by Norman Green
Calder looked at me. “My father,” he said, looking bleak. “My father. Come on, let’s go get you that car.”
“Roscoe, you seen Hobart?” Roscoe, Sam junior had told me, was a French Canadian guy who worked at Hobart’s garage. Roscoe was exploring the mysteries of a Holly four-barrel that he had sitting on a workbench. He was a dark-haired guy, five eight or so, and solid, looked like he was ready to fight you. He looked up from what he was doing, a wide grin on his face. He reminded me of Teddy Roosevelt because you couldn’t be sure if he was smiling, grimacing, or just showing you his teeth. “Over da smokehouse, maybe,” he said. “De old man call over here. Look for you, aye?”
“He got me already,” Sam said sorrowfully.
“Someday,” Roscoe said. “Someday you ask him if his pee-pee reach his asshole, aye?”
“You think I ought to tell him to go fuck himself?”
“He wait for dat, I tink.” Roscoe shook his head slowly, still grinning, or showing his teeth, or whatever it was he did. His accent was much different than the down east accent. “Dat old man too mean to die,” he said, “too old to fight, too ugly to fuck. I tink you maybe stuck wit him. Check over da smokehouse, I tink Hobart over dere.”
The smokehouse was across the street on a wooden pier that stuck out into the vicious currents of what was called Passamaquoddy Bay. The back of it was a long red barn-looking thing with vents in the roof, and the front was small, no bigger than one room, white clapboards, and cedar shingles on the roof. We stopped on the sidewalk to let a single car pass by. Whoever it was driving waved to Sam, and he waved back.
“Hobart own the smokehouse, too?”
“Yep. Maine multitasking. Most men up here have to wear a lot of different hats to make one living. There’s not enough business to be just one thing.”
The door to the white building was unlocked, but there was nobody inside. We went back out and around to the smokehouse. There was a row of low, door-sized openings that ran along the length of the place, and there were piles of sawdust on the floor inside, smoldering. Rows of wooden poles bridged the upper part of the place, and what I found out later were herring fillets hung from the poles. They averaged about eight inches in length and were a dark, dark brown, almost black color. Calder stuck his head into one of the openings. “Hobart!” he yelled. “You in there?”
A tall guy with unruly white hair stepped out of the far end of the smokehouse. He was taller than me, maybe six three or so, broader through the shoulders than I am, and sinewy, made you think of a lifetime of hard work and exposure. He wore suspenders to keep his pants up, probably because his bony ass didn’t have enough shape to give a belt any purchase. He had an air about him—maybe it was the sparse white beard, the kind old guys grow when they’re bored with shaving, or maybe it was the wrinkled shirt, the unkempt hair, or just the look on his face, but I would have bet you then and there that this guy was beyond caring, that everybody who’d loved him was gone. He was just playing out the hand.
“Right heah,” he said. “No need yellin’.”
“Hobart.” Sam turned in his direction and started telling him how my van was broken down, how I was staying out at the Averys’ and needed a car for a few days. Hobart walked up, stuck his hand out, and I shook it. It felt like I had a handful of what I’d spent the morning wrestling out of Louis Avery’s pasture, rough, no inner warmth of its own, covered with hard bark. He didn’t squeeze in that adolescent way that some guys do, but I got the feeling he was taking my measure somehow, and more out of habit than interest.
“How’s my old friend Louis?” It struck me as an odd question to ask, in a place so small. How could you avoid running over the guy every other day?
“Seems fine to me. You want me to say hello for you?”
Hobart chuckled. “Long as you can do it when Eleanor ain’t around. She thinks I’m a bad influence.”
“That so?”
“Ayuh,” Hobart said. “Tell the Frenchman to give you the Brat.”
