The Opal Legacy Part 6

"The only ones. A few miles north of us along the lake there are a couple of summer cabins. Sometimes people come there during the hunting season, too, but they have their own access road."

They pa.s.sed through what Jon told her was a second growth of maple, alder, and birch, a dense, seemingly impenetrable tangle of saplings and underbrush competing for light beneath the taller trees. The leaves had fallen and, except for the green of an occasional pine or spruce, the branches reached black and stark into the sky.

As they neared the lake, the evergreens, pines for the most part, replaced the deciduous growth and the forest became ordered, the trees taller and more widely s.p.a.ced, the ground beneath a matted duff of earth and needles. To Lesley, the forest, hushed in the pale light of early morning, seemed impossibly old. The sharp and pungent odor of the pines delighted her and she smiled, looking to Jon, wanting to share her pleasure with him, but she found him driving with both hands gripping the top of the steering wheel, his eyes intent on the road as though he had never come this way before.

"Look!" She pointed to the far side of a meadow. Jon braked, throwing them both forward against the seat belts.

"What do you see?" His voice was impatient.

"Only a deer. Never mind, he's gone now." Jon said nothing.

The road climbed a long hill, then leveled to follow the crest. Jon pulled into a turnoff and parked. "This is where I used to stop on the way home from Marquette," he told her. They got out and crossed the road to stand on a large flat boulder. The house was hidden in the pines but between the uppermost branches of the trees Lesley saw a strip of blue darker than the blue of the sky.

"Do you hear the waves?" Jon asked.

She lifted her head, listening, and from a distance came the faint slap of water on the sh.o.r.e. Lake Superior, she thought, and at that moment, even before she had seen the house, she knew she had arrived at Iron Ridge. She had put her past irrevocably behind and entered a new life. As long as I live I'll be Mrs. Jon Hollister, she thought. She said the name aloud.

Jon frowned, his eyes narrowing, and then he relaxed. "Welcome to Iron Ridge, Mrs. Hollister," he said, grinning, his old self again. He put his arm around her waist and she gasped as he swung her into his arms and carried her to the car.

At the foot of the hill, the road curved into the woods. Behind the car, dust rose in the sunlight slanting between the trees while on both sides of the road and in front of them the rough-barked white pines seemed to hem them in. They rounded a curve and there, without warning, was the house.

Bleak, Lesley said to herself, the word coming unbidden to her mind. A cold and impersonal house, aloof, without a hint of welcome, the dark exterior relieved only by the silver-gray of the stone chimneys.

"So many chimneys," she said.

"Nine of them." Jon stopped the car and they looked up at the house. "Every bedroom has a fireplace."

"And all stone. We had mostly brick chimneys and fireplaces in New York."

"There's a stone quarry about a mile and a half from here near the iron mines."

"And that must be the lighthouse." A square tower rose to their right, three stories high, as tall as the house itself, the blankness of the walls broken by a small porthole-like window on each level. A balcony had been built around the top of the tower.

"Is the light you told me about inside the room with the balcony?" Lesley asked.

"We call that a widow's walk, not a balcony. Yes, there are windows on all four sides."

She looked more closely at the house. Stone steps led directly to a double door; the house had no porches. Like the tower, the house was built of narrow pine boards which had weathered from the original light brown to indeterminate shades of brown, black, and gray. The roofs sloped steeply because, she supposed, of the heavy snows of winter. Lesley counted four broken windows.

"There are actually four floors," Jon said. "We can only see the top two from here. The house was built on the side of the hill above the lake and you can see where in some places it's lower than the ground level. This is the front entrance even though it leads to the bedrooms on the second floor. Just inside the entrance, a big staircase goes down to the lake level. That's where the living and dining rooms are. And the kitchen and library. We never used this upper door when I lived here."

"Those lower rooms must be gloomy."

"We have to keep the lights on all day."

