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“Yeah, but?”
“What the hell, I’m game. Blow your precious primal breath, Butchie.”
He smiled, shook his head, and held the case out. “After you. And if it kills you I promise to take care of Sheila and Mark.”
“Mark’s almost old enough to take care of himself,” I said. “Okay, open sesame.”
I blew gently on the wave. The case opened. It was empty. But when I breathed in, I caught a faint whiff of peppermint. I think that was it.
The case closed by itself. There was no line where the lid met the body, and indeed no hinges. It looked completely solid.
“Nothing?” Butch said.
“Nothing. You try.” I held it out to him.
He took it and breathed gently on the wave. The case popped open. He bent down, took a timid sniff, then a deep breath. The case shut. “Wintergreen?”
“I thought peppermint, but I guess they’re about the same.”
“So much for Greeks bearing gifts,” he said. “Lare… it wasn’t some kind of a hoax, was it? You know, like some girl and some guy pretending to be… you know, a trick…” He stopped. “No, huh?”
“No.”
He put the gray case on the end table next to his drawing pad. “What are you going to tell Sheila?”
“Nothing, I guess. I’d prefer it if my wife didn’t think I’ve gone crazy.”
He laughed. “Good luck with that. She can read you like a book.”
He was right, of course. And when Sheila pushed—which she did—I told her no, we hadn’t gotten lost, we’d had a close call in the woods. Some hunter had fired at what he thought was a deer and the bullet went between us. We never saw who it was, I told her… and when she asked Butch, he backed me up. He said it had probably been some out-of-state flatlander. Butch had seen a couple, so that much was true.
Butch yawned. “I’m going to bed.”
“You can sleep?” Then I yawned, too. “What time is it, anyway?”
Butch looked at his watch and shook his head. “Stopped. Yours?”
“Yes, and…” I yawned again. “… it’s a wind-up. Should be fine, but it’s not.”
“Lare? What we breathed in… I think it was some kind of sedative. What if it’s poisonous?”
“Then we’ll die,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
That was what we did.
I had a dream of fire.
It was full daylight when I woke up. Butch was in the kitchen part of the main room. The coffee pot was on the stove, huffing away. He asked how I felt.
“Okay,” I said. “You?”
“Fine as paint… whatever that means. Coffee?”
“Yes. Then we ought to go see if the bridge is still there. If it is, we’ll get going. Show up earlier than planned.”
“Which we do some years anyway,” he said, and poured. Black coffee, rich and strong. Just the thing after an encounter with creatures from another world. By daylight it all should have seemed hallucinatory, but it didn’t. Not to me, and when I asked Butch, he said the same.
The Wonder Bread was gone, but there were a couple of fruit pies left. I imagined Sheila shaking her head and saying that only men in the woods would eat Hostess Fruit Pies for breakfast.
