Always Watching

commune and used to ride our bikes out there to swim sometimes. My brother and I, we got to know a few of the kids. They were nice to us, but I remember rumors.”
    “They were a strange bunch. Okay for the most part.” Again he gave me a look, like he was evaluating me, trying to figure out what I was really about.
    “You met them?”
    “Yeah, I stopped my rig and hung out by their campfire a couple of times. I was trying to tell them that they shouldn’t hobble the horses.”
    I’d forgotten how scared I’d been for the horses when I was a child, knowing they could break a leg easily on all the trees on the ground. But I couldn’t remember ever seeing Larry at the site. I was surprised Aaron allowed it.
    He was still talking. “They liked to lecture me on logging, so I’d let them. Heck, why not, pretty women with hardly any clothes.” He smiled, his face slightly turned away, looking at me from the corner of his eyes, gauging my reaction. “I used to give them rides when they were hitchhiking into town. They’d accept a lift in a logging truck, and then all the way to the village they’d give me holy hell for killing trees.” He laughed, but he started coughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. He reached for some cough drops on the table, I pushed them toward him, about to get him some water, but he motioned that he was okay. His cat climbed up on the table, and he pulled it into his lap. It made me think of the stray near my house. I’d been checking her box every day since the catfight but there’d been no sign of her.
    When the coughing spell had stopped, he shook his head, and wheezed, “Getting old isn’t any fun.”
    “No, it isn’t.”
    The polite exchange over, he met my gaze. “That all you wanted to know?”
    It was clear he wanted me gone, so I had nothing to lose. “Do you remember a girl named Willow?”
    He stared off like he was thinking. “Don’t think so.…”
    “She had long, caramel-colored hair, big brown eyes, she was only about seventeen. Maybe you gave her a ride into town, say late July?”
    “That was over forty years ago. I’m lucky if I remember what I did yesterday.”
    “I’m sorry. I know it’s a stretch.”
    “I’d say. But I wished I did remember her, she sounds like a looker.” He gave a bawdy laugh and instead of it being amusing, it struck me as wrong, this old man mentally leering at a seventeen-year-old. He said, “Why you asking?”
    “She was just someone I remembered. I wondered if she was still in Shawnigan. I think she ran away from the commune or something.”
    “Far as I recall, most people were running to the commune, not away from it.”
    We held gazes. Again I wondered if he recognized me. Or had he known my mother? I looked down at my mug, took the last swallow of bitter coffee, and said, “Well, I’ve used up enough of your time. I should get going.”
    I stood up, and he followed, shuffling behind. I paused at the door when I noticed a painting of a small boy picking berries. It reminded me of Finn, and I wondered if Larry knew anything about the case.
    “I heard a little boy also died out there.…”
    His eyes widened, but then closed back down. He nodded. “That was a bad bit of business. Parents smoking too much wacky tobacky, and the kid dies in a puddle.”
    “That’s so sad. Do you know if anyone was ever charged?”
    “The cop who worked the case, Steve Phillips, he’s retired now, but he’s still in Shawnigan. You’d have to ask him about that.”
    I nodded. “Thanks for the information. It was interesting.”
    He just grunted.
    At the bottom of the stairs, I turned around. “I’d love to talk to that officer. Do you know where he lives?”
    We held gazes again, his revealing nothing, then he said, “He lives by the provincial park. Big white house at the end of Minnow Lane—he’s got a camper in the front.”
    I knew the area well. In the summer evenings, after we’d been hauling hay all day, our dad would stop at the park and we’d race through the dark trails in the forest, over the open field into the water, washing away the hay and sweat.
    “Thanks, that’s very helpful.” The words were barely out before he’d shut the door. But a corner of his blind lifted up as I backed down the driveway.
    I felt him watching me until I’d turned around and driven off.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    It didn’t take me long to find the white house, but when I knocked on the door I was greeted by silence.