Closer All the Time Read online

  He stands up and we think about hugging each other. We shake hands instead.

  “You want some coffee?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  He takes me out the side door. We go into the snack bar and I get all kinds of childhood vibes. They still have the four-chambered drink machine: pink and regular lemonade, grape juice, orange juice. Beside it is a shiny new coffeemaker. Lucas pours two cups, slides mine forward.

  “So,” he says, “you married yet?”

  “Haven’t found the right girl.”

  We laugh; it’s one of our long-running jokes, something he told Mother whenever she raised the question. Lucas himself is divorced. He has two daughters, living with his ex-wife, and he’s moved back in at the Sahara. But he’s been working there all along. I try to imagine sticking around like he did, with that old man.

  I put my coffee down and look at Lucas and he smirks back at me, like he’s reading my mind. He probably is; we were always pretty tuned in, for stepbrothers. We were more tuned in than I ever was with anyone else, even Jeffrey, I’d have to say.

  The night I ran off Lucas woke as soon as I climbed down from the upper bunk. He propped his head on his hand, watched me get dressed.

  Then he whispered, “Are you really leaving?”

  I reached under my mattress, pulled out the bus ticket.

  A couple of days before, the old man had caught me in the guide house practicing a dance move—a sort of elbows-at-the-waist gyration, like swiveling while holding a bag of feed, that I’d admired during a few stolen minutes watching American Bandstand—and his reaction, besides the usual look of aversion, had been to say, “There’s plenty to do around here if you’ve got all that energy to burn,” and to push me toward the gift shop and direct me into a series of chores: brooming the boardwalk, raking the parking lot smooth, and cleaning the restroom. This was far from the worst I’d ever been treated, but for some reason, it clinched a decision to leave.

  Straw and camel’s back, I guess. Hardy-har.

  The next Saturday when he rode into Baxter to do his errands, I jumped into the back of his pickup. He saw me, but didn’t care enough to do anything about it. When he stopped at the town garage to try and sell them sand for winter—he tried every year, but always wanted too much—I waited until he went inside, then raced down to the drugstore and bought the ticket.

  When I got back I saw him outside, talking to a tall, bleary-looking guy leaning on a shovel by a pile of crushed rock. My stepfather was back-to, waving his arms and complaining—he’d struck out again, apparently—and I remember how the tall guy looked past him at me and covertly raised an eyebrow, like he knew I’d been up to something, but would keep it between the two of us.

  It surprised me, and gave me a little boost, somehow.

  Anyway, Lucas looked the ticket over, then handed it back.

  He seemed sad, so I said, “Secret walk?”

  Nighttime walks on the desert were another part of our private existence, and I had the idea that it would help him if we did it one last time. He rolled out of his bed and got dressed. We climbed out the window and stole along the ridgepole of the snack bar. We stepped into an apple tree, monkeyed down its branches, and sneaked out the boardwalk, stopping for a drink at the springhouse.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually leaving.”

  It was after midnight, the moon up bright, shadows from the trees stretching along the sand.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Are you ever coming back?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What about Mother?”

  “She lets him get away with it.”

  The moon went behind a cloud and it got darker. The trees disappeared and we could have been in the actual Sahara, miles of sand around us. We marched on—Lucas taller than me, as he had been for a couple of years—until his breath caught and he sat down and let the sand run through his fingers. Then he put his hands on his knees.

  “I’ll keep in touch,” I told him.

  He was blinking like crazy.

  “You can come and visit.”

  His face crumpled then, and I turned my back. When I faced him again his cheeks were all wet.

  “Don’t be a sissy,” I said: a last tough-guy moment.

  He stood up and gave me a shove. I pushed him back and we headed off the way we’d come. We passed the springhouse, walked down the boardwalk, and climbed the apple tree. In our bedroom we solemnly shook hands. He crawled into bed and watched me pack clothes and a library book I hadn’t finished and intended to steal. At the window I looked back, and he was still watching, just his eyes showing above the blanket.

