“It doesn’t matter anymore, Bob. It’s just, I always had my doubts, because of those damn dogs. And how weird the Wickenses are, and what Betty had to say.”
“Betty? What did Betty have to say?”
“She used to be a nurse, and she saw Morton Dewart’s body, and she just didn’t think he looked like he’d been torn apart by a bear. She thought it looked more like the work of those pit bulls. And then, the other night, Dad and I went up there for dinner.”
“Up where?”
“The Wickenses.”
“You had dinner with them?”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t have seconds, I can tell you that. But yeah, we did, and everyone went out of their way to tell us how Dewart had seen this bear, and decided to go after it, and how he must have had a run-in with it. It just all seemed a bit rehearsed, you know? Like they were putting on a show for us.”
I glanced in my rear-view mirror, saw Lawrence’s blue Jag following us. Bob stared straight ahead. “So what do you think now?”
“I guess there’s a bear in the woods, Bob. I still don’t know for sure that one killed Dewart, but I’m not going to get anyone to listen to my suspicions, certainly not Orville, who doesn’t give a shit what I say anyway. And the fact is, your description of the bear, with the torn ear, matches the description the Wickenses gave of the bear that Dewart went after.”
Bob nodded tiredly. “I feel kind of sick,” he said.
“You’ve been through a traumatic incident, Bob. We need to get you looked after, and then get you back to the camp.”
“I need to lie down,” he said.
“Just hang in till we get to the hospital. They’ll get you patched up and then you can come back, sack out in the cabin. We’ll have you back out on the lake in no time.”
“The lake,” Bob said dreamily.
“Yeah. Maybe you can take me out with you.”
“Did Leonard, did he have a wife, a family?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Bob put his head back against the headrest and kept his eyes closed until we pulled into the driveway of the emergency ward.
I left Bob with the nurse at reception and went out to talk to Lawrence and Dad, who now was in the front seat. Dad hit the power window. “How is he?”
“Shook up, but he’ll be okay. I better hang in to drive him back. Once they bandage his hands it may be hard for him to steer.”
Dad said he’d have some lunch ready for when I got back, and Lawrence’s Jag pulled away. By the time I walked back into the ER, Bob was already with a doctor. This wasn’t exactly like going to a big-city hospital, where they kept you waiting for hours.
“Hey, Mr. Walker.”
I whirled around. It was Tracy, pen and notepad in hand.
“You’re everywhere,” I said. “I guess you heard about what happened.”
“The bear got another one.”
“Well, yes and no. Looks like Leonard Colebert died trying to get away from him. But you should talk to the chief. This is his thing. I’m out of it.”
“Is there some kind of trouble between you two?” Tracy asked.
I shrugged, not eager to get into it. Tracy presented me with a brown business envelope. “Could you give this to your wife, Mr. Walker? It’s a resumé? My work experience, some clippings?”
“Why don’t you fax it to her directly,” I said. “I may still be up here for a few days.”
“And I heard a rumor the mayor’s getting death threats. Is that true? Is that why you were up talking to her?”
“I’m out of this, Tracy. Talk to the chief.”
I felt I really was out of it. What did my suspicions amount to, really? Betty could be wrong in her assessment of how Morton Dewart died. Tiff, at the co-op, could have been killed for any number of reasons. And all that fertilizer could have been stolen by a farmer looking to save a few bucks.
And the Wickenses might have a framed picture of Timothy McVeigh on their wall because they were nuts. Simple as that. It didn’t mean they were up to anything particularly sinister.
And Alice Holland’s refusal to kick a gay rights group out of the fall fair parade could be expected to produce some nasty crank calls. People were always tough when they were anonymous. It didn’t have to mean the mayor was in any real danger.
With any luck, Dad’s ankle was nearly healed. Maybe, by the next day, or the day after that, he’d be well enough to get back to running the camp on his own.
I was ready to go home.
I grabbed a seat in the waiting room and was glancing through a hunting magazine that I cared nothing about when Bob reappeared. His hands were wrapped in gauze, and he had a couple of small bandages on his cheeks, and a third on his forehead.
“Ready?” I said.
“Ready,” Bob said.
He said nothing the whole way home, and once we were back at the camp, he said a simple “Thanks” as he got out of the truck and walked over to his cabin.
“You want to come over, have a drink, something to eat?” I asked.
Bob shook his head no and went inside.
There were tuna sandwiches on the table when I walked into Dad’s cabin. “I didn’t do a thing,” Dad said. “Lawrence here made lunch.”
I suddenly realized I was starving, and sat at the table and practically inhaled the sandwich.
Lawrence said, “Your father’s kinda been filling me in. The stuff you already told me, plus some other stuff.”
“I don’t know whether there’s anything here for you to do or not,” I said. “I’m sorry if I dragged you up here for nothing.”
“Well, from the sounds of it, these folks renting the farmhouse from your dad are bad news, no matter how you look at it. I think we start by trying to find out more about them.”
I shrugged. I just didn’t know anymore.
“I do know one thing that hasn’t changed,” I said. “And that’s May Wickens, and her boy, Jeffrey. They still need to get away from her father, Timmy. No boy should be growing up, getting indoctrinated in the kind of hate that’s preached up there by that man.”
