A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain Read online

  Advance Praise for Adrianne Harun and A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain

  “I have long been a fan of Adrianne Harun’s work, and A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain has raised my admiration to new heights. Writing with astonishing vividness, Harun weaves her own myths and magic as she plots her amazing tale.”

  —Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

  “Adrianne Harun’s dark, mysterious novel is by turns Gothic and grittily realistic, astute and poetic in its evocation of evil everywhere.”

  —Andrea Barrett, winner of the National Book Award and author of The Air We Breathe

  Praise for The King of Limbo

  “[An] assured debut collection . . . offers tales of outsiders, idolaters, the estranged, and the just plain strange. These uprooted lives read like dreamscapes spun from fierce realities, in prose radiating intelligence, panache, and wild humor.”

  —O, The Oprah Magazine

  “A diverse collection . . . These stories succeed as quirky examples of how strange the world looks to people who are not at home in it.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A most impressive debut . . . These stories sparkle like expertly cut gems.”

  —The Denver Post

  “A writer worth watching . . . Harun’s greatest achievement is that each story comprises its own separate world.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “A witty, sure-handed writer whose work shines with real originality.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “Magical . . . Adrianne Harun possesses that rare ability to see the world at an odd tilt that makes everything appear new, at times even to shimmer.”

  —Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of That Old Cape Magic

  “These are eloquent stories about restlessness and longing. In them Adrianne Harun manipulates darkness and light, humor and pathos, the familiar and the strange, managing to reveal the peculiarity at the heart of the commonplace and to transform the extraordinary into something inevitable and real.”

  —Alice McDermott, winner of the National Book Award and author of That Night

  “In The King of Limbo and other Stories, Adrianne Harun writes beautifully of the world we thought we knew, showing it to us from unexpected angles, and introduces us to her own unmistakable world. Her fierce, delightful stories are like no one else’s. This is an enthralling collection.”

  —Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

  “Adrianne Harun’s stories are elegant, funny, and well-designed.”

  —Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

  “These stories surprise at first, literary and wild, and then get funny, and then we read them for pleasure alone. We can properly expect things of Adrianne Harun.”

  —Padgett Powell, author of Edisto

  “Adrianne Harun’s stories are elegant, mysterious, and polished. They balance perfectly on the edge between ordinary life and dreams. Her landscapes are places you would love to visit, and her characters, be they hopeful, grieving, or disquieted, are rendered with great sympathy. The King of Limbo is a wonderful work of the imagination.”

  —Jean Thompson, author of The Humanity Project

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN

  Adrianne Harun’s acclaimed story collection, The King of Limbo, was a Sewanee Writer’s Series Selection and a Washington State Book Award finalist. Her stories have been widely published in such periodicals as Story, Narrative Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune (as a Nelson Algren Award winner) and also listed as notable in both Best American Mystery Stories and Best American Short Stories. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

  Also by Adrianne Harun

  The King of Limbo and Other Stories

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in Penguin Books 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Adrianne Harun

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Excerpt from “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen. © 1992 Stranger Music, Inc. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Excerpt from “There is a War” by Leonard Cohen. © 1974 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Harun, Adrianne.

  A man came out of a door in the mountain / Adrianne Harun.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-670-78610-7

  ISBN 978-1-101-60985-9 (eBook)

  I. Title.

  PS3608.A788M37 2014

  813'.6—dc23

  2013035043

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  This book is dedicated to the families of the Highway of Tears victims—the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, lovers and friends—of the stolen sisters.

  And to the memory of my father, the irreplaceable Dr. Joseph Harun

  There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.

  —Leonard Cohen

  CONTENTS

  Advanced Praise fro Adrianne Harun

  About the Author

  Also by Adrianne Harun

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Devil’s Hopscotch

  Our Collected Breath

  The Devil’s Companion

  Hana Swann

  Keven Seven

  His Playground

  The Devil’s Pocket

  Uncle Lud

  Snow Woman

  The First Bad Idea

  As He Lies Dying

  Devils Make the Best Salesmen

  Homework

  Caretaking

  A Man Came out of a Door in the Mountain

  There Is a Crack in Everything

  Laundry Day for the Devil

  Collateral Damage

  The Next Bad Plan

  Out of the Pan, Into the Fire

  Free Rides for All!

