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  In an homage to the countrified roots of their flown youth, Larry and Vonda Prettyman retired to a farmhouse on a big piece of property a few minutes southwest of Kingston, New York. Cornfields and blackbirds. Winding back roads and golden light reflecting from streams. Rural, yet within shouting distance of civilization.

  Larry departed a career in heavy equipment sales for a Newark-based contractor. Vonda had managed a doctor’s office in Queens. He’d spent the juiciest span of his life flying international business class and riding in the back of company cars. She’d burrowed into the metro art scene, routinely hosting parties for lower-echelon literati. Between hectic careers, children, and encroaching age, they had gradually been worn to the nub.

  Cashing in their 401(k)s and moving to the country was just the tonic. He’d grown up in a Norman Rockwellesque county of Western New York; she’d come of age in Ogdensburg, which was basically a woodsy suburb of Canada. To the surprise of those who never really knew them, the graying couple said their goodbyes with cool handshakes and dry pecks on the cheek, pulled up stakes overnight, and vanished into the ether.

  *

  Sunset and sunrise were as cool and soft as a bruised apple. There was a garden, a copse of sycamore and pine, distant meadows, then low, heavily wooded slopes that built to an arm of the Catskills. Orb spiders crept out of the dewy grass and spun traps in the eaves. The grand dame of them built her silken death maze in the kitchen window overlooking the garden. Vonda snapped photographs and mentioned an essay she’d read. According to scientists, the web was actually an extension of the spider’s mind.

  Vonda subscribed to eight or nine periodicals. Arts and crafts; popular science; modern art; a couple on film and literature and high-class pornography. The Skeptical Inquirer and Fortean Times rounded out her collection. She carefully removed the pages with her favorite articles and photocopied them at the library in Stone Ridge. She sent the pertinent items to the kids—girls in Arizona and Alaska; two boys in Montana. The girls promptly wrote back. The boys called on Thanksgiving and Christmas, or the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas, yelling season’s greetings over a cacophony of children and barking dogs.

  Larry leaned against the sink, abstractedly longing for a dog. The notion of a fluffy, warmhearted, nonjudgmental companion snoozing at his feet appealed to the peculiar loneliness gathering in his heart, as did the idea of leisurely strolls in the nearby forest and someone to woof when the express delivery guys dropped packages at the door. His parents had raised a border collie. Bought from a farmer who preferred blue heelers. He had shared many adventures with the dog. The dog’s name escaped him.

  “Hello, raccoon eyes.” Vonda sailed in from stage left. She poured a glass of water and studied him as she sipped. “I rolled over to a cold spot at 4 a.m.”

  “Something woke me.” He’d surfaced from an incoherent, yet erotic dream but wasn’t about to admit it. “Guess I slept in the den.” This might’ve been true.

  “Something? Something, as in…?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  She regarded him speculatively.

  “Maybe it was the farmer’s dogs.” He indicated the dairy farmer who lived nearby and kept a trio of blue heelers to safeguard his cows. The heelers patrolled the vast property, yodeling periodic alarms late at night.

  She tapped her forehead and smiled. “A dream, perhaps? Lately, you’re so … in the clouds.”

  “Am I?” He nodded blandly affable to cover his discomfort with her perception.

  A breeze whipped the spiderweb. The spider clung tight.

  *

  Afternoon shadows dappled the wall. Larry peered at the computer monitor, comparing prices for Wellington boots. Bemused by the sea of choices, he contemplated visiting the hardware store yet again. Perhaps the fifth time would be the charm. Shop Local! was an admonishment blazoned on seemingly every other business window. Mud season rapidly approached; the owner promised him new stock would arrive momentarily. Larry hoped “momentarily” came before the driveway and his favorite walking trails devolved to muck.

