River of Heaven

by Lee Martin

  My mother laughed. “You don’t have to tell the whole joint about it. Honestly, Bill.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Folks will think we don’t know how to act.”

  He wouldn’t take off his hat. Not even when our food came, nor when my mother asked him in a quiet voice, “Bill, please.”

  “A man ought to be able to wear his goddamn hat.” He tugged on the brim of the fedora. “Yes, sir. Wherever he damn well pleases.”

  I felt sorry for my mother. The air had gone out of the evening—a festive night out she’d been enjoying—and she couldn’t understand why.

  Only my father and I knew. Our shame was all around us: in the way we both kept our heads bowed over our plates, barely saying a word; in the puny answers we gave to the questions the waitress asked (“More iced tea? Coffee? Save room for dessert?”); in the defiant way he kept his hat pulled down close to his eyes as if he hoped he could shade out the truth that was glaring now between us.

  But he couldn’t deny it, and later that night, when I was getting ready for bed, he came into my room, and he said to me, “Dewey Finn.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I was buttoning my pajama shirt, and my father couldn’t watch, couldn’t tolerate, suddenly, the sight of my bare chest. He looked down at the floor. He stuck his hands in his pocket. He rocked up on the balls of his feet.

  “The two of you,” he said, and I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I told him yes, it was true; I was the same as Dewey. That’s why I didn’t have a girl. That was the real answer to the question he’d asked me at the restaurant.

  He took a sharp breath. He ran his hand over his head, forehead to crown, taking his time, as if the right words were there in his brain and if he touched himself in the right way he would call them up and give them to me like a gift. He let his hand slide down to his neck and rest there. He lifted his face to me, a look in his eyes I can only describe as helpless.

  “Christ, Sammy,” he said. “What do I do with this…this thing you’re saying? This way of being? It’s something I don’t know.”

  You have to remember this was 1959, and my father was a man, like most men then, who had no idea how far love could reach.

  “Can’t you just let it be?” I said. “Why do we have to do anything with it at all?”

  You have to know I didn’t blame him—not then. I was willing to let him be the man he was, someone who had trouble with the idea that his son was queer. All I wanted was the same from him; all I wanted was for him to allow me to be who I was. The problem, of course, was that we were at cross-purposes. How could either of us be who we really were around the other as long as my father carried in him the smallest grain of disgust, or, as much as it still hurts me to say it, hate?

  He nodded his head. He took his hands out of his pockets and clapped them together once as if to say, all right, yes, okay. He turned and started to walk out of my room. I was anxious for him to be gone. But he paused at the doorway. He reached up and grabbed the top of the jamb, as if he had to stop himself from taking another step.

  “Whatever goes on in your life in this town from here on.” For a long time, he stood there, head bowed, shoulders slumped. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.”

  He slapped the door jamb with his palm. Then he left my room. The quiet settled around me and I could barely stand to put out my light and close my eyes and slip off into sleep, my ears on fire with the ugly thing he’d said, which I imagined was the way he felt about what had happened to Dewey, that he had lain down in front of that train because he hadn’t been able to live with the fact of who he was—that he had made his own end.

  When my father died in 1973, he was a widower, my mother having gone on ahead of him. The last words I spoke to him were at her funeral.

  “I can look after you,” I told him. By this time, his heart had failed him once and it wouldn’t be long before it stopped for good.

  He gave me a fierce look, one that said he had no use for me. Whatever love he’d had for me went away as soon as he found out I was queer. “You don’t need to come looking after me,” he said. And that was that.

  13

  THE SUN IS BRIGHT THE MORNING AFTER CHRISTMAS WHEN I take Stump for his walk. Some folks, anxious to be done with the holiday chores, have left their Christmas trees at the curb for the garbage men to pick up. Here and there, a few strands of icicles still cling to the trees and sparkle in the sunlight. Bits of ribbon—green, red, silver, and gold—flutter in the wind, which comes this morning from the south, promising a warm-up and the melting of all this snow.

  The neighborhood kids are enjoying it while they can, building snowmen in yards, hurrying by toting sleds, bound for the hills at the city park. Their woolen scarves unfurl behind them as they run. Their shouts ring out on this clear, bright day. “Wait up, Enis McMeanus,” one boy shouts to another, and right away I recognize the boy—the one who shouts—as the boy who told the pirate joke to Stump. Enis McMeanus—I delight in the whimsy of that made-up name.

