Authors: Don Hoesel
Below, lights were coming on in windows throughout Ade- lia, and Graham guessed that what was happening in the house behind him would be done before more than half of them were lit. He also suspected that while the death of a Baxter had always carried historic significance, the appearance of the Festival signs would hold greater import for most Adelia residents. The thought elicited a snort, but not because that truth bothered him. Rather, it was because he understood. His family, while a major part of the town’s history, no longer carried the weight held by the myriad other customs and totems handed down over the last two hundred years. The principal selling point of these other things was that none of them found their gravity in something as fragile as flesh and blood, but in the malleability of the intangible.
This town and its history, as well as all the trappings that went with it—unsophisticated though it all might be—was in Graham’s blood, and it had been an important element of his long campaign, even as it had also been a weight on it. Small-town folksiness only punched his ticket so far up the political track.
He flicked the cigarette butt toward the tree line and shook his head. One thing at a time. He had to get to the senate first, and this small town was good for a great many votes from the similar small towns that comprised his strongest voting bloc.
He saw the light come on at Kaddy’s, and knew that Artie must have seen the cars in the driveway—how it would look to the hardware store owner, and the rest of the people down there who would be waiting for word to come when it finally happened. As he turned to head toward the house, he thought to wonder if Artie was in the pool.
The five steps up to the wood porch were solid beneath his shoes, the third step having lost its telltale creak after last weekend’ s repair work. With the end of the senate race less than two months away, his new campaign manager had poured time and money into making certain that the family home was ready for television. Graham had to admit the place looked better than he could remember ever having seen it. The louvered shutters were all hanging for the first time in two decades, the roof had been repaired, and the copper gutters added. Even the privet had been pulled up, replaced with boxwood. On some level it bothered him that the house’s return to something of its former glory was a result of mostly cosmetic work planned and executed by someone from out of state. The restoration—the upkeep, really—of the property was something that should have remained in the family, a duty discharged over succeeding generations.
Edward was the first to greet him as he stepped inside, as the warmth from the massive fireplace in the living room hit him in the face. Graham had the impression that his uncle had been waiting in the foyer, watching his nephew through the small window cut into the cherrywood door. Almost before Graham could shut the door, Edward’s strong hand—the one not shredded by ordnance in Korea—was on his shoulder.
“It’ll happen this morning,” Edward said. “Probably within the hour.”
Graham nodded. “Is he awake?”
Edward looked back down the hall as if he could see Sal’s room, the old man sucking oxygen through a hose, as he had been for more than a month. “He’s on a morphine drip. He won’t wake up again.”
Edward led Graham down the short hall, past pictures hanging along both walls that marked the family line for the last 160 years, the older generations nearest the door, and the newest, Graham among them, trailing toward the great room. Even before he could walk, Graham had begun to learn the stories behind the photos, while carried along in the arms of his parents. There were more than two hundred pictures covering the walls, not just in this hall but throughout the house, many of them posed portraits of the great men and women who had carried the Baxter name, while others were scenes captured in their unfolding. Like all the Baxter children born in the house, Graham had been told again and again the stories behind the pictures—the reasons they inhabited the walls of the home, and the things occurring in each of the candid shots that made them suitable to join the photographic pantheon. He’d learned them because it had been expected, and now that he was older, he was glad for the force-feeding of his family history. There was something to be said about having a sufficient knowledge of one’s lineage to gauge one’s own contributions to it. Of course, Graham’s adult appreciation of the tutelage was dwarfed by the interest CJ had exhibited even as a child. Often, Graham would find his brother standing alone in the hall, looking up at the pictures. And it seemed to him that CJ was somewhere else entirely. In retrospect, it was no surprise to Graham that CJ had become a writer. He’d spent his childhood making up stories—even some to supplement the ones that had been handed down to them by their parents.
Edward’s arm fell away as Graham sidestepped the antique credenza with the missing wheel that had occupied the same spot in the hallway since he was a boy, the hobbled back leg propped up by a 1957
Farmer’s Almanac
.
