Border Songs

by Jim Lynch

  His guilt or innocence was hard for most locals to ascertain, but his take on things was as clear as ever: WELCOME TO AUSCHWITZ. This greeting looked more out of place the longer it stayed up. The BP accelerated its exodus, and the entire valley quieted as raspberry fields were put to bed, illegal farm workers returned to their homelands and fair-weather residents abandoned their toy ranches. Customs interrogations softened, too, and the few remaining agents grew increasingly reluctant to confront anybody, especially after the immigration-detention centers maxed out. The Princess of Nowhere herself was sent back to Brazil the prior week, once it was finally sorted out that she spoke an oddly accented mix of Portuguese and her native Tupian. Captured illegals were now simply put on the street with the promise they’d leave the country voluntarily. Consequently, arrests amounted to little more than annoying paper shuffles and flimsy agreements. “Catch ’n’ release,” as McAfferty called it.

  The border cams—first feared, then ridiculed—were now forgotten. Nineteen-year-old Americans resumed crossing the ditch for the ritual thrill of legal drinking. More Canadians ventured south to buy groceries and gas and awaited the September 10 grand opening of the Lucky Dog Casino just over the line. Bud smuggling slowed down, as if there’d been a cease-fire or the outlaws themselves had lost interest, although a better explanation surfaced in The Economist, which concluded that the rising Canadian dollar had accomplished what the drug czar and Border Patrol and police forces couldn’t.

  What lingered was the gossip about Brandon. People obsessed over his Superman-like ability to detect a tunnel where everyone else saw dirt, pavement and a ditch. They shared testimonials of watching him build strange things—could you call them sculptures?—throughout the county.

  Sophie finally persuaded even Jeanette Vanderkool to discuss Brandon on camera, but it didn’t go as planned. As soon as she asked about his childhood, Jeanette insisted they change places. Sophie sat in front of the camera, grinning apprehensively.

  “Everybody shares themselves with you,” Jeanette said. “Who do you share yourself with?”

  “The dead, mostly.” She smiled at her camera. “My first partner kept demanding more distance, then got it. Boom. An aneurysm. We talk a lot. My second one left for a blonde who didn’t ask questions. Died in a convertible two years later. We talk too. And, of course, my father. We did an oral history of World War II together at the V.A.s in every air force town we moved to. I’d do the recording, he’d ask the questions.”

  “Who’d you do it for?”

  “See, I didn’t realize it, but all those letters from the publishers and TV stations were rejections. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Most people didn’t ask or seem to care who or what it was for. My father was the sort of person people told everything to.”

  “Did he die in battle?”

  “No. Riding a lawn mower in Houston, when a truck tire bounced down an off-ramp over his fence and killed him instantly.”

  “Do you make this stuff up as you go?”

  “Who’d make up something like—”

  “Well, it’s just such a freak—”

  “Freak accidents, in my life, have been the norm. I was hanging up my ice skates when I was fourteen … I was really into skating as a kid. Dreamt of the Olympics and everything. So I was hanging up my skates in this locker when someone asked me a question. I pivoted like this and a skate fell down and the blade slit my wrist.” She raised the scar to the camera. “Took two surgeries to sew the ligaments back together. Everyone thought I’d tried to kill myself. That was the year before I was sleeping in a tent with a friend—an acquaintance, actually—who died instantly when a gum-tree limb fell on her and didn’t even touch me. You want more?”

  “Where have you lived?”

  “Nineteen different states. You want the cities?”

  “What jobs have you had?”

  “Stewardess, research librarian, nursing assistant, substitute history teacher, sex instructor, masseuse. Lots of things.”

  “You taught sex-ed in the schools?”

  “No, I taught groups of women how to get comfortable with their sexuality.”

  “You’re serious? You’ve got all these men primping for you, but you’re not sleeping with any of them, are you?”

  “Marilyn Monroe once said sex is the opposite of love. I’m afraid there’s some truth to that when it comes to men.”

