“Okay. That’s hopeful.” Charley pulled on his long earlobe and looked down, nodding as though he were visualizing the words I’d said. His thick white hair glowed with whatever light was left in the twilight. “That’s really a pretty hopeful view,” he said solemnly.
“I’m a hopeful man,” I said, and promptly felt as hopeless as an exile.
“Fair enough then,” he said. “Do you suppose in a hopeful way you and I are ever going to be friends?” He half raised his head and looked at me through his metal-rim glasses. “Friend” I knew to be, in Charley’s view, the loftiest of lofty human conditions men of character could aspire to, like Nirvana for Hindus. I never wanted to have friends less in my life.
“No,” I said bluntly.
“Why’s that, do you think?”
“Because all we have in common is my ex-wife. And eventually you’ll feel it’s okay to discuss her with me, and that would piss me off.”
Charley held onto his earlobe, his gimlet in his other hand. “Might be.” He nodded speculatively. “You’re always coming across something in someone you love that you can’t fathom, aren’t you? So then you have to ask somebody. I guess you’d be an obvious choice. Ann’s not that simple, as I’m sure you know.”
He was doing it already. “I don’t know,” I said. “No.”
“You maybe oughta have another go at it, like I did. Maybe you’d get it right this time.” Charley rounded his eyes at me and nodded again.
“Why don’t you have a go at a flying fuck at whatever’s in range,” I said moronically, and glared at him, feeling fairly willing to throw a punch irrespective of his age and excellent physical condition (hoping my children wouldn’t see it). I felt a chill rise then like a column of refrigerated air right off the pond, making my arm hairs prickle. It was late May. Little house lights had printed up across the silver plane of the Connecticut. I could hear a boat’s bell clanging. At that moment I felt not truly angry enough to cold-cock Charley, but sad, lonesome, lost, unhappy and useless alongside a man I wasn’t even interested in enough to hate the way a man with character would.
“You know,” Charley said, zipping his sweater up to his glunky Adam’s apple and tugging his sleeves as if he’d felt the chill himself. “There’s something about you I don’t trust, Frank. Maybe architects and realtors don’t have that much in common, though you’d think we would.” He eyed me just in case I might be about to produce guttural sounds and spring at his throat.
“That’s fine,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you.”
Charley gently tossed his glass, ice and all, off onto the lawn. He said, “Frank, you can play sharp and play flat but still be in tune, you know.” He seemed disappointed, almost perplexed. Then he just strolled off down the gravel path toward his boathouse. “You won’t win ’em all,” I heard him say to himself, theatrically from out of the dark. I let him walk all the way down, pull aside the sliding door, enter and close it behind him (I’m sure he had nothing to do there). After that I walked back around his house, got in my car and waited for my children, who were soon to be there with me and be happy.
D
eep River, as I drive hurriedly through, is the epitome of dozing, summery, southern New England ambivalence. A little green-shuttered, swept-sidewalk burg where just-us-regular-folks live in stolid acceptance of watered-down Congregationalist and Roman Catholic moderation; whereas down by the river there’s the usual enclave of self-contented, pseudo-reclusive richies who’ve erected humongous houses on bracken and basswood chases bordering the water, their backs resolutely turned to how the other half lives. Endowed law profs from New Haven, moneyed shysters from Hartford and Springfield, moneyed pensioners from Gotham, all cruise sunnily in to shop at Greta’s Green Grocer, The Flower Basket, Edible Kingdom Meats and Liquid Time Liquors (less often to visit Body Artistry Tattoo, Adult Newz-and-Video or the Friendly Loaner pawn), then cruise sunnily back out, their Rovers heaped with good dog food, pancetta, mesquite, chard, fresh tulips and gin—all primed for evening cocktails, lamb shanks on the grill, an hour of happy schmoozing, then off to bed in the cool, fog-enticed river breeze. It is not such a great place to think of your children living (or your ex-wife).
Nothing extravagant seems planned here for Monday. Droopy bunting decorates a few lampposts. A high-school “Freedom Car Wash” is in semi-f swing out on the fire station driveway, a rake-and-hoe promotion in front of the True Value. Several businesses, in fact, have put up red-and-white maple-leaf flags beside Old Glory, signaling some ancient Canuck connection—a group of hapless white settlers no doubt mercifully if unaccountably spared by a company of Montcalm’s regulars back in ’57, leaving a residuum of “Canadian Currency OK” sentiment in all hearts. Even Donna’s Kut’n Kurl boasts a window sign reading “Time for a trim, eh?” But that’s it—as if Deep River were simply saying, “Given our long establishment (1635), the spirit of true and complex independence is observed and breathed here every day. Silently. So don’t expect much.”
