Old Newgate Road

by Keith Scribner

  —

  “Dad?” Cole calls from the keeping room, but there’s no reply.

  Daniel drops his duffel. “This place is hammered.”

  “Just needs some furniture and a good cleaning.”

  “I’ve been in crash houses that look homier than this.”

  “Jesus, Daniel. You don’t belong in those places.”

  “They have actual couches, for example.” He nudges the broken chair with his foot like nudging an animal to test if it’s alive.

  “Dad?” Cole shouts again, walking to the front stairs.

  “Hey,” Daniel says from the front window, “check this out.”

  When Cole joins him he points up the road. A hundred yards away Phil’s wobbling toward them on Cole’s old bike, an enormous plastic bag weighing down one side of his handlebars; each time it swings the bike lurches to the side, nearly crashing him into the ditch. “That looks like a cartoon.”

  “In fact that’s your grandfather.”

  Daniel laughs. “Far out.”

  They go to the door. Coming up the driveway expends Phil’s last ounce of energy, so Cole jumps down the steps and grabs the handlebars just as he’s about to keel over, sweating and panting. Stretching the seams of the plastic bag is a huge watermelon and a gallon of ice cream, chocolate, melting through the rim of the cardboard lid.

  He dismounts as Cole steadies the bike. “This must be the lad.”

  Daniel steps down onto the grass and stands straight, arms at his sides. “Yes, sir,” he says, and for a moment Cole suspects he’s up to no good, some irony that’ll slowly sour.

  “Are you hungry?” Phil asks.

  “I had something at the airport,” Daniel tells him.

  “They used to serve nice meals on a plane.”

  “Back in the day.”

  “I haven’t flown in forty years.” He looks up at the sky, and then Daniel does too.

  “That’s a long time.” Daniel’s voice is tender.

  Phil nods. He holds out his arms and Daniel hugs him. “I got you some ice cream.”

  Cole carries the bag into the kitchen and slices watermelon on the counter.

  “Used to be,” Phil says, “you waited till August for watermelon. We always got ours at the Liss farm. Corn and tomatoes too. Tomatoes that actually tasted like a tomato. Now you buy watermelon trucked in from anywhere. Where’s it say?”

  Cole rolls the melon over and spots a sticker. “Texas.”

  “Who the hell knows?”

  “I’m a locavore as much as possible myself,” Daniel says. “There’s the spoilage of trucking, never mind the carbon footprint.”

  Cole sets a couple plates heaped with melon wedges on the table and Phil stares at Daniel, nodding slowly. “Like I say.”

  Cole sits, and they eat. It’s sweet and delicious, the long ride north notwithstanding. Pink juice runs down their arms. His father and his son sit side by side, elbows on the table, and there’s no missing the resemblance in the slope of their shoulders as they lean forward to have a bite.

  “What else did they grow on the Liss farm?” Daniel asks.

  “Zucchini and squash,” Phil says. “You gotta be careful picking those. Mr. Liss would get peeved if we scratched the skins on the leaves.”

  Daniel spits a seed. “Did you work on the farm?”

  “Not really peeved, I guess. He was a kind man, but even back then it was hard to scratch out a living as a farmer. I worked on his farm before I got old enough to work tobacco.”

  Cole sees his mother in Daniel’s eyes, and strong as ever, even as his face is becoming the face of a man, Nikki’s nose and lips and chin.

  “And pickles,” Phil says.

  Daniel laughs. “How do you grow a pickle?”

  “They were cukes for pickling. ‘Load them bushels of pickles on the truck,’ he’d say, and the next morning he’d drive them into the market in Hartford and be back by eight when I showed up to work. Not an easy life at all for him.”

  “I know a guy,” Daniel says, “he pickles everything instead of composting it. Watermelon rind”—he holds one up—“the entirety of a pumpkin. Lemons, pears, okra. Eggs, of course. Brussels sprouts make amazing pickles. They’re called frog balls.”

  “That’s a new one,” Phil says, and they both laugh.

