Return to Oakpine (4 page)

Wedged between the mountain bike store and Oakpine Java, the new coffee shop, the old black-tin front of the Antlers hadn't changed since he and Frank and Mason Kirby had painted it the last summer they were all together thirty years before. Inside, the place was half full because of
Monday Night Football
, and Craig slid onto a barstool. The old back bar was a hundred and twenty-four years old, an elegant monstrosity that the former owners had found in Bozeman and shipped down in four parts in two trucks sometime in the fifties. It was dark cherry and had fluted pillars and carved doors, and fourteen cherubs swam across the top, seven on a side, each big as a real baby, centering a figurehead nude, a placid woman with long hair and small breasts. She was seventeen feet from the floor, Craig knew, way above the two televisions at either end of the long, scarred cherrywood bar, so high nobody even looked for her up there in the dark. The beveled mirror was set in three huge sections, and the three bullet holes along the top of the center panel dated from prehistory, although they were featured as the punch line in a thousand stories, all about big jealousy and mistaken identity, and all sworn to be true and very recent.

Sonny was tending the bar, and Craig ordered a schooner of Cowboy lager, which was one of the two beers Frank's little brewery made out back. “You're still working here,” he said to her.

Sonny set the tall beer in front of him and looked him in the face. “Meaning?”

“Sonny,” he said. “Meaning nothing.” She looked tired, a pretty woman with dark hair to her shoulders. She wore a man's blue dress shirt with a pen in the pocket. “I never said one thing in my life that had a meaning. I'm surprised to see you. I don't know.”

“Well, hello to you too, Craig Ralston. You ought not to come in here in your Mr. Hardware shirt like that. The good folks will think we've got plumbing problems. Which we do.” She glanced up at the television and started to move down the bar.

“Sonny, I didn't mean anything. I'm an oaf. Don't be offended by anything an oaf says. You know already that I like you just fine.”

She softened and smiled. “I do know. And you are an oaf. And I'm still in town, and I still have a job, and this is my job, and I'm sort of happy and plan, frankly, to stay. Enjoy your beer. Frank's right around the corner at one of the tables if you want to know.”

“You always had a way with women,” the man next to him said. It was Al Price, who had spent more time in the Antlers than any man, even Frank, who owned the place. Once or twice a month in the winter Al would end up sleeping in one of the big booths in the back. He'd been in their class too, a tough guy who didn't play football and who lost a hand in his first month as a roughneck in the Chevron fields. He'd been nineteen. Now he was gray and grizzled, looking both wiry and soft at the same time, looking, Craig thought, as old as the rest of us.

“Hey, Al. Can I buy you a beer?”

“You ain't been in here for a while,” Al said. He was cleaned up, comb tracks in his hair, his eyes bright.

“Life caught up to the good times,” Craig said. “Larry's a senior, you know.”

“Jesus Christ. I'd heard rumors that they kept that school open after we ruined it. A senior. What's he going to do to shame us all?

“He wants out of Oakpine,” Craig said. “And he's not really picky after that.”

“An idealist.”

“And how's Marci? Don't even tell me. I know she's thriving. She's the one of us not to worry about. She's always been together.”

“Right there, Al. She's at the museum. What you been up to?”

“Dribs and drabs,” Al said. “I'm doing swing security at the transfer station. It's okay. Enough to buy beer, but not enough to get my teeth fixed.” Al lifted his head and showed the two gaps on the sides of his mouth. “We're so old, our teeth have given up. You still got yours.”

Craig looked at Al. It was a picture of two fifty-year-olds at a bar, Craig knew, but all he could see was this kid he had known who had been a smartass and careless and who'd hung on the periphery of things. All these years had passed, but it seemed simply impossible. “Yeah,” Craig said. “I still got mine, but I never use them.” Al snorted at this and began to laugh, a tight wheeze of a laugh, an alcoholic laugh overtly, and when his face settled, his eyes looked ancient. “I'm going to catch up with Frank,” Craig said, standing. “Sonny,” he called to the woman who now stood at the end under the television, “let's get Al a beer.”

She pointed her finger at him and pulled the trigger. “You're an ace,” she said.

“Thanks, man,” Al said. “You're an ace.”

