crumbling late ‘60s and early ‘70s Colonials occupied small plots of land, lining both sides of the street. Most of the windows had been broken long ago, leaving the structures unprotected against the vagaries of wind, weather and time. Still, it surprised him to see just one house totally burned out. The black scorch marks above its empty windows evidenced the raging fire that had licked against the melted yellow paint. He wondered who might have cared enough to put it out.

  Distracted for a moment, he felt the jarring crash of the street slamming against his undercarriage as he drove too fast over a deep rut. He slowed just in time to ensure the rear wheels passed over more slowly, then stopped the car, took a deep breath, and waited for his heart to slow.

  Rolling down his window, he revved the engine loudly and listened closely to the sound. Relieved that apparently, no harm had been done, he put the car into gear and proceeded more cautiously down the empty street, arriving at a small cul-de-sac marking the end of the road. He took a moment to gather his strength before turning to glance at the house on the right—the house where he’d grown up.

  Halfway up a small hill, it was a gray three-story edifice. The third floor windows were boarded over, but glass remained throughout the first two stories. A covered porch along one side connected to a gazebo in back. He turned his car into the gravel driveway and drove up the sloping hill. After shutting off the car, he reached for his knapsack and stepped out.

  Pulling his coat tight against the chill, he grabbed a few small boxes and a handful of hangered clothes from the back seat. Draping the loose clothing on top of the boxes, he carried them awkwardly up the steps. At first glance, the porch appeared in decent shape. But further along, toward the gazebo end, he saw boards missing or rotted through. Most of the white painted trim had peeled away to reveal a flesh colored undercoat. Putting down the boxes, he reached into his knapsack for the keys. He inserted a key into the rusty lock in the weathered door, then pushed the door open and stepped across the threshold into the dark and empty house.

  He was greeted by a powerful, musty odor: dank earth and rank sweat mingled with the fetidness of sweetly rotting fruit. His eyes watered, and he stepped backwards again onto the porch. Turning his head to expel his breath, he began waving the door open and closed to coax some outside air into the house. He almost smiled to think that as bad as it was, he had expected worse. After a while, he picked up the largest box and stuck it in the doorway before bending down to grasp the rest of his boxes, juggling the hangered clothes on top.

  Walking down the dark narrow hallway, he stopped at the first doorway on the right. It opened into a small sunroom with a beatup couch. Crumpled yellow sheets lay on top of the couch in a heap. Two oversized chairs sat opposite, interior foam poking out of dozens of rips and tears. A worn oriental rug covered most of the hardwood floor.

  The next entrance on the right led to a small living room with a fireplace. Tattered brownish yellow curtains hung half open in front of the three bay windows. Further down the hall, he looked into a room on the left and recalled that his family had used it sparingly as a formal dining room. It was empty now, bereft of all furnishings.

  At the end of the hallway, he poked his head into the kitchen. Empty beer bottles and cans covered every surface. The room reeked of stale nicotine from hundreds of cigarette butts overflowing the ashtrays scattered among the empties. Dugan sensed a fouler odor coming from the fridge, but he wasn’t ready to investigate that yet. Turning, he walked back down the hallway to the sunroom. He put his stuff on the floor and made three trips to the car for the rest: a few more boxes and two trash bags holding loose clothing and bed linens.

  He put on his gloves before lifting the yellowed sheets from the tattered couch and stuffing them into a trash bag. He picked up a few stray beer cans and chucked them in the bag as well, twirling it shut to contain the reek. After opening the five windows, he grabbed a coat hanger and beat it against the well-worn sofa. Large motes of dust and dirt rose into the air before they were trapped in the stream of cold winter breeze and sucked out of the house.

  After a while, he risked a quick sniff of the sofa. He detected only a mild funk, with perhaps a hint of Aqua Velva. Smiling, he grabbed the bag with his bedclothes and made up the couch, then walked through the adjoining door into the living room. It took him a moment to remember how to work the fireplace. The brass knob of the flue stuck, but a small bit of force always did the trick. He used sheets of paper from a small notebook as kindling, and somehow, the half-burned log in the fireplace caught.

