Carry Me Home (22 page)

Josh glanced over, quickly looked back at the grays who had trotted closer. “I—” Bobby drew out the sound, “know what you’re thinkin. But if I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, how can you think that?” He paused. Josh cocked his head. Pensively Bobby continued. “I do have faith. And patience. Faith and patience,” he repeated to himself. Faith and patience in the pursuit of answers, in the pursuit of design excellence, he thought. It was a throw-back thought to his college days, to an engineering fundamentals class. I could go back to school, he thought. But not here. I could work in the trades. But not here. Build some decent houses instead of those wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, don’t-call-me-if-it-settles boxes they put up in Old New Town, or the slap-em-up-overnight boxes they’re still putting up in New New Town. I could go back, become a designer. Maybe a city planner. But not here.

As they walked back to High Meadow, Wapinski thought of one more option—of reenlisting, of escaping by reenlisting—but it did not seem viable. He’d served his time. It was time to get on with his life.

Back at the drive Bobby pulled the morning’s paper from the box. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Ah ... no offense Josh. Hot damn, look at this! Ho Chi Minh croaked!”

Bob Wapinski was now dating Red full-time. They talked, walked, made love. Seldom did he take her to anything fancier than the cinema in downtown Mill Creek Falls, though on Labor Day weekend they did go to an inn in Towanda. He had little money, no job, except that he labored around the farm and continued to refurbish the house. He had collected two unemployment checks but stopped going, saying, “I’d rather eat dirt than take their filthy handouts.” Mostly he and Red spent weekend days hiking with Josh at High Meadow, and week nights, after Red got off work, lying in the back seat of the old Chevy, parked in the remotest corners of town.

Joanne had called several times in mid and late August and again in early September with the same message as before, that Montgomery McShane was going to press charges. “I’ll take my chances,” he’d told her. He knew there were no charges, no medical bills he’d be asked to pay. He had talked with the boy and Montgomery had apologized to Bob as much as Bob did to him, and he assured Bob that he was okay, no permanent damage. Joanne, however, continued pressing. “You might just as well shoot yourself,” she’d told him. “You should have died in Viet Nam.”

The weekend after Labor Day, two weeks before Jimmy Pellegrino returned, Wap, Red and Josh hiked the long path around High Meadow. The day was hot, without wind. They started at the house, followed the trail through the orchard, over the knoll, across the dam, over the rock crags. Bob never smelled fresh blood and entrails at the crags when Red was along, though he’d smelled it twice again when only Josh was with him. He never mentioned it to her. They followed the path to the fork where they usually continued to the right, around the pond, but this time they went left up into the woods, past the cabin Grandpa had built the first year he owned the farm. “‘Before he built a proper house,’ is what Granma used to say,” Bob said. They followed the trail up the side of the now dry streambed, listened to the birds, kissed. Red followed Bob over an old stone wall in the woods. “Granpa did this. At one time he’d cleared and cultivated this side. With these fields he had ninety acres planted. It’s not a lot but it was a hell of a feat being that he did an awful lot of it by himself. A lot of it by hand.” Bob led Red up the steep embankment and into the sugarbush where they made love in the cool shade of the maples.

It was pleasant sex but not passionate sex. To him it seemed as if she could not let go. He wasn’t sure if it was
his
insecurities and
his
lack of direction that were affecting her. It seemed to him she had made love to him today solely to please him, even though she had no desire. It worried him.

For a while they didn’t talk, didn’t move. He thought of Red’s aroma, then didn’t want to think of her at all but of other concerns he wanted to share but couldn’t. He rolled to his side. He looked at her tiny pink breasts, thought of Stacy, about to be married. And he imagined, wished, that somehow the entire time since he’d returned had been a test, a conspiracy designed to stretch to the extreme his true love for Stacy, that at any moment Red was going to say, “Ha. You blew it. We were just testing you to see if you would pass. You flunked.” Except he wished he hadn’t flunked. Had gone after Stacy.

Red was lying on her back, her hands on her stomach. She too was thinking divergent thoughts. In less than two weeks her fiancé would be home. In another she’d be the maid of honor at Stacy’s wedding. She bit her lip, then said, “I got another letter from Jimmy.”

“You told me.”

