“God.” Bobby propped himself on an elbow. “What time is it?”
“Three thirty,” Sara said.
From outside, at some distance, came, “... this is number four and I’m knocking on her door. Roll ... Hey! Anybody home? Oh geesh. Oh geesh!” Then quiet.
Bobby did not want to get up. He’d worked till one on the model greenhouse, creating openable bottom windows and roof vents—important in the summer for cooling. Sara, exhausted from a sleepless night with Noah, who had had a bad reaction to his second DPT shot, didn’t want to get up either.
Josh began barking. From outside, closer: “This is number seven and I’m at her little heaven. Roll me ... Son of a bitch! Wapishkis! Is thish Wapishkises? Thish is Ivan ... Oh Geesh! Ivanushka ... Ha! Hahaha! Ivanushka Durrag ... Durreg ... Oh geesh! Ha! Durachok. I need ... Ha! help.”
In his bunker cubicle Tony sat on the edge of his cot. He was angry, frightened. He did not turn on a light, did not flick on his flashlight. For months, at night, since shortly after those weekends in March when Linda had come, he had been expanding and reinforcing his bunker. He was not sure why. It was as if he were being directed by an outer force. Perhaps, he thought, it was because of all the nuclear freeze material he’d been reading. A bunker would be necessary to protect first against the nuclear storms the war would unleash, then the initial fallout, then the roving bands of starving survivors.
Tony had first pushed the back wall of his cubicle back three feet. Then he’d erected shoring and a false wall. Nightly, behind the false wall, he bored away at his three-foot-by-two-foot tunnel—first level with the tractor garage floor, then angling downward and back, under the barn foundation, toward the east ridge. There he’d begun to carve a room. “Fuck,” he’d muttered to himself in the throes of digging and shoring, “any asshole can see they’re on a course to fuck it all up. For good. Motherfuckers don’t give a flying leap. They got their bunkers. Kremlin’s building an ABM system and their bunker’s twenty stories deep. Plan, Tony had thought. I’ll show him a master plan. Tony tried to make two feet each night, picking, shoveling, chipping, at times using the big Milwaukee drill with a three-quarter-inch masonry bit.
On his cot Tony heard the commotion, the singing. He heard Josh bark. He was unarmed. His thoughts were barely coherent. It would be easy to slip out, to ambush. He needed to continue the work on his bunker. He could go down the tunnel, bring out another bucket of chippings, load it into the tractor cart. It had been easy dumping the chippings each morning before anyone rose, turning some of it in with the high meadow, some in with the lower thirty-six, using some out along the drive to reinforce the sides where the danger of washout was greatest. And Wapinski didn’t care, didn’t notice. He was completely absorbed with his Vertsborg project. The only real problem was the tunnel had again set off Tony’s dreams, nightmares. Nightly, after finally falling asleep, exhausted from farm chores during the day and chipping and shoring at night, Tony woke to the smell and feel of the rotted corpse breaking, being dragged over him. He did not wake in terror. His heart would not be pounding, preparing him to flee, but thumping, glubbing, pushing thick volumes, a slave, a resigned, depressed, manic indentured servant.
But this! This noise! This singing! In the dark Tony tied his boots, edged to the thick door he’d made, ostensibly to keep out winter cold. Quietly he unbarred the door, opened it on well-greased hinges, shut and locked it behind him. His cubicle had been stuffy, airless. The bunker room at the end of the tunnel would be worse. Once it was full size, he told himself, he’d begin work on ventilation. Maybe even a well. From the tractor garage he peered into the night.
“... Durreg ... Oh geesh! Ha! Durachok. I need ... Ha! ... help. Geesh. Oh God, I’m drunk. Wapishkish? Oh God. Drunker en a fly in a vodka vat.”
Dale Ivanov was rotund, chalk-white, flabby. He had pale blue eyes, long, wild blond hair, a brushlike mustache, perfect but unbrushed teeth. In the kitchen, before he said two sentences, with Josh sniffing his leg, and Bobby excitedly thinking he could help, Ivanov blew lunch onto the kitchen table and chairs, onto Bobby’s legs, onto the floor, splattering walls and cabinets as high as Bobby’s shoulders. Then Ivanov whirled. Bobby reached out to stabilize him, hesitated, reached but missed, and Ivanov collapsed out cold amid the puke and stench.
