Before We Sleep

by Jeffrey Lent

  He parked and again grinned at her and said, “He does it right. It’s whole-hog, snout to tail, cooked in a pit. Come on, girl, let’s put some south in your mouth.”

  He stepped out of the truck and she did also. The smoke was paling about them and the smell of cooked meat rode the smoke and she followed as he walked to the building and together they went through the door.

  A large Negro man stood behind a counter of pitted and scarred wood. He wore a pair of bib-overalls and no shirt, with a red bandanna tied like a pirate over the top of his head. His face and powerfully muscled arms were beaded with sweat. Before him on the counter was a heap of glistening charred meat and in one hand he held up a cleaver, the blade thick as an axe along the top but tapering down to a wafer edge.

  He said, “Hey, Mr. Potter. How you this fine morning?”

  “I’m good, Clyde. How bout a couple jumbos?”

  “You got it. Wrapped in foil?”

  “Naw, paper plates is fine. We’ll eat at the tables.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He reached to a shelf and from a plastic bag took two of the largest hamburger buns Katey had ever seen, pulled them apart and set them on plates from a stack. Using the cleaver he moved meat from the mound and then chopped the big hunks into a finer mass of pieces, then used the cleaver and a spatula to divide the meat and mounded the two piles neatly atop the buns, moving them around with the tip of the cleaver while leveling the meat into even thick circles. He set down the tools and opened a big plastic tub and used an ice cream scoop to place an equal amount of coleslaw on the meat. Then he put the tops on and gently pressed down. As he was doing this Brian went to an old zinc cooler and lifted up sweating bottles of Coca-Cola and set them on the counter. The whole process was fast and neat and not once during it did Clyde so much as glance at Katey and she realized he was deliberately not seeing Brian Potter in his place with an older teenage girl he’d never seen before. And she wondered if Brian was even aware of this.

  “Two dollar and dime each for the Co-Colas, you leave the bottles on the table.”

  Brian paid and picked up a plate in each hand and said, “Thanks, Clyde. It’s the best.”

  “You right it is.”

  Brian looked at Katey and said, “Grab the dopes, will ya, girl?” And turned for the door.

  There was only one thing he could mean by that and so she lifted the bottles of soda and turned, then stopped and glanced back. The Negro man was looking at her and averted his eyes when she turned. She said, “Thanks.”

  He took the cleaver and slapped the spare trimmings back onto the heap of meat and glanced at her and said, “You welcome, missy.”

  She went out and sat across from Brian, to where he’d pushed one of the plates. There in the shade a breeze was coming off the lake and while it was still very hot, the breeze felt good. Brian had carefully lifted the top of his bun and took up a small bottle of thin pale red liquid and dribbled some out onto the coleslaw and then handed it to her.

  “Some people like to put it on their meat. It doesn’t really matter ’cause it all mixes together once you start eating.”

  She held the bottle. There was no label on it. She said, “What is it?”

  “Sauce for your barbecue. Not the ketchup stuff you might be used to. Made for pig meat cooked over hardwood and eaten with slaw. It’s mostly vinegar and red pepper. It packs a punch but you’ll see, all three go together real good.”

  She sprinkled some on top of her slaw as he had, glanced up and he said, “You’re bold enough so far. Don’t overdo it but take a bit more. You’ll like the bit of heat, I promise you.”

  And she did. They ate and it was all good. Pieces of meat and clumps of slaw fell onto her plate and she saw the same was happening to Brian and he looked at her and scooped it up with his fingers and then pulled paper napkins from the dispenser on the table to clean his fingers and she did the same. The food settled into her stomach and she gained a solidity that had been lacking since the beginning of this day and then both were finished and they sat drinking the cold Cokes.

  “That was real good.”

  “I told you it would be. I haven’t lied to you yet and I don’t plan to start, just so you know. Now, Katey Snow. I told you I wanted to know more about you and I do but there’s a pair of questions I’d like to ask first. Fact is, how you answer will tell me some of you, also. Maybe not a bad place to start.”

  “Go ahead.” The food and the Coke were gaining on her and she felt her face turned into the wind, ready for whatever came next.

  “I’d like to ask after your father and your mother. How are they?”

  And there it was: He wasn’t denying her paternity but clearly identifying who her father was. And she knew he was right about that, in fact, once it was out between them, or at least laid before her, she understood she’d never wavered from that knowledge, even come seeking the man who, one way or another, sired her. She sensed as well that within her answers would lie the key to her future dealings with him. And found a burble of respect for him that she hadn’t been sure she’d find, and, finding that, didn’t want to lose. And once again was all complicated within. But without confusion. Things were starting to make sense.

  She traced a finger along the rough planks of the tabletop, then drank the last swallow of her Coke and looked at him across from her, the man relaxed and solid, deep within himself and she liked him. She said, “They’re good.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. But can you enlarge on that a little bit? It’s been many years. You should understand what I mean.”

  “Well. I said, ‘They’re good.’ But truth is, once I took off to try to find you, I wonder how well they’re doing.”

  “They did not know you were doing this?”

  She paused then and considered. Then said, “I didn’t announce it. I snuck off in the night. But they had to know what I was up to.”