He started the car again, driving past the house and tower to park in front of a barnlike garage. To the left of the garage, beyond a double row of white pines, sunlight sparkled on the lake. The water, desolate, without ships or birds, stretched unbroken to the horizon.

"My G.o.d," Jon said. He strode ahead along a flagstone path leading under the pines toward the house, stopping to stare down at the lake lapping a few feet from the path. Jon slapped his fist into his open palm.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Look at that spruce." The tree, twenty feet high, leaned toward the lake. Water eddied around its exposed roots. "When I planted that tree ten or eleven years ago the lake was at least twenty feet away."

"You said you knew there was an erosion problem."

"Yes, but in the past we lost less than a half foot a year to the lake. Nothing like this." He shook his head. "I don't see how I can save the tree."

"Can't you build a breakwater? Not for this tree but to protect the rest of the sh.o.r.eline?"

"We've tried breakwaters, pilings, stone riprap. Nothing works. The army engineers proposed a mile-long breakwater north of here to divert the current but they couldn't get the money."

Lesley glanced along the path. A strip of brown gra.s.s, some fifteen feet wide, separated the house from the lake.

"Like death."

"What?" Lesley asked.

"That's what Mary used to say. Death creeps up on us like the lake, so silently that at first we never notice. We can slow its progress, yet still death comes on, year after year, inexorable. In the end, no matter what we do, death claims us all."

Lesley shivered, crossing her arms about her chest, hugging herself. "Let's go in the house," she said. "Do you have the key?"

He nodded, still, looking at the canted tree and muttering under his breath. She took his arm, pressing it to her side, and he walked with her to the back door. The house was even more weathered on this, the lake side, and several boards hung askew. The key refused to turn in the lock so Jon worked it back and forth until at last she heard a click. He pushed open the door. A whisper of sound swept toward them from inside and a cold gust of air struck her face, disarranged her hair, bringing with it the musty, airless smell of the ancient structure.

"A draft from a broken window," Jon said. She followed him into the pantry and on to the kitchen. He didn't carry me over the threshold, she thought, disappointed in spite of herself.

A sound came from within the heart of the house, a steady reverberating beat that reminded Lesley of a pulse. They stopped to listen, then Jon led her along a hallway to a partly open door. The sound came from within the room. He pushed open the door and switched on the light.

Dust covers shrouded the furniture, the carpets were gray and cobwebs trailed from the ceiling in the far corner. A bookcase filled one wall and a deer head stared gla.s.sy eyed from above the fireplace. Lesley found the source of the sound on the mantel-a Seth Thomas clock. The hands pointed to six thirty. Jon walked to the clock, unfastened a door in its back, and reached inside. The ticking stopped.

"The men must have started the clock when they came to check the electricity and the radiators," he said. Lesley looked at the markings left by Jon's feet on the dust-coated rug. Before he crossed the room to the mantel, she knew, there had been no footprints.

"Sometimes," Jon added, "this clock used to start by itself." Lesley, doubtful, said nothing.

They spent the day unpacking and cleaning. Lesley scrubbed closets and sinks, arranging the pots, pans, and dishes in the kitchen while Jon carried chairs, tables, and beds from the attic and from a storeroom in the garage. After supper, exhausted from vacuuming their huge, high-ceilinged bedroom, she lay facedown on their double bed while Jon tramped from room to room arranging furniture.

She dozed, then awakened to reach to the stand beside the bed and run her fingers over the wooden carving of the girl. My disappointment is natural, she told herself, a letdown after the trip. Yet as recently as yesterday she had been so excited, looking forward so eagerly to the adventure of living at Iron Ridge. In the morning, she thought, I'll feel better about the house in the morning.

Lesley closed her eyes again, listening, knowing she heard an unfamiliar sound. She thought first of the clock in the library, sleepily shook her head, realizing finally that she heard the lake, the water washing onto the sh.o.r.e, wave after wave after wave, seeming to murmur, Death, death, death, and, with the word repeating in her mind, she slept.

Chapter Eight.

