Return to Oakpine (13 page)

“I don't know what to think.”

“It's a good heart, Mr. Brand. There's stuff in it. I want to write. I'm sure people who read your books have said they feel like they know you, because that's the way I feel. But I came over today because I feel that you know me. The wind at the reservoir and Cameron's decision. The New York stories.”

“You read them.”

“I read them all. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Jimmy Brand said. He closed his notebook and leaned back into his pillows. He could feel the familiar friction in his eyes building to a headache. “Do you want to write a story?”

“I want to write a story,” she said, “and have you read it.”

Jimmy thought about it all, ran the good and the harm of such an enterprise, and then made a decision in a minute, like all things he did now, which was based on the way he was living this last fall. “I'll read it, Wendy, but you must have it here tomorrow. Is that going—”

“I'll bring it by at four o'clock.” She stood up. She placed his books on the little table. “Thank you so much. You can't know what this means to me.”

“If you miss the deadline,” he said, “the deal's off, and you'll have to marry Wade and have his fourteen children.”

“I don't know what will happen with any of that, but I'll be here tomorrow.” She crossed to the door, and then as her shadow in that rare sunlight reached onto the bed, she waved, a little crazy wave that could only be sincere.

The Wind

The next afternoon in a light skirling wind, Mason Kirby parked his Mercedes in front of the old Antlers, a bar he'd help paint thirty years before. Mason stepped into the wide empty street, avoiding the puddles. He scanned the old funky skyline of his hometown: the brick buildings, all two, three, and four stories from this end of the street, made a kind of child's drawing. The clouds were now broken and sailing, and deep shadows came across the village, gliding up onto Oakpine Mountain and beyond to the horizon. He could smell the dry diesel of the railroad yards, and the air was neither cold nor warm. It was odd not to be focused, in a hurry, and the old street charmed him as he finally remembered how it had changed. The far side was curbed and guttered where they'd parked and smoked, sitting on the fenders of Frank's car, and the ratty Chinese elms that made the dead end a leafy warren were gone. The bus stop had been near the far corner. It had never been marked; the bus just stopped there and a gaggle of the busworn would walk across the street carrying their packs and cases into the Antlers for a drink. There had been a smoke shop and a little liquor store, almost a closet, but later when Mason was away at college, there had been a shooting, the owner had killed a drunk robber, and he'd closed up and moved towns. You would. The facade had been rebricked pale yellow, and the two big windows were lined D
UNN-
A
RMOR
A
TTORNEYS AT
L
AW
in black letters with gilt edges.

A dirty white Suburban drove by him, and he watched it park against the train fence. The vehicle hadn't been washed in its history. A woman got out and hurried to the back doors and began to wrestle with her big folded stroller. Mason stepped over quickly to help her lift it up so it could clear the backseat. The wheels were big as plates. He'd never, in the twenty that had come his way, taken a stroller case. The ones that appeared in his office had been made out of the wrong materials from the wrong design. Every metal hinge caught, and the wheels, until five years ago, had been like toys. Mason swung the big blue device free and turned and set it on the ground, where it unfolded neatly, and he snapped each crossbar into place. He checked each jointed rivet and saw the plastic finger guards. Good for them. He hoped it was just planning and not the result of lawsuits. It was well made. The woman now came around with the baby, an infant giant, thirty pounds and eyes roving like a soldier; he fixed on Mason and started to grin.

“Wrong guy,” Mason said, rubbing his knuckles on the kid's cheek.

“Thank you, sir,” the young woman said.

“He's going to be a fullback,” Mason said. “Look at this guy.” The baby was now situated in the stroller, and all through his installation he had stayed on Mason's face.

“Oh, don't say it,” the woman said.

Mason immediately knelt and put a finger under the wide face of the child. “Don't you bump heads with anyone,” he said. “It's okay to watch the game and talk to the girls. Can I say that?” He smiled at the woman. “It's what I did. All my buddies were on the team at Oakpine.”

“One million years ago,” Frank Gunderson said, crossing the street. “Lorna,” he said, “this is the front man for my band, the Rangemen, other names, then Life on Earth, Mason Kirby.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said. Mason could still see Frank's high school face underneath the goatee and the gray streaks in the sides of his hair and the smokers' wrinkles and weather.

“And this is Lorna and Roger Beckstead, who are related to the approaching railroad engineer. Roger is just now one year old.”

“Fourteen months,” the woman said.

“Oh?” Mason said.

