Before You Know Kindness (2004)

by Chris Bohjalian

  "I'll bet you're Charlotte McCullough. My name is Lorelea. Lorelea Roberts." She stuck out her hand, and Charlotte took it. "I'm with the Times. I'm a writer."

  "I had a feeling."

  The woman smiled. "Can we talk?"

  Reflexively, before she could stop herself, she glanced back toward the auditorium, hoping someone was emerging who could rescue her. But there was no sign of any help in that direction.

  "I heard there was going to be a press conference tomorrow," the woman continued, "but then it was canceled."

  "Really?" She hoped she sounded surprised, though after she spoke she honestly wasn't sure what was supposed to have surprised her: the fact there had once been a press conference scheduled or that it had been canceled.

  "It was going to be tomorrow afternoon. At some law firm. Your father's law firm, I presume. True?"

  She nodded, and as she moved her head she feared that already she had revealed too much.

  "Ah, but then it was canceled."

  "I should go meet my mom," she said quickly. "I'm supposed to catch up with her in, like, five minutes."

  "You're meeting her in her classroom, I bet."

  "Yes."

  "Then can I have just a few of those minutes? Please? When we're done, I could walk you to your mom and ask her a couple of questions, too. The truth is, I already have my story, and I just want to confirm the facts. That's all. I won't ask you anything I don't already know, I promise. I just want to do what I can to get it right."

  "You already know what happened?"

  "Uh-huh. Absolutely. I've talked to a lot of your father's friends in the animal rights community--folks he's spoken with since he got back to work. And I've connected with a number of people in New Hampshire."

  "Have you spoken to my father?"

  "No, but I'm trying."

  Charlotte swallowed hard and tried to think. She made a production of switching her backpack from her left shoulder to her right to give herself time, because the disparate strands of an idea were starting to coalesce in her mind. Her dad had wanted a press conference because he was pissed off at the way hunters blasted a bazillion deer a year. Well, the press conference may have been off, but this Lorelea Roberts seemed nice enough. And very professional. Perhaps, she reasoned, she could use this interview to say some of the things her father would have wanted said if the event had gone forward as planned. Given her unfortunate history with firearms, she guessed she was in about as good a position as anyone to talk about the evils of guns. And she'd certainly grown up around her share of animal rights propaganda, so some of it had to have registered.

  At the very least, she could make the point that, clearly, it hurt like heck to be shot.

  Besides, she wouldn't be telling this lady anything she didn't know. Hadn't the woman said that she already had the full story and was just checking her facts?

  "So, what do you think?" Lorelea was asking, her voice a low, seductive, almost conspiratorial whisper. "Can you give me four minutes?"

  "Okay," she agreed slowly. She had the sense this could be a huge mistake if she weren't smart. She'd have to play this one carefully.

  "Good. Thank you," the reporter said, instantly pulling a pocket-sized digital recorder from her windbreaker pocket as she spoke and clicking a button on its side. "This happened on July 31?"

  "I guess so."

  "A Saturday?"

  "Yes."

  "And you thought you were shooting at a deer?"

  She started to nod and then caught herself. She saw the trap: If she said she was shooting at a deer, the newspaper would have the daughter of a senior FERAL executive taking a potshot at a wild animal. That would do no one any good. And so instead she changed direction and answered (and she could almost see how proud of her Father would be), "I didn't know the gun was loaded. It was one of those horrible mistakes that, like, just happens."

  "Why were you even holding the gun?"

  "Curiosity, I guess. I mean, the thing is, you saw the damage it caused. My dad practically lost his arm. He was nearly killed! That's what a gun can do. That's what a gun does to all those deer--to any animal. Hunting is just the most gross thing. And it's not a sport. Please. What chance does a deer have against something like that? Like none, that's how much. Zip, zero, nada. And my dad is in constant pain," she said, and behind the reporter she saw her mother and the headmaster stomping down the hall, but she was on a roll and she didn't care. This was a stage, she was discovering, she could handle.

  Moreover--and this was a point that mattered to her--she was doing this for her dad.

  "How does that make you feel?"

  "I feel terrible, of course. And that's the lesson here," she said, as her mother and Mr. Holland surrounded Lorelea Roberts. "We are inflicting a lot of pain on a lot of animals. And what for? Do we need deerskins for clothing anymore? I don't think so. Do we need to eat deer meat? No way. I mean, my parents' freezer at home has got all kinds of imitation meat that tastes just fine. They even make imitation chicken fingers now, and--as we all know--chickens don't even have fingers. Am I making sense?"

  "You'll have to leave," Mr. Holland snapped, unwilling to hide his annoyance with the reporter. Normally, he was a pretty good-natured guy, especially since her mom was one of his teachers. "You didn't check in at the front office and--"

  "I'm an alumna," the reporter said, smiling. "My mother is an alumna. My grandmother was an alumna. Lorelea Roberts." Now she offered her hand to Mr. Holland. "You arrived five or six years after I graduated, but I've read in the alumnae magazine about the terrific work you're doing here. I'm sorry we haven't met."

