He glanced at me, just a quick flick of his eyes, then he looked back at the ground and shrugged his shoulders. I wished that Nicky were with me, I was no good at this shit. Nicky would crack this guy open in a second, he'd hop out of the car
. I shut off the Subaru and got out, held out my hand. "Hi, my name is Manny."
He looked at my hand for a second or so before reaching out slowly with his big mitt. "Manny?" His voice rumbled deep in his throat.
"That's me. What's your name?"
"Franklin." He was still looking at my hand, or maybe the tattoos on my forearm, not my face.
"Is that your bicycle, Franklin?"
He looked at the bike, nodded slowly.
"What happened to it?"
He glanced back over his shoulder then, back in the direction he'd come from. "Pickup truck," he said, looking back at the ground again. "Scared me off the road."
"Well, that's a hell of a thing."
"Don't cuss," Franklin said. "Cussing isn't nice."
"You're right, Franklin, I apologize. So what happened when you went off the road? You hit a rock?"
"Tree."
"That's too bad. Messed your bike up, but you can fix that. Did you get hurt?"
"Just my ahm."
"Let me see. Can I see your arm, Franklin?"
He set his bike down, leaned it against his leg, held his other arm up for my inspection. His denim sleeve was shredded, and he had some road rash on his hairy forearm, it was scratched up pretty good, with blood seeping through in places.
"That doesn't look too bad, Franklin. Just a little scrape. Let's put your bike in the back of my truck here, and I'll give you a ride home."
It took him a long time to answer, like he had to think of the words one by one, line them up in a row before he spoke. "My dad says I'm not supposed to take rides from anybody."
"Well, your dad sounds pretty smart. How about if we call him up? Do you know his phone number?" Franklin shook his head. "How about your number at home?" Same response. "Well, this is kind of an emergency, Franklin. I'm sure your dad would think it was all right." He looked doubtful. "I'll drive, okay, but you can tell me which way to go. How about that?"
He looked down at the bike, thought about it. "All right," he said.
I took the bike from Franklin and put it in the back of the Subaru. He squeezed himself into the passenger side, and it was a tight fit. The first time he tried to slam the door, it thunked him in the ass and didn't latch. He sighed, hitched himself over as far as he could, and tried again, with more success. He looked uncomfortable as hell. "Roll your window down if you want, Franklin. It might give you more room."
He looked at the window crank by his right knee. "Okay."
"Which way to your house?"
He was looking at the floor, but he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "Other way," he said.
Franklin must have gotten around pretty good on his bicycle, because it was something like six miles to his house. It was your basic suburban raised ranch, I don't know who came up with the design but you see them everywhere. There was a Ford station wagon parked in the gravel driveway. I couldn't tell the year of the wagon, but it was from back when they were making them the size of Noah's ark. A small dog with short, curly gray hair ran around in circles, barking at the two of us. Franklin lumbered out, ignored the dog, and stood by while I got his bike out of the Subaru. He took the bike from me and carried it over to the side of the house. He tried to make it lean on the kickstand, but it wouldn't, because of the bent rim. He fussed with it for a minute, then sighed, gave up, and laid it down in the grass.
The front door to the house opened and a woman came out. She was short and sort of round, and her hair was the same color as Franklin's. She looked afraidher eyes were wide, and she clutched her hands together in front of her. She was much smaller than Franklin, who was out of sight around the side of the house. "Can I help you?" The dog ran over to where she was standing, barked at her, too.
"Franklin had a little accident."
He came around the corner just then, stopped, glanced at her, then at me, and shook his head. He seemed to know that the aftermath was going to be worse than the event.
"Franklin! What happened?"
"I hit a tree, Ma."
She sucked in a big breath, hustled down the steps, and went over to him. "You hit a tree? Oh, my God. How did that happen?"
He didn't seem to want to tell her the story. He shrugged. "Went off the road. Hit a tree."
"Franklin, you're going to be the death of me, you worry me so much." She had that sixth sense mothers have, in a half a second she was looking at his arm, holding it up to the light, shaking her head and clucking in consternation. "Go on in the house and take that shirt off. I'll be right in to clean that up."
"It's just a little scrape, Ma." He glanced at me when he said it, and I thought I saw a little bit of amusement on his face.
His mother wasn't having any. "Go on, now." The dog finally got her attention, and she snapped. "Scruffy, shut up!" The dog stopped barking, finally, but he growled and showed me his teeth when he looked at me, as if to say, I may be afraid of her, pal, but I ain't afraid of you.
"All right." Franklin ambled over to me, stuck out a huge mitt. "Thanks for the ride, Manny."
"You're welcome, Franklin," I said, shaking his hand. I winked at him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his mother watching me in disbelief. "You take care of yourself now, okay?"
"Okay." He let go of my hand, took a step toward the house, and stopped. "You take care of yourself, too."
"Thanks, I will."
His mother watched him go through the front door. "He must like you," she said, looking at the front door, shaking her head. "Honestly, I'm so surprised. Normally he's so shy, he never talks to strangers. He hardly talks to the people he knows. Thank you so much for bringing him home. Did you see the accident?"
"No. He was walking down the road, carrying his bike, and I stopped."
"Where did it happen? Do you mind me asking?"
"I don't mind at all, but I can't tell you where it was. I could show you, I guess, if I could find my way back there. I was actually going to ask him for directions. I'm staying with the Averys, and I took a wrong turn. I don't know the name of the road. It's five or six miles away from here."
"He worries me so much," she said. "Can I ask you to come in, Mr
.?"
"Manny Williams. No, thanks, I think I really need to get back."
