Things have been pretty bleak for fifteen-year-old, Jack Larson since the day his father walked out the door and never returned. The cops think he abandoned his family to start a new life, but Jack refuses to believe it.
Now, almost two years later, Jack is stagnating in his drug-ridden mountain townāspending his days in a haze of pot smoke, playing video games with his best friend Cash. Jack feels like heāll never get an answer regarding his dadās disappearance when he stumbles upon information that changes everything.
Jack and Cash follow clues that lead them to the infamous Black Forest Inn where they make an unbelievable discovery ā one that puts them on a collision course with a gang of white supremacists who will stop at nothing to keep the dark secret buried.
Things have been pretty bleak for fifteen-year-old, Jack Larson since the day his father walked out the door and never returned. The cops think he abandoned his family to start a new life, but Jack refuses to believe it.
Now, almost two years later, Jack is stagnating in his drug-ridden mountain townāspending his days in a haze of pot smoke, playing video games with his best friend Cash. Jack feels like heāll never get an answer regarding his dadās disappearance when he stumbles upon information that changes everything.
Jack and Cash follow clues that lead them to the infamous Black Forest Inn where they make an unbelievable discovery ā one that puts them on a collision course with a gang of white supremacists who will stop at nothing to keep the dark secret buried.
āCASH!ā I TURN TO SEE IF HE heard me, but he doesnāt respond.
Heās slumped in the back seat, bloody, the seatbelt the only thing holding him in place. My shoulder aches and I can feel my own blood slide down my armpit. I hold tight to the steering wheel and urge the crappy Camaro faster. The blown out back window brings the sounds of the
outside in, but does little for the smell.
āCash! Open your eyes man. Just open your eyes, please.ā Nothing.
I reach a stop sign and blow through it. Luckily itās late. Just a couple more miles. I floor it.
We come to a red light. I flash my brights, pound on the broken horn and fly through the intersection. A car stops just in time and we narrowly avoid colliding.
āCash, buddy. Cash, look at me. Iām so fucking sorry man.ā He coughs weakly. A driver pulls into my lane and slows to make a turn, I swerve around the car at the last second. I hear the screech of brakes as I narrowly avoid clipping another car. A hand juts out the open window with middle finger extended as we race past. Yeah, fuck you too.
Finally a road sign with a blue āHā and an arrow to the right. So close, but I take the turn too fast and the car fish tails. The left rear tire slams into the curb and hops on the median. After the side of the car smacks a road sign I manage to right it and keep going. The tire didnāt blow, but the car is pulling hard to the left and is almost impossible to keep straight. As we get to the top of a small hill the hospital becomes visible, the only light on this dark stretch of mountain road.
I keep the pedal floored and fly into the parking lot, gravel spitting on the parked cars. The ER sign just a couple hundred yards away. I pull up to the entrance and slam on my brakes. I open my door and tumble out.
I look up at the sound of the automatic doors of the ER opening, but no one is coming. A man stands behind the front desk, cranes his neck to see.
I yell: āHelp! I need some fucking help!ā
I get Cashās door open and work on the seat belt thatās jammed under him. His clothes are squishy and wet with blood.
āCome on Cash, almost there man. Just hold on.ā At last I unfasten his seatbelt and get him out of the car. I grab him under both shoulders and pull his unconscious body towards the entrance. Itās like dragging a dead deer.
I get him halfway across the sidewalk and slip. Iām able to get my body under his before we hit the ground, cushioning his fall. A half dozen nurses and other hospital employees rush to us. Two of them push a stretcher on wheels. Cashās weight is lifted off me and they put him on the bed and place an oxygen mask on his face. They yell things back and forth and I get up and follow them through the doors, trying to keep up. Before I make it to the next set of doors a nurse notices my bloody arm and pulls me to the side and looks for the source. I try to yank myself free. āI need to go with him. I need to be with him.ā
She grabs my good arm firmly, holding me in place. āHeās in good hands. Right now we need to take care of you.ā
The last thing I see as the doors close is Cashās bloody arm slip off the side of the bed.
I drove as fast as I could, but I donāt think it was fast enough.
Ā FOUR WEEKS EARLIER
FOR TWO DAYS I'VE BEEN STARING AT this mugshot of Alex Finn and it still scares the shit out of me. Even without the swastika tattooed across the
front of his neck he'd be terrifying. The shaved head, the scar under his right eye. It's not long, but it's deepāmore like a stab than a cut. He was twenty-two when this photo was taken. Heād be twenty-four if he was still alive.
My phone rings, I find it buried under the papers scattered across my bed. Itās Cash calling on video. He's been on a ārunā with his dad the past two days and got back late last night. Cashās full name is Johnny Cash McDermid, but everyone calls him Cash. His dad wanted to call him Cash from the start, but his mom wasnāt having it, so he started life as Johnny. The moment his mom died, Johnny became Cash full time. She overdosed when he was three and he doesnāt remember her at all.
