I didn’t.
Then she began to tell me a story about the past. Not my past, but her past, my father’s and mother’s past. It was about an event that took place back in the early 1960s before I was born. Back when my father had just begun his career as a state trooper for Rensselaer County, back when the house in the woods was not a house in the woods at all, but a house surrounded by farmland.
“There had always been something terrible surrounding that home,” she said. “It was a dark place, the house not kept up, the vegetation that surrounded it overgrown and neglected. They had a few animals, but pathetic stock. Your father had just moved to his place at the time and had, in fact, purchased his spread from the Whalen’s. They were always desperate for money so eventually they sold off most of what they owned, including a good sized parcel of Mount Desolation.”
She looked away from me, toward the window.
“The Whalen family was what you might refer to in today’s day and age as, dysfunctional. The father was a heavy drinker; an alcoholic. Rarely did he emerge from the house, other than to start up his truck, drive it into town for groceries and of course, whiskey. Mrs. Whalen did the best she could raising a daughter and a son on what little money came in. Although it was never proven, it was widely believed that young Joseph took the brunt of his father’s anger.
“I believe his father beat him, beat him terribly. Joseph was an abused boy and like many abused boys he grew up to be cruel. He was eventually dismissed from high school for stalking and then inappropriately touching a girl in his class. The incident was kept hush-hush. Not a strange thing for the day. But Joseph was asked not to come back and I think for him it was a relief. He spent his days and nights on the farm after that, rarely leaving it, hunting and fishing for food; growing what he could.
“Things were quiet for some time, until one night not long before President Kennedy was assassinated, we all awoke to a fire. The Whalen’s barn was burning. The fire lit up the night sky and we all came out of our houses to see it. My husband and I got in the truck and drove down to your parents’ place. Your father and mother were already up and holding vigil outside in the driveway. She was pregnant at the time with a baby that eventually miscarried. Your father had this look on his face I remember. It was a cross between worried and downright furious. The door to the squad car assigned to him was open and the radio was spitting out orders. Your dad was being ordered to investigate the scene while fire and police backup were on their way.
“What he found inside that house that night shook up our small community something terrible. Joseph shot them all while they lie asleep in their beds. His mother, father and sister. Your father found them like that, in their beds. He found Joseph sitting outside the barn, the shotgun in his hands, just staring unblinking at the fire.
“Your father arrested the fourteen-year-old boy on the spot. He was convicted and because of his age, treated as a youth. A ‘crime of passion’ they called it; the desperate action of an abused youth. In the end he was incarcerated for ten years up in a mental institution just outside of Saranac. By the time he was released in 1973 he was twenty-four years old. He returned to that house that by now was surrounded by thick woods. Joseph kept to himself, but still we were acutely aware of his presence. It was as if the devil himself was in our midst.
“Then women started going missing. Young women, some of them girls. No one attributed their disappearance to him at first, but I think your father suspected. Finally, an Albany woman had the guts to come forward and identify Whalen in a lineup. He’d abducted and attempted to rape her, but somehow she’d managed to get away. After she came forward so did a few others who’d been lucky enough to escape him.
“They sent him away then for thirty years and what we thought would be for good. You girls were still young at the time so I can’t begin to describe the sigh of relief that was breathed by our entire community.”
I took in Caroline’s story. Each one of her words seemed to bear a great weight. I had no idea about my father, about what he’d seen, about what he’d been ordered to do by his state trooper superiors. In my mind I pictured him walking the upstairs of that horrible house only to witness the dead bodies. I knew then that the reason he forbade me and Molly to enter those woods had nothing to do with a stream that ran as deep and strong as a river or the cliff and waterfall beyond it.
It had everything to do with Whalen.
How he could have kept the horrible story of that house and the people who had been murdered there from Molly’s and my ears for so long a time was beyond me. But certainly not impossible. Not when it came to my dad. Not when it came to protecting his daughters. Molly and I knew about Whalen’s rape conviction; knew that he’d been sent to prison for a time that seemed forever. We felt secure because he wouldn’t be able to get to us from prison. He wouldn’t be able to hurt us or our parents. We knew about his arrest but we never knew about his murders. And I’m glad we didn’t.
Caroline stood.
“Joseph Whalen,” I said, my voice stuttering, stammering, eyes tearing. “When Molly and I were twelve…” She pressed her open hand against mine. “We… never… told anyone.”
She too began to cry.
“I know,” she said, patting my hand. “I didn’t always know. But now after what happened to you in the woods on Friday… after what the detective told me… now I know.”
We were silent from that point forward.
Until Franny came back.
Chapter 77
He had a smile on his round face.
I didn’t know whether to attribute the smile to the pie he’d just eaten inside the hospital cafeteria or to the painting he was about to give me.
The final painting.
As he picked it up and brought it to my bed, I felt my heart beat. In my head, flashes of images. Faces. Michael. Molly. Whalen.
Like the other four before it, this image took my breath away. Unlike the others, however, it did not frighten me. What this image represented was the end of something.
It was an almost exact representation of Molly and me. We were sitting by the stream in the woods, still dressed in our cut off jeans and t-shirts. Molly was washing me with the stream water, washing my hair, touching me with the cold, clean water and her gentle hand. It had been only moments since Whalen had attempted to do terrible things to us and failed. But now he was gone and Molly was being strong. Strong enough for the both of us. Molly was washing me in the stream. It was a baptismal ceremony; Molly making all things new again.
I laid my head back on the bed, into the soft pillow. I wanted to cry. For Molly, for Michael, for Franny, for everyone. But I felt that I couldn’t possibly cry another tear.
This painting was the end of something.
Somehow I was happy about that. Happy and sad at the same time.
“What’s its title Franny?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“’Touch’,” he said softly.
Maybe there were no more tears to shed, but I felt myself choking up. I felt my heart and my lungs and all my organs twist inside out.
“You were there, weren’t you?” I said. “All those years ago in the woods. You saw what happened to Molly and me. You must have seen it all through a basement window.”
He stood by the bed in his baggy jeans and yellow suspenders and he began to cry. He cried for the both of us. It was all too true. Franny had witnessed the attacks and couldn’t find a way to express what he’d seen. He couldn’t communicate it until now; this very week. Like me, like Molly, Franny had been carrying the burden for nearly his entire life.