“Come, come,” Frank said, steering the stroller now toward the steel train fence. “It is so good to see you, Mason.”

They walked in the flat sunlight, and Mason could see the woman listening, and then he heard the old friction himself. He shook his head. “Trains.” Now he could see the boy was aware of the air changing. “I need more trains in my life.”

“Let's hold him up for Darrell,” Frank said, bending to the child. Frank lifted Roger and straightened the little blanket and handed him back to Lorna. He was a heavy baby, but she held him up easily as the locomotive rose along the fence line and passed in a rush. A moment later with the train gone, she tucked the boy into the stroller and walked up around the block for the little coffee shop.

“Lucky kid to have a dad work the railroad.” The two men shook hands. “How are you, Frank?”

“Still on plan A, but keeping my options open.”

“That's what Kathleen said,” Mason said.

“That's what Kathleen would say,” Frank said. “Come on in. I heard you were in town.”

They walked back into Frank's bar and talked business for an hour, surface stuff, Mason's firm, his plans, a lawsuit that he'd helped Frank with fifteen years before. Frank had five buildings now, four of them nicely leased. “I don't know. I've paid attention to business,” Frank said. “For the first time I'm kind of stepping back and taking a look. I mean, I've worried about money all my life, and now the whole package is about right. It could carry me. I kind of wish I'd gone to college or got out real good for a while. Even Craig got out for a while. I mean I'm having fun, I guess, but there's something working at me.” Frank drank his beer and poured them both another glass from the pitcher. The two men were silent. “You got any of that going on?”

“Plenty,” Mason said. “But I'm not thinking about it these days. My thinking might be faulty. I'm into renovation, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, another month of it here before I have to start thinking again.”

“Have you seen Jimmy yet?”

“I haven't. I saw his folks. I'm going to wait until I hear from Kathleen about it. She said she'd go over there tomorrow morning.” Mason leaned back and put his hands on the table. “I don't know why I haven't been down there. I guess I'm scared or something like it.”

“He's dying, Craig says.”

“I believe he is,” Mason said.

The two men sat in the quiet bar. Suddenly the light dimmed again under a cloud, and it was a moment that went out on them, through the big plate-glass window across the gray street and up above the town in a moment, reaching past the last house and the few bad roads newly bladed into the prairie and the antelope in clusters on green-gray hillsides beyond that and then hovering beyond and beyond, the world, their lives, the full gravid sense of afternoon. There was nothing to do or say except ride this part of the day together there, both men feeling the weight register, the men they'd become. It was a beery afternoon in their hometown.

•   •   •

The second time Kathleen Gunderson went to see Jimmy Brand in his little garage room, the same young man answered the door, Larry Ralston, and again he had his Martin guitar in his hand. She thought she'd heard the rippling intro to an old song, “Help Me, Rhonda,” as she walked up the driveway.

“Kathleen,” Jimmy said. “You're right on time.” She'd come the week before and spoken to Jimmy and gotten his signature for his medical records in New York. At that time Larry Ralston had been wiring new strings on the red Fender, which now lay across Jimmy's lap on a pillow.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, setting down her tote and her briefcase and taking the chair by the bed.

He waited to catch her eye and then said quietly to her, “Good. We're good.”

She took his blood pressure and temperature. “You're starting a band?”

“Anything's possible,” he said. “Right, Larry?”

“He's teaching me a few new riffs,” Larry said.

“Old riffs,” Jimmy said. “Ancient secrets from the Pleistocene era of rock 'n' roll.”

Kathleen set two big bottles of prescription medicine on the bedside table. “There are two more we'll get next week that go with these,” she said. “Now I want to get some blood.”

“Kathleen,” Jimmy said.

She snapped the rubber gloves on, then stopped. “What?”

“Larry,” Jimmy said, “could you kindly check with my mother about the availability of some of her cinnamon tea?” The young man put his guitar on his chair and went out.

Jimmy took Kathleen's wrist. “My dear old friend. We were in a cappella together.”

“I remember,” she said. “We were in
The Nutcracker
together in fourth grade with Mrs. Weyerhauser.”

“I used to detest
The Nutcracker
,” Jimmy said.

“You were horrible,” Kathleen said. “You called him ‘that little wooden fascist.'” She laughed. “Jimmy, we were children.”

“I got over it. He was misunderstood, like everyone else.” He waved at the room. “But here, with this. With me back here like this. We're not going to trouble with any program. My dear, I know what this is, and you know what is going to happen.” He waited. “Right?”