“So this Timmy, he hates fags and niggers and Jews and probably the New York Philharmonic as well,” Lawrence Jones said thoughtfully.
“Yeah. And he decides what lessons his daughter should teach his grandson.”
He pursed his lips, nodded. “Doesn’t sound to me like a very enlightened curriculum.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked him, taking another bite of my sandwich and feeling a bit apprehensive.
“We’ll see,” Lawrence said.
When I finished my lunch, I went into Dad’s study to see whether Sarah had gotten back to me.
I signed on to the mail program. Bingo.
Sarah wrote:
When are you coming home? Angie and Paul are starting to drive me crazy. No, I take that back. They’ve always driven me crazy, but when you’re home, at least you can take some of the brunt of it. I’ve spent $60 on taxis just so I won’t have to referee all these fights over the car. I don’t want to give you something else to worry about, but the dishwasher is making a really weird noise, it goes chugga-chugga halfway through the cycle, sounds like there’s a cat in there. The dishes are coming out dirty, which means they have to be done by hand, which means I have to ask Paul or Angie to do them in the sink, which sets off World War Three because they each think it’s the other person’s turn. And while I’m on the subject of cats (see dishwasher, above), both the kids are talking about getting a dog. Where did that come from? I don’t want any part of it.
They’re making some noises around the offices about when you’re coming back. There’s a Star Trek convention in town this week and the features editor figured you’d be the perfect guy to cover it, which I happen to disagree with. I say you send someone who DOESN’T know the first thing about Star Trek, and can take a look at these sci-fi nuts, no offense intended, and offer an unbiased perspective, but what the hell do I know.<
br />
Now, your requests. I made some calls about women’s shelters. A place where this woman and her kid could go. I’ve got a contact at Kelly’s Place, the one that was named in honor of that woman whose husband killed her with a crossbow. They’ve got a spot, if you think she’s interested.
And on the other thing, the picture you sent me, of Orville Thorne, the police chief. Nice fish, by the way. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this guy before, but if you’re wondering why he looks so familiar, maybe you should go stand in front of a mirror. The guy looks just like you. You could be brothers, for crying out loud.
All for now. Love, Sarah.
I stared out the window, and into the woods, for a good five minutes.
23
I REMEMBER IT like it was yesterday.
I am twelve years old.
My mother is standing just inside the front door, looking back into the house, two suitcases packed and at her side, my father at the top of the stairs, saying, “Evelyn, don’t go.”
It is raining outside, and Mom is wearing her tan raincoat, with the long dangly belt that is always slipping out of the loops, over a blue striped dress, and if she had just come in from the outside, you might have thought those were two raindrops running down her cheeks.
I am standing next to my sister, Cindy, who’s fourteen. Mom looks at me and tries to smile and says, “You two look after each other, okay? Your dad’s going to be busy and won’t be able to look after everything.”
I am numb. What is going on here? Why does Mom have suitcases packed? Where is she going? How long is she going to be gone? I get this horrible feeling that if she goes, she is not coming back. That she is leaving forever. What has Dad done to make her so angry she has to leave?
“Where are you going?” Cindy asks. “Will you bring me something back?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” I snap at her. “She’s not coming back.”
Cindy shouts at me. “Shut up! You don’t know anything!” She’s so angry, she must have some idea that this is actually the truth.
Mom swallows. She is crying. “I’ll send you something,” she says. “And I’ll call you all the time.”
Dad shakes his head. “This is crazy. You can’t do this. We can figure out something else.”
Mom looks at him. “Arlen, I think you know why I have to do this.”
There are tears in his eyes, too. He turns away so we can’t see him wiping them away.
There have been arguments in the night. For a few weeks now, it seems. Sometimes, in bed, I pull the pillow over my head so I won’t hear their muffled voices through the wall.
I know Dad drives her crazy on occasion, but I’ve never thought his behavior would drive her out of the house. I mean, he drives me and Cindy crazy, too, but we aren’t leaving. It seems no more a choice for Mom than it does for us, as children.
It has not been that long since the infamous Emergency Brake Incident. Five or six months, maybe.
We have a white Volkswagen Beetle, with the motor in the back, and it distresses Dad to no end that his wife can’t remember to pull up on the emergency brake when she parks the car. She figures leaving the gearshift engaged holds the car in place, and on level ground, you can get away with that, I suppose, but there is a slight incline to our driveway, which means that if the shifter were to somehow become disengaged, our Bug would roll back and out into the street.
Dad reminds her time and again that she has to put the emergency brake on, and sometimes she remembers, but most times she forgets. Mom is a bit forgetful at times, easily distracted. She explains that she’s the one who keeps the house running, that she has a lot to keep track of, and if she can manage to make twenty-one meals a week and change the sheets and do the laundry, can’t she be forgiven if she doesn’t always remember to put on the emergency brake?
It doesn’t help that our other car, a 1965 Dodge Polara, has automatic transmission, and even Dad rarely bothers to shove the emergency brake foot pedal down in it. Mom must figure, if she doesn’t have to remember it in the Dodge, why does she have to remember it in the Volkswagen?
