Off Course

by Michelle Huneven

  He stopped short, pointing to a scrap of red plastic embedded in the dirt. He crouched and dug out a Swiss Army knife. “Lookee here,” he said. “This represents real money. Just lying on the ground.”

  He rubbed the pocketknife on his jeans, and gave it to her. In the red plastic, a tiny, smiling, thick-lipped fish was inlaid in steel. The toothpick was still in its slot. “You got to pay me for it,” he said. “Or it’s bad luck.”

  “Bad luck, how?”

  “Give a knife, sever a friendship,” he said.

  She dug in her jeans pocket, handed over a nickel.

  Nine

  The Morrow brothers camped beside the Rodinger house in an older white travel trailer with a thick aqua stripe and, high up at the back, a pair of small, flat, useless yellow wings. Inside was an entire miniature home—kitchen, dining room, bedroom—paneled in yellowing teak. Cress, Don Dare, and the brothers played hearts at the tiny dinette, whose table and benches folded down nightly into Caleb’s bed. (“Quinn gets the master suite.” Caleb pointed to a platform in the rear of the trailer where a sleeping bag curled on a bare foam pad.)

  Cress was winning. They called her the smart one, the little cardsharp in the corner there, and the doctor, but they didn’t seem to mind her victory—unlike her Econ colleagues, who had taken her successes as personal affronts. The Morrow brothers made sure she had a drink, a pillow behind her. She felt happy, petted.

  The brothers glowered and clucked over their cards. “Hate to send a boy out to do a man’s work,” Quinn said, playing a jack of diamonds.

  Caleb dropped a two of diamonds on the trick. “And that’s all she wrote.” He raised an eyebrow her way, as if they shared a secret. He was droll with that elastic, hound-dog face. The more she was around him, the less ugly he was. She hoped his wife was smart. At least she was a laugher, if a loud one.

  Quinn scooped up the next trick. “That’s what I get for bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

  Caleb stood and said he was going out to have a look at the stars. Quinn called after him, “Fifty feet, please.” When Cress got up to use the bathroom a few minutes later, they shooed her away from the tiny one inside the trailer (“You don’t even want to look in there,” said Caleb) and sent her out of doors, with Quinn calling, “Fifty feet, please.”

  Caleb said, “This morning I’m making coffee and who’s looking in at me but some white-muzzled old bear.”

  “That’s my guy!” said Cress. “But why isn’t he asleep?”

  Quinn said, “Sierra bears don’t go into a true hibernation. It’s not really cold enough. They get up and snack.”

  Caleb made popcorn and they opened more beer. A wind came up and shook the little trailer, but they were snug inside. At midnight, she and Don clambered down the steps and both brothers, silhouetted, waved from the door.

  * * *

  “Pop bid a remodel at that house seven, eight years ago.” Quinn waved at one of Reggie Thornton’s ranch-style log homes. “The kitchen was a dark, airless cubbyhole they wanted to open up. That was my one time at the Meadows before now. Pop came in at something like twice the nearest bid—he was never ever the lowest. Of course, he was worth every cent. But not everybody wants a work of art for a kitchen. Or can afford one. Nobody did work like Pop.”

  “You must miss him,” said Cress.

  “When I don’t wish I’d killed him with my own bare hands,” said Quinn. “Ah, Pop”—this with soft bitterness—“such an artist and such an infant. Completely irresponsible.”

  “You’re an artist too.”

  “Oh no. I’m just a craftsman, thank God.”

  But Caleb, Quinn said, took after the old man. Every project, those two had to go through the whole agonizing creative process, A to Z, starting from scratch; never wanting to repeat, they lived in fear that the new job was too much like the old job. If the client had paid them for an original design, they wanted it to be entirely original, from the ground up. Then, at a certain point, they became afraid that they’d gone too far afield from the last job, the one that the client had admired. Each step of the way involved torture and self-doubt, the smallest thing that went wrong became a major crisis. “Though they usually made something even more imaginative and unusual from their mistakes,” said Quinn. “I wish I could show you; their work was so clever and funny—if you think cabinets can be funny—little stowaway places for lids and bowls. Handles in the shapes of bones and pomegranates. One in-and-out china cupboard they built, you filled the shelves from the kitchen and pulled the plates out in the dining room—just a lovely, one-of-a-kind thing … but the amount of moaning and self-doubt, and the naps!”

