“What should I read?” I asked.
“Hell if I know.”
William abruptly removed a hand from its pocket and flicked the cigarette from his mouth into the ice-glazed bushes.
“Look,” he said.
A small red truck crawled toward the house. We trudged through the crust of snow to meet it. As we came closer, we could see Leigh in the front seat, next to a bearded man wearing a heavy wool sweater, a black watch cap, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. As the truck slowed to a stop, Leigh waved and smiled and opened the door. She was barefoot. Beneath a giant black down parka, she wore nothing but a cotton nightgown, nearly translucent from wear.
“Damn, girl,” William said. “Ain’t you cold?”
There was no note of alarm in his voice. William was accustomed to odd behavior from the frail of mind.
Leigh held her arms up as if she were trying to grasp the air in her hands.
“It’s invigorating,” Leigh said. “I’ve never felt so alive!”
As she drew near to me, I could see that her eyes were dull and heavy, the pupils widely dilated.
“Christ,” I whispered. “How much did you take?”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Rocky,” she said.
The black parka clearly belonged to the man in the truck, who had already climbed out and circled around the front. Leigh teetered for a moment, as if her legs were about to give way. The bearded man lurched forward and grasped her shoulders.
“Why don’t you let me carry you?” the man asked.
“Over the threshold?” Leigh asked, with a coy giggle.
“If you like,” the man said.
“I can’t believe you found me,” Leigh said, resting her head on the man’s shoulder as he lifted her from the ground. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“He sure does.”
The bearded man tilted his head and fixed his eyes on mine. My heart seized. The flesh had settled and thickened, along with the heavy beard that was once so thin and wispy. But the eyes were unmistakable. I had waited to see those eyes again for longer than I could remember. Still, it was only when he spoke my name in the old, familiar tone that I believed it was really him.
“Hey there, Rocky,” he said.
“Hey yourself, Paul,” I murmured.
He smiled. I couldn’t say another word; I couldn’t even move.
Paul swept Leigh up into his arms as if she were as light as a child.
“Would you mind getting the door for me, brother?” he asked.
I trudged falteringly to the top of the porch. Behind me, my brother climbed the steps with Leigh in his arms, stoned and serene, her face ashen and her lips purple. The ends of the cotton nightgown billowed beneath her in the icy wind as they passed by me into the warm light of the waiting house.
PAUL CARRIED HER into the living room, tracking snow onto the white Wilton woven rug.
“I’ll get some blankets,” I said.
“Maybe we should build a fire,” Paul said.
“We got a fire back where your daddy is,” William said, addressing Paul as if they’d known each other for years. William may very well have felt that he did know him, given how vividly Paul had come to life in the Old Man’s delusions.
“All right, then,” Paul said, stroking his beard. “Let’s take her back there. Would you like that, Leigh? Would you like to warm up by the fire back in my old man’s room?”
“He’s expecting me,” she said.
Again, Paul lifted Leigh into his arms. We followed William back to where the Old Man still sat sleeping, his head thrown back and mouth agape as usual.
Paul set Leigh down on the couch. I took the down comforter folded at the foot of the bed and spread it out over her. William stoked the fire with the brass-handled poker and placed a fresh slab of wood in the flames.
The Old Man awoke because of the commotion, his arms still crossed over his chest, his eyes sanguine and sleepy. He peered up at Paul, who stood rooted next to the couch, looking a bit dazed and unready.
“Your beard,” the Old Man said, clearing his throat. “I like it.”
“Thank you,” Paul said.
“I never wore a beard myself,” the Old Man said, his voice slow and drowsy. “Tried the mustache for a while when I made rank in Korea. Your mother said I looked like Clark Gable in the pictures. I always thought I looked like a greasy wop or a Mexican.”
“It’s not for everyone,” Paul said.
He held his composure, but his eyes rebelled against him. The tears flowed forth into little rivulets that trickled down in glistening beads over the thick mat of his whiskers.