One day, Dad decides to teach her a lesson.
She’s returned from grocery shopping, and Dad slips out to see whether she’s remembered to put the brake on. He does this almost every time she comes home, and if she’s slipped up, he’ll come in right away and let her know. If she’s remembered, he says nothing. Sometimes, soon as Mom gets home, I’d slip out before Dad can and if Mom has forgotten to pull the brake on, I’ll do it.
This one particular day, I guess he’s had enough.
He gets into the Beetle and coasts it back, just far enough that the back end is hanging into the street about a foot. Then he slips it back into gear, resists the temptation to put the emergency brake on, and goes back up into our garage, where he finds Cindy’s red and white tricycle, which we still have, even though she hasn’t ridden it in six years or more. The garage is filled with stuff we’ve outgrown, including a turquoise pedal car I once used to tour the neighborhood and pick up hot four-year-olds.
Dad takes the tricycle and carefully wedges it, tipped onto its side, under the back of the car. The handlebar he links in with the bumper.
Dad has staged the event in such a way that it can be seen from our front door.
He comes back inside and walks into the kitchen, where I am making a peanut butter sandwich, and Mom is glancing at that day’s paper. He says, casually, “Did you hear something?”
Mom says, “What?”
“Out front. I thought I heard something a second ago.”
Mom decides to go check. I don’t think it even occurs to her that there is a problem with the car. Maybe she’s thinking Dad heard the mailman arrive. Dad waits in the kitchen. He’s grinning, and at this point, I have no idea why. It’s only later I learn how he’s set this all up.
So I have no idea why Mom is suddenly screaming, “Oh my God!”
I bolt from the table, ahead of Dad, and when I got to the front door I can see Mom running flat out to the end of the driveway. I see the trike jammed under the back of the car, and I recognize it as Cindy’s, and even though I know she doesn’t ride it anymore, I feel this jolt. I guess Mom felt it, too. I shudder at the thought of what else might be found under the car, in addition to a tricycle.
Mom drops to her knees, looks under the car, gets up, looks around, as if maybe she might spot some injured child attempting to crawl home.
Dad is leaning in the doorway, arms folded, looking unbearably satisfied with himself. As Mom walks back across the lawn, saying something about maybe they should call the police, there might be a hurt child wandering the neighborhood, Dad says, “Looks like maybe you forgot to put on the e-brake.”
That stops her cold. Not, I suspect, because she is trying to remember whether she did apply the brake or not, but because at that moment she realizes what has actually happened. That her husband has staged this event. That he has allowed her to think, if only for a moment, that she is responsible for a monstrous tragedy.
She walks up the steps to the house and, in a blinding flash, slaps my father across the face.
I have never seen my mother hit my father. Nor have I ever seen him hit her. For all his faults, he is not that kind of man.
This is not some little slap, either. It actually knocks him off his feet and into the shrubs at the side of the door. And then she goes inside, and doesn’t speak to him for three days.
Dad apologizes endlessly. It doesn’t take him long to figure out that he may have crossed the line here.
It is painful to recall this incident, not just because it shows my father, basically a good man, in such a bad light. It also shows how little we can learn from our parents’ mistakes, how we can know, even as children, that what they’ve done is wrong, and then, when we grow up ourselves, we go along and make the same kinds of mistakes. I had to make my own, with disastrous consequences, before I learned to tone it down.
Looking out th
e window of Dad’s cabin, one memory links to another, and then, suddenly, there is Lana Gantry.
Not outside the cabin, but in my memories.
The Gantrys live up the street. I hadn’t remembered it all that clearly when I’d been reintroduced to Lana earlier in the week, but now things started coming back. Mr. and Mrs. Gantry. His name is Walter. He works at the Ford plant. He’s the first person in the neighborhood to have one of the new Mustangs. My parents get together with them once in a while. They play bridge, or barbecue out back. One time, they actually play charades.
After three days, Mom starts talking to Dad again. It is summer, and they’ve already invited the Gantrys over for dinner that weekend, so some sort of peace accord is reached.
I see the four of them out back, Dad and Mr. Gantry with beers in their hands, laughing, the women shaking their heads and smiling, sharing jokes about their husbands’ foolishness. They are all friendly together. Mr. Gantry talking to Mom. Dad talking to Lana.
Sometimes, slipping his arm around her waist. Surely, I think, this does not mean anything.
And then, not long after, Mom at the door with her suitcases.
And not long after that, the Gantrys move away.
And the four of them never get together again.
But now, a decade after my mother’s death, here is Lana Gantry again. Back in my father’s life.
Living in the same town as a young man she refers to as her nephew. Orville Thorne. Who, I guess, is about thirteen years younger than I.
And who, I now realize, looks an awful lot like me.
It doesn’t seem possible that Mom would walk out on Dad for the better part of half a year over the Emergency Brake Incident. But I can imagine her leaving him for fathering a child with a woman from down the street.
The night before she leaves, I hear snippets of her argument with my father in their bedroom, snippets which, up until now, more than three decades later, never meant anything to me. I hear the name “Gantry.” And I hear the word “baby.”