“The first thing it’s about is that little song and dance you performed at my parents’ grave,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Fear congealed like gelatin in his eyes and clouded them. For a moment I felt sorry for him.
“You were trying to tell me something, weren’t you, Arnie? You were trying to tell me that you and my mother were having an affair, weren’t you?”
“I …”
“Weren’t you?”
His eyes stayed fixed on the lush green grass. “Yes. I was. That is, we were. I … It didn’t last long. Not actively. But we were. Yes. I was trying to find a way to tell you, but I wasn’t brave enough.”
“You were trying to tell me something else, too, weren’t you? Something more than that.”
“Yes.”
“You were trying to tell me that this argument you speculated they were having—this distraction that caused my father to drive off the road and into a tree—this argument was about you. Isn’t that right? You think they were arguing about you when they were killed.”
“God help me. That’s what I think. Yes.” His voice held twenty-five years of horror.
“What happened? Did my mother tell you she was going to bring it out in the open? Confess all to my dad? Did you know that was the night for that little scene?”
He looked at the gilded thrones. “We’d been seen. She wanted to tell him before someone else in town did. But you have to know the rest. She told me she wasn’t going to see me again. Not in that way. She was going to stay with your father. I wanted to marry her, you see, but she wouldn’t. So it was over, really. That’s what makes it so absurd.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What do you want from me, Marsh? I’m not sure I can add anything.”
“Oh, I don’t want you to add anything, Arnie. You’ve queered the past for me quite enough already.”
“How do you mean?”
“You know damned well how I mean. I mean from now on every time I think of her I’ll think of the two of you sneaking around behind my father’s back, acting out your little appassionata while poor dumb Dad lived in ignorant bliss and all the town was laughing at him.”
“It wasn’t like that, Marsh. Not at all.”
“So you say, Amie. I’m sure I don’t know what it was like, but I doubt if you do, either, by now. It was like whatever you want it to have been like. That’s what memory does for you.”
“No, Marsh. Please. It was good. It was, well, pure, if you will. At least till the very end. I thought you’d understand.” Arnie’s hand reached for me and I moved away.
“I didn’t know either of you well enough back then to understand,” I said. “But it’s not important.”
I thought I smiled, but from Arnie’s reaction it must have been a sneer. “I’m going to return the favor now, Arnie. That’s why I got you out here.”
“What do you mean?”
“You gave me a little nugget to carry around inside my gut, so I’m going to give you one just like it. Or almost.”
“I still don’t understand,” Arnie said, frowning. “Is it something about Grace?”
“No, it’s not about Grace. Don’t mention her name again.”
He nodded rapidly.
I walked slowly around the goalpost, fingering the crepe paper that masked it, feeling the tug of youth and the urge to do it over, to make it right. Then I saw the thrones and the urge collapsed, because there’s no way it can ever be right. I had thought that my return to Chaldea might reveal something that would explain or even excuse some of the things I was and unfortunately was not. But it hadn’t done anything of the kind, of course. It had just reminded me that those days were worse than I remembered, not better, and that the search for excuses is endless and therefore worthless.
“This isn’t my town anymore, Arnie,” I began abruptly. “I don’t know what goes on, what the problems are and aren’t. But you do, presumably. I mean, everyone always wondered why a smart guy like you stayed around Chaldea when you obviously could have done other things in other places. Though I guess now I know one reason why you stayed, don’t I?”
“If you mean your mother, then yes.”
“Okay. I’ve been nosing around the last few days, trying to find out who killed my nephew Billy. And the first thing I learned was that Billy had a lot of enemies in Chaldea.”
“That’s true,” Arnie said. “At least, that’s what I heard.”
“But there was one group of men who especially had cause to resent Billy. He’d picked them out for special treatment for some reason, had tried his best to destroy them, or so it seemed.”
“You mean like Tom.”
“Right. And Chuck Hasburg, and Clark Jaspers, and maybe the extension man, too, whoever that is.”
