The Hour Before Dark by Douglas Clegg

got a spiral notebook I’d had for years and wrote down the details I could remember in it: Moon, fishing, eels and trout, fingernail crescent moon, seagulls, eyes missing, eyes returned to normal, tan baseball cap, calm water. Pola.

     
    2
     
    For the first time in daylight, I went to the village.
    The village was only about a half-mile walk from the eastern edge of Hawthorn. The day was overcast and the woods to the south sent a piney scent up to me as I trudged through the crunchy bits of snow. It had snowed off and on since I arrived, but generally melted by late afternoon down to a manageable slush. I could’ve borrowed Brooke’s truck, but she was sleeping and had the keys somewhere in her room. I didn’t want to disturb her.
    The road to town was slick and wet, and I enjoyed the freshness of the day as I went. Part of me wanted to jog the whole way in, to feel my lungs working, but instead, I opted for a lit cigarette out the side of my mouth. My self-destruction would be slow and take as long as cigarettes could take.
    Everything about Burnleyside was unappealing in winter.
    It seemed Main Street had no color after summer—the peeling paint of the white clapboard two-stories all ran together in a jumble of storefronts and thin slivers of small Cape houses. The locals called it the Shambles—the way the stores seemed to pile on top and over each other on Main Street. It always seemed overcrowded in summer, and like a mess of poor architectural planning in the winter. The Oaks, up island, was more picturesque owing to the money poured into the houses and few convenience stores at the end of the island. In the summer, there was a Baskin-Robbins there, and even a McDonald’s, all of which closed down for the winter as of October 20th. On Main Street in Burnleyside, I saw MontiLee Stormer with her swanky new hairdo. “Just like a movie star,” she said, and at first I wanted to smirk and chuckle at the provincialism of Burnleyside, but when I looked twice at her, it did give her a glamorous look. MontiLee was the woman who women kept their husbands away from because she seemed to be catnip for the men in the village, even if she had never strayed from her own husband. She had the look of a woman who might stray, and no matter how she protested, there were those who thought she’d spent her life in alliances. MontiLee quizzed me about what it had been like living in the South (as she thought of Washington, D.C.) and asked if the senators and congressmen were as corrupt as they seemed. She talked politics a bit—first national, wondering what the president was up to and why he didn’t respond to the letters she’d sent him about what she considered were the growing concerns of the nation. Then she switched to local news.
    “I know I shouldn’t be mentioning this,” she said. “But any news?”
    “On?”
    “The murder" she whispered, and glanced about the street as if others might hear her. As if it were a big secret. “We’re absolutely terrified to go out at night.”
    “They think it’s a killer from the mainland. Who’s back on the mainland,” I said, fairly sure that it was a lie. I had to admit it: “I really don’t know. I don’t even understand what the cops are doing about it.”
    “I watch all the Discovery Channel shows on forensics, and it’s fascinating. How they can even see how blood sprays a certain way, and—” but she must’ve seen the look of revulsion in my face, because she stopped. “Our hearts go out to you, dear,” she said, and placed a hand on my chest, right above where my heart would be. For just a second, I thought she might be flirting with me, which was less annoying than uncalled for. I will grant that it gave me a tingle, partly because MontiLee was so attractive; I was not immune to her charms. “And you know,” she said, keeping her voice low, “You look like you’re holding up.”
    “Thanks. Ah ...” I said, fumbling with words. The only thing I