He parked and shut off the engine and listened to the silence of decay. A fat man in a T-shirt and overalls came out of a shed and walked toward them, looking at Bo first, then Ruth, and not taking his eyes off of Ruth.
Bo got out of the truck, extended his hand, and said, Bo Konar.
The man ignored him, reached into his pocket and took out a plug of chewing tobacco and tucked it into the back of his mouth. Here about the saw, ain’t you? he drawled.
The smells of pine and morning air gave way to stale engine oil and unwashed sweat. That’s right, Bo said. Let me get my tools and we can get this over with. He opened the front door of the truck and said to Ruth, Lock these doors when I go in.
He took a flashlight from behind the seat, then closed the door and reached into the truck bed for his toolbox and followed the man through the yard and into the shed.
The saw sat uncovered in a corner. Bo walked around it, then came in close, knelt down, and turned on his flashlight. It was a DL 750, built in ’52 by the serial number, and he could tell that someone had taken care of it. It would need a new chain, but the lubrication unit was intact and most likely operative. He took off the spindle housing, and the air gap clearance between the rotor and the stator was fine. Then he checked the pressure roll assembly for wear and axial play, and everything looked good. Even the guide rail and the stock rail were in nice shape.
The fat man watched Bo as he worked, and when Bo lifted his head up and stepped back from the saw, the man said, Know what you’re doin’, don’t you?
Sometimes, Bo said. He turned and looked at the man. I’ll give you five hundred dollars for it.
The man scoffed. That’s what I paid fer it.
No, you didn’t. Five hundred, and I’ll have a flatbed down here tomorrow to pick it up.
Lemme think on it.
You can think on it all you want, Bo said, and looked around at the rest of the junk jammed into that shed, which foretold what the saw would become. But that’s more than you’ll get leaving it here to collect cobwebs and batshit. I’m going home.
He had decided as he walked from the shed to the truck that if the man let him get inside and turn the engine over, he was going to drive away no matter what. He was tired and hungry and in no mood to bargain. Bo opened the door of the pickup and said to Ruth, Count to five for me, would you? Out loud.
When she got to four, they heard the man holler like he would never see that truck in his yard again. All right! You got yerself a saw.
Bo got out and yelled back, Good. He reached into his pocket for his wallet, peeled off four fifties, and waited for the man as he sauntered over to the truck.
Two hundred now, three hundred when my guy comes to pick it up.
Bo gave him the money. The man counted it out slow, twice, then folded the bills and put them in the chest pocket of his overalls.
I’ll be here, he said.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
BY THE MAP, ABAS WAS five miles or so west along that same road, and Bo drove until he came to the town and pulled up to the first place he found that served food. A diner, though it had no name that he could see. He called the mill collect from the pay phone outside and told Jeff that he had bought the saw and would need a flatbed down there tomorrow.
Anything else? Jeff asked over the phone.
No, Bo said. I was lucky to get this one.
The diner was empty except for two men in garage coveralls eating at the lunch counter, and they never looked up. A woman wearing a pink and white apron over a denim dress stood at the end by the soda fountain and smoked. Her left arm was holding up her right arm at the elbow while she dragged on the cigarette and tugged at a coil of dirty-blond hair that she had pulled from around her back and over her shoulder. She had on scuffed saddle shoes and no socks, and Bo could see behind the makeup that stopped in a line underneath her jaw that she was older than she wanted to look.
He and Ruth slid into an open booth and the woman crushed out her cigarette and came over and stood next to their table. What are you havin’? she asked.
Bo tried to read the menu, but his mind was still in that shed. The woman tapped the pad with her pencil and said, You take a minute. I’ll be back.
No, Ruth said. We’ll have two coffees, a ham sandwich, and a hamburger.
The waitress flipped the pencil with one hand and scratched again, dropped the pad into her apron pocket, and walked toward the kitchen door.
You okay? Ruth asked Bo.
Getting there, he said. How did you know what I wanted?
I didn’t. But I’m starving, and I’m guessing it’s all the same around here.
