by Ron Carlson
Before Mason could move, the young woman came past him, her face flushed, agitated and glorious, smiling, and she said, “Excuse me,” and settled her papers into a folder as she grabbed up her bicycle and wheeled toward the street.
“Hello, Jimmy?” Mason called into the dim garage as he entered.
“Mason, for chrissakes.”
“Something like that,” Mason said. Jimmy stood from where’d been sitting on the bed. Mason hugged his old friend. He said quietly, “You’re sick then.”
Jimmy smiled, rolling his head back in the pillow. “I’ve been slightly worse. Kathleen Gunderson got me on some killer drugs. She told me you were back in town.”
“We’re neighbors again, big boy. We’re going to be seeing each other.” Mason sat in the armchair at the foot of Jimmy’s bed. “What I mean is, Jimmy, I’m sorry I haven’t been down here sooner.” As he said the sentence, it felt inane to him and it hurt, but he claimed it and continued: “I came back to this weird planet, and that was one kind of tough, and I didn’t know you’d be here, and all the days in these years I wanted to call you, how many, hundreds, they suddenly stacked up and . . .”
“Got heavy,” Jimmy said. “Don’t let them. I am glad to see you, mister. You were kind to me, and I knew you were all right or doing all right, and I also knew that I’d see you again. I always knew it, but I didn’t know it would be like this, with this.”
Mason sat and looked at Jimmy and felt again his heart beating the seconds away. It felt unreal to be in the same room again. “Thirty years,” he said. “What is that?”
“Minutes,” Jimmy said. “Yes? Is it still you?”
“I see now that it could be,” Mason said. “I like your place.” He leaned forward and put his hand on the bed. “You got my letter, my one letter.”
“I did, and you got mine.”
“I didn’t say it all right in there.”
“That book upset you.”
“It did, but I loved it. I didn’t want you to blur what had happened. It was all simple to me: Matt was at fault.”
“It was a novel,” Jimmy said. “I know what you’re saying.”
“No, it’s a good book,” Mason said. “I think I was angry because I didn’t write it.”
“And you know I didn’t really have a choice,” Jimmy said.
“I know. There were many days when I wanted to talk to you about the books, all of them.”
Mason had read all of Jimmy Brand’s books and had some of his feature writing printed off the Internet in his office. He’d followed Jimmy’s career, at first because he had the same vague ache to write that all lawyers have, but then simply to see which way Jimmy was going to use the moments they’d shared in his stories. They were good books, and Mason had noted the reviews and awards, but he hadn’t read the books the way America had. He’d read them to see Jimmy’s take on the life they’d known. Only two of the books, both novels, centered on their hometown. One was actually set in New York and had flashbacks to a little town in Montana, which Mason knew to be Oakpine. The other was a rites-of-passage book, Jimmy’s first novel, and it used street names and places, and it captured and delivered a feeling of growing up in Oakpine like nothing Mason had ever known before.
“They’re all good books,” Mason told his friend. “More than books to me.”
“Thanks, Mason.”
“Reservoir taught me an important lesson.”
“Uh-oh.”
“It did. It showed me that I didn’t know how to read. That book made me crazy, because you—”
“Because it’s a novel.”
“Exactly. It’s a novel and I was there, and I got pulled into a story I know pretty well, and when it turned, it threw me out on my ear. I know exactly what you were doing.”
“Maybe you do know how to read. I’m glad to see you. How have you been?
Mason let the question rise and fall. “I don’t know,” he said. “Being honest, I don’t know.”
“Good,” Jimmy said. “It’s no help knowing. I can still see your real face in the years.”
“That old face,” Mason said. “And I can see you. It feels like I saw you last week.”
“I still owe you for the Trail’s End, the room rate.”
“I’ve been worried about the money.”
“Last week,” Jimmy said. “That must be what thirty years is. I am so glad to see you again.”
• • •
Mason stayed at the Ralstons’ house on Oakpine Mountain for two nights while the paint at his place dried, and the second night in the thick early dusk, Kathleen Gunderson took him down to the care center. He’d been having a drink with Craig and Marci in their glassy kitchen, watching the lights of the town come on below them. Craig and Mason had already laid out their new campaign: treat and seal the floors, rebuild the basement stairs, install a banister and seven new windows, refurbish the fireplace, check the boiler. Mason rattled the ice in his scotch, gratified to have these things before him.
“You’re going to make it so nice, you’ll have to stay,” Marci said. She’d come in while they were making their strategy, listing tools, materials, inventory. “Start a new life.”
“I just want to stay until it snows.” Mason turned to her, as she rolled the sleeves of a white shirt. After work, she wore a big shirt and Levi’s. “Get some good out of that new roof. Until the snow falls, I’m just a sidekick to Handy here.”
Marci crossed the room with her glass of merlot and sat at the butcher-block table with the two men. “Well, I want to get everybody up here once before that, a dinner or something. Could Jimmy come?”