  Whenever something went wrong, his father hit the ground snoring. The owner would come home and there was his carpenter, asleep on the kitchen rug. Whether it was a famous producer’s private theater on Mulholland Drive or some housewife in Sparkville having Sears cabinets installed, his father went at the job like it was the Sistine Chapel. “Me, I go in, build the kitchen, the home theater, the bookshelf, and move on,” Quinn said. “Someone in this family had to get the job done. They got the talent, I got the clipboard.”

  “But you were picked to make the Frank Lloyd Wright doors.”

  “I picked me. Pop and Caleb’d still be dithering over those damn pieces of glass. I’m a good woodworker, but Pop and Caleb, they’re gifted—in music, too. They each learned like ten instruments. I’m the only Morrow who doesn’t play at all.”

  His father played guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and banjo interchangeably. The bass, too, upright, and guitarrón. One night, just four years ago, all the instruments had been claimed, so Lew played percussion on a little plastic ice chest. At his memorial, Quinn said, a good half-dozen people talked about that—the night Lew played the Igloo.

  * * *

  She showed Quinn the back road to Globe Rock. On their way home, they bought a to-go cup of bourbon from the lodge and shared it while walking.

  Quinn swished the liquor around in his mouth. His dad, he said, had loved bourbon. Not that Lew was a big drinker. Except when he gambled. Then all bets were off. Once Lew started gambling, Quinn said, he went headlong into devastation. He’d lose tools, cars, wedding rings, his clothes. He’d get into fights, black out, get sick, wake up in the middle of nowhere in boxers. He owed money everywhere, to everyone.

  “I feel the tug when I play poker,” said Quinn. “To throw it all away. But Pop—he was gone from the first shuffle. He bet on anything, gambled every penny that came his way. He had this stamina. He could ignore bills for months and brush off creditors like gnats.” The gas, the electricity, the water, the phone were routinely disconnected. When Quinn was eleven, Lew parked the family on Noah Mountain and took disaster-relief jobs out of state. At first, his checks came home. Then they stopped, and for most of that year, the family lived on charity, until he came back with a big sack of cash, and they moved down south again.

  “How did your mom put up with that?” Cress asked.

  “Pop was terribly charming, and clever. You would have loved him. Everyone did. And talented? Man.”

  His father had once built a library with carved wood paneling for Armand Hammer. He’d made the plain wood benches at the Arcadia arboretum and vitrines for the Getty. His whittling won prizes at the state fair. “But he had trouble finishing. He lost interest once the artistic decisions were made. He’d get within days, sometimes even hours, of being done—and vanish. Caleb and I called him the unfinish carpenter. What is that, not finishing?”

  “You’re asking me?” said Cress.

  “Your case is different. In contracting, you don’t finish, you don’t get paid,” Quinn said. “The last checks are what you take home free and clear.”

  As soon as he was old enough, thirteen, fourteen, whenever his father started to fade on a job, Quinn stepped in; he filled nail holes. Slapped on the last coat of varnish. Worked his way down the punch list. Swept. Coiled extension cords. Phoned inspectors. Wrote invoices,
whatever it took.

  “God, I wonder if there’s an equivalent for you in economics,” said Cress. “I could really use a finisher.”

  * * *

  Out by Globe Rock, they came upon Jakey’s green truck parked off the fire road in a stand of elderberries. The cab was empty, the windows half down. Around the next curve, there was Jakey having sex with a woman against a ponderosa pine, his usual checked cook’s pants hobbling his ankles. Those strong solid legs shone pale pink in the late-afternoon light. His partner’s eyes were shut, her straight, faded-blond hair familiar. Why, that was Ondine Streeter! Cress grabbed Quinn’s arm, spun them around. “We don’t need to see that.”

  Redness crept up Quinn’s neck, flared over his jaw.

  “You disapprove,” Cress said.

  “Who says I disapprove?”

  “Aren’t you the mated-for-life school?”

  “I don’t know about any school,” he said. “And it doesn’t mean I like it.”

