“I thought it was Ritter,” he said, shooting Earley a poisonous glance. “I’m forty feet in the air—how the fuck am I s’posed to know who’s yanking my hook rope?”
“A hook rope’s for wood, not for people.” The sergeant was crewcut and stocky, with a thick neck that rolled over his collar. The tag on his uniform pocket read “Buck.”
“My fault,” Earley said, staring down at his mud-caked boots. “I should’ve stopped him.”
“Why didn’t you?” the sergeant asked.
Earley paused, remembering Reed’s ecstatic shouts as he rose in the air. The memory rolled backwards: Reed’s kiss, and the last thing that Earley had said to him, the last words he’d heard in his life: “Are you nuts?” Earley swallowed and bit his lip. Don’t fall apart, he prayed. Not here. Not now.
“Do you know his—Reed’s—family?”
Earley shook his head, numb. “I know he’s from Marblehead, Mass.”
“Parents still live there?”
“Far as I know. They’re divorced, though, so maybe not both.” Earley thought of the postcards of sailboats and lobsters he’d picked up from their G.P.O. box, along with Reed’s forwarded stacks of The Nation , the package his mother had sent with a down vest and wool socks from the L.L. Bean catalog. Reed had been angry about it, and Earley had wondered why; he wished someone would send him free work clothes.
“Alton,” said Sergeant Buck, gazing at his report. “You got a first name on his father? I’m not going to call Information and tell the wrong guy that his son tumbled out of a plane.”
“Helicopter,” said Clay. Sergeant Buck didn’t bother to answer. He stood and went into the back office, coming back out with Reed’s wallet.
“Let’s see what he had on him.” Earley squirmed as Sergeant Buck took out Reed’s Visa card, California driver’s license, his Berkeley student ID. He peered at the photos, then handed them off to a deputy. “I need a home number and next of kin. Student ID should pan out. If it doesn’t, try Visa. They can always track a guy down.”
The deputy nodded and went to the phone. Sergeant Buck sat back down in his desk chair and sighed. “You know, maybe if you boys had to do the job I have to do today—call up some stranger and tell him his son broke his neck—you’d think twice about breaking every damn rule that you come across.”
Earley looked down at his boots again. “I’ll call him myself if you want. It’s hard to imagine how I could feel worse.”
“It’s my job,” said the sergeant, his voice clipped. “I do my job.”
Clay shifted his weight in his hard wooden chair. “Are you done with me yet?” he asked, scratching his arm. Sergeant Buck looked at him as if he were a cockroach.
“Oh, we’re just beginning,” he said.
Earley stumbled back out to his truck. The interrogation had taken three hours. Reed’s father was going to fly into Sea-Tac tomorrow to pick up the body; he’d asked Earley to gather Reed’s things, and then changed his mind. “I’ll get them myself,” he had said in a tense, flattened voice. “I want to see where Reed was living.”
Earley’s whole body ached, as if he, and not Reed, had been dropped from the sky. All during the drive to the hospital morgue, at the state trooper station, he’d fought back his tears. Now he felt as if something inside him had been cauterized, sealed off forever, and he would be numb for the rest of his life. Every movement he made felt surreal and suspended. He couldn’t make sense of the actions he usually did without thinking: inserting a key into the ignition and shifting into reverse felt like things he had done once in some other lifetime, which he only dimly remembered. Earley put his hand onto the throttle. I’ve got to tell Zan, he thought. But how can I find her?
And that’s when the tears started. Earley’s sobs heaved up from the core of his being like lava, choking him, scraping his throat, uncontrollable. He was crying for Reed and for Zan, for himself, for the thought that he’d never hold either of them in his arms again, that he, Earley Ritter, card-carrying loner, had gotten more love than he’d known what to do with, had swum in it, swirled in it, given his heart to not one but two people, and now he had lost it forever. Gone, he thought, empty. Emptier now, because Earley had learned, for a few shining months, how it felt to be full.