I answer and Cash immediately jumps in with: āDude. Grams didnāt kill me. Sheās losing it, though.ā He sits on the edge of his bed, a cigarette in his mouth and a book on his lap. Heās so tall he needs to bend his head to the side so it doesnāt hit the bunk bed above. His red hair covers one eye, but I can tell heās tired.
āAbout time you got up. Iām coming over. I found something hidden in my dadās study,ā I tell him.
āWeed?ā He jokes holding his cigarette like a joint.
āI think your dad has us covered on that. No, a file. One of his patients. Remember Alex Finn?ā
āDuh.ā
āWell, apparently my dad was his therapist at County.ā āDid he try to set your dad on fire too?ā
āThankfully no. But I think the f ile has something to do
with my dadās disappearance.ā āYou shitting me?ā
āI am not. And donāt laugh, but get this, in the file Finn said he found the Raubgold.ā
Cash laughs, doubles over even. Once he gets it under control he says: āSure he did. I always thought it was Robās Gold anyway.ā
āNo dumbass, itās German. Raubgold, it means stolen gold.ā
Most everyone who grows up in this town hears the rumors about the Black Forest Inn having been some kind of secret headquarters for German spies in the 40ās. The spies apparently hid a bunch of Nazi gold at the Inn to help finance the eventual German invasion of America. I always thought it was ridiculous. What the fuck would a bunch of Nazis be doing in our tiny mountain town in the middle of America? Most people older than about twelve feel the same. Most, but not all. Thereās a group of local white supremacists who believe the rumors with a vengeance and theyāve turned the search for the Raubgold into something like a religion. Alex Finn was the most obsessed of all.
āFinnās been dead for what, two years? He finds the gold and no oneās heard about it?ā
āHe got arrested right after and the only person he told was my dad.ā
āOkay, so whereās all the gold then?ā
āAccording to the file, itās still at the Inn. Hidden in the same place itās been for seventy something years.ā
āYouāre high.ā Cash shakes his head.
āIām just telling you what I read. Thereās more, but itāll be easier if I show you.ā
āThen get your ass over here. I got a gift from Grams.ā āOh, really? Whatās that?ā
āItās a surprise.ā
āOn my way.ā Without waiting for a reply, I hang up and
drop my phone in my pocket. I slide the mugshot, the file and the other papers and maps Iāve been scouring through for the past two days into my backpack and hop out of bed. I search my room for clothes and grab a clean-enough shirt, a pair of jeans, and my Converse. I run my hands through my hair and decide itās still short enough that I can leave it alone.
I make my way past my momās room as quietly as I can ā she works overnights and sleeps during the day. There's a post-it on the front door of our apartment she must have left before going to bed. It reads: Jack, my love, have a great day! The exclamation point has a circle at the bottom instead of a dot, like an unfinished smiley face.
Some people say my mom looks like Jackie O. I just think she looks distant. I feel closer to my dad, who I haven't seen in two years, than I do my mom, who I saw yesterday. Because even when she's here, she's not here.
At first I thought when she would disappear behind her eyes it was because she was on something. Like pills, Xanax probably. I searched through her purse and her medicine cabinet and nightstand and car and everywhere I could think of, but never found anything. So now I donāt think so.
Most of the time, I just think she's depressed. Actually, most of the time I donāt think about it at all.
My mom and dad got together when I was a year old. Iāve never met my biological dad, he left the minute he found out my mom was pregnant. Iām told that move was pretty consistent with his personality. My actual dad leaving though, the one that has been here my entire life, thatās a whole different story.
I doubt Mom knows anything more than I do about what happened or why. Or where he is. All we know for certain is that he got in his car one morning, drove off and never came back. But Iām convinced she thinks heās dead.
In the beginning, every time I heard a car drive by Iād turn in hopes it was him, but she never did. Same with when Iād hear the chime from a message arriving on my phone, Iād pray it was something from him like, āHey bud, sorry, f inally on my way home, you'll never believe what happened to me.ā The message never came, but I always scrambled to check. I never saw her do that.
I got my first phone when I was ten, about three years before he went missing. I must have sent him a hundred messages a day back then. Smiley faces. Frowny faces. What are you doing? What are you doing now? Now? How about now? Hereās a picture of my hand. Of my foot. Of the grass. And he always wrote back. He never got annoyed, never told me to stop. One night we were at a neighborās house for dinner and they made this vegetable casserole thing. It was not good. My dad texted me Gross right at the dinner table. I busted out laughing. God I miss him.
Heād been suspended from work and things were going on I didnāt know about, but they were all still within the range of normal.
The cops came and asked some questions. They looked for a couple of weeks, or said they did. I overheard them tell my mom that sometimes people just leave.
