Fever Tree

by Tim Applegate

  As if he had spent the last three days preparing for Dieter’s return, Frank promptly closed the front door, put up his Out to Lunch sign, and over Mason jars of sweet southern tea commenced to describe, in spurts of homespun eloquence that would have done his twin James Dickey proud, the story of his life. Leaning back in a cozy upholstered loveseat, Dieter grew pleasantly drowsy in the afternoon heat while visualizing, like a dream, every minute of Frank’s nostalgic narrative. Frank, the child bobber fishing the Apalachicola River or racing through the piney woods half naked, part animal, part boy. High school football and Frank’s first genuine crush, a cheerleader named, appropriately enough, since she had yet to be deflowered, Daisy. Daisy was a true southern belle from a proud and dignified local family who, when Frank sailed off to Europe to fight the Battle of the Bulge, wed, to her parents’ consternation, a bookie she had met on a day trip to Pensacola Beach. Unfortunately, on their honeymoon the bookie had escorted his bride out to his favorite racetrack where he squandered her father’s considerable dowry by the end of the seventh race. It was an auspicious beginning to a sacred union that would last, Frank reported, all of two months, at the end of which Daisy returned, in tears, to Crooked River, admitting her monstrous mistake.

  When Frank came home from the war, the now disgraced former cheerleader was bound and determined to snare him once again, but alas, she was a few weeks too late. For Frank had already promised his hand to Janice Rutledge, a nurse he had met at a military hospital in Louisville while recuperating from a series of shrapnel wounds to his torso and upper thighs. In a modest ceremony at a chapel on the outskirts of town, Frank and Janice were married, and remained so to this day. A fine woman, Frank gushed, my soul mate. But then his voice grew quiet and wistful as he confessed how on certain autumn evenings during football season, despite his abiding love for his wife, he still pined for Daisy, recalling in a glow of ardor the cheerleader’s magnificent flips and spontaneous handstands. Because the first cut, he practically sang, is the deepest, even though Dieter already knew that, in spades.

  Finally running out of breath, Frank shuffled into the back room for two more jars of tea, and when he returned Dieter stood up and looked him square in the eye.

  I’ll refinish that rocker for you, sir.

  What’s that, son?

  That rocker, the one in the workroom, I’ll refinish it for you.

  Frank’s expression was indecipherable. Confusion? Doubt? Dismay? He’s wondering, Dieter concluded, what my angle is. He’s wondering if I’m a thief.

  Frank set his jar of tea down and stared into the middle distance, as if considering Dieter’s offer. But his shrug was a grimace of pain. Trouble is, well I hate to admit this, son, but the trouble’s money. I’m kinda strapped right now.

  But that’s not a problem, Dieter assured him. ‘Cause I don’t wanna be paid.

  Say what?

  Paid. I don’t wanna be paid.

  Frank guffawed. Clearly the boy was having him on. Now listen, son, don’t go talkin’ crazy like that, you hear? I don’t wanna be paid, he scoffed.

  But I don’t! Look, I’m gonna be in town for awhile and I need something to keep me occupied. I’ll come around now and then and do a little work. Refinish that rocker for you, or this tea cart here. It’ll keep me busy. It’ll give me something to do. When Frank’s dark, skeptical expression didn’t change, Dieter barged on. Fine. You can buy my lunch, then. When I’m finished, you can buy my lunch.

  Your lunch?

  Yeah, my lunch. We can eat here in the store or we can go out. Whatever suits you.

  He’s ready to cave, Dieter thought. He’s ready to give in. One more push and he’ll topple. I’m gonna be straight with you, Frank, okay? When I was a kid my dad taught me woodworking. He had this amazing shop, you know? All the tools, even a lathe. And one of the things he taught me was how to refinish antiques. It’s something I’m good at, and something I like to do. It relaxes me.

  Frank nodded, impressed. The kid didn’t say much but when he did, he came right to the point. Frank liked that. He foresaw lazy afternoons in the back room waxing poetic about his wartime experiences in Belgium while Dieter the craftsman sanded away. The boy was a hell of a listener. Frank liked that, too.

  And so a bargain was struck, and after a preliminary inspection of the workroom, Dieter presented Frank a list of supplies he would need for the first job: mineral spirits, a box of rags, a gallon of lacquer.

