Page 12 of Buried in the Woods Below

Chapter 6

After a seven-hour drive through a seemingly endless expanse of farmland, I pull into the postage-stamp parking lot up the street from Cov. It’s five thirty. Just enough time to change clothes, slap on deodorant, and apply makeup. I find a parking spot in the least trafficked part of the garage, slide the driver’s seat back, and awkwardly shimmy into a pink-and-purple floral dress, scanning the garage to ensure no one’s watching. I pull down the vanity mirror and apply enough bronzer to mask my freckled, too-much-time-in-the-office complexion, and add concealer to hide the under-eye bags from my tequila binge last night. My hair is another story. The wind from the drive has created a blond bird’s nest. I brush my hair for five minutes until every tangle is gone. By the time I’m done, I look downright respectable.

I grab the bag of gifts for Mom and the Parkers, leave the parking garage, tiptoe downhill into town, and take in the scene. I had forgotten how idyllic Wayzata is in the summer. Small apparel shops and trendy restaurants line Lake Street. Families disembark from speedboats on their way to dinner. Older folks sit in Adirondack chairs in the plaza watching the sun set over the lake. Kids slurp ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s. Teenagers gossip outside the local coffee shop.

But the real jaw-dropper is Lake Minnetonka—a rich blue expanse with 125 miles of winding shoreline, fringed with thick oak trees and dotted with multimillion-dollar estates. I remember my dad telling me the name Minnetonka comes from a Dakota phrase meaning “big water.” Beside the lake, an old train track cuts through the trees, and the familiar ding of an approaching train floats through the air.

My mind stutters, and a memory takes over. I’m back on that night on the train tracks with my father.

It’s Friday. He’s seemed different lately—small things, subtle at first. His conspiratorial smile is there, but the twinkle is gone. When he’s writing, his fingers no longer dance across the keyboard like they used to; they slog. His drinks come earlier each day, the ice clinking by midafternoon, scotch, mostly, occasionally gin. Sometimes he gets angry.

We sit down for family dinner at Gianni’s, in a booth with Moroccan-tile cushions and a waitress who calls everyone hun. We eat steak and creamed spinach and too many carbs, and then we follow our ritual: a walk along the sidewalk near the tracks. A family constitutional, my mother calls it.

My dad has had four, maybe five scotches. Could be more. He tiptoes along the train tracks like he’s walking a balance beam, one foot wobbling in front of the other, arms out, cardigan flapping in the breeze. His glasses slide down his nose, a damp curl glued to his forehead.

I laugh. I’m ten. Dad’s being funny.

Then I hear the ding.

Soft at first, like a neighbor’s doorbell, but it keeps coming, growing louder, higher-pitched.

My mother stiffens beside me. “David,” she calls, her voice sharp but quiet. Pleading without panic. She doesn’t want to embarrass him.

But he just keeps walking—left foot, right foot—wobbling, humming something tuneless. His shadow wavers under the streetlight, thin and unsteady.

I keep waiting for the punch line, for him to jump off with a ta-da and a goofy bow, but it doesn’t come.

Her hand grips mine tighter.

The bells ring louder. A second ding, closer now. The low growl of something moving fast.

“David. Get off the tracks!”

Still, he walks the balance beam. Still, he hums. His beard has grown patchy and gray. He doesn’t look like my dad anymore. It’s the beginning of what he’ll become.

“David!” Her voice cracks now and she runs to him, but she won’t get there in time.

Then the horn. That awful mechanical scream.

I feel it first—a vibration in the soles of my shoes—and then I see it: the eye of the train, a blazing white light searing through the dark.

I scream.

Praying my thin, desperate voice will break through the fog of his stupor.

He looks up, and our eyes meet. His pale-blue, bloodshot eyes, wide, burning, like he’s been swimming in chlorine, or something worse.

And for a second, he freezes.

He’s going to let it happen. Just…let it end.

Then, he calmly slides off the tracks.

The train screams past us, a monstrous blur, wind howling, metal shrieking, horn blasting.

He pivots toward me, smiles, raindrops squinting.

Like it was a joke, like he’d meant to all along.