Moving into the great room, he saw a quorum in assembly, which lent a certain sobriety to the moment considering the earliness of the hour. Almost the full complement of Baxters. All three of Sal’s boys, as the father had always called them, and most of the local grandchildren, among which Graham was numbered, and some of the older great-grandchildren. Sal had long outlived his own eight siblings, five having gone to the grave through natural means, one lost in the Ardennes, one in the War in the Pacific, and one through a misstep that had sent him through a vaulted ceiling from an attic.
Holding court in a room that only impressed Graham with its size when filled to capacity, as it was this morning, sat Graham’s father.
George, the second of Sal’s children, sitting by the fireplace in a hardback chair, the toe of his work boot tapping a rhythm against the brick run, had long usurped the birthright that belonged to Sal Jr., who was perfectly content to have abdicated that entitlement. The two men were talking as Graham and Uncle Edward entered. The older man stood on the opposite side of the fireplace, and he had a poker in his hand with which he absently worried the half-spent logs in the firebox. Graham’s father greeted him with a look and a brief nod before continuing his quiet conversation with Sal Jr.
On the couch beneath the bay window directly across from the entrance where Graham stood, Edward’s son Ben sat with his wife, Julie. The only non-blood relation regularly included in these sorts of family events, Julie looked like she belonged more than did her husband, who appeared uncomfortable—a mantle he’d assumed by virtue of what was perceived as an inability to engage in higher thought. Family matters always seemed to be happening just beyond the edges of his understanding. Ill-equipped to handle the responsibilities that came with the station, George had once said. Graham hadn’t been so sure at the time that there was any lingering station granted by the name, but he hadn’t challenged his father.
Sal Jr.’s son, Richard, stood by the entrance to the kitchen, a dirty hunting boot supporting his weight against the doorjamb. He was talking with Edward’s other son, Andrew, and Graham suspected they were already dividing up his grandfather’s estate, despite their being far down on the list of those who had a claim on anything in the home. Regardless of his age, George would put each of them on the ground should they so much as finger one of his father’s many guns. The real vulture—the only one Graham worried about—was Maryann. He located her on the chaise lounge near the piano, finding her eyes already on him. His beloved sister—a career gray-collar criminal who specialized in the managerial fleecing of retail from the inside. That was another thing that could get him into trouble as the campaign raced toward its conclusion, as his opponent began to look with growing panic into the private family nooks; he’d have to take Maryann aside soon and explain that to her, let her know the way things would have to be from now on. Perhaps she sensed what he was thinking, or maybe she just didn’t appreciate the way he looked at her, because she raised her hand to brush the hair from where it had fallen in front of her right eye and deftly gave him the finger. For his eyes only.
On any other day he might have responded, either in kind or in some escalatory fashion, but his grandfather was dying in the back room. Considering the circumstances, it seemed inappropriate to allow his sister to bait him. With a dismissive headshake, he crossed to his father’s side.
“How is he?” he asked, nodding toward the back room.
Arms crossed, George regarded his son with a look that indicated he thought Graham might be a simpleton. Then he huffed and pushed the chair back until it teetered to a stop against the mantel. “How do you think he is? He’s dying.”
“You’re right,” Graham said. “Dumb question.”
He took his uncle Sal’s offered hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Who’s back there with him?” he thought to ask, noting that all the principals appeared to be out here.
“Just the nurse,” George said.
“Giving him a sponge bath,” Sal Jr. added. He gave the fire another poke, prodding a piece of wood until it birthed a new flame, and then looked up at Graham. “He’ll pass anytime now, and she thinks he needs a sponge bath.”
No one said anything, as if granting the activity in the back room the absurdity it surely deserved.
“They can still sense what’s going on around them, you know,” Ben offered from his spot on the couch. “They say that people in comas can hear and feel things, even if they can’t move.”