I turn toward the river and head down woodsy Selden Neck Lane, which T’s into even woodsier, laurel-choked Brainard Settlement House Way, which curves, narrows and switches back onto American holly and hickory-thick Swallow Lane, the road where Ann’s, Charley’s and my two children’s mailbox resides unnoticeably on a thin cedar post, its dark-green letters indicating THE KNOLL. Beside it a rough gravel car path disappears into anonymous trees, so that an atmosphere of exclusive, possibly less than welcoming habitation greets whoever wanders past: people live here, but you don’t know them.
My brain, in the time it’s taken me to clear town and wind down into these sylvan purlieus of the rich, has begun to exhibit an unpleasant tightness behind my temples. My neck’s stiff, and there’s a feeling of tissue expansion in my upper thorax, as if I ought to burp, gag or possibly just split open for reliefs sake. I have, of course, slept little and badly. I drank too much at Sally’s last night; I’ve driven too far, devoted too much precious worry time to the Markhams, the McLeods, Ted Houlihan and Karl Bemish, and too little to thinking about my son.
Though of course the most sharp-stick truth is that I’m about to pay my former wife a visit in her subsequent and better life; am about to see my orphaned kids gamboling on the wide lawns of their tonier existence; I may even, in spite of all, have to make humiliating, grinding conversation with Charley O’Dell, whom I’d just as soon tie up on a beach and leave for the crabs. Who wouldn’t have a “swelling” in his brain and generalized thoracic edema? I’m surprised it isn’t a helluva lot worse.
A small plastic sign I haven’t noticed before has been attached to the bottom edge of the mailbox, a little burgundy-colored plaque with green lettering like the box itself, which says: HERE IS A BIRD SANCTUARY. RESPECT IT. PROTECT OUR FUTURE. Karl would be pleased to know vireos are still safe here in Connecticut.
Only directly below the box, on the duffy, weedy ground, lies a bird—a grackle or a big cowbird, its eyes glued shut with death, its stiff feathers swarmed by ants. I peer down on it from behind my window and puzzle: Birds die, we all know that. Birds have coronaries, brain tumors, anemia, suffer bad luck and life’s battering, then croak like the rest of us—even in a sanctuary, where nobody has it in for them and everybody dotes on everything they do.
But here? Under their very own sign? Here is odd. And I am, in my brain-tightened unease, suddenly, instantly certain my son’s to blame (call it a father’s instinct). Plus, animal torture is one of the bad childhood warning signs: meaning he’s begun the guerrilla war of spirit-attrition against his foster home, against Charley, against cool lawns, morning mists, matched goldens, sabots, clay courts and solar panels, against all that’s happened outside his control. (I don’t completely blame him.)
Not that I approve of dispatching blameless tweeties and leaving them by the mailbox as portents of bad things on the wing. I don’t approve. It scares me silly. But as little as I hope to be involved in domestic life here, I also believe an ounce of intervention might deter a pound of cure. So, putting my car in park, I shove open my door and climb out into the heat, my brain still expanding, stoop stiffly down, lift the little dull-feathered, ant-swarmed carcass by its wingtip, take a quick look behind me at Swallow Lane curving out of sight, then quick-flip it like a cow chip off into the bushes, where it falls soundlessly, saving my son (I hope) one peck of trouble in a life that may already stretch out long and full of troubles.
Out of ancient habit I quickly raise my fingers for a sniff-check in case I need to go someplace—back up to the Chevron on Route 9—to wash the death smell off. But just as I do, a small dark-blue car (I believe it is a Yugo) with silver lettering and a silver police-shield door decal inscribed with AGAZZIZ SECURITY pulls in to block me where I’m standing beside my car. (Where has
this
come from?)
A slender, blond man in a blue uniform gets quickly out, as though I might just take off running into the trees, but then remains behind his door looking at me with an odd, unhumorous smile—a smile any American would recognize as signifying wariness, arrogance, authority and a conviction that outsiders cause trouble. Possibly he thinks I’m filching mail—ten reggae CD offers, or some prime steaks from Idaho, special for high rollers only.