It was a Subaru Brat, sort of a miniature pickup truck, fiercely rusted and seriously cramped for a guy my size. I wondered if Hobart had chosen it out of some sadistic impulse, but Roscoe told me the thing was the most dependable piece of shit they had. It started with a roar and ran raggedly, stood there on the lot in front of Hobart’s garage and quivered like a dog who’d been in cold water too long. Roscoe told me, while we waited for it to warm up, that his band was going to be playing at the VFW that night, and that I was invited. Sam Calder made his way back over to his office to resume the cockfight with his old man. You assume, when you’re on the outside looking in, that families tend to be, you know, love, caring, mutual support, all that shit. Maybe not exactly the Brady Bunch, but everybody on the same side, at least. Right then I got an image of Sam and his father: two cats with their tails tied together, thrown over a tree branch. No matter what their motivations, they would only continue to slash at each other, each unable to help either himself or the other guy. How do you get into something like that? Was I, even now, taking the steps that would lead to Nicky and me being thrown across that same branch?
Jesus.
Roscoe seemed genuinely pleased when I told him I’d probably see him at the VFW.
All the other drivers waved at me on the way back to the Averys’. I mean, all of them. They did it in the minimalist way Mainers have, nothing very demonstrative, just a quick flash of one open hand. Hobart’s vehicle, it seemed, had given me entrance into some private club, and even though they were probably waving to the Subaru and not to me, I found myself waving back, Hey, how are you, hello, whoever you are. It got me in the habit of looking at whoever was riding inside the cars, not just at the outside of the vehicles. These were people out here, individuals, not just cars in my way, slowing me down.
I took a wrong turn somewhere on my way back to Louis’s house. I knew right away that I was on the wrong road, because the stream was missing. I didn’t turn around, though, I followed the road as it twisted and turned past what I assumed were abandoned farms. There weren’t any farmhouses, just a decaying wooden shed here and there, and fields of tall yellow grass banded by rock walls. It was impressive, in a sort of melancholy way, because of the sheer volume of backbreaking labor it must have taken to build those walls. Some poor bastard busted his ass for what had to be decades to hump the rocks out of his fields, and now the fields were empty and untended. In some places the woods had taken over, the stone walls ran through stands of trees, and not skinny ones, either, these were mature, thick at the bottom. I didn’t know how long it took to grow a tree that big. A hundred years? More? And the poor son of a bitch that cleared the fields to begin with, built those walls, wrestled his living from that hard ground, he was long gone, dead, forgotten, nameless, while the fucking rocks endured. Didn’t seem fair.
A truck came around the curve in front of me, a pale green GMC pickup truck with oversized tires, looked like a ’74 or ’75, two teenagers in it. The kid driving it was going way too fast and using most of the road, so both he and I were very busy for a couple of seconds. It was a good thing the Subaru was on the small side—there was room for it in the ditch. The GMC’s horn bleated at me, and I jerked the Subaru back on the road, none the worse for wear, it appeared. I looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see the pickup round the corner behind me and vanish from sight.
Stupid kids.
It was hard to stay mad at them for too long, though, because I wasn’t that far removed from being a stupid kid myself.
A few miles farther on, I slowed down, began looking for a place to turn around. That’s when I saw the guy. He was huge, bigger than me, bigger than Rosario even. He had straight black hair, sloping shoulders, sleepy eyes. It was hard to tell his age, I would have guessed early twenties. He was carrying a bicycle under one meaty arm. The front wheel of the bike was badly bent, some of the spokes were broken off, and the rubber tire hung loose from the metal rim. I pulled over to the side of the roa
d, intending to ask directions, and the guy looked down at the ground, not at me. I rolled the window down. “Hey, buddy. How you doing?”
He glanced at me, just a quick flick of his eyes, then he looked back at the ground and shrugged his shoulders. I wished that Nicky were with me, I was no good at this shit. Nicky would crack this guy open in a second, he’d hop out of the car. . . . I shut off the Subaru and got out, held out my hand. “Hi, my name is Manny.”
He looked at my hand for a second or so before reaching out slowly with his big mitt. “Manny?” His voice rumbled deep in his throat.
