Eighteen
For several weeks, the clandestine meetings stayed pretty
much the same, helped greatly by the expansion of Scott’s business. BankNet was
paying the price of success, facing a continual shortage of trained personnel
and constantly fighting to keep up. There was always some sticky issue, some
snag in negotiations necessitating the president’s personal touch.
He expected trouble from his wife, but was pleasantly
surprised to find her amiable, even friendly, upon his returns. He surmised
that he had been silently forgiven, that Juliana had settled into the idea that
business would continue to dominate her husband’s life, at least for the next
few years.
Given this kind of free rein, Juliana was able to see
Scootie once each weekend and once or twice during the week. They grew comfortable
with their arrangement, but not comfortable enough to leave the safety of Room
14. For his part, Geoffrey was doing his damnedest to accommodate. He refused
to rent out the room to others, and filled the interior with his most precious
imports: brass candlesticks from India, a crystal vase from Belgium, and a
stylized wooden fertility god from Kenya. Juliana brought vanilla tapers for
the candlesticks, Scootie filled the vase with flowers, and the base of the
fertility god was a handy place to keep the condoms.
Geoffrey came to think of the room as his own presidential
suite, blessed as it was by the lovemaking of Hallis’s two most charismatic
beings. He refused remuneration until Scootie reminded him that the wife of the
King of ATMs had no shortage of cash. Juliana even considered renting it on a
monthly basis, but wanted to make sure the transaction would be untraceable.
The lovemaking showed no signs of letting up; the two had a
world of variations to explore. Once, Scootie entered to find Juliana in a
buckskin jacket, cowboy hat, boots and chaps, facing the bathroom with her bare
bottom cocked invitingly to one side. Another time, Scootie embroidered a
comforter with a hundred tiny bells, every small motion bringing a new wave of
sound.
Juliana continued her oral explorations as well, with a
Heinz variety of toppings: whipped cream, honey, chocolate, tartar sauce, cream
cheese and some wild blackberries she had discovered next to a creek behind
Blaze Hill.
Despite all this pleasurable distraction, Scootie felt the
walls of Room 14 bearing in on him, and settled on a plan of action for the
out-of-doors. In mid-July, he got Juliana’s OK for a Saturday afternoon, and
placed the following message at the hooves of Pan: Touch the tail of the big white bird and turn around. Find the
alligator and take 500 in the direction of its snout. When you find the baby
scarlets, clap your hands three times and listen for the cuckoo.
Juliana slept in, treated herself to a breakfast of bagels
and lox, then dug up the nicest hiking clothers she could find and headed for
the Swan Theater, taking a back trail to stay out of view. She emerged from a
grove of pines, placed a hand on the Swan’s back wall, and took a 180.
Scootie’s alligator turned out to be a fallen pine, its bark resembling the
scaly lumps of a gator’s tail. She found the snout at the far end, where the
trunk had snapped into a long, sharp triangle, and followed it into the woods
until she found a little-used trail.
Fifty feet further, she spotted carved initials in the trunk
of a big-leaf maple – M.B. y F.E. – and knew she was on the right track. She
made a further assumption that Scootie meant 500 steps along the trail, and not
straight ahead, since the latter would take her into a patch of poison oak.
The trail wound to the left, slanted upward through groves
of tan oak, then back through a rising straightaway of chaparral. Her steps
sent dozens of parchment-colored lizards scooting into the undergrowth. The end
of the straightaway took a sudden dip into a dark wood, and as he eyes adjusted
she found a grove of young redwoods. Baby
scarlets. She took her 500th step and clapped her hands three times.
Scootie answered with a high-pitched “Cuckoo!” Its origin was hard to locate,
but she kept climbing as the cuckoos grew louder.
She found a pile of sungray deadwood where someone had tried
to block a path and stepped over, ducking under some branches to emerge into a
sudden clearing. At the center stood a circle of bay laurels, dropping like
fishing rods toward the Pacific. She peeked between their trunks to locate her
smiling accomplice. He let out a final staccatto cuckoo to serve as “hello,”
then jumped up to meet her with a self-satisfied kiss. Pulling her into the
bays, he revealed a picnic buffet worthy of royalty. He had covered the level
surface of a stump with a green checkered cloth, and lain out a round of sweet
French bread with honey-butter, multicolored cheeses, a fresh pineapple cut
into chunks, a jar of red caviar, and a bottle of Chenin Blanc with two
glasses.
After eating heartily, and applying the caviar to Scootie’s
favored body part for dessert, Juliana settled against a freckled trunk and let
out a sigh.
“It’s a good thing we’re hiking downhill on the way back.
I’m stuffed.”
“Funny. You look real.”