I lower my fingers—unhappily they
do
smell of feral death—my skull tightened back down into my neck sinews. “Hi,” I say, extra cheerful.
“Hi!” the young man says and nods in some unclear sort of agreement. “Whatcha up to?”
I beam probity at him. “I was just going into the O’Dells’ here. I’ve been driving a ways, so I decided to stretch my legs.”
“Great,” he says, beaming cold indifference back. He is razorish-looking and, although thin, undoubtedly schooled in lethal martial-arts wherewithal. I can’t see a firearm, but he’s wearing a miniature microphone that allows him to talk to someone in another location by speaking straight into his own shoulder. “You friends of the O’Dells, are ya?” he says cheerfully.
“Yep. Sure am.”
“I’m sorry, but what was it you threw over in the trees?”
“A bird. That was a bird. A dead one.”
“Okay,” the officer says, peering over in that direction as if he could see a dead bird, which he can’t. “Where’d
it
come from?”
“It got caught behind the outside mirror of my car. I didn’t notice it till I opened the door. It was a grackle.”
“I see. What was it?” (Perhaps he thinks my story will change under interrogation.)
“Grackle,” I say, as if the word itself might induce a humorous response, but I’m wrong.
“You know, this is a wildlife sanctuary back here. There isn’t any hunting.”
“I didn’t hunt for it. I was just disposing of it before I drove in with it on my car mirror. I thought that’d be better. It’ll be okay over there.” I look where I’m referring.
“Where you driving from?” His young weak eyes twitch toward my blue-and-cream Jersey plates, then quickly back up at me so that if I claim I’ve just driven in from Oracle, Arizona, or International Falls, he’ll know to call for backup.
“I’m from down in Haddam, New Jersey.” I adopt a voice that says I’d be glad to help you in any way I can and would write a letter of commendation to your superiors complimenting you on your demeanor the moment I’m back at my desk.
“And what’s your name, sir?”
“Bascombe.” And I haven’t done a goddamn thing, I say silently, but toss one dead bird in the bushes to save everybody trouble (though of course I’ve lied about it). “Frank Bascombe.” Cool air surrounds me from my open car door.
“Okay, Mr. Bascombe. If I could just look at your driver’s license, I’ll get out of your way here.” The young rent-a-cop seems pleased, as if these words are the standard words and he positively loves saying them.
“Sure thing,” I say, and in a flash have my wallet out and license forked from its little slot below my realtor certification, my Red Man Club membership, my Maize and Blue Club alumni card.
“If you’d bring it over here and put it on the hood of my car,” he says, giving his shoulder mike an adjustment, “I’ll have a look at it while you stand back, then I’ll put it back and you can pick it up. Is that all right?”
“It’s just great. It seems a little elaborate. I could just hand it to you.”
I start in the direction of his Yugo, which has a springy little two-way antenna stuck onto its dumpy top. But he nervously says, “Don’t approach me, Mr. Bascombe. If you don’t want to show your license”—he’s eyeing his shoulder mike again—“I can get a Connecticut state trooper out here, and you can explain your case to him.” The blond boy’s amiable veneer has, in a heartbeat, disappeared to reveal sinister, police-protocol hardass, bent on construing obvious innocence as obvious guilt. I’m sure his real self is right now trying to figure out how Bascombe is spelled, since it’s obviously a Jewish name, remembering that New Jersey’s chock-f of Jews and spicks and darkies and towelheads and commies, all needing to be rounded up and reminded of a few things. I see his hands drifting somewhere below window level and around toward his backside, where he probably has his heat. (I have not provoked this. I merely am handing over my license.)
“I don’t really have a case,” I say, renewing my smile and stepping over to his Yugo and laying my license above the headlight. “I’m happy just to play by the rules.” I take a few steps back.
The young man waits till I’m ten steps away, then comes round his door and snakes up my license. I can see his idiotic gold name-plate above his blue shirt pocket.
Erik
. Besides his shirt and blue trousers, he’s wearing thick crepe-soled auxiliary-police footwear and a dopey little red ascot. I can also see that he’s older than he looks, which is twenty-two. Probably he’s thirty-five, has multiple applications in with all the local PDs and been turned down due to “irregularities” in his Rorschachs, even though from a distance he looks like the boy any parent would love and spare no expense in sending off to Dartmouth.