Carry Me Home (81 page)

“He doesn’t like Simon Denham very much, does—”

“That’s not really it, Sar. He’s just packed with anger.”

“Well, lately he’s seemed pretty happy.”

“Syruping, huh?”

“Um-hmm.”

“He’s always happy when he’s doing that. I’ve got no idea why. It’s not just a matter of being outside because he’s had lots of outside jobs.”

Tony was at the Sugar Shack unloading logs and branches from the tractor cart. He was not happy. He was bored, antsy, impatient. The oscillation in temperature should have produced treble the sap he’d collected. Things were no longer falling into place. The gate was finished. There was no more forge work. Seed had been ordered but it was too early to plant. He’d laid out an area for vegetables—nothing commercial, just a house garden—but the ground wasn’t ready for rototilling. The fields weren’t ready for turning, either, and there were no materials to begin the little barn project. Bobby had been spending so many hours tinkering in the barn that Tony felt invaded. And Bobby was insisting that he read something every day, something beyond farm journals. He’d fallen into the habit of reading the daily paper and was now convinced the Kremlin or the White House would soon blow half the planet to smithereens. He wanted to get his Harley from Linda’s—why it was still there he didn’t know. He had the urge to go, to move, split, change scenes—anyplace, anything, as long as it wasn’t High Meadow, as long as no one asked anything of him.

“Hi Babe.”

Tony started. He hadn’t seen her coming.

“How ya doing?” Linda’s voice was light, simple.

“Fine.” He straightened his back, looked down from the cart. Linda’s face caught the sun, her eyes glistened. “Where’re the girls?” He asked. She looked prettier today than she had since he’d come back, but immediately he focused on himself, told himself she found him horrible, deranged, repulsive. He looked away.

“They’re inside,” Linda said. “Playing with Noah.” She had not seen Tony like this in years. He was shirtless. His arms and shoulders looked sinewy, his stomach was flat, hard. “How’s syruping going?”

“Ugh.”

Linda interpreted his grunt as anger. “I saw Mr. Morris last week. Did you know he’s looking for syrup?”

“There’s not going to be much.” Still terse.

“Why?” Soft, concerned.

“I don’t know. It’s the trees.”

“Are they okay?”

“Um.”

“It’s been wet enough, hasn’t it?”

Tony jumped from the cart, kicked a branch into the pile. “Old Man Lutz cut in a foundation for a new barn. I think he hit the upper aquifer. It’s been draining steadily for months. You can see it. It’s like a giant ice floe.”

“Well, can’t they stop it?”

“I ...” Now Tony again looked at Linda’s face—those hazel eyes, that auburn hair, those beautiful lips. How incredibly attractive she was, and how repulsive he felt. “I didn’t connect it until you said that,” he said. For a while they talked about the maples, about telling Adolph Lutz about the problem, about what if it killed the entire sugarbush. “Want to ride up on the tractor?” Tony asked, smiled, suddenly wanting this person, this one person, to think him attractive, to like him again. He felt excited and happy when Linda climbed up with him and sat behind him on the sap tank, and he felt rending pangs because he knew he could not meet her expectations. Then he thought, she’s probably being nice so she can bring up the divorce.

The tractor rocked as it crossed from the dirt road to the high meadow to the path for the sugarbush. Gently Linda touched Tony’s shoulders. It had been so long since they’d touched, but he knew his shoulders were disgusting, crusty with that acne that never went away, that had turned to two strips where his pack straps had once rested, two dry, rough, cracking patches.

“Bobby’s thinking of putting in grapes down there,” Tony said as the tractor rumbled north of the pond. “Use a windmill to pump the water up to a big tank, then use a drip irrigation system on the vines.”

“Oh. What kind of grapes would you plant?”

“I don’t know. He wants me to go up to some winery in New York. Find out what they’re doing.”

“Can you grow them here? With the way the winters get?”

“They do in Europe. And New York. I got a book ...”

Trees. Grapes. Alfalfa. Linda listened, was easy to talk to. Maybe things were falling into place, he thought, but you just needed to show it to someone for you to realize it. At the edge of the sugarbush Tony loaded more cut branches into the cart. Linda bent to help. “Don’t do that, Babe,” he said. “You’ll get your clothes dirty.”

“I can wash them.” Linda smiled.