  His mouse cursor hovered—

  Directly overhead, something moved in the attic. Larry startled, his gaze dragged to the dim eggshell paint and the stained globe light fixture. A long, portentous silence followed, then an outburst of frantic scrabbling. His heart sank. The unthinkable had finally occurred. One of Vonda’s squirrels had invaded the house. He blamed Vonda because every morning she filled the bird feeders hanging from the crabapple tree in the backyard. She also scattered unshelled peanuts for the deer. This attracted every possible variety of avian and mammalian miscreant. Local feral cats once checked the smaller wildlife population. Coyotes subsequently roved through the neighborhood and put paid to the cats. In the absence of feline assassins, birds flocked, and heaps of squirrels too.

  Accessing the attic via a loose ceiling panel in the closet, he pushed aside winter coats and awkwardly scaled a stepladder and pushed his head and shoulders through the opening, keychain penlight in hand. Rich, dusty gloom, redolent with the faint odors of decay, greeted him. The attic ran the length of the house, divided by a thin partition at the halfway point, which blocked his view. Not much to see, anyhow; exposed timbers that ribbed a sharply peaked roof, shriveled puffs of fiberglass insulation, a cable attached to an industrial fan, and a low stack of boxes of junk.

  One of the boxes lay toppled, spilling curios he collected during his journeys abroad. Paperweights and coffee mugs. Cheap pens. Photographs of him and his colleagues plastered, ties loosened, acting like clowns, hanging on the arms of burlesque dancers and cocktail waitresses. He’d chosen the attic as a likely spot to stash mementos. His wife wasn’t enchanted with his former rambling man persona, whom she termed the Other Larry. Though the photos were nothing more than proof that boys will be boys, he feared Vonda might get the wrong idea. When was the last time he’d visited his attic trove to indulge in nostalgia? Days? Weeks? In the early days of his retirement, he made frequent pilgrimages. The life of a salesman could be monotonous, yet he still missed the foreign nightclubs and karaoke bars, and the drunken camaraderie of fellow travelers. He thrust his arm forward and scooped the items into the box and righted it. A mildew stain on the side had congealed into a leering visage he almost recognized.

  Making another sweep, his light caught the edge of rotting wooden placard that had pitched to one side, and lay partially obscured by the box. Roughly the dimensions of a license plate, it was draped with cobwebs, withered moths, and the desiccated flap of a burst cocoon. Red, flaking kanji warned against disturbing or removing anything from the “waterfall site.”

  It took him back. He’d almost forgotten his lone tour of Jōren Falls in Izu, Japan, months prior to 9/11. Travel companions—jocular guys from advertising—egged him into swiping the sign to take home for a cool souvenir. How many martinis had they downed to uproot that homely, weathered little warning sign? He vaguely recollected sweating as he waited to clear customs the next day, hungover and mightily ruing his impulsiveness, yet embarrassed to “chicken out.” The advertising guys were right, though—it was indeed a cool souvenir.

  Larry gingerly laid the sign inside the box and rubbed at the cobwebs that stuck to his fingers. He could’ve walked the beams and floor joists in a crouch if the spirit had moved him to investigate further. Which it did not. Observing neither the interloping squirrel nor any obvious entry point for the critter, he retreated.

  *

  “Call Roger,” Vonda said at dinner. She meant Roger Miller, a friend and handyman who lived not far down the road. Roger had a solid decade on the couple, who were no spring chickens themselves. Vonda referred to him as Sundance’s Hot Granddad, in honor of an ancient Robert Redford. Larry thought Redford resembled an unwrapped mummy. Admittedly, Roger had aged well.

  Larry frowned at his plate. Autumn allergies were kicking in—nothing tasted right. “I could have a peek—”

  “Don’t fool around. You’ll crash through the ceiling.”

  “As you say, dear.”

  He didn’t regard himself as overweight. Beefy, perhaps. He walked daily along the road where it climbed a steep hill toward the neighborhoods of historic colonial homes. He also split two cords of firewood every autumn as insurance against the not infrequent power outages caused by winter storms. Nonetheless, Roger was inarguably lighter and spryer, despite pushing his late seventies. The fellow had shipped out to Vietnam in the Army. Plenty of unobtrusive crawling in the jungle during w artime. Lean, mean, clambering machine.

