From Away

by David Carkeet

  Nick jumped in. “How did the two of you happen to start talking?”

  Homer the Phlegmatic frowned. He sighed. He finally said, as torpidly as possible, “We were sitting near the baggage office. He was killing time before his flight. I was trying to track down my bags.”

  Lance said, “Did he say anything about his activities the night before?”

  Denny took his time answering. “No.”

  Nick said, “Did he mention anyone he knew in Burlington?”

  Long pause. “I did most of the talking.”

  Sarah made a tiny mirth noise that seemed to say it must have been a scintillating conversation. Lance smiled at her. Nick looked curiously back and forth between the two of them, then at Denny.

  “Nick asked about Burlington,” Lance said, “because ostensibly the creep is there. Ostensibly.” He seemed to like this word. He now stood with his legs slightly spread and his hands on his hips, which flared his jacket to each side and exposed his flat abdomen. “Yesterday the creep left his cell phone at Marvin’s French Fries on Williston Road, and he shopped at a Shaw’s there with his company credit card and made an ATM withdrawal. But Nick and I part company on the interpretation.” With these words he moved toward Sarah, partly blocking Nick out. “The creep left his fingerprints all over Burlington, and that tells me that Burlington is the one place he’s not.”

  “Maybe he’s just not very bright,” Nick said.

  “He’s no dummy,” Lance said. “He might be a doofus, but he’s no dummy.” This produced sparkling laughter from Sarah, a surprisingly delightful tinkle. “Get this,” Lance went on. “We tracked his movements the day before he was with Marge. He’d been doing some work for a magazine—he writes about toy trains, for God’s sake—and on his way to a meeting he stopped at the Ben and Jerry’s factory. He got thrown out of the tour.”

  Sarah laughed. “Why?”

  “He got worked up about some flavor they stopped making.”

  Nick said, “Wavy Gravy.”

  Lance said, “You familiar with it, Homer?” He might as well have called him “Lard-ass.”

  “No,” Denny said.

  “So I assume he’s from away?” Sarah said.

  “Chicago,” Lance said. “A suburb called Downer’s Grove. That’s where he lives now, anyway. He grew up in a circus. His parents were clowns, of all things, and they dragged him all over. They’re both in clown heaven, but I’m trying to reach an aunt of his who lives down south—a twin sister of his mom’s. She was a clown, too, but with a different circus. Hell of a family.”

  Sarah laughed. “Sounds like he’s from way away.”

  “You got that right,” Lance said. “Anyway, we’re hoping this aunt knows of his whereabouts.” His cell phone rang and he whipped it from his jacket pocket and turned away to take the call.

  How strange, Denny thought, to see this chiseled, turtlenecked monkey swing all over his family tree, fouling his loved ones with these careless, contemptuous references. Denny could not imagine a more unfair representation of his childhood.

  “Is that a good likeness of him, Homer, based on your meeting?” Nick gestured to the photo, still in Denny’s hands. “We were told he’s large, but he doesn’t look that big to me.”

  “It’s dead-on,” Denny said. “He even holds his head in this screwy way, facing down, with his eyeballs rolling up at you. That’s him, all right.”

  “Good.” Nick took the photo. “The Macalesters might have seen him at the hotel. We’re going to scoot up to Hardwick and show it to them.”

  “No we’re not,” Lance announced as he snapped his cell phone shut. “The creep’s right here. In Montpelier.” He paused for a beat: his theory had been proven correct. “The street freak who gave us the description just saw him again, at State and Main. Actually, he didn’t just see him. The freak ran all the way to Cumby’s before he stopped to call 911.” Lance favored Sarah with a goodbye smile. He jabbed a finger at Denny. “Homer, let’s hope that lip doesn’t fatten up any worse than it already is.” He broke into a backward trot down the sidewalk, then whirled and ran with surprising speed.

  Nick sighed, started to follow, then came back and handed Denny the antiques store bag. “Stop in and see Betsy.”

  “Right.” Denny gave him his glove back and watched him hurry after Lance. He turned to Sarah. “Did I do anything wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m always doing something wrong and you’re always punishing me. Let’s get it over with.”