Deep in the sugarbush they inspected the trees, the taps, the crowns. Then Linda hugged him as if for the first time ever and Tony could barely control himself. She tucked her head into his chest, rubbed her cheek very lightly against his nipple, then looked up for a kiss. Then they were kissing and feeling like a midsummer’s day in Boston and thoughts and remembrances and fears were overridden by desire, love and lust. Then she said, “Wait.”

Coming down from the sugarbush Linda sat between Tony’s legs as he taught her how to drive the tractor, and nibbled on her neck. “‘They call me baby driver ...’” Linda laughed.

“‘... You’re on my pair of wheels ...’” Tony too laughed. He was hot, expectant. Together they sang, laughed about how the engine feels.

At the Sugar Shack the afternoon breeze turned cool. Tony unloaded the last of the branches, drained the scant few gallons of liquid from the sap tank. Linda kept him at bay. Again he felt her rejection, revulsion. Again he saw how deserving he was of that rejection.

“Babe,” Linda said tentatively. How hard it was for her to speak the words. “Do you want to come home?”

Tony looked at her, his eyes locked on hers, not with intensity but in pain. How he wanted to say yes. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

For Tony things became more complicated. Bobby had asked him to talk to Adolph Lutz about the aquifer and to tell him that Tony would plant the lower thirty-six acres this year. Tony had agreed, had talked to Old Man Lutz without satisfaction. To make things worse, Bobby had begun to push Tony on “our agricultural master plan.” Linda had come each of the next two Saturdays, had come into his bunker-cubicle, which even Bobby never entered, had cleaned it the first week!, made out with him, necked, petted, fondled without going “too far” the second; then didn’t show at all on the third.

More confusion: Tony, with Bobby’s help and the brand new EES Ford Econoline van, brought Tony’s Harley back to High Meadow—ostensibly to be used to visit the New York wineries. But the Harley meant, for the first time since he’d returned, that Tony had the means of splitting, of avoiding, evading the assault forces of civilization.

More yet: the bartender/owner of the White Pines Inn, Aaron Holtz, had come up to tell them a guy named Dale Ivanov, an ex-brown water navy man, needed a place to stay. “Can I tell im to check you guys out?” “That’s why we’re here,” Bobby’d answered. “He sometimes calls himself Ivanushka,” the bartender said. “Ivanushka Durachok. It’s some kind of joke.” “Guy down and out?” Bobby’d asked. Holtz had answered, “Seems to be. Drinks a lot.”

After Holtz had left, Tony had asked, “Where are you going to billet him?”

“That’s a good question. We haven’t really started the little barn.”

“Not in my bunker,” Tony said firmly.

“Ah, right. Do you think on the main floor ...”

Bobby turned the big three-oh. April passed. He paid the capital gains tax on Old Russia Road and suddenly found himself with much reduced funds. May came and went. Ivanov did not show. Still, in Bobby’s mind, the venture had begun. Bobby tinkered with solar collector plate designs, built three, mounted them on the barn roof—asking everyone who came for their reaction, their first impression—searching for something aesthetically pleasing, efficient, lightweight, cheap. He subscribed to the National Technical Information Service and was swamped with documents and data; his research advanced in leaps and bounds. He made trips to Pittsburgh, Williamsport and Harrisburg. He found potential suppliers everywhere. In Scranton he found a shower-door company that would make aluminum extrusions to any specifications, in any color, with any finish he wanted. He continued to experiment with materials; he set up the first test stations, the first assembly table.

At the same time he busied himself fixing parts of the old farm house—attempting to keep the lid on the can of worms he was certain any major renovation would open. He felt guilty if he worked for twelve or ten or even seven hours in the barn without returning to the house to relieve Sara—even if only for a few minutes—from the frustration of caring for a one-year-old. He postponed the house roof work because he wasn’t satisfied yet with the collector design. Then the well pump burned out and needed replacing, and a spring storm washed out the lower drive. Bobby and Tony spent two days cutting swales, installing drainage and a new culvert, and regrading the drive. Then the refrigerator went, then the clothes washer, then the upstairs bath drain pipe sprung a leak and the ceiling in the downstairs hall collapsed, and suddenly the after-tax capital from the sale of Old Russia Road, the start-up capital for the new venture, seemed inadequate, minuscule compared to the projected master plan. The barn became Bobby’s refuge. The plan, the program, the Grunt Theory of Psychology, and The Code were all put on hold. There was one and only one concern—sell a cash crop.