  The conversation sounds so natural that Cole thinks back to last night—how easy it was talking with Alex and Antoine. How good it was. And those endless nights talking with Nikki, laughing and holding hands on the couch. Why did they stop?

  “Ice cream,” Phil says, their bellies bloated with watermelon. “Who’d like a big dish?”

  * * *

  —

  Though the AC window units are chugging, the farmhouse is hotter than last time, the reek of cigars staler, danker. They sit waiting silently for Jim Stanton in the cramped front room’s only two chairs, Daniel texting and Cole flipping pages in Cigar Aficionado.

  Finally Daniel slips the phone into his front pocket and slumps to his feet, antsy. “Want some water?” he asks. Through a glass door leading to a small conference room they can see a bubbler.

  Cole shakes his head and glances at his watch.

  On the other side of the glass Daniel sips from a Poland Spring paper cup, studying a blown-up historic photo of tobacco pickers under the nets. A side door opens and bright light sweeps into the room, and through the glass Cole sees his son look up at a woman in oversized bubble sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat. Over the noise of the air conditioner he can’t hear them, but they’re speaking to each other: Daniel looks surprised, he’s nodding, and the woman steps closer to him, then reaches out, heavy gold bangles slipping from her wrist to her elbow. Suntanned arms, blond hair cut smartly at her shoulders. She touches his chin with her fingertips, gently turning his head to profile. Her face is mostly hidden by her hair and the big blue brim of the hat but, strangely, Cole recognizes her hand, her long, hyperextending fingers thicker than they used to be. His son seems uncomfortable, his eyes flitting through the glass, and then he points and she turns: her sharp chin and painted lips, her small nose barely poking out from under the enormous sunglasses. In one motion she draws off the hat and slides the glasses on top of her head. Their eyes meet, but still it takes her a moment. Cole stands up, straightening his shirt, and her face flashes with recognition. She comes through the door, and he thinks how tall she appears in high heels and poofed-up hair.

  “You look just the same,” she says, reaching toward him with a straight stiff arm.

  Cole clasps her hand, then tugs her closer and they embrace, and except for a few spots the fit is familiar, a sort of muscle memory, and he says, “You’re just the same too,” and their first words strike him as lies until her sharp hipbone cuts into him, and through the lingering smell of cigars, her cinnamon-and-pepper scent, the essence of Liz, long ago vanished from his memory, is as present as his own breath.

  He hadn’t realized his eyes were closed until he opens them to see his son, and he waves Daniel over as he and Liz release each other. “This is a very old friend of mine. An old flame.”

  “Duh,” Daniel says flatly. “Get a room.”

  Cole’s face warms. “And this is my boy, Daniel.”

  “You’re a dead ringer for your father at fifteen. Even the shaggy hair.” While she’s focused on him, Cole steals a closer look at her. Her narrow shoulders are fitted with a cream-colored linen top and a scarf that drapes across her chest. Her clothes appear expensive, as if they’re meant to. Except for a few lines around her mouth and the corners of her eyes, she really doesn’t seem that much different to him.

  When the silence grows awkward, he says, “What the heck are you doing here? I thought you lived in Brazil.”

  She laughs. “Brazil? Where did you hear that?”

  “I
have no idea.” He actually knows exactly where: an email from Sherry Devereux, who’d found him through his company website a few years back. They’d exchanged updates on their lives, and she’d been full of gossip about their old classmates; when he declined to meet her in Seattle while she was there on a business trip, the emails stopped.

  “I’ve lived for twenty years in Miami, but my husband’s Brazilian.” She lowers her head and he notices a bump in her nose that he doesn’t remember, and also that her nose is a little crooked. He remembers a straight and petite nose, sharp as a blade. “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re trying to get Daniel a summer job.”

  “In the office?”

  “In the field. Or the sheds.”

  “Oh, that’s all changed since we were kids. It’s only migrants now. The same folks come back year after year.”

  “We ran into your nephew—”

  “But wait. Are you living here?”