  I always felt there was something I should have said, then. But I climbed out and set off along the Desert Road. I hiked all the way down to Route 1. The sky was just starting to lighten over the trees when the Greyhound came along, I flagged it down, and gave my ticket to the sleepy old driver.

  “Where we off to, son?” he said.

  “Portland.” It was as far as I could afford to go. Far enough, it turned out. Nobody bothered to come after me, which was good, because I didn’t get out west until a year later. I wound up in Arizona, got my GED, worked at a Holiday Inn. Saved for a few months, hit the road for the coast.

  And now, I think, here I am, all the way back.

  Lucas takes me back through the gift shop, nods toward the hallway.

  “She’ll snooze all afternoon.”

  He opens the door and I follow him outside and look at the picnic tables, the guide house, the boardwalk. Everything’s the same, but it seems smaller. Lucas nods toward the desert.

  “Secret walk?”

  I grin and follow him out onto the sand. Old guide phrases drift into my mind; it’s amazing how much of that stuff sticks with you. We pass the springhouse, Lucas walking with his head down, kicking sprays of sand ahead. We scuff toward the dune and the edge of the woods and the river. The desert feels small to me, too, which is funny. In my mind it was always this vast barrens, fringed with greenery. Now, walking through it, my main impression is of an arid patch in the middle of the forest.

  “I hated it when you left, you know,” Lucas says then.

  I don’t say anything back. What can I say?

  We cross to the dune and look down at the Baxter River. It’s narrow up this way, high-banked and turbulent with spring runoff. I think about the kid who hurt himself, blubbering down by the water, leaning against me when I helped him to the top, and I wonder where he is now and whether he ever figured himself out.

  Lucas steps closer and puts an arm around my shoulder.

  It catches me by surprise. We Hurds were never much for touching. But then I realize he’s not giving me an awkward sort of hug; he’s just getting a grip. I don’t catch on quickly enough, though. Before I can react he pivots and slings me right over the edge of the dune. I stumble and trip and lurch into this sort of downhill run and only manage to stay out of the river by throwing myself down and digging in with both hands.

  I lie there hugging the desert, my heart thumping in my chest.

  Then I get to my feet and brush myself off. I spit sand and glare up at Lucas, who’s looking down at me with his hands on his knees. He’s laughing, his shoulders shaking, and I growl and charge back up the slope. The dune shifts under me and I slip and slide, but finally make it to the top. I’m still pretty worked up, and I slog toward him with bad intentions.

  But he just grins and holds up a hand.

  “I’m sorry you made me do that,” he says, and I’m sure he expects me to stop. Only, I don’t. Oh, he’s set me up perfectly, and I can’t help but admire him for it, but that doesn’t mean I have to play by those old rules anymore. When he gets what’s happening, his eyes widen.

  “Hey!” he says, just before I tackle him.

  We wrestle until he finally throws me off. Then we face one another, sitting on our heels, panting. We’re disheveled and red-faced and covered with sand, and it strik
es us both funny at the same time.

  Lucas cackles and slaps his hands down on his thighs.

  I shake my head so that sand flies out of my hair.

  He points and snorts and we giggle like fools.

  Finally Lucas struggles to his feet and offers me a hand. He yanks me up and we slap the sand off our clothes and wipe our noses on our sleeves and call each other misanthropic names. Then we set off across the desert.

  Halfway back he slings an arm around my shoulders—for real, this time—and I resist an impulse to shrug it away. We take small, uneven steps toward the farm, and just as we get to the boardwalk my eyes get damp and I think, Oh, Jeffrey, you ought to see me now.

  Arnold

  Usually I try to sit by Rocky Marciano, but today somebody beat me to it. So I end up by the kitchen, next to old Mysterious Billy Smith.

  I’d never heard of Mysterious Billy until I came back to town and saw him on the restaurant wall. And he was a Baxter boy, too; I guess it just goes to show you. He looks like a fighter. He’s got the busted nose, the kiss-my-ass eyes. He’s bare-knuckled and wearing those tights they fought in way back, and he has his dukes up like he means business. Under his signature it says welterweight champion of the world, 1892. Imagine that.