Lesley sat up in bed. The sun, shining through curtainless windows, made a bright band of light on the floor. The other side of the bed was empty though the covers were rumpled and the pillow was indented. Jon was up. She threw back the blankets and went to the window, stretching. Alive, she thought, I feel so alive. This was a new day, the beginning of a new life.

From the window she looked across the narrow beach to the boat dock and then out over the lake. Except for a layer of haze on the horizon there were no clouds. Along the near sh.o.r.e, pines blocked her view in both directions, but far to the north a point of land thrust into the lake, the treetops making a jagged line against the sky.

Lesley showered, pulled on pants and a shirt. Coming down the stairs she smelled coffee and heard the sizzle of frying bacon. In the kitchen Jon stood in front of the stove with a skillet in his hand.

"Just in time," he told her. "Sit down. Breakfast is almost ready."

While she pulled a chair to a table set with two red place mats, Jon poured their coffee and handed her a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.

"I thought you were never going to get up," he said. "I've been taking an inventory of what has to be done on the grounds. The dock needs repairing and the path from the house to the lake is washed out. I looked in the tower. I think I'll use the first floor for my office."

"Tell me if you want me to help. Did you know you make good coffee? And this is how I like my bacon, crisp. You're going to spoil me."

"I want to." He covered her hand with his. "Let's go to town after breakfast. I have to make arrangements to have phones installed, and stop at the bank. Oh, yes, and see Andy Bennett, he's my lawyer in Marquette. You'll probably want to shop."

"I need so many things-a new mop, cleansers, a tablecloth for the dining room, curtains for our bedroom, double sheets, meat, milk, and we should get..."

"Make a list. But no work today, this Indian summer won't last forever. Let's make the most of it."

"But Jon, there's so much to do."

"We have months ahead of us for that. You don't realize how cold the weather gets in January and February-day after day with below-zero temperatures. Not below freezing, below zero. Next month, December, can be cold, too, and the snows start soon, probably later this month. I won't let you work today. They have a good delicatessen in Marquette, so why don't you buy corned beef and salami and when we come back to Iron Ridge we'll walk along the lake. I'll show you some of our land and we'll have a picnic."

"Sounds like fun."

"I found an old picnic hamper in the storeroom but you'd better put a thermos on your shopping list. One other thing. You'll have to change your clothes before we go."

"Change clothes?" She looked down at her burnt-orangecolored shirt and pants.

"This is hunting season in Michigan. Posting along the borders of our property doesn't keep the hunters off. The men who come here from downstate shoot at anything that moves. We try to wear yellow clothes during the season."

When they returned from Marquette with packages and bags of groceries piled on the back seat of the Buick, the sun was high above the trees. After Lesley made and packed sandwiches, Jon slung the strap of the wicker hamper over one shoulder and they headed north along the beach. A hum came from the lake as, a few hundred yards offsh.o.r.e, an inboard droned past, the man at the wheel waving to them. They waved back and, as they walked, watched the boat until it disappeared around the distant point.

Jon motioned ahead of them to where a range of hills ended in a steep bluff falling a hundred or more feet to the lake. Pines grew at the base of the promontory but higher up she saw only smaller trees and shrubs among the boulders.

"Is that the bluff you saw in your dream?" he asked.

"I can't tell. It could be, but in the dream the day was dark and the sky seemed overcast. The lake and cliff were impressions rather than clear images in my mind."

"You surprised me yesterday. I thought you'd be out here looking to see if you recognized the bluff."

"I don't even want to think about my dreams. They make me feel so helpless. You don't realize what it's like to know something terrible's going to happen and be unable to prevent it. My dreams belong to the past, and I've put the past behind me."

"You haven't had any more dreams then?"

"None, and I hope I don't." As they walked beneath the bluff, the beach became rocky and narrowed until the lake washed the foot of the cliff, forcing them to wade through shallow water or jump from rock to rock. In places they climbed over mounds of earth and stone which had broken from the face of the cliff to slide into the water.

