Absentee List_An Old Horse Mystery Read online

  Absentee

  List

  Absentee

  List

  An Old Horse Mystery

  Elskan Triumph

  Absentee List by Elskan Triumph

  Published by BeachChair Press

  www.middleschoolpoetry180.wordpress.com

  Copyright © 2018 Elskan Triumph

  All right reserved.

  Al places, persons, events are all works of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places or events past or present are coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  CHAPTER 1

  It began with a chainsaw.

  Looking at the chimney, Bissonette had seen no smoke and wondered if Dan and his son were even home. It was cold and over three feet of snow had been dumped on Grace Haven. Ahead of him, his neighbor’s house stood dark in the shadow of the dense forest that surrounded it. No lights from inside, the deep snow surrounding it and the outbuildings lay untouched by footprints or shovels. He had tramped up the driveway in his snowshoes, the deep snowpack muffling the sound, wanting to borrow a chainsaw.

  ‘No, borrow back his own chainsaw,’ he thought, correcting himself in an attempt to screw up his courage and avoid feeling guilty for something that he knew was his right. He spat on the ground.

  Bissonette had lent his chainsaw to Dan in the fall when Dan’s old Skihl had frozen up while in the middle of a job clearing some overhanging trees for a guy in Hyde Park. That has been six months ago. Now, with the trees downed from the storm littering his yard and blocking his driveway, Bissonette needed it back. Normally, a neighbor would have returned it within the week, cleaned and freshly oiled. Dan had not. Six months had passed, so he had to go and ask for what was his. Within his rights, Bissonette still hated to ask.

  ‘Why couldn’t he just return the damn thing on time,’ he thought.

  His fear of confrontation caused his ex-wife to call him acoward. She had been right.

  Standing before Dan’s house, Bissonette wondered if he should just go to the barn and rummage around for it.

  ‘No one is home,’ he thought. Best to avoid an argument.

  He looked around.

  Nothing had been shoveled, not a curtain was drawn, and when he knocked on the door there was no sign that anyone had been there since the storm. The door gave an empty thump. He knew Dan heated his home eight months a year with the wood that was neatly stacked against the back of the house; if someone was home, the stove would be burning. No smoke. The neighbor glanced at the chimney again before knocking again, harder this time.

  Silence.

  ‘Nobody home,’ he thought. ‘Now I don’t have to ask.’

  He smiled. Bissonette looked back from where he had come, and then over at the small barn. As he shifted his weight, turning towards the barn, the snow gave a low squeak as his snowshoe compacted it against the concrete stoop. Part of him was relieved, as he could grab the chainsaw without talking to Dan and feeling as though he, the owner, was asking a favor. Part of him, though, was annoyed with a smoldering resentment that his neighbor wasn’t home; that he had made this hard slog through three-foot drifts for his own damn chainsaw.

  ‘You’re being an idiot,’ he thought to himself. Dan, he knew, was a nice guy and he also knew that he, Bissonette, worked himself up over the smallest things. This was one reason his wife had left him. The jealous paranoia… He let little things smolder, but here he was trying to do it correctly. ‘Dan has a reason,’ he thought.

  As he considered how he would get into the barn, a noise came from inside.

  Something stirred.

  Shuffling; socks on floor.

  Then the door opened and in its frame stood the boy.

  A light-haired boy in the midst of a growth spurt, he stood as if having just rolled out of bed. Eyes of blue, his feet and hands were larger than his current body; the ears also stuck out. Peter. Twelve years old, Bissonette had known him since he was born—knew the mother before she had died. To his knowledge, the boy was a good kid who sometimes let his impulses get himself into trouble. A bit of crazy, Dan had once said about his son, but not an unhealthy amount. Since as long as he could remember, the boy followed Dan around most weekends, working around the house or going into town. It used to make Bissonette jealous, especially after his wife moved out and took their only child with her. As the little Bissonette grew up, the feeling passed. He had not seen Dan and the boy together since the first snow, though. Last week Bissonette had seen Peter’s name listed in the paper as making honor roll; he had meant to congratulate Dan, and then the storm hit and stopped everything.