“There are days,” Mason said. “Kathleen told me he could go out.” They watched a car turn up from the street, its lights now coming up the long drive. “There’s Kathleen,” Marci said. “She’s giving you the tour.”
“It’s a date,” Craig Ralston said.
“It’s my hometown,” Mason said, standing up.
“What should I do about Frank and Kathleen?” Marci asked.
Craig shrugged and said, “Invite them both. They’re big kids. It’s been long enough. I’ll tell Frank not to bring the girl. It’ll just be the old-timers.”
They saw Kathleen stand out of her blue Volvo and wave. “It’d be good to get everybody together,” Mason said. “Let’s do it. I’ll bring the keg and my tambourine.”
“Don’t joke,” Craig said. “We’ll fire up the drums at least.”
“I’m gone,” Mason said. “You two behave. I’ll be home by ten.”
“Touch-up tomorrow,” Craig said. “And I’ll rent that sander for the floors.”
• • •
In Kathleen’s automobile they talked about Jimmy. Mason had made arrangements to pay for the medications, but Kathleen had filed under the state Medicaid plan. “I’ll just get it all,” he had told her.
“He’s indigent,” she said. “It’s covered.”
“We want more than just the standard stuff,” he told her. “I know there are levels of these things.”
“There are. And we’re getting him the best. I know you’ve got money, Mason. It doesn’t exactly work like that. I know what’s available as it comes available. I’ve always gone to the top drawer for all our patients. Jimmy Brand is not the first person with AIDS in Oakpine.”
The speech was a scolding, and Mason took it as such. He’d seen Kathleen a couple times since his return, and he understood she was smarting still or something, maybe it was that she was pinched by the embarrassment of Frank’s decision; she was stiffer than he’d known her. He had felt familiar with the woman until that moment, and now he saw what it was.
Lights were on in the gigantic new homes well back in the thick scrub oak on Oakpine Mountain—these huge yellow plates printed the branchy imbroglio as Kathleen drove them down. He was a stranger
come to town, lording it over everybody. He wondered if he’d been too bossy with Craig as well.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you know what to do. If I can help, I will. But don’t let me—”
“I won’t.” She drove down the mountain road.
After a minute of silence, which then folded and magnified, Mason said, “You want to talk this out, or should we just carry on? I’m real good with the latter. I can do it for years. Correct that: did it for years.” Kathleen turned and made a serious face at him, and the way the lost light fell on her cheekbones, Mason could see her freckles, the shadow of them. Didn’t freckles fade?
“There’s nothing to talk out, Mason. Please. I’m glad you could get out. Mr. Sturges will be very pleased to see you.” She spoke as if she were reading something she didn’t like, and Mason knew she was angry, but he wasn’t sure it was all for him.
“I was eighteen. If he remembers me, he gets the prize.”
“He’s only eighty. He remembers.”
“Why’s he in the center?”
“Had a stroke. Lost his wife.”
“Was she the—”
“Chorus teacher. Were you in a cappella?”
“I only sang in the band. You were in a cappella. Red dress. Hair like this, a bun?”
“It was a hairpiece.” She put her hand on top of her head. “Something we did.”
Mason looked at her until she turned from the road. “You look good,” he said. “You always looked good.”
“I’m fifty. Three years ago my husband found a girlfriend. It’s the oldest story in the world. So watch what you say about how I look.”
Mason wasn’t going to say it, but he was sick of being judicious and silent, and so he spoke: “I met her.”
“I have too.”
“I meant: whatever it is, this old story, it is not a beauty contest. She’s a tall woman, but she’s not in your league.”
“Mason, leave it.”
“Kathleen, I don’t believe I will. I believe I’ll go right on here.” They were at a light downtown, crossing toward the medical complex. Kathleen Gunderson sat at the wheel looking straight ahead. Mason shifted, the way a person does before launching into an explanation. “Frank’s deal is not with you or about it. It’s a disappointment and, in my opinion a mistake, a common and a large mistake, but it is about Frank and nothing about you.”
“Divorce is divorce, as you well know.”
“I know the legalities and nothing of the rest. I’m learning, but poorly.”
“But you’ll feel free to speak to them anyway.”
With the light they crossed the intersection and began following State Street. “Again, old friend,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
The Gables Care Center was adjacent to the four-story hospital, both structures unfamiliar to Mason, and lit in the new night. Kathleen parked, but Mason stopped her before they went inside to see their old teacher. The care center was more a sprawling house with a shake roof; there was something pagodalike about it. When he took her arm, she turned to him, the hospital bright behind her. She spoke: “Jimmy’s going to die, Mason. Regardless of who does what. These are powerful drugs right now, but they can’t beat it. He won’t see Christmas this year, so get ready or leave town or whatever, because you can’t stop this train.”
He dropped his hand and said, “I thought so, but I appreciate your saying it.”
“It must be strange for you to be back,” she said, a conciliation.
