Gurney made a mental note of the plate number and turned into the lane. As he reached a point that offered a partial view of the clearing ahead, a heavyset woman in a shapeless brown blouse and slacks came half running, half stumbling toward him. He stopped the car and got out.
“Did he hit you?” she cried in a panicky voice, trying to push her glasses, which were falling off, back in place. “Is he alright? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, just got a tiny kiss on the bumper. You are . . . ?”
“What?”
“May I have your name?”
“Nora. I’m his mother. I heard a crash. Is he alright?” Her glasses were thick, magnifying her watery eyes.
“If you mean the driver of the car that went speeding out of here, I don’t know anything about his condition. He hit a tree sideways, skidded out of the lane, and drove off. May I have your full name?”
“Rumsten. Nora Rumsten. Do you think he’s alright?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. What’s your son’s name?”
“Colson. It was such a loud crash. But you’re alright? What about your car? Was there any damage?”
Gurney checked his bumper. There was only a slight scrape. “No big problem. Perhaps we could go up to your house?”
Pushing her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose, she looked back toward the clearing, as if to confirm the location of her house. “Yes, I guess, yes, okay.”
When she didn’t show any sign of moving, he pointed up the lane. “You lead the way. I’ll follow.”
He drove slowly behind her. When they entered the clearing, he got a ground-level view of what he’d seen the day before from the satellite’s perspective. The cabin and the shed were both larger than the impression he’d gotten from the out-of-date aerial photo. A covered front porch had been appended to the cabin, and the raised planting beds with drifted snow against their sides now had the bare look of most Catskill gardens at that time of the year.
The woodpile, thirty or forty feet from the opening of the clearing, was covered with patches of windblown snow. A second woodpile, smaller and in a state of disarray, was in the process of being disassembled by a balding, gray-bearded man in rubber boots, muddy jeans, and what looked like an old Carhartt work jacket. His abrupt movements, grabbing and scattering the logs, conveyed more agitation than planning. Gurney got out of his car and joined the woman, who was pointing at the log hurler.
“Just look at him!” she cried. “That’s what sent Colson flying out of here. I don’t blame him, not when his father gets like this, which is too often. I mean, I’m sorry if he gave you a start, racing by you like that, but it’s not all his fault, not really, not when—” She shook her head, as though the situation were beyond explaining.
She called angrily to the man assaulting the woodpile, “I hope you intend to restack that mess you’re making!”
“The mess
“Fact is, Bert, Colson’s had another accident—thanks to you and your foul mouth!”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“You’re so deaf you didn’t hear the crash?”
Still holding the log, he walked toward her. “What crash?”
“He ran into a tree and grazed this gentleman’s car. Colson could’ve been killed!”
He eyed Gurney warily. “Ran into a tree? How? Where?”
Gurney answered calmly. “End of the lane. He was driving too fast, skidded, ricocheted off the big hemlock down there, nicked my front bumper, and kept going.”
Bert nodded slowly. “So . . . we’re not talking about a lot of damage. Tree’s no matter.” He took a few steps toward Gurney’s car and peered at the bumper. “Little smudge is all I see. Little polish ought to—”
His wife cut him off. “That’s not the point, Bert! Temper of yours sends the boy out of here like he’s been shot from a cannon. Not the first time, is it?”
He uttered a dismissive grunt. “Nothing to do with me. Not a damn thing! Running fast as he can from real life, is what it is. Boy’s allergic to the right way of doing things. A contrary nature from the day he was born. Say the ocean’s blue, he’ll say it’s black. Agree it’s black, he’ll say it’s purple. Tell him the right way of anything, guaranteed he’ll do it wrong. Screw it up on purpose.”
“Did it never occur to you there might be a better way of providing guidance than calling your son a fucking idiot?”
Bert bared his discolored teeth. “Lucky that’s all I called him, after the goddamn trouble he’s brought us, the money he’s cost us!”
She stared at him, a warning glare in her big myopic eyes.
He shook his head and wiped his mouth with a dirty red hand. Blinking and clearing his throat, he turned to Gurney with a cagey look. “So, that little affair down the road—way I see it, that’s between you and Colson. Got nothing to do with us.”
Gurney shrugged. “If you say so.”
