Next morning Skinner woke, doused the fire with water from a nearby creek, packed up, and moved on, cresting the ridge around noon. This was the tricky part that put his walking stick to good use. In places the trail narrowed to the width of two boots, riding the top of a crumbling, undulating spine. Lake Chelan stretched below like an enormous string bean. Skinner hiked along the ridge for a good two miles before the trail dipped toward the lake, steeply switching back and forth. He steadied himself by grabbing huckleberry branches along the path. On the third switchback he spotted the church steeple through the trees.
Soon the path leveled out and intersected with what used to be a paved road, now a zone of chunked-up asphalt overgrown with waist-high sedges. This was the main road, an isolated stretch going from one end of nowhere to the other in a town accessible only by boat. Bramble Falls seemed to have sprung fully formed from the mind of an omnipotent tourist, with its collection of artisans’ galleries and tackle shops, a magnet for pashmina-clad grandmothers and men wearing hip waders. Visitors used to come here in the summer to stay at the inn or the dozen B&Bs, to kayak and hike, to attend Buddhist retreats where no one was permitted to speak for days. Skinner had lived here with his dad, a retired fisherman and boat builder who’d escaped western Washington to spend the last few years of his life in the mountains. Decades later, walking through the ruins, Skinner wondered if he should remember more of these buildings and business signs. It was a documented side effect that indulging in too many enhanced memory trips chipped away at real memories, those ephemeral, less vivid, frozen moments so prone to distortion. Here was an ice-cream shop, identified with a dead neon sign in the shape of a dripping cone. The rusted skeletons of a few cars sat inert in the street. Trinket stores, the old grocery, a salon offering specials on facials and pedicures—all these places empty. Bramble Falls was a ghost town.
Skinner stood outside the two-story house considering the windows blinded by sheets of plywood, the yard with the tree where the tire swing still dangled from a plastic rope. Nearby a carcass of some sort, maybe a fox, hosted a buzzing convention of flies. Skinner walked to the door and opened it. Easy as that. Inside smelled of mildew and rot and animals. Light seeped through various holes and cracks. Objects that used to be pieces of furniture collected shadows in the living room. From where he stood he could see into the kitchen, where a cookie tin lay on the floor. The floorboards seemed to cry out in pain as he crossed to the stairs. He tested each stair with his walking stick before putting his weight on it, holding on to the railing as he climbed to the second story. Up here sunlight and wind fought their way through a window that hadn’t been covered. Skinner shook as he walked down the hall to his old bedroom. The door was ajar. He nudged it open. The room hadn’t changed. The football-print bedspread was as vibrantly green as he’d left it, books and sports trophies almost too neatly arranged on shelves. A toy fire truck sat in the spirals of a rag rug. This was all wrong. There should have been cobwebs, dust, peeling wallpaper. The place looked preserved.
A naked child with no eyes exploded from the closet.
Skinner reeled back. The boy jumped on the bed, spitting out sounds: “Bzzzzz! Beeezzzz! Bzzzzzst!”
Skinner ran. Down the stairs, out the front door, across the yard, gasping, back to the main road. He fell to the street, clawing at his face as he violently wept. Gradually he composed himself. The sound of shoes on gravel, thirty yards away. In a second Skinner was on his feet, Coca-Cola unholstered. A middle-aged man and woman jumped and exclaimed. Both wore multipocketed khaki vests and shorts, hiking boots, sun hats, backpacks laden with gear. The man bore a voluminous beard streaked with gray. The woman was considerably shorter, her face beaky and startled.
“Identify yourselves,” Skinner said.
“For God’s sake, wise elder, put that firearm down!” the man said.
“I said identify yourselves.”
“We’re doctors, Sal and Rhonda Vacunin.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We might ask you the same question!” Rhonda exclaimed.
“We’re here conducting academic research for a book,” Sal said. “Now please point that pistol elsewhere!”
Skinner returned the gun to its armpit holster. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect anyone else to be here.”
“We heard a commotion and had to satisfy our curiosity,” Sal said. “And now that we’ve given our reason for being here, what’s yours?”
“I used to live here.”
The professorial couple both rose up on their tiptoes with hands aflutter and mouths agape.
“Why, how unbelievably serendipitous!” Sal exclaimed as the couple rushed to grasp Skinner’s shoulders as if he were an old friend. “Rhonda, can you believe our fortune? How grand!”
“How grand indeed!” Rhonda laughed. “Oh, you must join us for supper. There are so many things we’d love to ask you. We didn’t catch your name.”
Skinner introduced himself, a little skeeved out by the sudden affection.
“Ah, like B. F. Skinner, the great radical behaviorist,” Sal laughed.
“Look, thanks for the invitation, but—”
Rhonda said, “Oh, we insist on plying you with wine in exchange for stories of this mystifying hamlet. Do indulge us, please?”
“Wine, huh?”
“But of course,” Sal said. “And merriment as well! Ha! Come, come!”
Skinner followed the professors to the building that used to be the town library. He’d spent many hours here as a child, studying histories of wars and assassinations, lost in action-adventure novels. The building was small but stately, constructed of marble and brass by way of an overly generous grant. The inside was a one-room affair, with high windows letting in dust-filtered light. The Vacunins had been here for some time. In one corner of the room was a neatly made bed. On tables were spread maps, papers, manuscripts, a couple solar laptops, stacks of photographs. Most of the shelves were empty but here and there stood books that had miraculously escaped the ravages of looters and silverfish, every one of them over a century old. Beside the work tables rose a tower of several cases of wine. Rhonda uncorked a bottle, splashing some Baco noir into a glass that looked clean enough.
“Welcome to our humble domicile,” Sal said.
“How long have you folks been here?” Skinner asked.
“Four months? Five?” Sal said.
“Oh, Sal, we’ve been here over a year,” Rhonda said.
Sal laughed. “One loses track of time when engaged in the passions of the mind.”
“Not to mention passions of other sorts,” Rhonda stage-whispered. The two giggled.
“You said you’re writing a book?”
“Indeed,” Sal said. “Focusing on the events that transpired in these parts during the early years of the FUS.”
Skinner lifted the wine to his lips. “Holy—this is good wine! What is this?”
“Bramble Falls Vineyards, FUS 12,” Rhonda said. “You’ll find that the Vacunins only imbibe the finest libations.”