Terminal

The pressure got to me. I started smoking again, and drank coffee nonstop. I’d get up at five, make the daily commute from the bed to the coffee pot to the computer, and start writing. I’d work on one novel until noon, take a break for lunch, and then work on the second novel until late evening. After a full day of that, I’d take care of business— reading contracts, responding to fan mail, checking my message board, giving interviews— all the other things that constitute writing— and then go to bed around midnight.

During those rough months, I’d have gone insane if not for Big Steve. Tara brought him home from the pound to keep me company during the day. Big Steve was a mutt— part beagle, part Rottweiler, part black Lab, and all pussy. Despite his formidable size and bark, Big Steve was scared of his own shadow. He ran from butterflies and squirrels, fled from birds and wind-tossed leaves, and cowered when the mailwoman came to the door. When Tara first brought him home, he hid in the corner of the kitchen for half a day, tail between his legs and his entire body shaking. He got used to us fairly quick, but he was still frightened by anything else. Not that he let it show. When something— it didn’t matter what, the Ferguson kid or a groundhog— stepped onto our property, the Rottweiler inside him came out. He was all bark and no bite, but a robber would have had a hard time believing that. Big Steve became my best friend. We watched TV together. He listened while I read manuscript pages out loud to him. He liked the same beer as me, and the same food. Most importantly, Big Steve knew when it was time to drag my ass away from the computer. That was how we started our daily walks, and now they were a scheduled routine. Two per day— one at dawn, shortly after Tara left for work, and the second at sundown, when she was on her way home. Tara commutes to Baltimore every day, and it was at those times— when she first left and when she was due home— that the house seemed especially lonely. Big Steve had impeccable timing. He’d get me outside and that always cheered me up.

Which brings us back to Shelly Carpenter and the hairy man.

When Tara left for work that morning, on the first day of spring, Big Steve stood at the door and barked once— short and to the point.

Behold, I stand at the door and bark; therefore I need to pee.

“You ready to go outside?” I asked.

He thumped his tail in affirmation, and his ears perked up.

I clipped his leash to his collar (despite his fear of anything that moves, there is enough beagle in Big Steve to inspire a love of running off into the woods with his nose to the ground, and not coming home for days). We stepped outside. The sun was shining, and it felt warm on my face. Tara and I had planted a lilac bush the year before, and the flowers were blooming, fragrant and sweet. Birds chirped and sang to each other in the big oak tree in our backyard. A squirrel ran along the roof of my garage, chattering at Big Steve. The dog shrank away. The long, cold winter had come and gone, and somehow, I had made it through. I’d finished both manuscripts, Cold As Ice and When the Rain Comes. Now, I could finally focus on the novel that I wanted to write. I felt good. Better than I had in months. The weather probably had something to do with that. Now it was spring. The time when nature lets the animal kingdom know that it’s time to make lots of babies. Spring, the season of sex and happiness. Big Steve celebrated the first day of spring by pissing on the lilac bush, pissing on the garage, pissing on the sidewalk, and pissing twice on the big oak tree— which further infuriated the squirrel.

Our house is sandwiched between Main Street and a back alley that separates us from the Fire Hall. The Fire Hall borders a grassy vacant lot and a park, the kind with swings and monkey bars and deep piles of mulch to keep kids from skinning their knees. Beyond the playground lies the forest— twenty square miles of protected woodland, zoned to avoid farmers or realtors from cutting it all down. The forest is surrounded on all sides by our town, and the towns of Seven Valleys, New Freedom, Spring Grove, and New Salem. They all have video stores and grocery outlets and pizza shops (and our town even has a Wal-Mart), but you wouldn’t know it while standing inside the forest. Stepping through that tree line is like traveling through time to a Pennsylvania where the Susquehanna Indians still roamed free and the Quakers and Amish were yet to come. At the center, at the dark heart of the forest, was LeHorn’s Hollow, source of central Pennsylvanian ghost stories and legends. Every region has such a place. LeHorn’s Hollow was ours.