“Hah ha, Mister Wit.” She leaned her head against Scootie’s
chest. Scootie wrapped his arms around her waist, enjoying the new smell of
her, the small scents of dirt and sweat away from the clean interior of Room
14. Juliana craned her neck for a kiss, then took a whiff of the air. “God, the
smell of these trees is just...whuff!”
“Very. I picked a bunch of the leaves once and wrapped them
around a salmon for cooking.”
“No!” said Juliana. “I want some right now.” She watched the
sun winking through the marquis-cut leaves. “So how’d you find this place?”
“I’m an inveterate wanderer, blessed with an immunity to
poison oak. I was up here about a year ago, recovering from a wicked bulk
mailing, when I spotted that break in the trail – that pile of deadwood – and
couldn’t resist. Imagine what this place looks like shrouded in fog.”
“Heaven,” said Juliana.
They stayed for ten minutes, taking in the library mutter of
wind and leaf, still Scootie stood and pulled Juliana to her feet. “Come. I
want to show you something else.”
He took her downhill to another grove of redwoods, gathered
at a seam between the hills. “Our Mr. Fetzle had a decent sense of ecology for
a tree-killer. When he saw how scalded these hills were, how ineffective the
grasses at holding back erosion, he sent out troops of workers to plant
seedlings. That’s why these groves look strangely... neat. All the trees are
exactly the same age. Now let me see...Oh, here it is.”
Scootie pushed aside a clump of sword ferns, revealing an
uneven block of nutmeg-colored marble.
Virginia Ivens Chappell
1950-1967
Those who visit this place, please
remember our dear lost daughter, who desired nothing more than to walk the
beauty of these woods.
Juliana ran a finger along the letters. “What does it mean?”
“Aggie’s a member of the Hallis Historical Society, so I
asked her. She dug up a clipping from the Gazette,
along with some details from old-timers. Virginia was a local kid, something of
a maverick. She loved the woods, and was always disappearing on long hikes. Her
parents said she spent more time in the woods than out of them – and sometimes
got reckless. She occasionally lost her way, and had to camp out overnight. But
she would show up the next day, none the worse for wear, and casually dismiss
any concern for her well-being.
“In the wilderness of high school, however, she was not so
well-adapted. She was plagued by a crippling shyness; the kids liked to pepper
her with unflattering attentions, just to watch her turn red and run away. Her
parents were very concerned about this, and considered it a major victory when
they convinced her to attend a school dance during her junior year.
“When Virginia arrived at the dance, she immediately went to
the back of the auditorium and occupied herself by drinking glass after glass
of punch. Jerry Decker and Steve Makovitz, two football players who made a
regular habit of tormenting Virginia, spotted her and decided to have some fun.
Jerry would come and ask her to dance, then Steve would sneak up to the table
with a bottle of whiskey and pour some into Virginia’s punch. Then they would
disappear to the other side of the hall, wait for Virginia to pour a fresh
glass, and return to pull the same gag. Virginia was so unsettled by Jerry’s
attentions that she failed to see any pattern. After three drinks, she began to
feel dizzy. In the middle of drink number five, as Jerry was kneeling to
deliver a mock proposal of marriage, she passed out. Jerry managed to catch her
mid-collapse, and, with the rest of the students occupied with a Beatles dance
medley, to drag her out the side exit without anyone noticing.
“Despite her social isolation, Virginia was a very
attractive girl, and this gave Jerry Decker some wicked thoughts. He and Steven
took her to his car, drove her down to Hallis Beach, and took turns raping her
while she was still unconscious. Afterwards, they dumped her in a field two
blocks from her home. If it weren’t for the hardiness of her constitution,
built up by those long walks in the woods, she might have died from exposure.
As it was, she managed to drag herself home in the morning, very sick and
having no memory of the night before.
“When she started bleeding, her parents took her to the
doctor and found out the horrible truth: it was the result of repeated and
forceful intercourse. They immediately assumed the worst – that she had tried
to fend off her shyness by getting drunk, and had ended up going off with some
boy – and reacted with accusations, lectures and a grounding.
“Torn apart by the prospect of trying to disprove her
parents’ assumptions, not to mention going back to a school where there was a
boy, or boys, who had done this, Virginia snuck out of the house, came to this
spot, and slit her wrists. They found her body two weeks later, and the truth
came out a week after that, when a guilt-riddled Steve Makovitz confessed to
the principal.”
Scootie knelt beside Juliana, wiped a tear from her cheek
and placed it on his own. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you sad, but I
thought you’d want to hear the story.”
She took Scootie’s hand and kissed it. “And they say nothing
bad happens in small towns.” She stood and reached her arms around his neck,
looking over his shoulder to picture a 12-year-old Virginia in cuffed jeans and
a yellow gingham shirt, skipping up the trail in a cloud of dust. Instead, she
saw something else. “My God, Scootie. What is that?”
Scootie turned around. “What?”