  A red woolen scarf slips from the boy’s neck, and I snatch it from the air. Stump strains at his leash, eager to follow the boys as they hurry past.

  But we have our own day ahead of us: this brisk walk, smartly once around the block, and then back home to make breakfast. A special turkey and lamb for Stump; Belgian waffles, a recipe I got from listening to Vera on the radio, for Maddie and Cal and me. He’s done almost all the cooking since he’s been here, and it’s time for me to get off my duff. I’ve decided that I’ll go to Vera’s New Year’s Eve party. I’ll even try to convince Cal and Maddie to go. I’ll play the role of Happy Mickey Finn.

  I wave the scarf in the air. “Hey,” I shout. “Your scarf.” But the boy keeps running. Then I do it, and the sound of my voice both thrills and frightens me. “Hey, Enis McMeanus,” I say, and the boy stops, turns back to me, his mouth open in amazement, stunned that an old man like me has been listening to this private talk of boys and now has been so bold as to use their language as if it’s his own.

  I reach out the scarf to him. He walks back to me, his steps at first hesitant. Then he grabs the scarf from my hand and runs to join his friends, who are speeding on ahead of him. He stops once, nearly halfway down the block, and he calls back to me. “I like your dog.” He waves the scarf in the air. “Thanks, Enis McMeanus,” he says, and then he runs on down the street, leaving me to laugh to myself, to appreciate this one, simple moment of joy. Oh, for a world of days like this and one Enis McMeanus after another.

  WHEN I GET HOME, CAL AND MADDIE ARE DANCING. SWEAR to God. My brother, still spry enough to stomp the boards and show her some of that rockabilly swing dancing he was always so good at. Maddie has her portable stereo—a boombox, I guess she’d call it—in the living room, and Cal’s put on a Carl Perkins CD. “Blue Suede Shoes” is blaring, and Cal’s showing Maddie how to spin and bounce and turn.

  Stump looks up at me as if to say, “What in the devil,” and, like him, I’m amazed.

  Cal and Maddie try to do a figure-eight turn, but they both lose their balance and tumble onto the couch, laughing.

  Stump starts barking, and that’s when they see me.

  “Oh, Lord, Sammy,” Cal says. “You been there watching me make a fool out of myself? I used to be able to swing with the best of them.”

  “It looked all right to me,” I say. “A little more practice and you’ll be ready for Vera’s party.”

  “I don’t hardly think so.” He holds up his hands and shakes his head. “No, I think I’m going to keep quiet on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Come on.” Maddie tugs at his shirtsleeve. “We’ll show everyone how to dance.”

  “You go ahead, little lady,” he says. “I’ll stay home and you can tell me all about it after it’s done.”

  “No dice,” she says. “If you’re not going, neither am I.”

  “All right,” I say, deciding for the time being not to press the issue and risk the high spirits we all have. “Now
I’m going to make us some breakfast.”

  Cal snaps to attention. “That’s my job, Sammy.”

  “Not this morning,” I tell him.

  Then I go out to the kitchen and get to work.

  When everything’s on the table, Cal pours maple syrup over his waffle. Maddie spreads strawberry jam on hers. She sits cross-legged, her feet drawn up beneath her knees. She’s wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a man’s flannel shirt over her white T-shirt. It takes me a while to realize that the flannel shirt is mine, the green and black forest plaid Cal gave me for Christmas. I’d left it still folded on my dresser, and now here’s Maddie wearing it as if it’s her own.

  “It’s all right, isn’t it?” she says when she realizes I’m studying the shirt. “I got a little chilly.”

  And here’s the thing. I don’t mind at all. In fact, I’m overjoyed because this is one of the rare times in my life when someone has needed something and I’ve been able to supply it. Like I did when I gave the boy his scarf. This is what I’m learning. These small gifts, these simple ways of finding love.

  “It’s all right,” I tell her. “It looks good on you. It matches the green in your eyes.”

  She gives me a skeptical look. “Jeez, Sam-You-Am,” she says. “Shake off the pixie dust and come back to planet Earth. We’re just talking about a shirt.”