  “Portland, Oregon,” he says, then tells her about the shed he’s buying and crossing paths with Kirk. “But what are you doing here?” he asks, pointing at the floor. “At this farm?”

  “I’m a buyer. If it’s a good year, we take all their leaves.”

  “A Connecticut Shade buyer?”

  “And broadleaf.”

  “I heard you were an exporter. Or an importer.”

  “The leaves ship to rollers in the DR and product comes back in through Miami.”

  “Amazing,” he says. “Here I am scavenging an old shed for chestnut, and you’ve got a big career in cigars.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  He forces a laugh. “At my old house. Sleeping in my old room.”

  “But…” She tips her head to the side. “Has it just been empty?”

  “Actually, my”—the words catch in his throat before he finally ejects them—“my father’s there.”

  Not quite a gasp, but a quick sip of air, and then her face goes red, her eyes darting to Daniel and back to Cole, and in the moment it takes his heart to thump three times, each more powerful than the last, she’s regained her composure. “Wow,” is all she says.

  “It was a surprise to me too.”

  “So he’s out?”

  “For sixteen years now.”

  “And he’s been living here the whole time?”

  “Just the last few months. From what I can tell.”

  “He hasn’t told you?”

  “I’m not sure he totally knows. His mind…it’s not too sharp.” He turns to Daniel again; they haven’t had time to discuss this yet. “He seems to not want to remember anything.”

  She gives him a long, hard stare.

  Jim Stanton pops out of his office and stops short—apparently not expecting that Cole and Daniel were still waiting.

  “You hooking this young man up with a job?” Liz asks him.

  “As I told them, we’ve got what we need for the summer.”

  “Jimbo,” Liz says, looking at her fingernails, “don’t be a douchebag.”

  Five minutes later, Daniel’s signing a W-4.

  10

  Cole does what he knows he needs to do, finally. Christmas was when he’d last heard from his brother and sister. Every year he sends a card and a few lines come back by email: frustrations with the school board in Toyohashi, where Ian teaches English; a clipped description from Kelly of breaking the sound barrier over the Mojave Desert or screeching low over jungles in the tropics, often ending with the wish she could say more but “most all I do is classified.” He believes she flew missions for a time, then became a flight instructor. She might still be, though a while back she mentioned hitting the age limit for flying.

  In the parlor he switches on a lamp, sits in the old wing chair, and stares at his laptop screen, hands hovering over the keys, and finally he just starts typing. “I hope all’s well. I happen to be back in East Granby. The town looks just the same. I’m surprised by the connection I feel to the place. At every turn—a deep familiarity. There’s a particular smell of humidity sitting heavy in the nettles beyond our backyard that transported me in a snap to searching for the boomerang. Remember that, Ian? The damn boomerang that never came back? Tobacco nets bright in the early morning, the Metacomet Ridge at sunset—it’s beautiful, and it’s stirring up our childhood. I wish we all saw each other more often. And the house—it looks the same too, and the main issue I’m writing about is Dad—”

  “Dad,” he hears behind him. “Yo, Dad!”

  He jerks his head around.

  “Phil’s outside.”

  Cole goes to the front window, cups his hands to the glass, and peers out into the twilight, where his father’s tromping down the road. “Crap,” he says, and charges through the door. He gets halfway to him before calling out.

  Phil looks over his shoulder, then jumps the ditch and runs through the high weeds into the tobacco field.

  “C’mon,” Cole hollers, “come back,” breaking into a jog, and just as he catches up, his father trips and falls.

  “Damn you!” he shouts. “Back off!”

  Cole drops to a knee beside him and takes hold of his arm. “Dad—”

  “Quit harassing me.” He yanks his arm free. “You’re harassing me!”

  “Let’s get you into the house.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Dad—”

  “Why are you calling me that?”

  “It’s okay. It’s me, your son.”

