by David Gates
“In secret code?” he says. Right out of the gate, boy. What a shit he is.
His mother squinches her eyes shut, then opens them and takes a sip of her scotch. “Oh dear. Well, what did I know at twenty-two? A stupid little Smithie.” She pronounces it styewpid. “But really, how was I to know? He was very normal, I thought. From my vast experience.” Sip. “Well, it was such a long time ago. But it has been a strange life.” Sip.
“So are you off now?”
“Am I off?” he says.
“From your work? Aren’t you on sabbatical?”
“Oh right. Two months.”
“And you’ll be at your farm?”
“Yeah, the endless project. I just patched a pipe in the bathroom that’s probably been leaking since I got the place.”
“But it’s splendid that you can do that work,” she says. “You do take after your father in that respect.” Sip. “It has been a strange life. Do you ever hear from Cynthia, by the way?”
“Not since the last time you asked.” Cynthia was Willis’s girlfriend before he met Jean.
“I always liked her. And she’s gone where, again?”
“Madison, Wisconsin, the last I heard.”
“Oh yes,” she says. “It’s supposed to be very civilized.” Sip. “How’s yours holding out? Dinner’s going to be another half hour.”
“In that case,” he says. Something rubs against his leg: Geoffrey, come to greet him.
“We’re having pollo coi funghi secchi.”
“Mam-ma mia,” he says, bouncing the heel of his hand off his forehead. “I trust we aren’t going to be having visions of the Absolute after the funghi secchi.”
“Dear God, don’t even joke about such a thing.” Willis’s mother had once been talked into eating psilocybin mushrooms during those first years in Cambridge.
“Oh come on,” he says. “I was proud of you. I always remember that thing about how you were listening to Beethoven and—”
“Stop.”
“—and seeing purple penises wiggling in sync like the—” “Stop.” Hands over her ears.
“—Rockettes. I was hugely impressed.” He strokes Geoffrey’s head, and the cat arches his back.
“Dear God, imagine telling that to your child. What were you, fifteen? Fourteen? Well, it gives you some idea of the state I was in. Horrible.”
“Hey,” says Willis. “Sounded great to me.”
“Yes, I know.” She gets up and takes their glasses into the house.
Willis stares out at the maple tree. Scotch must be kicking in; his legs feel heavy. The light from upstairs catches that tree branch: the rope that held the tire swing is long gone, and even the scar has healed. After it rained, you used to have to lift the tire exactly right to dump the water out, or it would just race around inside.
“Are you in touch with your brother these days?” He didn’t hear his mother come back out. “He’s not still at that dreadful store?” She hands Willis his glass.
“He’s making the best of it,” says Willis. Better not to tell her Champ was just in Preston Falls. “I admire him for hanging in.” He takes a sip; she’s put more water in this one.
“Apparently he’s still punishing me.”
“You could call him, you know.”
His mother raises her glass. “Cheers.” She sips, then sighs. “I understand his new friend is very nice. I hope she’s not on the stuff.”
“On the stuff?” Willis says. “I love it. What are you, keeping low company in your old age?”
“Well, whatever the expression is nowadays.”
“She seems fine to me,” he says. “Of course, she does wear long sleeves and she always seems to have a cold.”
“Now you’re punishing me.” Sip. “What else shall we talk about?”
“Hmm,” he says. “Okay, what did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbitt?”
“Dear God.”
“Nope,” he says.
After dinner, Willis pours himself more Macallan, and his mother puts Charade in her VCR. When they get to where Audrey Hepburn says, “You know what’s wrong with you? Nothing,” Willis gives his mother an appreciative smile, sees she’s fallen asleep and touches her arm. She tugs down her skirt, gets up and says good night. Willis watches Charade to the end, with Geoffrey purring on the arm of his chair, then pours more scotch. He stupidly forgot to bring Our Mutual Friend, but he does find the fat old Washington Square Press Pickwick Papers he had in high school. So he reads the trial scene, then some of the shit where Mr. Pickwick gets drunk with Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer. He pours more Macallan, which he brings upstairs along with Pickwick to his old bedroom with the eyebrow window. Sleeping here after all these years is less weird than it used to be, he’ll give it that.
