River of Heaven

by Lee Martin

  “Open it,” he says, and I do. Inside are copies of the map I found in the garage: downtown Chicago and the Sears Tower and the route to the getaway car. “I made copies,” Cal says. “Just in case I lost the first one like I did tonight. So much junk in my truck. I’m a careless man, Sammy. You’ve always known that. I wish I’d never laid eyes on Leonard Mink.” Cal takes the maps from me and puts them back in the envelope. He lays the envelope in the top drawer of the bureau and slides it shut. “If you ask me, Sammy, we’ve all got at least one moment we wish we could go back and fix.”

  It takes me a long time to fall asleep, mulling over the story Cal’s told me and the part he hasn’t, whatever it was that made it impossible for him to show the police that map and tell them the whole story. When I finally doze off sometime toward morning, I dream that he and I are in Jerusalem. Brilliant sunshine glinting off white stone. A warm breeze from the Mediterranean Sea. We enter Gethsemane where Christ spent his last night before he was taken for the crucifixion, and there amid the gnarled olive trees and the rocks, Cal takes my hand, and I feel I’m at the place where the world had its chance and then let it go, and all its troubles began. That’s what I feel in my dream, this tremendous sense that once there was a time when we could have made a bargain to love one another, when we could have saved ourselves from every misery to come.

  Then everything is moving, the way it does in dreams, and Cal and I are running—our legs are the legs of boys—down narrow alleyways, our feet pounding on cobbles, our shoulders brushing stone walls, and though I don’t know who’s chasing us, I know it’s my job to run as fast as I can, to keep up with Cal who goes on before me. And I do. I run and run until I wake, my heart hammering in my chest, and I have to talk myself back to the world I know, the one we keep trying our best to ruin, the one that tests the depths of our love. I lie awake, saying to myself, this is my bed, this is my house, this is my life for better or worse.

  I find my bathrobe and slippers, and then I go out into the living room. The sky is brightening in the east, and there’s enough light for me to see Maddie on the couch and Stump stretched out beside her. He grunts in his sleep. Maddie’s arm is out from under the blanket and draped over his back. For now it’s enough, the sight of them huddled together. It’s enough to make me glad for all the days and months and years that have added up to this.

  Here I am on Christmas morning, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I have a place to go and people’s company to enjoy.

  12

  MADDIE DECIDES, GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN GOING TO Vera’s or staying home alone with a hot dog and a can of pork and beans, it won’t hurt her, at least this once, to put her feet under Vera’s table. “It’s probably a very nice table,” she says. “A very Vera table.” She tries to be a wiseacre, but as she does there’s a tremor to her voice—that and a furrow to her brow, a weakening around her eyes—that tells me she doesn’t dislike Vera as much as she tries to let on.

  Cal warms up his Russian potato casserole, and Maddie begs him for “just a teensy bite.” He tells her she’ll have to wait until it’s served at Christmas dinner.

  So we go—Cal and Maddie and Arthur and I. We wish one another Merry Christmas, and we get into Arthur’s Chrysler, and we drive across Christy to the part of town known as White Squirrel Woods. Magnificent old homes sit far back from the streets on heavily treed lots where squirrels—white, gray, and somewhere in between—scamper and dart.

  Soon we’re gathered around the table. Here is the roast duck, the cranberry sauce, the yams, Cal’s Russian potato casserole.

  “You’ve put caramelized onions on top,” Vera says. “Now that can be tricky.”

  “Oh, not so hard if you know the secret,” Cal says. “You must know what I mean. An old pro like you.”

  “Well,” Vera begins, but he won’t let her finish. He’s too eager, I can tell, to show off what he knows.

  “A piece of parchment,” he says.

  “Exactly,” says Vera. She reaches out and squeezes his hand.

  He says, “Right after you put a dot of butter and pinch of sugar in the saucepan.”

  She says, “It keeps the moisture from evaporating. Cal, you’re a gem.”

  He smiles, and it does me good to see how pleased he is.