•   •   •

Frank was in the first booth talking to his brewmaster, Ted Klein. There were papers spread on the table. “Well, Big Craig Ralston,” Frank said to his old friend, “sit down.” Craig greeted them both and tucked himself into one side of the table. “We just set our tanks in place today. Ted's in business. We're about to make some beer.”

“Good deal,” Craig said. “Congratulations. When do we sample the first batch?”

“We'll get the wrinkles out this week and start in,” Ted said. “We're going to make an amber ale that should be ready about the time you get back with your first antelope.”

“I like that,” Craig said. “But I don't hunt anymore. I gave it up that time with Frank and Mason and Jimmy when we ran into the guy who'd been shot, remember?”

“You gave up everything, don't you mean, and years ago. We weren't exactly hunting, more like camping with guns.”

“The point is to get out of town,” Ted said. “If you hunt after that or not, it's okay.”

“For god sakes, this old fart's not a hunter,” Frank said to Ted. “We gave it up and went indoors, right, Craig? We're grass eaters now. I couldn't tell you where my rifle even is. Time cuts a guy real good.” Frank called for Sonny, and she appeared around the corner and leaned her hip on his shoulder. “Bring us three more, dear,” Frank told her. “Do you remember Craig?”

“I saw him already,” she said. “He's glad to see me.”

“I am,” Craig said. “I thought—”

“He thought I'd run away so as not to ruin your former marriage,” Sonny said, and disappeared.

“She gets right into it, doesn't she?” Frank said.

“How is Kathleen?” Craig said.

Ted pushed the papers into line and gathered them up, tapping the edge. He laid them back in a neat stack. Craig could see the diagrams of the vats on the top sheet.

Frank looked pained. “Everybody is fine. It's all old news. Sonny's a good woman, with her antenna out to here. She's sick of everybody assuming she's the deal, when it was just Kathleen and me crosswise. We've had some little moments, but everybody is an adult, and everybody is fine.”

“Good, good,” Craig said too fast. “As you know, I'm one of the few guys you know who wouldn't know what to do with an opinion.”

Sonny herself appeared now with her tray and three glass pints of lager, setting them before the men. Without speaking or looking at any of them, she left.

“Sonny is staying,” Frank said. “It turns out to be a free country, and she's staying in town.” He lifted his glass. “Did you come out to take a census? I haven't seen you in months.”

“I finished a project over at the Brands and had an hour.”

“Are they selling the place?” Frank asked. “All the houses in that neighborhood are turning over.”

“They finished the garage out back, insulation, the works. It's Jimmy. Jimmy's coming back. I guess he's sick.”

“Jimmy Brand.”

“There's a blast from the past,” Ted said. “That's Matt Brand's little brother?”

“I thought Jimmy was dead,” Frank said. “Where'd he live, New York?”

“Mrs. Brand said New York. Marci has some letters years old that were from New York. I think he's been out there all this time.”

“Why the garage?” Ted asked. “What's the deal on that?”

Frank interrupted: “Jesus, we spent a lot of time over there, remember, Craig? We had a band, Ted, in high school and used to tear up the garage pretty good. Rock ‘n' roll. Christ, talk about ancient history.” Frank slid out of the booth. “Wait a minute.”

He went behind the bar and returned with an aluminum step stool and set it up beside the jukebox and stepped up and reached the yellow bass guitar that was hanging there just below two mounted antelope heads. Wiping it with a bar towel, he brought the instrument over, grinning and plucking the strings. “Hell, maybe it will all come back to me.” He handed it to Craig, who held it in his lap. The name
RANGEMEN
was written along the shoulder in a loopy cursive in red enamel. “That name may have been premature,” Frank said. “I'll have to take this over and show Jimmy. You still got your drums?”

“I think one survives,” Craig said.

“Well, dig it out.” Frank went on, “When we were little kids, Old Man Brand would stand on his front porch in those overalls and bellow for Matt and Jimmy. You could hear it downtown. Everybody knew it was six o'clock—you could set your damn watch by it. I think they ran the trains by it. Jesus, Jimmy Brand. He could play the guitar.”

The beer had a heavy pleasant pull, and Craig sipped from his again. He'd last had this guitar in his hands thirty years ago as they unloaded somewhere, setting up for one of their few gigs. It had been fun. His old drum kit was in storage, a hole through one of the snares. Why had he kept it?

