Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  This good-humored, telling-it-like-it-is account roused a chuckle from the crowd.

  “Anyway, the thing is, I was thinking about this and it seemed to me that I was the one who should be complaining about the stink his place makes. It’s one of the first things you see when you come up River Road into town from the west, and it gives a really god-awful first impression of this wonderful community. So, you know, I talked to a number of people around here about the problem. And I understand you’ve kind of been over this issue before?” He turned around to address this question to the dais. Paul was sitting two down from Owen, hunched down into himself.

  “Oh, yes,” Owen Phelps said and sighed. “This committee has had reason to discuss Luke Barnett and his property on prior occasions.” Several people laughed out loud at this. Oh, yes, we were all in this together, good neighbors having to deal with a bad seed.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. As far as I’m concerned the place is literally a dump. And it’s my guess that it’s a fire hazard, too. I think something needs to be done.”

  “We’ve tried,” Owen told him. “We’ve already sent Mr. Barnett several letters asking him to clean his place up.”

  “And when were these papers served?”

  “Well, they weren’t legal notices. Just informal requests. We sent the last one in December, I believe. But, you know, it’s very difficult to enforce this sort of thing without stepping all over Fourth Amendment issues.”

  “Right. I realize that can be a real problem. But, as I said, I’ve been thinking about this and I even decided to do a little investigating. Hell, it didn’t take much. A Google search was all. I’ve got to say I was more than a little shocked to discover that I had a convicted drug dealer for a neighbor!” A few people turned to look at each other, puzzled. Those who knew looked down or gazed away. An uneasy stillness had fallen over the room. Richard pulled some papers out of his satchel and quickly scanned one of them. “That’s right, in 1990, Luke Barnett was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and possess with intent to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was sentenced to eight years in a state penitentiary. A state penitentiary for eight years! You’re all good folks, I know that. But we’re dealing here with the kind of person most of you probably just can’t believe lives in a town this nice. I think he’s a dangerous man. And I can tell you right now I don’t like the idea of him living so close to my house and my kids. On top of that, I don’t like the fact that he thinks he can live in that pigsty, making the rest of us have to put up with his—well, honestly?—kind of sick way of life.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at Paul. I felt frozen, though my face was flaming red. The whole room seemed paralyzed, uncertain what to feel or think. Of course, many if not most of the people there knew all about Luke’s time in prison and Paul’s role in the old story that Richard had referred to. But it had become one of those things that time covered over, wearing down the sharp edges, blurring the memory. Subsequent events had diminished the story’s power. Life went on. Nothing bad had happened. Parents worried about crack and methamphetamines now. But Richard had succeeded in turning the facts around so that Luke’s conviction was no longer relegated to the past. Unknowingly or not, he’d also tapped into the ill will so many people already felt toward Luke and his hermetic existence. Surely there’s more than meets the eye. Why is he living in such squalor? Making that stuff? Refusing to conform? How have we allowed this to happen? Richard let these thoughts sink in before he continued in a gentler, reasoning tone of voice, “So, let’s get together here. As a group, okay? I’ve a feeling you’re all pretty much with me, right? Let’s see what we can do to get some traction on this problem. Okay, I’ve said my piece. Now I’d really appreciate a little feedback.”

  As if on cue, Tom Langlois stood up and turned to face the room.

  “Yes, I think you could say most of us agree with you. And besides the issue of unsightliness, Luke Barnett is using that property as a place of business without—and I’ve looked into this, too—filing any of the appropriate paperwork. So, for starters, we can go in there. Close down the work area. Seize his machinery.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Tom!” Paul said. No! I almost cried out loud to him. Keep your head down. Stay out of this! “You mean you’re going to take his blowtorch away?”

  “I mean there are rules about running businesses in this town that we expect everyone to adhere to,” Tom said.

  “A business? Oh, come on! This is just a trumped-up excuse for you to go in there and—”

  “Listen, I’m just trying to do my job. Preserve and protect, okay?”

  “And I’m saying you know perfectly well that Luke’s harmless. We all do. Seize his machinery? What kind of a town are we turning into here?”

  “I’m surprised you’re so eager to take his side,” Richard said. He paused briefly to slip his papers back into his satchel. “From what I understand, you weren’t always so supportive.”

  It took a moment for this comment to sink in. For me. For everyone. Then Paul, shaking his head, rose from his seat. He pushed back his chair.

  “Just what are you trying to say?” he asked as he began to move behind the dais toward Richard, but Owen shot up and blocked him from going farther.

  “That’s it for tonight, folks,” he said, holding tight to Paul’s right arm. “This meeting is adjourned.”

  29

  The aisles were clogged with people leaving. I could see Paul and Owen at the dais, heads bowed together in an intense exchange, as the rest of the select committee silently worked its way around them. Richard was talking to Tom, his big hand resting on the chief’s forearm as he made some point; then they both threw their heads back and laughed. A little bottleneck had formed around them as people waited to talk to Richard.

  “It’s about time we all did something,” Janie was telling Nina. “The place really is an eyesore, isn’t it? And Zeller’s right about it being the first thing you see coming into town… .”

