In the Fall

by Jeffrey Lent

  Binter looked at him. Slowly, with regret and distaste, his eyes rotated away, back to the lap below him. Then up to the windscreen. “I’m out,” he said. Then put the Ford in gear and drove a circle around Jamie in the soft soil and back up the track to the road, the Ford popping as it went.

  He drove Foster and the puppy into Littleton, to Scully’s small house where the old man now sat most days in a padded rocker by the small coal-burning range that gave what heat there was to the place, even now in midsummer a small fire chuckling in the grate, Scully with a blanket over his knees. A stack of magazines one side of the chair, a box of dime westerns the other. Scully twisted always a little sideways, his arms and legs angled sharp and hard with arthritis. His hands curled claws that palsied as he held his reading matter. Jamie explained himself.

  “Boy’s always welcome. His creature too, it don’t shit the house. If he’ll listen, I’ll tell him tales. The old days.”

  “Don’t let him pester you.”

  Scully ignored this. “Somebody should tell him. He should have something of her. I know you won’t speak of her.”

  Jamie looked around the house. Lovey sniffing crumbs along the counter edge of the sink. Then to Foster. “You be all right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Be useful. Fill the coal scuttle. You could scrub up some too.”

  “Leave the boy be. He don’t need to cart after me.”

  “I won’t be but a couple—three hours.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Back to Bethlehem then to track down Jeeter Carrick, watery-eyed sometime dishwasher errand-boy loafer rounder-of-the-town, whom time to time Jamie employed to bottle liquor out of the casks and could not be trusted but he was in to you. At this time he was in to Jamie for a couple hundred dollars, the loss of five cases of liquor fronted to Carrick for a sure-thing deal, that as Jamie had told him when the liquor was gone and no money to show for it, wasn’t sure at all but was quite a thing. Found him sprawled in alcohol narcosis in a cheap ground-floor rented room and kicked him awake, hauled him down the hall out into the yard and pumped water over his head, holding him by the neck with one foot up on his backside until Jamie was satisfied that he was as alert as could be hoped. Then stood him up and slapped him a hard roundhouse blow the side of his head and stood waiting for Carrick to pick himself up from the soft mud surrounding the pump. And stepped in and held his shirtfront and slapped him again, this time just enough to focus the anger out of the boy’s eyes and then told him how it would be. How a debt was to be paid. How good would come of it.

  The two of them rode then over the hills to Franconia and down the long valley of the Gale River with the farms spread out either side between the dark high ridges, both silent, Carrick settling himself with small hits from the leatherbound flask out of the Packard’s glovebox. The farms to Jamie like Sunday afternoon although it was a weekday. The smell of mown hay. Mixed herds of Jersey and Guernsey cattle in meadows, some lifting heads to watch their passing. A pair of big bay Belgian horses standing in the shade of an elm, their heads drooped somnolent, their tails whisking for flies. Even the smell of the barnside dungheaps was sweetened, distilled out into the afternoon air. Willows and elms.

  Carrick bumming smokes, head turned to the open window, flatulent.

  In Binter’s dooryard they stopped. The house and yard still, silent. Some red hens dusting in the sun against the side of the barn. Jamie stepped out of the Packard and looked back at Carrick. “Wait,” he said. “And think it through so you got it straight. You try to go around me, go out on your own, I don’t care how small-time or peckerheaded a deal it is, I wipe you up like crap off my shoe. I been thinking, riding along, for you it’d be a red poker up the ass. Think on that. And stop drinking my fucking whiskey.”