  “Poor thing. You’ve never had a good man, have you?”

  “Is Norm a good man?”

  “A great man. A wonderful man who worries too much.” A desperate expression washed over her face, as if she’d just lost something. “Did you,” she said, “did you answer my question?”

  Sophie ran a pinkie finger around her tight smile. “I’m a lesbian.”

  Jeanette paused and tilted her head. “Oh, that is so delightful.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m asking the questions today, Sophie Winslow. So what are you really doing with all this?”

  “Dad always said he wanted to do an oral history of now. To do as many interviews as it took in one place and time until the truths rose up. That stuck with me. I’d wonder what it would be like to know what everyone on a plane was thinking at the same time. If you lined all those thoughts up, would it add up to anything? So when this place came to me, it seemed as good an opportunity as any to try, for once, to get my arms around a people and a place and a time. You know, a community time capsule of sorts. I lucked out on the timing, of course, but it took me a while to figure out what my real subject was.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Your son.”

  Jeanette cocked her head as if to shake water from her left ear. “Come again?”

  “He’s your son, but he’s our story. He’s not only unique and honorable, but he’s also the only one who’s incapable of …”

  “Of what?”

  “Of posing. Do you have another half hour, Jeanette?”

  44

  NORM STALLED in the boat barn, pacing along the full length of the fifty-six-foot-six-inch mast he and Brandon had roped—in sections—to the truck and hauled from Anacortes in the slow lane with his hazard lights flashing. Why hadn’t he waited until he’d found a good price on a short rig? The taller stick would come in handy in light air, sure, but fifty-six-six? Christ. He’d read enough to know that the bigger the mast, the bigger the sails and the bigger the trouble.

  He’d pulled the trigger on the rest of the rigging, too, from some salvage guy in Sacramento, of all places, who swore it was all brand-new and should arrive by the following weekend. Flipping through the Yanmar catalogue for another look at the two-cylinder twenty-five horse, he pictured his shiny sloop swaying in the boat-lift slings at the marina, rocking his head slightly to enhance the fantasy.

  He didn’t know what exactly explained it, whether the stroke had cleared his head or if it was the removal of his daily burdens or what Jeanette would probably call karma. He just knew things looked as different as they did after the first snowfall. Brandon, especially. He was far better at running the dairy than Norm had expected and seemed to communicate more easily than ever. But Norm still couldn’t make sense of the notoriety he continued to generate. The tunnel discovery was a freak show unto itself, with people always stopping by to fawn over him. And he flatly couldn’t believe what Sophie had told him about the pothead professor taking a serious interest in Brandon’s art. Plus she now was throwing an art show cocktail party strategically scheduled just hours before the grand opening of the casino. Jeanette said it would feature some of their son’s work that nobody had ever seen. He’d even received an invite in the mail. When would it ever stop?

  The idea of everyone standing around staring at Brandon’s paintings went down like castor oil. He’d never understood art for art’s sake, which left him bored and snickering at the suckers who bought into it. Brandon’s took it a step further and confused and embarrassed him, as if it exposed something unflattering a
bout the Vanderkool gene pool.

  When daylight flashed inside the barn, Norm could hear crescendos of laughter coming from next door. The party sounded large even by Sophie’s standards, so apparently even the anti-casino doomsayers were turning out en masse to see just how cheesy this “Vegas-style” monstrosity was inside, after first checking out the artwork and grabbing a few free drinks.

  “Brandon?”

  The youthful voice puzzled him, since he’d assumed it was Jeanette coming to scold him about being late for the party. He stepped out from his semi-enclosed workstation, looked down and saw nobody. “Hello?” he hesitantly replied.

  A moment later, a slender, short-haired woman with bright eyes ducked out from beneath the broad camber of the hull. It took Norm a couple breaths to recognize Madeline Rousseau.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt—”

  “No bother.”