  And why shouldn’t he be. Here is the fir tree trimmed and lit. The smell of bayberry candles aflame in their pewter holders. The light reflecting off the crystal water glasses, the wine goblets brimming with sparkling cider, the china. The logs crackling in the fireplace. Here are the miniature dollhouses that Vera collects displayed on occasional tables and bookshelves and on the sideboard behind where Maddie and I sit next to each other. While Vera and Cal chatter on about parchment paper and caramelized onions, I catch Maddie turning to look into the small windows at the tiny people and dishes and chairs, the precisely patterned quilts on beds no bigger than postage stamps.

  “It’s all something, isn’t it?” I whisper to her.

  She shrugs her shoulders. “It’s all right,” she says, but I can tell she’s quite taken, as I am, with the miniature ice skates and bars of soap and anything you can think of—all the exquisite details of our living.

  “Merry Christmas.” Vera holds her goblet aloft, and we all raise our glasses.

  “To the hostess with the mostest,” Arthur says, and I add my modest appreciation.

  “Thank you for thinking of us,” I say.

  We eat without much chatter, polite guests feeling just a tad strange to one another, speaking from time to time to compliment Vera on the duck or the chestnut stuffing, to say how pretty the snow is, to comment on the New Year’s Eve Murder Mystery Dinner.

  “A real whodunit,” Arthur says with a grin. “What to you think, Maddie? How does that sound?”

  “Boring,” says Maddie, picking at her stuffing with her fork. “Snooze City. That’s how it sounds.”

  “Well, I think it’ll be a hoot,” Arthur says.

  “Indeed,” says Vera. “Cal, you must come. It’s a costume party. You should see the one I picked out for Sam.”

  Arthur wants to know what sort of costume I have. “I hope it’s nothing swishy,” he says, “like the getup you had on your dog.”

  Vera smiles at me. “Oh, a costume for your dog? How fun. Please, tell me all about it.”

  “Just a sailor’s outfit,” I say, embarrassed. “Just something I ordered in the mail. You know, for laughs.”

  “Oh, it was a riot,” Arthur says. “Sailor Stump all fou-fou. All ribbons and bows.”

  “He was cute,” Maddie says.

  “I don’t know. If you ask me, the whole deal was swishy.”

  “Swish-pish,” Vera says with a wave of her hand. “I get tired of talk like that. Like the story of that boy. You know the one I mean. That Dewey Finn? Duncan came by the other day—Dewey was his great-uncle, you know—asking me what I remembered about when he died. I wish people would just leave it alone. Ancient history. Kaput.”

  “Dewey Finn?” Maddie says.

  “A boy from Rat Town,” Vera says. “It was a long time ago. Cal, you remember, yes?”

  “Dewey Finn,” says Cal, and then he goes back to eating.

  When I speak, I do my best to keep my voice even like I’m trying to call to mind something I heard about and then forgot. “Yes, there was a boy from Rat Town, but that’s not a story for a day like this. Not a Christmas story at all.”

  Vera says, “It was a train that killed him. The National Limited. He was lying on the tracks on the trestle just north of Rat Town. I guess he got what he wanted. Folks said it was because he’d been tormented so—you know, because he liked boys—he just couldn’t bear the thought of living anymore. Isn’t that the way you remember it, Sam?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I say.

  “I think Sammy is right,” Arthur says. “Maybe this isn’t a story to hear on Christmas.”

  I do my best to steer the conversation to another topic
. “Vera, I don’t know how you manage to be so relaxed and natural on your radio program.” I balance my knife on the rim of my plate. “I’d think of all those people listening to me, and I’d be scared to death.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, ducky.” She winks at me. “It’s just chitchat. I just talk into the microphone. La-di-dah. I’ve always been able to gab.”

  TONIGHT, WHEN MADDIE AND I ARE ALONE IN MY KITCHEN, Cal gone to bed, she says, “You knew that boy, the one Vera talked about. He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

  We’re in the kitchen drinking cocoa and having a slice of spice cake I bought from the Wal-Mart bakery. Compared to the feast we had at Vera’s, this is puny doin’s, but still there’s something to love about the fact that here we sit on this Christmas night, the cake on our paper plates, the cocoa steaming in our mugs, and Maddie waiting for me to answer her question.