  "You still should have checked in at the office, Ms. Roberts."

  She spread her hands palms up in a gesture that was a little like an apology and a lot like a dismissal. Charlotte saw the eyes of the other two adults land squarely on the small recorder.

  "And you have to turn that thing off," her mother said. "Right this second."

  "No, it's okay," she told her mom, surprising herself.

  "Charlotte?"

  "Really, I know what I'm doing and I know what I want to say," she went on. Then she reached for Lorelea's hand with the recorder and actually steered it toward her face. "There's one more thing I want to add. Actually, it's two. Can I?"

  She could tell that her mother and the headmaster wanted to stop her, but either they didn't want to make a scene in front of this reporter--who happened to be what Grandmother Seton liked to call a Brearley girl herself--or they trusted her just enough that they were going to let her plow ahead. When they remained silent, Lorelea said to her, "Looks to me like you're good to go."

  "Okay, here we are. I think the company that made the gun should make it really obvious when the darn thing is loaded. It would have been nice to know, thank you very much, that there was a bullet in the rifle when I picked it up. Second, I made a huge mistake that night, the biggest one I will ever make in my life. At least I hope it was the worst mistake: I hate to think what worse shi--" She caught herself before she had finished the word, then resumed as if nothing had happened, "Anyway, I love my dad. I love him a ton. I would give anything in the world to be able to go back in time and give him back his right arm. Okay?"

  Lorelea looked at her and seemed to be considering this. Then she nodded and clicked off the recorder.

  "Good. Let's go home, Mom," she said, taking her mother's long fingers in hers. With her free hand she gave the headmaster a small salute and then walked with her mother down the hall. Three words formed in her head in the almost old-fashioned courier font from her Secret Garden script, and the image in her mind made her smile:

  Exit, stage right.

  THAT EVENING Nan Seton had dinner alone with her dog in her dining room. Across the wide expanse of park the three McCulloughs ate with their new dog, the cats watching warily from different perches on a living room couch. Far to the north the Setons ate at an Italian restaurant near the airport in South Burlington: Sara and Wi
llow and baby Patrick had met John there, and they all had agreed they were far too hungry to wait till they were home to dine. Patrick ate Cheerios one by one from a restaurant high chair and sucked on a bottle of milk.

  None of the Setons or the McCulloughs was feeling particularly celebratory, but they all felt relieved.

  Three hundred miles apart the grown men both brought up the missing casing, and each time their wives told them--gently--to drop it. Just shut up (please) and drop it.

  The two girls thought of the vegetable garden in New Hampshire, and--again, similarly--hoped their parents would not get the notion into their midlife-addled brains that it could possibly be worth the effort to try once again next year. Charlotte liked the gardens the students were building for her stage play, especially the hedges. They were constructed entirely from green paper cocktail napkins and walls of mesh screen. They looked real enough, and they demanded no serious care.

  But the girls also knew instinctively that they would never be alone in New Hampshire with their grandmother again. It wasn't that Grandmother couldn't manage them: Good Lord, she probably managed them better than their own parents. Rather, it was their sense that their parents, pure and simple, were going to want them with them. Not because of their dalliance with underage drinking and dope, but because they loved them and did the best that they could.

  This attention might grow tiring. Still, it was reassuring.

  Some of the people ate meat that evening and some did not, but those who did were aware of the flesh on their plates. They told themselves, however, that there was enough in their small worlds about which they could feel guilty--myriad, endless failings and whole catalogs of disappointments they heaped on others--and so they chewed and smiled and swallowed.

  And Spencer, at least for the moment, looked the other way. He looked only at his wife and his daughter, grateful, grasping his Good Grips easy-to-hold fork, and hoisted chickpeas and artichoke hearts across the great divide that separated his dinner plate from his mouth.

  THE GIRLS WERE CORRECT when they surmised they would never again be alone in New Hampshire with their grandmother: That night the old woman died. Even so vigorous a heart was not immune to the unsubtle havoc wrought by time. Besides, some hearts are better than others, and though Nan's was generous, it was weak. Had she not been so vigorous, she might have died a decade sooner. And though it would have been simpler for everyone if she had lived another five years--even five months--she lasted just long enough. She made it by hours. The boys had reconciled in the morning, and she passed away in her sleep a mere half spin of the Earth later. And so while John and Catherine and Spencer were devastated, they were devastated together. Sara helped them all, the therapist in her surprised by the depth of her own sadness, as did Nan's granddaughters. The girls' presence was comforting, because they seemed so very grown up.

  Nan died dreaming of a woodpecker in one of the trees that ringed her house, the drumming in actuality the last beats of her heart before it spasmed, then stopped. The sudden spike of pain woke her body, but Nan was never conscious of what the pain was or that she was dying. Her eyes opened reflexively, then shut, and she was gone. It was all very similar to the way her friend Walter Durnip had died in the country that summer, except she had her dog with her at the end instead of her spouse.