“I do,” she said. “I've seen it.”

“Then don't worry,” he said. “And you don't have to bring anything around.” He gestured at the bottles of medicine. “I'm thinking I would want something later on.” He looked at her. “Morphine, whenever. It's what helped Daniel.”

“Your friend in New York.”

“My friend in New York.”

“I can see to that,” she said. “And in the meantime this stuff will actually help. It's powerful, and it works.” She helped him take two of the pills with a glass of water.

“I was sorry to hear about you and Frank.”

“Not at all,” Kathleen said. “Frank recently made a stimulating decision. Not so recently really—everybody knew this was coming for a while now. We divorced and he has a new friend.” She saw the concern on Jimmy's face and changed tone. “It's not a big deal to me. Once he realized he was successful, he got scared. I don't think he was bored, but he had to have something new. We've been through it. It was a good marriage. He worked hard, and so did I. I'm a little surprised we didn't have kids, but everything was fragile. We were always scrambling up the mountain. It's going to hurt when he has babies with this new girl though. Mister Jimmy Brand, that is going to hurt.”

The plastic on the ceiling billowed and the door opened as Larry and Mrs. Brand came in with a tea tray. Jimmy noted his mother's face when she saw the nurse, and regretted the hope he saw there. Human beings. There was always hope.

Mrs. Brand disappeared for a moment and came back with a grocery bag full of zucchini for Kathleen, and then they all had a tea in the little room, and then Larry lifted his guitar, and he and Jimmy played the rippling opening of “Help Me, Rhonda” three or four times, almost getting it right.

•   •   •

The nights cooled down, and Larry and Wade continued to run. Larry loved it, striding through the tangible air. After he was warmed up, jogging through the streets of his hometown, he felt something fill him, something he couldn't have explained to anyone. He was changing, and he liked it. Wade wanted to walk certain stretches and give Larry advice. Wade was indiscreet about what his father said about other players on the team and repeated these things. Guys were screwups or lard asses. Larry deflected the remarks, defending his teammates when he could. Wade's behavior was a surprise to Larry and it dismayed him. It was odd to have a friend act this way.

On the team, Larry had made his clear mark and was the undisputed starting defensive end and he rotated every other play on offense. Wade told him that his father had said that he'd wished he'd made Larry co-captain, and though Larry deflected this also, it got through and surprised and steadied him. He'd been heavily celebrated after the Rawlins game, guys clapping him on the back and talking about him making all state. He'd lost himself in the game. Here, halfway through the season, he knew his position well, and his body had caught up and was ready for all of it. He'd made eleven tackles and he took it all, the running and the diving and all the knocking about, as a kind of pleasure, rising from the grassy field with new energy after each play. There was still more in him when the game ended, and it was apparent to everyone. He was tall and strong, and as he pulled his helmet off and left the field that day, he said, “I'm tall and strong.” It was strange and thrilling to hear. He'd loved being a boy, but he wasn't a boy anymore. He was the next thing.

They'd showered at Rawlins, and when they came out of the gym, it was nearly ten o'clock, and the wind had come up with its cold edge. On the bus all the way home, he'd ridden with the corner of his forehead against the window and watched the Wyoming night and felt apart from everything in his life. He watched the miles become a hundred miles, and he knew he could have run it. The boys on the bus, the game he'd just played, his home on Oakpine Mountain. He thought about his mother and father, their lives, and he knew what they had done for him, and he knew they loved him, but he felt separate from them now. His mother was a bright woman who was trying to make some kind of mark. He saw that.

He saw that she was different from the people she worked with at the museum, wanting something different. Thought opened now, and he could see her as the girl she had been, like girls he knew, and if that was true, then she lived in a kind of danger every day; she wasn't finished at all. This broke his sense of safety, and he blinked and put his head back against the window.
Good,
he thought,
good.
He said it: “Good.” His father was happy these days with Mason Kirby's house. His father wanted to build the world. In the dark bus, Larry wondered what people lived for; his parents—what did they want now?

He had a bruise above his left knee, and he squeezed it and saw again in his eyelids the tackle when he'd earned it, and then he pressed it with his fist again, and he saw the play, smelled the grass again. What was he living for, in this body, except these small surprises? Larry Ralston rode the bus. He had the clear sensation that it was going the wrong direction, taking him to a place he'd never been before. Around him, the team had settled down, quieted. Several boys were asleep. He put his lips against the cold glass and whispered, “I'm tall and strong,” and it misted on the window.