And he does sleep. Not even a dream, that he remembers.
When he comes downstairs, she’s just putting water in her little Braun espresso maker; stiff strips of bacon are already stacked on a paper towel. She’s listening to Morning Edition.
“Good morning,” she says. “Scrambled, yes?”
“Is that some kind of innuendo?” He sits down at the table, ungrateful dog for thinking she might have made some fucking coffee before she started dicking around with bacon and shit. She pours the grease from the skillet into a Medaglia d’Oro can, then cracks four eggs into an earthenware bowl. He can’t watch the rest. Eventually he hears the skillet sizzling.
“You don’t have to go right back, do you?” She takes two plates down from the cabinet and sets them on the counter, then turns again to the skillet.
“Not right away,” he says. “I should start back this afternoon, though, so I can get up early tomorrow and get some work done.”
“Oh, fooey,” she says.
“Why?”
“Well, I have tickets to the chamber series in Hanover. Elaine Cooper usually goes with me, but they’ve got Bartók on the program tonight and she can’t stand anything at all screechy. What she calls screechy. She’s a bit of a wuss—is that the word?”
“She’s probably on the stuff,” he says. Elaine Cooper is the widow of a Dartmouth history professor whose specialty was Froissart.
“Stop,” she says. “I don’t suppose I could tempt you.”
Fuck, why not. Follow her to the concert in the truck and just leave right from there. A good old late-night drive. “Boy, Bartók—woo, I don’t know.” He flutters his fingers. “Pretty scary. I guess I better come along in case you need to be talked down.”
“Oh, goody,” she says, and brings the plates to the table. She’s given him four pieces of bacon and most of the eggs. So much for eating better. Well, so he should’ve said something. “Voilà.” She sits down, then bounces up again. She’s forgotten forks.
His dream comes back up to him out of the dark, like prophecy in a Magic 8 Ball. He and Philip Reed are onstage, singing that Louvin Brothers song: Satan is real, working in spirit.
“Enjoy it,” says his mother.
He picks up the stiffest strip of bacon and bites, then has to bring his palm up under his chin to catch a splinter. He pushes down the thought that he could be satanically possessed.
Morning Edition has a report on what happens to computers when the year 2000 hits. The gist is that somebody will think of something.
He’s taken the plates to the sink and begun running water, when his mother says, “Oh, leave those and come for a walk. I have something to show you.”
“And what might that be?”
“You’ll see.”
He opens his eyes wide and flutters his fingers again. She smiles.
They walk up the old overgrown road that goes behind the house and through the gap in the stone wall. Geoffrey follows this far, then turns back, meowing piteously. Past here you have to push through the saplings that have grown up in the track. A bright-blue sky, but it’s turned chilly overnight; Willis left Preston Falls without a jacket, so he’s put on a flannel shirt that belonged to his father. They step over
the brook where it cuts across the trail and continue uphill. The old spring-house was over to the left: now it’s just a glimpse of gray, mossy boards lying among the raspberry bushes. They follow the stone wall and the line of thick old maple trees, regularly spaced. Once, this was a real road, leading to a long-gone farm.
They pass the cellar hole his father called the Griffin place and keep walking uphill. In what used to be an orchard, his mother stops and touches a rotten old apple tree. “This is it,” she says. “No, wait. I think I’m turned around. That one.” She points to a different tree, similarly ancient and deformed, nearer to the stone wall. “That’s where you were conceived.”
“Out here?” he says. “Al fresco? My God, you were a couple of bohemians.”
“It was just about this time of year—well, obviously, since you were born in July. It wasn’t quite so cool, but of course it was later in the day. Dear God, it does come back. We made a little nest of all our clothes. Right there, in that patch of sunshine.”