“What am I going to tell him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I ... I feel sad. Like I want to run away.”

“Me too.”

“I really love you.” He rolled, kissed her. She continued. “I think I’m going to take the job in California.”

“Oh. Hey, that’s great. In January?”

“They want me there November first.”

“November first? That’s—that’s only ...”

“I know. But I’ve got to get away. I don’t want to spend my life in Mill Creek Falls. I’m twenty-one. I want to live a little before I settle down.”

“Umm.” He didn’t want to brood, didn’t want her to brood, didn’t want their fragile moods to plummet. At once he felt relieved, as if she were letting him go, and hurt, afraid to lose her.

“Will you write to me?” Red asked.

“Um-hmm. Will you write back?”

“Um-hmm. Could you, maybe, come out and visit?”

“Yeah. I could.”

“Could you move out there?”

“Aw, Red.” He sighed. “I don’t know. I ... maybe. You hit me with it pretty sudden. I didn’t even know they’d made you a real offer.”

“I start at ten thousand. That’s nearly double what I make working for Daddy.”

“That’s great. That’s really nice. Ten thousand!?”

“Isn’t it exciting?”

She’d hugged him, kissed him, kissed him passionately as his hands explored her petite body, kissed him a dozen hello, welcome home, I-love-you-so-much kisses. Then she pushed away and announced, “I’m going to move to California.” Jimmy Pellegrino stared at her but didn’t respond. “I’m going to move in about five weeks,” Red said as if she were challenging him, said as if she wanted a conflict to ease the message, wanted
him
to object, wanted
him
to be the cause.

“Cool,” Jimmy said. “That’ll be after my leave. You’re comin with me this weekend. To Boston. Tony’s getting married.”

“Tony!”

“Yeah. He met some nurse chick who’s in school in Boston. The whole family’s going up.”

“I can’t,” Red said. She was glad. A clean break. “Stacy’s getting married. In New York. I’m her maid of honor.”

“Stac—She marryin that ...”

“Um-hmm. I’m going up on Wednesday. I thought you’d come....”

“Naw. I gotta go up and see Tony. I’m goina be his best man. Ha! But California, huh?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Where?”

“San Martin. My father has a friend out there. He offered me a job.”

“Hey, okay!” Jimmy said. He put his hands on her shoulders again, pulled her close. She dropped her head. He kissed her hair.

She held him, not with passion, with control. “Jimmy, we need to talk.” He rocked back a few inches. She took her hands from his side, with her right she removed the engagement ring he’d given her. “Jimmy, I can’t do this if you’re going back there again.”

“Why?” He was calm.

“I just can’t,” she said. Her eyes began to tear.

“What if I don’t go back?” Jimmy said.

That stunned her. For a moment she said nothing. Then she whispered, “Your letters said you were going back for a third tour.”

“Yeah, but what if I don’t?”

“I ...” Again she couldn’t answer.

“Come on. What is it?” Now Jimmy stood back. “What if I stay?” His voice was hard.

“I ... you ... you don’t fill my needs anymore.” Red said. “And ... I’ve met someone.” She did not look at Jimmy. “I’ve met someone else who fills my needs.”

“Needs? What needs?” His words were fast, his tone had gone from calm to hard to angry.

“Well, to start with, I need someone who’s here.”

“Damn it! I just asked you what if I didn’t go back?” Now he turned, stepped away. Then he stepped back. “What someone?!”

“I wrote you ...”

“You mean this guy that you’re just buddies with?!”

“Yes.”

“I knew it. I knew it the first time you wrote that!”

“That’s what you said in your letter, but it wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah.”

“Really.” She was crying now, looking at him, beseeching him with her tears, angry at him for not believing her. “Really,” She said again. “Maybe if you’d trusted me I would have felt....”

“Oh, my fault, right?!”

“If you’d trusted me I would have stayed true. But you immediately thought I was cheating ...”

“You’re being just like Stacy!”

“You know it hurts to be accused of—like Stacy?!”

“Yeah. Like when she was foolin around on that Airborne guy.”

“Oh damn! It is that Airborne guy.”

“What is?”

“Bobby is. That’s who I’m seeing. Stacy’s old boyfriend.”