None of the three other Baxter men said anything, but Sal Jr. looked over and offered a small smile. None of them cared enough to point out that the elder Sal wasn’t actually in a coma, but in an opiate-induced state that had placed him far beyond the reach of even the most determined of his senses. Ben’s wife placed a hand on her husband’s thigh and gave it a gentle pat, and with a sheepish smile Ben leaned back into the couch.
“I’ve already called your brother,” George said.
Graham nodded, but the doorbell rang before he could say anything.
Edward left to answer it.
“You expecting anybody else?” George asked Sal Jr.
“Nope. Near as I can tell, everyone’s here,” his brother answered. He was still working the fire, tapping the gutted wood with the poker until, finally, one of the load-bearing pieces gave way, bringing others down in a small cloud of ash and burning embers. One of these latter made an erratic escape from the firebox and aimed itself for George’s leg.
Graham’s father watched as it gained altitude and then as it started to float down. “If that lands on me, you know where I’m going to stick that poker?”
The three of them watched the ember descend and, at the last second, catch some small draft that sent it floating harmlessly to the hearth.
“Is that what passes for entertainment up here?” asked a voice from behind Graham.
When Graham turned, it was to find his uncle Edward standing next to a short man in an expensive suit. His uncle alternated his gaze between the stranger and the three other Baxter men, as if trying to convey to them without words that he had no idea how this man had worked his way past his defenses and into the middle of a family gathering. Graham, though, knew that nothing Edward could have attempted, short of brandishing a weapon, would have been able to deter a man with a long history of insinuating himself into places he didn’t belong. That was one of the reasons Graham had hired him. That, and the many bars they’d hit together during their time at Stanford.
“Hello, Daniel.”
“Hello, Senator,” the man said, extending a hand.
Graham took it with a chuckle. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Then, to his family, “This is Daniel Wolfowitz.”
Bringing on a new campaign manager with only three months left in the race had been a gamble, but the last thirty days had proven the wisdom of the decision. For the first time since announcing his candidacy, the polls showed Graham with a slim lead over the incumbent. It was one of Daniel’s most valuable skills—the ability to take a mechanism with countless moving parts and improve its performance. He was a systems guy, and he’d come in and optimized Graham’s political machine. Of course the money helped too, but even that had been Daniel’s handiwork.
At the introduction, heads nodded, although Edward still looked unsure about the non-familial interruption. With as busy as the last month had been, this was Daniel’s first visit to Ade- lia, which marked him as a stranger, despite what he’d done for Graham.
Daniel set his briefcase down and crossed to the fire. “It’s cold out there,” he said, rubbing his hands together, then blowing on them for good measure.
“Cold? It’s fifty-eight degrees outside,” Edward protested. He looked around at the others, as if soliciting support for this little nugget gleaned from the early morning news. “There won’t be frost for another few weeks.”
“This couldn’t happen at a better time,” Daniel went on, too focused on his topic to pay any attention to Edward. He turned to Graham, a smile on his face. “You have the funeral this weekend and then carry the emotion all the way to election night. We can play the whole ‘my grandfather’s dying wish was that I press on’ thing. People will eat it up.”
Graham could see that Daniel’s enthusiasm did not translate well. Edward, especially, had quickly moved from wondering how anyone could think fifty-eight degrees in October was cold, to appearing ready to have a coronary.
“Daniel, this might not be the best time to talk about strategy,” Graham said.
“Why?” Daniel looked around, until his eyes alit on Edward’s face. “Oh, right. Your grandfather.”
Almost instantly, a proper sympathetic look appeared. “I really am sorry for your loss.”
“We haven’t lost him yet, Daniel,” Graham said.
“Right. Of course not,” Daniel amended, yet this detail would not be more than a small speed bump. “But what I’m trying to get at is that this is a real opportunity for you to finish this thing off right. You’ve already played the educated-rural angle, no political experience—”
“Lest you forget, I’ve been a state senator for two years.”