Gone was the fancy high tech gear. Now Alex took readings from far-off hills using her old tripod and scope system to perform precise angle and distance measures. Surveyors called it a total station. Using it, she tentatively identified and marked her exact (or close to exact) location on the printed USGS map. Then she spent the morning directing the talkative Benny and his quiet brother to gather the dimensions of the cliff and the surroundings of the parking area up to the trees. She estimated her height above the water to be about 183 feet.
She had the men stop for lunch, and Alex and Barny sat in silence as Benny talked about fishing for muskie in Chester Lake.
He didn’t sound nearly as stupid as he had that morning. Alex was trying to figure the brothers out. At first she thought Benny had a mental handicap, maybe genetic or the result of a head injury. As the morning wore on, she realized he could follow directions and spoke well enough. She decided he was just real slow, and somehow Barny, who seemed pretty smart, had decided to take care of him. It didn’t feel like a couple, so Alex decided they probably weren’t gay, but their dependence on each other was obvious.
Benny was talking about the huge colorful lure he used to hook a muskellunge, a fish she’d heard of, but never actually fished. “There’s red, and yellow and some pretty blue, but watch out for the hooks.” The description of the colors reminded her of the morning trip to the island.
“What’s the story on that truck we ran into on the bridge?”
“Oh that’s Old Tom’s pickup.”
Alex looked at Benny and waited for him to continue.
“Tom Fiddle, like the land company. He’s had that truck since before I was born. The Knights of Columbus keep inviting him to join their Harvest Parade, but he won’t do it.”
“Who does work like that on a truck? And that pretty trailer. How do you pay for work like that?”
“I don’t know. He grows weed on a lot just past the bridge, but it’s back in the woods. It’s good weed, though.” Barney swatted his friend’s shoulder.
“Well it’s true. Besides, it ain’t illegal any more, so you can just quit pretending, Barney.”
Benny waved towards the trees. “When it was illegal, the police could never find his plot, or catch him selling, and nobody would ever snitch on him. Now he has a sign.”
“I saw it. It didn’t look like it would catch attention.”
Barney was silent during this, of course, like a Bud Abbott with no lines. Now he pointed to his right leg, then at Benny.
“Oh yeah.” Benny turned back to Alex. “His leg. One of his legs is messed up.”
“A leg. Like it’s amputated? I couldn’t see.” At the bridge, he’d never exited his vehicle.
“It’s his right leg, I think. It’s not amputated, but he can’t get around real good on account of it hurting. Though, when I seen him in town, he seems to be doing just fine. Maybe he’s smokin’ his own weed.”
Barney nodded and pretended to take a drag off a spliff. “Yeah, you know what I mean.”
“How did he hurt his leg?” She was thinking maybe he was veteran or had a farm accident.
And Benny paused at that question. He looked to his brother who looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was always busted up, like he was born with it.”
After lunch, Alex considered mapping the shore, but a walk at the edge of the clearing confirmed the terrain was overgrown and sloped all over the place before more forest quickly obscured her view. Just getting to the shore from here would be a chore.
Later, she thought to herself. Once she figured out how to shield her signal and keep the drone under control. Maybe with infrared?
The three began working back down the road. She would send Barney to hold the leveling staff so she could take a vector to the next curve in the road. They slowly leapfrogged back to the bridge.
They pulled into a small clearing to the right of the island side of the old trestle bridge late in the afternoon.
The wind was picking up, and looming clouds to the east had hidden the sun. Alex eyed the sky and made a decision.
“Let’s call it a day, gentlemen.” Alex declared.
She could see Benny and Barney were ready to abandon her quick. Benny expressed his hope they might see the volunteer fire department finish washing their trucks and then parking the engines, if they hurried.
Barney looked at her and his friend with resignation. His eyes said, “What are you going to do?”
The two brought their gear back to the truck and left it with Alex, who had ruffled through the zippered bank pouch she kept in the glove box.
“Here you go, boys. $200 each for a ten-hour day. You done good.”
They seemed quite happy, and Benny made sure she knew she could reach them at Metzger’s Cafe if she needed more work. The two piled into their beat up Buick and trundled across the bridge, muffler rattling.
Alex stowed the gear in the truck, satisfied they’d at least marked the road, but still dejected at the unlucky day and losing her drone.
She went to the drivers’ side and Connor was standing with his front and back paws in the seats, big, sloppy and wagging his tail with expectation.
“You need to go, don’t you?”
She looked around and then at the clouds overhead. The storm was coming. Time to hurry.
“Go do your business,” she said, opening the truck door.
Connor stepped down gingerly, an enthusiastic old dog ready for his turn with his mistress. Alex attached a leash to him. The sky rumbled.
She stood at the edge of the trees while he did his business. As he finished, something near the bridge made him growl.
Alex looked at the woods near the bridge, listening, but she could not see or hear an animal. They could have scared up a moose or deer, and now it was standing quiet and motionless in the trees, out of sight. Maybe even a black bear. Maine had a lot of wildlife.