The coffee came a minute later, and Bo hunched over his cup and drank and felt like he was waking up in the middle of the day. The hamburger and sandwich took some time, but they were better than expected, so Bo and Ruth each ordered a piece of the apple pie that the woman told them had been baked that morning at a bakery in Spencer with apples from an orchard in Jefferson County.
When she came back a minute later with two plates of pie and a new setting of forks, she said, So, you two here just to buy scrap off of Hollis? Or is there some other reason you drove to Abas from wherever it is you’re from in Pennsylvania? Because I know you ain’t here for your honeymoon.
Word travels, Bo said.
’Round here it does.
Bo pulled his plate toward him. We’re looking for Morning Ridge. A man named Grayson.
Burne? she asked, and Bo said yes. She studied him for a moment. You don’t look like the law.
We came here to ask him about my brother. Her fiancée. He served with Grayson in Vietnam.
The woman folded her arms against her chest and glanced over at the two men finishing their lunch. Let me take care of those boys, she said. She strolled over to the counter and put her arm around the one closest to the edge. He was wiry and nervous-looking and ate with his hat on. She spoke to them both, then moved her hand down the thin man’s back and around to the inside of his thigh, and squeezed his leg. He smiled with his teeth and put a single bill on the countertop. She swept it up fast and put it in her pocket, and the two men stood, gave a little hop to settle their coveralls, and walked out the door.
When the waitress returned, she took an order pad and a pencil from inside her apron, tore a sheet off the pad, and set it down on the table. Look here, she said, and sketched a large calligraphic Z on the paper with a line running through the middle of it. That’s Main Street right out there. Take a left at the service station and keep following it until the road bears left again, real sharp, like you’re fallin’ off the world. Then keep going until the road stops. That’s the ridge. That’s where you’ll find him.
She pushed the drawn map toward Ruth and put the pad and pencil in her pocket. No idea why he came back to this shit hole, she said. I seen all them medals he’s got. You’d think a man like that could live wherever he wants. She pulled at the hair on her shoulder. Or have whoever he wants. But he’s got that house his daddy built. And a new dog since he’s been home.
She stared outside and followed a car down Main Street with her eyes, then shook her head and turned back to Bo and Ruth at the table. Four dollars even, she said to Bo. For the coffee and lunch. I’ll be at the register when y’all are ready.
They drove longer than Bo believed was the distance that the waitress had intended on her map, the road climbing and climbing, dense woods on one side, sheer cliff on the other, the left they were told to take nearly a mile behind them now. He slowed the truck and rolled down the window. He could hear on the crisp air the unmistakable TOK of an ax rounding into wood. He heard it again and put the truck in gear and kept going up the road a few hundred yards until they came to a bend and into a clearing. There in front of them stood the back of a two-story log cabin with a broad fieldstone chimney rising up the center, the house itself perched on a ledge that looked like it hung in the sky. The place seemed built not to take in the view so much as to ta
ke flight from whomever or whatever might climb up that mountain and find it.
Bo turned off the engine, and he and Ruth got out and listened to a breeze stir in the oak and beech in the woods behind them. There were stone steps to the side of the house, and they heard again the sharp TOK of someone splitting firewood. Someone good at it. Bo moved in that direction and Ruth followed him, but the first flat rock at the top of those steps tilted when he came down on it. Bo dropped and let out a yell.
A hound began to bay and Ruth stopped. Bo stood up fast and dusted himself off, the underside of his forearm and elbow smudged with dirt and blood. He saw a bluetick approach the bottom step and begin to howl.
Hector! a voice shouted, and the dog stopped and sat. A man carrying an ax came into view, looked up, and said, Don’t worry. He’s just a puppy. We don’t get many visitors.
He was a tall man with a slight paunch and a fine blond beard. A shock of that same blond fell into his eyes, and he pushed it aside as if he had just gotten used to it being long. He had on a black-and-green-checked flannel shirt with a white T-shirt underneath and double-front canvas work pants that were worn at the knee. Bo guessed that they were about the same age, but he felt humbled somehow in the man’s presence, student to a master in a course unknown, and he might have bowed if they had been on level ground.
You going to stand there at the top of my steps? Or are you going to come on down and say hello like polite folks do?
Bo and Ruth walked the rest of the steps. The dog sniffed at them and stayed by Ruth, and she petted his head.
