The Rail (23 page)

“So,” Jack says, turning toward David, “how's he doing?”

“The Rail? Dad? Oh, he's fine. Just adjusting to real life again. It's going to take a while. At least he has a place to stay. Thank God for James Blackford Penn.” David forces a laugh.

Jack is quiet. They both watch as two squirrels scurry along the branches of a pecan tree whose base is littered with ruined shells. David is about to make a comment about what a nuisance squirrels are, rats with tails, really, when a darkness passes in front of them. The red-tailed hawk is gone with the squirrel before they even know what it is. It becomes a speck against a gray sky in scant seconds. The other squirrel sits in the V of two branches, shaking and then scrambling as far up the bare tree as he can.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Jack says, and he and David concede that they've never seen anything quite like that.

They compare other feats of nature they've witnessed, including Dasher.

Jack sets his Coke on the ashtray along the porch rail. Then he turns to David.

“I know the lawyer who drew up James Penn's will,” he says, and David wonders what, if any, response is expected.

There is silence for a few more seconds. Jack Stoner speaks again.

“David, I don't know why I'm telling you this, except I can't keep a damn secret. The lawyer, he can't keep a secret either, I suppose, but he said he was just amazed when he heard what Blanchard was telling people. About the will.”

“The will.”

“David,” Jack says, drawing him by the elbow away from the sliding glass door to the porch's far corner, as if they could be heard over the now-resumed game, “James Penn left everything—the house, whatever money was left, everything—to Blanchard. Neil got nothing, at least not from him. Nothing. He wasn't even mentioned.”

David is looking across the yard, to the woods beyond. He thinks for an instant he sees a deer, but when he looks again, it is either gone or camouflaged.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing. I don't know what it means, and I don't know why I'm telling you.”

David turns back toward the house, fixing his gaze on Dr. Jack Stoner for two seconds.

“I don't either.” And he goes back inside.

The house's population has grown by two while David was on the porch. Tom has arrived with a woman who appears to be about 10 years younger, a redhead wearing some kind of animal fur who looks as if she would rather be almost anywhere else.

Tom introduces her as Ella Turpin, and the others greet her pleasantly enough. She wants to stay close to Tom in this house full of someone else's family, and they settle in the middle area where Blanchard is trying to make her drink last as long as possible.

They finally sit down to dinner at 4:30, all 16 of them. Wat has had to add two leaves to the table, which stretches out of the dining room and into the adjoining den. They've put a card table in the den for the three children.

There is no seating plan, and they divide by generations. David joins Ray, Patti, Susan and Parker on the side of the long table nearest the children, with Willa, Jack, Tom, Ella, Blanchard and Neil on the other. Millie and Wat sit at either end.

They join hands. Wat asks God's blessing on the food before them and notes that he is thankful for family on such a day as this.

David looks across to where Neil is sitting with his head bowed, between Blanchard and Tom's girlfriend, Ella. He hasn't heard Neil say more than a dozen words since they arrived, and he imagines his father is just as happy not to be entertaining questions about the last two years. Everyone seems to prefer it that way. Blanchard's eyes are wide open, and they meet David's briefly before the blessing is concluded. She appears flushed.

When the blessing is over, Ella seems to have overcome her earlier shyness. She appears to be trying to draw Neil out, although David can't hear everything she's saying. Neil seems to be mostly nodding and answering as economically as possible.

The table is covered from one end to the other with turkey, ham, dressing, gravy, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, carrots, beans, field peas, biscuits, cranberry sauce, stewed tomatoes and squash. There are three casseroles.

Everything, David thinks, but a green salad. He feels as if he has gained five pounds already from his stay in Penns Castle, and he's liable to add another five before the day is over.

He and Carly agree that Thanksgiving feasts are a waste—all that food, she would lament, and everyone inhales it in 20 minutes. Then the men go back and fall asleep in front of a TV football game and the women clean it all up.