  “Yes,” I say. “He was my friend.”

  This is the time of night when ordinarily I feel the dark close in around me—another day nearly gone—and I find myself thinking about the way time runs out and leaves us wishing we had more. What will it be like, I wonder, when it ends for me the way it did that spring evening in 1955 for Dewey? There are times, to be perfectly honest, when I’m ready to be done with it all, to just disappear into the darkness, to let all the sounds of the living slip away, and to be nothing more than a name said on occasion by someone trying to recall the old man who lived by himself and kept a succession of dogs—basset hounds, every one of them—for company.

  Then there are moments like this—Maddie speaking to me in soft, soothing tones; Stump on his belly by my feet, chewing on his rubber horseshoe—when I wish it could all go on and on, when I let myself believe for just a moment that there might really be a heaven where every sin gets washed away and the dead live forever in paradise.

  “Is it true?” Maddie asks. “What Vera said? Did it happen like that? Did that boy lie down and wait for that train?”

  The easy answer is, yes, it’s true. Yes, it happened exactly like that. But really there’s so much more to it, so much I can’t bring myself to say.

  “It was a horrible thing.” I try to take another sip of my cocoa, but my hand is trembling and I have to set the mug back on the table. “It’s something you’d never want to know about.”

  But she does want to know. “Did he want to die because he couldn’t stand being different?”

  “He was just a boy,” I say. “We both were.”

  I bow my head, afraid I’ve said too much, afraid I’ve given myself away. After all these years with no one in my house but the dogs, I don’t know how to talk to people about the things that matter. I’ve spent a lifetime hiding myself from the world. I look up at Maddie and she has such a kindness in her face that I can’t speak. My throat closes and I feel the ache. Then I have to stand up and move away from the table so she won’t see how shaken I am. I go to the sink, where I pour out what’s left of my cocoa and rinse out the mug.

  It isn’t long before Maddie joins me. She puts her hand on my back. She says, “If you loved him. If he was special to you, it’s okay.”

  Then she leaves me alone. She goes down the hallway to the bathroom to get herself ready for bed. She’ll sleep on the couch again tonight and who knows how many nights to come, and I’m glad for that—as glad as I’ve been in some time.

  STILL, I CAN’T GET DEWEY OUT OF MY HEAD. I REMEMBER THE night when Arthur and two of his friends were uptown in front of the pool hall. This was in 1955, and Mt. Gilead was celebrating its centennial. The men were growing chin whiskers, trying to win the beard-growing contest. “Buddies of the Brush,” they called themselves. Some of the older boys like Arthur and his buddies were sporting beards, too, and that gave them even more swagger than usual. That night in front of the pool hall, they were lighting matchsticks and tossing them at one another and sometimes at people walking by on the sidewalk. They were bored and more than a little mean, the way teenage boys can be, and they were putting a little jazz into the way they lit the matches. They struck them on their belt buckles, the soles of their shoes. They snapped them with their thumbnails, flicked them from their front teeth. I guess you’d say they were lighting those matches with flare—please excuse the pun.

  Certain facts I’ll never forget. They’re burned into me. I know this isn’t the time to be funny, but sometimes the words are just there and I can’t stop myself from saying them. Just like I couldn’t stop myself that night from saying what I did about Dewey. He went walking by on the other side of the street, and, because I didn’t know what to do with that kiss he’d given me in the alley behind our houses, I said, “Look at that queer. Ain’t he a sweetheart?” That caught the other boys’ fancy and Arthur called after him: “Dewey! Oh, Dewey. Come over here, sweetie.” I said it again. “Queer,” I said, the way I’d heard it said so many times in our town.

  One of Arthur’s friends wore a white T-shirt, a package of Lucky Strikes rolled in one sleeve. The other boy was lanky and he belted his trousers high on his waist. He had a pencil behind his ear. These are the things I remember.