  “Saw the light and couldn’t resist peeking,” she explained. “I had no idea how big it is. You could go anywhere in this, couldn’t you?”

  “If I can get her out of the barn.”

  “Can I have a look inside?”

  “By all means.”

  She climbed the stairs, stepped confidently aboard and spun a Lumar winch. “Look at the size of these suckers.” She disappeared below, clucking and whistling. “Had no clue it would be this … awesome.”

  Norm didn’t notice the knee twinges as he descended into the galley.

  “Bronze portals, laminated beams, teak trim. You’re a real craftsman, Mr. Vanderkool.”

  Norm blushed. “Don’t look too close.” He’d heard the professor had put her in rehab for a couple weeks. He’d also heard she went away to college in Ontario, or had gone to see an aunt in Manitoba. He unlatched the electrical box and waved her over to see the color-coordinated wiring, feeling like a sweaty kid showing off his science-fair project. “Got it all labeled, see? Bow light. Anchor light. VHF.”

  She at least feigned interest. “I’m stalling,” she confided after he shut the box. “I don’t feel up to going to Sophie’s quite yet.”

  “Me neither.”

  She laughed, and Norm wondered why he’d just now realized how pretty she was. He’d always thought her sister was the beauty. “You were looking for Brandon?”

  She smiled. “Been thinking about him a lot lately.”

  Norm scrambled to catch up with the significance of the words and the smile.

  “I got my job back at the nursery. And if I can stay sober”—she tapped a knuckle on the cabin trim—“I’ll apply for winter quarter.”

  He nodded, admiring her candor.

  “So part of my plan,” she continued, “is to get back into sailing—not racing, just sailing—which got me curious about your project here. What do you still need?”

  “Plenty.” Norm inhaled as Sophie’s party clamor crested again. “For starters, an engine, so I’m—”

  “What else?”

  “Little things, sails being the biggest, but I’m a long ways from being able to afford even a Yanmar, so—”

  “Why not just buy some used sails online and drop her in the bay?”

  He laughed awkwardly. “Think I’ll have a hard enough time maneuvering her with an engine, Madeline. You see, I don’t have all that much experience under sail.”

  “I’d love to help you figure it out,” she said. “We could learn how to sail her together, Norm—in and out of the marina, if we had to, until we can get an engine for her.”

  He turned away, pretending to sneeze. The biggest difference the stroke made was emotional. He couldn’t remember ever breaking down quite like he had earlier in the week when the tall doctor in her white lab coat gave them the verdict on Jeanette’s condition: “It looks like early Alzheimer’s.”

  “Looks like,” Norm had repeated petulantly, zeroing in on the chink in the diagnosis. “So you don’t actually know what it is.”

  The doctor looked at each of them confidently, patiently. “My experience tells me that’s what it is, but there isn’t a blood test or—”

  “So you don’t know,” he snapped.

  “That’s true, but—”

  “Well, why do you—”

  “Norm,” Jeanette said calmly. “It’s okay. I’ve got it. It’s almost a relief. Really, it’s okay. I’ve known it for some time.”

  It wasn’t her graceful acceptance so much as her attempt to comfort him that got him blubbering. But even little things uprooted him now. Jeanette’s reminder notes that she posted for herself all around the house. Brandon bottle-feeding a calf. So something as incidental as Madeline Rousseau calling him Norm for the first time could move him, much less her offering, in the gentlest way imaginable, to teach him how to sail his boat.

  45

  BRANDON WAS PINNED in a corner behind two Lynden ladies he vaguely recognized, both chattering simultaneously about the “quite unusual” photos and paintings on the walls and desperately trying to drag him into their conversation.

  He’d never known how to react to this sort of attention. Ever since kindergarten, he’d heard his work called unusual and bizarre or, worse, weird. No response beyond a shrug or a blank stare had ever come to him. It never seemed like the sort of thing you talked about. Besides, Danny Crawford always said that the less artists said the better.