  The Binter woman had no English but left the kneading bread to come around the kitchen table in a floured fury when Jamie came through the screen door, her arms up and hands spraying white flour dust as she gesticulated, her face a harridan of hatred as if she recognized unwanted fate in the form of a single man when she saw it, her mouth old dry lips stretching out from yellow teeth, her tongue clacking against the roof of her mouth, the language Dutch or Ukrainian or Polack or something else, Jamie had never learned what. He went the opposite way around the table from her, ignoring her protest, the small hammer of her fists on his shoulder and back. She was small, big-breasted, her hair a tight bun, the color of dulled gunmetal, no gray. Now she had hold of the back of his jacket, pulling to stop him and he twisted free of her without turning toward her. Had no interest in silencing her, happy to let her quacking bring Binter out. He’d not till then been inside their house yet turned easily in the hall off the kitchen and down to the first door on the left where the drapes were pulled to block the light and the furniture was dark wood, carved with scrolled arms and clawfeet, dark-green-velvet upholstered. The walls a dense dim floral paper nearly covered with prints and photographs in silver- and gold-painted plaster frames. Binter rising from a single-ended settee of the same velvet, his trouser waist loosened against the bulk of his stomach for his nap. His hair flown. Buttoning his flies. The wife had stopped at the parlor door as if giving up. Or witness.

  “Get her out of here,” Jamie said.

  Binter ran a hand through his hair, his fingers crabbed as if not caring, the gesture without intention or thought. Studying Jamie a long moment. Then spoke in their tongue to the woman.

  “I got a man’s going to live with you. You teach him the liquor making, front to back and back to front. When I’m happy with what he’s doing I’ll take it all off your hands. Not until then. Meanwhile, you can use him however you want. He makes any fuss at all about anything let me know. That’s how its going to be.”

  Binter looked at Jamie and said, “It cannot be.”

  “It already is. He’s here, in the car. There ain’t no choice in this.”

  “No.”

  “Listen old man. You want to retire there’s only two ways to do it. This is one of them. This is the best one. You comprehend that?”

  Binter took breath, weary. Again: “It cannot be.”

  Jamie shook his head. “You should’ve of thought this through all those years ago when you started in. Once you fill a need you can’t just quit in this world. The same way I can’t let you just quit me. It’s not just you and me, it’s a whole line of people. But then again it is just me; you’re what I got right now. And I won’t let you go just because you got tired. Why, you look at it the right way, it’s not so bad. What am I talking about, four-five months?”

  “I sold the cows.”

  “You what?”

  “I sold the cows.”

  “What was all that I saw driving in here if they wasn’t cows.”

  “They’re sold. Once they’re gone I got no excuse for all that corn. Same man’s wanting the sheep.”

  “Well fuck.”

  “Just right. Like you say, I’m tired. Also, things have changed. People, they watch different now than it used to be.”

  “Well fuck this now.” Both then quiet a long moment. Jamie looking around the room, Binter watching him. After a time Jamie looked back at Binter and said, “You sold your stock, how come it’s all still here?”

  “He give earnest monev.”

  “Sure.” Jamie nodded. “I see. How much?”

  “A head?”

  “No the whole fucking lot of them.”

  “Chust the cattle or the sheep too?”

  “Oh my christ all of it. The whole deal.” Digging around behind him and pulling out his wallet. Unzipped it and took out the roll of bills circled with a rubber band. The roll he’d never once let another man see. Hoping he had enough. Knowing Binter could well mention any figure at all and he’d have no choice, no gauge, no knowledge. Cows and sheep. Fucking farmboy.

  “I’m too old,” Binter said. “Too old for this work.”

  “Like I said I got a man for you. All you got to do is tell him what
to do, how to do it.”

  “A man to live here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who pays his board?”

  “Well christ. I figured he’d earn it.”

  Binter shook his head. “The kind of man you’d bring, I’m thinking, will be more work than doing it myself. However much he learns.”

  Jamie considered Carrick. “How much board then?”

  “Twenty a week.”

  Jamie paused counting the bills, looked at Binter. “I’m buying the cows, the sheep, be buying the feed too. And you want twenty a week to board my man?”

  “Yuht.” Binter smiled.

  They walked out through the pasture that bordered along the Gale, stood there with the summer sun hot on the backs of their necks. The river a small oxbow a dozen feet across, the water five or six feet deep. The opposite shore heavy in shade, beds of fern smelling sweet and cool, the smell coming off the water like a breeze. Carrick kicked one foot toefirst into the ground.