"You're staying with Eleanor and Louis?"
"Yes."
She came over and squeezed my hand. "Thank you again, Mr. Williams. You don't know how much I appreciate this."
* * *
Louis wasn't there when I got back to the Averys' house. Eleanor said he'd had to go off to fix a broken toilet at someone's summer camp. She told me the place was owned by some people who lived down in Massachusetts, and one of Louis's gigs was taking care of the place for them. She looked a little frazzled telling me this. "He was going to go open Gerald's place up for you," she said, "but that might have to wait until tomorrow, if you don't mind."
"Are you kidding? Of course I don't mind. Would you like me to take Nicky out for a ride somewhere, get him out of your hair for a while?"
"He does have a lot of energy," she said, and she sighed. "I guess I'm not as young as I used to be."
"I'll try to wear him out a little bit. Do you know a good place we could go?"
"Oh, sure," she said. "Would you mind picking up a pound of coffee for me while you're out?"
* * *
I followed Eleanor's directions to a lake up in the woods about fifteen miles west of the house. You had to follow some dirt roads to get there, and the last one wasn't even a dirt road, just a grassy set of tire ruts under the overarching trees. I would never have attempted it in a car, or at all, I suppose, if Eleanor hadn't assured me we wouldn't be trespassing on anyone who cared. "The timber companies own everything up in there," she'd told me. She dosed Nicky and me with bug repellent before we left. "Might be a few blackflies still around," she said. "And they don't suck blood, either. They eat meat."
The only thing that kept me from chickening out that last half mile was the knowledge that I'd have to back all the way out because there was no place to turn around. Finally, the track opened up into a clearing, just as she'd told me it would. You could see where other vehicles had parked in the grass, although there weren't any there now. On the far side of the clearing an opening in the trees showed you the lake, sunlit blue and beautiful, unspoiled, it seemed to me, because there were no houses or cabins, no boats, even. There was a trail that meandered between the trees along the shoreline, though. Eleanor said you could follow it all the way around, though she herself had never done so.
Nicky was hesitant. I walked around, opened the door for him. "Whose
" He looked around. "Who lives here?"
"Nobody. This is like the park. People can come here and walk around if they want to. Mrs. Avery said so."
"She did?"
"Yep."
"All right." He jumped out.
"You forgot the book. Do you want to carry it, or do you think it will be too heavy?"
"I can do it," he said, and I reached in and got it for him.
We spent a couple of hours there. For a while I tried to teach him how to use the binoculars to look at things, and he tried to do it, but I think he was really too young for it, and he was probably looking through them mostly just to shut me up, so I stopped trying to teach him and just let him explore in his own way.
The most amazing thing about the place, to me, was the utter silence. I guess I'd never experienced such a thing before, never heard it. In Brooklyn, where I grew up, there's always noise, all day and all night, all year long. You get so you don't notice it, you tune out the cars, planes flying overhead, people shouting, talking, laughing, music coming from a radio somewhere, always and forever. Up here the only human noises were the ones Nicky and I made walking through the leaves. Everything else was the wind or the animals. A crow, once, staccato, yelling for his friends, the breeze banging empty tree branches together, something chirring softly in the brush. I didn't know if it was some kind of a bird or maybe a raccoon or squirrel. I tried to see it, but it was too shy for me, whatever it was. There were some ducks on the far side of the lake, a couple of overloaded barges in miniature, riding low in the water. I thought they might be loons, but they were too far away for me to be sure without the spotting scope. I was too distracted anyhow, watching Nicky. Come back, I told myself, come back and look for them another day.
"You ever hear of Daniel Boone?" I asked him.
"No," he said. I made up a story about Daniel Boone and told it to him. I left out the ugly parts, him and the Indians shooting at each other, Boone's inner knowledge that white guys were gonna follow him there and take it all away, cut down the trees to make room for houses, roads, and all the shit that comes after. He must have hated it, that had to be the reason he was out there on the hard edge, he had to know that time and civilization were going to spoil it all. I left all that out of the fairy tale I told Nicky. I just told him about the explorer wearing deerskins, the first guy to come looking, who never got lost.
When I was about Nicky's age I was in this foster home for a while, the guy living there had a lot of books. That was where I found out about Daniel Boone. I have always had problems sleeping, and they would turn off the television at a certain hour and make you go to bed. I would cop a book, hide it under my pillow, and then pretend to be sleeping until they all went to bed. Then I would lie awake reading by the faint glow of the hallway light. Reading became my first addiction. It was my first, and maybe best, escape. It's magic, when you think about it, how some dusty artifact made of paper and dried ink can transport you off to Skull Island, or out to the purple-tinged plains of the Southwest. It's very seductive, you know. I got caught up in it, and I have never really recovered. Anyplace but here, right? Any life but mine.
It's the same thing that makes me look at real estate every time I go someplace new. What would it be like? What if I did not live where I do, what if I were not who I am? I kept picturing log cabins back in the woods while I watched Nicky play by the water's edge, and it was that same old thing, you know, that itchy discontent, that restless spirit inside, always asking What if? Life seemed so much easier back when I had nothing, because back then it didn't matter what I did, nobody gave two shits, least of all me. But now life, or nature, or God, if you prefer, some cruel spirit had given me Nicky, suddenly I wanted things I had never cared about before, and the castles of my imagination seemed far beyond my poor capabilities. I wondered then if every parent feels this way, if even old man Calder might not be skewered on this same spit, roasted over these same slow flames. I could picture what I wanted for my son in a thousand variations, not for me, God, really
. But in all my capacity for fantastical thinking I could not picture any of it coming to pass.