  I check the Rocky booth again. They’re smiling at each other, a couple of swanks, probably trust-funders from Camden. They’ve got the look, anyway: sleek and sweatless. The guy holds up his hands peekaboo-style and dodges his head around, and the girl laughs. She’s wearing this beret and her cheeks are rosy and her eyes are bright, and I feel a pang because I’m not the one she’s smiling at.

  Fat chance of that, I think.

  While I’m watching an old-timer stops and looks in their window. He takes his skully off and pushes long gray hair behind his ears and squints into the restaurant, and that’s when I realize it’s none other than my old promoter, Sam Silverman. There’s only one reason he’d ever show up in Baxter, and I go ahead and raise my hand. He grins, slaps the cap back, and disappears.

  A few seconds later he comes shuffling past Muhammad Ali, Earnie Shavers, and Roberto Durán and stands beside the booth, looking at me with his usual shit-eating grin.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” I say.

  Silverman wags his head at the empty seat.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  He drops into the seat without further ado, as the swanks might say. The old boy hasn’t changed a lot. He’s still big and beefy and dresses like a lumberjack, which I must say fits pretty well out here in the hinterlands.

  “I hear you’re driving an oil truck,” he says.

  “Just for the fun of it.”

  He laughs and looks around at all the signed pictures on the walls: Floyd Patterson, Preacher Lewis, Jerry Quarry. Sonny Liston, Vito Antuofermo, Marvin Hagler. That strange kid they called The Pink Cat, who fought a couple of times in Portland before he hit the skids.

  Over the years Alva Potter has managed to get signed pictures from pretty much everybody. He even has Terry Hitchcock over by the door, a guy I fought twice, someone who did pretty well for a Maine kid—not up there with Mysterious Billy, maybe, but someone who actually got ranked for a couple of years.

  I’ve joked with Alva about bringing one of mine in.

  “So do it,” he says in the tough-guy way he favors. But I haven’t so far.

  Silverman looks at the swanks in the Rocky booth and grunts.

  “So what brings you to town?” I say.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  He spreads his hands on the table. He was a fighter, too, before he was a promoter. You can still see it in his ugly knuckles. He looks at something over my shoulder and I turn and see Tomi Lambert walking up, holding her order pad. Or Tomi Hurd, I guess her name is, even though I understand she divorced old Lucas a few years back.

  Tomi’s the main reason I’ve been hanging out here—not that I have any delusions. It’s just nice to have someone like her waiting on me and being somewhat friendly.

  “Yours is coming right up, Arnold,” she says, and looks at Silverman.

  “I’m in training.” He winks at her.

  Tomi smiles and heads off again. I watch her cross the room, as pretty as when she was a little girl, even tired out like she must be from working and raising a couple of kids on her own. She’s told me it isn’t easy finding someone when you’re single with a couple of kids, but I’d definitely take a shot if I thought there was a snowball’s chance. But to her I’m probably still the kid who tried to shoot his aunt and uncle, who got sent away to the State Farm for Boys until he turned eighteen.

  And I doubt she’s very impressed by my subsequent boxing career, because I never was a big name or anything. I was what they call an “opponent,” the guy they call on short notice who’ll put up a good-enough fight so the fans won’t feel disappointed, but not so good that he might actually win. The kind of fighter the golden boys fatten their records on. I didn’t plan on being that kind of fighter; that’s just how it worked out.

  “Speaking of training,” Silverman says now.

  “Gave it up for Lent.”

  “I was just gonna say, you don’t look all that bad.”

  “Don’t even bother, Sam.”

  I take another look at the Rocky booth. They’re sipping their pints. I wonder again what they’re doing in here, and then I get generous and think that maybe they’re actual boxing fans. They can crop up anywhere, even in Camden.