“I heard the stories. It did seem Billy was engaged in some sort of vendetta.”
“Right. So after I learned what Billy had done to these men I tried to find a common link. And eventually I did.”
“What was it?”
“The war. They all had something to do with Vietnam, at least all but the extension man. I didn’t have time to find out much about him. But Chuck was on the draft board, and Clark prosecuted draft resisters, and Tom got the mayor’s son out of combat duty by using political pull, and so forth. So I thought Billy’s crusade was some kind of war protest. Revenge. But one thing bothered me.”
“What?”
“Why did he wait so long? His attacks on these people started only within the last year or so, as near as I can figure. Ten years after Billy was in the war. So why did he wait so long?”
“I don’t know. Why?” Arnie fidgeted, scraping at his hollowed cheeks with tapered fingers as gray and rigid as dead boughs.
“Because the link between those men didn’t have anything to do with the war at all. That was just coincidental. Billy went after them for another reason entirely.”
“What?”
I knelt in the end zone and ran my fingers through the grass, remembering the Bloomfield game and the gang of students who had pummeled me when I made the winning score. Maybe that was as good as it had gotten for me. Maybe I was like Chuck Hasburg and didn’t know it. Maybe life was the same for everyone. I stood up and looked at Arnie Keene’s haggard face. “Do you know anything about the drug problem in this town, Arnie? With kids, especially?”
He thought for a minute and shrugged. “Not much. It seems to have gotten worse lately, but no one really talks that much about it. There seem to be lots of kids just hanging around, dabbling in religious cults or the like, waiting for someone to tell them what to do with their lives, I know that much. Why?”
“You know a guy named Zedda?”
“He heads that nature group, doesn’t he? WILD?”
“Right. Except it’s not a nature group, it’s a wholesale marijuana business. For several years Zedda has had several acres of marijuana under cultivation out on our farm. Billy was the guardian of the crop. He and his girlfriend lived out there near it.”
“You must be kidding.”
“No, I’m not. Now the rest of this is guesswork. I doubt if I could prove it in court without getting lucky and without spending a lot more time in Chaldea, which I definitely don’t want to do. But I hope I won’t have to prove it. That’s where you come in.”
Arnie rubbed his face again. I remembered how nervous he’d always gotten in school when kids had acted up. They’d called him Arnie the Twitch in those days, behind his back, but not very far behind. “I don’t understand this, Marsh,” he said slowly. “What do I have to do with it?”
“I don’t know why Billy agreed to get involved with the dope, Arnie. I suppose he figured he owed Zedda something for opening his eyes about the war, and he probably didn’t think marijuana was all that bad anyway, given the general state of inebriation of most of the adults around town. In any event, Billy agreed to keep the crop safe from intruders as long as Zedda sold only to outside buyers. Chicago. KC. St. Lou
is. And I think that’s the way it went for several years, in the beginning.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then Zedda got busted on a rape charge and hired Clark Jaspers to defend him. Now, Clark by his own admission resented this town for a long time because of the way various people reacted to his handicap. He came back to town determined to show people what he could do, that he was just as good as any of us and maybe better. But for a long time it didn’t work out that way. His practice wasn’t all that rewarding financially, which is the usual measure of success in this town. So Clark was looking for a way to make a splash. Then there was Tom Notting. At about the same time Tom had just been dumped out of office by the city fathers, who had tapped some young Turk as their candidate for assessor instead of Tom. So Tom was mad. And there was Chuck Hasburg, who’d failed at a whole series of jobs and whose life had never measured up to his high school athletic exploits, at least in the eyes of other people. So you have those three men, plus maybe the extension man and some others, nursing resentments and needing money.”
“I still don’t understand, Marsh. What are you saying happened?”