Earley had arranged to meet Bowen Alton at the funeral home where Reed’s body was being embalmed. He couldn’t have missed him. Reed’s father was lean as a greyhound, with an aquiline nose and tan hair, turning silver and sparse at the temples. He was wearing a navy blue blazer, a club tie and chinos, as if he were attending some alumni event and not picking up his son’s corpse. Earley had dressed in his newest and cleanest clothes, and he still felt like something you’d find in a laundromat lint trap. He took a step forward and held out his hand.
“I’m Earley,” he said. “I’m Reed’s friend.”
Whatever Bowen might have expected, it hadn’t been him. He had glanced Earley’s way as he stepped from his truck, and dismissed him as some local workman who happened to be in the same place. Now he peered at him, taking in Earley’s bulk, his dead tooth, untrimmed beard and long hair, and Earley could feel the dismay that clicked into his eyes. Bowen shook Earley’s hand in a tight, viselike grip, withdrawing his own hand so quickly that Earley nearly expected him to wipe it off with a handkerchief. “I don’t need to tell you how shocked we were,” he said.
You and me both, Earley thought, but all he could say was, “I’m so sorry.”
Bowen nodded, as if that empty, ritual phrase bore some actual comfort. He paused for a moment, about to say something, but changed his mind. He took a set of keys with a Hertz rental tag from his pocket. “I’ll follow you up to the house,” he said.
Earley glanced at the parking lot and spotted a silver Oldsmobile Cutlass parked by the curb. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The road’s pretty rugged.”
“It’s rented,” said Bowen. “I’m not concerned about wear and tear.”
“I’m not talking wear and tear, I’m talking arrival. I’m twelve miles up an ungraded dirt road with a ton of spring washout. Unless you’ve got four-wheel drive, you’re gonna wind up sticking out of some drainage ditch, miss your flight home and all. I’ll drive you up there and back to your car.”
Bowen glanced over at Earley’s mud-crusted pickup, with its rust-riddled wheel wells and tarp-covered toolbed. “All right,” he said, pursing his lips.
Earley opened the passenger door for him, carefully lifting the bungees and twine so it stayed on its hinge. He thought about telling Reed’s father that Reed had invented the system, but decided against it. Let Bowen choose what, if anything, they ought to talk about. Earley slammed his own door shut and started the engine.
Weather, it seemed, was all Bowen was willing to broach. He noticed the “Logging Capital of the World” sign on the outskirts of town that boasted an average rainfall of 126 inches a year. “Must be why it’s so verdant,” he said, launching into an oddly bright speech about touring through Ireland and Wales, and then falling suddenly silent. Earley glanced at him, trying to prove he was listening, and saw that Bowen’s eyes had gone helpless, consumed by grief. Leave him alone, Earley thought. Don’t say anything useless. He gazed out the window.
Route 101 unspooled ahead of them, one hairpin curve at a time. The roadsides were lush with wildflowers: foxgloves, yarrow, yellow cat’s ear, even some late rhododendrons, and the trunks of the fir forest rose up like pillars, filtering sunlight in muted diagonal shafts. The day was so lovely that it seemed impossible they could be headed on such a dark errand. It hasn’t sunk in yet, thought Earley. I still don’t believe it. His sleep had been haunted by dreams of Reed falling, not from Clay’s chopper, but over the edge of the waterfall gully, where they had thrown his burnt mattress.
And there was one more thing that haunted him, waking and sleeping. He kept hearing Sergeant Buck’s gravelly voice asking, “Did Reed seem depressed? Was there any reason he might have been tempted to take his own
life?” Earley had stared at him, struck to the root. The fall was an accident, surely; the weight of the cast had thrown Reed off balance. That’s what they’d agreed on. And Reed had been far from depressed. Earley pictured him pouring Tabasco all over his omelette, unable to stifle the lopsided grin he’d had on his face ever since they had woken up side by side in Earley’s big bed. The memory seared through his brain like a knife.
“No, nothing like that,” he had told Sergeant Buck, but the question had sent a barb into his darkest imaginings. He replayed the moments before Reed’s fall over and over obsessively, reliving each detail as if he were picking a scab. He died waving to me, Earley thought. Was he trying to kiss me good-bye?
No, he told himself, not even close. Reed’s kiss had been more like a challenge: I dare you to let Scoter see us. And I didn’t dare, Earley thought. I turned away, and he slipped through my fingers.
