The Devil's bed

“Did he leave alone?”

“I don’t know. I was busy in the copy room. Was he expecting you?”

Bo shook his head.

“Would you like to wait?”

“I can’t, thank you.”

“May I give him a message?”

“Yes. When you see him, tell him I hope I haven’t gotten him in too much trouble. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Well,” she said, puzzling this. “Sure.”

Bo turned to leave but paused a moment. “You don’t happen to know what time the moon rises tonight?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Sandie Herron looked at him, and added with sincerity, “It was nice meeting you, Spider-Man. God bless you.”

Bo could see in her the same goodness that Otter obviously saw, and he was happy for them both. He said good-bye. Then he went out to the parking lot and stole the van.

• • •

In the last fifty miles of its flow, before it delivered itself into the sweep of the Mississippi, the St. Croix River cut among heavily wooded hills. Along many of the steep slopes, the topsoil had eroded away, exposing the underlying sandstone in long wall outcroppings or in solitary pinnacles. Ten miles south of the interstate bridge at Hudson, a little river called the Kinnickinnic cut its own way through the rock strata. It was a clear, fast flow favored by anglers because of the trout that swam in its shaded pools. In order to protect and preserve the beauty of the waterways and the unique landscape surrounding them, the state of Wisconsin had set aside the area at the confluence of the Kinnickinnic River and the St. Croix River as a state park.

Bo didn’t need to read the brochure the ranger had handed him after she’d taken his entrance fee. He pretty well knew these things already. Or the important part anyway. The sandstone formations. The brochure did tell him something he didn’t know. That the park closed at 10:00P.M. And the ranger herself had told him something else. That the moon would rise at 10:06. A moon nearly full. A shame, she’d said, that no one would be in the park to enjoy it.

He drove the van along a narrow road that threaded its way among meadows of tall prairie grass and stands of white-barked poplars. There were parking areas that afforded access to hiking trails among the hills. Finally he entered a forest that was a mix of oak and evergreen. A half mile beyond that, the road ended at a picnic area perched on a hill overlooking the place where the Kinnickinnic spilled into the St. Croix. A dozen cars sat in the lot, gleaming under the hot August sun. Bo pulled into a slot away from the other vehicles. He took his bedroll with the Sig stuffed inside, and he left the van. A few families were gathered at the shaded picnic tables. Bo could hear the squeals and laughter of children somewhere out of sight toward the river. He walked a path that took him beyond the picnic area to a wooden observation platform constructed at the precipitous lip of the hill. The orientation of the platform was to the south. Far below, he could see the little blue-white thread of the Kinnickinnic snaking toward the grand sweep of the St. Croix. Over thousands of years, a curving delta of sand had formed at the confluence of the two rivers and a stand of tall cottonwoods had taken root. Several pleasure boats lay anchored along the shore of the delta, and Bo saw people strolling the beach. Beyond the delta, the river made a slow curl southeast. A few miles beyond, far out of sight, the St. Croix finally fed itself to the Father of Waters.

What lay to the south didn’t interest Bo. It was what crowned the bluffs directly across the river that had drawn him there. The orchards of Wildwood.

Two tall spruce trees blocked any clear view a visitor might have of Wildwood from the platform itself. Bo left the observation area and scouted along the crest of the hill, peering among the trees, carefully eyeing the slope. He stumbled upon a trail that cut down to the St. Croix, and he followed it, arriving quickly at a protected inlet with a beach and a swimming area full of children. This was the source of the laughter he’d heard from the hill above. As he approached the beach, the parents who lounged on blankets there gave him a wary look. He realized how out of place he appeared in his long, borrowed pants and shirt, his too-small shoes, his bedroll, with his hair uncombed, and his face unwashed and unshaven. They probably thought he was a vagrant, maybe a predator. He hurried on, lest they alert the park authorities to his presence.

He made his way along the bank of the river, studying the broad hillside as he went. It didn’t take him long to spot what he’d been looking for. A beige outcropping, three-quarters of the way up the hill, almost directly below the observation platform. Wedge-shaped, maybe fifteen feet from side to side, it thrust out a dozen feet or more from the hillside. Because trees walled the outcropping on three sides, it was invisible from the picnic area on the hilltop, but it had a perfect, unobstructed view of Wildwood.