America America (47 page)

The drinking. For the first time, Liam Metarey understands it’s going to be a real problem. For the campaign. This thing he should have seen long ago, the way Clara did. Should have had it vetted by the lawyers. The outlandish flaunting of the rules. Barely made the stairs to the study this morning in the dark. One arm up under his shoulder. And he’s seen him that way more than once. In public. The night June smashed the pole barn, for one. But others, too. Like he wants to throw it all away.

Something to keep an eye on—more than an eye on. Make it a point from here on out. Keep the reporters away from it, too. A mile away.

Now Henry’s in the chair, nodding off. Still shivering. Liam Metarey can smell the booze.

He makes a pot of coffee.

Sends for Gil. Instructions: His cousin, in Toronto. The dealership. Out-of-town press hears he smashed the car—a month till Iowa—it’s over before it’s started. His cousin can send someone across the border with the parts. Simple thing.

He makes more coffee. Takes his own cup black and gives it to Henry the same way. Tilts it to his lips for him like feeding a baby.

Not until they’ve drunk down two pots between them does Henry wake up and say, “Shit, where’s she?”

Slurring.

“Where’s who?”

An ashen look on his face.

“Abbles.”

“Who?”

“Ab-bles. Silverdon’s.”

This is all he needs.

By the time Liam Metarey’s halfway up the driveway he thanks the lord for the Ferguson. Real snow here. Six inches on the ground and maybe twice that much still to fall. And not too cold yet, either. Still warm enough for plenty more. The storm growing over the lake. Better not have left her out here.

With a start, he turns back. Leaves the Ferguson running outside the back door. Takes the stairs to the library two at a time.

“Did anyone see?”

“Anyone what?”

Shakes him in the chair. “Did anyone see?”

“No.”

“You sure now?”

Shakes him again.

“Henry!”

“Gas. Stobbed for gas. Peed.”

“The boy see you?”

“The boy?”

“At the gas station, Henry.”

“Well, yeah, might’ve.”

Back on the Ferguson now. As fast as it’ll go, through the trees. Could be anywhere in all the goddamn woods. Miles and miles of it. Glittering shell already smooth behind him. Erased. Or pretty close.

It’s more a sense than anything. Two faint furrows. Shadows. Not much more, running down the driveway: the Cadillac’s tracks. Wandering side to side. Good and drunk. Good and goddamn drunk.

He follows.

Light’s already bad. Clouds and winter and trees, late afternoon. But it brings out the shadows. Two gray slivers in the pale crust.

He’s out near the orchards now. Out from under the big canopy and into the heritage trees. Cragged, hundred-year-old Macintosh and Spartan in rows. He can see half a mile either direction.

The tracks stop.

He slows. Backs up.

There they are.

Then they’re gone.

A stiff wind riles the branches and he looks up to see the snow sweeping in from the lake. A moment later he’s in it.

A blizzard.

Out between the rows now. That’s where they must have gone. Out between the bending trunks. Deeper now over the softer ground, which slows him. But harder to lose. The ruts still there but not for long. Has to shield his eyes to see. Swirls of moth-sized flakes careening berserkly in the gusts. Northwest toward the orchard house and the highway.

The turn.

He kicks it up to third, cuts north and makes a diagonal across the land, the Ferguson’s huge wheels shattering the drifts. Here and there, downed branches cracking under the axle. The low, sucker growth snapping.

In the boulder meadow, he has to zigzag in the massive rocks. Dozens of them in their crazy pattern, looming like ghosts. He turns tight around them. Looking left and right, his fingers parted over his eyes to clear the snow. Left and right. Making his way toward the S-curve where the road comes in tight.

At the end of the field, near the bend, he comes out from behind the last rock and something glints in the snow.

He climbs down: a flask.

Plain. No marking. Still something inside. He tilts it: bourbon. For some reason then he sets out to look for the cap. But that’s crazy. He can’t see more than ten feet through the thicket of white.

He climbs back into the seat and sets the flask in his pocket, and when he leans over the shifter to start up again he sees them in the snow on the other side.

The black pumps.

A fringe of red.

Hair.

His gut comes up.

Off the tractor. In his own tracks, around to her.

She’s face down. He brushes the snow. Fur coat, up over her shoulders and head. Red dress under it.

He lays his palm on her back.

It rises.

He rolls her over and she’s a bag of rocks. The face white from cold and snow stuck all over it. Fur pasted down. Bruise on the forehead. Dark blood. Dried or frozen. Eyelids glued shut. He looks away. Looks back.

With one finger he brushes off the frost. Carefully. The bulge of the eyeballs under his glove. He stops. Pulls the lids open.

Jesus!

They’re moving: back and forth.

He lets go and the head rolls sideways.

Doesn’t want to touch her again. And he sees something else now, in the crease of the neck. Just for a moment. Did he see it?

“JoEllen.”

A jump and a flicker. Under the skin.

But the eyes: he saw it.

Touches her arm. “JoEllen.”

Shakes it.

“JoEllen!”

Slaps her face. A woody hardness like the rind of something.

Takes off his glove. Touches the cheek.

Is that warm?

He opens the eyes again: back and forth.

Hardly older than his daughter.

Christian.

Back and forth.

He looks toward the road. Bile in his throat. The snow, the snow. Gusts whipping it like a curtain closing. Dark in an hour and a freeze coming in. A week of it. Hard freeze and another foot or two still to come. He looks up. Three, maybe. Dry snow. Drift snow. Still sweeping in from the lake.

And all the wind.

He climbs up into the seat. Drives a few yards. Then shuts it off and climbs back down.

On the ground he moves a few things. A branch. A rock. Brushes out his boot prints.

Lifts her by the hard handles of the frozen fur, doesn’t want to touch the skin again. Even with his gloves. Turns her back over and the head drops forward into the white like a sinker. Kicks snow over it. Half covers the body.