  Larry morosely dumped peas onto the remnants of his potatoes. He topped the milk in his glass. He methodically ate the cardboard potatoes and then drank the chalky milk, looking his wife in the eye throughout.

  *

  “Oh, they’ll burn your house to the foundation,” Roger said on the phone later that evening. Yelled, really. His hearing had deteriorated. “Right to the ground. Bet your sweet bippy.”

  “Because they chew the wires,” Larry said, hoping to sound authoritative. He considered Roger’s blue collar competence a form of black magic. Larry excelled at massaging bad news and at wining and dining balky clients, but he didn’t know one end of a wrench from the other. That seemed like a personal failing.

  “Yeah, that’s how they keep their teeth short,” Roger said. “Buggers don’t mean any harm. Won’t stop ’em from doing plenty, though. Gotta take action. The wiring in your house is probably subpar. None of the old places in this neighborhood are up to code.”

  “Actually,” Larry said. “Vonda hired an electrician to inspect the attic. Two or three months ago. Upstairs hall light started turning on and off by itself. Guy didn’t report any critters or damage.” As a point of fact, the electrician had lingered in the attic for quite a while. Later, the fellow muttered a perfunctory report and then practically bolted to his van.

  “Gotta be careful,” Roger said. “Some fly-by-night jokers in this neck of the woods do a half-baked job and call it a cake.”

  “Sure, we’re rubes from the city. Who wouldn’t fleece us? You’ll take a look?”

  “Bright and early.” Roger’s deliberate cadence suggested he’d soaked up a skinful of Boone’s. Since his wife Lucy’s death, the old boy polished off more than his share. A real tragedy. On the other hand, as a widower divested of Lucy’s infamous honey-do lists, his schedule was wide open.

  “I’ll be here. Considered going by the store to check on Wellingtons…”

  “Good luck with that. I’ve an extra set in storage. What size you wear?”

  “Thirteen,” Larry said.

  “Ha! Forget I said anything.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those are clodhoppers, not feet, old son.”

  “Okay, right.”

  “Tomorrow, then. Thirteen. Ha! Ha!”

  Larry placed the phone in its cradle. He sat alone in the living room. Vonda customarily went to bed early and played the evening news as background while she skimmed magazine articles. She and dearly-departed Lucy had gotten on well. Canasta and gardening buddies. Lucy loved her role as wife and homemaker; Vonda wasn’t as enamored of the role. However, she’d either grown more accustomed to it or was good at pretending.

  The windows reflected the light of the floor lamp. He inhaled and listened to the house. Those decades in the city had conditioned him to neon and fluorescent rays, the low rumble of endless traffic. Nighttime here stole in on black wings and in a breathless hush. Yips of hungry coyotes broke that stillness, as did the chorusing frogs. The small noises of animals merely emphasized that humans were visitors, lingering tourists. He felt nature pressing against the sides of the house, felt her in the chilly draft under the doors and windowsills. A hunter searching for a weak point. An egg on the cusp of hatching?

  Larry glanced upward and imagined the squirrel lying in wait, saliva dripping from its incisors. Right on cue, muffled scuttling that abated momentarily. Later, swaddled in blankets, he dwelled upon sparking wires and the house consumed in a fireball. Tick bites that itched and bled for months. So many deer ticks in rural New York—a veritable plague. He recalled that sometimes, in the dark, a plastic shroud crackled near his face like webbing spun by some umbral horror, and his mother and father stood in silhouette, and the rumble of water falling upon itself became the wind punching the house.

  *

  “This is fascinating.” Fascinating was Vonda’s go-to multipurpose gambit. She said it in response to many things—news articles, an empty cereal box in the cupboard, the toilet seat left up, and so forth. “The Max Planck Institute reports baby owls’ sleep activity is similar to that of very young mammals.” She waved her magazine. A color photograph captured an owlet snoozing with its beak planted in straw bedding. Its fully extended legs were muscled like a weightlifter.