  Patterns of Energy

  The Devil Does Story Problems, but First Eats Hooke’s Law for Breakfast

  A Brief Reprieve<
br />
  Equation with No Answer

  The Devil Plays with a Telephone

  Henchmen

  Turn Back, Turn Around

  The Game Begins

  Calling the Devil’s Bluff

  The Unforeseen Consequence: Success

  The Devil Draws a Map

  Lost at Last, in the Fiery Woods

  One Last Shot

  A Treacherous Journey

  Beauty + Despair: A Poem by the Devil

  In His Wake: Inference, Interpretation

  THE DEVIL’S HOPSCOTCH

  In mountain towns, children play a game called Devil’s Hopscotch. Perhaps it’s a game that’s played everywhere, under different names. It goes like this: One player chooses a marker—a fork-shaped stick, a piece of reddish shale, a furred leaf that resembles the torn ear of a dead cat. The marker is set upon a square in an ordinary chalked grid of hopscotch. And the game begins as usual: A throw. A series of hops. A bend, graceful or teetering to a near fall. The tip of a sneaker crossing a line. Boundaries called and kept. Again. Again. All leading to the final chalked box and a return one hopes is every bit as uneventful as the cleanest advance. But here’s the rub: if your marker lands in the box with the Devil’s Marker and if you or your marker touch the Devil’s Marker, you partner with Old Scratch and have the option to do his handiwork when the opportunity arises. The option, mind you, the option. The problem is, that blasted marker won’t stay still. It flips and skips of its own accord, changing shapes as it moves, so that you can’t be sure until the last minute, when head spinning, you bend to see, that you’ve knocked against the devil’s marker. Confusion, disbelief—all part of the game, and so, should it be a surprise when a simple game of hopscotch devolves into stone-throwing and bloodied fingers, the weakest children ironically becoming the best devils?

  • • •

  Adults who have studied the games of children allow that the Devil’s Hopscotch makes for an interesting variation, but doesn’t alter the concept of play since the possibility of trouble is present in all social interactions. The children, of course, devils breaking out on all sides of them, must disagree.

  OUR COLLECTED BREATH

  That wasn’t the first summer girls went missing off the Highway, not the first time a family lost its dearest member to untraceable evil, but it was the first time someone I loved was among that number—spirited away, it seemed, although I knew better. If Uncle Lud were here, he’d tell this story. He’d know right where to begin so you could see how the devil slipped into town, how visible his entry was, and yet how we bumbled right into his path. All the pieces would make perfect sense then. Fractures would vanish. You’d see the whole of it. But Uncle Lud’s not here, and he’s left me and a few scattered notebooks to set the shards of the story side by side and conjure demons once again. Even as I do, I want to call out to all of us. I want to yell: Look sharp! For as Uncle Lud might say, the devil could find a soul mate in a burnt teaspoon and he sure as hell can choose whatever forms suit his purpose. I can almost see myself, crouching down beside Bryan and Jackie at the refuse station as that Hana Swann strolls toward us, or hollering up at Ursie on the motel’s upper balcony while Keven Seven waits for her. Look sharp! As if that might have altered every part of the day the devil first arrived to meet us—the bunch of us—in person.

  “Ursie’s not coming,” Bryan said as I swung the gun duffle into the truck bed and got ready to hoist myself in after it. “She’s up at the P&P today.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” I said as I changed course and climbed into the cab. “She’s getting more hours.”

  “As long as she stays clear of Auntie and those mining fellows,” Bryan said. “Yeah, it’s good. Good for you, at least,” he said. “You might actually hit something.”

  All of us were decent shots, but Bryan and Ursie’s mother and dad had made their first hunting camp when Ursie was still in diapers, and Bryan was right. His sister was the best. Once she’d had her turn, the rest of us were left with the odd tin can to aim at. But Ursie was modest. She didn’t take time off to congratulate herself after every shot either the way we all did, whooping a little, or as Jackie did, banging the big spoon she wore on her belt against whatever was handy, even my head every now and then.

  “Thick-skulled Leo,” she’d say, “better rattle those smarts.”

  Even Tessa, the least accomplished among us, liked to celebrate a good hit, handing out clove gum all round and sometimes giving me a hint of her big warm smile.

  “She’ll miss the show, though.”

  “The show?”

  Bryan smirked. “You forget already? Jackie’s bringing that gal up today?”

  “Yeah? Hey, don’t start talking about her in front of Tessa, okay?”

  We weren’t even to the curve down toward town, but I imagined I could already see Tessa, the hood on her sweatshirt up despite the heat, waiting on the corner for us.

  “What? You think she’ll be jealous?” Bryan said. “Man, you wish. I wish. She could be, you know. Why else would that girl come up to the refuse station with us but to hang around with your handsome self?”

  “You know Tessa’s only coming along to help Jackie.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Bryan cackled. “Or maybe . . .”