  Frank held out a hand. Never look a gift horse, his father used to say, in the mouth.

  You got yourself a deal, son.

  8

  The summer she turned nineteen, Maggie’s younger sister Lureen met a private pilot from Wichita Falls whose license had recently been revoked when he blacked out from a near overdose of psylocibin somewhere over the pristine woodlands north of Jasper, B.C. At a raucous party in Panama City, the pilot had coaxed Lureen back to his apartment overlooking an undistinguished stretch of white beach, where, on a moonlit balcony, he offered her a vodka martini before describing, in precise aural detail, the sound a Cessna 150 makes shearing off the crowns of Douglas firs. The plane was toast but somehow the pilot survived, and he had the scars to prove it, he told Lureen, unzipping his pants.

  And thus began a torrid affair, afternoon sex followed by exuberant episodes of chemical abuse: mescaline, speed, a handful of peyote buttons, and when things got a little too edgy, various tranquilizers Lureen couldn’t remember the names of, washed down with shakers of the pilot’s incomparable martinis. The sex was divine, and there were times when Maggie’s sister thought this might be love. But she was addled, too, and didn’t trust her judgment. Still, it was a strange and exhilarating interlude, right up until the turbulent evening the pilot invited two fellow flyboys from a nearby airbase back to his apartment where something happened that Lureen, to this day, was unwilling to talk about, though she hinted, darkly, the boyfriend’s consent. Furious, she drove home to Crooked River in a manic midnight rainstorm and never saw the pilot again.

  A few months later, a reformed and no longer disconsolate Lureen swore off booze and drugs altogether, and at the end of one of her weekly AA meetings met the man of her dreams. Hi there, the big man boomed, my name’s Charley and I’m an alcoholic and I think you, little lady, are hot!

  After an extravagant marital ceremony befitting the son of the local owner and editor of the Crooked River News, the young couple proceeded to settle down, buying a house near the center of town and producing a healthy baby boy who would be raised, she assured her sister, in the kind of drug-free, booze-free, God-fearing household she wished she had been raised in also, mindlessly dissing poor Mom and Dad. For not only had Charley and Lureen kicked, in tandem, their terrible habits, they had found Jesus to boot.

  You should think about it, she advised Maggie. I mean let’s face it, hon, you’re not getting any younger.

  And you, Maggie thought, are? They were sitting in the Delta Café at the end of Maggie’s shift at Winn-Dixie, drinking coffee and sharing, with an eye on their figures, a slice of coconut cream pie.

  I have thought about it.

  Lureen lifted a brow. And?

  And I don’t know how to swing it, okay? It’s a lotta cash.

  Her sister shrugged. Ask Dad.

  Maggie refused to respond. She stabbed at the pie, piercing the meringue. Ask Dad was Lureen’s stock answer to everything, as if the parental pipeline was never going to run dry. On the other hand, the idea of taking classes at the local community college held genuine appeal. She could learn a trade, become a nurse, or a CPA. How hard could that be, doing other people’s taxes? In any event, anything, she figured, was better than what she was doing now. Because Winn Dixie was the pits. The shifts were long and redundant, the pay skimpy, and if that weren’t enough, the new manager, Cain the Pain, was getting increasingly frisky. Just that morning, in fact, the Pain had pinched
her ass again and Maggie was still steamed.

  Listen, hon, there’s a corn roast down at the church this Friday. Why don’t you stop by?

  I gotta go, Lureen.

  Seriously, drop by.

  I’ll think about it, okay?

  You do that.

  On the way home Maggie picked up a bucket of fried chicken because she was too exhausted to cook. Her shift had been brutal, a steady flow of impatient shoppers stocking up for the annual football game between Florida and Florida State. It was the biggest weekend of the year with tailgate parties launched at the crack of dawn going full bore until kickoff that evening; cases of beer, boxes of brats, industrial-sized jars of pickles. By the end of her shift Maggie’s feet ached like the dickens and her concentration was shot. With one eye on the clock above the bakery, she accidentally rang up a zucchini as a cucumber and then somehow kept her cool (on the surface at least; inside, she was boiling) when the hawk-eyed customer—one of those coupon-shopping harridans who never missed a trick—threw a hissy fit about the discrepancy on her bill. Thirty-three cents.