  “Why’s that? Was it a point of contention between them?”

  She remembered the night her father had stood from the table and announced that she might as well have been adopted and left the house, left her mother to explain what he meant by that remark. And what her mother finally told her and how she’d then understood the Christmas cards found years ago. How she’d then blamed her mother.

  She turned her eyes steady on Brian Potter and found his steady upon her. She said, “I honestly don’t know. My mother and I, we don’t see eye to eye on much. She’s prickly with me and unreasonable with her expectations of me. But that’s a recent thing. As a child all I recall of her was kindness—well, that’s not true. She always had expectations of me but they were ones I was happy to strive to reach. And Dad—Oliver—he wasn’t ever anything but kind and loving with me. You have to understand, he’s a man different from other men. Most deeply silent and withdrawn into himself, keeping best he could away from other people. Except for fiddle players. He repairs fiddles and is known for the work he does. But that work, that allows him to mostly be alone. I guess maybe the music, the instruments that make the music, the men who understand how that all works, I guess those are the men he understands best. I spent most of my childhood with him and meeting those few men and watching him at his work. So I’m guessing I’m pretty much right about him. And this, also: He was not only tender and gentle and loving with me, but with my mother, also. Does that answer your question?”

  Brian turned and looked out upon the water spread with the sun as a sheet of golden light stretching far away. He tapped out a smoke and struck fire and turned back to her then and said, “Not really. But you wouldn’t know. By the time you were old enough, whatever she told him, how he reacted, those moments were long ago. And pret’ damn clear, he took you on as his own, even as he also knew the truth otherwise. That says much. About both of them. Tell me. You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”

  She said, “No.” Then she said, “No. I’m it. I do recall in a vague way as a young child there was a time, maybe two, when I thought
I was getting a baby brother or sister and then that talk stopped. I was too young to wonder much, or ask questions. So I don’t know. I do know, because it’s a grand famous family story that I was born in a blizzard and there were problems with all of it. So. Maybe I’m alone because of that storm. Or maybe other reasons. Does it matter?”

  “Well, it could. But probably not. Recall what I said about consequences and how we never know truly how they play out? I think this is one of those things. Although I have to say I’m sorry you don’t have siblings. For you, for your folks.”

  Then he fell silent and she knew he was thinking about his other daughters. And oddly felt a stab to her gut, her heart. For him, for her mother and father, for the scowling girl on the porch an hour ago, for Judith, for all the people in the world wrapped up in their own miseries and vales of sadness and regret. At the same time knowing she’d just learned something, a wider net suddenly cast out into the dark.

  After a long silence she looked at him and again said, “Did I answer your question?”

  He lifted his dropped head and said, “Maybe. Maybe close as it gets.” Then he said, “No. Not all of them.”

  “All right,” she said. “What are they?”

  “What about you? What are your plans for this life, Katey Snow?”

  A flutter of panic. Once she’d set herself on this course of discovery she’d also slammed shut those doors of coming-future. And now all she could think was What would he want to hear? And with that she realized she wanted to please him, wanted, at the least, to have him continue what he’d hinted at the possibility of in some undefined way, their remaining in touch. And with that a bit of surge—he knew nothing really about her and it wasn’t her job to make him want to keep in touch. Not even sure he’d meant what he said.

  She said, “I’m enrolled at UVM for the fall.”

  “Good for you.”

  With great nonchalance she said, “I was an honor student straight through high school. And valedictorian, as well. In Vermont that’s a full ride to UVM.”

  He nodded and said, “Very good. You have a major?”

  She paused and took a breath and said, “I’ll figure that out if I go.”

  He lifted his chin a hitch and said, “If?”

  “When I set out looking for you, I didn’t have any idea what I’d find. If anything. But also, all through high school I waitressed weekends and summers and saved my money. So I brought some along with me. Because I thought, maybe I’d drift about some this summer and see what’s out here.” She raised an arm and swept it toward a vague horizon, one that had nothing to do with where she was. He was looking at her, his eyes quizzed to almost a squint. She went on. “Frankly, I already have seen a lot, some interesting and some not so much but I’m curious. There’s plenty of interesting stuff happening and I’d like to explore it some more. Maybe, once I do get to college, I can learn even more. But for the summer, I was thinking, just go looking, see what comes.”

  He’d sat up straight and was level and hard-eyed upon her. “You’re not talking about the hippies and their drugs, are you?”

  “Oh, no,” she lied. “I’m more interested in the Civil Rights stuff, also the people against the war. Mostly the political parts.” Smoothly she thought, she said, “Strikes me, when I get to college there’s going to be a lot of talk about that and I was thinking if I saw some of it up close, I’d be a little ahead of the game. At least at UVM. That’s still, you know? Vermont?”

  “Don’t do it,” he said. “Go home. Go back to your job and go off to college in the fall.”

  “I could do that. But I was thinking, why not drive around and meet some people and see what’s happening? I think the world is changing, maybe in big ways and I think maybe that’s a good idea. But how can I know if I don’t see some of it? I mean why in the world are we in Vietnam? I know people, young men not so much older than me, who are about to be drafted, or might be drafted, to go fight a war that they all know we don’t have any business in. Right?”