  She wondered what, exactly, he didn’t like: adultery in general, this adultery in particular, or being mated for life. She was too shy to ask.

  * * *

  “We had our first fire of the season tonight!” Tillie said. “We did a raclette-like thing using kebab skewers and a cookie sheet. We really missed you, everyone sitting on the rug, drinking rosé like old times.”

  “You should come up here,” Cress said, sounding like her mother. “I have fires all day long.”

  But Tillie had her job now at the little newspaper, pasting up ads and contributing the occasional drawing and cartoon. And Edgar worked twelve-hour days at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They wouldn’t have vacation time until December. “We’ll come for a few days between Christmas and New Year,” Tillie said. “A bunch of us. You wait.”

  * * *

  “Why don’t I like Candy?” Quinn took off his battered leather hat and eyed its unevenly curled brim. “Let me count the ways.”

  They were sitting on the bench on the Bauers’ cabin porch, the meadow spread out before them. The pale afternoon light was going fast. The deep, narrow channel of water made its satisfying low chortle. Small birds, black in silhouette, swooped past.

  His mother, Quinn said, somehow had set aside a few old family valuables: some guns, Lew’s whittling collection, a steel box with two gold pocket watches, rings, gold coins from the 1870s, a locket holding a dark curl. After the memorial service, his mom gave everything to Quinn to distribute or keep, as he saw fit.

  They were all living up on the Noah Mountain property then. Quinn and his family were in a double-wide trailer—he was about to build a new house for them on the land. Caleb and his family had just come back from South Carolina and were living with the parents until they saved enough to rent a place of their own.

  Quinn brought out the heirlooms and went through them with Caleb. The women came in and out; Candy examined every item. For starters, the brothers each took a gun and divided the coins, then decided the rest could wait. A month later, Quinn took out a garnet ring and gave it to Annette for her seventeenth birthday. Apparently Candy had set her sights on the ring; when she saw it on Annette’s hand, she blew up. “She accused me of hogging the booty,” Quinn told Cress. “Said I was cheating Caleb out of his birthright.”

  “Birthright! That sounds so biblical.”

  “Oh, she’s biblical, all right. Born again and more righteous than God.”

  Quinn refused to take the ring away from Annette. Voices were raised. Things were said that should never be said. Quinn had bought a little house in Sparkville at auction thinking to fix it up, flip it, or rent it out. At that moment, it was sitting empty, so overnight, he moved his family there.

  Not long afterward, Caleb moved his family to a small rental in Sawyer.

  “Mom wouldn’t put up with Candy, either,” said Quinn.

  “You guys all seem on good terms now,” said Cress.

  Good enough. But they hadn’t spoken for six months, during which time Quinn felt as if he’d lost both father and brother. “And there was no damn work to take my mind off what happened.”

  When Rick phoned with several large jobs, Quinn called Caleb.

  “Caleb must have appreciated that,” Cress said.

  “Not sure anybody appreciates anything. They’re too busy worrying about their share of the crap. Meanwhile, who scraped the hair and brains and eye jelly off the barn walls? Who shoveled out a ton of bloody mud? You know the first person who noticed I was hurting?”

  “I’m sure Sylvia … Or no—your little boy?”

  Sylvia? Sylvia had carried on worse than anybody. Couldn’t sleep. Scared to death of death. Wept, moped, got the kids all wrought up. Quinn had to calm everyone down. No. Quinn pressed his finger to Cress’s forearm. “You, Cress. In all the months since. You reached out. You held my arm.” His hand closed around her wrist.

  “Anybody would’ve,” she said. “You were so obviously in pain.”

  “Not anybody. Nobody. Until you,” he said.

  The meadow simmered in the dusk, the air busy with birds. Cress wanted to hold him, soothe him, kiss his face. She didn’t dare. He released her wrist. They stood and walked cross-country into the development. Before he split off from her by the Rodinger place, he said, “I talked too much back there.”

  “Not too much.”

  “But you’re such a good listener. Maybe too good.”

  Back at the A-frame, Cress felt the impress of his hand around her wrist. She was all riled up. Oh, he was terribly appealing, or his sadness was. But he was married, mated for life, and to a woman far more beautiful than she.