  After throwing another log on, he returned to the front room to close the windows and grab his cigarettes. He snagged the box of crackers and went to the cooler for the tomato juice, taking it all back in front of the fire. While the food did nothing to satisfy his hunger, it gave him something to do.

  He set the food aside after a while, took off his jacket, and lit up a smoke. The room warmed up considerably as he flicked ashes into the hearth, and after a few minutes his eyes became heavy with the overwhelming need for sleep. He flung the butt into the fireplace and was able to muster strength enough to drag his tired body into the next room.

  He shut the curtains so not a hint of daylight could get through, then slammed the sliding doors that led into the room. Slumping onto the sofa, barely conscious, he managed to kick off his shoes and lift his legs onto the cushions. He pulled the thick comforter over his entire body and was asleep before his head was on the pillow.

  Although his condition made him incapable of dreams, Dugan’s last conscious thoughts were about his boyhood, and the events that had brought him back to this place…

  3

  In the days of my youth

  Fourteen-year-old Scott Dugan groped for his nightstand and shut off the alarm before rolling out of bed. His eyes were still closed as he reached to the floor for yesterday’s crumpled jeans. After pulling them over his pajama bottoms, he opened his eyes and walked across the room to his dresser. He grabbed an old sweatshirt and put it on while shoving his already sock-clad feet into a pair of dingy blue and black high tops. Fully dressed, he left the room and tiptoed down the stairs into the kitchen.

  He turned on the coffee maker and grabbed an apple from the fridge. Pulling a handful of biscuits from the box in the cabinet under the sink, he filled his sweatshirt’s pouch and went into the bathroom off the kitchen to take a whiz. Before leaving, he ran some water over his fingers and ran them through his unruly mop of blondish-brown hair. In the hallway, he heard snoring from the sunroom. He looked in and saw his father asleep on the couch, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes and only half-covered with an old blanket. Dugan walked over and gently pulled off his father’s shoes before hiking the blanket over him. The old man stirred but did not awaken.

  He went out back to the shed where he kept his bike, tightening his scarf against the wind and cold of the late March morning. It was still dark as he hopped onto his battered ten-speed and rode to the top of the street. From there, he took a left onto Route 135 and rode the half mile up to Katy’s Korner just off the highway.

  The Korner was an old-fashioned drive-through variety store that sold cigarettes and beer and penny candy. It had a couple of gas pumps for folks who might wander in off the highway, and between the pumps was a small wooden hutch that belonged to Dugan. Its once green paint was mostly gone now, but it was to this box that trucks came every day from Boston to drop off the newspapers for Dugan’s route.

  His routine was the same every morning. He pulled off his gloves with his teeth and knelt down to open the hutch. Using his pocketknife, he cut t
he thick twine off the two large stacks and was pleased to see no circulars this morning. That always saved him time. He reached behind the box and into a hidden alcove where Mr. Gordon left a can of Coke for him each day. Popping the tab, he sat back to read the paper. The presidential race was heating up. Iranian students still held the hostages. Interest rates might exceed twenty percent.

  After finishing his Coke and the paper, he folded the papers and stacked them carefully into the twin saddle baskets. That done, he got on his bike and took a left out of the lot, swerving back and forth on the empty road to help balance his load and pick up some speed. His routine was to first ride out to the houses that were farthest away before turning around and heading back home to his own neighborhood. He stopped at every house to carefully insert the paper into the front door.

  About halfway along his route, there was a slight dip in the road. He always sped up when approaching this stretch to heighten that weightless, fluttery feeling in his stomach. It was at about this same place every morning that he waved at a passing truck, Mr. Gregory making the early morning deliveries of fresh milk and cream from the dairy farm.