We’re looking for Captain Burne Grayson, Bo said.
Retired, Grayson said.
I’m Bo Konar, Bo said, and reached out his hand. And this is Ruth Younger.
Grayson shook Bo’s hand without much of a grip. I know who you are, he said, and let go. I know, he said again. He turned and walked over to his woodpile and sank the ax into a chopping block. He whistled for the dog, and clipped him to a rope eye-bolted to the house. He turned back to Bo and Ruth and said, I was just getting ready to knock off for the day. Let’s get you something for that arm.
They followed him up a wooden staircase that wound around the slab of stone on which the entire house sat and went into a living room built of glass and timber with a view of the valley so striking that Bo had to reach for the door handle as he turned and stood before it. Behind him was a fireplace large enough for a grown man to stand inside. What looked like the kitchen was an alcove with a sink, a refrigerator, and an old Franklin stove. Nothing else. Furniture consisted of a wooden chair with an embroidered cushion, and this sat before a rabbit-eared television set (the lone evidence that this man lived in an age that could claim electricity) on top of an orange crate. There was another flight of stairs that led to a balconied hallway, and on either side of the large chimney were two doors, one open, the other closed.
Grayson rinsed a dish towel at the sink in the kitchen, wrung it out, and handed it to Bo, who spot-cleaned the blood and dirt from his arm. He handed the towel back to Grayson.
Might want to cover that up, Grayson said. He rinsed the towel again and went to Bo and wound the dressing around his elbow and tucked the two ends inside the wrap. That ought to do it. Keep it straight for now.
He went back into the kitchen, took a ceramic pot from a cupboard, doled three spoonfuls of chopped green needles from a Mason jar into the pot, then poured hot water from a kettle on the Franklin into the pot. He put a lid on it and placed three more empty Mason jars on the counter by the sink. White pine tea, he said. Good for what ails you. Let’s just give it a moment to steep.
There was nowhere to sit but the lone chair, and Grayson did not offer it. So Bo stood holding his arm and Ruth slumped down on the floor by the window. Grayson poured the tea into the Mason jars and picked one up like a man picking coals from a fire and handed it to Ruth. It’s hot, he said.
She pinched the mouth of the jar with her fingers and held it that way. Grayson gave the other one to Bo and took his own and motioned to the deck outside as he walked. Bo and Ruth followed.
They sat with their backs against the house and cups of tea between their legs, the sun past its equinox tilting toward the west, the trees on the other side of the valley looking in their leaves like a wash on a canvas that moved from green to yellow and orange. Near the mountaintop they were a flamelike red.
Airy this morning, Grayson said. That’s how you caught me chopping wood into the afternoon. Afraid I’m behind, if this winter promises to be a bad one. They’re saying by Friday there might even be a skift of snow on the ground in the elevations.
Grayson sipped his tea and stared out at the sun as though it held some clue on how he might recollect and sift through what he ought to tell. Bo had seen that look on his grandfather’s face. A look of unburdening. And he wished in the faintness and fatigue that had come over him all of a sudden that he could stand and walk away and leave the burden for Grayson himself to carry, if he was the kind to carry burdens at all. But Bo knew that Ruth would not leave until she had heard something she could take back with her, something she could place on that chest of drawers where the pictures of Sam lay, and she could say, Now there are two things I know.
It was a long time before Grayson said anything, so long that Bo almost got up to leave. Then Grayson swirled the green needles in his jar and took a long drink and whispered as though to himself, So you’re here about old man.
He didn’t say, What do you want to know? Or Heard any more about him? Or I’ve heard Sam Konar talk about you two since the day I asked him what town he was from, then had to order him to quit talking. He said, That’s what we called him. Old man. Not the Old Man. Just old man. First his squad. Then the platoon. After a while the whole rifle company got used to it. He’d talk to himself. Real quiet. And the guys would say, Who the hell are you talking to, Konar? and he’d say, An old man.
That was our grandfather, Bo said. Hard to shake him even when he’s not around, so you end up talking to him instead.
Is he back in Pennsylvania?
He’s dead.
