by Archer Mayor
When I returned from the Rocky River, I found Buster in the kitchen, in his bathrobe, cleaning up the dishes before heading off the bed. For half an hour, I sat with him, nursing a coffee I knew would keep me up half the night, trying to get a feel for what was left of the town that had done so much for me as a kid. I was in better spirits than I had been earlier. My interrogation of the Wingates had made me keen for the task ahead. What I’d gotten from them hadn’t broken the case, or even changed things dramatically, but it had been progress-something valuable to be used later, like bricks for a future house. Now I was sitting in the near dark of the living room, seeing only the dim hall light upstairs, which filtered down the staircase around corner. Buster had left it on for me after he’d gone to bed, some o hours ago. I could hear him snoring in his room above. I’d been very touched when Laura had told me Buster kept a apbook about me. It had been tangible evidence of the affection I’d ays sensed was there.
The feeling was mutual, in fact, which exined why I didn’t find it odd.
Buster had been for me, even long fore my own father died, the man to whom I naturally looked for otional support.
My father had been a farmer. My first and last memories of him of an earth-soiled man, slightly stooped from his labors, working land. I used to stare at him at the table when we shared breakfasts d dinners, not only because he struck an impressive figure, which he with his huge, gnarled brown-stained hands, but because those were e only times I ever got to see him up close. The rest of the time he out there in the fields, in the barn, among the animals-working. worked consistently, constantly, mostly by himself, and mostly thout a word. Every year, there were times he hired extra hands to there the crop. Then, suddenly, briefly, the farm resounded with ghter and coarse voices, the kitchen was crowded with men and ise at mealtime. Leo and I tore around, watching, listening, helping mother, reveling in it the way other children revel in Christmas rols in late December. And theh the silence would resettle around the use.
It wasn’t oppressive, because there was nothing to fear in it. It was my father’s way. He was older-over forty when he married my other-supporting his family in the classic mold, through the Depresn, through the war, through the bad years and the good. He did so th the same metronomic doggedness as a cave drip building a stalagite. He never yelled at us, never lost his patience as he taught us our ores, never showed anything but quiet pleasure at our company. rely, I caught him glancing at Leo or me and smiling privately. But at was it-that smile was the extent of his emotional volubility. My mother picked up the slack, caring for our emotional needs, couraging us, nurturing us.
Realizing that we needed a father who also a friend, and realizing my own father’s limitations in that partment, she had merely substituted him with Buster during our mmers in Gannet.
It was a perfect example of her inborn genius at mothering. Father our father-the point was never denied nor denigrated. Indeed, we nsed she worshipped him, albeit from afar and without demonstran. But Buster was fun, and while as a year-round influence he proba bly would have ruined us, as a summertime dad, he was as necessary for us as the occasional candy-bar hinge is for a ten year old.
If my father had his fields to till and make flourish, Buster paid just as close attention to the human spirit. Nowdays, he was given to drinking too much and giving marginally coherent lectures on the human condition, but back then he was a hands-on soul massager, as eager as a young school teacher to expose his charges to the ins and outs of life.
He did so using his garage, the surrounding hills and streams, and his wife Liz’s tolerance at having their house and kitchen perpetually invaded by boisterous, ravenous kids. Under his guiding eye, we fished and hiked and worked on cars, painted and repaired houses, and worked as willing slaves at the fire department. We were taught the value of everyone’s private dignity.
Only when I was much older did I realize the price Buster had paid for his generous excess. Like a rich man desperate to make an impression, he had exchanged his wealth for friendship. By the time Liz died and most of the town’s younger citizens had either grown up or moved to greener pastures, Buster had found little left in his reserves with which to holster his own spirit. He’d begun to drink more, to reminisce, and to hold court among people who, barring a few exceptions like Laura, didn’t give much of a damn what he had left to offer.
In that, he’d become much like the land around him. Listening to him talk earlier, as I sat sipping my coffee and watching him do the dishes, I had my concerns for the Northeast Kingdom confirmed as he elaborated on what he’d said during the celebration at the Rocky River.
When I was younger, the Kingdom had been much as the name implies-a magical other world, removed from the mainstream and endowed with a specialness in the minds of those who knew of it. Its topography, both rugged and cursive, could reject and embrace, kill and nurture. It was a place where land and weather ruled, where the beauty came less from the majestic mountain views found farther south, and more from the perpetual surprises that lurked behind the low, ever-present hills.
Even at its harshest, the Kingdom was seductive, as when its omnipotent sky darkened with boiling blue-black clouds, low slung and pregnant with threat.
Its people, like those of Gannet, clung to this mercurial terrain mostly out of choice. It was not a place to come to work, for jobs were few and far between, and demanding on the body when found. It was not a vacation retreat, since it offered no glitzy ski slopes or lake-side spas. Even during deer season, outside hunters were forced to work for their kill, finding shelter in uninsulated hunting cabins or weather-worn motels with no TVs.