  As she pulled into the cabin’s gravel drive, she saw Colt and Hunter out at the end of the dock fishing for the perch that sometimes gathered at dusk around the pilings, and her heart sank. There was something timeless, something painterly about the posture of father and son standing side by side like that casting their lines into the pond. Dreading what now seemed inevitable, she saw Hunter’s tear-stained face when she told him that Colt would no longer be living there. He would be devastated. For despite Colt’s considerable shortcomings, Hunter loved his father even more, Maggie suspected, than he loved her. Because the mother represented discipline—somebody had to—while Colt, with his flashy cars and shiny new golf clubs and cherry-red canoe, represented fun.

  She called out the boy’s name and lifted up the bucket of chicken and Colt turned too, his lips curling into the lazy smile that used to make Maggie’s blood race. Catching sight of Colonel Sander’s familiar face, Hunter quickly reeled in his line. At the end of his stringer dangled a single pale perch.

  Famished, Colt tore open the bucket and grabbed a still-warm leg while Maggie dished out the coleslaw, mashed potatoes, one golden biscuit each. She asked Hunter about school—he had started kindergarten that year—and then leaned back in her chair, bone weary, to listen to a typically convoluted tale about one Timmy Norton, who refused to take a nap today and kept making funny sounds so the other kids couldn’t sleep either.

  What kind of sounds?

  Moos, like a cow. And beep beeps.

  Beep beeps?

  The roadrunner!

  While Hunter rattled on about Timmy Norton, Maggie looked over at Colt, considering the possibility of a truce. Two nights ago she had reluctantly allowed him back into their bed although she adamantly refused his subsequent advances. He didn’t complain but she knew he was frustrated and that sooner or later, if she didn’t give in, he would go looking for it elsewhere. And for someone who looked like Colt, it wouldn’t be hard to find.

  After dinner, Colt helped Maggie load the dishwasher and wipe down the counters and stuff the empty containers into the trash. He suggested tea, and put the pot on. And then, as Maggie quietly sipped her mug of chamomile at the kitchen table, he reached out to stroke her arm.

  Instinctively she recoiled, yanking the arm away.

  Christ, Maggie. He bit his lower lip, stifling an urge to fling his mug of chamomile at the far wall.

  I’m not ready yet.

  Look, it’s not like I killed him you know. Besides, I was just trying to protect your honor.

  She couldn’t believe her ears. My honor?

  You shoulda heard what he said about you!

  You gotta get away from that place.

  We need the money.

  You could find something else.

  Like what?

  Like anything!

  He slammed his mug down. It was hopeless. You had to pay for your sins but for how long? Without another word he stomped outside and marched over to the dock and stared, in black anger, out at the water. A blue heron was preening in the shallows and the light was falling fast, turning the pond pewter. Soon the stars would blink on and the moon would lift up over the treetops and the perch would nose the surface again, feeding on gnats. He thought about taking the canoe out but decided he was too riled up.

  It just wasn’t fair, the way she was treating him. God knows he had screwed up before—what about the night he plowed the Camaro into her new flowerbed?—and yet he couldn’t remember Maggie ever being this reluctant to let something go. Shivering at the thought he wondered, not for the first time, if she was considering calling it quits. What if he came home one day and found his belongings in a pile on the back lawn? Where in the world would he go? And how would they explain it to Hunter?

  He picked up a small rock and flung it across the pond. Fuck it. If she didn’t want to spend time with him tonight he’d find somebody who did, even if it was only Gene, the bartender down at the Blue Moon. They were old pals, drinking buddies, former high school teammates who, over the years, had learned to take solace in each other’s considerable lack of achievements.

  That was it. He’d go down to the Blue Moon and knock back a few cold ones and bullshit with good old Gene. What was the point, after all, of hanging around here?

  9

  Gene drew a pint of beer from the tap and placed it in front of Dieter.

  So what’s the haps, D? Whatcha been up to, man?

  Refinishing a rocking chair.

  A what?

  A rocking chair. For Frank Paterson.

  No shit. Over at the antiques store?

  That’s the one.

  Gene wiped the counter with his bar rag, frowning. As a rule, the Blue Moon’s customers were easy enough to read because drinkers liked to tell bartenders their life stories, no matter how mundane those stories might be. But Dieter was a different breed, the kind of gambler who plays his cards so close to the vest you never get a peek at them. He was invariably pleasant—a genial drinker—but if you pushed too hard, he clammed up.