  “Nope. I’m not milking a bunch of shitty cows. And I’m not shoveling shit for him either. That wasn’t the deal. I won’t even tote pails of milk for him. That smell, milk and shit all mixed together, it makes me want to puke just thinking of it. Told myself I wouldn’t ever do her again.”

  “You’re off a farm?”

  “Little runt-ass scratch of rocks and stones up to Lyndonville. I’ve not looked back and don’t think to commence now.”

  “It’s not but a couple months. Look sharp how things work it might not take that long.”

  “Then what? Move the still somewhere else? All you got then’s a piece of machinery. How you aim to account for the raw materials?”

  “Tell you what. You work off your debt, let me figure out the rest of it. That’s why we’re standing here, I’m good at figuring these things out.”

  “You got my ass in a sling is what you mean to say.”

  “You’re looking at this all wrong. You put a little effort in, you’re going to be valuable. You following me?”

  Carrick shook his head. “I never ought to’ve tried the liquor business. I had a bad feeling about it, even when I was thinking I was going to skin those birds.”

  “You got to make mistakes, starting out. It’s how you learn what to do right.”

  “Shit.” Carrick turned away. “Let me meet this old fart.”

  Crossing back over the meadow Carrick stopped of a sudden. Took a smoke from Jamie and lighted it, crushing the match into the grass. Blew out smoke and looked at Jamie.

  “Back there, I’d said no and stuck to it, what’d you’d have done?”

  Jamie studied him. Finally said, “You’ve got an interest now. See?”

  Carrick nodded. “I’d be in that little river with my head stove.”

  “Well, you’re not going to be running around flapping your mouth.”

  Carrick looked off, somewhere else. Then back at Jamie. “Shitty fucking cows.”

  What Jamie saw, everywhere: women with children. A woman in spring snow on the street of Bethlehem bending near to a squat in her heavy overcoat to tighten a muffler across the face of her child. A woman walking with a pair of children, a boy and a girl behind her, each carrying a sack of groceries. A woman in a sailor blouse on the lawn of one of the hotels playing croquet with her teenage daughters, a group of four intent and serious, hair wisping sweat-soaked onto their cheeks, one of the girls looking up to glance at Jamie as he passed by, then immediately back down to her game. The young woman teacher at Foster’s school, outside of a May noon with the children at recess, a flock of children around her. All seeming to radiate out from her, small planets in steady irregular orbit to her sun. A young woman stepping down onto the train platform, holding an infant out from her hip, her head tilted back slightly as she scanned the small crowd for the man they both were meeting. The settled certainty of her glance, contentment. Central to the world. And smiled then, a brief eclipse upon her face as the young father come north ahead of them stepped forward. But mothers with daughters, little girls. These he would look at and look away, afraid they would one or the other glance at him and read something of his wanting in his face and misunderstand it. Or understand it. One summer afternoon in Bethlehem heard Claire’s exact cry—“Poppy!”—and stopped where he was, not looking, not wanting to see the child caught up by her father. Another evening followed fifty feet behind until they turned into the Maplewood a man with a young girl up riding his shoulders—the man from behind could have been himself, the girl Claire—Joey’s hair, the small dress, her father’s hands up to hold her in place by her knees, her arms wrapped around his head, her chin riding the peak of his hair. When they turned he looked away, kept walking, not wanting to see their profiles. As if he carried a pair of small river-smoothed pebbles in some pocket cut into his heart. He thought he might inhale some particle of air that had once passed in and out of their lungs. Scully was right; he would not speak of them to Foster. Even as he was sure variants of the same things moved someway through Foster. But neither of them owned a language for these things. Jamie did not believe anyone did.

  One morning in late August when a single small maple along the river burned a lone fire of the season turning, the doctor Dodge drove in unannounced, his setter bitch sitting upright on the passenger side. Jamie stood on the step with a cup of coffee and watched as his boy and the pup Lovey ran outside, the puppy galloping and barking excitement, dancing around the motorcar. Foster, Jamie knew, spoke to Dodge time to time over the telephone. Dodge got out, wearing knee-high gumboots and wool trousers, a green and black checked woodsman’s shirt. Jamie walked over, the sand cold and damp under his feet. The setter bitch jumped over the side of the door and nosed her puppy, then swarmed her with an attack of teeth and savage snarling. Lovey cried and crawled away a dozen feet, peeing as she went. She stopped there and turned to crouch and watch. The doctor was tamping a pipebowl of tobacco. The bitch lay at his feet, her eyes on the men. The doctor was talking to Foster as he got his pipe going.