“That’s me. What’s your name?”
“Franklin.” He was still looking at my hand, or maybe the tattoos on my forearm, not my face.
“Is that your bicycle, Franklin?”
He looked at the bike, nodded slowly.
“What happened to it?”
He glanced back over his shoulder then, back in the direction he’d come from. “Pickup truck,” he said, looking back at the ground again. “Scared me off the road.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a thing.”
“Don’t cuss,” Franklin said. “Cussing isn’t nice.”
“You’re right, Franklin, I apologize. So what happened when you went off the road? You hit a rock?”
“Tree.”
“That’s too bad. Messed your bike up, but you can fix that. Did you get hurt?”
“Just my ahm.”
“Let me see. Can I see your arm, Franklin?”
He set his bike down, leaned it against his leg, held his other arm up for my inspection. His denim sleeve was shredded, and he had some road rash on his hairy forearm, it was scratched up pretty good, with blood seeping through in places.
“That doesn’t look too bad, Franklin. Just a little scrape. Let’s put your bike in the back of my truck here, and I’ll give you a ride home.”
It took him a long time to answer, like he had to think of the words one by one, line them up in a row before he spoke. “My dad says I’m not supposed to take rides from anybody.”
“Well, your dad sounds pretty smart. How about if we call him up? Do you know his phone number?” Franklin shook his head. “How about your number at home?” Same response. “Well, this is kind of an emergency, Franklin. I’m sure your dad would think it was all right.” He looked doubtful. “I’ll drive, okay, but you can tell me which way to go. How about that?”
He looked down at the bike, thought about it. “All right,” he said.
I took the bike from Franklin and put it in the back of the Subaru. He squeezed himself into the passenger side, and it was a tight fit. The first time he tried to slam the door, it thunked him in the ass and didn’t latch. He sighed, hitched himself over as far as he could, and tried again, with more success. He looked uncomfortable as hell. “Roll your window down if you want, Franklin. It might give you more room.”
He looked at the window crank by his right knee. “Okay.”
“Which way to your house?”
He was looking at the floor, but he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Other way,” he said.
Franklin must have gotten around pretty good on his bicycle, because it was something like six miles to his house. It was your basic suburban raised ranch, I don’t know who came up with the design but you see them everywhere. There was a Ford station wagon parked in the gravel driveway. I couldn’t tell the year of the wagon, but it was from back when they were making them the size of Noah’s ark. A small dog with short, curly gray hair ran around in circles, barking at the two of us. Franklin lumbered out, ignored the dog, and stood by while I got his bike out of the Subaru. He took the bike from me and carried it over to the side of the house. He tried to make it lean on the kickstand, but it wouldn’t, because of the bent rim. He fussed with it for a minute, then sighed, gave up, and laid it down in the grass.
The front door to the house opened and a woman came out. She was short and sort of round, and her hair was the same color as Franklin’s. She looked afraid—her eyes were wide, and she clutched her hands together in front of her. She was much smaller than Franklin, who was out of sight around the side of the house. “Can I help you?” The dog ran over to where she was standing, barked at her, too.
“Franklin had a little accident.”
He came around the corner just then, stopped, glanced at her, then at me, and shook his head. He seemed to know that the aftermath was going to be worse than the event.
“Franklin! What happened?”
“I hit a tree, Ma.”
She sucked in a big breath, hustled down the steps, and went over to him. “You hit a tree? Oh, my God. How did that happen?”
He didn’t seem to want to tell her the story. He shrugged. “Went off the road. Hit a tree.”
“Franklin, you’re going to be the death of me, you worry me so much.” She had that sixth sense mothers have, in a half a second she was looking at his arm, holding it up to the light, shaking her head and clucking in consternation. “Go on in the house and take that shirt off. I’ll be right in to clean that up.”
“It’s just a little scrape, Ma.” He glanced at me when he said it, and I thought I saw a little bit of amusement on his face.