  I could see Tessa walking up Fuller toward the corner with James Street. For real now. The hood rising as Bryan’s truck slowed. My heart already doing its usual wild thumping at the sight of her.

  “Shut up, Bry,” I said. “Just shut up.”

  Before Bryan could fully respond, I was opening the door, getting ready to swing to the ground, making room for Tessa in the cab between us as nonchalantly as I could. She was still more than a block away and I was halfway to the pavement when a loud car horn blasted right beside the truck. I jumped backward, smacking my head as I went, then I smacked it again as Bryan reached across the seat and grabbed the front of my shirt, yanking me back into the cab so that I tumbled onto the truck floor, my face scrapping the tattered seat, my right ear knocking against the gearshift. It wasn’t a flattering position, and I was cursing Bryan, until I raised my head and slowly understood.

  Beside us cruised an orange Matador, the latest acquisition of the Nagle brothers. Their crony, a skinny tattooed cipher who everyone just called “the Brit,” was driving, Markus Nagle glowered from the backseat, but it was GF, the older Nagle, who was reaching across the Brit to slam his fist on the horn as if he were sending us a coded message, which I guess he was.

  Bryan managed a half wave, and the Matador shot away, but not before a stone-faced GF took stock of us. I hoped Tessa had noticed the car, that she’d slowed down, even tucked herself away into a shop for a moment.

  “Don’t mess with them, Leo,” Bryan said as I pulled myself out of the truck cab, wincing. “Don’t let them notice you.”

  Not even Bryan, who sold pot off and on for the Nagles, wanted to be on their daily radar. The Nagles were like bad dogs. If you stayed off their turf, you might be safe, but if they got your scent, they’d set you running, and eventually you might find yourself in a fight you had no chance of surviving.

  We were both squinting up Fuller Street, hoping the Matador had kept going, that the Nagles weren’t on their way back around the block, when I felt Tessa squeeze by me into the truck, and a different sort of pummeling began on my heart.

  “C’mon, Leo,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. Unless you want the Nagles to come shooting with us.”

  What a thought. It propelled me into the truck even as Bryan tried to speed away from the curb, his old truck shuddering and chugging as we left town behind us.

  Since school finished in June, we’d been driving up to the refuse station, our dump, a straight half mile from the turn-off on one of the gutted logging roads no one used much anymore, a clear-cut in what Uncle Lud, in one of his stories, liked to
call the Once-Impenetrable Forest of Vast and Unclaimed Riches. The five of us—Jackie; Bryan; Bryan’s sister, Ursie; Tessa; and me—had been oddball friends since swaddling days, and as soon as we started school, that friendship had been cemented. Part Kitselas, part Haisla, part Polish and German, Ursie, Bryan, and me fit with neither the white nor the Indian kids, who spurned us in different ways. But Jackie, who held her whole generous nation in her blood, adopted us, and somehow Tessa had always been there, a few steps to the side of me, looking on. We’d ridden all the way to our seventeenth year together, holding one another in sight as best we could. We were still trying that last summer.

  Townies had used this stump-marked pocket as a dump until the new refuse station with its sanitation center was built. Now, only the logging camp and the occasional hunter dumped here illegally, and so we claimed it for our own private playground, handing a pair of guns—one a .22, the other a 30-30—back and forth until the air jelled and grew stinky, the mosquitoes and horseflies swarmed, and our fingers slipped on the slick triggers so that we missed the rats and crap crows we aimed at more often than not.

  You get a good eye shooting rats. They’re fast and low and not as mean as the crap crows, which will turn on you and rouse the others so that the air fills for a moment with the chaotic bursts of feathers and bird crap. Crap crows make a hell of a mess, and their kin remember every offense, spreading news of it far and wide. Crap crows aren’t as smart as ravens, or as excessively dramatic, but once they get a good look at you, you can’t walk outdoors without one of them or a sympathetic raven dive-bombing you. They spread tales, they do. Uncle Lud told me this ages ago, and he was dead right. Bryan got his right earlobe nipped hard that way.

  Rats, on the other hand, well, the rats just kind of explode in place, and the other rats don’t give a shit. They just keep coming.

  Early on that summer, Bryan and I managed a bottle or a joint or two, but then Jackie nearly got herself killed at a house party and ended up on probation and up at the logging camp, and the rest of us quietly made a kind of pact. She called us every name she could think of, imagining the worst—that we’d found religion—but we stood steady through her every tirade, and after that the five of us just came to shoot, leveling the guns, imagining we were picking off the enemy one by one. And Jackie came around, her ferocious enthusiasm a sure sign that she had plenty of worthy targets in mind and she planned to get them before they got her.