The sack of rocks.

Back in the seat now, his throat pinches. He leans out and a gash blooms in the white. Spills steam. He leans out farther. Another gash and the steam again.

But in a minute, no steam.

Then nothing.

Reaches into his pocket and pours a little bourbon down his throat. Pours so the flask doesn’t touch his lips. Syrupy from the cold. But it quells it.

Carefully then, he leans out again from the seat. Aims. Throws it so the uncapped neck stays upright. Soundless when it hits, right beside her. Below the crook of her arm. A perfect shot. The hole closing.

Starts up the Ferguson.

Follows his own tracks back to the driveway. Shuts it off when he reaches the big trees and looks back. All the marks rounded off now, too. Already. Starting to disappear. It’s a blizzard, all right. Lord’s sent a blizzard to help them. And the wind still keening.

Blow everything flat by morning. That’s what the Lord will do. Not for him but for everyone else. Turn it all into a desert of ice. Covered till spring.

Nothing he could have done.

It was meant to be. Maybe that’s why.

Nothing he can do for her. But plenty to do for the others.

I understand.

To save his son.

To save a thousand sons.

All that wind and snow. The great heavenly blanket. Just a bump he can make out now in the thick of it, vanishing already as he watches, the red dress blinking into white.

“C
OME ON
, D
AD,”
I say. “Let’s go see Mom.”

“Why should we do that?”

“Because you want to.”

He’s struggling with his shoes. They’re still steel-toed Red Wings, twenty years after his last job, worn nearly through. And he doesn’t like me to help him with them, even though some days it takes him ten minutes to get the laces tied. He’s got pain in the shoulders, pain in the knees, pain in the hips, and now and then pain in the knuckles. His plumber’s pension, as he calls it. But more than anything else, I can see that he doesn’t want to go. Sometimes I wonder if all the pain is a convenience.

“Come on,” I say. “We missed going two weeks ago.”

“We did?”

“Yes. Remember? We went to the Metareys’. And we missed it two weeks before that, too.” I point. “Remember the window?”

I can see him thinking.

“That’s right,” he finally answers. He lets go of the bootlaces and sits upright on the bed.

I face him. “You remember the window, Dad, right?”

“Of course I remember the window.”

“You pulled it out,” I say. “And Mrs. Milton called the orderly.”

“Thank you. I remember fine.”

The laces are through the eyelets now, and as he climbs stiffly down to the floor, then rises on one knee to pull them tight, I see him for a moment in overalls and a wool cap, at our back door in dawn light.

But he can’t quite get the left one the way he wants.

“Here,” I say, “let me.”

“No.”

“How’re the fingers today?”

“They’re okay.” Then, “Stiff.”

“I can do it for you. Really. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“I said no.”

Half an hour later, when we turn in at Greenhaven Cemetery in the Camry, he’s still working on the knot, leaning forward in his seat. Huffing and puffing. But midway up the long entrance road to the cemetery plot, where the headstones start in their temperate rows, he finally decides he’s tied it well enough. He sits up then and lifts
David Copperfield
onto his lap, though we have no more than a quarter mile to go. When we arrive, I get out and stand in the grass while he finishes a chapter. Then we walk over together.

Behind Mom’s grave is a marble bench, a gift of the Metareys. The monument itself is a slab of limestone, long and squat, rising no more than six inches high but running almost the full length of the seat behind it. A low wall. Mom didn’t put her head high but she was obdurate. The same, really, for Dad, even though now he seems to be lifting his brow a bit into the wind. We like to wander for a few minutes when we come. But today he leans down right away and picks a handful of the daisies that grow in profusion along the paths here. He does this every visit, and then, as always, he begins to join their stems with square knots. The work involves two hands, and I can see the right one having to wait for the left, but he’s strangely patient with it, the way he is with his shoelaces. The daisies are oxeyes, and the bare heads have long gone to seed so that the tying is easier. Before long he’s made a length of chain as long as his arm. Then he takes off his hat and walks up to her.

“She’d be sorry about what’s going on over at the Metareys’,” I say, moving next to him.

He looks down at the stone. “You never cared much about them, my love.”

“She did, actually,” I say. “You did, Mom.”

“Then you kept it to yourself, my love.”

I think about that.

He begins to tie the daisy chain then into the particular knot he likes. It’s called a sennit, and he used to tie it for me when I was a boy—a long intertwining braid that looks in the end like two bodies joined by arms, wrapped round and round each other. His fingers are slow but they’re surprisingly limber when they’re warmed up.

“She was a good woman,” he declares finally, turning. He says this to me nearly every visit, and has for all the years we’ve come together, but each time it’s as though he means it anew. Longfellow and Shakespeare and William Manchester, and I guess Marx and Zinn and now Dickens, and even a stroke—they haven’t changed all that much about him. He holds the crown of knotted stems next to his chest and closes his eyes for a moment.

When he opens them, he says, “You never expect the way your life is going to turn out. Do you? And you never get to find out how your children’s turned out, either.”

“You don’t, Dad. I wonder about the girls all the time.”

“And I used to wonder about
you
.” He smiles, a little sheepishly. “Not all the time, maybe, but I did. I thought that when Mom went, it was a blow you’d never get over. That I’d never get over, either.”

“But we did,” I say. “We both did.” Then I add, “We love you, Mom.”

“Don’t be sorry, Cor. She would be glad.”

He holds out the daisies in his two hands in front of him, examining them in the light. They tremble on his palms.

“Dad,” I say. “Did you know it was going to happen?”

“Did I know what was going to happen?”

“What happened to Mom. Did you know back then? Did she tell you? That she was sick, I mean.” I turn to him. “That she knew she was going to die.”