  She made a guttural noise. “Did you see some shrink in Florida? Or go through some flaky program?”

  “You’ll probably want to change your panties after that chat with Lance.”

  She glared at him. “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t know who you are or what you’ve become. You don’t even sound like yourself. Right now I just need one thing from you, and that’s those computer files.”

  Denny shrugged. “How soon do you need them?”

  “How soon?” Sarah struggled to rein herself in. “I said I want them. That’s all you need to know. How hard can it be? You enter your stupid password—the one you presumably used every day. You can’t have forgotten it. I’m coming up later.”

  “When?”

  She threw her hands up. “What does it matter?” Denny felt like a naval subordinate who had questioned the captain’s order. “Just do it,” she snapped.

  “Okey dokey,” he said. “But let me ask you one thing. Are you punishing me because I went away without any explanation?”

  Sarah laughed so brightly that Denny turned around and looked for a fresh audience that might be approaching. But no one was anywhere near them. By the time he turned back to her, she was on her way down the sidewalk, a spring in her step thanks to his accidental joke. He felt a surge of pain in his mouth. He had set his palliative snow pack on the low wall in front of the bank, and he picked it up. Instead of applying it to his face, he wound up and threw it at her, but it fell well short.

  He turned and walked in the other direction, past the Ethan Allen entrance, then darted into an alley beyond the hotel. He circled wide behind the building, heading for his car. Having successfully dodged Betsy, he kept an eye out for Two-Tone. Who would have figured this street person for a crime-stopper?

  He remembered a saying he had read somewhere: You’re not really at home in a new place until you have enemies.

  Two-Tone. Lance. And Sarah?

  THIRTEEN

  DENNY ROARED UP HIGHWAY 12 LIKE THE WABASH CANNONBALL. He did his best thinking when driving, and he had arrived decisively at a theory: Homer was nothing but a pretend mate for Sarah. It took a stomped-on foot and a busted lip, but he had gotten the message—hands off. If he was right, what did Homer get out of the arrangement? What did she get out of it? And did other people, like Nick, know the truth about it? More immediately, what would Sarah do to Denny when he failed to produce Homer’s password? He raised a hand to his mouth. His lip was so tender that it hurt to talk to himself.

  He felt vulnerable on many fronts. Lance had exploded his cell phone subterfuge, and how had he learned so quickly about the Ben and Jerry’s fiasco? Denny regretted the ruckus he had caused there, but he had good reason. He had known that the tours ended with free samples, and he had counted on all of the flavors being available, including discontinued ones. When he learned, mid-tour, that the tasting would be limited to flavors scheduled for future release, he protested. The resulting property damage certainly wasn’t intentional. He had simply thrown an arm out to accent a point, and it had crashed into a glass display case full of packages from Ben and Jerry’s first year of business—as if packaging were the important point! The next thing he knew, he was being manhandled by a local cop who thought Denny had been seized with “agitated delirium,” which Denny came to understand was the superhuman strength ornery people displayed when cops came for them. The yokel must have just taken a weekend workshop on the s
ubject because he used the term over and over to the other cops who showed up. They finally convinced him that Denny was just a big man who waved his arms a lot—an appraisal that gave Denny the rare feeling of being understood. In the end, the officers’ prevailing consensus was that Denny was amusing, though not in a good way.

  Wavy Gravy. Caramel, fudge, cashews, Brazil nuts, hazel nuts, and roasted almonds. He had last sampled it—through tears—from 1:15 to 1:25 A.M. on April 20, 2004. Some time in the fall before that, his mother, browsing at a general store during a seniors’ bus tour of apple country in northern Wisconsin, had spotted what must have been the last pint of Wavy Gravy to be sold in North America. She snagged it, sealed its lid against leakage with packaging tape, and, when she got home, wrapped it in Christmas paper and hid it in Denny’s basement freezer on her last visit with him in Downer’s Grove. She died a week before that Christmas. Clowns are good hiders, and he didn’t find the pint and explanatory note until four months after Christmas, when he went on a late-night snack rampage. Her last act of love! Bacteria must have contaminated it in its melted state before she could get to a freezer, but the next day’s explosive diarrhea was a small price to pay.

