1/6/1975

Mom slept ‘till 11. Or so dad told me when I came back. I was inclined to believe him, considering I heard her snoring right as I went out to meet Hannah and Janet. Brad joined me as I walked towards Kennedy Bld, right next to the bus stop. He seemed to be surprised to see me there, as if he’d never seen me take a bus.

Yeah, I am not walking all the way Downtown, and then trudging through that morass of brickwork up to the distillery quarter. I know it is the only thing keeping me something approaching slim- Or so Tara says- But a girl’s got her limits. I told as much to Brad while we were waiting for Janet, and he made a joke about our least favorite airhead. Turns out she’s been spreading rumors about him and Derek. Which, fine, girl, one of those days you’ll get what’s coming to you.

Now that I think about it, though, a date with Hannah’d be the perfect cover. Clever boys. If what Tara is saying is somewhat true. But then again, she thinks Mrs. Hopkins was playing tonsil hockey with some fellow from Hawthorne University, so.

Still, thank God Brad has gotten most of his good ol’ American Boy mojo back. He’s getting more work in with the rangers now that the pet munchings’ve graduated from “Freak occurrence” to “Actual problem.” They’re brainstorming a solution, it seems, and not a temporary one. But first, they need to know what they’re up against. I could’ve sworn a little Timmy popped up in my brain, calling it the fight of the century. The Rangers vs The Clearview Pet Muncher, now in simulcolor!

Brad was a lot more workmanlike about tackling this. He’s weighing towards an angry puma, ever the victims of CL&M’s land-logging. Though Derek and most of the senior Rangers think it may have been a coyote. Or two. Apparently they can accomplish some pretty wicked things when in a pack. Not that they could check for multiple bite marks, now that the original pooch had been put on ice.

He let it slip that he was going to miss the dog. Tara seemed to be less of a hoary harpy whenever they took the pooch on a walk, and in turn the schnauzer seemed to become mollified from its usual yappy self. But eventually, as with all good things we turned to envy, and its color. Yeah. The damn turtle. He was wondering if it really was true that Timmy found it in a creek.

Well, I told him, do you see any pet shops selling one of those? That was kind of the point, he admitted. Says sometimes people just, pick up forest critters thinking they’re lost, they need a home, or something equally magnanimous. More than a few reacted to the manhandling by returning the favor, and a handful were deemed not releasable. Thus handled over to uncle Carl. God bless him and his infinite patience towards fauna of all stripes.

Truth to be told, I was wondering where he’d keep finding so many feral cats. Especially for a dog person.

Still, I had to reassure Brad that no, The Unappealable Hulk was not being kept in our backyard against his will. If anything, keeping the damn thing from taking a dump on our carpet and chewing the upholstery was a struggle. An uphill one. I don’t know where that fable comes from, I told Brad. Damn turtles move fast. Especially when you aren’t looking. And they’re slippery too. Leathery, like a handbag someone spilled wine over. He instantly pegged the origin of the saying to Francis. He sure did not say it out loud, but he had that glint of recognition, that quiet curve of the lips, that inaudible “Oh.”

Anyway, Hannah popped out from Rosemary Street all fluffy and bright-eyed as usual, carrying a bag full of much needed supplies. We cracked open a cola as we waited for Janet. She didn’t take long, a leather purse. Or a document pouch. Or whatever fancy French name it had. It looked old. Dartmouth-esque.

Turns out it was pretty dated. So were the maps inside. Yellowed things, covered in dark blotches of a nature that was best not speculated on. They had a lot of 1800 names, a few Union generals. Saints. Irish ones, I think? And shops too. Their original incarnations, that is. The bus left us two blocks away from Mr. Bellamy’s shop, and yet countless twists and turns away.

IN fact, I idly wondered how the Lodge go about carting out its works to the antique shop. Didn’t spot any robot or wheelbarrow or whatever thing a sane person’d use, for starters. Then I wouldn’t call the streets and their greyed, cracked sidewalks “cramped”, but I couldn’t picture Mr. Bellamy carrying an armoire to the back of his shop all by himself. Maybe he had help? Seasonal hired help.

This and other questions swarmed my mind as we made our way past brickwork facades that’d seen better days. Lots of barred windows and FOR SALE signs. A handful of shops had been covered in scaffolding that hinted at some sort of ongoing renovation, but I could tell that it was going slow, or not going at all. Few graffitis even, mostly swirling gibberish in white paint that looked like a mangling of some cursive font. They were just scribbles in alleyways and a smattering of curse words on some shop, half faded. Whole place seemed to have just been given up.

Or so I thought by glancing at the empty, husk-like spaces past the metal armatures. I don’t know. I am not an expert in quasi-abandoned shops. Heck, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a closed-down shop before. At least not near the ‘burbs. Changing hands, sure, rebranding, also sure, but not downright closed.

There was little to tell them apart, to tell us what they once’d been. Janet pointed out to us the bits where there once had been plaques, signs. The brickwork, the stone was clearer there. One block in, and that wasn’t the case anymore. The wooden boards looked weathered by the rain, and there was this sort of scent, like wet plaster. Hate it. At least there weren’t any overturned trash cans laying about.

I wouldn’t call the place “Clean”, though. Just, the kind of lack of trash you get when no one lives here, and no one dumps their scraps as well. I knew the distillery quarter had suffered a hit during the Prohibition, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this desolate. Neither was Janet. She eyed dark windows with a look that was halfway between concerned and almost saddened, the lightest frown on those gentle lips. Guess it’s what happens when you’ve got a good visual imagination. I bet she was picturing these places as-they-were. Maps didn’t help, telling us of barbershops, of drugstores, of restaurants. I spotted an O’Malley & Sons- Choice Cuts Butchery here, a La Ville Greenhouse Gathering there. All surnames that rung hollowly familiar, emerging from faint memories.