“Maybe I’ll try it again,” the Old Man said.
He turned to William.
“What do you think, boy?” he said. “How’d you like to get out of shaving me every goddamned morning? I bet you’re good and sick of it, aren’t you, boy?”
“Don’t bother me none either way,” William said.
“Well then,” the Old Man said. “I’ll grow a beard. Like my son.”
His eyes closed and he leaned his head back. It became clear to us all that he was still traveling through some manic dream—that he had seen Paul a hundred times before, on my face, or William’s, or in the naked air. He had yet to grasp that his son was actually there before him, in the flesh.
Paul knelt and buried his face in his sleeping father’s lap. The Old Man’s hands fell from his chest and cradled Paul’s head, stroking the thick, brown hair, still wild and long and wavy beneath the watch cap, which had fallen away to the floor beside them.
17
IN THE KITCHEN PREPARING TEA, Paul paused for a moment before opening each cabinet or drawer, as if amazed that everything was still kept in the same places. Even the refrigerator—replaced since he left—seemed to surprise Paul by being in the same corner where the old one had been. When he raised the tea to his lips, I caught him staring at me over the brim of the teacup, his eyes filled with boundless wonder.
For my own part, I was too stunned to remember any of the questions I had thought for years about asking him. I could find the words to ask only one—the same question he used to ask me almost every day.
“Want to go upstairs and listen to some records?”
“Sure,” he said.
Paul followed me up the stairs and into his old room. I hopped up onto the bed. Paul scanned the room with muted curiosity.
“I tried to keep things the way you left them,” I said. “You can have the room back now, if you want.”
“That’s all right,” he said, almost whispering. “You keep it.”
“You really should take it. That’s why I moved in, you see? So it would be here for you when you came home.”
“Home,” he said.
He took the chair by the window. I dropped the needle on CSNY’s Déjà Vu. He reached in through the neck of his sweater to remove his pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.
“What happened to the Nova?” I asked.
“Sold it a few years back,” he said.
“I can’t believe you ever got rid of that car.”
“Can’t get through winter in the Bitterroots without a four-wheel-drive,” he said. “Plus I needed the bed for tools and supplies and whatnot.”
“I get my license this summer,” I said.
“Right on,” he replied.
Paul finished his cigarette and lit another. He looked up the hill at Twin Oaks, illuminated by floodlights Brad Culver had installed in the hedges.
“I don’t guess you see much of those people anymore,” he said.
“It’s a long story.”
“I might know some of it.”
Light from the headlights of an approaching car filled the room. It was my mother, home from work. Paul stubbed out his cigarette on the sill beneath the crack he’d opened in the window.
“Think she’ll be happy to see me?” he asked.
The front door op
ened. My mother’s heels clicked across the hardwood floor. She started to make her way back to the Royal Chamber but paused as if overcome by some apprehension. Perhaps she sensed his presence—some odd energy, like a visitation of spirits. More likely she smelled the smoke. When her shadow fell across the door, Paul’s face was once again a flinty edifice of indifference, even beneath the warm shroud of his yogi’s beard.
“Hello, Alice,” he said.
For a moment she stood frozen, taking him in, adjusting her eyes to the absence of light.
“Would you turn that off, please, honey?” she said to me.
I slid off the bed and lifted the needle. The room fell into fraught silence. Finally she spoke.
“Have you seen your father yet?” she asked.
“Sort of,” Paul answered. “He was resting.”
“How did you find him?”
Paul fingered the pack of cigarettes on the secretary next to him but did not remove one.
“Older,” he said.
“There isn’t any money, if that’s what you’re here for.”
“I know that,” Paul said.
“Do you?” my mother said, an uncommon and unseemly venom creeping into her voice. “How, pray tell, would you happen to know that?”
“You remember my old pal Rayner Newcomb, right?”
“How could I forget?” she said.
