The Signal Flame

by Andrew Krivak

  They knew that at any minute there were bound to be cops, and then the guy just tossed Sam the keys, jumped into the front seat of his friend’s car, and was gone.

  Sam looked stunned, Ruth said. He’d expected to win, but he hadn’t expected the guy to give him his car. He had no title, no registration, and he told me later it crossed his mind that he was being set up. But he pressed the keys into my hand and I drove the ’Cuda home and parked it in my father’s backyard. Never once thought about what might happen to me or to Sam. Until I woke up to police flashers and my father outside talking to the cops. All he said to me when he came back inside was, I thought you two were smarter than that.

  Hannah said, The police came to the farm that day, too. Looking for Sam. And he tried to run. I had never seen him do anything like that. Mr. Vinich came out and told the police to leave and not come back until they had a warrant for whatever it was they were looking for. While they were gone, he went into the wood shop, pulled Sam out by the neck, and threw him onto the ground by the driveway. Nobody runs in this family, he said. Now sit your ass down and don’t move. The police can do what they want with you when they come back.

  All was shade except the last few feet of the dock, where they had pushed the chairs as the sun dropped, and Ruth leaned back in the Adirondack and said, I had never seen him so scared in that courtroom. Like he couldn’t just do whatever he wanted to do anymore. And that scared me, too.

  Hannah reached over and touched her hand and said, We’re close to a place I want to take you. If you’ve got strength enough for one more thing today.

  Okay, Ruth said.

  They dressed and walked to the car, and Hannah drove back around the lake and out of the basin of mountains, where there was all of a sudden more sun, as though another afternoon remained before them, and they drove in the direction of town with the windows down until Hannah slowed and took a left turn onto a road that a sign partially obscured by overgrown sumac said was Myrtle Ave. She drove down this road as though she knew it well. By distance and direction of the town Ruth could tell only that they were not far from the college. Hannah stopped the car beneath a wrought-iron arch decorated with scrollwork and a gold-painted sign at the top that read OUR LADY OF SORROWS CEMETERY, and Ruth knew where they were.

  Hannah said, You haven’t asked to come see these graves, but I know you think about them. If you’re ready, we’ll go in. If not, we can go back to the house and come back another time. You just tell me.

  Ruth looked up at the gently sloping hill on which row after row of headstones seemed to grow out of the ground—some flat, others curved at the top, many looking like monuments in worn granite capped with flanking angels or a single cross—without uniformity or order but for the worn paths that visitors had trod to come and go from their loved ones. And she said, I wanted to ask you but didn’t know how.

  It’s all right, Hannah said. It’s the kind of place I know my way around.

  She put the Dart in gear and drove up the main access road, then began to angle the car toward the far corner. She passed the row of graves where her husband and father and mother lay, but she said nothing and drove on. When they were nearly to the back of the property, she stopped the car at the edge of a chain-link fence long overgrown with ivy, which separated the cemetery grounds from practice fields in the distance.

  They’re down that path, Hannah said, and pointed through the open window.

  They got out of the car and Ruth reached for Hannah’s hand and they walked through grass that had not been mowed in a few weeks, until they came to three rectangular patches of earth that were dirt and stone and slightly rounded, though it was clear that the earth had settled some. At the head were freshly laid grave markers flush with the ground, the edges sharp and newly cut, as were the names on the stone. Paul A. Younger. Clare Frances Younger. Mary E. Younger.

  Hannah said, Bo had these placed here. In the spring you can decide what you want to do for a headstone. We can help. She let go of Ruth’s hand and backed away a few steps, and Ruth knelt down on the ground.