  At that he quits fighting and goes completely limp. “Ian,” he says. “You were always a pipsqueak”—he chuckles—“but very steady. A solid kid. Never any trouble. You made those damn labels for everything I owned.”

  Cole remembers: the alphabet on the dial, Ian feeding in the plastic strip and squeezing out the letters, embossed and precise as Braille.

  “You stuck my name on saws and crowbars, on my briefcase and razor, even the car door.”

  Pulling him to his feet he says, “I’m your other son. I’m Cole.”

  With a sideways glance and a smirk—as if he knew all along—he says, “Yes, yes. You were always her boy.”

  * * *

  —

  Daniel’s in the kitchen when he gets his father inside. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of nylon gym shorts and holding a glass of ice water to his cheek. “Doesn’t it ever cool off here at night?” he asks.

  “If you can’t stand the heat,” Phil says, “get out of the kitchen.” His face goes blank. “No, that’s not what I mean….Heat of the moment. Dead heat.” He wanders into the keeping room, shaking his head.

  “Why don’t you wash up for bed, Dad,” Cole says. “We should all hit the hay.”

  “I’ll tell you something about freedom and free will and the great journey we call life et cetera. That when you reach a certain age you decide for yourself when it’s time to brush your goddamn teeth.” He takes a few more steps, then stops. “ ‘Humidity’! That’s what I was looking for.” He smiles at Daniel, wide and warm. “The one that goes ‘It’s the humidity.’ ”

  After a moment they hear his father’s surge of piss in the toilet bowl. Daniel clinks ice around his glass and presses it to his bare chest. “Why are we here, Dad?”

  Cole swings the back door shut, the old iron latch clanking like in a dungeon. “He needs help. What would happen to him if I just left?”

  “I’m not staying here indefinitely. I’m really not.”

  “Don’t worry. This is very temporary,” Cole says. “I’ve just got to get him eating right. Get him a phone. He doesn’t even have a doctor. I’m waiting to hear back from the senior center about activities. I’m hoping there might be a van that could take him grocery shopping.”

  “You can’t fix it this way, you know.”

  “I’m just t
rying to—”

  “You think that hunkering down and just sort of being together, quiet and with good intentions, solves problems. But only action solves problems. Bold, decisive action.”

  “So that’s what this is about? Why we should all be vandalizing dumpsters? You’re going to land in juvie, Daniel, if you don’t come up with a thousand bucks for Safeway. It’s hard to see how that’s a model for how I should be caring for my father.”

  “I’m talking about fixing our family. Do you remember you, me, and Mom sitting in a triangle and holding hands and meditating together? God, what was I—like eight? And you wanted us to align our breathing, which was going to bring us all into harmony. And making us go to that cabin on the Olympic Peninsula. Cold and raining every time. And I’m sorry to break the news, but I don’t like hot tubs. They sap you of energy instead of cranking you up. The opiate of the privileged class. And Mom never liked them either.”

  Blood rushes to his face. “Yes she does.”

  “They make her feel bloated. Actually, I think she said stewed.”

  Cole takes a step away from his son. He can hear the bathroom sink running and hopes his father’s cleaning himself up.

  “You’re a great guy, Dad. I really mean that. You just can’t always be in the hugging-it-out mode. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but it doesn’t take Dr. Phil, no pun intended, to recognize that you ran as far from your disastrous childhood as you could get without falling in the ocean, and now you’ve run back here to avoid Portland.”

  “I came here to buy thirty thousand board feet of chestnut.”

  “But you should be back living your actual life and doing whatever it takes to convince your wife that Tony’s an asshole and that your marriage…” Daniel’s eyes fill with tears and he chokes on his words. “You can’t just let it implode.”

  “Oh, son,” Cole says, opening his arms and stepping toward him.

  “No!” He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I don’t want a fucking hug. I want…I want…” Tears are streaming down his face. “I want everyone around me to quit deluding themselves. I want everyone to grab the world by the collar, stare it down, and shake some sense into it. Jesus, he strangled your mother. Instead of trying to save him, you should be saving your own family.”