“I think Clark and the others set up a local drug network. I think in exchange for getting Zedda off on the rape charge Clark got first shot at all the marijuana he could move. Chuck didn’t have a job, so he had plenty of time to deal the dope. Tom worked with the Scouts, so he had access to the younger customers. I think Tom even faked an illness of his own so he could get tranquilizers and other drugs to deal along with the pot. I think these guys set up a sales organization, and sooner or later Billy found out about it and wanted them to stop and when they didn’t he took out after them. That’s the link. Not the war. The drugs.”
“This is all fantastic, Marsh.”
“I know.”
“I can’t really believe it.”
“I can’t either. But I’m pretty sure Tom and Gail’s son Bruce found out about it, too. He and Tom had a fight before Bruce went off to the navy and I think that was the cause. But the point is, Arnie, you don’t have to believe it. Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I destroyed Zedda’s crop this morning. And we’re going to lease out the farm so it will be hard for him or anyone to do anything out there in secret anymore. So I think Zedda will split pretty soon, and the drug scene will die down to normal. If that’s what happens you can just forget everything I’ve said, pretend it never happened. But if the drug situation doesn’t improve, if it’s still a major problem in town, then you can talk to Tom and Chuck and Clark, tell them what you know, tell them they’d better cool it or you’ll go to the sheriff.”
“You mean I get to play God.”
“Something like that.”
“But if it all ends soon and Zedda leaves town?”
“You let bygones be bygones, and I do, too.”
Arnie walked to the goalpost and leaned against it, his head cradled in his arm. “Are you saying this group killed Billy, Marsh? Zedda or one of the others? Tom? Or Chuck?”
“No. I thought so for a while, but I don’t anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the way Billy died. Because they found him hanging from a goddamned tree.”
Twenty-six
When I pulled to a stop in front of Gail’s house Matt’s Lincoln was already in the drive. Pilar was sitting on the passenger’s side, erect and motionless, a monument to impatience and disdain. I hurried past her rudeness and let myself into the house.
Curt was folded into the couch and Matt was pacing the floor, much as they had been the last time we met. Matt’s outfit was by Bruce of Beverly Hills; Curt’s by Oshkosh B’Gosh. “Let’s get this show on the road,” Matt said. “Pilar’s booked into the Holiday Inn in Urbana tonight. She gets docked if she’s late.”
“This will only take a few minutes,” I said, “if you all agree with my proposal. Then you can be on your way.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell us what to do with the farm,” Matt said, his lips knotted in a practiced sneer.
“That’s right. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” I went over to the couch in the wake of Matt’s grumble and sat beside Curt and asked him how he was doing.
“Okay, I guess. Laurel’s feeling better.”
“Great.”
“She went up to Marshall town to stay with her people for a while. Seemed like the best thing.”
Curt’s blue eyes seemed to have kindled overnight, the icy deadness melted by something known only to him, if anyone. I patted his thick shoulder. “You listen to what I’ve got to say about the farm, Curt. If any of it bothers you, let me know.”
“Sure, Marsh. Don’t make much difference to me what we do. Not now.”
“You hear anything from that deprogrammer character?”
“Him? No.”
“Good. You let me know if he hassles you.”
“Marsh, I can look out for myself. It’s best you get that straight, I think.”
The words were forged on the iron will I had always associated with my brother. Curt was Curt again. I smiled for what seemed like the first time since I’d hit Chaldea. “One more thing,” I said to him. “I know about the deed you gave Billy. I know he owned half your interest in the farm.”
Curt nodded. “I almost forgot I did that. Thought it would make him settle down. Like spit in the ocean, was what it amounted to.”
Just then Gail entered from the kitchen, toting lemonade and cookies. As she passed them out I looked at my parents’ furniture that occupied the room along with us more animate survivors. None of the others seemed at all interested, and I wondered if I would have been making the inspection had I not learned of our mother and Arnie Keene.
I ignored my father’s things, which were uninteresting in any event. He was not an imaginative man, a trait he had passed on to me. He was merely a worker, tireless, intrepid, serene—traits he had passed on to Curt and Gail. There aren’t many workers around anymore, perhaps because work is now as often ridiculed as praised.