  “Hi,” Bissonette said, his enthusiastic voice hoarse with a mix of uncleared phlegm that had risen from exertion in the cold.

  “Hi,” the boy replied, in a hoarse voice that had not spoken yet that morning. He wore gray wool socks, red sweatpants, and a white T-shirt that poked out sloppily from under a blue wool sweater at the collar and bottom. Over his shoulders was a gray-blue blanket whose edge touched the wooden floor.

  “Dad home?” the man asked, his voice taking on its regular sound with use.

  “No.”

  “You alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  The boy made no move to let Bissonette in, not exactly blocking the doorway but not welcoming a conversation, either.

  “Where is he?”

  The boy said nothing. A shift occurred in conversation from that of friendly neighbors to one of child and adult. Like most adults with regard to children, the man had felt an obligation to sniff out deceit in the child. A feeling he could not name rose in the man—Bissonette felt the boy was hiding something.

  From just outside the door the man felt the still cold of a house without heat. He peered into the darkness.

  “Stove out?”

  “Sometime in the night,” the boy answered. He added, “I just woke up under three comforters, so I didn’t notice. I was just going to start it again.”

  Tightening his face, Bissonette thought for a moment. He had a beard that was trimmed once a month, now half woven with white hairs, below eyes that had begun to sink into his fifty-year-old skull. Topped by an orange watchcap, his head looked a bit tiny stuck on top of Carhart duck-lined quilt coveralls that looked slightly too tight in the waist. While he thought, the boy stood motionless in the doorway. His eyes never left the man.

  “You haven’t gotten to the driveway, yet?”

  The man had said it as a question, but meant it as a statement. Bissonette was used to answers—it was another personality traint that had pushed his wife to leave him ten years prior—and only got worse the more isolated he became, and the fewer relationships he had. The longer he stood on the porch in silence the more questions came to mind. He felt the desire to push the kid aside and burst through the door, but it wasn’t his place to do it. You had to respect property. The man’s father had beaten that lesson into him fifty years before.

  The boy looked up and just shrugged.

  That pushed a button inside of the man on the porch.

  “Where is he?” He had not shouted, but the tone cut nonetheless. Bits of spittle came out.

  “He didn’t get home before the storm,” the boy said quickly. His was a voice of panic—of fear and something to hide—as if getting all of the words in would prevent discovery and the fallout that followed. A quick end, he seemed to hope, to the entire scene. “He called to say he’d stay with friends. I figure he’ll come with a plow and take care of the driveway later.”

  “He hasn’t called?�
��

  “Line’s out,” the boy blurted. Those ears looked like they stuck out even more as his face grew tense. The boy’s tension only served to ramp Bissonette up.

  “No cell?” he asked with a tone that put the boy on edge.

  Silence at first. Finally, a, “No.” Then the boy paused, thinking of what to say next. Of the thing that would explain it, and make it, if not all right, all go away.

  “Dead—battery.” He had said each of the two words as if they were in separate sentences. Dead. Battery. Each landed like a chunk of falling ice from the eve of the roof into the snow bank that covered the foundation. Each had gravity. Weight.. The man knew it to be true.

  Bissonette looked around. From the barn, he followed the indent of the unplowed driveway down to the street. Turning back, he looked over the boy’s shoulder and into the darkness of the house.

  “He’ll come,” the boy said, calmer than before. The detail of the dead battery had eased the tension somewhat.

  “Listen,” the man began. Standing on the stoop, he found children exhausting and now only wanted his chainsaw. “A few limbs have fallen around my house and I need to take care of them if I want to get out of my driveway.” Typically, a mention of the fallen limbs would have brought forth an offer of help, or a query as to what mechanical problem might be plaguing his own chainsaw. “I need my chainsaw back,” he spat. “Your dad borrowed it last October,” Bissonette added. “Can I have it back?”