  Wavy Gravy. Mom. They were inseparable in his mind. There had been a lot at stake on that dumb-ass factory tour.

  He struggled up the muddy driveway in the Rambler and slid to a stop in front of the house. Inside, he shed his coat and boots and hurried up the stairs to the computer room off the bedroom. The PC sat in an old open rolltop desk that Homer must have customized for the digital age. An upper shelf had been cut out to make room for the screen, and a sliding keyboard tray hung in place of the center drawer. Denny turned on the power and fidgeted until the screen settled down to two icons of ignorant-looking toothy animals—woodchucks, Denny guessed. Next to each animal was a name: “Homer” and “Sarah.”

  A click on Homer’s icon opened a password box. In it he typed “music” and was immediately rebuffed. He went back and, out of curiosity, clicked on Sarah’s icon. In her password box he typed “dearfriend” and was rebuffed. He typed “sharpchin” and was rebuffed. He typed “wetpanties” and was rebuffed. Back to Homer. He tried “trombone” and, rebuffed again, laughed at the ridiculousness of trying to arrive at someone’s password by deduction. After all, whenever Denny forgot his own passwords, he didn’t try to conjure them based on self-knowledge, and he certainly knew himself better than he knew Homer. On those occasions he either kept making stabs from memory or he tracked down his password master list—if he could remember where it was.

  Homer could very well have such a list. Denny began to go through the desk drawers, pawing aside pens, paper clips, and other desk clutter. In one drawer he found a small box full of political campaign buttons promoting an Ollie Dumpling, who was “standing for” state auditor. A relative of Homer’s? Under this box was a folder of concert programs with Homer’s name in them. Another drawer held old letters, most in their original envelopes. Several were from Michigan; a few were from Germany.

  One drawer held a folder labeled “Soc. Sec. Card, B. Cert., Passport.” Denny examined all three documents and discovered that Homer was born 38 years ago in Randolph, Vermont. Thus ended the separated-at-birth theory that had been at the back of Denny’s mind since his assumption of Homer’s life, for he knew for a fact that he had dropped into the world in a Pullman car compartment just outside Shreveport, Louisiana, 42 years ago.

  One drawer held boxes of new checks, but no working checkbook. Homer had probably taken it to Florida. A rubber band held Homer’s check-writing records from past years, one register per year. Denny looked through the most recent one—no surprises, though he did notice frequent and large entries for checks made out to “Little Dumpling Farm Concert Series.”

  He slammed the last drawer closed. He was done with the desk—the most likely place for a password list, but he still felt confident that he would find one. Unless Homer had taken it to Florida? He didn’t take the computer, but he would need the list for access to his Internet accounts. Would it have occurred to him to take it? That depended on how far in advance he had planned his departure and how long he had thought he would stay. He left other important documents here, so maybe he took off in a hurry. But why?

  He heard the crunch of tires on snow. The tingling he felt was not in his loins but in his stomach. He foresaw her beating him about the head and shoulders as he hunched over the keyboard and tried to “remember” “his” password. He hurried to the front window of the computer room. It was not Sarah’s car, but a brown paneled van. The driver’s door opened with a creak, and a man with a floppy-eared orange cap stepped out and walked to the porch. He moved with such a pronounced stoop that his body had to hurry to catch up with his head. A gentle tapping on the door pulled Denny downstairs.

  He was a shy one. After a glance at Denny, he looked to the porch floor and said by way of greeting, “Homer.”

  Denny said, “How’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain. Can but won’t.”

  Denny looked at the windowless van. Slaughter Plumbing was stenciled on the side. Did the house have plumbing problems that Denny was unaware of?

  “Thought you’d call,” the man said to the floor.

  “It’s been a little crazy since I got back.”

  “Left a message.”

