Lowell furrowed his brow. “It’s okay if you don’t,” he said. “I was just wondering. I’m trying to learn how to harmonize.”
He began walking.
Tracy watched the back of him, cursing herself for her cowardice. And then, when he was ten strides away, she willed herself to speak. “I will,” she said. And then again, louder.
“Right on,” said Lowell. “I’ll find you.”
• • •
On her top bunk, after dinner and before lights-out, Tracy folded the front page of The Saratogian into a small square, and read the article.
From it, she learned the full story of Jacob Sluiter. He was, she read, a notorious killer who had haunted the Adirondack Park just over a decade prior. Sluiter was accused of and prosecuted for eleven murders, all of which took place between 1960 and 1964, the year in which he was finally apprehended. Most of these killings took place at campgrounds or remote cabins. The victims—couples, sometimes single women—were bound and stabbed; no firearms were used. What allowed Sluiter to elude capture for so long was his deep knowledge of woodcraft, forged over the course of a childhood spent in rural poverty. He could trap and fish with great skill. During each of the four winters he was on the lam, Sluiter moved from unoccupied cabin to unoccupied cabin, stealing canned goods and other provisions left behind by summer people; from May to September, when the region became more populated and owners returned to their cabins, he camped out in the wilderness. He might have gone on this way forever if not for a stroke of bad luck: a cottage he assumed to be empty for winter was, in fact, the site of its owners’ annual Christmas celebration. Pulling into the driveway, the owner spotted a fire in the fireplace. Before Sluiter could get to his gun, the owner was inside, on top of him.
Jacob Sluiter was tied to a chair while the authorities were called. On December 23, 1964, he was captured at last.
He confessed to nothing. He maintained his innocence, despite the evidence that damned him irreversibly: possessions from victims among his belongings; his fingerprints at all the crime scenes; testimony from two siblings about sadistic tendencies; and, at last, a positive visual identification from one survivor of an attempted homicide. Still, Sluiter denied it. His lack of transparency, wrote the reporter, led to speculation that Sluiter may have been responsible for even more homicides than those he was accused of. Certain cases involving persons who’d gone missing while out hiking—who were formerly considered to have simply gotten lost—were reopened.
Including Bear Van Laar’s? Tracy wondered. This was the frightening rumor she’d heard her first night at camp.
The article went on: ten years after Jacob Sluiter’s capture and sentencing—life in prison, without parole—he feigned illness to oblige a transfer to a lower-security prison. And three weeks ago, Jacob Sluiter escaped that prison, over two hundred miles south of Camp Emerson. The issue of The Saratogian she held was published in his fourth week of being on the lam; the headline reported a possible sighting near Schoharie, New York.
To the side of the article there was a diagram, a sort of map that displayed the location of Sluiter’s known killings, and also of his previous apprehension. And Tracy couldn’t help but notice two of the several reference points the artist had included on the map. One was the town of Shattuck, five miles from Camp Emerson. And the other was the Van Laar Preserve itself. Tracy used her finger, and the key, to judge the distance from where they were to where Sluiter’s arrest had been. Twenty miles, or thirty at the most. She traced a path from Camp Emerson, to the arrest, to the closest killing, also twenty or thirty miles away, and in the process produced a neat isosceles triangle, an eastward-pointing arrow with Camp Emerson as its tip.
Tracy
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
Lowell Cargill, it turned out, was more than just talk. An excruciating week went by, and then he arrived on Balsam’s porch—guitar case in hand—and knocked on the door. One of the Melissas answered, confused. When he asked for Tracy, her mouth fell open further.
Lowell’s suggestion was that they go to the amphitheater to practice, and this was how Tracy found herself following him silently across the grounds of the camp. She tried and failed to think of something to say to him. But Lowell seemed comfortable not talking—until they arrived at their destination. Then he sat down on a stump, opened his guitar case.
One thing Tracy had noticed, the first time she heard Lowell sing, was that he evinced no self-consciousness at all—but really sang, his eyes closing sometimes, as if blocking out the rest of the world.
Today was no different. He began the same Ian & Sylvia song he had sung before—the one that Tracy knew.
Facing Lowell now, Tracy was conflicted: a large part of her was struggling not to burst into hysterical giggles, and she began to dig her fingernails into her own palm to prevent them. But another part of her found Lowell’s passion inspiring, even attractive. His earnest face, beautifully sculpted, moving in agitated ways: it was perhaps the most erotic thing that Tracy, at twelve, had ever witnessed.
“Okay,” said Lowell, when he had sung the song through one time. “Now I’ll teach it to you.”
“I know it already,” Tracy said.
For an hour, they rehearsed—Tracy teaching him, this time, how to hold his note while she held hers. She suddenly found herself missing her mother—a track rat, an exercise rider, tomboyish and forthright, tall, with red hair and freckles like Tracy. She ate her food messily, hunched over her plate, and laughed loudly, and walked with her knees and elbows out, loose-limbed, jangling as she went, her gait reminding Tracy somehow of a marionette’s. Her only moments of gracefulness were on horseback. In the year following her parents’ divorce, most of Tracy’s anger had been directed at her mother—whose vicinity made her an easier target. But now, in her mind, Tracy thanked her for this one thing: teaching her daughter to harmonize.
• • •
That night, Tracy floated back to her cabin like a ghost. Upon entering, she was met with the inquisitive gaze of Barbara, who must have heard where Tracy had been.
She sat down next to Barbara on the lower bunk and gazed at the floor.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Quietly, Tracy told her.
It was the first time in her life that she felt she had a really good story to tell. One in which she—Tracy Jewell—was the protagonist, the ingenue. Barbara, next to her, was nodding sagely as she spoke.
“Did he say he wanted to meet again?” asked Barbara.
“Yes,” said Tracy.
Barbara thought. “Well, he likes you,” she said. “That much is obvious.”
It was strange, but Tracy knew that she was correct. There was no doubt about it: Lowell Cargill liked her.
“What happens next?” Tracy asked her.
She shrugged. “Depends how experienced he is,” said Barbara. “Maybe he’ll ask you to the dance. Or maybe, next time you play together, he’ll try it with you.”
Try what, Tracy wondered—though a part of her knew.
“You’re not scared, are you?” Barbara asked.
“No,” Tracy said. “I’m not scared.”
She was petrified.
A long silence ensued.
“Do you ever listen to music?” Barbara asked.
She did—but not any music she’d confess to Barbara. She listened to her mother’s music, or to bands and boys who could be found on the cover of Tiger Beat.
Barbara continued without waiting. “Kissing someone—someone you want to kiss, I mean—is like living inside the best song you ever heard. It’s the same feeling.”
• • •
Later, atop her bunk, Tracy took out her journal and enumerated everything she knew about sex.
What parts of the anatomy it involved: this was at the top of the list.
What actually happened between those parts: she knew the technicalities, but couldn’t quite grasp the mechanics.
She turned her face to the window: the moon was nearly full.
That’s the last thing she remembered seeing before they were woken, in the morning, by the sound of an air horn.
“Survival Trip,” whispered one of the Melissas. All around Tracy, the campers of Balsam sprang into motion.
Barbara, on the bottom bunk, was the first one dressed and out the door.
