1
"My rig's a little old, but that don't mean she's slow--Batman--that
don't mean she's slow." Joe Burke was singing, driving south. His rig
was a blue Ford pickup with a battered cap on the back. Batman, all six
inches of him, was propped upright on the dash.
Joe followed signs to the Weston Priory, climbing through woods and out
onto an open plateau. A cluster of wooden buildings stood near a pond.
A monk was raking leaves from a path that curved around the pond like a
trotter's track. Joe got out, stretched, and entered a gift shop by the
parking lot. A middle aged woman seated next to the cash register
closed her book.
"Where is everybody? Rehearsing?" She smiled slightly and remained
silent. "Lovely day," Joe said.
"Yes, isn't it."
He bought a cassette made by the monks. "A bit stagy, Batman," he said
climbing into the truck and closing the door. "We must continue to seek
truth and contend with the forces of evil." Batman stared resolutely
ahead.
Joe cut over to the interstate. When he reached the highway, he played
the cassette: resonant voices and a single guitar, encouraging.
"Sappy," Ingrid had declared impatiently. Joe smiled. She was free of
his taste in music now--had been for a year and a half.
At Brattleboro, he turned off the highway, rented a motel room, and
walked into town. He found a brew pub where he sat at a corner table
with a pint of ruby brown ale--cool and fresh, the malt veiled with
lacy astringent hops. He had another and watched the bartender talk on
the telephone, her elbows and breasts on the bar, a vertical worry line
dropping between her eyes. She was about his daughter Kate's age. The
room began to fill, the nasal sound of New York mixing with flat New
England tones. The Connecticut River valley narrows in Brattleboro, a
gateway to upper New England for New Yorkers. He was going through in
the other direction, trying to figure out what to do next. What do you
do at 52 when the kids are grown? The same things all over again?
He took out a notebook and remembered the drive--the blue sky, the red
and gold ridges, small fields tilting greenly in their arms. On such a
day, one could almost be forgiven, he wrote.
A blonde woman with a wry smile, an experienced charmer, sat down at
the next table. He considered having another ale, making friends with
her and starting a new life in Brattleboro or over the mountain in
Bennington, but he knew that he was fooling himself. It was too
familiar; he might as well have stayed in Maine.
"Gotta go," he said to her sadly. She raised her eyebrows,
acknowledging the human condition, and he walked back to the motel. At
the edge of town, trees were dark behind a body of water that was
platinum and still. Fish broke the surface with soft slaps in the
centers of expanding circles. Ansel Adams might have caught the many
shades of silver just before the lights went out.
The next afternoon Joe was across the Hudson, driving through the
mountains on roads that were more crowded than he remembered. There
were many new houses and the trees were larger. He stopped on the hill
by his grandparents' old house in Woodstock. Captain Ben had retired
during the depression to that rocky hillside and made a homely paradise
of gardens and fruit trees. A slow silent job. Emily was beside him,
canning, cooking, and mothering. They said you couldn't grow pears
around there. We ate a lot of pears, Joe thought. And plums, apples,
rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus . . . The house smelled of geraniums
from the solar greenhouse that his grandfather built onto the dining
room long before anyone ever heard of a solar greenhouse.
Captain Ben was a son of an old Virginia family who in better days had
owned Monticello. _Lee's Lieutenants_ lined a living room shelf.
Noblesse oblige came with mother's milk. You are born privileged; you
have an obligation. He had a company garden when he was serving in the
Philippines--men who got out of line did time weeding and afterwards
ate fresh vegetables. Once a year he would go to town and whip the
touring chess master who was playing 20 people at once. "Pawn to King's
four," he taught Joe, "control the center." Joe opened with pawn to
Queen's knight four, bringing a smile. "Learn the hard way, huh?"
He died when Joe was in seventh grade, and Joe spent his high school
years with his grandmother, well cared for, but living more or less
alone. She remarried about the time Joe graduated. The new husband
moved _Lee's Lieutenants_ to the attic and Joe moved out. The house
that Joe remembered had disappeared inside a gaudy renovation, but the
mountains hadn't changed. What is it about land, Joe wondered. It gets
inside you, deep as your loves, maybe deeper.
