Off Season - Jack Ketchum [20]
The sign over the front door said HARMON’S GENERAL STORE. The place was small, its white paint weathered badly and peeling. Through the door she could see Nick standing at the counter in front of a rack of Woodsman’s Dope and mosquito repellent, talking with a fat, red-faced woman behind the counter in a faded cotton print dress. She supposed Jim was hunting down the beer in the back of the store.
The countryside had changed considerably over the past hour or so. Everything seemed smaller somehow—the houses, the barns, the gas stations—as she supposed was appropriate to a depressed area. Part of the problem, no doubt, was that there were so few people living out here. They’d driven for miles without seeing a soul, or for that matter a house or building of any sort. Of course it was off season. In the summertime it would doubtless fill up some. But were it not for the hills she’d have thought herself somewhere in the Midwest, it was so empty. Rough dirt roads, streams and marshes feeding right off the highway. And not only were the houses smaller, but so were the trees, as if the trade winds off the coast had smothered them, and the earth could give them little in the way of sustenance.
It was pretty, though, in its way. Long, roller-coaster hills that Nick was having a wonderful time driving, an occasional hawk flying overhead, great wide ferns and cedars and scrub pines, and a long beautiful stretch of newly reforested white birch along the roadside. This far north, most of the trees had already turned, and there was a distinct feeling in the air that winter wasn’t far away now and might well overtake them during their stay here. It was that close. Already Laura was complaining that the leather jacket was her heaviest item of clothing.
The beer had been Dan’s idea. He and Nick were really the only drinkers among them, though Marjie too thought it would be relaxing after the long drive. Dan had not been saying much since lunch, except to moan about how many steamers were lying cramped and sodden in his gut. Well, they had all overeaten.
As far as she was concerned, it had been a terrific meal. The lobsters had been big and sweet and the steamers cooked to just that point where they were perfect; a few seconds later, they’d have become stringy and tough. She’d sat back in her none-toosturdy cane-back chair when it was over, knowing she’d overdone it, that she was just the slightest bit this side of comfortable. She looked at the table, cluttered with cracked claws, legs broken and sucked dry, broken backs and tails, empty clamshells, and a tablecloth spackled with butter. What you should do after this kind of meal, she thought, was to clear the table fast and get rid of it immediately.
She thought of a drawing by the German painter George Grosz. There was a big, fat, red-cheeked man sitting at a table in his living room, a table laden end to end with fish, chicken, a couple bottles of wine, a soup tureen—scraps of maybe five different dishes. He was gnawing a chicken bone greedily. At his feet was a mongrel dog working on another. The place was a shambles, everything in it given over entirely to the man’s gluttony. The chairs were stained with grease, the pictures (of food, she remembered) askew on the cracked walls, the floor in front of him was strewn with garbage. Both man and dog looked avaricious and ugly. There was only one door to the room, and it was open. Through the door peered a leering skeleton—Death, come to fetch its victim.
Their own table had looked a little like that by the time they’d finished. Every so often life reminded you of how grimy and carnal a creature man could be if he set himself to it.
All the same, she’d get herself another fresh Maine lobster first chance she got. She wondered what Carla was planning for dinner. She half considered