  “What makes you create these things?” asked the one with the pastry flakes clinging to her lipstick.

  “Yes, what compels you?” pressed the one with the goiter.

  They might as well have asked him why he breathed. After hesitating, that was the question he answered. “Because I need to,” he mumbled. “And because I want to.” He stared down at the ladies until their heavy eyelashes fluttered like hummingbird wings trying to lift them off the floor.

  Brandon hadn’t foreseen any of this when Sophie casually asked if she could show some of his work at a “little gathering.” It sounded as if a few of his canvases would be mixed with other art and a few people would eat cheese and crackers and glance at it. Instead it was only his stuff. On every wall. Even in the bathroom. Twenty-three recent paintings and more than fifty photographs of his outdoor work. Several sequences showed him building cones in the river and on the flats, or his thorn-stitched structures getting ripped apart by the currents, or the rainbows he created by swinging a club off the water. There were shots of many columns on riverbanks, in trees and ravines. Then still more action photos of him, from up close and afar, throwing sticks into the sky or hanging see-through tapestries of leaves that he’d completely forgotten about. The paintings included clusters of foreign faces—more expressions, really, than faces—and others of bird flocks, the largest canvas being a silver ball of flashing dunlins, as well as his most recent—a three-panel portrait of Madeline, the first nearly photographic in its precision, the second more abstract, her face flushed with anxiety, and the third, almost surreal, of her pink-tongued laughter.

  Luckily, almost nobody—except these puzzled elderly women—was paying much attention to the art, beyond the most easily understood paintings in the entrance, including one of his mother sprawled in dandelions and another of a lineup of cattle wearing the faces of his father, Dirk Hoffman, Cleve Erickson, Raymond Lankhaar, Roony Meurs and other local dairymen with features too small to make out.

  For the most part people were talking and laughing, not seeing. And as the house filled and the volume climbed, most of the giddy chatter was about blackjack, craps and slots, about how much money people were going to win or lose, what Katrina Montfort had heard about the decor and the buffet, everyone gorging all the while on Sophie’s free liquor.

  Brandon’s mother passed through the door in a sequined top and so much makeup that he almost didn’t recognize her. She looked hesitant, though her smile bloomed once she recognized people. She hugged Sophie, then Alexandra Cole, then anyone within reach, embracing some of them twice. He started toward her in case she needed him, but felt blocked by the s
ea of expectant faces. The room was filling fast, and he reminded himself to try not to watch and listen to everything at once.

  He’d agreed to come only after Sophie told him Madeline might show. Having talked to her so persuasively so many times in his mind, it kept jolting him to remember that he hadn’t actually spoken to her since he’d called about the tunnel. When he finally asked her father about her, he said she’d be back pretty soon and left the rest dangling. Now he wished Sophie hadn’t mentioned her at all, so he wouldn’t have spent so much time searching for a strand of words so simple that he wouldn’t trip over them—such as, Something that amazing can’t be considered a mistake. Yet by itself, that seemed even worse than saying nothing. So he worked on combinations of ideas that incorporated an apology, though he couldn’t pinpoint what he’d done wrong. He wished he’d heard Danny Crawford apologize more often so he’d know what a great one sounded like.

  He found McAfferty in the kitchen, mid-story with Dionne and Canfield. “This was a two-day wedding. Two days! And it was one of those weddings that’s so small it’s too intimate, know what I’m saying? Especially when you don’t know anybody, which I didn’t. And this congregation didn’t split along traditional bride-and-groom lines, okay? The two camps here were crossworders and gays.” He topped off everyone’s champagne glass and glanced at Brandon. “What’s up, Picasso? So I wake up and stumble into this way-too-intimate lodge on this way-too-special wedding day, and there I am, a hungover, hetero noncrossworder with no place to hang. Know what I’m saying? The gays are all chatty lovebirds on the couches. And the thoughtful brainiacs are at the breakfast table obsessing about thirty-seven down.”

  “So what’d you do?”