Thunder rumbled again, and the first drops were falling, large and sloppy. She hustled back to the truck and opened the door. She reached down and unhooked Connor, intending to lift him back into the truck, when he squirmed and shot off along the road and under the bridge.
The derpy slob from before was gone, and Connor charged down the slope that went beneath the bridge, a hound dog on a serious chase. He started barking, and it was an aggressive, no nonsense bark.
“Connor!” Alex looked quickly around the site. All her gear was secure. Maybe it was a bear.
The barking continued, and then there was a crack sound, almost like a tree cracking in deep winter, followed by a sharp yelp.
“Connor!”
Alex grabbed her flashlight, noting the wind was starting to pick up. The storm front would be passing through soon. and what locals in Maine called a “blow” could become fearsome in a few moments.
Wind blowing off the lake felt almost solid in her face. She headed out to find her dog with a leash and a flashlight. The yelp worried her.
She charged down the trail that looped like a collar beneath the island end of the bridge. Over the years, the locals had worn a trail to favorite spots for local anglers to seek. One of these was a point on the underside of the bridge, a part of the shore that was rocky and treacherous, but accessible.
The bridge overhead blocked the rain, but the deluge fell with an endless roar, and the wind continued to thrash back and forth. She’d kept her hair short since she was in high school, but blasts of wind beneath the bridge still blew it across her eyes. She hopped from rock to mossy rock, and she painted her flashlight at the region beneath the bridge.
She didn’t see him. She turned the flashlight over the water.
Connor was laying on a large rock about twenty feet from shore, panting.
Because she only had eyes for Connor, she missed the something that slithered back into the shadows of the girders and struts beneath the bridge.
“Your bleeding!”
The dog was on his side, sprawled awkward across the stone. There was matted blood. Connor whined and tried to bark, but it came out a whimper and a wet shudder. She couldn’t tell what had done it, but it looked like something had thrown Connor across the water to land on the rock.
Whatever did this to Connor, it seemed to be gone now. Alex cast around, looking for a path to her dog, but water surrounded the rock, and it was much further than she could ever leap.
She jumped into the water anyway, and discovered her feet did not hit the lake bottom. The sheer walls of the rock which supported her dog, she realized, were so high above the surface, she might be unable to pull herself on the rock once she swam to it. Even if she could get to him, she thought, what could she do to bring him back across?
She cried out in frustration, slapped the water, and returned to the shore, staggering from the lake before turning back to the sight of her dog suffering on the stone. The rainfall roared outside the shelter of the bridge.
Don’t panic, she told herself. Pick a direction, make a plan and hope it works. She considered her options, and decided she would need help. Here phone was dead because of this weird place, but she knew she must find someone.
She recalled the conversation earlier when the brothers had said the hippy weed grower was supposed to have his garden near the bridge. Crossing the bridge seemed futile, and she did not recall any homes or camps nearby on the mainland end of the span. She recalled the wooden sign.
Alex decided he might be weird, but maybe this Tom Fiddle had a land line phone she could use.
“I’ll be back, Connor!” she called to her dog, who could only whimper in response. She scrambled back to the topside of the road. Rain was falling in a torrent.
They’d need a boat, she thought as she ran down the road beside the woods. If there was a way to the supposed marijuana patch, she thought she could find the entrance, even in the woods.
After running for a couple of minutes, or at least running as fast as she could get her 58-year-old body to run, she began casting the flashlight around for the sign she’d seen earlier. She knew it was near this spot, for she had a surveyor’s sense of direction. Then the brown wooden planks revealed itself to her flashlight, and she dove into the woods thinking there would be a trail.
There was no trail.
The overhead branches caused the rainfall to lessen, but water dripped everywhere around her. The woods tried to keep her from passing. Brush and branches blocked her way. The ground became treacherous as the ground seemed to cover itself with hazardous roots.
It was like the forest had become a wall in front of her.
Alex glared at the roots and greenery that blocked her way, and something clicked in her chest, or maybe her head. As the feeling passed through her, she’d swear the brush and roots pulled back and even melted into the ground. When she raised her eyes from the suddenly cleared ground, she looked up, a path now revealed itself through the woods, as if it had always been there.
She could see a cabin or something down the trail. She ran towards it, and the lightning flashes revealed a trim single-story structure at the edge of a large clearing. She sensed branches and covering above her, but she did not see the huge tree in the dark light. It was just too large.
The cabin was round, and it wasn’t a wooden shack like she expected, but some sort of tent. Part of her noted this, and saw there was a large barn across the clearing that probably housed Fiddle’s truck and was the place where he stored his weed.
There was smoke coming from a chimney that poked through a fabric roof, unlike a tent, and she decided the round structure was the home. She recalled an article about something called a yurt.
There were steps leading up to a wide porch that encircled the building. Wind chimes swung wildly in the wind beside the door, which was a regular door, like you’d see in a regular house, except it was mounted in a fabric wall. It’s position at the top of the steps told her this must be the front door.
She started pounding on the door.
“Wake up! Mister Fiddle wake up! I need your help!”