“Watch it,” said Bowen, and Earley realized his pickup had drifted out onto the oncoming traffic lane.
“Sorry,” he said again. That seemed to be his refrain with this guy. The word was pathetic, but what else could he offer him? Sorrow was all he had left. Earley reached for his Drum pouch and stuck a rolled cigarette into his mouth, catching a look from Reed’s father as he lit it up. “It’s tobacco,” he said.
“May I have one?”
“Yeah, sure, of course.” Earley nearly tripped over himself with relief. He handed his suede pouch to Bowen, who drew out a lopsided home-roll and twisted it tighter. Earley fumbled to coax a flame from his sputtering lighter and Bowen leaned towards it. Earley noticed that he had the same long, improbably straight eyelashes as Reed, though his eyes weren’t as blue.
Bowen inhaled deeply and turned towards the window, sending smoke streaming out through both nostrils. “I quit twenty years ago,” he said, and looked back at Earley. “He was my only son.”
Earley couldn’t even choke out an “I’m sorry.” He nodded and bit his lip.
Bowen didn’t speak again until they were most of the way up the access road. Earley noticed him clutching the armrest as they jostled over bare roots and gullies. “Long way off the road,” he offered, and ten minutes later, “We’re almost there.” Bowen didn’t respond. Earley couldn’t decide whether he should be upset or grateful that Reed’s father was not going to pump him for details or, worse, explanations. He tried to imagine Reed sitting next to this man at a Thanksgiving dinner, or talking to him about music, and came up blank. But hell, at least Bowen was there. If Earley had died in the woods, there’d be no silver Oldsmobiles rented.
They bumped over a rock and the truck’s engine sputtered and died. “Oh shit,” Earley said. He looked down at the gas gauge and saw that the needle had sunk below Empty. Story of my goddamn life, he thought, punching the wheel. “Got a couple of saw cans in back,” he told Bowen, and went out to peel back the tarp. The first can he hefted was empty. So was the second. Fuck, he thought. I’ve got to drain my damn Husqy. In front of the Crown Prince of Marblehead.
Earley twisted off his chainsaw’s gas cap and funneled fuel into a can, then took it around to the side of the truck and poured all of it in. He screwed both the gas caps back on, pulled the tarp into place and got back in the cab. “Ought to get us back to Forks, at least,” he said.
“Ought to?” said Bowen.
“I’ve got some more gas at the bus,” Earley mumbled. Bowen turned his head towards him and Earley thought, You heard me right, buddy. Bus. Not some eighteen-room mansion with gold toilet seats for your privileged ass. Some of us work for a living. He sped up the last stretch of road and pulled into his clearing. Without even turning his head, he could feel Bowen stiffening, galled by the plastic bags over the five broken windows, the tin cans and beer bottles, the mottled pink longjohns that sagged from the clothesline, the splitting maul chunked in the chopping block. Shake-rat deluxe, thought Earley, defiant. Your son called it home.
Bowen swallowed and reached for the door. “Careful,” said Earley. “That hinge is real dicey. Reed made it.” He reached across Bowen and eased the door open. They got out and walked to the bus.
Earley had gone into Reed’s room that morning. He’d dug through Reed’s duffel and moved the remains of his stash to an old creosote bucket out back by the woodpile. There wasn’t much left, but he figured Reed wouldn’t have wanted his father to find it. It wasn’t a pure act of conscience, though; there would be times ahead, Earley knew, when he’d need to get wasted.
The rest of Reed’s room was untouched, as he’d left it. Earley pulled back the curtain and stepped aside. Bowen took in the milk crate end table with its oil lamp and pile of books, the discarded work gloves beside the unmade single bed. “I don’t know what my son thought he was playing at here,” he said bitterly. “What a damned waste.”
Your son put my dick in his mouth, Earley thought. I could pop your snot-nosed, superior bubble with one word of truth. “I’ll be in the back,” he said, turning. “His stuff is all here.” Except for his drugs. And his caulk boots. And his mandolin.