His mother wasn’t having any. “Go on, now.” The dog finally got her attention, and she snapped. “Scruffy, shut up!” The dog stopped barking, finally, but he growled and showed me his teeth when he looked at me, as if to say, I may be afraid of her, pal, but I ain’t afraid of you.
“All right.” Franklin ambled over to me, stuck out a huge mitt. “Thanks for the ride, Manny.”
“You’re welcome, Franklin,” I said, shaking his hand. I winked at him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his mother watching me in disbelief. “You take care of yourself now, okay?”
“Okay.” He let go of my hand, took a step toward the house, and stopped. “You take care of yourself, too.”
“Thanks, I will.”
His mother watched him go through the front door. “He must like you,” she said, looking at the front door, shaking her head. “Honestly, I’m so surprised. Normally he’s so shy, he never talks to strangers. He hardly talks to the people he knows. Thank you so much for bringing him home. Did you see the accident?”
“No. He was walking down the road, carrying his bike, and I stopped.”
“Where did it happen? Do you mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind at all, but I can’t tell you where it was. I could show you, I guess, if I could find my way back there. I was actually going to ask him for directions. I’m staying with the Averys, and I took a wrong turn. I don’t know the name of the road. It’s five or six miles away from here.”
“He worries me so much,” she said. “Can I ask you to come in, Mr. . . . ?”
“Manny Williams. No, thanks, I think I really need to get back.”
“You’re staying with Eleanor and Louis?”
“Yes.”
She came over and squeezed my hand. “Thank you again, Mr. Williams. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”
Louis wasn’t there when I got back to the Averys’ house. Eleanor said he’d had to go off to fix a broken toilet at someone’s summer camp. She told me the place was owned by some people who lived down in Massachusetts, and one of Louis’s gigs was taking care of the place for them. She looked a little frazzled telling me this. “He was going to go open Gerald’s place up for you,” she said, “but that might have to wait until tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I don’t mind. Would you like me to take Nicky out for a ride somewhere, get him out of your hair for a while?”
“He does have a lot of energy,” she said, and she sighed. “I guess I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“I’ll try to wear him out a little bit. Do you know a good place we could go?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Would you mind picking up a pound of coffee for me while you’re out?”
I follow
ed Eleanor’s directions to a lake up in the woods about fifteen miles west of the house. You had to follow some dirt roads to get there, and the last one wasn’t even a dirt road, just a grassy set of tire ruts under the overarching trees. I would never have attempted it in a car, or at all, I suppose, if Eleanor hadn’t assured me we wouldn’t be trespassing on anyone who cared. “The timber companies own everything up in there,” she’d told me. She dosed Nicky and me with bug repellent before we left. “Might be a few blackflies still around,” she said. “And they don’t suck blood, either. They eat meat.”
The only thing that kept me from chickening out that last half mile was the knowledge that I’d have to back all the way out because there was no place to turn around. Finally, the track opened up into a clearing, just as she’d told me it would. You could see where other vehicles had parked in the grass, although there weren’t any there now. On the far side of the clearing an opening in the trees showed you the lake, sunlit blue and beautiful, unspoiled, it seemed to me, because there were no houses or cabins, no boats, even. There was a trail that meandered between the trees along the shoreline, though. Eleanor said you could follow it all the way around, though she herself had never done so.
Nicky was hesitant. I walked around, opened the door for him. “Whose . . .” He looked around. “Who lives here?”
“Nobody. This is like the park. People can come here and walk around if they want to. Mrs. Avery said so.”
“She did?”
“Yep.”
“All right.” He jumped out.
“You forgot the book. Do you want to carry it, or do you think it will be too heavy?”
“I can do it,” he said, and I reached in and got it for him.
We spent a couple of hours there. For a while I tried to teach him how to use the binoculars to look at things, and he tried to do it, but I think he was really too young for it, and he was probably looking through them mostly just to shut me up, so I stopped trying to teach him and just let him explore in his own way.