“Please come this way,” Bobby said.

“Into the barn?!” the woman said.

“My office is upstairs,” Bobby said.

“You understand we’re only looking,” the man said. “We’re exploring our options.”

“It would be foolish if you weren’t,” Bobby said. He led Mr. Jasper Vertsborg and Ms. Ellen Louwery-Vertsborg, husband and wife, into the barn, across the main floor to the rustic elevator Tony had built for Pewel.

“You don’t keep any animals?” the woman asked.

Bobby chuckled. “Only Josh and Tony.”

Neither Jasper nor Ellen responded. He was less than five seven, and frail. She was his height, taller in heels, about his weight. They were exploring the possibility of purchasing an old home in the Lutzburgh section of town. Jasper had just signed a three-year contract with the Mill Creek Falls Board of Education to fill the newly created position of school psychologist. Ellen, who was a children’s clothes designer, had just leased the small building on Third Street that had been Pete’s Barbershop. “This is quite a contraption,” Mr. Vertsborg said as the small wooden platform with the single handrail slowly rose. “Does your insurance company know you don’t have it fully enclosed?” He didn’t give Bobby a chance to answer (Bobby thinking, Thank you. What insurance company?) but continued, “Someone could fall off. If they fell from here, they’d be killed.”

“Yes,” Bobby said. “I guess. We use the lift mainly for materials. One of my men is building a set of regular stairs.”

“That’s good,” Jasper said. Then, as they entered Grandpa’s office, “Oh! This is very pleasant. What a nice view. I didn’t realize your pond was so large.”

“Please,” Bobby said. “Sit down. Let me ask you a few questions.”

For half an hour Bobby asked questions about the house they were considering. He knew the house. It had been the home of his fourth-grade friend, Bobby Conner. He asked about the old apple tree with the tree fort in the side yard and told Jasper and Ellen about the apple wars he and Bobby Conner used to have with Mickey Turley and Bobby’s brother, Brian. “Yes. Well ...” Jasper gave Ellen the high sign.

Bobby knew he was losing them. “Let me come out,” he said. “Let me draw a plot of the property, take some pictures and measurements. I think with the proper insulation that house could be eighty percent self-sufficient. Particularly ... you know the way the back of the house has those two inset porches ...”

“They remind me of my aunt Millie’s house in Scranton,” Ellen said disdainfully. “All they need are clothes lines running out to the trees and a couple of old biddies yakking between floors.”

“Picture that entire volume as a three-story greenhouse,” Bobby said. “It would unite the floors.”

“Hmm! That might be nice,” Ellen said.

“Put in a terra-cotta floor. Or maybe slate,” Bobby continued. With his hands he shaped the forms in the air. “Lay it in six inches of concrete over a foot of crushed stone to create a giant heat sink.”

“Um.” Ellen glanced at Jasper as if to go.

Bobby rushed on. “And even though it’s practical,” he said, “it’s also elegant. Think of it at night. Two and a half stories of glass, a glass canopy, the night crystal clear, the stars twinkling. Because the glass is thermo-pane you can actually have ... oh, an orange tree, some potted palms ...”

Now Ellen was interested. Bobby talked on, explaining the workings of an advanced Trombe wall system, how it worked as a massive collector, how its heating and cooling function could be expanded by encasing pipes and pulling off and storing heat in a huge basement water tank. The more he spoke, the more excited he became. Finally Jasper said, “Well, go ahead. Go out there. Work up a plan for us. And a price. By components though. We might not be in the position to do everything at once.”

After they left Bobby was riding on air. “Sar, guess what?! I think we’ve got our first job. And it’s a big one. We’d need a crew of five, at least, to do it right.” And to Tony, “We could make enough to buy a cement mixer and the sheet metal break I was telling you about. This could really get us started.”

Bobby set to work. For the Vertsborgs Bobby built the most elaborate model of Bobby Conner’s old house. Then he constructed the modular changes he would propose and he placed the model on the siting table. Carefully he tested the orbital track lighting to see not only how sunlight would hit the roof and walls, but even how furniture would cast shadows within a room or at what time on any day sunlight would enter the bedroom and hit the eyes of old sleepyhead. Bobby then priced out the materials, estimated the labor, and tacked on a minuscule profit margin. This was to be EES’ first renovation and in Bobby’s mind it had to be a showplace.