Earley hadn’t meant to keep that from Bowen, at first; it was just that the instrument happened to be in his room. Reed had played him to sleep one night, a week and a lifetime ago. You can’t have it, he thought at the stranger in Reed’s room. You can’t have the part of him you never knew. He looked at the teardrop-shaped instrument with its twin strings, remembering the gypsyish tune Reed had played him. A surge of pure longing rose through Earley’s body. God help me, he thought. I’m going to lose it. He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. He could hear Bowen packing things, moving around. Make this be over, he begged to the universe. Just make it stop.
Neither man spoke on the long drive back down to the funeral parlor. As Earley turned into the parking lot, he saw a hearse parked behind Bowen’s rental. Reed’s in there, thought Earley. My lil’ dude, my buddy. He glanced over at Bowen and noticed the way he was cradling Reed’s duffel, as though he were holding a child on his lap. We both miss him, thought Earley. He’s lost to us both.
Bowen turned towards him. “Thank you,” he said in a choked voice. He lifted the hinge and climbed out of the truck, turning back to press something into Earley’s hand. “For the gas,” he said. It was a folded bill. A fifty.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Earley drove over to Chester Marczupiak’s Texaco and filled his tank. He’d have enough extra cash left to get ploughed at the Cedar, but he couldn’t face seeing anyone there. The rumors had swept through town like a wildfire. If anyone looked at him funny, he might have to hurt them, and he couldn’t muster the energy. His whole body felt like a bruise.
He went into the station and paid Chester with Bowen’s fifty, stuffing the change in his jeans pocket as he walked back to his truck. He heard something ping on the pavement and roll past: a dime. It had fallen right through the same hole in his pocket. Earley stared for a moment, unable to choose between letting it stay there and hunkering down on his haunches to get it. This isn’t a major decision, he thought, but it was beyond him. His brain felt like rain clouds.
Margie was driving past in her rusty orange Pinto. As soon as she saw Earley standing there, she braked and pulled into the lot. Earley swallowed hard, wondering what Harlan had told her. She left her car door swinging open as she hurried towards him, her eyes full of sympathy.
“Scoter told me about Reed. I’m so sorry.”
There was that word again. It was pitiful, really. Could this be the best that people could offer each other? A word that meant nothing, healed nothing, changed nothing, not one goddamn thing.
Margie put her arms around Earley’s waist. He looked over her shoulder, anxiously scanning for oncoming traffic. “We better be careful. If someone tells Harlan . . .”
“You already told him,” said Margie, “and I could care less what anyone thinks.” She hugged Earley tight, pressing her soft body against his. He could feel her heart beating, the warmth of her arms. It was like being wra
pped in a blanket.
He closed his eyes, letting her hold him. “Margie,” he whispered.
“You poor man.” She pressed her cheek into his chest.
“I loved him,” he blurted.
“I know you did, Earley.” She stroked his bare arm.
“No, you don’t know. I loved him.” Earley realized it was the first time he’d said it aloud. Never to Reed, he thought. Coward. And now it’s too late.
Margie stepped back and stared at him. “Jesus. Oh, Jesus. You?”
What in hell made me tell her? thought Earley, despairing. He glanced back at the station, as if Chester had heard every word through his plate-glass window. Was what he had said even true, had he really loved Reed in the way he loved women? Was that even possible? Nothing made sense any more.
Margie’s eyes brimmed with a feeling that he didn’t recognize, not disgust but something more fragile. “I didn’t realize.”
“Neither did I,” Earley said.
Margie took half a step backward, tilting her neck to look up at his face, as if she couldn’t see from so close. “So that’s what was up all this time, why you haven’t been . . .” She shook her head, staring, unable to take it in.
Earley didn’t know what he should say or do. He couldn’t meet Margie’s eye. This is what it’ll be like from now on, he thought. I’ve got nowhere to hide.
“Harlan said you were both screwing what’s her name.”
That too, thought Earley. He pictured himself with his arms wrapped around Zan and Reed, the three of them rolling around in the moss, the unbounded bliss they had found in each other. How could anyone else understand? He didn’t understand it himself; he just knew it was gone, gone forever.
“I’ve got to go home now,” he mumbled.
Clearcut Page 24