  Paterson’s huh. So you workin’ there now or what?

  Nah, not really. I just like to refinish antiques. Gives me something to do.

  Frowning again—something to do?—Gene grabbed the remote control and switched on a TV mounted next to a dusty shelf of imported liqueurs no one seemed to order anymore. On the screen, two middle-aged men with perfectly coiffed hair were discussing quarterback options, the wishbone offense, and something called a four-three. Dieter had no idea what the two men were talking about, but he didn’t let on.

  You like football, D?

  ‘Course I do. Who doesn’t?

  Atta boy.

  So who’s playing tonight?

  The Eagles. The Eagles and the Broncos. No, wait a minute. Gene looked up at the screen. Not the Broncos, the Rams. The Eagles and the Rams. Dieter smiled at the bizarre nomenclature. Eagles, Broncos, Rams. If Jen were here, she’d gently mock the bartender, careful not to give offense, by asking about the Orangutans, or the Jaguars. She’d say, What about the Jaguars, Gene? Is there a team called the Jaguars?

  One afternoon Jen and Dieter were lying in twin hammocks strung between palm trees overlooking the beach in Quintana Roo when it came to him, like a revelation. He sat up grinning, shook Jen’s shoulder to rouse her, and said Jaguar Moon.

  Jen rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. What’s that?

  Jaguar Moon.

  She rolled the words over in her mind, trying them on. Then she sat up too. Well that’s it then, isn’t it.

  Is it?

  It’s perfect!

  Later that night they split a tab of sunshine acid and Jennifer fell apart. Crouched in a corner of his room like a trapped, terrified animal, she reminded Dieter of the madwoman
in that play he had seen the year before in Bloomington, the one about Jean Paul Marat and the inmates at the asylum in Charenton. He tried to distract her by reciting some poems by Frost, and when that didn’t work, by pouring her a cold cerveza, which didn’t work either; she took a tiny sip of the beer and winced, her throat still dry. Finally he talked her into a walk on the beach. After supper Jen liked to hike with Dieter down the white sands, listening to the murmur of the surf or pointing out, high above the water, the Southern Cross. But not tonight. Tonight she was terribly frightened, and Dieter was distraught. The acid was too potent, a legendary high that could go haywire at any moment, and apparently had. At the very least the tab should have been quartered, not halved. Why had he split it with her?

  Glued to the images on the screen, Gene slapped a hand down on the bar in frustration. Then he addressed the man in the striped shirt, as if talking to someone on TV was perfectly normal. C’mon, ref, throw the fuckin’ flag! He was holding him! Didja see that shit, D? Didja?

  Thorazine could bring you down from a bad trip but Dieter didn’t have any. And to complicate matters, the half tab he had swallowed kicked in too, with a vengeance. He stumbled down the beach shivering from sudden chills though it must have been eighty. A bloated moon hovered over the sea and for some reason Dieter thought it was about to explode. Meanwhile Jen squeezed his hand in trepidation, as if they were crossing a minefield. But it isn’t a minefield, he thought randomly, it’s a beach. Then again, if the moon explodes, gravity will fail and we’ll all go sailing off into the cosmos.

  Gene’s face was red now and he was shouting at the screen. C’mon, chump, tackle the fuckin’ guy! Dieter glanced around the bar at the six or seven other drinkers whose rapt faces, like Gene’s, were bathed in the television’s blue light. Mimicking the bartender they, too, were talking to the TV.

  If you didn’t have Thorazine you had to sweat it out. Back in Dieter’s room Jen curled into a fetal position, embracing the floor. Dieter wedged a pillow under her head and asked if he could get her anything else but she didn’t reply, too high to talk now. So he curled into a fetal position also, on the futon. Outside the wind picked up, rattling the windows, and a few minutes later it began to rain. Dieter shivered again, pinned to the futon by the torque of the drug. Gruesome images raced through his mind, the sacrificial altar at Chichen Itza, a dead dog on the side of a road, his grandfather’s tombstone. He felt his body disconnect and float toward the ceiling until there were two of him, the one on the futon apparently asleep and the one in the rafters gazing down at Jen curled on the floor humming a lullaby a mother might sing to a child who had just woken from an ominous dream.