“What do you know,” he says. He walks over to the spot. Tufts of grass, ferns, old rotted leaves. A flat rock, flush with the ground. With clothes under them, they wouldn’t have felt it. He gets down on one knee, digs his fingers under the edge of the rock and lifts it: ants. He lets the rock back down, stands up and brushes off the knee of his jeans. “And you’re sure that time was the one.”
“Oh, no question,” she says. “This wasn’t one of our … better periods, shall we say. Though of course not as bad as—you know—it got.”
“Right.” He looks at the flat rock.
“I never told this to anyone,” she says. “But it’s so odd: when I woke up this morning I just had the strongest feeling about it. And I remembered it so clearly. It frightened me all of a sudden—do you know?— to be the only person alive who knew about it. Because for that just to be gone, for it never to have even happened, in a way … I think if you hadn’t been here I would’ve called poor Elaine Cooper and burdened her with it.”
“Well,” he says. “I mean, I’m glad you told me….” “I thought you ought to know. Because it was—it’s your story, really, more than mine.”
“Right,” he says.
“Well, so now you know.” She shakes her head. “It kills me that it’s not precious to you.” She begins to weep, then quickly stops herself. “But I suppose it’s one more chicken come home to roost, isn’t it?”
He puts an arm around her; she seems to shrink and harden. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It means a lot to me, that you, you know, brought me here and everything.”
“Stop it,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Silence. Then a crow starts cawing.
“I thought someday,” she says, “you might want to bring your children here, because … This is all crazy, isn’t it?”
“Of course not.”
“Would you know your way back here?” she says. “If you wanted to come sometime?”
“Sure. I actually know this spot. He and I used to come through here hunting.”
“Oh dear,” she says. “Yes, and I used to worry so about you.”
“And all for naught,” he says, bright and breezy.
Another move or two and she’ll say Shall we? and they’ll start back for the house and that’ll be that.
“You won’t come back here,” she says. “You’ll forget I ever told you this.” She looks back down the hill, toward the old cellar hole. “Well. Shall we?”
7
He rolls into the dooryard at three in the morning, still buzzed from the coffee he got at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Rutland. He lies down on the couch, pulls the comforter over him and picks up Our Mutual Friend. No point in trying to go to sleep until he’s cooled out a little. By daylight he’s polished it off. Piece of shit, basically.
He gets up, finds The Mystery of Edwin Drood and settles back in, but drifts off into a thing where Jasper in the opium den gets confused with Hildegard Behrens trying to take his pants down, except Willis doesn’t know what Hildegard Behrens looks like, so he’s using his mother’s friend Elaine Cooper for her. It’s probably a pun, and he’s telling himself he’s lost his bearings—that would be about his speed. But at least it’s not another thing about the fucking devil.
He wakes to the phone ringing, jumps up and goes running.
“Hey, man,” the voice says. “It’s Reed.”
“Uh-huh? Yeah?”
“What did I, wake you up? Listen, man, you going to come rock and roll tonight?”
“Shit.”
“I think I woke you up,” says Reed. “You get my messages?”
“I was in New Hampshire. Shit, what time is it?”
“Noon? Something like that. So you remember how to get there, right?”
“I don’t know, man. I’m fuckin’ beat.”
“Yeah yeah. So go back to sleep and we’ll see you over there like nine o’clock, right?”
“I don’t know,” says Willis. “Maybe.”
“Hey, we got to have our swingin’ guit-tar man. Plus we, ah, have mucho business to discuss, you and me. I got your statement here, which we need to go over together.”
“Shit,” says Willis. “Yeah, okay. I may not stay all that late.”
“Cool. We’ll talk about that too.”
Willis pisses away what’s left of the day reading Drood and falling asleep and reading more Drood. For what it’s worth, he figures out that Datchery, the guy who shows up out of nowhere, has to be Bazzard, Mr. Grewgious’s clerk. Who the fuck else can it be? He wakes up from another nap, and it’s dark outside. Time to make some coffee and hit the trail. Feels like he’s coming down with something. Well, if the coffee wakes him up enough to get there, the drugs will keep him going. Though coming home last week was a little hairy. Still, it’s great doing cocaine and playing rock and roll, or even just standing around being high with guitars and shit. No wonder it’s such a thing. Bending over to put his boots on, he thinks he should at least change these socks. But.