  The animal, much to everyone's surprise, actually outlived her. He spent his last days with the Setons of Vermont.

  Nan was buried in the cemetery in New Hampshire, with a service beforehand at the homestead. The afternoon was raw but bearable, and the family stood together with Nan's friends near the dead stalks of the cutting garden, the rented trellis exactly the one Sara had seen in her mind when the days had been long in July. Then they all sang a hymn and went out--but they sang only one, and it was short.

  Chapter Thirty-five.

  The clouds were moving like whitewater, streaming in lines to the south. Occasionally the sun would appear, adding bright, fibrous stripes to the oyster-colored mass.

  Each time the sun would emerge the crow would look up, his dark eyes attracted by the sparkle.

  Still, it was chilly and there was less sunlight every day. Winters here were just cold enough and the hills just high enough that soon the crow would fly south, as would the female pecking now at something in the ground far below, and their offspring. Three smaller birds, each about half his size. Altogether, this extended family--this small series of nests atop the white pine--numbered fifteen, and together they would leave for a slightly warmer climate.

  This particular crow was the biggest. He was just about a foot and a half long and he had a wingspan of thirty-five inches. He weighed almost exactly a pound.

  At the edges of the distant woods the deer were starting their walk up the hill toward the garden. They used to come only at night, but lately they had grown considerably bolder and would venture here during the day. One of them, a male, had even begun to scrape at a thick maple tree beside the garden as the rutting season began to draw near. The animals were growing their winter coats, a grayish brown shell of hollow, kinky fur that insulated them against the cold.

  The crow turned his head from the deer when he saw something moving on the ground near his mate. A raccoon, perhaps, was stalking her. He screeched and the other bird rose instantly into the air and landed on one of the lower branches of an apple tree. His eyes darted back now to the source of the motion, and he saw it was merely a twig from a rosebush scratching against the side of the gray house.

  The place had been empty for a week. No longer was it a source of almost ceaseless activity, with humans constantly coming and going, their cars rumbling up and down the long driveway. The deer, of course, had noticed their absence, too, which was why they had extended the small world of their browse to the remains of the garden during the day as well as the night.

  Humans didn't seem dangerous to the crow, at least not this bunch. But they were noisy.

  Especially that one night in the middle of the summer.

  The bird no longer remembered the details of what he had seen from the top of the pine, and--entranced by the lights that flashed everywhere, the lights atop the cars and the lights waved by the people--he hadn't even witnessed the precise moment after that nearly deafening blast when a woman had picked the rifle up off the ground and heaved it hysterically against an apple tree. He hadn't seen the brass casing fly free of the chamber when it slammed into the trunk.

  It was actually the next morning, while one of the little girls was curled up in the strawberries, that he first noticed the twinkle, the flash in the grass. It was irresistible. Whatever it was, it was glimmering in the high early August sun. And with the child absorbed in her strawberries, he had been able to swoop down and gather it up.

  He gazed now at the cylinder in his nest. It was bigger than the other items: the thin, crinkled piece of aluminum foil that he could actually bite through with his beak if he wasn't careful and the perfectly round bead that had come off the wrist of one of the girls. The casing was a bit heavier than his galvanized carpenter's nail, but the tube was hollow and so it hadn't been particularly difficult for him to lift it off the ground and deposit it here in the nest. It was lovely to look at, and he treasured it. So did his mate. It wasn't as flawlessly shaped as, for example, that bead: There was a dimple near the opening where he had lifted it off the ground, and a section of the rim--that lip at one end--had an ugly flat patch. But, still, the crow thought it was beautiful. The bird wouldn't take it south with him--he took nothing with him when he flew south--but this summer and autumn it had given him a pleasurable sensation that, in his small mind, was rather like being full.

  Now his mate lifted off the apple tree and flew up to their nest in the pine. Below them the deer started to dig at the weedy dirt. A squirrel scampered abruptly across the gravel driveway. A rabbit crouched behind the lowest branches of the hydrangea, his ears high, his nostrils twitching as he sniffed the crisp, autumnal air.

  And beh
ind them all, the house sat perfectly still.

  EPILOGUE:

  The Race to the Face

  My cousin was eighteen the autumn her father finally had his arm amputated. She was a freshman at Yale, and even in southern Connecticut the leaves had mostly turned. It was a Wednesday, a detail I recall because I was a junior in high school and I had a double block of organic chemistry that day. Uncle Spencer checked himself into a hospital in Manhattan shortly before breakfast, and the dangling appendage was gone before lunch. It was, by then, as thin and frail-looking as a very old man's. I don't believe he ever missed it.

  The following summer, my cousin's and my family convened in Sugar Hill the very last week in July. We knew we would be there for the anniversary of the accident, but we were no longer fixated on the date and certainly those of us from Vermont didn't discuss it. We had returned there any number of times since that long and awful night when my cousin had shot my uncle, and the principal strangeness we experienced inevitably was due to my grandmother's absence--not to any awkwardness that we were vacationing at the scene of the crime. The big old house just never seemed quite the same without her.