“Bobby,” Sara called, hushed. “Is everything okay?”
Muted. “Um-hmm.”
“Did he—”
“Um-hmm. I’ll clean it up. Go back to bed.”
“I can help.”
“Don’t—” Bobby began. His diaphragm lurched, he caught the motion, stifled it. “Don’t come down, Sar. I got it.”
It was dawn before Bobby finished. He’d swabbed and disinfected the entire room, he’d cleaned Dale Ivanov and had laid his pallid flaccid body on a blanket on the floor. Bobby’d bagged the towels he’d used for cleaning and put the bag out back. Then he’d gone up and showered and scrubbed himself raw, then returned and made the day’s first pot of coffee.
“What died?” Tony looked at the body. “Oh.”
“Dale Ivanov.” Bobby looked at the blob of a man on the floor. “Our first new vet.”
“Um,” Tony uttered somberly.
Then he looked at Bobby and let out a tiny chuckle. Bobby stifled a laugh. Tony rocked back, laughs forcing themselves out in bursts between tight lips. Bobby hunched, hands on his thighs, laughing loudly. “You shoulda seen im”—now both were laughing uproariously—“he wobbled ...” (God, it was so good to laugh) “... said something ... then ... gooooshh! And BAM!” Bobby flopped his arm over like a tree falling. “I haven’t seen anything that disgusting since Granpa found me in a gutter downtown....”
A week passed. Ivanov was set up in a corner of the main floor of the big barn. He, like Tony, came into the house for his meals. At first he was contrite, quiet. “Man, I’ll never forget this,” he said to Bobby over dinner. “You really got me out of a jam. Thanks, Man. Thanks.”
Daily he became more talkative. In the house, before Sara, even before Bobby, he was polite, almost formal. But in the barn, in the tractor garage, he was brash. “Man,” he spouted at Tony, “I don’t know who done it. Man, I was down there at the White Pines. Behind it, you know?”
“Yeah.” Tony was suspicious.
“There was this great big fat broad down there. A real idiot. Shee-it, I was already drunk. I didn’t give a shit what she looked like. I just wanted to get my dick wet. That’s the thing, right?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. He didn’t like Ivanov, didn’t like and didn’t understand Ivanov’s self-important, self-assured manner.
“Man, I’m fuckin away on this fat bitch. Jessie somethin. I don’t know if she even knows her name.”
“Big strong girl?” Tony asked.
“Oh Man, was she strong. Man, it took all my strength to pin her. Oh, but, Man, she loved it. She’s moanin’n groanin’n buckin like a racehorse. I’m fuckin my brains out. And somebody musta called the cops. Man, I grabbed my bottle and cut a chogie. There’s like three bubble-tops zoomin in, Man. Lights. Sirens. Shee-it. I didn’t do nothin illegal. I humped up through them nigger houses. Man, I walked right through that nigger section. I’m scared, Man, but I’m drunk. I got my bottle by the neck, ya know?”
“Um.”
“I figure any nigger try en butt-fuck this dude, he’s in for a world a hurt. Right?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“You ken fuckin bet on it, Man. Next thing I know, Man, I’m so fuckin far out in the boonies ... I’m singing my fool head off. And I remember ... Shit, I don’t know. Ha! I don’t remember. Somehow, next thing I know is I’m sleepin it off on the floor in there and I open my eyes and some gorgeous dome’s washin dishes at the sink and her tight little ass is packed in these jeans wigglin and twitchin ... What’s the matter, Man?”
No response.
“Tell me you wouldn’t fuck her.”
“I’m goin up the north end of the pond,” Tony said. �
�Comin?”
“Uh ...” Ivanov shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, I’m just kiddin, Man.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. Then, “I need to figure out a terracing plan. For grapes. See if we can bench it without retaining walls. Just cut it. You comin?”
“Ah ... ah ... Nah. Bobby said I could work in the barn.”
“Um.”
“Hey. You ever fuck anybody in your bunker?”
“I”—Tony stared at Ivanov—“fuck over anybody who tries to go in.”
“Vertsborg. Jasper Vertsborg,” Bobby said into the phone.
“There’s no one in the school,” the female voice said.
“Yes,” Bobby said. “I know. He’s the new school psychologist they’ve hired. Doesn’t he have to come in during the summer? Set up his office, or something?”