He ate dinner in town. He saw Aaron Shultis across the street, but
Aaron didn't recognize him after twenty-five years. Joe drove back into
the hills and parked by a narrow lane across from the one room
schoolhouse where he had gone to fifth grade. He fell asleep in a
cradle of memories: fucking Sally in this very spot . . . apple fights,
BB gun fights, the sound of the schoolhouse bell calling them out of
the woods after a long recess.
A steady rain was bringing down the leaves when Joe woke up. He drove
over to Morgan's house and pounded on the door. When Morgan opened, Joe
could smell breakfast cooking.
"Joe, well, well. What brings you out in the rain?"
"Hey, Morgan, bacon! They say you're cooking bacon."
"They're right. Come on in."
"Remember that time you were hitching to Florida and you met those guys
heading for Georgia because they'd heard that a Salvation Army cook was
serving meat?"
"Some trip that was." Morgan was grayer but still powerful. "So, what
are you doing?"
"Starting over. I've been saving since Ingrid and I split up. I put a
bed in the back of the truck, got rid of a bunch of stuff, and here I
am."
"When did you leave? You want some eggs?"
"Three days ago. That's affirmative on the eggs," Joe said. "I've had
it with computer programming. Jamming all that stuff in your head
messes you up. You wake up at two in the morning and start working."
"Good money," Morgan said.
"For good reason."
"Did you sell everything?"
"Just about. Kept my tools, a couple of boxes of books, some clothes.
Kept the cat, Jeremy, but he jumped ship on Deer Isle at my father's.
Oh yeah, my notebooks, a footlocker full--I was wondering if you'd
stash them for me. I'd hate to lose them; they go all the way back."
"Sure. Maybe you'll write a book one of these days."
"I don't know; all I ever do is look at things and try to describe
them. Should have been a painter like my father. No talent, though.
Anyway, after I took off, I went up to see him and Ann on Deer Isle. He
gave me a painting for Kate."
"How is he?"
"Going with his boots on. Just before I left, he gave me a drink from
his stash of Laphroiag in the barn. We had a country music toast.
'Younger women, faster horses, older whiskey, and more money,' he said.
I asked him if 'children, old dogs, and watermelon wine' wouldn't cut
it."
"Tom T. Hall songs," Morgan said.
"Right. My father just laughed. I think he was trying to tell me
something but didn't know how."
"Hard to communicate at this point, I suppose," Morgan said. "What's
next?"
"Drive out and see Kate. Me and Batman--he's riding on the dash." Joe
gave Morgan the cassette from the Weston Priory. "Try this some stormy
night."
"O.K.," Morgan said. "The damnedest thing . . . I bought a tape of
Chesapeake Bay sea chanteys a while back. One of the voices was
familiar. I looked on the picture of the group and there was Jason! I
hadn't even noticed."
"Best banjo player I ever heard," Joe said. "He disappeared into the
world of big biz. What a waste. I thought he'd given up on music."
"Why don't you take it? I'll pick up another."
" Good deal, a trade. So, how's Daisy doing? I was thinking of dropping
in and saying hello."
"She's in France. She's fine." Morgan took a piece of bacon. "She and
Wes have stuck together. Of course it helps if you can nip off to
Provence whenever you feel like it. Their daughter, Yvonne, just got
married. Jake is in New Zealand, I think. Nice kids."
"New Zealand? That's where Max is, Ingrid's son." Joe hesitated. "I
remember when Daisy was choosing. She said, 'I feel happy and excited
when I'm with you, and I feel warm and safe when I'm with Wes."' Joe
shook his head. "Knowing what I do now, about women that is, I'd say
she made the mainstream choice. She'd have had rice and beans with me."
"Red beans and rice aren't bad," Morgan said.
"True. We could have gone the distance, though. Strange how you know
these things . . . Not that I haven't had good relationships since. I
mean, Sally and I had Kate, and then I had the chance to be part of
Maxie's life. I wouldn't trade that for anything, but . . . So, how's
your love life?"
Morgan's eyebrows raised. "Prospects are bright," he said.
"Prospects, plural?"
"Singular," he said.
"Yok, excellent. And the book, how's that coming along?"
"Slowly. My publisher's annoyed, but he's used to delays."
"And _The Houses of the Hudson Valley_ aren't going anywhere."
"I wish that were true," Morgan said. "They're going downhill. On the
other hand, if they weren't, I wouldn't have any work."
"Rot," Joe said, "your enemy."