  I can’t help but notice, then, the way she’s so neatly folded back the cuffs of my flannel shirt—it makes my heart glad to know that she was cold and now the shirt has warmed her—or the care she takes with each bite of her waffle, chewing slowly, her eyes closing sometimes with bliss. How happy I am that I made these waffles that so obviously please her, that Cal is here, and we are, at least for the time being, a family.

  When we’re finished with the waffles, Maddie takes Stump out to his ship. I watch her light a cigarette, something I won’t let her do in my home, and she stands there, smoking, looking over at Arthur’s house.

  I let Cal help me with the dishes. I wash and he dries, and for a good while we don’t say much. There’s only the noise of the water and the dishes bumping around in the sink and the squeak of Cal’s dish towel as he dries the plates.

  Then he says, “You’re doing a good thing, Sammy. With Maddie, I mean.”

  I go to work on the silverware, scrubbing the syrup and jam off the knives and forks. “I’m not sure Arthur sees it that way.”

  “Maybe not now, but he will. Just be patient.” Cal takes a handful of silverware from the rinse and shakes the water from them. “You’re a good man, Sammy. You always have been.”

  I don’t know what to say to that; I’ve spent so much of my life believing otherwise. To hear it, though, from Cal, means something to me, and I stand there lingering in the glow of his compliment.

  Through the kitchen window, I can see that Arthur has come outside and that he and Maddie are standing at my fence, talking. He has his hands stuck in his pockets, and he hangs his head as if he’s having a hard time saying what he came to say. But he does, and then Maddie reaches across the fence and throws her arms around his neck and gives him a hug. I’m happy for Maddie and her good heart and happy for Arthur, who means to do right by her. My throat fills with an ache, sensing as I do that I’m this much closer to not having her in my home, but hasn’t that been the plan from the git-go? So why should I feel anything but glad?

  Cal’s cell phone rings. He dries his hands and takes it from his pants pocket. He flips it open and holds it to his ear. The odd thing is he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t say “hello,” doesn’t say “Cal Brady.” He just listens. Then he says, “Right. Got it. I’ll be ready. I’ll wait for word.”

  He puts the phone away, and we stand there a good while just looking at each other.

  Finally, I can’t stand the silence, so I say, “Ready for what?”

  “That was Mora Grove,” Cal says. “The woman from Herbert Zwilling’s grain elevator.”

  “About that Coca-Cola glass? Is that why she was calling?”

  Cal narrows his eyes at me. “I made that up, Sammy. I read about that blind man in the Daily Mail. I had no idea you actually had that glass.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I couldn’t stand to tell you the truth.” He takes a breath and lets it out. “The truth about Herbert Zwilling and me.”

  I hold my hands in the dishwater until I can barely stand the heat. Then I lift them out and stare awhile at the red, wrinkled skin, and it seems as if they aren’t my hands at all. Then, I say what I’ve come to suspect, that Cal and Zwilling knew one another longer than Cal has let on. “Is that the case, Cal? Were you already hooked up that day you took Mink to the grain elevator to get that Volare?”

  Cal hesitates. Then he says it, the thing he hasn’t been able to bring himself to say. “Me and Zwilling,” he says. “We’d known each other for some time.”

  I don’t know what to say because I fear where this is leading, and finally Cal goes on. “I wasn’t part of that militia, but Zwilling was wrapped up in it. Still is. That Michigan Militia, Sammy. Conspiracy to overthrow the government. That’s what we’re talking about here, and he knows at any minute I could decide to go to the police and tell them everything I know.”

  “And Mora Grove?”

  “She says Zwilling’s making noise about trying to hunt me down. If he finds me, Sammy…well, he’ll kill me if he gets the chance. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll put me where I can’t say a word. That’s how men like him operate, the ones that think they’re above the law. They show up one day and tap you on the shoulder. Then it’s too late. Then you’re done. Mora will let me know when it’s time for me to run.”