“I don’t know anything about a Doctor Vertsborg,” the woman said. “Perhaps you should try the Board of Ed number.”
Bobby was exasperated. He’d been trying for four days to reach the Vertsborgs. At first he’d thought nothing of the no-answer at their home phone. By the third day he’d become concerned. He had added a heat-loss analysis to his presentation and he wanted to explain all the facets and options he’d produced. He drove on to Old Pete’s Barbershop. Work had begun on the store, but no one was about. To be so ready, with such a superior package to present, and to be in limbo was maddening. He’d been able to sell Aaron Holtz on a four-collector array for the roof of the White Pines Inn. That’d be something. It would preheat the well water for the dishwasher so the electric elements wouldn’t have to bring the temperature up from its constant fifty-one degrees. But it was a tiny job compared to the Vertsborg project. Bobby wanted them both. And he wanted to put Dale Ivanov to work.
That night at dinner Ivanov said, “I’d be real happy to help. But I don’t want to handle the glass.”
“That’s not a problem,” Bobby said.
“I’m just afraid for my hands,” Ivanov said.
Tony looked at Dale’s pudgy hands, at the stubby fingers. “What’s with your hands?” he asked.
Ivanov held his hands before his face, palms toward him, fingers wriggling. “These are my ticket to fame and fortune.” He smiled broadly, resumed eating, waited, wanting someone to ask. Then, seeing Sara eyeing him approvingly, he went on. “I’m a musician. I’m probably the best bass guitarist in the East.”
“Oh!” Sara was thrilled. “Can we hear you play?”
“See, that’s the problem,” Ivanov said. “When I got in some trouble last time I hocked me git-ar.” He laughed. “I need six hundred bucks to get it out.”
“Six hundred!” Tony straightened. “For a guitar?”
“Oh, it’s probably worth five times that,” Ivanov said. “I was with the group that opened for The Stones.”
“Is that right!” Bobby was as enthralled as Sara.
“That’s why I was drinkin that night,” Ivanov said. He hung his head in repentance. “If I hadn’t found a brother vet ... Man, I’ll never forget what you did for me.”
“Aw geez, Dale,” Bobby said. “Really. Don’t think about it. You’d have done it if it’d been one of us.”
Tony coughed. Slid his chair back, coughed into his fist. He stood, turned away, turned back, indicated something had gone down the wrong way, turned away again.
“Tony, you all right?” Dale sprung to his feet.
Tony waved him back. He slapped his chest. Took a short breath, cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he rasped out. His eyes watered.
“... when I’m on my feet again ...” Ivanov was saying.
Another week passed. Bobby convinced himself the Vertsborgs had gone on vacation, taking the long Fourth of July weekend. Ivanov shadowed him everywhere, chatted constantly, ostensibly assisted him with the four collectors for the White Pines. For Bobby, Ivanov’s inane banter was an amusing break.
“Listen to the frogs,” Ivanov said one warm evening as Sara (she’d cleaned the kitchen and put Noah down for the night) joined the men on the back steps. “It’s like they’re in complete command of the farm. Just listen to that croaking concert, that raucous reverberation.”
“You could write a song about them, huh?” Sara said sweetly.
“Yeah,” Dale said. “It really takes me back. When we were young, my brother and I would walk in the fields and search for frogs in the spring when it was wet and lizards in the summer when the fields were dry, when they were parched by the sun. This was in Ohio, almost down to Kentucky. That’s where I grew up. My brother’d remember.”
“Does your family still live there?” Sara asked.
“No. They’ve gone,” Dale said. “I remember one time following an old creek bed, late one summer, following it up to the hills. Nick had a new bow and two new arrows. It may have been his birthday. We were after rabbits. Nick wounded one. That ol’ rabbit gave out this terrible cry, like a baby bein hurt. And it tumbled into a thicket. We couldn’t find it. We lost the arrow too. It was the last arrow we ever lost and the only rabbit. After that, Man, we only hunted lizards and frogs and those by hand.”
“Where’s your brother, now?” Bobby asked.
“Beats me,” Dale said. “When I got back they didn’t want nothin to do with me.”
“I know what you mean,” Bobby said.