One year, the two of them tried to make it better. They invited six friends over and planned a five-course meal that they would eat, one leisurely course at a time. They would have a different glass of wine with each one, and when it was all over, everyone would have enjoyed a three-hour dining experience in which you actually tasted the food rather than simply swallowing it. It was all very French.

Their friends came, and for the most part they tried everything, remarking on how interesting everything was. After everyone left, David and Carly were quite proud of themselves and thought that perhaps they had broken new Thanksgiving ground. The next year, though, one of the other couples invited everyone over to their house, and there were the turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberries and all the rest, and no one mentioned the Beauchamps' ground-breaking meal of the year before. They ate everything in an enthusiastic 20 minutes, and although the men did help clear the table, it was not appreciably different from the holiday meals the eight of them had eaten when they were children. Everyone watched the rest of the football game together.

That was the point at which David and Carly stopped trying to improve on Thanksgiving.

“You can lead a guest to turkey terrine and sweetbreads,” David told her on the way home that night, “but you can't make them eat.”

It takes 10 long minutes for everyone to pass everything to everyone else, and then the table gets quieter as serious eating begins. Over Millie's protests, Wat has bought several bottles of passable Virginia wine, a merlot, and everyone except Neil fills a glass.

After a few quiet moments, Ella turns to Neil.

“So, Mr. Beauchamp,” she says, “I understand you've been away at Mundy. My cousin's son is there. He was a fine boy, but he got mixed up with that crack cocaine.”

The table grows quieter.

“Yes,” Neil says, “I've been away.”

David can see Tom's face redden as he tries to nudge his friend into silence. David wonders if Blanchard hasn't shared her cache of mini-bottles with Ella.

“Well, I reckon everyone else knows,” she says gaily, “but what'd you do?” She giggles. Tom is looking down at his plate, his mouth full of food.

Neil chews a few more times and swallows.

“I was driving drunk and I ran over a man and killed him,” Neil says, staring straight ahead, at a spot beyond Patti's head. Everyone is looking either down at their food or at Neil.

“Well,” Ella Turpin says, “I guess that's why you're not having any wine.”

“I guess so.”

Susan gets up to go check on the children, and Patti follows her. Millie goes to get more turkey.

The quiet lasts until Wat says, “We were all sorry, Neil. We wished you'd have let us come see you. Hell, nobody blames you. Ain't been but one man that was perfect, and they nailed him to a cross.”

Neil knows he's trying to make it better, trying to guide this holiday meal through uncomfortable shoals without making him feel like a total asshole. But he doesn't know what to say, other than, “Thank you.”

It is Blanchard who gets up and leaves the table, her face pale and tight.

By the time she comes back, 10 minutes later, the other women have brought out the desserts—sweet potato pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, lemon pie, pound cake, German chocolate cake, angel food cake—and a certain equilibrium seems to have been reached. Ella is restricting her conversations mostly to Tom, and Susan's boyfriend is asking Neil about his glory days with the Tigers and Indians.

“You know,” he said, as he lifted several ounces of pecan pie to his face, “I got your autograph once, when I was about six. You were out at the big card show they have every year. I've still got the ball you signed for me.”

Neil nods. He autographed a lot of things, in a lot of cities, on his way to Mundy. After everything else went to hell, after the divorce finally came through and it was clear that he could not properly manage a baseball team, or a bar, or his half of a marriage, or even himself, it came down to signing things. He brought in more money on a slow July afternoon in Richmond signing scraps of paper and baseball cards, and caps and bats and gloves, than he made his first year with the Detroit Tigers.

“Yeah,” Neil nods, looking across the table, “I signed a lot of balls back then.”

Neil Beauchamp returned to Virginia the first time in 1985, the same year Blanchard came back. His plan was that he would start a sports bar in Richmond, which he would call simply The Rail.

He still had some money after the divorce and settlement, and he knew other ex-players who claimed a sports bar was an intelligent way to make money grow. And by this time, Neil had had some experience with bars. His partner was a developer who put up 60 percent to Neil's 40, since the developer had more money and considerably less name recognition.

