Free Past Imperfect by Kathleen Hills Page A

century, the Petworth land had been one of the few wooded tracts left in a countryside as stripped and burned out as a war zone. But now, while forest was steadily reclaiming most of St. Adele’s fields, the patch of ancient timber that had escaped the first round of the logging onslaught had vanished, replaced with raspberries and potatoes. Only the few acres surrounding the old homestead were virtually unchanged. McIntire looked with envy at the house, solid as the day Grandpa Petworth had constructed it of massive logs and native stone, using the mast of his father-in-law’s schooner as a ridge pole. To its rear, spreading oaks, a rarity in the Upper Peninsula, still shaded open grassy spaces, and the creek still gurgled over rocks on its way to the pond that was just visible through a drape of willows.
    Together with Wylie and Mia, the young Johnny McIntire had spent long hours in this child’s paradise, playing cowboys and Indians, catching minnows in the creek, and vainly endeavoring to construct rafts that would actually float in the pond—rafts, he recalled, to escape the vile pirate “Gutter,” whose inspiration reposed just on the other side of a rusty iron fence in the form of the earthly remains of Captain Guttorm Gulsvagen, the earliest resident of what had become the St. Adele cemetery. In life, Gulsvagen must have been that great-grandfather who had first put down European roots here, but to the three adventurers, he was the personification of evil—the all purpose villain, a ready adversary for every game. They never tired of creating new tales of Gutter’s sinister exploits, but they carefully avoided straying too near his grave after dark.
    Odd, how it seemed that it was always summer then, especially considering that the reality was so much the reverse. Maybe those long frozen months only served to make the temperate days more memorable, but when McIntire let his mind wander back to his boyhood, as he did with increasing frequency, he remembered days filled with warm sun and blue water, and mellow starry nights chasing fireflies and executing hair’s breadth escapes from old Gutter Gulsvagen.
    He found Wylie seated at the table in his small, rigidly neat kitchen. He looked up unsurprised when McIntire walked in without knocking.
    â€œMornin’ Mac. I’m afraid you didn’t catch me in the best of spirits.” He ran his right hand down the front of his shirt and up over his hair. “I just can’t get used to it. The whole business hardly seemed real, right up until the time we put him in the ground. It only really hit me last night that he’s not coming back.” He stood up for a moment, then sank heavily back into his chair. “I have to get these books in order—maybe somebody else will be taking over the orchard—but I haven’t had the heart to even open them.”
    Wylie did indeed have the appearance of one without a functioning heart. He looked worse alive, McIntire thought, than Nels had dead. Seemingly not one drop of blood had found its way to Wylie’s face. Its only color came from the gray semi-circular smudges under his eyes. His usually chiseled features sagged like putty left in the sun. The thick waves of his russet hair and the back of his rumpled white shirt were damp with sweat.
    McIntire yanked open the curtains on the two windows. The high-beamed room was flooded with light, causing Wylie to recoil and revealing three identical stacks of leather-bound ledgers on the table alongside an open bottle of Seagrams. McIntire helped himself to a mug from the cupboard and filled it with coffee. He took a couple of quick swallows of the viciously black brew before he sat down opposite Wylie.
    â€œIt’s been quite a shock for everybody,” he started awkwardly. “Of course, I know you and Nels were especially close,” he added. He didn’t want to appear unsympathetic.
    â€œCloser than most