"Neglect," Morgan said.
They finished breakfast and hauled Joe's footlocker to the barn. "I'm
going to have a book shop when I retire," Morgan said.
"The fortress and the cork," Joe said, putting down one end of the
footlocker in a room filled with books. "Two good strategies: strong
walls or travel light, bob up and down in the heavy weather."
"You always did travel light," Morgan said, "but you probably don't bob
as well as you did." Joe hopped on both feet to demonstrate his
buoyancy.
"Thanks for the reminder." Departures required gallantry. "Good eggs.
Listen, if you get a chance . . . give Daisy my love. Tell her
nothing's changed." Morgan nodded and they walked out to the truck.
"Take care of yourself," Joe said. "Hang in there."
"Good luck," Morgan said.
Joe drove down the mountain in the rain. When he reached Route 212, he
turned towards Phoenicia. His old high school district covered a
thousand square miles; half an hour later as he crossed its western
boundary, he felt a twinge of nostalgia and relief. It was like
graduating again; his mind was free to drift forward.
At tech school in the Air Force, he used to spend Friday and Saturday
nights in the BX with a guy named Shannon. The BX was always jammed
with G.I.'s drinking cheap beer and eating French fries. One man tried
to keep up with the empties and the dirty dishes. He was bald, slow
moving, friendly, and particular. His cart was organized to hold as
much as possible on each trip. It seemed like the original dead end
job, but he did it well, never flustered, taking pride in his cart and
the tables that were clean for moments. He told Joe once that he was
saving money to buy tools so that he could help in his friend's garage.
As Joe drove, the rain and fog lifted, revealing lonely bays and wooded
hillsides. Route 30 curved endlessly along the banks of the Pepacton
Reservoir. Joe had the highest entrance score they'd ever recorded in
that Air Force tech school. Sergeant Quimby told him, reading it,
unbelieving. Joe was an athlete, a most likely to succeed guy; yet
there he was every weekend in the BX with Shannon, fascinated by the
aging bus boy loading his cart. And Shannon? He was from Ten Mile
Creek, south of Pittsburgh; what had happened to him? Joe decided to
cut through Cat Hollow and over to Roscoe on Route 17. He followed 17
west, taking his time, enjoying the October colors. He had lunch in
Hancock and stayed overnight in a motel outside Painted Post.
The next afternoon he was in Ten Mile Creek, coal country. A black hill
in the distance, the highest point around, turned out to be a slag
pile. Containers suspended from cable were hauled up the pile, tipped
over, and returned upside down. The top of a silo, last sign of a
buried barn, waited a few feet above a spreading shoulder of slag. The
air was gritty and had a sulfurous tang.
He stopped outside an American Legion hall and walked into a dimly lit
bar. In one corner a fat man sat upright before a video poker machine.
Only his right hand moved as he inserted quarters, one after another.
Joe sat at the bar, three stools down from a short guy who was staring
over the top of a half empty glass of beer. The bartender moved a step
in his direction and waited.
"I'll have a beer," Joe said, putting a five dollar bill in front of
him. The bartender was about forty. He had a blonde crew cut and a face
like a poker chip, Robert Redford run into a door. He set the beer
down, made change, and resumed his position. It was oddly as though he
hadn't moved at all.
"I was in the service--with a guy named Shannon. Long time ago. Said he
was from around here." Silence. Friendly place.
"Which service?" Shorty didn't turn his head.
"Air Force."
"That'd be Bobby," Shorty said.
"Yeah," Joe said, "Bobby."
"Jacky, he went in the Navy."
"Bobby was a good guy. He around?" Shorty glanced at the bartender.
They had a committee meeting.
"California," the bartender said.
"California," Shorty confirmed. "Stayed in and retired. He's out there
cashing checks with eagles on 'em."
"Shit," Joe said. "Would'a liked to seen him."
"Two more, Floyd." The gambler said, putting a twenty on the bar.
The bartender laid two quarter rolls soundlessly next to the bill and
asked, "You come around just to look up Bobby Shannon?"
"I, ah, well, got sick of working. Had some money saved. Thought I'd
take a break, look around." Shorty shook his head. "I mean, what do you
do after . . . " Joe meant, after you'd done pretty well, at least
compared to these guys.
The bartender said:
"Beware of gnawing the ideogram of nothingness: