America America (44 page)

For some reason I decided then that I needed a tool for clearing away the brush, and with a strange concentration I began to look for something. When I found a hatchet leaning against the wheel of one of the fire trucks, I picked it up and brought it back down to the edge of the clearing. The fire spurted lower tendrils now but was still dazzlingly bright in the darkness, and the smoke still poured skyward. The brush and grasses had caught in a hundred places, too, and webs of low flames crisscrossed the uphill paths in a shimmering maze of red and orange, like lava emerging from the earth. But these burns were petty affairs: some of the firemen even walked right through them. Of course I knew a hatchet was useless. But still I stood with it in my arms. I was actually aware now that my mind wasn’t working properly but I seemed to lack the discipline to do anything about it. I saw Christian and Clara in every dark-suited figure moving in the shivering light, and I saw Mr. Metarey every time someone ran down the hill. At one point I even looked into the horrific mass and saw June Metarey’s black skeleton suspended by its shoulder belts over the cockpit; a moment later I saw it climb out over the wing between low licks of blue flame and jump to the ground. I shook my head to clear it. I’m sure I was in tears.

It was obvious that nothing would even be recognizable by the time it finally burnt out, and at this point Gil McKinstrey came down from the shed on the Ferguson with a cart full of chain saws and set to work with the firemen cutting a break, farther out among the smaller birch. In a moment I joined them, and I have to say it was bracing to finally do something. My mind cleared a bit. It was not difficult to stay out of the smoke, which still raced upward but didn’t spread until it had overreached the trees. We notched the trunks so that they toppled away from the center, and in a short time we’d cleared a rim. At that point there was not much else to do but stand and watch. A wreath of flickering blue flame now snaked around the dark nucleus. Several maids were standing near the barn, and when I looked up I saw in the revolving glow of the engine’s lights that they were weeping.

I turned back to the woods. At that moment Gil McKinstrey abruptly dropped his chain saw and took off up the hill. A second later, I saw the lights of the Chrysler coming down through the front gates. And that’s when I began to cry in earnest. Like a child who manages to restrain himself until his parents come home. And though I’m ashamed to say it, I wanted badly—for some child’s reason as well—I wanted badly to be the one to tell Mr. Metarey. I started to run toward him, even though now I could hardly make out anything through my tears. I was trying to get ahead of one man to tell another that his wife had just been killed. But Gil’s distorted shape was already over the nearside berm, and after just a few steps I stopped and simply stood at the edge of the trees, wiping my eyes so that at least I could see him as he sprinted across Breighton’s corral, jumped the fence, and then slowed to a trot on the upper drive where the car had come to a halt. He leaned up to the windshield, and suddenly his hand went to his face. He had to grab hold of the hood. Carlton Sample emerged from the driver’s seat, and a moment later the back door opened and first Christian, then Clara, and then June Metarey stepped onto the gravel.

And my question is: How did I know, just an instant before?

I think sometimes of his last moments. He would have felt the wind, seen his broad sea of oaks approaching. Then their limbs. He would have noticed their new, pale leaves. All of them fluttering in the approaching wake. Is he looking at them? Are his eyes open? I think they are. I see him moving down through their shivering embrace, their tips first brushing his wings, then folding over them. The leaf of the red oak divides at its margins into lobes that end in a point; the same lobe on a white oak curves to a rounded edge; and the leaf of the black oak is distinguishable from the red only by its variegated size. The great mysterious work of God. I see his arms out in the open cockpit. I see him parting the air with his outstretched hands. Is he shouting? I don’t think so. I think he’s quiet, actually. Quiet as the greenery comes loose and rains in every direction around him. Quiet as his worries are jettisoned first in the heave and then in the snap of the first great branches. Quiet as his father’s land with its frail meadow of sprouting acorns reaches up to take him.

TEN

A
S WE REACH LEVEL GROUND,
my father laughs suddenly, shaking his head. Then he says, “The Oaks.”

“Yes?”

“That’s what they’re calling it.”

“Calling what?”

“The new place. The mall.”

It’s a little easier for him to talk now because we’re out of the hills. We’re coming down from our regular outing in the Shelter Brook Set-Aside, the land that Liam Metarey preserved. Every week, we take a meandering hike up the short slope that looks over the last stretch of undeveloped terrain between the old Silverton Orchards and Saline.

“Well,” I say, “I guess there’s nothing I’d put past them. Just surprised I hadn’t heard about it.”

“Don’t worry.” He turns up his boot sole to pick a stone out of it. “You’re only a newspaper guy.”

He rubs his hands, then leans them on his knees to rest.

“Last to know,” I say.

“Last to be told, at least.” He grins from his bent position. Then he stands. “That’s just how they do it now,” he says. “Build the whole thing in secret. Guys on the job can’t even talk. Not if they want to have a job in the morning. Just deliver a wrapped package. At Christmas.”

We start to walk again. He’s still in reasonable shape, but recently the hills have been tougher for him. We used to do three or four of them. Now we do two, or sometimes one.

“That guard told me on the way in,” he says. “You know, he’s Murph Mills’s boy.”

“I know, Dad,” I say. “You already told me.” We’re near the parking lot now. He’s looking down as he walks, the way he does these days, not watching anything in particular. A peaceful expression, really, in the low afternoon light. A little sleepy, maybe. A touch of consternation. “Dad,” I say, “how old would Murph Mills’s boy be now?”

“Hmmph.” He pulls off his Yankees cap and scratches his head with the bill. Then, as though finally remembering, he mutters, “Christ.”

“Maybe you mean Murph Mills’s grandson.”

“What’s the goddamn difference?”

And for the rest of the way we walk in silence.

OFFICE OF THE CARROL COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER

146 East Lake Street, Steppan, NY 14063

AUTOPSY REPORT

FINAL DIAGNOSIS:

1) Hypothermia

A. Vitreous Glucose 84.5 mg/dL

B. Wischnewski ulcers

C. Diffuse erythema

D. Acute pancreatitis

2) Head Injury

A. Scalp abrasion/contusion, right temporal area, minor

3) Muskulo-skeletal injuries

A. Fracture, left 5th finger, distal phalanx

B. Fracture, left 5th finger, proximal phalanx

Toxologic studies:

Blood alcohol: 0.14%

Blood toxic substances: none detected

CLINICOPATHOLOGIC CORRELATION: Cause of death of this 26-year-old white female is accidental hypothermia secondary to alcohol-induced ataxia and fall.

By

I
T ISN’T UNTIL A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER,
as we’re driving home from another outing, that Dad says, “Then how come you didn’t ask me about the date?”

“How come I didn’t ask you about what date?”

He’s looking out his window, showing me only the back of his ball cap. “The one I put in the concrete. I know it’s not 1971.”

We’re near Walnut Orchards. The terrain is really quite beautiful here, a run of shallow, overlapping hills that are staggered from the glacier’s first track through the basin, the low horizon striped by the shadows of their intersecting valleys.

“I have to admit,” I say, “I was a little worried.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“Same reason, I guess.”

He thinks about that. Or seems to. He’s still looking out the window. We’re at the edge of the Shelter Brook Set-Aside, which is a surprisingly large piece of land, even for the Metareys—the largest single conservation in the western half of the state. The north edge runs from the end of the old Silverton Orchards all the way to within a couple of miles of where Dad lives now. And some of the retired farmers who own the parcels adjoining it have given sections, too, or have allowed paths to be built on the acreage they’ll own until they die, so that today if you walk every inch of the winding, gravel paths you’ll cover something like 350 miles. You cross Little Shelter Brook now on arched footbridges made of timbers, and you can relieve yourself in bathroom huts hidden at the sides of the trails and rest on iron benches at the hilltops. From a few of those benches, you can see the red-tile peak of the Target store and the wavy blue
NABO
of the
CINNABON
sign at the Oaks, and from the ones at the north end you can hear the trucks on 35; but from others you can look thirty miles into nothing but meadow and hilltop, and along the pastures you can watch whole families of deer not twenty yards away, standing on the grassy banks like girls in heels.

He still hasn’t turned from the car window. “You and Dr. Jadoon,” he says evenly.

“What about us?”

“You’re always trying to trip me up.” He lowers the glass partway down and tosses out the stem of the crab apple that he’s picked up on our walk. “Both of you together. I know how you work. Every chance you get, you test my memory. See what the old man can do. I’m not senile, you know. You think I don’t see it?”

“Well, I guess this time I wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t what?”

“Testing you.”

“This morning,” he says, “I was reading the
People’s History of the United States
.” He turns. “Howard Zinn. Is that good enough for you?”

“It’s good, Dad. It’s very good.”

“You know what that date was?” He bites into the tiny apple now and makes a sour face.