“I’m strange,” Mason said. “This town is the town, but I’m a little tilted.”
She took his arm and led him toward the care center. They were walking slowly, as if waiting for words to find them.
“It’s weird that you and Jimmy are both here. The band.”
“The years,” Mason said.
Kathleen said, “You guys were tight as tight and then gone.”
“I know all about it,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder if anyone else does.”
“Frank does. The band was big for him, maybe the biggest thing. You know when he started in on it? When he was drunk. He’d get drunk and start on the various gigs. The road trip back from . . .”
“Cheyenne, when the blizzard crossed us north of Ardmoor and we stayed at that place—” Mason stopped and dropped his chin to think.
“The dude ranch and their last customers in the lodge.”
“The Wooden Star, it was.” He looked at her. “It was not a small place—buffalo heads, a stone chimney three stories. That ranch is still there. God, what a night. We had about four times like that—when the world seemed like it was just made for four kids from Oakpine.” He smiled at her.
“You never talked to Frank about it when you were up doing paperwork, those deeds or whatever?”
“We’re men—we don’t talk. We did the deals Frank needed. I never talked in my life, really. I did some business, and I’ve got a vocabulary for my work, but I have never, ever talked.”
• • •
Mr. Sturges had all his hair, and he was dressed in a dark blue robe over a set of light blue pajamas. He had lived in Wyoming all his life, yet he had always radiated a sense that he was visiting from a larger world, come to civilize the children of the frontier. He had called the students mister and miss, and all through his forty-one-year teaching career, he had worn ties with white shirts and tweed sport coats.
“Mrs. Gunderson,” he said, standing from the easy chair in his room. “Mr. Kirby. How kind of you to come. Sit down.” Two folding chairs had been set up for the occasion, and as Kathleen and Mason sat, a nurse appeared at the door and greeted them.
“Tea all around?” Mr. Sturges said.
“Perfect,” Mason said, and the nurse disappeared.
“Well,” the older man continued. “How goes the profession of the law?”
“Just as the papers have it,” Mason responded. “Stalled by self-serving sycophants, such as myself. Justice held hostage.”
Mr. Sturges laughed. His smile when it came showed the small s of stroke on the right side. “That’s not what I’ve heard, but you tell me. Which law do you practice?”
“I started a small firm in Denver, and we’re primarily doing industrial claims.”
“And he’s selective,” Kathleen added.
“I’m sure he is.”
“If you mean I don’t advertise on television,” Mason joked. The nurse returned with a tray, and Mason poured three cups of tea, stirring sugar into Kathleen’s. “But I think we’ve been able to help some people. I still harbor the sense that we are doing the right thing.” He examined his cup and toasted his old teacher. “Real china,” he said.
“This is a civilized place for keeping the likes of me,” Mr. Sturges said. “I’m glad to hear that, Mason,” he said. “You were a bright light that year.”
“Who do you think had the hardest time doing the right thing?” Mason asked. “From history.”
Mr. Sturges sipped his tea. “They’re easy to spot in the history books. Anybody killed in his prime. We made it easy to kill people in this country. There’s no cure for it, except mediocrity.” He smiled again, and his lip fell down. “Listen to me. I sound like I’m eighty again.”
“You were a good teacher,” Mason told him.
“I appreciate that. I enjoyed the career. Now tell me a story or two about your cases. Tell me one where the people in the right were duly rewarded.”
“I know a couple like that,” Mason said. “If you can tolerate my opinion.” Mr. Sturges nodded, and Mason leaned forward and began to talk. The two visitors stayed another twenty minutes until Mr. Sturges’s face began to fade. They said goodbye and stood to leave.
Mason and Kathleen drove down to Oakpine High School. “You want to walk out to where Frank broke his leg?” Mason said. Immediately upon opening the car
door, they could hear music across the green.
“I don’t think so.”
“New scoreboard.”
“New track, all weather, and new bleachers, and new gym.” She pointed each out. “A little walk?” she said.
“Walking,” he said. “You pioneers. But yes.”
The two sets of double doors in the new gymnasium were open and lighted, and they could see boys and girls coming and going with streamers and sheets of paper. “The homecoming dance is Saturday.”
“Want to go? I came home.” He quickly pointed to the white cupola of the old gym. “What’s in there?”
“Learning center for second language, dyslexia, computers.” They walked across the corner of the football field and sat on the stone steps of the main building.
“I ate my mother’s sandwiches here two hundred times.”
“Have you really enjoyed the law?”
“I have. I became what I expected, I guess. There’s no surprise in me. Thirty years later, and there’s no surprise in me. What would Matt have been if he’d lived?”
“He’d be dead,” Kathleen said. “He would have played football somewhere, that’s for sure, probably Laramie. He had a scholarship. Then he would have come back here to town and relived the glory days for ten years and passed out under a train.”
“You guys were in love,” Mason said.
“Whatever that means,” she said.
“We know what it means, but let’s talk about something else.”