Firestarter(52)

He stood by the chain for a moment, looking at the leather tab, then at the keys themselves. There were almost two dozen of them. Keys were funny things; you could index a life by the keys that had a way of collecting on your keyring. He supposed that some people, undoubtedly people who had realized a higher degree of organization than he had, simply threw their old keys away, just as those same organizational types made a habit of cleaning their wallets out every six months or so. Andy had never done either.

Here was the key that opened the east-wing door of Prince Hall back in Harrison, where his office had been. His key to the office itself. To the English Department office. Here was the key to the house in Harrison that he had seen for the last time on the day the Shop killed his wife and kidnapped his daughter. Two or three more he couldn't even identify. Keys were funny things, all right.

His vision blurred. Suddenly he missed Vicky, and needed her as he hadn't needed her since those first black weeks on the road with Charlie. He was so tired, so scared, and so full of anger. In that moment, if he'd had every employee of the Shop lined up in front of him along Granther's road, and it someone had handed him a Thompson submachine gun...

"Daddy?" It was Charlie's voice, anxious. "Can't you find the key?" "Yes, I've got it," he said. It was among the rest, a small Yale key on which he had scratched T.P. for Tashmore Pond with his jackknife. The last time they had been here was the year Charlie was born, and now Andy had to wiggle the key a little before the stiff tumblers would turn. Then the lock popped open and he laid the chain down on the carpet of fall leaves.

He drove the Willys through and then re-padlocked the chain.

The road was in bad shape, Andy was glad to see. When they came up regularly every summer, they would stay three or four weeks and he would always find a couple of days to work on the road-get a load of gravel from Sam Moore's gravel pit and put it down in the worst of the ruts, cut back the brush, and get Sam himself to come down with his old dragger and even it out. The camp road's other, broader fork led down to almost two dozen camp homes and cottages strung along the shorefront, and those folks had their Road Association, annual dues. August business meeting and all (although the business meeting was really only an excuse to get really loaded before Labor Day came and put an end to another summer), but Granther's place was the only one down this way, because Granther himself had bought all the land for a song back in the depths of the Depression.

In the old days they'd had a family car, a Ford wagon. He doubted if the old wagon would have made it down here now, and even the Willys, with its high axles, bottomed out once or twice. Andy didn't mind at all. It meant that no one had been down here.

"Will there be electricity, Daddy?" Charlie asked.

"No," he said, "and no phone, either. We don't dare get the electricity turned on, kiddo. It'd be like holding up a sign saying HERE WE ARE. But there are kerosene lamps and two range-oil drums. If the stuff hasn't been ripped off, that is." That worried him a little. Since the last time they'd been down here, the price of range oil had gone up enough to make the theft worthwhile, he supposed.

"Will there be-"Charlie began.

"Holy shit," Andy said. He jammed on the brakes. A tree had fallen across the road up ahead, a big old birch pushed down by some winter storm. "I guess we walk from here. It's only a mile or so anyway. We'll hike it." Later he would have to come back with Granther's one-handed buck and cut the tree up. He didn't want to leave Irv's Willys parked here. It was too open.

He ruffled her hair. "Come on."

They got out of the Willys, and Charlie scooted effortlessly under the birch while Andy clambered carefully over, trying not to skewer himself anywhere important. The leaves crunched agreeably under their feet as they walked on, and the woods were aromatic with fall. A squirrel looked down at them from a tree, watching their progress closely. And now they began to see bright slashes of blue again through the trees.

"What did you start to say back there when we came to the tree?" Andy asked her. "If there would be enough oil for a long time. In case we stay the winter." "No, but there's enough to start with. And I'm going to cut a lot of wood. You'll haul plenty of it, too."

Ten minutes later the road widened into a clearing on the shore of Tashmore Pond and they were there. They both stood quietly for a moment. Andy didn't know what Charlie was feeling, but for him there was a rush of remembrance too total to be called anything so mild as nostalgia. Mixed up in the memories was his dream of three mornings ago-the boat, the squirming nightcrawler, even the tire patches on Granther's boots.

The cottage was five rooms, wood over fieldstone base. A deck jutted out toward the lake, and a stone pier poked out into the water itself. Except for the drifts of leaves and the blowdowns of three winters, the place hadn't changed a bit. He almost expected Granther himself to come strolling out, wearing one of those green and black checked shirts, waving and bellowing for him to come on up, asking him if he'd got his fishing license yet, because the brown trout were still biting good around dusk.

It had been a good place, a safe place. Far across Tashmore Pond, the pines glimmered gray-green in the sunshine. Stupid trees, Granther had said once, don't even know the difference between summer and winter. The only sign of civilization on the far side was still the Bradford Town Landing. No one had put up a shopping centre or an amusement park. The wind still talked in the trees here. The green shingles still had a mossy, woodsy look, and pine needles still drifted in the roof angles and in the cup of the wooden gutter. He had been a boy here, and Granther had shown him how to bait a hook. He had had his own bedroom here, paneled in good maple, and he had dreamed a boy's dreams in a narrow bed and had awakened to the sound of water lapping the pier. He had been a man here as well, making love to his wife in the double bed that had once belonged to Granther and his wife-that silent and somehow baleful woman who was a member of the American Society of Atheists and would explain to you, should you ask, the Thirty Greatest Inconsistencies in the King James Bible, or, should you prefer, the Laughable Fallacy of the Clockspring Theory of the Universe, all with the thudding, irrevocable logic of a dedicated preacher.