  The baby’s grave was in the middle of the three, and she put her palm flat on the earth of that one and curled her fingers as though trying to grab a handful of the rock and dirt. But the months of summer sun had baked it hard, and she uncurled her fingers and let the dirt lay where it was. Then she sat back on her heels and put her face in her hands and shook as she cried, though she made no sound. Hannah came forward again and knelt beside her, as if they were two women mourners brought together by those whom they mourned. Sisters, someone might have thought they were, if seen from a distance. Or a mother and daughter. Regardless, they were women who, after a time, rose and wiped their eyes, then walked across the grass to the car and drove down the road into town and back to the place where they were not strangers and there were chores to do and food to consider. In the evening around the kitchen table, they made a decision to go out to those graves every Sunday after Mass with fresh flowers, which they placed in six small vases (each woman with three), then knelt and prayed for those whom they loved and missed. And the next week did the same.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  ON THE FRIDAY MORNING BEFORE Labor Day that year, Bo woke and closed his window against the cold air that had come in with a front and pushed out the last stretch of heat and humidity of the summer. He washed and dressed for work and went downstairs, where he found Ruth sitting at the kitchen table. She was dressed in one of Sam’s flannel shirts, and the jeans and boots Hannah had given her, and she was drinking coffee from a mug with USMC printed on it in blue.

  Morning, he said.

  Good morning, Bo. How’d you sleep?

  Like fall is in the air.

  She was reading the paper from the day before. She turned a page and smoothed out the fold and said without looking up, Coffee’s ready.

  Bo took a cup off a hook and filled it. He leaned against the counter and studied her as he drank but said nothing. When he had finished, he put the cup in the sink and called Krasna and said to Ruth, Last time, all right? You’ve got it down. They’re chickens, not thoroughbreds.

  Ruth pushed the paper aside and said, I just don’t want Hannah to worry about whether I’m doing it right or not.

  He shook his head and she picked up her egg basket and they went out the back door.

  When he and Ruth stepped out onto the porch, the light was murky and there was a stiff breeze that shipped and swayed the limbs of the apple trees, the world of the orchard looking to Bo like it had been alive in the darkness and the players had suddenly run back to their places. The air smelled of cold and turning leaves, and Bo glanced at the thermometer on the smokehouse as they passed.

  Temperature dropped twenty degrees last night, he said.

  I don’t mind it, she said. I always liked the fall.

  When they got to the barn, Bo followed her inside and said nothing as she went through the steps of feeding Miss Wayne. Ruth said over her shoulder, as though it were a casual conversation, that the old cow was eating less these days, and Bo said, She won’t last the winter.

  Ruth gave a slow nod and watched the cow eat, then went outside to the chicken coop. She checked the feeding trough and put a hose in the waterer for a few minutes and walked around looking at the hens. Then she shut off the hose and went to the nest boxes and gathered eggs from the four still laying.

  We’ll be getting a full dozen by Christmas, she said to Bo. You wait and see.

  I expect to see, he said.

  She opened the door of the coop and went outside and looked around at the sky just as Hannah had taught her. Krasna nestled her head under her hand and Ruth scratched the dog’s ear.

  I’m going to take these inside, she said, holding up the basket of eggs. Are you home the regular time tonight?

  No, he said. I’ve got to head up to the hill house and meet the contractor. It’s getting close to done. You ought to come see it sometime.

  One day, she said.
I’ll keep a plate of food in the oven for you.

  He nodded and walked to his truck, opened the door, and turned. You around tomorrow?

  She smiled. And where would I be going, Bo Konar?

  Well, I’m coming over early to finish my hutch. One last coat of varnish to go. Maybe after that we could hike up to the bend and I could show you the house?

  Maybe, she said. Let’s see.

  Bo called Krasna and the dog started, then stopped and stood by Ruth’s side.

  You’ve got to decide, he said, and the dog sat down.

  All right.

  He got in the truck. He had to turn it over a few times before it started, but it did finally, and he backed down the drive.

  As the summer progressed, Bo began to see the house his grandfather had given him as an ongoing conversation with the old man, one in which Bo spoke to him if he had a problem, told him what he planned, and promised that he would bring some kind of order to the place. It deserved that much.