Native Northeasterners preferred it that way. They were indepen self-supporting, proud, and generally uninterested in what was ning outside their boundaries. Ignoring the police and social ies, they turned to themselves or their neighbors for help and e, and scorned whatever innovations the rest of the state touted aluable.
ut, obviously, the fabric of the Kingdom had begun to strain and The Gretas, Rennies, and Busters, with the modern world pressdemands, were no longer envied for their conservative selfiency, but rather seen as quaint and out of touch, even gullible. arketplace began to put a price on all they’d taken for granted, n many cases transformed an unimportant poverty into grinding y. It went a long way in explaining Greta’s anxiety about keeping n, and her xenophobic view of the Order and its practices. It also d to explain a new bitterness I sensed lurking beneath Rennie’s worn friendly exterior, working like an infection from the inside hat, of course, was purely an impression on my part; I hadn’t had I chance to sit down and talk with him. But he seemed tired, his ter was harsher and more brittle, and his eyes, once clear and mined, tended to look away. He struck me as a man running d.
I was sitting in Buster’s exhausted armchair in the living room, my clotted with thoughts of Gannet, before and now, with fire and I felt an overwhelming need to share what was bottled up inside espite the late hour.
The idea of calling Gail was instinctive, more natural to me than oncern about the present strain between us. This is not to belittle tter-it was real and painful and not to be taken for granted, but sis was in a friendship temporarily gone awry. I knew in my heart z n a time of need, even now, neither one of us would be unavailable e other.
I’d used the image of two seesaw riders to describe us to a. In my mind, it had gone without saying that a seesaw without people, no matter how out of balance, was a choice with no options. The only phone in the house was located in the hallway, as the phones had been of old. Buster had never seen the need for cy on the phone, especially since he rarely used one in the first I dialed in the gloom, the number known by heart.
The answering voice was sleepy. “Hi. It’s me.” “Hi.” There was a pause. I tried to gauge her mood from that one -just a sound, really-and got nowhere. “Sorry to be calling so late.” “It’s okay.”
Again, the brevity left me hanging. There was no hostility in the voice, but no encourage
ment either. She was letting me stick my neck out.
“How are you doing?” This time, a stunned silence preceded any words, and I rued the banality of my question. Her delayed response had the predictability of the pain following a slap. “How the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m angry. I feel like you walked out on me without ever telling me why. I thought grown-ups talked through their problems-you just ran away.” “I told you I wanted time to think.”
“That’s bullshit, Joe. What good is thinking in isolation? This problem belongs to both of us. I’m not interested in what you come up with on your own. Christ, we’re friends; you’d think this would be the time to work together.” Her precision undermined any defensive maneuvers I might have attempted. She had hit on the exact subconscious motivation behind my dialing her number in the first place.
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do now.” Her frustration boiled over. “On the phone? I hate the goddamn phone. It’s a business tool, Joe, something you use to fire people you can’t look in the eye.” “I don’t want to fire you.” Only after I’d said it did I realize how idiotic it had sounded. The realization prompted a more accurate rejoinder. “But I’m not sure I want to look you in the eye, either.”
She sat on that for several long seconds. This was not an impulsive, highly charged individual. Gail had walked a long, experience-paved road, from the free-love, drug-stimulated sixties to a middle age of thoughtfulness and reflection. Her answer echoed that, and made me glad I had phoned. “That’s fair, but only if you’re coming back so we can talk properly.” I was surprised by the implication. “Of course I’m coming back. I won’t deny I ran for cover, but I didn’t run away. Your anger scared the hell out of me. It was like standing too close to a hot stove.” Again, the reflective pause. “I didn’t mean to put you down.” It was a classic Gail line, a little bit of psycho-talk, of I’m-okayyou’re-okay. It was an extraordinary and endearing trait, her ability to nail down unstable emotions so they wouldn’t run amuck and cause undue injury. She, unlike anyone else I knew, understood when it was time to put down the weapons and make peace long before I ever did.
“You felt I was that angry?” she asked.
“Weren’t you?” “I think it was more frustration. I felt totally cut off from you.
The time you left my house, I felt like a hooker who’d been underpaid.”
“Good Lord, Gail.” “Hey. You weren’t even there. You were God knows where, at the ce, feeling sorry for yourself, waiting for Tony Brandt to get back you could retrieve your freedom, or whatever the hell it was.
When said you were going up north, it was like hearing the other shoe p.
It was the predictability that made me mad you had totally cut off.”
“I’m sorry.” “I don’t want to hear that. I’m sorry, too, but is that going to get anywhere?” “I hope so. It’s a start.” The thoughtful pause. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” “You’re sorry I’m sorry, or you’re sorry you’re sorry? Or are you ry you said we shouldn’t be sorry?” She laughed, and I realized I’d been clenching the phone. I relaxed grip.
“God, life is such a bitch.” She was right there, and by making the choices we had, we hadn’t de it any easier. We’d taken an ideal situation, one as potentially nsient as a burst of laughter, and had tried to freeze it in place. She single, as was I; she had a career, just like me; we both liked owing the other was there, available sexually and morally, but not endent.
