Unspeakable

'Itisa mission, Holly. You're right. At Hood River Forestry Industries, we consider it our duty to keep Oregon's forests protected and sustained, for the future of our children and our children's children.'

'Andtheirchildren, too, I'll bet,' added Doug. 'And their children's children's children.'

Katie nudged him and said, 'How many beers have you had?'

Ned kept on smiling with those clear caramel eyes, and Holly did her best not to stare at the shred of steak.

'You ought to get Holly to tell you about her lipreading,' said Doug as they finished their raisin ice creams. 'She's so good that she can even tell what part of the state a person was raised in.'

'It's nothing,' said Holly, embarrassed. 'It's a knack, that's all.'

'Doesn't sound like nothing to me,' said Ned. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs in his neatly pressed jeans. 'Can you tell me what part of the stateIwas raised in?'

Holly hesitated but Doug said, 'Go on, Holly. Tell him.'

'I don't think so, really.'

'Oh, come on,' Ned coaxed her. 'I've got twenty dollars that says you get it wrong.'

Holly said, 'Okay, it's a bet. Actually, you weren't raised in Oregon at all. Or at least your parents weren't.'

'I wasn't?'

'No. Your accent is more like northeast Minnesota or northwest Wisconsin. Within a two-hundred-mile radius of Duluth, anyhow. Also, you twice used the wordsawbuckwhen you were talking about cutting wood, whereas in Oregon they tend to usebuckstandorbuck- horse.'

Ned turned to Doug and said, 'Did you tell her that?'

Doug grinned and shook his head.

'You're sure? That isamazing. That is an absolutely amazing talent. My father started a lumber company in Babbitt, Minnesota, and I lived in Minnesota until I was seventeen. Then my father's company was taken over by North Minnesota Timber, and I was offered a job with Hood River. Amazing. And how did you know that stuff about sawbucks?'

'I make a study of it-you know, local and colloquial phrases. It helps me to tell where somebody's from and what kind of person they are. You know, white-or blue-collar, city or country.'

'She does it for the Portland Police Bureau,' said Doug proudly. 'She's the only court-accredited lipreader in Oregon.'

Holly said, 'Doug?' She didn't like anybody to know about her police work. Obviously she had been obliged to take Doug and Katie into her confidence, because of the erratic times that she needed to take off from the Children's Welfare Department. But for her own protection she didn't want murderers and drug dealers and sexual perverts finding out whose evidence it was that had sent them to jail.

But Doug plowed on. 'Only yesterday she was lipreading this guy who's going to have somebody's wife murdered. Can you believe that? There he was, in the Compass Hotel, arranging to have this woman killed like he's ordering lunch.'

'That's amazing,' said Ned. 'You just don't realize what's going on all around you, do you, unless you know where to look.'

'Doug,' warned Holly. Then, to Ned, 'You don't want to believe everything Doug says, especially after five beers.'

'No, no, I haven't told you the best bit,' said Doug. 'The best bit is, this guy was talking about how they're going to dispose of this woman's body once they've killed her.'

'Really? What were they going to do?'

'Doug!' snapped Holly, and Katie shook his arm and said, 'For God's sake, Doug, it isn't funny.'

'Of course it's funny. They're going to give the body to a guy they know in the wood-pulp business. Thewood-pulpbusiness! They're going to mush her up and turn her into cardboard boxes. So who's our number-one suspect?'

Doug slapped his thigh and let out a whoop of laughter. But then he realized that neither Holly, Katie, nor Ned was smiling at all, and his laughter petered out into a fit of coughing.

Ned said, in the flattest of voices, 'Sorry, Doug. I know you were only kidding, but we at Hood River have total integrity when it comes to the raw materials we use in our mechanically ground-paper-making system. And what you call 'cardboard' boxes aren't made with cardboard at all; they're made with linerboard and corrugating medium, which is one hundred percent postconsumer recycled fiber.'

Doug lifted both hands in surrender. 'Okay, okay, I apologize. But when Holly told me about the wood-pulp guy, I have to admit that- Okay, sorry.'

Back at the cabin they changed into warm coats and hiking boots so that they could take a walk up to Seven Arches Falls. Holly was ready first and came into the living room as Doug was poking the fire and building it up with more logs.