“Over that boulder, up in the branches. That big clump of
brown.”
“Damn!” said Scootie, in a hushed voice. “You know what that
is?” He took a few steps and squinted. “A great horned owl. See the face, the
ears?”
Juliana stood behind him and peered over his shoulder. The
great bird stood on the lowest limb of a Douglas fir, near the trunk, looking
more like an outcropping of limestone. She began to notice the subtle slope
between head and torso, the small notches of the ears, light markings around
the eyes. The markings flashed open to reveal two bright circles of yellow.
“Wow!”
“Shh! said Scootie, laughing. “We don’t want to spook him.”
“Well, did you see that?”
“Yes, I did. He’s probably still mostly asleep, so maybe we
can sneak up closer.”
He took her hand and stepped forward, but it was too late.
The owl shot from the tree with a thunderous rustle, retreating into the woods
with a swoop. Scootie watched him carefully as he tracked behind a clump of
branches and came out the other side, perching on another Doug fir 200 yards
back.
“You think we could try again?” asked Juliana.
“I don’t know. Judging by his reaction, he’s pretty unused
to humans. And there’s a lot of poison oak back there.”
“Well, hell, Scootie. What else is there to do?”
“Well, I did have my notions.”
“Later,” she scolded, and started off through the woods. The
combination of noisy undergrowth and poison oak made their pursuit a winding
one – it took them a solid ten minutes to get close. Twenty yards away, Scootie
failed to notice a thick branch, breaking it with a loud crack. He was
surprised to find the owl still in his place. Soon they stood ten feet from the
treet, gazing at a massive block of sleeping bird only fifteen feet above them.
“It must be nap time,” Juliana whispered.
“Very odd, the way he’s ignoring us. I’ve never been this
close to one before.”
The owl blinked and fixed them with a stare. Scootie
anticipated another retreat, but the owl remained stock-still, unfazed.
“Talk to him,” said Juliana.
“Huh?”
“You do a cuckoo, Mr. Audubon – do a great horned owl. My
voice isn’t low enough.”
“Scootie did as instructed, trying to recreate the haunting
murmur he’d once heard from the courtyard. His call drew an immediate response,
impossibly deep.
Juliana shuddered. “Whoo! That boy’s got cojones.”
“Three tones lower than death,” said Scootie.
“He seems to like you.” She ventured into full voice and
addressed the bird directly. “Anything else you’d like to tell us, Mr. Owl?”
The owl responded with two long, low hoots, then blinked his
eyes and turned his head sharply to the left.
“He’s looking at something.” Scootie followed the owl’s gaze
and began to make out something, a dark cone-like shape rising from the forest
floor. He paced toward it and came upon a pile of smooth river rocks, four feet
high, carefully mortared together. He ran his fingers down to where the rocks
ended, then dug away branches and needles to uncover the base, a long gray
boulder with a rough surface. Its face bore a surprisingly defined inscription
in six-inch letters. Juliana caught up with him as he sounded them out.
“Vil-la Ca-li-fa.”
“Wow,” said Juliana. “Another memorial.”
“Sounds more like a gate marker, or an entrance to an
estate.”
“Way out here?”
Scootie rose and scanned the woods. Let’s see. If this
really was an entrance, and the marker’s facing this way...” He squatted down
and dug into the forest floor, through a bed of needles, twigs and humus. Ten
inches down he found a rock, smooth like the ones in the gate marker. “Say...”
He dug forward, finding a stripe of mortar, and another rock, then onward till
he had uncovered five stones, evidently the edge of a path.
“It seems to be heading for that mound over there. Come on,
Juli, let’s do some exploring.”
He took her to the top of the mound, instructed her to pick a
spot and dig, and if she didn’t find anything to try somewhere else. Juliana
considered her freshly manicured nails, then said the hell with it and piled
in. Scootie did the same, ten feet away. She was on her fourth attempt.
beginning to lose feeling in her fingertips, when she found something.
“Scootie. Come here a second.”
Scootie dashed over. “What is it?”
“Maybe nothing – but isn’t this some kind of hardwood?”
Scootie swiped the soil at the bottom of Juliana’s dig to
find the surface of an oak branch, still clothed in thin gray bark. He searched
in one direction, then another, then stopped.
“Not only that. This hardwood has a nail in it.”
“Wow!”
“Yes. Let’s follow it and see what happens.” In ten minutes
they had uncovered another five feet of oak, sloping in a straight line down
the face of the mound.
“It’s a ridgeline,” said Scootie. After two more feet, he
found a juncture, a thin cross-pole that appeared to mark the edge of the roof.
Beginning to gather an image of the structure, he followed the eaves to where
he imagined the front entrance would be, then dug downward to discover the
corner of a door-frame, a straight-hewn board with a thick coat of varnish.