Neil was, by then, well into The Great Letting-Go. He and Blanchard had never completely lost touch with one another. She would write to him occasionally as he went from minor-league manager to major-league coach to unemployed and divorced, and as she went through two marriages and a breakdown.

The developer also gave Neil a sweet deal on a condominium he had built in the Richmond suburbs. Having a Hall-of-Famer in one of his buildings could possibly help sales, the developer supposed.

They called the living spaces units. Neil had one with three bedrooms and a fireplace; it overlooked a creek 40 feet below. Every night at 11, the train would pass along the opposite bluff, its light visible through the oak and sycamore leaves. Neil sat up and listened for the train, came to expect its two long blasts as it neared the crossing half a mile up the tracks. He looked as expectantly as a child for its one-eyed, ghostly appearance, gliding through the woods exactly at his level, across the ravine.

Some nights, though, the Virginia Rail was not home to hear the train whistle. The condominiums were populated by retirees, young marrieds and what Neil's neighbor and fellow divorcee Pat McLean referred to as the At Large. Weber kettle grills would be lit at six, down by the two picnic tables that sat in front of Neil's unit, and the communal drinking would begin. On at least two occasions that Neil can remember now, no meat ever touched the grill's surface, and they all drove to The Rail for burgers, with Neil picking up the tab.

The sports bar lasted nearly three years. Neil had neither the patience nor the business acumen to be more than an occasional, drunken guest at the place that was draining his money. The man who would get up on the coldest winter mornings in Cleveland or Detroit in order to go to the gym and work out for two hours could not make himself rise to the call of commerce.

After the bar failed, it was back to Cleveland, where a man who was once an Indians bat boy offered him a great deal on a restaurant. This time, the name was less subtle: Neil Beauchamp's Hall of Fame Auberge. Later, after the bankruptcy papers had been filed, the former bat boy wondered if they shouldn't have called it a restaurant instead.

“People don't like that fancy shit,” he said. Neil wished, as he had in Richmond, that he cared more.

Neil spent a decade moving, from Richmond to Cleveland, back to Richmond for a short spell, then to Kansas City and finally, in 1994, to Richmond again. After a while, he stopped unpacking certain boxes, and it seemed to him that he liked every place he lived a little less than the one before.

In Richmond, Blanchard would inevitably find him. No one else in his family tried very hard, and Neil had little heart for seeing them, ashamed that he could no longer send consistent small checks and occasional large ones, even though no one really needed the Rail's help any more. He would visit over Christmas, maybe once in the summer, if then.

He and Blanchard found that they were equally fond of drinking, and they would sometimes meet at bars in the Fan, or down in Shockoe Slip. Neil would be watching television in his apartment, and Blanchard would call, wanting to do something.

He was spending more and more nights by himself, and it was harder to turn down Blanchard's entreaties. He never came inside her big house in the West End, though. He never saw James or Virginia Penn in the years they had left.

“They think,” Blanchard said to him once, when he was 57 and she was 52, “that you're a bad influence.”

And when Blanchard would hint, and then outright ask, to come home with him, Neil always told her no.

In the year or so before the accident, she never even asked, and he assumed that the great, howling temptation that had always been there between them had at last, mercifully, become old and sickly, no longer scratching at his door, wanting to be let in as much as he wanted to let it in.

By 1994, Neil Beauchamp's sources of income were his baseball pension and the card shows. At the time little Parker's father paid ten dollars for Neil's name on a cheap baseball, he didn't need the money that much. After two bankruptcies, though, at a time when the Virginia Rail could have used the cash, he had been devalued to five dollars a ball. The more he needed money, the less he seemed to make.

The worst, he believes now, before the wreck, was when he did television commercials for what even Blanchard derided as loan sharks, trying to get people even more desperate than Neil to go deeper in debt for some short-term gratification.