Grayson nodded. Well, only Konar could get away with it. PFC then and already a kind of talisman when I was a first lieutenant. Guys in-country clung to anyone or anything for luck, as long as they believed it was going to get them out of there. Your brother found a tripwire once that didn’t trip. Another ville we were checking out got attacked. Small-arms fire. A grenade rolled right between Konar and the doc, and that damn thing was a dud. Other stuff, too. All coincidence, but not when you’re counting days and all you want to do is go home. Guys started to fight for who got to be next to him on patrol at night. There was a sergeant who chewed his ass out once. Don’t give me that old man bullshit, Konar. But he stopped right quick when your brother spotted some VC setting up to ambush them. Just movement like the breeze, except there was no breeze that day, and Konar knew it.
Grayson took a sip of his tea and smiled. Not all the Vietcong were hardened jungle warriors, he said. And as a result there were six fewer of them by that sergeant’s count.
Bo watched and listened to the man, not wanting to interrupt but wanting to know when he would get around to telling them what it was they had come to hear. Grayson put his head down and stared into the dregs of pine needles that he swirled slowly in the jar.
Bo said, Captain Kraynack told us in a letter that you’re the reason my brother’s still listed as MIA.
Grayson looked up. That’s right, he said. He unlaced his boots and pushed them to the outer edge of the deck, sat up straight, and tucked his feet under his legs in a lotus position. A gust of wind lifted his hair, and Bo could see the fresh scar tissue of a wound on the back of his head.
Kraynack tell you where I live, too?
Waitress at the diner drew us a map, Bo said.
Oh, Ashley, Grayson said and shook his head. She and I were in high school together. She was the homecoming queen, and I was a bookworm on his way to Morgantown and drea
ming about what it’d be like just to talk to her. She used to torture me something fierce. Now she finds her way up here every once in a while. When she’s got no one to talk to, I guess. I kinda feel sorry for her.
He stared in the direction of the valley. But we were talking about Kraynack, weren’t we. He and I go back to Okinawa in ’65. We were on the same C-130 that took us to Danang. And look at us. We both made it. I was even stupid enough to do a second tour. And then a third.
He raised his arms above his head and arched his back and exhaled. He turned to Ruth. How do you like that tea? he asked.
Better than Ashley’s coffee.
Ain’t that the truth, Grayson said, and laughed. You get a slice of pie, though?
Ruth nodded.
Hell yes, Grayson said. He turned to Bo. How’s your arm feel?
Not bad, Bo said. Look, we’ll finish up and leave you to your woodpile. We were just wondering, you know, if we should put up a marker for Sam and get on with it. Or keep waiting.
We? Grayson said.
Ruth and me and Sam’s mother.
Grayson drew a deep and audible breath through his nose and exhaled out his mouth. You might put up a marker regardless, he said, and raised his face to the weakening sun and closed his eyes. He sat like that for a minute, and Bo looked at Ruth and motioned with his head that they ought to go. Then Grayson opened his eyes and said, I remember once on my first tour, my platoon was doing patrols with a unit of South Vietnamese soldiers, and we stopped at a village one day to talk to this old lady that the commander said he got good intel from every now and then. I couldn’t believe it, but we went along. She wasn’t a day under a hundred, I swear to God, and she talked, and he talked, and she talked some more. And when I asked him what she said, he said that she had seen some Vietminh soldiers come through a few days ago, and they told her that her son would be home soon, so she’d been tidying the hut and fixing up his corner of it the same way it was when he left, praying every day to her ancestors to say thank you. She means Vietcong, I said, excited now that we were getting somewhere, and the commander said no. Well, when the hell’s he coming back? I asked. We ought to stake out this ville and see if the whole damn army shows. But he thanked the old lady, who smiled and bowed and said all kinds of nice things about us as we walked away. I told my men to set up on the perimeter, and the commander said that wasn’t part of the orders. I told him I didn’t take orders from him, and that if we knew there were VC coming back into this village, my men were going to wait and meet them. Lieutenant Grayson, the man said like I was a petulant six-year-old, that woman’s son disappeared in 1954, when the Vietminh marched against the French at Dien Bien Phu. She’s not seen him in eleven years. But every time I visit her, she says he is coming home tomorrow.
The Signal Flame Page 16