  The boy said nothing by way of an answer. He had picked up on the tone.

  “I need my chainsaw.”

  The boy knew what he had to do.

  Flinching, his mind then turned, eyes darting as he thought.

  “No,” he finally said. Then he spit out as if one word, nervously, “Hehasitwithhim.”

  To this, Bissonette laughed.

  “I know.” Bissonette’s face turned to a friendly smile. He liked the boy—the three of them had shared chores at times, splitting woods and wrestling heavy things from trucks; tasks that passed easily with the help of others. They were not friends—Dan and Mr. Bissonette—but the two had a relationship like the neighbors in the Frost poem “Mending Wall.”

  ‘The kid is a good boy,’ he thought.

  “I know,” he said again. “Dan borrowed mine a while ago. Before he got the new Husqvarna. He was going to sharpen mine before returning it, but fall turned to winter and I never got around to picking it up.”

  The boy eyed him. ‘He’s talking like I’m slow,’ he thought, the feeling tipping him off that the man was planning something. ‘Adults do this,’ the boy thought. They do what they’re going to do like you don’t exist.

  “So,” Bissonette continued in a declarative tenor, “I’m going to go into the barn and just get it.” This was the tone that had driven the people in his life away.

  “I’ll get it,” the boy said, firmly.

  “No, you don’t need to…” the man replied dismissively. Bissonette tried to turn, but being strapped into snowshoes he didn’t get far before the boy responded.

  “I’d better,” the boy said in a reassuring tone. “The barn’s a mess.”

  Turning into the darkness of the house, he was gone. Mr. Bissonette could hear him struggling with snow pants and boots and gloves in a hurried way. Nylon rubbed with a swish. The boy swore a muted swear.

  “I can just pop in…”

  “No!”

  Then a calmer voice came from the darkness. “No. I’m not supposed to let anyone in.”

  “I understand, it’s just…”

  Letting the voice leave him, the man resigned himself to waiting. Raised to respect the differences in the rules of a home, as a man Bissonette respected how people did things, even as he found them infuriating. ‘The boy’s just trying to do what he thinks his father wants,’ he thought. The man sighed. ‘Alone for three days, he is the man of the house.’ Even with these thoughts, the weight of the passing hour pressed on him. ‘Let’s get to it,’ he thought, not quite resigned to the boy’s will.

  After a bit more tussle coming from the darkness, the boy returned to the door not quite dressed.

  “Can I bring it to your house?” the boy asked.

  Bissonette looked at the sky. It was after lunch. From the look of the drifts and the small stature of the boy, he would not expect to see him until dark. If then. That would delay the plow. It would add another day of being snowbound.

  Of not working, or being paid.

  “I need it,” the neighbor said. He wouldn’t have said it if it were not true—to push the boy’s sense of duty and his wanting to honor the loan by handing it back himself, a proxy for his father. The boy knew this and threw on a coat. As the blur passed, Bissonette noticed that the boy’s snow pants were not tucked into his boots—he would surely wind up with a boot full of snow—and his jacket was not zipped. It was also too big, as was the blue ski hat that ate his head, ears and all. The boy scrambled past the man, and climbed onto the snow.

  And sank.

  He was lucky it only came to his waist—there was a lot more snow below him. Waiting on the porch, watching the boy’s torso make its way to the barn, the unzipped jacket now trailing like a puffy nylon cape, Bissonette shook his head. ‘This is all so unnecessary,’ the man thought. He also knew it’s what he would have done. Bissonette wore a brace on his knee because he’d rushed back to roofing too soon after ACL surgery, having promised to do a job before the snow flew in November. Your word is what defined you. Dan, the boy, and himself were cut of the same cloth—men of their word. He felt for the boy, and thought for a moment of his own son and wondered if he should have fought for more visits or even custody. ‘He’s okay,’ he thought of his own. Then he felt a sadness as he realized what little impact he had on his own kid.