  But in my own good time, Pop, he would say out loud in the truck, walking in the field, or in the barn. In my own good time.

  After he had mowed the place at the end of July and they got some rain that August, the grass came back green around the house and out to the edge of the fields, and this Bo mowed every other week on Fridays after work to keep it from ranging out again.

  He bought a new oil burner and put it in the basement. The plumber installed a propane tank at the back of the house and brought the gas in to a new water heater and kitchen stove. Then he roughed out and installed a sink and toilet on the third floor and brought water pipes up along the chimney. Outside, the builders tore off the old front porch to the footers and framed a new one wrapping around to the kitchen door, replaced the rotten fascia board, and put up new rain gutters.

  In late August Bo found someone who wanted to lease the land and grow winter wheat, and the up-front money paid for most of the repairs. On that Friday after work, Bo met Matt Devlin and the contractor at the house, inspected the porch that had just been finished and went back over all of the plumbing, then wrote the two men checks for the final amounts due and drove over to the farm for his dinner and a beer, talking to his grandfather the whole way.

  Most weekends, Bo stayed at the farm with Hannah and Ruth, disappearing into his wood shop to work on the hutch. He had assembled it back in early August, and now he took advantage of the cooler days to sand the sides and insides flat with four-hundred-grit paper, tack it clean, and brush it. The entire piece was a beautiful one. It stood even and balanced. The dovetail joints he had made for the insides fit as if they had grown that way, and the drawers opened and closed as smooth as water over a stone. He had chosen and planed his own cherry boards from the same tree and left them exposed in the tally shed to let the shade of the heartwood deepen before he went to work on them. When he did, he was surprised at the color that the wood gave off, a kind of unsettled red, like a sunrise that presages a storm.

  On the morning of Labor Day he woke and had breakfast with Hannah and Ruth, then went into the wood shop to get an early start. He sanded the finish with six-hundred-grit paper for the fifth and final coat, picked up a varnish brush, and tried to put out of his mind the things that always seemed to draw him elsewhere.

  It was just before noon when he finished, and his head was reeling from the fumes. He was rinsing out his brush when he heard the door rattle and he turned and saw Ruth. Her black hair had grown out and she pushed one side of it behind her ear and kept a strand from the other side in her mouth. She wore another one of Sam’s flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, and her harness boots.

  Hannah wanted me to tell you that lunch will be ready in about a half hour, she said. She had an apple in her hand and bit into it, winced, and spat the pulp into a trash can by the door. When do these things get ripe?

  End of September, Bo said. How are those chickens getting along without me?

  Like good girls. I was just about to round them up in the yard. They’ve been out there all morning. She began to walk around the shop, picking up discards of wood and putting them down until she came to the hutch and stood staring at it. That’s nice work, she said.

  It needs to sit for a few days, while the finish dries.

  She nodded and peered around all four sides of it.

  I made it for Hannah, Bo said. I thought a place to keep the letters about Sam that came back with some reply might make her feel like writing them was a lot less futile.

  Ruth came over to the sink where he was standing and leaned in. He could smell her perfume, sweat, and the green apple on her breath.

  It’s her boy, she said. She won’t stop until they find him, one way or the other. She turned away and walked over to the lathe. So what are you going to work on next?

  Table and chairs, I think, Bo said. For the house.

  She nodded. My father used to talk about that place like it was the only time he was happy in life. He was going to farm it. Maybe raise some chickens, too, for all I know. I think that’s why I’ve been dragging my feet about going up there to see what you’ve done.

  You might not recognize it, he said.

  Wouldn’t have recognized it before. I’ve only seen it once, and that was from the front seat of a car out on the road.

  Bo put his brush in a can of turps and placed it on the windowsill. I’ll let you read the ledger my grandfather left for me along with that land. Then you should sit down with Father Rovnávaha. You ever hear anything about your grandfather Walter?