  He had learned over time which houses had dogs and how close to the front door he dare venture. The Wilson Shepherd and the Smith Doberman were well tempered and wagged their tails when he approached. Dugan was able to feed them the biscuits straight from his hand. But Mrs. Skinner’s poodle was another matter entirely. He had to throw the biscuit away from the house and then make a run for the door lest his ankles suffer the consequences.

  Sometimes, there would be an envelope taped to the front door, the laggards who waited weeks to pay him or the jerks who didn’t tip but wouldn’t stiff him to his face. He collected in person every Sunday just to let the stiffs know he was on to them. He figured today’s envelopes should yield about twenty bucks or so.

  By the time he turned his bike back home into Applewood, he would be down to a dozen of the sixty papers he delivered each morning. These went to his closest neighbors, with the last paper going to the house next door to his own.

  Turning into his driveway, he rode up the steep hill just as the sun began breaking through the early morning cloud cover. After putting his bike in the shed, he ran up the back porch and into the house where his father slept on in the sunroom. He hung up his coat and looked at his watch to see it was 6:45. His mother would be up by now.

  Smiling as he walked down the hallway, he entered the kitchen and there she was, sitting alone at the end of the kitchen table. She looked up at him and smiled. Dugan went over and made himself a strong cup of joe—black, no sugar—before sitting down to join her at the table.

  “What’s new in the world?” his mother asked, invoking their daily ritual. He told her about the presidential election and the hostages, but left out the part about the interest rates. He didn’t know just how bad things were, but he figured their family was probably in hock big time by now. Had to be.

  His father hadn’t worked in ages and she just made excuses, so it was a subject they each now tried to avoid. She worked as a secretary at the dentist’s office and had to be at work by 8:00. She didn’t drive, so she usually scrounged a ride from a co-worker or took a cab that cost an hour’s pay. Dugan couldn’t wait until he could drive.

  “Are you going to shower?” she asked.

  “Naw, don’t need to. I got gym second period so I can shower there.” It would also leave some hot water for his mother.

  He sipped at his coffee for a while before looking at his watch and realizing he had to leave now if he was going to catch the bus. Gulping down the last swallow, he got up and walked over to put the mug into the sink, before turning again to look at his mother.

  She was nibbling at her right thumbnail and staring off into space, her half-finished coffee gone cold in front of her. When he looked into her face, he saw a single tear trickle slowly down her cheek. He walked over behind her and bent down to give her a big hug, to nuzzle his face into her neck one last time, and as always he clutched only empty air.

  “He loves you very much, you know,” his mother’s voice said softly, but only inside his head. She’d been dead almost a year now.

  He stiffened and turned away, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. Dropping a ten onto the table for his father, he turned his back on the empty room and walked down the hallway, grabbing his coat before heading out the door.

  There were already about a dozen kids standing at the top of the street in the semi-gloom of the late winter morning, waiting for the bus. Dugan saw Mike Dolloff standing alone, clutching something close to his chest wrapped in a brown paper bag. An undersized seventh grader with fiery red hair and freckles, Mike’s family owned the funeral home in town. Dugan would be forever grateful for the kindness they showed him and his father last summer.

  Walking over to Mike, Dugan tried to sneak a peek into the brown paper bag while thinking that whatever it was, it looked heavy. “What you got there, squirt?”

  Mike smiled up at him. “Check this out.”

  He bent over and lay the bag flat on the ground before slowly and deliberately sliding something obviously fragile out of it, about a foot and a half square. When Dugan crouched lower to get a better look, he saw it was a carefully constructed, three-dimensional, papier-mâché diorama. Dugan’s best friends Larry Miller and Jimmy Thompson came over to get a better look, too.

  “It’s Gettysburg,” Mike said proudly.