  A few days later, Dewey was dead, and I can only imagine, as I have for years, what misery I must have started for him when I called him a queer, and Arthur and his friends picked up on it. How did I make the last days of his life when I said that, said it to protect myself, afraid that eventually people like Arthur would figure out the truth about me?

  As my father finally did a few years after Dewey died. It was, as it so often is with the moments that change our lives, a small thing that made him understand the truth he had surely sensed but hadn’t been willing to accept. Perhaps this truth began to gnaw at him the night Dewey died. Or maybe Cal, before he left town a few days later, told him what he’d seen the evening Dewey kissed me in the alley, and my father did his best as long as he could to believe it didn’t mean anything.

  Whatever the case, my secret became clear on a Sunday in August when my mother and father and I drove out to the state park to have supper at the Lakeview Inn. We were celebrating. I was nineteen, and I’d just hired on with the janitorial service. I’d had my first payday on Friday, and now I was taking my parents out to eat.

  “A regular Rockefeller,” my father said with a sneer, but I knew he was putting on. I could tell he was happy for me.

  My mother was happy, too. Cal’s infrequent visits since coming home from Germany had taken the heart out of her, and, as we sat down to supper that night at the Lakeview Inn, I could see that she was glad to have something to lift her spirits. She took my arm as we walked to our table, and I made a big show of pulling out her chair for her. “Ooh-la-la,” she said. “My son, the gentleman.” I shook out the cloth napkin and laid it in her lap. She leaned across the table toward my father, who hadn’t taken off the summer-weight, woven straw fedora he was wearing. “Are you taking notes, Bill? Are you watching this? Maybe you could learn something?”

  “Mr. Fancy-Pants.” My father pushed the fedora back on his head and squinted at me. “So tell me, Cary Grant, how come you don’t have a girl?”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was something he asked me from time to time, teasing, and I always said, well, you know, gee, Dad, I guess I’m picky. That’s all right, he always told me. It was better to do a little living first and not get tied down too soon. “Forty,” he said. “That’s the best time to get hitched. You’ll be all used up by then, and you’ll need someone to look after you.”

  That evening at the restaurant, I said to my father, “If you want the truth, I don’t hold much faith in that lovey-dovey, happily-ever-after jazz.” I was full of myself. Nineteen and money in my pocket. I was, as my father sometimes said of me, just talking to hear myself roar. “Oh, it might be fine for some folks,” I said. “But me?” I held my arms away from my body, as if someone were frisking me. I invited my parents to give me the once-over. “Come on. Seriously.” I turned my face first left and then right, displaying each profile. “
Do I look like the kind of guy a girl would go ga-ga over?”

  I knew my mother had no reason at all to suspect me. I wasn’t a swish; in fact, I didn’t believe there was anything effeminate about me at all. I was a skinny kid, normal-looking enough, but not striking by any means. Not pretty. Sometimes I studied the other boys in town, the ones who chased girls, strutted around jacked up with hormones. The ones like Cal and Arthur. Even they had a feature here and there that, under the right circumstances, might come across as womanly: long eyelashes, slender tapered fingers, delicate collarbones. But no one thought a thing about them, just like I imagined no one thought a thing about me when they saw me out and about. I was just a young man, seated now in this restaurant, doing monkeyshines for his parents. No one would have thought anything at all about me and the secret I had.

  My mother said, “You’re very handsome, Sammy.”

  She reached across the table to pat my hand, and, when she did, a raveling from the sleeve of her dress floated out into the air and landed on my arm.

  I brushed it off, not with the flat of my hand the way I had seen my father sweep the powdery dust from the mill room off his clothes on our wash porch after work, but with my fingertips—a breezy, back-handed flip like that, and I saw the way my father looked at me as if something had come clear to him, as if he had finally worried a splinter up through his skin.

  That’s what did it. That loose thread. The way I brushed it away with a motion my father perhaps had never seen me make, and suddenly he couldn’t ignore the boy I was. It should have been nothing, that motion I made, but right then, given all that my father must have surely suspected, it was everything.

  “I’m hungry,” he said in a voice that was too loud and full of bluster. “My God, I’m starved. I swear I could eat a moose.”