The Caretaker of Lorne Field Read online

  “I think you two had better leave,” Charlie said.

  “Aw, come on, Charlie, we’re just having some fun,” Jasper said, his laughter dying down to a sputter. Darryl, grinning widely, wiped tears from his face.

  “I mean it. I want you to leave now. And I don’t want you coming back here.”

  Charlie took a step towards them, his large hands balled into fists, and the humor left the Hagerty brothers’ faces. The brothers were big men and less than half the age of Charlie Harper, but Charlie was also a big man with large forearms and thick bones and a face that showed scars from dozens of barroom fights. As the Hagerty brothers tried to stare him down, the violence compressing their mouths faded to something more like petulance. Darryl cracked first and shifted his eyes towards the exit. “Plenty of other places to spend my money,” he said. He got up and walked towards the door. Jasper Hagerty followed him out of the Rusty Nail.

  Charlie walked back behind the bar and rejoined Durkin. “Hell with them if they can’t show the proper respect,” he said.

  Durkin kept his eyes trained on his beer. “That’s what it has come to. Being laughed at by a couple of oafs like them.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then smiled reluctantly. “It’s tough enough every day looking out at a field growing full of Aukowies, knowing I got almost four years left before Lester can take over. With the way the town’s acting, I just don’t know, Charlie. I’m getting tired.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  “You’re not going to stop your weeding?”

  Durkin didn’t answer him.

  “Jesus, Jack, if you are planning that give me some notice.” Charlie forced a nervous smile. “At least give me a chance to get on the first plane I can to Tahiti.”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good. Aukowies would be there quick enough. Three or four weeks tops.”

  “Jack, come on, you can’t let a couple of dumb asses like the Hagerty brothers get to you.”

  “It’s not just them, Charlie. It’s the whole town. Chrissakes, even my wife, my two boys.”

  “Your boys don’t believe?”

  “Maybe Bert, but Lester can’t keep the smirk off his face.” He smiled weakly and waved a hand in front of him as if he were waving away the last few minutes. “Don’t worry, Charlie. Just feeling sorry for myself, that’s all. I may be tired but I’m not quitting my weeding. Hell, only a couple of months to first frost. I’ll make it. And things are going to change with Lester. I’m taking him with me in a few days. He’ll see firsthand those ain’t no weeds.”

  Charlie’s heavy eyelids drooped a bit as he nodded to himself. “Any chance you can take me out there sometime?” he asked.

  “I can’t do that. That would be violating the contract.”

  “It might help to have other people see those creatures firsthand.”

  Durkin thought about it and shook his head. “I’d like to. But I can’t violate the contract. If I start with this, who knows what rule I’d bend next. At some point we’d all be lost.”

  Charlie stroked his chin, considering that. “How about taking pictures of them. Anything in the contract against that?”

  “Shouldn’t be anything against it. Contract was written before cameras existed. Problem is, from a picture I doubt they’d look much different than a weed.”

  “You own a camcorder?”

  Durkin shook his head.

  “I’ll loan you mine. I use it to take movies of my grand-kids. You film those creatures and I think people around here will change their attitude.”

  Durkin sat still for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “I could do that,” he said. “As long as there’s nothing in the contract against it. You think you could teach me how to use one of those things?”

  “Sure. They’re easy to learn. I should be able to teach you in a few minutes. I’ll tell you what—I’ll bring it over to your house tomorrow night.”

  Durkin sat straighter on his barstool, his shoulders barely stooped, his chest looking less caved-in than usual. It was almost as if some of the invisible weight had been rolled off his shoulders. Not all, but some. “Okay, then,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning Lydia surprised her husband by having the boys at the table with him for breakfast and by serving fried eggs and bacon with rye bread toast and grape jelly. Jack Durkin eyed the food suspiciously, then asked his wife what got into her and why she was serving real food for a change.

  “You don’t like it, I can take it away and give you a bowl of corn flakes,” she snapped back at him.

  “No need to do that.” He gave her a wary look and leaned forward, his arms circling the plate as if he were guarding it. “I was just wondering what got into you, that’s all. You hit one of your scratch cards or something?”

  “I don’t play them! You want to keep pushing your luck, you ain’t never going to see bacon and eggs again.”

  “Don’t worry, I ain’t saying another word about it.” Durkin took several greedy bites, then turned to his two boys. “What do you two say? You going to thank your ma for cooking you such a nice breakfast?”

  Lester was sitting across from him, his face pale, his eyes puffy and mostly shut. He grumbled something unintelligible. Bert mumbled a quick thank you. He changed the subject by asking about the Aukowies, about why they just don’t cover Lorne Field with cement.

  “Wouldn’t work,” Durkin said. “Once those suckers got big enough they’d break through. Then there’d be no stopping them.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  Durkin soaked a piece of toast with some egg yolk and chewed it slowly while he considered the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s nothing in the Book of Aukowies about it. But my guess there’s something like a root system under the field that these critters keep growing from.”

  Lydia let out a loud snort and mumbled something under her breath that of course there was some sort of root system, where else would weeds like that come from. Durkin turned to her, annoyed. He was about to say something when he spotted the coffee maker on the counter gurgling and brewing fresh coffee. “I thought that was broken,” he said, his tone accusatory.