  Denny leaned back inside and looked at the blinking light on the machine. “Yes, I see it now. I didn’t check when I got in.”

  “Figured you’d want ’em back.”

  Denny hesitated. Plumbing fixtures? “You figured right.”

  “Got ’em in my rig.”

  “Good.”

  The man raised his eyes and looked at Denny, but only briefly. He preferred looking at the floor. “Chester’s got the runs.”

  A noise from the van drew Denny’s attention. It was a scratching sound, such as a prisoner might make on a cell wall. “The runs?”

  “Ate a begonia last night. Nothin’ to worry about. But you might want to pen ’im.”

  The prisoner’s scratching transformed into claws of a dog pacing on a metal floor. Denny felt a threatening descent in his own bowels. “That’s a good idea. Could you do it?” Denny pointed to his feet, clad only in socks. Throwing this request out was like throwing his body out an airplane. Would the parachute open? Did “pen ’im” mean “put the dog into the pen?” If so, did the man know where the pen was?

  “Calvin too?”

  God help me, Denny thought. “Yes, yes. All of them.”

  “All two of them. Okay then.” The plumber started to turn away, then hesitated. He now stood in profile, eyes still down, hands stuffed into his pockets. “Shots’re up to date.” The words fell so far short of being directed at Denny that they could have been practice speech for some future occasion.

  “Shots?” All Denny wanted was to be safely inside, behind the closed door.

  “Got ’em last week.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Physicals too. Both of ’em.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “All . . . covered.” The plumber uttered these words with the pain of one rending his own flesh.

  “Oh, right. What do I owe you?”

  “Ninety-six dollars. If it’s handy.”

  “I’ll go get the money while you pen ’em. Okay?”

  The man hesitated. “And the chicken, I guess.”

  “Yes, put the chicken in the pen, too.”

  This brought the man’s face into full view. Upon it, wonder was written.

  “I’m sorry,” said Homer. “What did you say?”

  “Chicken.” The man paused.

  Denny would have to wait him out. It was all he could do.

  “Chicken for the boys. Maybe you already mailed the check for that.”

  “No, I . . . I don’t think I did. How much is it?”

  “Fifty-five. Like always. Dang it—I forgot to bring it.” The man lightly kicked a boot heel on the p
orch floor—for him, a flamboyant display of unbridled emotion, though it looked more like a dance step. “I’ll drop it off later.”

  Denny eased back inside. He peeked through the small window in the center of the door and watched the man go to the rear of the van and release two black dogs, both on leashes. As soon as they hit the ground, they ran in different directions, jerking the man’s arms straight out like a scarecrow’s. Then they doubled back and circled him. He untangled the leashes from around his legs and urged the dogs in the direction of the barn. They smelled every square inch of territory along the way.

  As he hurried up the stairs, Denny refused to think about how he would handle the animals. He was thankful simply to have survived the moment. He counted out what he owed Orange Cap, drawing from the stash he had acquired the day before with the company ATM card. When he got back to the porch, the man was returning from the pen, walking backwards and talking to the dogs, who were around the corner of the house, out of Denny’s view. The man raised a hand and waved goodbye to them.

  “Gonna miss those boys,” Orange Cap said when he was back to the porch. He stepped up and took the cash without looking at it and quickly stuffed it into a front pocket. The phone rang inside. Denny thanked him and reached for the door, but the man raised a finger to hold him in place. “Gonna dip tonight.”

  Denny nodded. Skinny-dip? Eat potato chips with dip? It would help if the man produced an occasional subject to go with his verbs.

  “Bring ’em in later.”

  The temperature was going to dip. “Right. Thanks.”

  The machine clicked on as Denny closed the door. “Homer?” It was a man’s voice. “Homer?”

  “It’s a machine!” Denny yelled as he walked to it. In the caller ID window he read, “Boren Electric.”

  “It’s Warren Boren.”

  “Borin’ Warren,” Denny said.

  “I called before.”

  “I know, Numbnuts.”

  “You didn’t return my call.”

  “Oh boo hoo hoo!”

  “The damage you’ve done me is incalculable.”