My Uncle Mike gave me some weak-ass talk a week or so after and said, āAdults are complicated. Life gets hard, people fall off the wagon, and all bets are off,ā and some other shit. Donāt get me started on that guy. My dad quit drinking before I was born and minus a three week period when I was nine, heās been sober my entire life.
For most of those three weeks he drank just fine. Then he got drunk one evening before he picked me up from soccer practice. He didn't mean to. He was just gonna have one beer. He walked toward me from the parking lot, not stumbling, but not steady. I smelled the beer on his breath as he helped me pack up my bag. As we walked back to the car he told me to pass him the ball. I did and he took a shot on goal and completely missed. Not just the goal, the ball. He laughed, but I could tell he was embarrassed.
He took back roads home. Just past The Black Forest Inn he turned on Jackpine. Itās a dirt road and the f irst curve is deceiving, the shoulder makes it look more gradual than it is. He took it too fast and we went off the side. Brakes locked and we slid down the embankment into the forest. Itās pretty crazy how far we made it before hitting anything. But all good things must end, and we slammed into a tree. We were going pretty slow by that time, and if we had another twenty feet or so the car might have stopped on its own, but we hit the tree with enough force to shatter the passenger window and send it into the side of my head. It didnāt hurt, but blood got in my eye and I saw the world through a red kaleidoscope. I went to the emergency room, no stitches though. Just two small butterfly bandages. My dad managed to avoid his second DUI because by the time he talked to the cops, too much time had passed to give him a breathalyzer.
My dad never drank again. Pretty much devoted his life
to staying sober and helping other people get sober after that. On occasion, out of the corner of my eye, I would catch him looking at the two small scars on the right side of my forehead. The few times I made eye contact with him before he turned, I saw his eyes go shiny.
Contrary to Uncle Mikeās vast knowledge of all things human nature, I donāt think my dad is all that complicated. He likes football. He likes working in the yard. He loves my mom. Heās funny. Heās never made me feel like shit, or small.
Iām not saying my dad was perfect. Heād lose his patience with me on occasion, and there was the relapse of course, but those are just examples of things that are still himājust further from the usual him.
To me itās like this: letās say you have a dog. And youāve had that dog since he was a puppy, nine years now. And sure, that dog might surprise you here and there ā he might pee in the house when he didnāt usually. He might chew up your baseball mitt. He might even bite your cousin Pete on the arm and break the skin if Pete tripped and fell on top of him while he was sleeping. So no, you canāt predict everything, but even the things you canāt predict fall into some kind of normal. But my dad just abandoning us? Itās like that dog coming up to the table where the family is eating breakfast, going up to your little sister, like he wants a Cheerio or something, like heās done a million times, but instead he attacks her throat. Then, that same dog takes a seat at the table, and with blood and spit and bits of esophagus stuck in his teeth he screams, in actual human words: āI fucking hate all of you!ā Then he jumps up and takes off through the dog door.
Jack Larson is dealing with a sense of abandonment after his father suddenly disappeared from his life when he was fifteen years old. The officers believe that his father left his family to start a new life, although Jack doesn't believe so, thinking that something must have been wrong to force his father to leave. Two years later, Jack's abandonment issues are rearing their ugly heads through his drug use. Even though he spends his days playing video games and not caring about the world, his father leaving has clearly taken a toll on his mental and physical health.
During this time, Jack and his best friend Cash find new information on Jack's father that wasn't revealed two years ago, and this leads to an adventure that may give Jack the answers that he has been looking for. This may also give him some sort of closure about why his father suddenly left, and may reveal what truly happened.
This book was a hard one to read with the drug use that Jack deals with in the aftermath of his father's disappearance. While some people may argue that doing "pot" is not considered drug abuse in comparison to hard-core drugs like cocaine or other more lethal substances, the fact that he is engaging with drugs at all at his age is still concerning ā especially for those that may feel triggered by this kind of portrayal. If this is something that is difficult for you to read, I would not read parts of this book.
Jack and Cash's friendship was interesting to read, and portraying them as each other's support systems throughout the story was great to see; sometimes it is difficult for young men to hold on to a positive friendship when they are having other issues in their lives. Jack is struggling to come to terms with his father's disappearance and apparent abandonment of his family (although Jack still doesn't believe that his father abandoned his family, despite what the police claims). Cash ensures that Jack isn't alone with his thoughts, and demonstrates that Jack does have someone on his side, which is a blessing in itself. Jack also shows up for Cash, even if he may not be at full capacity to offer a full support system.
Finally, the inclusion of the white supremacist plot was also a little difficult to read at times, especially during society's political climate today - and in general. If this is something that makes you uncomfortable, I would not suggest this book. However, I do believe that the author did a sufficient job with this novel and it made for a good thriller.