  As the boy moved closer to the barn, he cursed under his breath. Snow fell into his boots; his sweater was wet with snow, but he didn’t want to stop and zip the jacket because he thought the neighbor would see him as weak and try to help. Wearing gloves like a little kid would—navy blue nylon made to grow out of—he felt stupid and small as he tried to do this one thing. He stopped, conscious of having done so, and then moved forward again. Finally, the body met the barn followed by the door opening up. He fell in. Thankfully, the door swung inward, as the snow would never have yielded.

  For a long minute, Bissonette waited. The air was cold and pure and silent.

  Then he thought it made sense to meet the boy at the barn. When the boy came out with the saw, the man figured, he could take it and trudge straight through the thin line of trees that separated the two houses. Honor would still be met—the boy had gotten it himself. Otherwise, Bissonette thought, the boy would be forced to drag the chainsaw through the snow as he struggled his way back to the house. It was bad for the saw. The man followed the path made by the boy, his snowshoes packing down the snow the boy had disturbed.

  Ten feet from the door, he heard a crash inside shattering the hushed air; a shelf of cans or nails or tools or all three had fallen onto the concrete floor. Bissonette lurched forward, into the doorway. On the floor were all kinds of metal debris, and in the middle stood the boy holding his chainsaw.

  “Great,” the man said

  Glad that the saw was whole, his mind began thinking of what he was going to do when he got back home—of going inside for coffee first, or seeing if the saw started right off and cutting a few of the limbs that blocked his drive. It probably would need oil, and Bissonette began to worry that his can of gasoline might be stale. Quickly, he made a mental inventory of his own small engine supplies. An image of Pennzoil’s small yellow bottle of two-cycle oil struck him, sitting at home on his workbench.

  The boy looked down, worried and with a hint of shame. The completion of this transaction had not gone as he had imagined, and he was not yet old enough—not sophisticated enough, nor experienced—to make a joke, or recognize that no one really cared about what happened. The chainsaw was safe. Bissone
tte was there, waiting to take it. Wanting to cry, anger rose to push it aside. The house had been cold for days, and he had been sitting in a dark house alone, stranded by the snow. Tired from boredom, the neighbor brought unease bordering on fear.

  And now this.

  Snowshoes on, Bissonette didn’t want to shuffle across the concrete floor and ruin his crampons. He looked at the boy, waiting for him to bring the chainsaw, his eyes silently calling him over. The boy looked at the man, unsure of what to do and clearly thinking about a whole host of things balanced in his mind.

  The two were frozen in place.

  Eyes adjusting to the darkness of the garage, it seemed to Bissonette that whatever had crashed, his saw was all right. ‘No hurt, no foul,’ the man thought. Reflecting on it, he realized no one said that anymore. At his own son’s school they didn’t tolerate a win-at-all-cost aggressiveness, which Bissonette thought was a good thing, he guessed. He had not had anything to do with the school in months—his son’s mother took care of most of that—and his son didn’t talk much about school, except to say that things were fine. That was when he saw his son; when the mother drove up from Starksboro. ‘No hurt, no foul,’ he thought, this time thinking of his son instead of the saw.

  The man smiled, and the boy smiled back.

  Tensions eased.

  And then Bissonette noticed the truck.

  Dan’s truck.

  In the bay of the garage sat Dan’s truck. Since the mother had died, Dan had owned only one vehicle, an F150 truck. Mostly a plumber, Dan did a lot of this and that to fill out the week with work. His was a work truck, with dents and scrapes before rust began to take it over. He drove it everywhere; their homes were far enough from anywhere to make that necessary.

  He wasn’t out. Not stranded by the storm.

  The man’s eyes widened slightly with understanding.

  Something was wrong.

  He stood in the doorway; he had to make a decision. To get help.