“Then I guess you heard he’s an attorney in town now.”
“Rayner? A lawyer?” I blurted out.
“Yeah, I know, right?” Paul said. “Who’d have thought that Rayner would be the one to turn out respectable?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Who’d have thought that?”
My mother glared at me with homicidal ferocity.
“So,” she said, crossing her arms and fixing her eyes back on Paul. “After all these years and the thousands of dollars your father spent trying to find you—the thousands of hours he spent wondering if you were dead or alive—all that time, you were in contact with your old pal Rayner?”
“I’m not proud of all the things I’ve done,” Paul said. “I know I hurt people.”
My mother laughed bitterly. Paul held her gaze.
“Your father never stopped hoping you’d come home, Paul,” my mother said. “I think if he’d found out that you were dead, I would have felt relieved.”
I had to admire my mother for going straight at Paul like that. I felt a twinge of remorse for having welcomed him back so willingly. After all, he had been a perfect shit.
Paul seemed unfazed by her wrath.
“I understand why you’d feel that way, Alice,” he said.
“So why now, Paul?” my mother asked. “Did you just need a place to come in from the cold?”
“Rayner got in touch. He told me things weren’t going well,” he said. “I thought I might lend a hand.”
“Hah!” my mother barked again, rolling her eyes. “Just what we need.”
“Jeez, Mom,” I said.
“Oh, please, Richard,” my mother said. “Let’s not forget, the last time you saw your dear brother here, he was trying to poison you to death with his goddamned cigarettes!”
I had never heard my mother curse that way before. I couldn’t decide whether to be dismayed or enthralled.
“Ma’am?” a voice called from the bottom of the stairs.
It was William, his timing impeccable, as always.
“Yes, William?” my mother said.
“They up now,” he said.
“Who’s they, William?” my mother asked.
“Mr. Askew and y’all friend Leigh.”
THEY WERE CHATTING amiably when the four of us found them. Leigh was still a bit loopy but seemed to have come down a bit. She had done us all the good service of explaining to the Old Man that the bearded, slightly paunchy Paul he’d seen earlier was not a vision but in fact the genuine article.
“Son!” the Old Man cried, pushing himself up from the chair and extending his arms eagerly toward Paul as he entered the room.
“Hey, Dad,” Paul said.
They held each other like that for a long time, the Old Man sobbing into the shoulder of Paul’s scratchy sweater.
“Praise God,” Leigh said.
“Leigh, honey,” my mother said. “What on earth are you wearing?”
Pulling away from the Old Man, Paul explained how he had come to find Leigh standing barefoot in the middle of the road.
“Well,” my mother said, the bile still boiling within her, “that was doubtless the one time in her life she was fortunate to run into you.”
“Oh, don’t be angry with Paul, Alice,” Leigh said drowsily. “I have a chemical imbalance.”
Paul knelt next to the Old Man, who had settled back in his armchair. Together the Old Man and Leigh Bowman beamed at Paul as if he were the risen Christ himself.
“I’d better call your father, Leigh,” my mother said. “I’m sure he’s worried sick.”
She disappeared down the hallway.
“I knew you were coming,” Leigh said. “Miss Anita saw it weeks ago. She saw me meeting you, barefoot in the snow. She said it was just a crazy dream, but it came true, didn’t it?”
“Miss Anita, huh?” Paul said.
“Oh, she’s been so wonderful to me,” Leigh said.
I waited for Paul to launch in on how Miss Anita was nothing but a quack in a Chanel suit and pearls. Instead he just smiled.
“That’s great, Leigh,” he said. “Really.”
“Tell me, Paul,” Leigh said. “Have you come to know the Lord? For real this time, I mean. Are you saved?”
Paul looked at the Old Man. He clapped his palm on the Old Man’s forearm.
“Sure,” he said.
“That’s so wonderful,” Leigh said. “Praise God.”
“Yes,” I said. “Praise God!”