Bobby climbed the loft ladder, crossed the darkened wood floor with its remnant scattering of straw left from a time when the farm was active. His eyes adjusted as he approached the door, and the heavy beams and braces of the simple structure emerged as if he’d walked into a hollow body supported by an old but still strong skeleton. Grandpa had told him to go there, to spend the day, because he didn’t want Bobby moping around underfoot like he’d moped all day Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday. “Go on up,” he’d said. “I left some things out. Some things a yours. And I cleared out a drawer too. That’ll be yours. When you’re done, file your things in the drawer and turn the lights out. You need anything at Morris’?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ll take Josh with me. He can’t climb the ladder yet.”

Dutifully Bobby had crossed the yard, opened the big door, walked by the vacant stalls, the long feeding trough, the center gutter for washing the place down, to the far end where the ladder was. He’d brought his AWOL bag, his records, a dozen magazines he’d kept, a hundred articles he’d cut from the newspaper but hadn’t read beyond the first paragraphs.

He put his hand on the latch to Grandpa’s barn-loft office, hesitated. It had been years since he’d been inside, years since he’d helped his grandfather raise the seven-sectioned bay window to the framed opening, pulling so eagerly on the line that ran through the pulley blocks, one on the superstructure Grandpa had built on the roof, one through the bindings that Grandpa had insisted Bobby tie about the window without Pewel watching or checking but just saying, “You’re fifteen. You know how to do it.” And he had raised the window alone, afraid his knots would fail or that the rope would slip through his hands, raised it easily until Grandpa had reached out and as simply as pulling in a child’s balloon, pulled the window into the opening, put precut dowels through each side into the predrilled holes in the side posts, opened the center window, and untied the line.

Bobby opened the door, felt for the switch, turned on the overheads. The room glowed warm without shadow, the soft luster of oiled pine absorbing any hint of glare. He stood. A thermal drape had been pulled across the bay window beneath which a large pine desk had been built. Bobby closed the door, stepped to the desk, dropped his AWOL bag on the floor, his armload of papers on the desk. He lifted the hem of the curtain. The morning sun was rising behind the barn. Before him was the pond. He raised the hem further. Across the pond he could see the crags and the woods. To the left were the knoll, the cliff, and the orchard. To the right was the high meadow, fallow now. Above, surrounding the woods, the meadow, and the barn were the ridges, which seemed to hold and to protect everything within their expanding, descending V. Bobby dropped the drape. He sat. He squeezed his eyes shut, shuddered, opened them.

Before him was an old manila envelope that he had stolen when he was thirteen, taken from his mother’s attic unknown to her then and probably to this day, had taken and run to his grandfather leaving Miriam to think he had run away. Grandpa had kept his secret, had kept the letters safe for ten years. The letters were the old man’s tie to his son as much as the boy’s tie to his father. Yet they’d sat, deteriorating, unread for ten years by either grandfather or grandson. They were love letters written by a man they both loved, to a woman neither loved but both accepted exactly as they accepted the physical presence of the letters, as a tie, a bind to a man who had deserted them, a man to whom neither held an iota of hate nor an ounce of grudge.

Grandpa had taken the envelope from the file drawer, had laid it on the big, oiled pine desk. With it he’d laid two file folders, one from Paul Wapinski’s soldiering time in the Pacific, one from Bobby Wapinski’s time in Viet Nam. Pewel had laid them side by side, his obsession with his family, driven, even back in the early ’40s before Paul returned to abandon them, by Pewel’s fear that he would never see his son again, driven, heightened for his grandson, because after Paul returned he disappeared and the same might be happening with Bob—disappearing, abandoning the man who had toiled for half a century to establish a home to which his son and grandson might return, might have a base upon which to build their lives.

Bobby did not immediately turn his attention to the manila envelope or to the files. He’d brought his own material and he’d brought Tyrone Blackwell’s letter, which he’d begun reading in the house but which had overwhelmed him in the first few sentences. He had stopped abruptly, refolded the pages, returned them to the envelope addressed by hand, marked in the corner FREE meaning it had been mailed from Viet Nam.

He pushed the folders and the manila envelope to one corner, Blackwell’s letter and his recent news clippings to the other, plopped the material from the AWOL bag in the center. That, he decided, would be the easiest way to begin.