“I’m going for a walk. Turn it off.”
Greer turned the key, leaving it in the ignition, and the idling engine cut off abruptly, the van seeming to settle down as if resting on its haunches.
I held my hand out. “Give me the keys.”
“The hell for?”
“So you don’t leave me alone out here.”
“I’m not—”
I leaned forward and jerked the keys out of the ignition. Greer grabbed at my hand, and I leaned back away from him. “Fucking dick,” he sputtered, pawing at me. “Piece of shit.” Fending him off with my left arm, I awkwardly grabbed the door handle with my right hand, still holding the keys, and swung the door open. Then I gracelessly half slid, half fell out of the van to the ground. “Give me my keys, you asshole!” Greer screamed. Instead, I stood up and slammed the door shut. “Fuck you!” Greer shouted, his voice muffled by the door. I held up the keys so he could see them and gave them a jingle. My well-developed sense of guilt kicked in for a moment—you’re taunting a man in a wheelchair—but only for a moment. The guy had sold drugs to students and then tried to frame me for it, after all. So I pocketed the keys, turned my back on Greer, and began to head up the heavily rutted road.
Leaving Pelham Greer in the van was actually smart, I told myself as I trudged up the dirt road in the dark. Driving up to Kelly’s front door didn’t seem like a good idea—if he was selling drugs, he might not appreciate a car pulling into his driveway in the middle of the night. I figured walking around a bit to scope out the area was a good idea.
Behind me, the van’s engine turned over and then roared. Headlights flared on, pinning me to the dark background of trees. I looked over my shoulder to see the van lurch forward. For a second I just stood there, mouth slightly open. He has a spare set of keys, I thought. Then I moved, stepping quickly off the road and behind a large oak. The van jerked to a stop ten feet away, the engine rumbling. I looked around the tree to see Greer’s face through the windshield, his lips curled back in a snarl. The trees were too big and too close together for him to drive between them and run me down. He raised a middle finger, and then the van was moving backward, turning tightly to the left before jerking again to a stop and then moving forward. It completed the turn and drove away from me into the night. “Damn it,” I said, staring at the red taillights winking at me. Greer had left me in the middle of nowhere, and he had my phone. At least the phone was locked, so he couldn’t call Kelly to warn him. Unless he had his own phone. Sighing, I turned and resumed my walk down the road toward whatever was waiting for me at the end of it. Snow crunched beneath my feet, and my face stung with the cold.
I was just beginning to think that Greer’s estimate of a quarter mile was off—I had walked more than that, I was sure of it—when the road hooked to the right, snaked between a pair of pines, and then opened into a snow-covered yard backed by a long ranch house. The house was trim and neat without being fussy, white siding on a brick foundation, a small covered porch shading the front door. A light shone on the porch, revealing a pair of empty wooden rocking chairs flanking the closed door.
Staring at the house, I walked right into a waist-high sign planted to the left of the driveway. It was oval with curled black text on a white background: “Ollie’s Orchids.”
I stepped to the side of the sign and moved behind a smaller pine tree, peering at the house. There were no other lights on besides the porch light, no cars in the yard. But I could see where tire tracks ate into the snow around the left-hand side of the house, so I sidled that way, trying to keep behind the trees as I went, my eyes on the house the whole time as I made my way around the back.
A small floodlight mounted over the back door of the house illuminated a cluttered backyard. A pickup truck, dark and empty, was parked beside a stack of firewood. Beyond the firewood stretched a long glass building—a greenhouse. I could hear a fan running over there—probably a heater. I could see nothing through any of the house’s back windows. The truck made me cautious, though, and Greer had assured me that Kevin Kelly would be home.
Unbidden, the memory of my father’s words from years earlier surfaced. In times of crisis, a man’s instinct is to do one of two things: retreat to a place of safety, or gather up his strength and hurl himself headlong into the fray. I walked back around to the front of the house, stepped up onto the porch, and knocked loudly on the front door.
I didn’t hear footsteps or any other indication that someone was inside, but suddenly the door was pulled open. Startled, I stepped back.
Kevin Kelly was standing before me. He was taller than I remembered. He had a mop of curly hair and a week-old beard ringing his round face. He was wearing jeans, a dirty long-sleeved tee shirt, and a pair of wire-framed specs. “Matthias,” he said. “Come in.” He turned and walked into the house, leaving the door open behind him. I hesitated, and Kevin was swallowed in the shadows past the foyer. His voice floated out of the darkness. “Close the door behind you. I’m not paying to heat the front yard.”
I walked into the house and pulled the door shut behind me. Inside it was dim, the air still and close. At the back of the foyer, Kevin turned left down an unlit hall, and after a moment I followed. As I passed a closed door, I could both hear and feel a steady, muffled hum, as if a large piece of machinery were throbbing nearby behind thick walls. Then I entered a well-lit kitchen, a room with low wooden beams overhead, the stove and refrigerator, and what I presumed was the back door on the wall to my right. To the left was a heap of broken furniture, half covering a door that presumably led to one of the front rooms off the foyer. In the middle of the kitchen, Kevin stood by a square wooden table. I now noticed his tee shirt had a picture of a cartoon moose with skis, under which was the caption “Chase the Moose.” He was scratching his right arm. “Rash,” he said. “Occupational hazard. Don’t know if it’s from the plants or the nutrients. Anyway.” He indicated one of two straight-backed chairs. “Have a seat.” His voice was just as I had remembered—slightly nasal, assured, the voice of a man who knows exactly what he is doing.
I sat in the chair, facing him across the table, and he settled into the other chair, still scratching his arm. A light fixture overhead shone in tight white circles on his spectacles, giving him the look of a benevolent, otherworldly creature, eyes ablaze with silver light. Then he leaned forward, and I could see behind his specs a pair of dark eyes that gazed curiously at me, in the way someone might watch a strange new animal in a zoo.