  Nina hadn’t said anything as I slipped past, not even good night. Was it my imagination, or were my friends and neighbors avoiding my gaze? The past seemed to hang in the air like smoke; it stung my eyes, blurring my vision. I kept my head down as I shuffled behind the others on the stairs, though I wanted to scream: Let me through! I have to get by! I didn’t have much time. No, I think I already knew that I didn’t have any time at all. I didn’t know Luke’s number, or even if he had a phone these days. If anyone was going to get to Anne before Richard did, it could only be me.

  Outside, the air was damp and chilly. A front had come through the final day of BlueFest, sweeping before it what felt like the last sweet warmth of summer. The night temperatures were starting to dip; Paul was blanketing our tomato plants with plastic sheeting most evenings. Though they’d left the tent up, hoping the weather might still improve, my daughters had moved back inside to sleep. The summer season wasn’t over yet officially for another ten days, but it felt like we’d come to the end of something. Way too quickly.

  I shivered as I moved with the crowd toward the parking lot, trying to get a signal on my cell phone. I held it over my head. I turned it off and then on again. But Red River had been built in a valley with hills cradling us on every side; the reception was notoriously awful in town. I knew of only one place close by that might be high and clear enough to allow me to get through, though I hated the idea of going there. I hadn’t set foot near the hardware store since the break with my parents. I’d cross the street on the way to the general store; I’d even look the other way. Of course, it was inconvenient and silly of me; after all, the store had been part of the True Value chain and managed by other, anonymous hands for over a decade. But, on some childishly superstitious level, it still felt wrong to me to be there, as though I’d be walking on someone’s grave. Now, though, I cut back through the crowd and hurried across Main Street. I was jogging, making a right onto Bridge Street, the whit
e-clapboarded presence looming up in front of me with a nightmarish unreality. The whole last hour seemed to have passed like a bad dream, warping time and memory.

  The old wooden outside staircase that I remembered had been replaced by a metal one, more a fire escape now than steps. I had to jump up and tug on the raised bottom rung to bring it down. Then I climbed up as best I could, my heels clanging on the metal slats. The top of the third flight ended as abruptly as it had begun. Gone was the ten-foot-long landing where I used to sit during the final summer that I worked for my dad, smoking a forbidden cigarette and daydreaming about Paul.

  From here you could see almost the whole town: the two church steeples, the many shingled roofs, the bridge with its flower boxes trailing petunias in the summer, the rust-tinged, mineral-rich river running fast and deep, rushing over the dam by the old mill. From here you could see why this spot would have appealed to those first settlers and missionaries. It was so well protected, situated in a pleasant river valley that promised fertile farming. There was the old railroad line, laid down in the town’s mining heyday in the mid-1800s, that used to run up to Albany and now stopped without fanfare in front of the post office. And farther, you could just about make out the skeletal imprints of a large complex of buildings, some of which had been burned, others abandoned: the overgrown remnants of the once extensive Colt & McCafferty iron smelting furnace and works, left in ruins behind the old high school playing fields. And beyond that the slowly flattening hills and fields rolling out to disappear under the steep shadows of the Catskills.

  “Anne?”

  “Who is this? I can hardly hear you… .”

  “It’s Maddie.”

  “Where are you? This connection is terrible.”

  “You haven’t told Richard yet, have you?”

  “What? No. Richard isn’t back yet.”

  “I know. I just saw him at the town meeting. I’m calling from town, Anne. I need to tell you something.”

  “You’re breaking up again. Why don’t you call me on your landline when you get back home?”

  “No! Don’t hang up. Listen to me. Richard found out something. About Luke. About something that happened when Luke was just a kid really.”

  “What are you taking about?”

  “Luke hasn’t said anything to you, has he? About what happened right after high school?”

  “No.”

  So I told her. I rushed through it, I know, but I wanted to get the whole thing out before Richard got home. I needed to get to her first, before Richard’s gloating report on how he ripped that crazy Luke Barnett to shreds in front of the whole town and had the select committee eating out of the palm of his hand. Oh, I could just imagine how he would sound telling her. How he’d relive his triumph in front of her and then start to criticize her for being so sloppy about choosing her friends. Did she have any idea that Paul Alden had been involved with this marijuana business, as well? And Maddie, too, no doubt. Alden had totally lost it at the meeting. And he’d done time, too. He was just a small-town criminal, really. Leave it to Anne to pick up with people like that, for heaven’s sake! When was she going to learn to exercise some judgment? To show a little discrimination?

  “You have to understand how young we all were then,” I told her, breathlessly. “Young and kind of desperate. The recession was—”

  “I don’t understand. Luke? He was in jail? For how long?”

  “He didn’t have to serve the full sentence. He got out on early release, for good behavior, I think.”

  “How long was the sentence?”

  “Eight years.”

  “Wait. No. I can’t believe this. You’re—what are you saying? Luke is a criminal? He’s a drug dealer? This doesn’t make any sense to me… .”

  “It was almost twenty years ago, Anne. Way, way back in the past. Richard just dug this up to—”

  “Hold on. Please. Stop. This is so … I don’t know what to think… .”