  “You’ve had her out?”

  “Most every day.”

  “Got her quartering for you?”

  “She works back and forth pretty good. I haven’t had to do much.”

  “How far out?”

  “Depends on where we are. Thick woods she stays in close enough most of the time. The pastures and orchards she’ll get out of sight on me.”

  “Uh-huh. She’s young. You worked on that Whoa business?”

  “No sir. I couldn’t figure out how to do it.”

  “It’s easy enough. Teach her around the house. Before you open the door to let her out, before you let her eat. That sort of thing. Teach her when she’ll do it because she wants to. That’s the best way to learn. She’ll still bust birds but it’ll sink in after a time.” Then to Jamie, “You look healthy, Pelham.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “What I thought, you didn’t mind, I’d take this boy off your hands for a day. See if we couldn’t scare up some young partridge. See what kind of a dog she’ll make for him.”

  Jamie looked at Foster. Without need he asked, “How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You behave yourself. Pay attention to what the doctor tells you.” Dodge said, “He’ll be fine. I’ve got a sack of lunch made up. You have boots, boy?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well go get into them. It’s best we start before all the moisture goes off and takes the scent with it.” Then with Foster run off to the house, Dodge turned to Jamie and said, “He needs something, might as well be this. Somebody got me started once. Some debts are long.”

  “I don’t know what kind of summer he’d have had, it wasn’t for that pup.”

  Dodge nodded. “I ran into Estus Terry the other day. Asked after you. Told me I ran across you, for you to come see him.”

  “How is Estus?”

  “He’ll outlive me.”

  Estus Terry still lived in the hermitage
set back in the wildlands north of Bethlehem in the big northward loop of the Ammonoosuc. He was out of the business, retired three years since his partner Aaron Wells was disemboweled by a logger in an Allagash camp and as Terry told Jamie at the time, “You got to quit when you can’t go in behind your partner. I got the news first thing occurred to me was four-five years ago that sonofabitch wouldn’t have even thought to pull a skinning knife on Aaron and if he’d been thick enough to try anyhow would have been him sitting on the ground trying to stuff his guts back inside himself, not Aaron. How does a man know when the time is come to say enough? You can’t trust your nerves, or we’d all have quit long since. So a sign comes. If it’d been me, I guess Aaron would be shacked up with some wore-out old whore in Bangor or Augusta. Someplace like that. I’m sorry it happened but I’m glad it was me was left.”

  The big horses were gone. Where Terry went now he went on foot. The house was much the same, but for a new stovepipe replaced the old one rotten to an angle. Terry was out in the yard awaiting him. Jamie had brought a pair of bottles of bonded whiskey and stepped out of the Packard with the bottlenecks gripped together in one hand. Terry spread-kneed on a chopping-block: green Johnson wool pants, a white shirt, black vest buttoned over the shirt. Hair straight back flat as if a wet comb had just passed through. He grinned a black-rimmed greeting.

  “Pelham.”

  “How’re you keeping, Estus?”

  “Just fine. Except I ought to’ve come over the spring when you buried that girl and the children. I’d like to tell you I was puny or didn’t hear until too late but the sad truth is I just wasn’t up to it, not the trip but all the rest. I never been one for such things. Ceremonies.”

  “That’s all right, Estus. It was a quiet little thing anyhow. I wasn’t up to having any big todo over it all myself. And it was Joey and Claire died; the boy, Foster, he never even come down with it. Sailed right through.”

  “I knew it. Not about the boy but I’m glad to hear it. The rest I mean—I knew you wouldn’t want a show. Maybe it was that left me feeling I ought to’ve made the effort. I liked that girl.”