  He stood then and walked off from the table, out past the canopy onto the grass and stood looking out on the lake. Then, swiftly he turned and came back and stood over her and said, “Communism. That’s what we’re fighting. You think we shouldn’t, you go back and read some more history. The Chinese, the Soviets, those are not good people. Maybe once upon a time there was an idea that as an idea, wasn’t such a bad thing. But in both those places that idea got all turned around and became a truly terrible thing. I’m talking about how it ended up in life. A few truly terrible people have total control over a great huge number of people. I was there; I saw it. In Germany, to start with. But also, at the end of the war? You know what I heard the most from the Germans? How glad they were that it was us and not the Russians that liberated their town. You know why? Because at the same time we were coming over the Rhine, the Russians were coming in from the east and we heard the same stories the Germans did about those Russians. Khrushchev finally told the truth about Stalin. Millions of people, millions of Russian people died. Because of the terrible power that man held. And how the people around him feared him and so aided and abetted him. Because, they, each and every one of them, knew they could be next. Mao and his bunch, they’re no better, it seems. Maybe even worse. And it’s that sort of business that your dad and me and so many others went off to fight against, the Japs and the Nazis. Vietnam? You know how I see it? It’s like Poland in ’39. One little country that the Germans had some claim to. Or so it was said. But then came France. And the Maginot Line crumpled like,” he paused and took a paper napkin and closed his fist around it and dropped the balled paper to the breeze off the lake where it then tumbled across the grass and he finished, “it crumbled like that. The Japs bombing Pearl Harbor. Is how those things start. This time, I think, we’re getting in there before it goes too far. Because, girl, once the red Chinese get Vietnam, why would they stop there? You want World War Three? With the Soviets having the Bomb?”

  She’d heard versions of this before. She feared the atomic possibility, of all life being wiped out. She knew of a couple of summer houses whose owners had paid to have elaborate bomb shelters built and, if those people from New York or Boston, if they felt such fear, how could she discount it? She also remembered a day the year before when she’d been in her dad’s workshop one afternoon after school and Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” came on the radio and Oliver had stopped work, stood from his bench and walked to switch the radio off. Then he’d looked at her and said, “Whatever it is, it’s not something to make a sentimental song out of.”

  To this other father she said, “Of course not. It’s just, everything seems so complicated now.”

  To her surprise he sank back down but this time on the bench beside her and he nodded and paused and then said, “It does feel that way, some days.” Then after a bit he said, “I was your age, I didn’t have the chance to question anything. We knew what had to be done and we did it. And I still don’t doubt the rightness of what we did. But there was a cost, no doubt.”

  She looked at him and was silent and reached again, for only the second time, but this time let her hand rest on top of his. He nodded and said, “Yes. Oliver. And me, too. Deedee. All of that. Many others, too. I’ve seen those damaged men, still do. So I understand how a young person could have their questions. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. To question, I mean. It doesn’t change that you still have to do what’s demanded of you. But to know enough to think it through, first.”

  And he looked away. Her hand still atop of his.

  After a moment he lifted his other hand and wiped at his face that she couldn’t see and she knew it was a tear he was pushing away. Still not looking at her he said, “I heard there was some of those hippies. Up in Vermont.”

  She’d heard the same, some sort of commune in the southern part of the state, around Putney or Chester, maybe somewhere else. And she felt as if together, the two of them had just walked through some he
aving territory and were close to some altogether new territory. And Vermont still felt too close, not only to home but also to what had happened to her in New Hampshire. So she said, “You know what?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Until I got to Maine? I never saw the ocean before. I went to Pemaquid Point and it was amazing and wicked scary at the same time.”

  He turned back and said, “Yup. Maine’s a rocky cold coast.” And took his hand away.

  She said, “Last night? I stayed in a little motel in South Hill? And there was a brochure from North Carolina, the Outer Banks? Might’ve just been the pictures but that looked like a coast I’d like to see. Closer to what I had in mind.”

  “The beach. What we call it here. Because it’s not a coast like Maine but beaches. It’s all a beautiful place.”

  “I’m thinking to visit it. Before I do anything else.”

  He nodded. Then he said, “Do you understand?”

  She was quiet a moment and said, “Yes. He’s the best father I could ever ask for.”

  “And your mother?”

  “I haven’t settled that yet. But I know I’ve got some thinking to do.”

  He nodded. Then he said, “Yup. We all do. You know, it never really stops, needing to think about things. I’m glad you’re in this world, to use your words, Katey Snow. And I’d be delighted if you chose to keep in touch with me. It’s not for me to set limits—it’s for you to decide what’s best, all the way around. But what I think, just now, is you should go and see a beach.”

  Again she was struck, knowing this was done. For the time being at least. She tangled her legs trying to quickly rise from the bench of the picnic table and then he was up also, his hand on her upper arm, steadying her and she slowed her flounder. So they came up together, finally, and he took her hand and they walked down to the water lapping among the stones and the oozing red dirt of the shore and stood side by side, gazing out upon the flat expanse of water.