  “You have to think that it doesn’t make any difference! That you know what kind of a man Luke is, deep down. Gentle. Good. That you love—”

  “I see Richard’s headlights coming up the drive,” Anne cut me off. “I’ve got to go.”

  Paul was waiting for me behind the wheel when I got back to the pickup. He was lost in thought, staring out the front window. He didn’t ask where I’d been, though we were the last car in the parking lot. The town hall was shut up for the night. Main Street was deserted.

  “I’m sorry I lost it like that,” he said finally, turning to me. “God, I hate losing my temper. I don’t know what came over me. One minute I was calmly sitting there telling myself to stay cool, let the bastard have his say, and the next thing I’m like this raving maniac.”

  “Not raving,” I said. “He played dirty and he knew it. He knew exactly what he was doing, and how he might get a rise out of you.”

  “You think so?” Paul asked. Under the cold light of the high streetlamp his skin looked bleached out. A part of me was shocked to learn how close all this was to the surface with him. How much it still mattered, though he kept trying to tell himself otherwise.

  “I know so,” I told him. “I told you before he’s a bully. He wanted to get you riled. It only helped him make his case.”

  “And people bought it, too, didn’t they? Even Owen, I’m afraid. He says he’s been getting pressure from other quarters. And obviously old Tom is just raring to go in there, guns blazing! I’d like to believe that it’s just the new people, you know, like the Zellers. But it’s not. It’s our friends and neighbors, Maddie. It makes me wonder what they think about me after all these years. What if I stumbled again somehow? Made a mistake. Spoke up the way Luke did? Or have I done that already by saying what I did tonight? Am I next?”

  It was painful for me to hear Paul doubt himself. His convictions run so deep. It showed me that what had happened that night had shaken him to the core. His faith in the town, in people’s essential goodness and goodwill, has always been immutable.

  “No,” I told him. “This isn’t about you. And I don’t think people really care that much about the drug conviction. That’s just an excuse for them to believe they have a reason to feel the way they do. The truth is: they don’t like Luke. He’s too aloof. Superior. Especially after all he’s been through. They don’t trust him. They want him to be sorry. They want him knocked down a peg or two.”

  “And what about you?” Paul said.

  In all the years that Luke had come between us, Paul had never come right out and asked me how I felt about him. It was one of the few things we never discussed, I think because it could so easily open up a chasm between us we might not know how to bridge. Why now? He couldn’t be testing my loyalties. He knew I would always stand by him. No, I think he must have sensed the shifting dynamics between the three of us: Luke, Paul, and me. He suspected something. But what? I believe a part of him wanted to find out, while another part knew that I must be keeping things from him for a reason. I guessed that he’d been picking up on my half lies and partial truths. He’d been looking the other way, purposefully not asking. Because he knew that I was protecting someone, or something. That’s what he was really asking: what about you? But I didn’t know what to tell him. And I didn’t want to add this uncertainty to all the rest of his burdens. Did I really think that Anne would leave Richard now, knowing what I had told her? I’d heard the shock in her voice. And the fear.

  “I want what’s best for Luke,” I told him, though I don’t think I knew then—or will ever be sure—what that might have been.

  “I know you do,” Paul said, turning the key in the ignition. “Of course. What the hell’s the matter with me, anyway? It’s hardly the end of the world. Owen agreed to let me go over and have a heart-to-heart with Luke. Let him know what’s brewing. I think I’ll be able to convince him to make some changes. They want him to take some kind of action before the next select committee meeting. That’s doable, don’t you think?”

 
; “Sure,” I told him, as we drove home through the shadow-filled, silent town. It seemed like a surface exchange but it had actually touched upon our deepest selves. Good, strong, optimistic Paul. And eager, accommodating me. I would only always tell him what he wanted to hear. It was our old sweet song, our lifelong refrain. That’s doable, don’t you think? Sure. What else could I say?

  Part Eight

  30

  Our luck didn’t hold. Or, perhaps it was more that a lot of things caught up with us all at once. My father died in 2002, right after Thanksgiving. I hadn’t seen him in almost ten years. A second cousin called to tell me the day before the funeral service. It was Nancy, one of Harry’s nieces, so I can only imagine what she’d heard about me over the years. I think she was around my age; I could hear children fighting in the background:

  “I’ve gone back and forth about getting in touch with you,” she said. “Your dad left a list of who he wanted at the service, along with what hymns he wanted and everything.”

  “I take it I wasn’t included.”

  “But I kept thinking: this is really about those of us who are still here, isn’t it? I lost my own father three years ago. That was hard enough—and I got the chance to say good-bye. I decided that it was only right to at least give you the option of coming.”

  The Feddersons tend to be a stoic and reserved lot. Their Nordic roots, transplanted to the Berkshires go deep—but not far. My father was one of the few who had left the immediate area, and that, along with the well-known facts surrounding my rupture with him, affected his relationship with the rest of the family. But they’d done their duty by him in the end. Paul and I dropped the girls off at the farm and drove over to the service in Great Barrington, which was held in the Lutheran church. It was Paul who had really wanted to go, not me, so I was surprised how touched I felt seeing the first four rows of the church filled with people.