It was my mother’s sense I sought, and it was not in her collection of silver spoons or in the sprigs of flora and feathers she arranged. Perhaps it was in the fine line drawings she had done in college, the precise still lifes, the pencil portraits of smiling friends, the looser splash of rural landscapes. Or not in the drawings themselves so much as in the fact that as far as I knew she had drawn not another line after the day she married.
My eyes drifted from the drawings to the only photograph in the room, the one that had been the unofficial family portrait. The six of us were knee-deep in yellow grass, the Tetons looming like a dream behind us, our faces grinning self-consciously at the behest of the obliging stranger who had pressed the button on the Brownie. My mother’s face was round and soft and white, from avoiding sun the way she avoided arguments. She had claimed at least once in my hearing to be the luckiest woman in the world. Now that seemed a lie, a mask for an ache to escape, for a resentment of many things, including me.
I looked away, remembering how she had surreptitiously comforted me after Dad had laid the quirt across my legs, remembering her kitchen treats and tortures, the cold tongue sandwiches and walnut brownies, the sauerkraut and lemon meringue pie. And her presence at Scouts and Sunday school and ball games. And how she looked when dressed for a party or an Elks Club dance, her hair and heels raised high, her dress wide and swishing above ridiculous mysterious garments, her eyes and voice eager to go to where the host of revelers would have included Arnie Keene.
“Hey.” Matt’s word broke my crystal reverie like a brick. “Come on. What’s the great plan?”
I abandoned the role of son and took up the easier role of brother. “This is what I think we should do,” I began, eyeing each of them in turn, receiving wary skepticism from all but Curt. “I’ve tried to take everything into account, and I’m sure none of you will be completely satisfied. But I think all of you will be satisfied at least a little.
”
“I’ll bet,” Matt mumbled, attracting a frown from Gail.
“First, the coal people. They’re out. I don’t think we should let a strip mine go in right on the edge of Chaldea. They say they’ll put the land back into farm production when they’re through, but if they don’t, we’d have to sue them and it would cost more than it’s worth even if we won. So coal’s out.”
“No problem,” Matt said, and Curt nodded.
“Oil’s out, too,” I went on, looking at Matt.
“Shit.”
“I’ve looked into Cosmos and they don’t seem quite on the up and up. I think they want to sit on the mineral rights, not drill for oil. Wait for a technological breakthrough that will make it profitable to extract oil from coal. The Cosmos man told me they insist on getting all subsurface rights, not just petroleum, and they won’t agree that we can farm the surface. They’re wheeler-dealers, and I think we ought to keep away.”
“Goddamnit it, Marsh,” Matt said. “If they hit oil out there we’ll be rich. I mean real money, not nickel-and-dime stuff. I mean—”
“There’s no oil down there, Matt. Curt knows it and I know it.”
Curt nodded silently.
“How the hell would he know?” Matt said. “Or you, either.”
“Because Billy told him. Right?”
Curt nodded again. “He said he heard them talking. Told me not to sell out to them. Said they were crooks.”
“The way I hear it, Billy was so stoned all the time he probably hallucinated the whole thing.” Matt’s laugh was cruel and was meant to be.
“Matt, goddamnit,” I said. “If you don’t shut up I’ll go into the little side deal you tried to cut for yourself with Mr. Beech.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Maybe so. But Cosmos is out.”
“Let’s hear the rest,” he grumbled.
I looked at the others again. They seemed entranced, afraid to ask questions and afraid not to. I hurried on above my mounting eagerness to flee.
“Agribusiness is out, too, mostly because it means selling the land. I don’t think we should sever that link, particularly the outsiders like Matt and me. And agribusiness wouldn’t help the town that much. A couple of men and a bunch of big machines is the way they work, with all the profits going to Illinois.”
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