"See that tree growing from the side of the slope?" Jon pointed above their heads. The tree, no taller than Lesley, twisted and wind wracked, clung to the cliff face.

"A chokecherry," she said at once.

"Yes. A chokecherry."

Lesley drew a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. Am I really done with my dreams? she wondered.

After they left the bluff behind, they came to a small creek flowing into the lake and Jon turned from the beach to lead her along a path into the pine forest. Patches of sunlight warmed her face, yet the air was cool and sharp with the tang of autumn, bringing Lesley memories of school, of football games, pom-pom girls, of chrysanthemum corsages, and for a moment she longed to return, not to a particular place, but to the past.

"Is the weather always so mild in November?" she asked.

"We usually have a spell like this, an Indian summer, after the leaves fall and after the first frosts but before the snow begins. Not always, but most years."

Jon slowed, and Lesley, ahead of him, followed a path up a low hill.

"No!" he shouted. "Don't go that way." She looked back, anger at his curt tone flaring up in her. "The ground becomes boggy on the other side of the hill," he said softly. "Come this way." He walked on without looking at her.

Sometimes he talks to me as if I were a child, she thought. She followed, silent, glancing up the hill to what appeared to be a clearing near the top. As they went on, their path grew indistinct and they walked beside the stream for ten minutes before Jon veered to the left. She stopped, listening, but heard nothing except the whisper of the pines and the bubbling of the creek. Jon turned to her.

"I have a feeling we're being watched," she told him.

"I've often felt the same way when I come back to the woods after being away for a while. It's just because they're strange to you." He pushed aside a screen of branches and they walked into a meadow. The creek, so narrow she could have jumped to the opposite bank, curled through long brown gra.s.s. In the middle of the meadow the branches of two weeping willows trained in the stream.

"The miners lived here. That's the foundation of one of their houses." Jon nodded to a level area where patches of dead gra.s.s showed amid a rubble of stone and concrete. "The other houses, there must have been eight or ten of them at the height of the iron boom, are overgrown."

"Those are the first weeping willows I've seen in Michigan."

"They're not native to Michigan. These must have been brought here from the East." They walked toward the two trees. "Do you want to eat in the sun or shade?"

"The sun, here where the gra.s.s is smooth."

He opened the basket and she spread a cloth on the ground between them, laid the sandwiches in the middle, handed him a cup, and poured milk from the thermos.

As they ate an occasional fly buzzed over the food. One landed in Lesley's hair and, annoyed, she brushed it away. Why am I so edgy? she wondered. In the enclosing woods a bird chattered and the pines sighed in the breeze. She listened for the sound of the lake but, so similar were the sounds, she couldn't tell if she heard the water or the wind.

"The mine shafts are a quarter of a mile from here," Jon said. "They haven't been worked for more than fifty years. There used to be a wagon road from here but it's overgrown now like the foundations of the houses and nothing's left at the mines except a few tunnels in the side of the ridge. I remember my father whipping me for going into one of the mine shafts and afterward he said he'd have them sealed but I don't think he ever did."

"You've told me about your mother and father but never about the early Hollisters, the ones who built Iron Ridge."

"It's not a pleasant story."

"I don't care. I should know about them now that they've become my ancestors, too. I know so little about you and your family."

"The Hollisters-three Hollister brothers, actually- came to Michigan looking for copper over a hundred years ago when the Upper Peninsula was a primitive area with Indians living along the lake. Not many, a tribe of twenty-five or thirty Ojibways who believed this land was sacred to their G.o.d Gitchee Manito. Then one of the Hollisters discovered ore, not copper but iron. The Indians intercepted him on his way back to the village and he was tortured and killed."

"What a horrible thing to do."

"After his brothers found the body with the ore samples still in his pockets, the men from the village became angry and afraid. They rode out and raided the Indian village. The Indians who weren't killed were driven off. They've never come back."

"They killed the women and children too?"