How long, in a world crammed with other people and nts, could such a static emotional state exist? “So what do we do about it?” she continued. “I’d like to do something-have I done any permanent damage e?” She sighed, and I could hear the pillow rustling against the headShe was right again: Times like these are not good on the phone.
onged to be next to her. “No, and nor have I, at least I hope I en’t.”
I picked that up quickly. “I made the call, and you didn’t hang She laughed again gently. “All right. That proves something, but on’t want this to happen again. I can live with the fact that things ght change and we might choose separate paths, but not this way, y?” “Sounds good to me.” But she wasn’t going to let me off that lightly. “I thought it might, but I mean it, Joe. You’re good at talking to people in trouble, or giving them the third degree. You’re even pretty good at snowing the Selectmen, but you’re not that great talking to me. I think you hope all our little problems will just die natural deaths of their own.” Despite the urge to do so, I couldn’t deny it. “You know that’s not the way it happens, right?” The hint of maternal superiority suddenly irritated me. “I may not be the only guilty party here.” There was a long, dead silence, followed by, “Ouch.” This time I chuckled.
“This may work, after all.” “You are a bastard and I hate the phone and I wish you here.” “I love you, Gail.” “I love you, too, Joe, but it can’t stop there.” I had to give her high marks for persistence. “I know. I’ll try to do a better job. The Chief coming back is bound to help-at least my professional life will be back to normal.” “How’s your professional life doing now? From what I heard on the news, it sounds like you stepped into it again.” “Did my name come up?” “I could arrange for it to.” “Oh, please, spare me that. What did they report?” She told me what she’d heard, which didn’t vary much from what I’d seen on Greta’s TV. I told her the details and the cast of characters. I also told her of the changes that had come to Gannet, and of the damage they had wrought.
She listened and asked questions and heard the sadness in my voice and became again, as she had been for years, my best friend. She reminded me before we hung up that we had work to do, that things were going to change between us, for the better if we paid attention, and that she was looking forward to that.
So was I, although as I replaced the phone on its cradle, I thought of Laura, opening her coat to show me her curves. It made me doubly glad Gail and I had talked, before I’d been tempted to try something that was preordained to fail. But then, that had probably been my driving stimulus that in the midst of a complicated case, in a town whose memories were becoming at best bittersweet, I needed to connect with a person whose motives were clear and clean, and whose alliance was unquestioned. Laura had said of Gail, “Skinnier than me, I bet.”
Skinnier, more complicated, more intellectually demanding, more emotionally precise, but only a small part of me wondered why I’d reached out to Gail, when getting her back meant so much more work.
Early the next morning, none of us had any doubts a crime had n committed. Bruce Wingate was found stabbed to death. A breathless, half-frozen teenage boy had been dispatched by Renon a bicycle to fetch me. Buster’s only comment had been, “Better b a coat. Cold’s back.”
There was frost on the grass; the surrounding bare trees looked old d withered in their icy, silver sheaths. The “warm snap had ended e the slam of a door, leaving the air brittle and raw, almost painful breathe too deeply. In the low spots-the ditches, the dips in the d, the hollows between the hills-ground fog lay as if clinging to dry The three of us piled into Buster’s pickup, placing the boy’s bike 0 the back.
Dulac’s ravine, where Wingate’s body had been found, a mile north of town, bordering a road off of I II. Dulac had been armer in the region years ago, and the road had once led to his house. th he and the house were long gone, but the road remained, a major raction to those who had to opt for backseats over bedrooms for their ments of intimacy.
Rennie’s pickup-green, battered, and flamboyantly splotched th dark red Rust-Oleum spots-was listing like a sinking rowboat at edge of the road.
We parked behind it and got out. A good twenty below us, at the bottom of a treacherously steep and ice-slicked pe, wreathed in a smokelike mist, stood Rennie Wilson and a man fluorescent orange carrying a rifle.
Between them, barely visible, lay uce Wingate, looking like the fallen ghost of a bird, dropped from air in midflight, with one wing still outstretched. The ravine was dry, walled in on
the opposite side by a gentler, ch taller, heavily wooded slope that curved away above us. To my right, a footpath angled down from the road to the misteathed bottom, a time-worn pedestrian trail used by anyone who nted to climb the hill on the other side. The boy who had driven back th us was already running off toward it to join Rennie and to ogle body.
“Buster. What’s his name?” “Jimmy.” I shouted after him. “Jimmy! Hold it. I don’t want any more prints around there. Stay up on the road.”
The shout caused both Rennie and his companion to look up at us. I waved them toward the path. “He’s dead, right?” Rennie answered. “As a doornail.” “Then come on up. I want to keep that scene as clear of people as possible.” I walked down the road a bit and met them at the top of the path.
Rennie introduced us. “This is Joe Gunther, with the State’s Attorney’s office; Joe, this is Mitch Pearl. He found the body.” We shook hands.
Pearl was about thirty-eight years old, with brown hair and eyes, a clean-shaven square face, and a respectable beer gut. He wore a worried look on his face. “When did you find him?” I asked.
“About a half hour ago. I was following a set of deer tracks along the bottom of the ravine. I drove back to town and told Mr. Wilson here.”