“Son,” the Old Man said, “where the hell have you been?”
“It’s a long story,” Paul said.
We sat there together, the five of us, listening to Paul describing his rambling years as casually as if he’d just come home from summer camp. After New Mexico, he’d gone to California, and then to Oregon, and Nevada, and finally Idaho, where he’d spent the past few years working at a ski resort and doing carpentry in the off-season.
“Just like Jesus,” Leigh said.
“Not exactly,” Paul replied.
My mother returned, carrying a red wool sweater, gray sweatpants, white cotton socks, and one of her old pairs of Saucony running shoes.
“Can you wear a size nine, Leigh?”
“I couldn’t take your shoes, Mrs. Askew!” Leigh said.
“I insist,” my mother said. “Your father would never forgive me if I let you out of this house dressed like that.”
Still sitting on the couch, Leigh hiked the sweatpants up beneath the nightgown and pulled the sweater over the top of it, so that the nightie hung down beneath it like an oversize T-shirt. She stood and held out her arms.
“How do I look?” she asked.
“Like a runaway from the nuthouse,” the Old Man said.
“Dick!” my mother said.
“I might as well look the part,” Leigh said.
“Goddamned right,” the Old Man said.
Leigh giggled.
“I’ll get you home now, Leigh,” my mother said.
“I’ll take her,” Paul said.
“Why don’t you stay here,” my mother said. “I need to run by the store.”
“Give me a list and I’ll pick up whatever you need,” Paul said.
“I didn’t mention your being here to Leigh’s father,” my mother said. “I don’t know how he’d feel about seeing you pulling up to the curb again.”
“He won’t recognize the truck,” Paul said.
My mother’s face reddened.
“I think I’d sooner stab myself in the eye,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “than have to explain to Prentiss Bowman how I let poor Leigh ride off again
with you.”
Paul, Zen teddy bear that he’d become, responded only with a sad smile and a shrug.
“I’ll take her, Ma’am,” said William.
“Heavens, William!” my mother said. “We’ve kept you more than an hour past the end of your shift.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” he said. “I’d be happy to see Miss Leigh home safe.”
“All right then,” my mother said. “Thank you, William.”
We left the Old Man alone in the Royal Chamber and walked out together to the entrance hall. Standing in the doorway, Paul extended his hand to William.
“Thanks, brother,” Paul said.
William took his hand and nodded uneasily. He must have been unaccustomed to being called “brother” by a white boy. William didn’t know any hippies.
“You ready, Miss Leigh?” William said.
Leigh nodded, casting a wistful glance back at Paul as William helped her down the steps and into his car.
“I’ll see you soon, Leigh,” Paul called out.
“I know,” Leigh said.
We waved as the car disappeared down the driveway.
“So, Alice,” Paul said, “what did you need?”
“What?” my mother asked.
“From the store,” Paul said.
My mother sighed.
“Nothing, Paul,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
18
PAUL LAUNCHED HIS REFORM program by presenting my mother with an envelope full of cash.
“It’s a little over three thousand dollars,” Paul said.
My mother stared at the money peeking out from the envelope.
“How did you get this?” she asked.
“I came by it honestly, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Paul said.
My mother placed the envelope on the table.
“I don’t want your money, Paul,” she said.
“I know you don’t,” Paul said. “But we need it.”
“We?” my mother said.
With great reluctance, she took the money. Paul was right. We needed it.
Against Paul’s protests, I moved out of his room and back into my old one. It would take some getting used to, I knew, but I preferred to have him back where he belonged.
Within a few days of his return, Paul found work on a framing crew for a residential construction company. From seven to three, he humped two-by-tens and hammered nails in the freezing cold. It was no big deal, Paul said; he was used to worse. On Fridays, when my mother came home from the office, Paul handed over a folded-up wad of bills—most of his paycheck. Every afternoon he relieved William. Every weekend he took the Old Man out for a drive.
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