I think about it for a while. “No, I don’t,” I finally say.

He looks over at me, rather smugly. “It’s the last time we were together.”

“I don’t get it, Dad.”

“The last time we were
all
together.” He takes another bite and makes another sour face. “
All
of us. It was the seventh. September 7th, 1971. The day you went off to—to whatever the name of that school was. I told your mother it was the end of our lives together. That day.”

“Dunleavy,” I say.

“I said to her you were leaving us for good.”

“I wasn’t, Dad. I wasn’t at all.”

“I didn’t want you to go, you know. But your mother thought it was some kind of great chance. God rest her soul.”

“You didn’t want me to go?”

“No sirree. She was the one who did. Wanted to give you the opportunity. We argued like hell.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“I know you wouldn’t have. That’s why I’m telling you now.” He raises his eyebrows. “For the historical record.” He takes another bite and purses his lips. “It went on for weeks. I thought it was the worst thing you could do. But it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s one of the things about life, isn’t it?” He chews deliberately, his skinny throat bobbing. “These things aren’t so bad,” he says, holding out the chewed core, “once you get used to them. Dunleavy—that’s it. I can never remember that name. It was a Monday, I think. September seventh. Or it might have been a Tuesday. That’s right. You might have started on a Tuesday, for whatever reason. Maybe because of Labor Day.”

“Ironic.”

“Yes, it is.”

He bites again.

“There’s a guy on my hall,” he says. “Leo Something—he can tell you the day if you give him the date. It takes him about thirty seconds. We’ll ask him when we get back.”

“You didn’t want me to go?”

“No, I didn’t, son.”

“But you told me you did.”

“Did I? As far as I was concerned, you were going to the other side.”

“And did I?”

He looks at me. “Well, I don’t know,” he says after a moment. “I really don’t.” Then he laughs and adds, “But that’s the way the world works, isn’t it? When the guys started using PVC instead of iron, I was going to quit the trade. But I went over to their side, too, in the end. And I loved it.” He lifts his shoulders, the weaker one lagging behind under his shirt. “Might have saved my joints if I’d done it earlier.”

“Dad,” I say. “What do you think about me being a newspaperman?”

“Me?” he answers. “What do I know? English was never my subject.”

“Did you even take English?”

“No.” He flicks a tiny apple seed off his pant leg. “They didn’t offer it to kids like me.”

“How much
are
you reading these days, Dad?”

“A lot.”

“How much?”

“Well, you know something—I found out I’m good at it. Who would have thought it? Your old man. Fast, I guess. Never would have known. A couple of books a week, maybe—seems about natural to me. Not bad for a plumber, huh? Never took English class in my life.”

“You read two books a week?”

“About.”

We’re at Walnut Orchards now, and I turn into the lot. “Wow, Dad,” I say. “Why now?”

“Why now?” This seems to stop him. “Well, for one thing, my schedule’s not what it used to be.” He kicks the Camry’s footwell, leans forward, and picks the loosened bits of dirt from his boots. A look appears in his eyes. “But I guess it’s also what they always say—because there are a lot of books.”

I stop the car in front of the door to his hall, but he makes no move to get out. He pushes the dust into a little pile on the floor mat instead, then sweeps it into his palm, his fingers shaking a little. “And all this reading
you
get paid to do,” he adds, opening the door finally and dropping his handful of dirt onto the asphalt. “It must be quite a life.”

“It is, Dad. It is.”

“Well, it must be.” Then he offers, “But I still miss you.”

“I’m right here, Dad.”

“I’ve missed you ever since you went off to your new life.” He shrugs on one side. “You were always ambitious, you know. Your mother encouraged it. I couldn’t stop it, I guess. And now I’m glad I didn’t.”

“I don’t think of myself as ambitious.”

“Oh, but you are. It’s just the way you’ve always been.”

He’s raising himself now on the door handle, and it takes him several moments to wrestle himself free of the seat. But I know not to offer to help. “And when you get down to it,” he says, standing up at last on the lot. “Mr. Metarey wasn’t even the one who sent you to Dunleavy.”

“You and Mom had to have a part in it, too—I know.”

He leans back down to the window. “Actually,” he says softly, “that’s not what I’m talking about.” His hands are shaking a little more. “What I’m talking about is Eugene McGowar. Him and his men and all the men like him. I hope you haven’t forgotten that they’re the ones who really sent you.”