“Yeah,” Ivanov said. “This is really somethin here. I was listenin to the frogs last night. I was trying to recapture that feeling I had but I’ve been removed from it too long. I could only recall, not recapture. And that’s different. The voices of the frogs are the only thing that seem not to have changed. Their voices and the moon, maybe.”
“Oh Dale,” Sara said, “that’s beautiful. You really should write a song about it.”
“Yeah,” Dale said. “Maybe. I’d call it ‘High Meadow.’”
The next day Bobby paid Tony and Dale Ivanov and Ivanov convinced Tony they should give Bobby and Sara a break and go to the White Pines for dinner and some beers. By eight Dale was tipsy, by nine loud and obnoxious, by ten in his first scuffle with a Jappo-biker that Tony dispatched with a single leg sweep. When the biker returned with two friends, Aaron Holtz threw them all out and the Catcher in the Alfalfa ended up pounding one guy’s head into the pavement while the other two kicked his sides and Ivanov ripped the plug wires from the three Jap bikes and somehow started the Harley—when he’d taken the key Tony had no idea—then waited for Tony to temporarily maim the other two, gain enough time to break contact and retreat.
At breakfast the next morning Ivanov raved about Tony’s strength, Tony’s fighting ability. “You shoulda seen im! These three guys were giving us the evil eye, ya know? Tony just lit into em. Man, I’d follow that guy anywhere.”
Later, alone, Bobby confronted Tony in the tractor garage. “What the hell’s this fighting shit?”
“I didn’t start it,” Tony said.
“You can’t go hitting somebody because they give you the evil eye.” Bobby was angry, tired, acting like a tired father with a nine-year-old son.
“Forget it, Man.” Tony clammed up.
“Damn it. I don’t want to forget it,” Bobby snapped.
“It’ll never happen again.” Tony was tense, defensive, angry.
“Fuckin better not!” Bobby stormed away.
Three days later, over dinner, Ivanov gave Sara a sheet of paper. “I’m going to dedicate it to you,” he said.
“Wha ...” Bobby looked at Sara reading.
“‘High Meadow,’” Ivanov said. “The song about a man trying to recapture feelings he had as a boy. I’m never going to forget you. And Sara. All you’ve done ...”
“Bobby ...” Sara nodded at him. Then to Dale she said, “This is very good.” Again she looked at Bobby. Bobby shook his head. Sara handed him the lyrics. “I think you should say it now,” Sara said.
Bobby cleared his throat. Glanced at Tony, at Sara, then looked at Dale. “Okay,” he said. “Dale, we’ll lend you the money to get your instrume
nt out of hock. You can pay us back a little from each gig.”
Ivanov’s appreciation was excessive.
“I’m glad I finally caught you,” Bobby said into the phone. “How was your vacation?”
“We haven’t been on vacation,” Jasper Vertsborg answered.
“Ah ... Oh. I’ve finished the redesign of the Conner house. I think you’ll be impressed. The greenhouse is truly elegant. By shifting the staircase, the dining room flows in—”
“We’re not sure about a two-story greenhouse,” Jasper said.
“Let me just show it to you,” Bobby said quickly. “I’ve built a detailed model and it’s on the siting table right now. You can see exactly ...”
“Mr. Wapinski, we’ve changed our minds.”
“You’ve changed ...”
“Yes. You knew we were just exploring our options.”
“Of course. So at least look at it. It’s really beautiful.”
“Well, you know they’re developing a new country club—Whirl’s End ... I’m certain you already know—”
“Whirl’s ... No. No, I don’t know.”
“Oh, it’s going to be fabulous. Ernest Hartley’s one of the partners. It’s just above the section they call South Hill, or New New Town ...”
Bobby had to think fast. “Then you’re going to build?” he asked.
“Yes. The streets should be in this fall. We’re going to build in the spring.”
“Then let me design it for you,” Bobby said.
“Oh.” Jasper Vertsborg laughed amiably. “We’ve already found a splendid architect. Barnett and Robins. You’ve probably heard of them. They’re the best in the Northeast and ...”
Bobby heard no more.
“How many gallons of syrup did you end up with?” Linda asked. She was in the tractor garage with Tony. Bobby was in the house, making phone calls. EES did not yet have a separate line to the big barn. Sara, the twins, and Noah were on a “nature hike” to the apple orchard.
“Less than forty,” Tony said.
They were in the same state of gentle ambivalence that had generally characterized their relationship for the past seven months.
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