He stops for gas in Preston Falls, and it’s so chilly he pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his Raiders cap and sticks his left hand in his pocket while he pumps. And this is only what, the middle of September. Still summer, technically.
When he gets to the farm, the gila monster’s glowing on the porch roof and everybody’s parked up by the barn. He opens his door to a blast of cold air and the smell of woodsmoke. You can hear them playing what turns out to be “Get Out of My Life, Woman,” with real drums. Willis exhales and sees his breath. He’s lugged his guitar and amp into the barn as far as the bottom of the stairs, when they finish with a ragged collective whomp.
“Soundin’ good!” he calls.
A hand parts the plastic sheeting, and Philip Reed’s foxy face appears. “My man. Give me one second.”
Through the plastic Willis sees a blurry form lift a blurry guitar shape over its head. Then out comes Reed and down the stairs; he bats Willis’s hand away from the handle of the Twin and carries it up himself. Willis can hear his ragged breathing. “Hell to get old,” Reed says. “Here.” He parts the plastic for Willis. Inside, the stove has made it stuffy, and everybody’s down to t-shirts.
“Hey, how’s it going,” says the Strat guy.
“Hey,” the bass player says.
“Hey, what’s happenin’,” says the drummer.
“Hey, sounds great,” says Willis. “What I heard.”
“Missed our swingin’ guit-tar man, though,” Reed says. “Here, why don’t you get set up. I’ll dig out that statement, we’ll get that shit squared away and then—rock and roll. Don’t forget, you got to do our gig with us. Saturday night.” He opens his guitar case. Willis plugs the Twin into the power strip.
“Ah. Here’s that rascal.” Reed sticks something in his shirt pocket. “Listen, what about some vodka and grapefruit juice? My man Sparky here just did up the last of the pixie dust.”
“Fuck you, man,” says the drummer. “Like you d
idn’t do none of it.”
Reed holds up a plastic jug of Popov. “You want a lot or a little?”
“Sort of medium.” Willis kneels on the shag carpeting and snaps his guitar case open. Damned if he’s going to show how bummed he is. He slings the Telecaster over his shoulder, plugs into his analog delay—purist that he is, he won’t use digital—then into the Twin, flips off the standby switch and plays an E-seventh: how’d he get so out of tune?
“Beautiful.” Reed hands him a trembling Dixie cup, full to an eighth of an inch below the brim.
“Jesus,” says Willis. He has to take a good sip just to get it under control.
“Hey, it’s that little bit extra I always give my clients.” The Strat guy sticks his upper teeth over his lower lip and makes a fart noise.
“Let’s go where we can have a civilized discussion,” Reed says, nodding toward where the sheets of plastic overlap.
Willis follows him out into the cold dark of the barn and down the stairs, dangling the Dixie cup from his right hand.
“What a night, huh?” says Reed when they get outside. Willis looks up and sure enough: stars and a crescent moon. Bigger or smaller than the last time he saw it? “Here, why don’t we sit in the car.”
He opens his passenger door for Willis, who reaches across and gets the driver’s side for him. Cold in here too. Reed squeezes in behind the wheel and turns on the dome light.
“So.” Reed touches the limp rim of his Dixie cup to the limp rim of Willis’s. “Better days.”
“Cheers.” The vodka reeks, like rubbing alcohol.
“That’ll put hair on your chest,” says Reed. “Okay, so here’s the thing.” He takes a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and hands it to Willis.
Willis looks at it, then looks back at Reed. “Two thousand dollars?”
“What can I tell you,” says Reed. “My expenses on this thing—well, you can see.” He leans over to Willis and points to a line that says Out of pocket expenditures: $1,050. “The fifty’s your fine,” he says. “The thousand is what it took to grease His Honor. And the fee, the nine fifty, has to take into account my specialized knowledge of the legal system around here.” He turns off the dome light.