But today, the day after the incident Arnold had begun to think of as The Encounter, complete with capitals, he had a decision to make. He enjoyed running. He especially enjoyed the solitude of the tree belt, and running against the wind off the prairie. He liked the clean rock-and-water smell of the Red River, and the far-off sound of airhorns on I-29. It was just after Labor Day, and Fort Moxie’s short summer was fading fast. He did not like to lose what little good weather was left, especially to an aberration, a trick of the senses.
Arnold had been unnerved by the experience. He trembled at the prospect of going there again, understood he could keep away and no one would ever know he had given in to his fear. He might wonder for a time what had actually happened, but he knew that eventually he would assign the event to an active imagination.
That seemed like the safer course.
Yes. He would stay clear. No point tempting fate. Why ask for trouble? This afternoon, he would confine himself to running in town. Getting near the end of the season anyway. And having made his decision, he welcomed Janet Hasting in at eleven, and went to lunch shortly after with a clear conscience.
Arnold said hello to the small crowd of regulars in Clint’s, and drew up a chair beside Floyd Rickett, who was dismembering a BLT. Floyd was tall, gray, sharp-nosed, pinched-looking, well-pressed in his postal uniform. He harbored strong opinions, and an unflappable sense of the importance of his own time. Cut to the bottom line, he was fond of saying, jabbing with the three middle fingers of his right hand. Floyd did a great deal of jabbing: He jabbed his way into conversations, jabbed through political opposition down at the club (where he was recording secretary), jabbed through lines and crowds. Life is short. No time to waste. Cut to the bottom line. At the post office, he specialized in sorting out problems caused by the general public. Floyd tolerated no sloppy wrapping, no barely-legible handwriting, no failure to add the proper zip code.
“You look upset,” he said, targeting Arnold.
Arnold sat down and shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so.” Jab. “Your color’s not good.” Jab. “And you’re avoiding eye contact.” Slice.
Arnold immediately tried to look directly into his eyes. But it was too late. “Something odd happened to me yesterday.”
Bottom line. “What?” Floyd leaned forward with interest. Odd occurrences, especially of the sort that could drain the equanimity from as solid a citizen as Arnold Whitaker, were rare in Fort Moxie.
“I don’t know how to explain this, exactly.” Arnold looked up as Aggie came over to take his order. When she had gone, he repeated his observation.
“Just get to the point,” said Floyd.
“I was jogging in the wind screen yesterday. I go up there every day, after I close up.”
Floyd shifted his weight.
“I heard a voice,” Arnold said.
Floyd took another bite out of his BLT, chewed, and frowned when nothing more was forthcoming. “I give up,” he said at last. “Who was it?”
“There wasn’t anyone there.”
“Must have been somebody. There was somebody behind a tree.”
“No.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“It wasn’t a voice like yours or mine. What I mean is, that it wasn’t a person’s voice at all.”
Floyd frowned. “What other kinds of voices are there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. What did it say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Just my name.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yes.”
Floyd tilted his head, smiled, and finished his iced tea. “Got to go,” he said. He had recognized that this was a conversation without a bottom line. No need to waste time on it. “Listen, Arnold, what you heard was an echo. Or the wind. Wind plays funny tricks sometimes.” He patted his lips with his napkin. “Maybe you need to take a few days off.”
Arnold went back to the store, and reconsidered his decision to stay away from the wind screen. He could not allow himself to be frightened off from something he really enjoyed doing. Especially when he had no explanation to offer, even to himself. By two o’clock, he had decided to confront whatever might be lurking (and that was the word that kept coming to mind) in the trees. And damn the consequences. But over the next hour, the forces of caution stormed back and retook the hill.
He considered inviting Dean, his part-timer, to go with him. But how would he explain the request? And anyway the kid was in terrible shape, and would only slow him down if a quick exit became necessary.
By the end of the business day, he had changed his mind several times, and finally settled on a compromise: He would stay out of the trees, but he would run as close to them as he could, while remaining on the streets.
His usual regimen, after locking up and changing into his sweat suit, was to drive down and park at the Historical Center, then run back along Bannister Avenue through town, and connect with the jogging path on the west side. Then he would follow it around the northern perimeter of Fort Moxie, passing the site of The Encounter, and eventually come out at the Historical Center. The route was about five miles long. He never actually ran that distance, couldn’t run that far, but he used a combination of jogging and walking. And sometimes he stopped altogether. Frequently did so, in fact. All in all, he might need anywhere from an hour and a quarter to two hours to complete the course.
Today would be different. He left his car in the garage and started out along Bannister, cruising past the post office and the bank and the Prairie Schooner Bar and Mike’s Supermarket and the Intown Video Store. But, instead of continuing all the way out to the western side, he turned north at Fifth Street, cutting across the leaf-strewn grounds of the Thomas Jefferson Elementary School.
Directly ahead, about six blocks, he could see the line of elms and boxwoods. The treetops rolled in a brisk prairie wind. They looked harmless enough. They also looked deep: when he’d been a boy, Arnold’s imagination had delighted in turning the narrow belt of trees into thick woods. That childhood Fort Moxie had been a redoubt carved out of a vast forest, rather than a lonely outpost on the prairie.
He left the school behind, cruised past homes and the bake shop and the North Star Apartments. Two blocks up from Bannister, he passed Floyd’s house. It was a pale green immaculately-kept two-story frame, with an enclosed front porch. Two box elders grew in a spacious, freshly-raked front yard. (The leaves had been bagged, and lined a side wall.) Broad manicured hedges marked its boundaries. A carefully-arranged assortment of bushes implied the owner’s almost obsessive taste for symmetry and order. The evening newspaper, the Grand Forks Herald, lay folded in the middle of the lawn.
Floyd’s red Nissan was parked in the driveway. And the man himself appeared at the door, waved to Arnold, and strolled out to pick up his newspaper.
Arnold waved back.
“Look out for the thing in the woods,” he called, as Arnold passed.
Shouldn’t have said anything. Arnold increased his pace slightly, felt his cheeks grow warm.
He was now approaching the Fort Moxie Library.
The library was the town’s pride. The taxpayers had supported a bond issue, an architect from Bismarck had designed the structure to resemble a Greek temple, and contributions of both books and money kept the institution well-funded.
The Greek temple commanded the top of a rise surrounded by lawns which had just begun to turn brown. Two elms, a flagpole, a statue of a cavalry soldier (from the days when the town was really a fort), and a few woodland iris and honeysuckle bushes contributed to a sense of disconnectedness from the world outside. The library was a time warp, located in a town that did not even have a police officer. It was part Hellenic, part 1910. A pebbled walkway, lined with green benches, curved through the grounds. The benches were occupied by teenagers, or by older residents enjoying the late summer days. And one, the one directly in front of the temple, facing it, held a stranger, a young woman Arnold had never seen before. She was, as he was quick to note, as his breath left him and he ran off the side of the curb, a woman of surpassing beauty.