  “I got it fixed.”

  The coffee finished brewing. She poured two cups and joined her family at the table, handing one of the cups to her husband. He took a slow sip and closed his eyes, savoring the flavor of the French roast. “Nice to be drinking something other than mud for a change,” he said. “So why’s this my lucky day? Ain’t my birthday, I know that much.”

  “Why don’t you just enjoy what you got and quit being such a damn fool,” Lydia said sharply. “And quit filling your sons’ heads with nonsense.”

  “First off, I ain’t filling that boy’s head with nothin’.” Durkin pointed a thumb at Lester who had his eyes closed and his elbow resting on the table to support his head. “I think that boy’s asleep,” he added with disgust. “And even if he weren’t, that head’s a steel drum. Nothin’ gets inside of it. As far as Bert goes, everything I’m telling him is the truth. And I’m going to prove it, too.”

  “How you gonna to do that?”

  “You’ll see,” Durkin said, chuckling softly. “A couple of days from now you’ll be whistling a different tune. The whole town will be.”

  “You’re just an old fool,” she replied. “That’s the only tune I’ll be whistling.”

  “Wouldn’t doubt it with all the hot air in you. But you’ll see soon enough who the old fool is, you old battle—”

  “Dad,” Bert interrupted. “If there’s a root system under that field, how about poisoning it?”

  Durkin closed his mouth. For a long ten-count he kept his stare fixed on his wife, but the fresh brewed coffee and good food tempered his mood. He looked away from her to his son. “That was tried once,” he told him. “My great grandpa laced the field with arsenic. According to my grandpa, the next two seasons the Aukowies ca
me up stronger than ever.”

  Bert scratched his head as he thought about that. “How about digging up their root system?” he offered.

  “You wouldn’t want to do that. First off, no telling how deep they go. And pushing up through the ground weakens them when they’re that small. You start digging a hole, you just make it easier for them so when they come up, they’ll be all that much stronger. No, son, you don’t want to mess with something like that. The only way to get rid of them is what we Durkins have been doing for almost three hundred years, which is weed them out when they’re still small and can be handled.”

  Lydia started laughing to herself. A tight, cackling-type laugh. “Never mind me,” she said, her small gray eyes sparkling. “When I hear nonsense like that, I can’t help myself.”

  Durkin glared hotly at her while he used what was left of his toast to clean off his plate, then pushed himself away from the table. “You can laugh yourself sick for all I care,” he said. “I save the world every day no matter what you think and I’m going to do it again today.” Turning his glare towards Lester, he added, “And wake that boy up. I don’t want to see good food going to waste. Especially given how little of it we get around here.”

  After putting on his wool socks and work boots, he stumbled towards the door and muttered a reluctant thanks to his wife for sending him out with some good food in his belly. Once he was out the door, Lydia put Lester’s plate in the oven to keep the food warm, then nudged her son awake and sent him back to bed. Bert, who was a slow eater, finished his breakfast a short time later. He got up from the table, stretched lazily and told his mother he was going to go fishing at Shayes Pond and see if he could catch them lunch. Lydia watched him leave. When the door closed behind him, she went over to a cabinet where she kept a carton of cigarettes hidden, took out a pack and, after pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee, sat back at the table. She lit a cigarette, the smoke curling upward while she sat deep in thought, her face screwed into a deep frown. She had pretty much decided the night before what she was going to do, but the way her husband acted cinched it for her. He was going to prove to the world those things ain’t weeds? Had he gone insane and actually believed what he was saying? It was possible he was simply putting on a show for her and Bert, but she was-n’t so sure anymore. She decided it didn’t matter, she was going to put an end to this nonsense. She stubbed out her cigarette and headed to the basement.

  One night the previous winter she had forced an argument with her husband about the Caretaker’s contract which ended up sending that old fool scurrying down to the basement to prove her wrong. What he didn’t know was that earlier she had Bert hide down there. Using a flashlight, she found the two stones along the back wall that Bert had shown her. The stones were harder to pull out than she would’ve thought and for several minutes she doubted whether she had the right ones, but eventually they budged and, using all her muscle, she was able to work them out of the wall. In the hole behind them was the Book of Aukowies and a wooden box. Opening the box she found the Caretaker’s contract. She knew the contract was almost three hundred years old, but the book looked even older. Small pieces of the leather binding flaked off when she picked it up and the gold leaf pages inside were brittle and had aged to a light brown. She wondered briefly how much she could sell it for. While it wasn’t in great condition, something that old still had to be worth real money—especially since it was the only book of its kind. Maybe an antique store would be able to give her a price. She left the stones on the dirt floor and carried the book and the contract back upstairs, dumping both on the kitchen table.

  She brought the phone over to the table and called Helen Vernon and spoke quickly to her friend. While she waited for Helen to drive over, she flipped through the pages of the Book of Aukowies. It was the first time she had ever seen it. The language inside was too archaic for her to make sense of, but the book contained illustrations of Aukowies at each stage of their development—from seedlings to full-sized monsters. Several illustrations showed mature Aukowies ravaging villages. Lydia’s eyes dulled as she studied the pictures.