  Dugan was astonished. There were painted green fields in the valleys. Brown roads made from real dirt led into and out of the battlefield. One-inch, delicately cut pine stalks densely populated the sloping hills, giving the illusion of enormous trees. Plastic blue and gray Civil War game pieces showed the positions of the opposing forces. Tiny plastic cannons marked the artillery positions, while in the ranks, plastic generals on plastic horses led plastic infantrymen to glory.

  But as he stared at it, Dugan began to feel woozy. He heard the anvil sound of blood pounding inside his skull, distant echoes of the tiny cannons. After another moment, his vision began to cut in and out.

  “See, that’s Cemetery Ridge,” Mike said, pointing things out. “And underneath that is Little Round Top. That’s where Picket charged.”

  But to Dugan, his voice seemed a million miles away. He felt a momentary, though not altogether unpleasant, sense of vertigo, and then tunnel vision blurred away both his friends and his neighborhood. He couldn’t take his eyes off Mike’s creation. It was the only thing he could see. As he continued to stare, he was stunned to see the tiny diorama begin coming to life.

  Suddenly, Dugan felt a strong wind on his face, heard it whistling in his ears. Above him, he heard what sounded like a hundred propane lanterns. He managed to tear his eyes away from the scene for a moment and look up, to discover he was standing alone in the basket of an enormous hot air balloon, hundreds of feet above the bloody battlefield. As if in a dream, he looked down again.

  From high aloft, he watched the tiny cannon begin firing into the hills, taking down huge trees, blowing dirt a hundred feet into the air. He watched the Confederate infantry begin shooting down the hill into the Union forces gathered below. Some of the Union troops began to run, but men on huge horses came at them from behind, their swords drawn high to block their escape. Dugan saw a Union general on horseback move out in front of the fleeing troops. Raising his sword, he urged them to fight on, imploring them by his example to be brave.

  Even from this high up, Dugan could hear the shouts and screams of desperate men, could smell the acrid smoke rising from the battlefield. When a powerful gust of wind began shaking the balloon, he feared for a moment he would be sent tumbling out. As the shaking became more violent, the wind itself began to speak his name.

  “Dugan. Earth to Dugan. Come in Dugan…”

  He felt a strong hand squeezing his shoulder, trying to shake him out of it. He blinked hard and kept his eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them, he was back on his street.
Looking down, he saw that Mike had already slid the diorama back into the paper bag. When he glanced over his shoulder, Dugan saw the smiling face of his friend Jimmy, and realized that it had been he doing the shaking all along. He looked up and saw the cloud of black exhaust signaling that the bus had arrived.

  “Did you see that?” Dugan asked incredulously. He looked over to Jimmy and Larry.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool!” Larry said.

  “No, I mean did you see…” His friends looked at him expectantly.

  Realizing he’d never be able to explain some of the things he’d been seeing lately, he said, “Naw, never mind,” standing up just as the bus door opened. But when he reached into his breast pocket, he felt his stomach lurch.

  “Aww…shit,” he muttered.

  “What is it?” Jimmy asked.

  “Don’t have my ticket,” Dugan said grimly.

  He felt around, but was certain that it wasn’t there. He’d used it last night as a bookmark and then stupidly forgot to bring the book. Mingling with the crowd like he had every right to be there, he got on the bus after Jimmy and Larry. He had just turned the corner and thought he was home free when he felt Mr. Marden grab his shoulder.

  “You gotta ticket kid?” Marden used his strong hand to turn Dugan around.

  Dugan looked down before answering, “I forgot it.” He looked up and saw Jimmy and Larry walking back toward the front of the bus.

  “Can’t ride the bus without a ticket kid. Rules are rules.”

  Dugan waited a moment in an attempt to stifle his rising anger, before raising his head to look Marden in the eye.

  “I’ve been taking this bus every day for three years now. You know that. You know I’m supposed to be here.” He tried to stare down Marden, but Marden had stared down tougher kids than him. Dugan had seen him do it.

  “Let the kid take the bus,” Larry chimed in, to no avail.