  “I don’t—there aren’t any owls in the attic,” Larry said. He considered how rarely one saw exposed owl legs. The sight was comical or uncouth. It also occurred to him that he’d left the toilet seat up more than usual. An uncharacteristic invitation to be excoriated.

  “Too bad,” she said. “Owls are killers. End of squirrel incursion. Assuming it’s even a squirrel.”

  “It’s a squirrel.”

  “How can you be certain?”

  “Deduction.”

  She flipped the page. “Assumption occasionally finds congruence with fact.”

  “Deduction. I said deduction—”

  “Historically speaking, as a rule, assumption leads to chaos.”

  “If not a squirrel, then I’m curious what else.”

  “Weasels. Chipmunks.” Flip, flip. “Sparrows. Brownies. Who knows?”

  “Excepting little people, I don’t see how the specific identity of the critter fundamentally alters our problem. Something is there, which should not be, and it’s raising havoc.”

  She smiled enigmatically.

  “Roger will be along in a bit,” he said to bridge the rapidly widening void.

  “We’re saved.” Flip.

  His skull ached. He walked outside to wait on the porch.

  *

  Roger arrived in a cloud of dust at the wheel of a Dodge. He wore a Yankees ball cap over remarkably thick, cropped hair. His coveralls were freshly washed. “Good grief. See that vent? That’s plastic.” He indicated a vent high on the north wall below the roof peak. Its dull gray paint had peeled, revealing a pale undersurface. A crack ran through the slats. Not large enough to admit a squirrel; although, if it worsened …

  “I take it the vent should be metal,” Larry said, mildly apologetic, as if he and not the original owner was responsible for faulty architecture. He too wore a ball cap (New York Mets), a long-sleeve shirt, pants, and boots. He’d always worn a hardhat while touring factory floors with other middle management suits. The habit of donning a costume to interact with the laboring class was ingrained.

  “Heck yeah, it should be. Fooled me, and I’ve walked around this house plenty. See how they painted it gunmetal gray? We better replace the damned thing before it falls to pieces in the next big storm.”

  Roger lit a cigarette and strolled all the way around the house, examining the eaves and the siding for holes—without success. He unloaded an extension ladder and leaned it against the wall. He ascended the ladder and poked around the vent with a tape measure.

  On the ground again, he lowered the truck’s tailgate and dragged forth a skinny rectangular box of wire mesh. “Come here and have a look. This is a live trap. Cats, raccoons, skunks. Squirrels, we hope.”

  Larry walked over as bid. “No joke—it better not be a skunk!”

  “You can set this baby up while I’m out.”

  “Out?”

  “Gotta grab a replacement vent at the store. Not like I’m driving around with a spare on me.” Roger gestured at the trap. “Anyway. Ever use one of these? Real simple.” Whiskey fumes and cigarette smoke seethed from his pores, causing Larry to withdraw a step as the handyman demonstrated how to arm the trigger, which was a metal faceplate inside the trap. Squirrel bait would be laid at the far end. When the critter stepped on the plate, the box would snap shut.

  “Don’t we need to determine how the squirrel is getting into the attic?” Larry said. “Otherwise, it’s an exercise in futility. Yes?”

  “Easy, partner,” Roger said. “Let me worry over the details. Your siding seems pretty tight So, we’ll deal with what we can and continue the search later.” He slapped the door panel shut and zoomed away.

  *

  Larry scrounged in Vonda’s supplies for a handful of peanuts. Climbing partway into the attic, he whistled to calm his nerves, which were inexplicably frazzled. He placed the trap on a narrow causeway of planks, set the trigger, then pushed the contraption as far as possible with a broom handle.

  “What was that tune?” Vonda emerged from the kitchen pantry as Larry washed his hands. “You were humming. What was it?”

 

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