Frank saw Craig's face. “What? Is there trouble?”

“Mr. Brand won't let Jimmy back in the house, doesn't want to see him at all. This garage deal is her idea. I've been over there six weeks, haven't seen the old man except the day we pulled the boat out.” Craig was thinking about the garage, what a good job it had been, how he was going to miss it. The store was wearing him out, all that smiling and the chatter. Any satisfaction he'd gotten out of finding someone the right hex nut was ghosted, gone. It was a good living, but it was eating his days.

“Jesus, that's right. I heard that boat was out of the garage,” Frank said. “That's the boat that killed Matt, cut him up like a sausage. Our first real tragedy, I'd say. Holy shit, what a deal. So Jimmy Brand is coming back to old Oakpine. How sick is he? We'll have to get together. Somebody should call Mason, and we'll get the band back together.”

“Mason's coming. He is selling his folks' place. Fix it and sell it.”

Sonny appeared. “Another beer?”

“I got to get,” Craig said. “Thanks.”

Frank waved off, and she went back to the front. He raised the last of his beer. “This lager is pretty good, but it will be nice to have some of our own beer at last.” He drank. They all drank.

“Is this good lager?” Craig asked Ted. “I mean, it seems real good to me.”

“American lager is always a little green,” Ted said. “They hurry it, age it with chemicals, and then drive it around in trucks.”

“You can't truck good beer,” Frank said. “Shipping kills it. It comes off like bus passengers, road shot and ready for nothing.” The three drank up.

“I'll grab Mason and bring him down for some of this nectar. I'm giving it an A right now. You guys are perfectionists.” Craig said. He set his glass on the wooden table.

“Thanks, Craig. We'll take it even though you don't know any better,” Frank said. “Find your drums, big guy.”

Craig smiled as he stood. He could feel the beer. He hadn't been in a bar after work for twenty years.
What am I,
he thought,
single?

•   •   •

When Jimmy Brand returned home to Oakpine, Wyoming, from New York City, he was met at the little airport not by his mother or father but by Chuck Andreson, in the old Suburban he drove as a utility taxi. Jimmy had four small trunks, everything he owned in the world. It had been thirty years, and he looked at the new terminal building and smiled. He was pretty cooked from the flights, and he sat in the wheelchair at the curb while Chuck pulled the big van around.

“You're Louise and Edgar's youngest boy,” Chuck said.

“I'm the only,” Jimmy said with no irony. “And no boy.”

“I knew Matt,” Chuck said. “At the high school. I was a year ahead.”

“You go to Vietnam?” Jimmy asked the bearded man.

“No,” Chuck said. “I got the diabetes.” He closed the back of the vehicle and came around to where Jimmy sat. Jimmy was looking across the road, across the mowed field to the village of Oakpine, where it sat at the foot of the massive rolling forest of Oakpine Mountain. He knew it so well and had seen it in his mind a thousand times, and now his imagination fought with the vista before him and he had to keep blinking. The view encompassed forty miles. Above the village the ridges were still bright green but run with the red and brown of the canyons. The town kept slipping from Jimmy's vision as if it could be misplaced, and refocusing his eyes took as much energy as a deep breath. Could you mislay a town, let it get away?

“You pretty sick?” Chuck asked.

“I am,” Jimmy said. “I'm sick. This is it for me. I'm home.” His smile was weak. “Don't worry. Just help me with the chair. I can get in the car.”

Exiting the airport, they passed a small herd of antelope grazing between the near runways. “You come from New York?”

“I lived in New York all these years.”

“That's some from Oakpine.”

“It can be. New York's a lot of places, really.”

“Right, and Oakpine's just the one. You like it, New York?”

They entered town and inched along the street toward the high school. It would be okay not to talk; each answer felt like a chapter. Cars were double-parked and parked one wheel on the sidewalk and on the lawns here and there, angled into the narrow road as if abandoned in a hurry under the sullen skies. There was a raft of smoke still hovering over the large parking lot, which Jimmy could see was full of RVs and lawn chairs. Chuck wended to the far end of the field, and a place opened so they could see the game and all the people in colored coats in the stands. Two teams struggled in the gray afternoon, and the crowds seemed a waving blanket to Jimmy.