  “Nothing but a load of nonsense,” she muttered to herself.

  Jack Durkin stopped to wipe his brow. Only a quarter to nine in the morning and his shirt was already damp with perspiration. He stood for a moment gazing at Lorne Field. Half of the field weeded, the other half filled with two-inch Aukowies. A breeze blew momentarily across the field and the Aukowies swayed a beat faster than the wind, trying to squeeze in the extra movement. He knew his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He knew they were moving just that much faster than they should’ve been.

  “Town thinks you damn things are nothing but weeds,” he muttered under his breath. “They’ll find out soon enough, won’t they?”

  The Aukowies didn’t bother to answer back.

  He placed his ripped baseball cap back on his head and yanked it down. A couple of safety pins held the torn fabric together enough so the cap still provided protection to his mostly bald scalp. Bending his knees and lifting, he swung the canvas sack over his shoulder and carried it to the stone pit where he dumped the Aukowie remains, then walked back to pick up his weeding where he had left off. That morning he had already come across three other Aukowies masquerading as daisies. As relentless as they were, they weren’t the brightest of critters. It took them three hundred years to come up with that daisy trick, and all he could figure was it would probably take them another three hundred years to come up with their next trick—at least as long as Lester was able to grow into Caretaker material. Jack Durkin worried about that. The boy just didn’t seem to have what was needed. Bert, on the other hand, would be just fine for the job. He had the right temperament for Caretaker: conscientious, resourceful, energetic. Lester wasn’t any of those. But he still had close to four years to prove himself. If at that time he still seemed incapable of taking on the responsibilities of Caretaker, something would have to be done . . .

  Even with the heat and humidity, even with worrying about Lester, Durkin moved with a quicker, lighter step than usual. The breakfast his wife had given him helped with his mood, but it was more the excitement of knowing there was a way to prove to the town—and more importantly to his thick-headed wife and equally ungrateful eldest son—that these weren’t weeds he was pulling out all day. His situation would change after that, setting things back to the way they used to be with townsfolk recognizing the importance of what he did and with them taking care of him and his family like they used to. Like they were meant to. Which would mean Lydia would quit her shrewish nagging, and maybe he’d be able to last four more years as Caretaker without dropping dead of a massive coronary.

  Durkin moved quickly as he went up and down the field pulling out Aukowies in swift, deft movements, ignoring both the crackling of his back joints when he bent over and the shrill high-pitched death cries of the Aukowies. Maybe their cries were too high-pitched for most others to hear, but he sure as hell could. And not just him. More often than not, whenever a dog was within earshot, he’d hear the thing howl as if its eardrums were being pierced. Dogs never got too close to Lorne Field, usually scampering off after their first few mournful howls. As he continued weeding, he whistled cheerfully, drowning out the dying cries of the Aukowies.

  Lydia sat stiffly in the leather chair, her hands clutched tightly in her lap. Bluish veins bulged from her skeleton-thin arms like rope. Helen Vernon appeared more relaxed as she sat to her right in an identical leather chair. Across the desk from both of them sat Paul Minter, his own black leather chair plusher and more expensive-looking than theirs, which made sense since this was his office. Minter was in his early thirties, but with his Dutch-boy haircut and smooth round face, he looked like he was barely out of his teens. His brow furrowed severely as he read through the Caretaker’s contract.

  There were only two lawyers in town. Hank Thompson was in his seventies and had been practicing law since Lydia was a little girl. He was a kind man with
a thick head of grayish hair and the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen. A man whose gentle manner could put anyone at ease. She decided not to go to him. She didn’t trust him, not with the way he acted whenever he saw her husband—deferentially, almost like he believed in this Aukowie nonsense. If she consulted him, there was no doubt in her mind that he’d run to her husband and tell him what she was planning—attorney-client privilege be damned! The other lawyer in town, Paul Minter, was a relative newcomer to the area, moving there and setting up shop only three years earlier. Lydia also had qualms about seeing him, thinking it might be best to find an attorney well outside the county, but Helen convinced her that Minter would be safe.

  Minter squinted for several minutes at the contract. Finally, he placed it gently on his desk, smoothing the vellum paper out with his fingertips, a bemused expression on his face as he looked from Lydia to Helen Vernon—almost as if he were expecting one of them to admit to the prank they were pulling on him. When both women continued to stare vacantly back at him, he shrugged to himself and picked up the Book of Aukowies. He took his time with it, carefully studying each page. When he was done, he closed the book and placed it next to the contract. He smiled in a bewildered fashion at Lydia. “This is on the level?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “This contract is dated 1710.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And this book is from the same time period?”

  “I’d have to think so.”

  “Amazing. I’ve been here three years and never heard a word about any of this.”

  “I don’t suppose you would. We usually don’t talk about it with outsiders.”

  “With outsiders?” He raised an eyebrow. “I guess after three years living here I’m still considered an outsider?”

  Minter waited for Lydia or Helen Vernon to contradict him. When neither bothered to, he chuckled softly to himself. “Your husband’s still weeding that field?” he asked.