Four of these establishments boxed in the Lodge. Mr. Bellamy’d told us we’d tell the building apart because of the chimney. Burnt brickwork, tall. Could see hints of a sloping black shingle roof at the base, elongated. We had to circle this whole bit a few times before figuring out the double oak doors were in fact the entrance. There was a buzzer, set in a brassy frame. It wasn’t just clean: It was polished.

You could tell this was a classy spot- Or at least wanted to be seen as such- By the Perpetua typefont, by the glass covers over the various blank spots. Eleven of them. Only the Lodge seemed to have survived. Its usher- And janitor- Was a man called Elias Hawthorne. No relationship with the university, he told us as he welcomed us into a warm-hued parlor that must’ve seen dozens of visitors once. Mr. Hawthorne’s got the same long hair look of De Santis, but his is snow-white, to go with a sharp nose and sharp blue eyes. An austere black waistcoat like a gothic valet completes the ensemble, together with a scent of candle wax and lacquered wood. Same brand of Ye Olden Gentleman as Mr. Bellamy. Perhaps the same generation? If that is so, then I need to learn how they age so gracefully.

The Lodge is not in session, he told us. Normally they wouldn’t receive visitors either, but a friend of his- Mr. Bellamy- Had told him that we could use their help with a research. And help he did.

There was a whole gallery of works there that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a museum. A marble bust of Ulysses S. Grant, a tapestry of a scenic hunt, wood carvings of saints, life-sized. No plaques, no names. Mr. Hawthorne recited from memory both commissioner and artists, going on and on over various details, such as the quarries, the logging sites contacted. His voice had this soft, papery touch to it, slightly raspy, and he never raised it, but it was clear to me he was passionate. Brad and Janet seemed to be engrossed by his talks of hermit-artists and quality wood cuts taken from century-old oaks. Hannah, well, Hannah was buy taking notes throughout all of this. Me? I’d noticed a dueling cane in one of the side-corridors. Pitch-black handle, almost like ebony, the sheath covered in some sort of velvet-like crimson fabric. And looking closer at it, I stumbled onto a remarkable thing among remarkable things.

A wooden statue of a dog, life-sized. A german shepherd, I think? The same rough-cut style as the statue of the Virgin Mary. The brass plaque on its base read something like To A Lifelong Companion. Rest Easy, Belle, For There Shall Be A Reckoning- HW.

I didn’t hide my interest, nor my surprise. Mr. Hawthorne wheeled over soon as he was done talking about the Grant bust. “Ah, this one has always been a favorite when we used to host viewings.” I could tell why: The ruff, the curve of the base of the ears, the eyes, the muzzle. ALl sculpted so lifelike it looked like the hound was coming into view from some mist, some darkness. If I’d met the model, I’d probably have lost a good ten minutes just petting her. She seemed the kind of dog that’d love that sort of attention!

The meaning of the plate didn’t sink in until we were on our way back, and I kicked myself for not asking about it. Mr. Hawthorne had us swept into a vortex of trivia and facts about the Lodge, about their contributions to Clearview’s greatness. Or so he said. Certainly, the works of their previous members did garner some posthumous fame. As far as the current batch, though? Mr. Hawthorne didn’t mention them, beyond saying that they are private entrepreneurs, and “Would very much like to remain such.”. My mind flashed back to our time in the woodcarving class, trying to make sense of chisels, hammers and knives. Sometimes disastrously. Even rugged, hard-working Brad was at a loss at first, needed instruction. Needed to rely on the prefab bits shown to us, the slides and training videos full of smiling men in safety hats. How many of the designs shown to us had been taken from the Lodge?

2/6/1975

There had been an attack yesterday. The only way we ended up knowing was ‘cause Dad phoned Carl, and he’d just guessed that something was up from his voice alone. And true enough, he looked pallid even a ways into the day, even after getting some lunch in him. Mom was still a bit out of it, so dad sent me on a grocery run to nab some steaks, joking that Carl could use some red blood. Not funny, dad.

Especially as it turned out he’d spent the night stitching up a border collie. Course, Carl being Carl, I had to pry this out of him after dinner, while he was half-asleep on the couch. He was dead-tired, didn’t even ask me to keep it on the down-low. Timmy stayed silent throughout all of this, tinkering with a book about the Navy in a corner.

It happened somewhere in another part of the ‘burbs. Near. St. Barbara, it seems. Sometimes around 10 PM he got a call from a near hysteric mother of two, I think she used to teach at Mrs. Maupert’s kindergarten. The family’s dog’d been let out for the night, and then not five minutes later they heard growling, a crash, and then a scuffle. Carl recounted it all with a flat tone. “I think it’s a puma, at this point.” He mimicked taking a scissor to his right wrist. Tim just nodded glumly, slinking upstairs as Carl started recounting the more specific details. “I think it was the best stitchwork I could pull off”, he admitted, rubbing his eyes in circles. The dog was currently under sedation. No, I couldn’t visit it. Which is, sure, maybe I was going to ask. Maybe! Not certainly, and surely not now. Seesh, uncle, have some faith in me.

Still, woof. First the dog statue, now this. Endemic rabies, maybe? Lead poisoning? Is it hunting season, even? Only thing I know is that I shouldn’t be thinking about this when there’s work staring me right in the face. Research’s sitting on my desk, nearly done. Or at least, my part. Janet’s coming in hot tomorrow.