  My father never said that name without wanting to spit. I asked him how a man could get so angry, and he said, You asking about me or him? I was sitting in my aunt Mary’s kitchen once when the conversation turned to where she grew up, so I asked why she and Daddy didn’t still have it, and she just said, Ruth, honey, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Nothing else you need to know.

  Bo said, Well, I’m not sure how much the Lord had to do with it. The men pretty much took care of the taking away themselves.

  Ruth pushed some leftover wood shavings from the tool rest of the lathe onto the floor. I’ll come see it one day, she said. When it’s all yours and I won’t recognize it for anything but a good house on a hill that a Konar fixed up and lives in now.

  They heard Krasna pawing at the shop door. Ruth went over and opened it and the dog came in and lifted her head and barked.

  I know, Ruth said. Bo’s almost done. Then you’ll get your lunch.

  Krasna barked again and ran outside.

  I’ve got no sticks to throw, girl, she said. Bo, hand me one of them scrap pieces you’ve got over there.

  She doesn’t want to play fetch, Bo said. That girl never barks. There’s something going on.

  He and Ruth stepped out of the wood shop and watched the dog bolt in the direction of where the chickens were left to range in the yard and orchard, and they ran after her in that direction.

  They found the hens huddled around the stone fireplace, against the side that faced away from the banana-apple tree, and even as Krasna ran toward them they stood there. The dog came up short and turned around to bark again, then raised her snout toward the tallest tree in the orchard, where Bo could see now the red-tail perched at the top.

  The chickens had about twenty yards of open ground to get across from where they were hiding to the cover of the coop. The hawk was waiting for them to break for it and Bo wondered why the chickens had not, then he looked over and saw that every time the new hens tried to emerge from the shadow of the fireplace chimney, Celeste beat them back with her wings, and Krasna ran across the grass in front of them.

  They’re trying to get to the coop, Ruth said. I’ll run with them and keep them covered.

  They won’t all make it, Bo said. That bird wants one, and that’s what he’ll get if they run. Stay here. I’ll get the gun.

  Ruth watched him sprint for the house and disappear through the back door. She called Krasna and the dog ran back to her, and
Ruth knelt down and held her head and said, Listen, girl. When I say go, you go. I’ll be right behind.

  The dog broke from her and ran toward the fireplace. Ruth followed after, and when she got to the flock in the shadow of the chimney, she yelled, Go, Krasna, go! and waved her arms, and the dog and the old chicken seemed to know exactly what it was she wanted to do. Krasna leaped forward and circled back and ran forward again, and Celeste beat her wings and pushed the others, and the entire flock began as one to run toward the coop by the barn, Ruth bringing up the rear and holding out her arms and flapping them as if they were chicken wings themselves, calling, Go! Go! as they raced across the yard.

  She had them more than halfway there when she thought it just might work, that she and the dog and Celeste might have done a remarkable thing by themselves on that farm, when she heard a sound behind her like a blanket on a clothesline snapping in a strong wind, and the sun above her was shadowed as the hawk swooped down like a stone toward the pullets scampering just a few steps ahead of her. She wished she could run faster. Wished she could dive on those chickens and save them, every one of them, no matter if the hawk bit her in the back of the head or tried to carry her away instead. But in the second when she felt that wind and saw the sun darken, she saw, too, the burst of feathers and the squawk of some bird, fowl or raptor she did not know, and the pullet right in front of her rose off the ground in the red-tail’s claws as she reached out her hands to grab it herself, tripped and fell off balance, and went facedown into that ground.

  When she tried to push herself up, she could taste the blood running from her nose into her mouth. Krasna came over and licked her ear, panting hard, and then stuck her snout under Ruth’s jaw and licked her face. Ruth winced from the pain, then reached up and petted the dog’s head. She tried again to stand and could not, then felt someone helping her. It was Hannah, who had grabbed her under the arms, lifted her, and held her. Ruth stood hunched over and spat blood and grass and began to cry, and Hannah said, Oh, look at you. Let’s get you into the house.