  “They been holding those amateur things at the Expo,” Silverman says.

  “I don’t get to Portland that much.”

  “Just as well,” he says. “It’d be an insult to a real fighter.”

  I laugh to show him I know where he’s going.

  It doesn’t slow him down any.

  “Anyway, I figure if they’ll pay good money to see firemen and cops, they’ll pay more to see the real thing. It won’t be nothing fancy, four fight under card and a main. It ain’t gonna be no blimp fight, that’s for damn sure.”

  He pops his knuckles and smiles. I know he’s working me, but my mind still goes right on back to when Georgie D’Amico took us to Atlantic City to watch a couple of up-and-comers. That was before I’d become an “opponent.” I remember looking at the Goodyear Blimp all lit up in the sky, and then back at the fighters in the outdoor ring, and feeling like anything in the world was possible.

  “Terry Hitchcock’s signed up,” Silverman says.

  “Now I get it.”

  Silverman grins. “You’d make some decent dough.”

  “Sorry, Sam.”

  He sighs dramatically, then shrugs and pushes himself out of the booth.

  “Just think about it, okay? That’s all I ask.”

  He turns to go but spots the Mysterious Billy portrait on the wall and stops.

  “Ever hear of him?” I say.

  “Sure,” he says. “Hell, I even met him one time, way back.”

  “No fooling?”

  “I was just a kid, training for a fight. He was living in Portland then, an old soldiers’ home up on the Hill. He was a vet of some kind. Anyway, I was running through the park and he was sitting on a bench, down by the duck pond. Suit and tie, even in August. He had some fussy nurse with him. I recognized him right off, could tell by the beak.”

  He moves his hand to show how Mysterious Billy’s nose went in about four different directions.

  “He must have been ninety and then some.”

  “Did you talk to him at all?”

  “Oh yeah, I stopped and said hello. He could tell I was a fighter, not just somebody out for a jog. He said, ‘Chin down, gloves up!’ He had some big hands on him for a little guy.”

  “What was so mysterious about him?”

  “I never figured that one out.”

  Silverman is still looking at the picture. “He stood up and made like he was throwing body shots. For a minute there he looked pretty serious. His nurse told him to take it easy. I
said good-bye and ran off. Only saw him that once. I think he went down for the count not long afterwards.” Silverman shakes his head, then looks back at me. “I almost forgot: Hitchcock said to say he was thinking of you.”

  “That’s just plain sweet.”

  Sam laughs.

  I think, Hitchcock—the only guy in the world who could strut doing roadwork. I picture him jogging through the park like the toughest guy in the world: bowlegged, chest out, arms swinging.

  Not that he wasn’t tough.

  Silverman sticks a business card into my shirt pocket. “Call me if you change your mind.” Then he shuffles off.

  I watch him go out the door and then past the Rocky window. The swanks look at him and he tips his cap. They laugh as he disappears and I sit back and shake my head.

  The old bastard’s got me thinking, just like he intended.

  I could definitely use the dough, with my mother in the nursing home, which is what brought me back to Baxter in the first place. And it’s not like I have any deep hatred of fighting; it brought a bit of discipline into my life while I was still at the Farm, and kept me more or less on the straight and narrow after I got out.

  There was a time when I thought it would do more than that, too. When Silverman showed up with D’Amico to watch me train, I thought that meant I was going places. When D’Amico invited me to the camp, I was sure of it. And you know, that feeling never completely died. Not when I found out I’d have to fight my way through the camp, or that I’d have to be twice as good as the kids coming out of Golden Gloves and AAU. Not even after I became an opponent. Hell, even now, there’s a part of me that thinks I could still do it.

  Talk about mysterious.

  Tomi Lambert comes up and puts my plate down, then looks at her watch.

  “Mind if I get off my feet for a second?”

  “Not at all.”

  She sits down. “It’s better if I stay near the kitchen.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Who was your friend, Arnold?”

  “Oh, a guy I knew.”

  “From boxing?”

  “Yeah.”