  * * *

  Cress got going on her second chapter on a chilly overcast day—in that even, soft light, all the hours were the same. She worked until she couldn’t see clearly, and then she saw why: dusk. She had forgotten to eat and walk. Months had gone by since she’d been so absorbed in writing that the clock hands twirled. These were the days that made work worthwhile, when concentration was absolute and time evaporated. You couldn’t make it happen. You just got lucky. Something sucked you in, and held you, and you leaped over the hours, and dense, boxy paragraphs accumulated on the page.

  The fire had gone out. She was cold. Snow, in small, glinting splinters, sifted down outside. She carried in logs, hatcheted a wedge of fatwood into kindling, crumpled newspaper. The resinous pine ignited, its heat instant, intense. She lowered the blinds, scrambled two eggs, and ate them, soft and buttery, from the pan. A good day’s work transformed everything—how had she forgotten this? Snow now fell thickly. Finally, she was writing. Could she sustain it? Would the clock hands twirl tomorrow? The fire snapped cheerfully. Another sound bled through, footsteps crunching on the porch. There, in sideways-blowing flakes, Quinn stamped his boots.

  A clench of fear. Then she walked over and opened the sliding glass door.

  “Don’t have much time. But I had to see you today.”

  Frost rimed his beard. He shouldered out of his coat, hung that and his chewed-up hat on hooks. His hair was flattened, and creased where the band sat. She almost said, Nice hat-do, but his glower cut her short. She poured one bourbon and they sat on the wicker love seat, arms touching—So emotional! Cress thought—and passed the plastic cup back and forth, the room dark except for the lively fire.

  “One other thing.” He set the whiskey on the floor under the seat. “I wasn’t ever going to tell anyone. But now I want you to know, so someone does.

  “The day he died,” Quinn said, “Pop borrowed my truck—his was in the shop—and he went into Sawyer. He had coffee at the café and mailed a letter—to me, it turned out. This was last December. December 14. He came back up with a bag of screws, a saw blade. In the middle of the afternoon, Mom knocked on our door and said, ‘Lew just took his deer rifle to the barn,’ and that very moment, we heard the shot.

  “Merry Christmas, everyone.

  “I hope nobody has to see what I did. Their own father. It never leaves your
mind. I covered him up, called the cops, the mortuary. After all that, I scrubbed the walls and windows, shoveled out the floor. I wouldn’t let anyone else in. I didn’t want those pictures in their heads.”

  The letter addressed to Quinn arrived the next day. A balloon payment, his father wrote, was due on the Noah Mountain property December 31. He had tried every bank and loan shark, but he couldn’t raise a cent, even at 25 percent. So he’d found a card game in Bakersfield. He was up 10K at first. But then he went in the hole. Lost his tools and his truck—it was not, as he’d said, in the shop.

  Enclosed with the letter were three IOUs totaling more than thirty thousand dollars. This was on top of the balloon.

  Quinn gulped the whiskey, handed Cress the empty plastic cup. She refilled it and returned. “What did you do?”

  “I refi-ed the little Sparkville house at 19 percent,” he said. “Nineteen percent! Thank you, Paul Volker. I took that and all the money I’d saved to build our new place to pay off the balloon, the 30K, and about ten more bills that come in. I didn’t want them going after my mom.”

  Cress put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his.

  “I’d have done it all, anyway,” Quinn said, “if Pop’d just told me earlier what was going on. That’s what gets me. If he’d of said something, he’d be alive today, all debts paid.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Quinn threaded his fingers through hers. Nobody knew about the letter, he said, or what it cost to get the land out of hock. His mom knew the property was in danger, but not to what extent. Sylvia had signed the mortgage papers on their little house without reading them. “I did what had to be done, only to hear I’m hogging the heirlooms.”

  Cress was silent. In her family, every cent spent on a person was trumpeted, with due gratitude extracted—often many times over.

  “I know, I know,” Quinn said. “No good deed goes unpunished.” He bounced their interlaced fingers on his knee. “So now you know.”

  She was about to say, You should tell your family what you did! when his face loomed, dark and cramped with pain. With his hat-flattened hair, he looked big-eyed and wet, as if he’d just surfaced in a dark lake.