Free Man in The Woods by Scott Spencer Page A

slides out of the driver’s side. The night air is dry, blade-sharp. Withered oak leaves, desiccated and crisp, blown by the wind, scurry across the parking lot like rats. Is anybody looking? Can anybody see? Paul turns up the collar of his leather jacket and opens the passenger side of the truck. Shep does not seem very interested in getting out but when Paul calls to him, the dog laboriously gets up, section by section, and when he is standing at last he gazes at Paul, as if hoping for some last-minute reprieve. “This is going to be fast,” Paul says, and there is something reassuring enough in his voice to induce the dog to hop down out of the truck’s warmth and onto the cold asphalt.
    Paul leads the dog, with his finger crooked around the dog’s metal choke collar. He doesn’t want to pull too hard on it and yank back sense memories of the rough treatment this dog has had to endure, but he wants Shep to mind him. He walks with him to where an old abandoned Comet is sitting, its tires flat, its windshield cracked, and commands the dog to sit. “You stay here.”
    He points at Shep and looks sternly at him, hoping to convey the importance of the order. Shep tilts his head to the left and opens his mouth, letting his long tongue unfurl and giving himself an unaccountably happy-go-lucky expression. Paul backs away, continuing to motion for the dog to stay put, and when he is halfway between the dog and the truck he turns and quickly walks over to his truck, opens the door, gets in, disengages the parking brake, puts it into gear, and runs it with some vigor into the closest large tree, which happens to be a red maple, judging by the diameter of its trunk. “Sorry,” Paul whispers to the tree as the front end of his truck strikes it. He braces himself and, in fact, is barely jostled by the impact, though he forgot to fasten his seat belt. He throws the truck into reverse; his headlights reveal a couple of gouges in the tree’s hide, but the red maple is a hardy tree, and Paul is sure it will barely be affected by the sudden laceration of its bark.
    What worries him more is if he has done enough damage to his truck to explain the bruises on his face and hands. He climbs out of the cab and checks the damage. Perfect. His spirits lift, unreasonably so, as if he has just solved every one of his problems. There is a large, deep dent along the left side of the front bumper, and the left headlight has a spiderweb of cracks over its entirety. Shep is at his side, leaning his weight against Paul’s leg. Paul reaches down and scratches behind the dog’s ears. “You see why I wanted you to get out of the truck,” Paul says to the dog, opening the passenger door for him.

    A half hour later, Paul takes the turn onto Kate’s long driveway. Locust trees, tall and bare, many of them dead but still standing, line either side of the curving quarter-mile. The house is an old Colonial farmhouse, built simply and in sections, the earliest part from 1766, with a subsequent addition from 1810, and another from 1890—the Victorian section, with dark pine built-ins, a carved marble mantel, and a wedding-cake ceiling.
    When Paul first came to this house he was looking for work. Kate had said, “I hear you’re the man to talk to about windows,” and ushered him in with a wave of her fingers. An electrical charge passed between them; it was a moment they relived together, months later. “The old owners put these crummy aluminum frames in and I want nice new windows,” Kate had said. “Maybe…” When she paused for a moment, Paul lowered his eyes, telling himself not to look quite so intently at her. She mentioned a brand of window often advertised in lifestyle magazines, usually with an illustration of a family sprawled out in a living room, husband, wife, daughter, Dalmatian, cozy and carefree, with a view of a winter wonderland through the double-paned glass.
    “This is a beautiful house,” Paul had said, “and it would be