  The back door opens, and I feel my heart in my throat. It’s only Maddie coming in from the yard, breezing into the kitchen, singing “Blue Suede Shoes.” “The Pope has given me his blessing,” she says, and she goes on to explain that she and Arthur are starting to see eye to eye. “Zippity doo-dah,” she says. She stands with her hands on her hips, a smile on her face. “Look at that sunshine, gents. What a glorious day, and here you stand, both of you looking like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  ARTHUR TAKES HER TO EVANSVILLE TO BUY HER ANOTHER Christmas gift, to let her pick something out at the mall, and, when it’s just Cal and me in the house, I say to him, as much as it pains me, “I won’t let you stay here unless I know everything there is to know. You’ll have to tell me everything, Cal. Otherwise, I’ll turn you out.”

  He paces around the living room. He tells me to get comfortable because what he has to say is going to take a while.

  I do what he says. I sit on the couch, and while he talks I rub my hand over the quilt and blanket Maddie has folded. I think of her out enjoying the sunny winter day with Arthur, and though I don’t begrudge her that, I realize that what I’m fearing most of all is the likelihood that soon she’ll be gone from my house and Cal, who works up the nerve now to tell me the rest of his story, will follow and here we’ll be again, just me and Stump, the two of us alone.

  It was true, Cal says, what he told me about drinking with Leonard Mink that night at the VFW, but what wasn’t exactly true was that it was the first time he knew of the plot to bring down the Sears Tower. He knew about it years before because he knew Herbert Zwilling, and Herbert Zwilling had been involved with other plots, even Oklahoma City.

  “There’s all sorts of people in on these things,” Cal says.

  “People in the government, even. Folks you wouldn’t suspect. Just people like Herbert Zwilling, running his business and up to no good on the sly. Trust me, Sammy. I know.”

  He knew because he’d made the mistake of getting chummy with Herbert Zwilling at a gun show. “We got to talking,” Cal says, “and he asked me if I’d like to make a little extra money by helping out at his grain elevator. So I did. I’d go down there a few days a week during harvest season and run the scales and write up the tickets and sell fertilizer and the like, just a part-time job like that. T
hen one day, I was the only one there—Zwilling and Mora Grove had gone uptown for lunch—and the mailman delivered a box that was coming return receipt requested. I didn’t think a thing about it. I just signed like the mailman told me to do. Then, when Zwilling and Mora came back from lunch, I gave him the box. He studied the return address, and he said to Mora, ‘It’s from Hendrik. It’s what we’ve been waiting for.’ I didn’t know who this Jacob Hendrik was, but I figured what he’d sent in that box had something to do with the business. Once I knew that Zwilling was part of that militia, I remembered that the box had come from Cadillac, Michigan, and I figured that it had something to do with what finally happened in Oklahoma City: blasting caps, fuses, something like that. Do you see what a stupid thing it was for me to do? Now someone has that return receipt with my signature on it—someone Zwilling knows—and it’s the proof they need to claim I’ve been in on all these plots all along. It’s that receipt, don’t you understand, that made it risky for me to say anything to the police even after Mink was dead.”

  Cal stops pacing and stands at the picture window, his hands flat on the library table, his head bowed. “You believe me, don’t you, Sammy?” Cal turns to face me. “If anyone would believe me, I figured it’d be you. Sometimes things just happen, things we never intended, and there we are. You know that, don’t you, Sammy? I know you do.”

  14

  ALL WEEK, I GO OVER CAL’S STORY IN MY HEAD, TRYING TO figure out whether I believe him. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I can trust, and he and I don’t talk about Zwilling or Mora Grove or anything that happened in Ohio. I ask Cal again to go to the New Year’s Eve party with me, and he says, no, he doesn’t think so.

  Come New Year’s Eve, the Cabbage Rose Bed and Breakfast, where Vera is hosting her party, rings and clangs with ragtime jazz. I stand on the wraparound porch, about to ring the bell, and for a moment longer I convince myself that I can step through this doorway and call out the names of my fellow guests and meet them with a smile when they in turn say, “Sam, Sammy. Hey, how’s the boy?” I pretend that I’m capable of this. I wish that Cal and Maddie were with me to make this easier, but he’s kept to his bedroom, not even coming out for supper, and Maddie’s held true to her promise to stay home with him. “He’ll come out sooner or later,” she said just before I walked out the door, “and I wouldn’t want him to be alone on New Year’s Eve.”