“It’s a house!” said Juliana.
“Not just a house,” said Scootie. “It’s Villa Califa.”
Within an hour, though weary of limb and ruined of
fingernails, they had managed to dig down to a doorlatch of wrought iron –
similar, thought Scootie, to the one on Fetzle Mansion’s front entrance. He
pushed on it, but it wouldn’t budge. He found a good-sized redwood limb, then
placed the limb against the latch and pounded the other end with a rock. Three
strikes later, the latch clicked and the door swung inward, amazingly mobile on
its old hinges.
“Good thing it’s an innie and not an outie,” said Scootie,
smiling. “After you?”
“No way in hell,” said Juliana. “Although you might want to
take this.” She handed him a keychain with a small safety light.
“Thank you, o pioneer. Well, here goes.” Scootie set himself
on the edge of the soil, dangled his legs into the opening and slid down,
landing on some sort of solid surface. He aimed the flashlight at his feet and
discovered a tile floor, covered with must and debris but clear enough to
reveal a checkerboard of terra cotta and white.
“Is it safe?” asked Juliana. “Have you been eaten by spiders
yet?”
“I am unconsumed,” he reported, extending a hand. “Come on
down.”
“We-e-ell, okay, I guess.” Juliana leaned on his forearm and
eased herself down. “Wow. Nice floor. Any clues yet?”
“For one thing, the doorway is very short, about five feet.”
He aimed the light behind her to illustrate. “Also, if you’ll notice, your head
is almost brushing the ceiling.”
“Goodness.” She ran a finger along the wood inches above her
head.
Scootie took her hand and ventured further, scanning the
walls with the flashlight. “The interior is all hardwood, nicely varnished,
cut’s a little rough but look at the seams! Smooth as Juliana’s behind, and
pieced together with wooden dowels. And take a look at... ouch!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I believe I’ve located a table,” he said, rubbing his
kneecap.
“It’s a flashlight, honey. Use it.”
“Thanks. Well, well...”
“Hmm?”
He ran a hand over the tabletop, removing a layer of dust to
reveal a varnished nebula, grains of rose and chocolate rising through the
gloss. “Redwood burl. Very nice. Let’s see here...”
He discovered a chair the size of a kindergartner’s, pieced
together from knobby limbs of blond wood, the arms marked with a rough-cut
network of triangles. The solid back bore a figure, a tall, muscular woman
draped along one side, unclothed but for armored cuffs on her forearms, a bow
in one hand, a quiver of arrows around her shoulder. The carving was done in
bas-relief, about an inch out from the background. Beneath the woman’s hand he
found the name “Barran,” inscribed in letters similar to those on the gate
marker.
He showed the carving to Juliana, then followed the table to
the far end, where he found a normal-size chair, constructed of a dark gumwood and
adorned at either shoulder with stylized Germanic eagles. Scootie swept the
light to the corners of the back wall to find ornately carved griffins –
half-eagle, half lions of European myth. He knelt at the back of the chair and
discovered another name, this one in barbed Tudor lettering. Then the lights
went out.
“Damn!” He whacked the keychain against his palm.
“Scootie,” said a nervous Juliana. “Unless you’re toying
with me – which I can tell you right now is not a good idea – let’s head back
out.”
“But I saw another name. If I can get just a second of light
out of this...”
“Honey, there’s not much we can do about it right now. Why
don’t we just come back another day?”
“Wait. Maybe I can feel the letters with my...”
“Scootie! Get me the hell out of here!”
Scootie knew the voice of authority when he heard it. He
took Juliana’s hand and felt his way along the table, then across the tiles to
the fading square of light at the door. He climbed out first, scooting backward
on his butt, then reached down to pull out Juliana.
“Thank you,” she said. “I am not fond of dark places.”
“So I gathered.”
“Scootie. What exactly have we found here?”
“I don’t know, but it definitely calls for further
investigation.”
“Should we tell someone? The Historical Society? UC Santa
Cruz?”
Scootie eyed the cave-like entrance, and followed imaginary
ridgelines to the top of the mound. “Call me selfish,” he said. “But I’d like
to keep it our little secret for a while, at least until I do some research.
I’ll start on it tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Besides, I’ve always wanted a place in the country.”
They
returned to the clearing and made love in the circle of bays as the sun sank
into the trees. Juliana came to after a brief nap, feeling worn out from the
day’s discoveries, and propped herself on an elbow. She scanned the clearing,
spotting a square of nutmeg marble under the ferns, and came away with a
startling thought. “Scootie? Do you suppose Virginia knew?”
Scootie woke from a dream of owls, eagles and griffins,
doing bloodless battle in a Grimm Brothers forest. He didn’t hear Juliana’s
question, because he had a thought of his own. “Fetzle,” he said. “It was
Fetzle.”
Photo by MJV
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