Cruelest Month

The day of the assault he was cheering Sabotny on. Made an attempt to pull off my jeans before Terry fought them off, giving me a chance to escape.

No local or regional phone number. No listing in Classmates, Facebook, Twitter. No hits on Google. No listing for anyone in the region with the last name of Brewler.

Mackenzie opened a new file and keyed a title at the top of the document: What Happened at the River:

It was a spring day, one of the first warm days. Terry and I had ridden our bikes down to the river a few miles east of Sandville. We had taken some lines and hooks. Terry collected some crawlers and crickets near the river, and was showing me how to hand cast, how to toss the lead weight and baited hook into the stream without getting entangled with the hook.

She stopped suddenly, pulled her hands from the keyboard. I need to see the place again, she thought. I need to go there, shoot pictures, and record everything that I remember, then come back and write it down.

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Mackenzie dressed in her bird-watching costume: baggy jeans, hiking boots, a fla

Reviewing the area on Google Earth, Mackenzie considered the probable route from Sandville to the part of the river where she and Terry had confronted Sabotny and the other boys. Her memory was that just north of the village they had biked down two-tracks and the bed of a deserted railroad. Then they got back on a two-track again. She sca

There was an old bridge built from timbers just wide enough for a car that she remembered too—no side rails, just a deck. Upstream from the bridge was a low dam with a spillway in the middle and a pool behind it.

Twenty years before, she and Terry had been fishing below the dam, letting their bait swirl in the eddies at the side of the stream. But looking at the map, she couldn’t see a widening in the stream or anything that looked like a dam. She found what she thought was the bridge and the road that ran across it. It now appeared to be more than the trail of her memory, still dirt, but wider. The bridge also looked more substantial.

She scaled back the map until Sandville was in the lower right corner and plotted distances and directions in her head. When she got to Sandville, she would use the map function on her iPhone if she needed any assistance finding the location.

She was surprised by how quickly she found the place, even though her estimates of distance and time were way off. The big curve on the river was only about two miles north of the village. She remembered it as being much farther—a long slog or a hot dusty bike ride. Parking in a small lot at the side of the dirt road, she walked out onto the bridge. It was a new structure two lanes wide with steel rails bolted to concrete pillars. Looking upriver, Mackenzie searched in vain for the dam, but nothing remained of the structure or the wide pond. Crossing to the south side of the bridge, she peered down at the stream, much narrower and shallower than she remembered it. The only sound was the wind and the gurgling of the river as it snaked around and disappeared in the low shrubs on the flood plain. There were no humans or their machines. She snapped several pictures.

Returning to her car, Mackenzie noticed a trail ru

A small wooden dock was secured at the trail’s end, a launching point for canoes and kayaks. She stood on the platform and slowly surveyed the scene, looking upstream first, and then following the flow of rushing water to the south. She focused on sound—the gentle gurgle of the water dominating the wind moving through leafless trees. The air was heavy with decay. The leaves and dead plants emerging from winter’s cover were begi

She gazed at the pallet of hues of the early spring landscape, earth tones mostly, a range of browns and dull greens. The water, lit at an acute angle by the early spring sun, was stained by the decaying oak leaves to the shade of weak coffee. Sca

She sca

Mackenzie slowly swept the scene a final time, her eyes taking it all in, recording the images, meshing this moment with the old memory, resizing and revising her knowledge of the area. Then she retreated up the path, awash with emotions, lost in the past. She was standing next to her car, still deep in thought, keys in her hand, when she was startled by the roar of an engine. A rusty Jeep came rolling down the sandy road, slowing and turning in to park. Four boys climbed out, dressed in cutoffs and t-shirts, one in flip-flops, the others sockless in battered ru

“Hi, guys,” she said. “How about this weather?”

“Amazing,” said the tallest of the group. “Should still be winter.”

“Well, enjoy,” she laughed, sliding into her car, hitting the door lock as she engaged the starter. But she didn’t leave. She sat for a while after the boys had disappeared down the path. Then, on her way back toward Sandville, it hit her. It all came rushing back. The sound of the engine, the smell of cigarettes and beer. She pulled to the side of the road, shaken. A Jeep, rusty, with oversized tires. She and Terry had seen it cross the bridge. And a few minutes later, Sabotny and the others were upon them, surrounding her. Terry had grabbed a piece of wood and used it as a club, allowing her to break free and run.

Yes, the Jeep explained so many things. Terry’s body didn’t get dumped. He was hauled up to where his body was found. A Jeep with big tires could have gone miles on the beach early in the season with little or no notice, especially back then. The question was, did they kill Terry, or just leave him on the beach to die of injuries and exposure?

30

Ray’s brain was somewhere else when his iPhone emitted a text message tone.

Ray—need to kayak. H.