'Doug? I want you to know that I'm not angry with you or anything.'

'I'm sorry, Holly. I opened my big yapola and stuck my foot straight into it, didn't I? But I think it's incredible, what you do. I just wanted Ned to know that we're proud of you.'

'Doug, I have to think of my security. I have to think of Daisy as well as myself.'

'I know that. But Ned? well, Katie and me, we've known Ned almost as long as we've known each other.'

'Do we ever get to know people, do you think? Like,reallyknow them? I thought I knew David before I married him, and how wrong I was.'

Doug stacked another log onto the hearth. 'Let me tell you something: When you first walked into the Children's Welfare Department, my heart practically stopped on the spot. I had the biggest crush on you for months and months, until I realized that you weren't interested in me at all, and that I was never going to be able to summon up the courage to ask you out.'

He turned to her, and there were tiny flames dancing in his eyes, like fireflies. 'So? well, I accepted my lot, didn't I? I swallowed my disappointment. Katie's a really great girl, and I'm very fond of her. But I still look at you sometimes and wonder what it could have been like, you and me, and my heart still hurts, now and again, when I'm feeling sentimental, or drunk.'

Holly reached out and held both his hands.

'I'm real sorry about spilling the beans,' he said, swallowing hard. 'It wasn't funny after all, was it, any of it?'

Holly said, 'It doesn't matter, Doug. You're forgiven. But think about it: Supposing Nedisthe wood-pulp guy?'

Cabin Fever

That night, unable to sleep, she stood with her forehead pressed against the chilly glass of her bedroom window, staring up at Mount Hood. The mountain appeared oddly insubstantial, almost fragile, as if it had been modeled out of nothing but crumpled white tissue paper.

She was very tired. During the afternoon they had climbed right up to the head of the Seven Arches Falls, so that they could see all seven separate cascades gushing down the mountainside into pool after foaming pool, and then down through the trees and the bushes to Mirror Lake. Then they had skirted the woods and descended an awkward rocky track, walking over five miles through the trees before coming back to the cabin.

Ned had stayed close to her side, offering his hand whenever she needed to climb up a slippery, moss-covered boulder, and even when she didn't. He had talked to her about thinning and sustained harvest and best management practices, and by the time they came through the cabin door she knew so much about forestry and wood products that she could have written a book about it-on recycled paper, of course.

After a supper of Katie'schuletas veracruzana,which were thick and spicy pork chops, they sat on the rug around the fireplace with glasses of pear brandy from the Clear Creek Distillery and told ghost stories.

Ned casually hung his arm around Holly's shoulders and made a point of turning to face her directly whenever he spoke, exaggerating his lip movements. He plainly believed that he was being considerate, but Holly could lip-read people who were stammering, and people who were muttering, and people who were talking so fast that even their friends told them to slow up, and after a while she began to find it wearing.

Katie told a story about when she was five years old and had walked into the yard where her mother's washing was hanging out to dry. She said that she had seen a bas-relief figure appear in one of the sheets, a figure with a horrified face. But when the wind had suddenly flapped the sheet up in the air, she could see that there was nobody standing behind it, and she was alone.

Doug had glimpsed his dead father in the sporting-goods section of a Fred Meyer store. He had followed him from one aisle to another, trying to catch up with him, but his father had left the store and disappeared across the crowded parking lot. 'One minute I could see him?. I knew it was him; he was even wearing his old felt hat. Next minute the sun dazzled me and it was just like he melted away.'

Holly was about to tell them about seeing David's Porsche and what the woman in the bookstore had warned her about, but Ned got in first. 'I never saw a ghost personally. I guess my upbringing was too rational, ha-ha. But up in the woods of Minnesota they have this story about a shadow that attacks people at night. It comes out of the woods and it grabs you by your hair, and then it drags you back into the forest and nobody ever sees you again, ever.'

She picked up her wristwatch from her night table. Ten after two. She supposed she ought to try to sleep, but for some reason she felt disturbed, as if something were badly wrong. She looked toward the oil painting of the woman in the field and she almost expected the black bird to fly off the post and flap off into the painted