Closer All the Time Read online

  “What?” one of the old ladies honks. “No!”

  James puts the cab in gear and pulls out into the lane. He leans sideways and throws the meter as they head off. Eric gets into his own cab and moves it up to the first position. When two suits come out of the terminal, heading his way, he scrambles to get the door for them. They walk right past, though—they’ve got somebody waiting in the temporary lot—without even an apologetic glance.

  Eric throws the door shut a little harder than necessary.

  “Excuse me?” someone says then.

  This skinny kid is dragging a big case on wheels with one hand and holding a duffel over his shoulder with the other.

  Eric looks around, hoping one of the Vietnamese cabbies might be pulling in. They’re usually happy to take anybody at all. If Eric was to walk down and say, “You want this kid?,” either one would jump at the chance and maybe even thank him in the process. But they’re not around, so it looks like the joke might be on Eric. James will have a good laugh when he hears who Eric ended up with.

  Or with whom I ended up, Eric will have to say, or James will correct him.

  “Excuse me, sir?” the kid says again.

  Eric looks a little more carefully at him. Blond hair, nice teeth. Sometimes you can’t tell because they all dress alike—this kid has cutoff jeans and a Red Sox T-shirt—but then you hear them speak and revise your original estimation.

  “Okay,” he says. He pops the trunk and wrestles the big case in. “Oof!”

  The kid laughs. “Sorry.”

  “That makes two of us,” Eric says. “What the heck are you smuggling?”

  “Just my cello.”

  Eric’s mental cash register dings again.

  He puts the other bag in and goes for the door. The kid asks if he can ride in front, and that’s usually a no-no, but Eric doubts this kid is going to be much of a threat. This little rich kid home from music camp. He projects a big tip for delivering the family scion home safely.

  His imagination takes over then, and he pictures Mommy, the nubile trophy wife, coming out to pay in her bathrobe, fresh from a steamy shower, all pink and moist and probably halfway to a self-induced climax because her aging and fabulously wealthy husband has run off to the hedge fund office with barely a backwards glance.

  Eric throws the meter. “Camden?” he says. “Chestnut Street, perhaps?”

  The kid looks at him. “How’d you know?”

  “Can’t tell,” Eric says happily. “Trade secret.”

  They pull into the terminal lane and roll out to the River Road. Eric drives up to Baxter and along the Speedway to Route 1. He stops at the intersection across from the Elks Club building, and while they’re waiting, remembers asking James if he wanted to go over for a swim after work, and the way James looked at him, as if he had two heads.

  “The Elks Club?” James said. “Serious?”

  It took Eric a moment. “You can’t swim there?”

  “Is there a Sons of the Confederacy nearby?” James said. “Maybe we could drop in for lunch afterwards.”

  Eric apologized, but James threw him to the wolves anyway by telling Lavin about the invitation.

  Lavin barked out a laugh around his soggy, unlit cigar.

  “Can I go too?” he rasped. “Hey, go get Trang and his old man—we’ll invade the sonofabitches!”

  It makes Eric cringe now to look at the place. But then there’s a break in traffic and he whips the cab out onto Route 1 and heads for Camden.

  About halfway there, the kid says, “How did you guess Chestnut Street, anyway?”

  “It was the cello,” Eric says.

  The kid smiles and looks out the window. They pass the new McDonald’s and run along past the hospital and through Rockport and on to Camden. They go into town to the five-way intersection and double back onto Chestnut Street.

  Riding up the hill, Eric looks out at the harbor and all the jutting masts. A block further and they’re smack-dab in the high-rent district, impressive old homes rising on both sides of the elm-lined street.

  “Tell me when,” Eric says.

  “Right there,” the kid says, pointing at a tall Victorian with a colonnaded porch, huge bay windows, fancy scroll-worked eaves, and a wide lawn stretching downhill toward the water.

  The gate is open so Eric drives on in. He takes them to the top of the drive and the kid says, “Keep going,” pointing to an offshoot that leads around the corner of the house.

  “What, the servants’ entrance?”

  “Pretty much,” the kid says. He shrugs and smiles.

  They follow the drive to a smaller place, built in the same style as the big house. Probably the carriage house originally, and Eric gets why the kid thinks it’s funny.

  “Home, sweet home,” the kid says.

  Eric helps him in with his stuff, and isn’t surprised when his mother turns out to be your plain, ordinary mom in her thirties, tired-looking, a little rushed. She’s nice enough, though, and gives Eric a decent gratuity.

  You never can tell.

  Eric walks outside and the kid follows.

  “My mom works for the rich folks,” he says. “That’s who paid for music camp. Braces, too,” he adds, showing his teeth. He watches Eric get in the cab and waves, sort of clumsily, the way kids do.

  Eric waves back and drives down Chestnut.

  He doubles back through town, thinking about the kid and his mom. Then he uses the rest of the ride to rehearse a story for James, the one he was getting ready to tell when the Maine Air flight came in. He wants to get the details right.

  It’s a good story that starts with him quitting his family and escaping to Florida, but he thinks maybe he’ll skip that part and go right to when he ran out of money and got caught stealing food. From there on it’s really good—how they took him into a back room at the grocery store and sat him down next to another kid they’d busted. How his ill-gotten steak and the other kid’s pilfered ham sat on the table, tagged as evidence, and how the other kid grinned at him and said, “Nice timing, brother.”

  “Shut up, you two,” the man guarding them said. He was watching through a window for other scofflaws. He hadn’t spotted any by the time the cops came and took Eric and his new acquaintance outside.

  The other kid’s name was Jerrod, and they talked all the way to the hoosegow.

  After Eric explained about Portland, Jerrod said, “You came all the way down here to get busted?”

  “Expanding my horizons,” Eric said.

  Jerrod laughed. They rode on, trying to stay upright on the bouncing bench seats. It wasn’t easy because they’d been left handcuffed. Finally they arrived and their driver marched them inside and they were booked: fingerprints, shoelaces and belts, wallets, the whole deal.

  “What’s this?” Jerrod said. “Crime of the century?”

  “Shut your mouth,” the cop inking his thumb said.

  When they were grudgingly offered a phone call, Jerrod shook his head, but Eric called Maine and left a message with Mr. Realtor—his stepfather—just on the odd chance that he’d actually pass it on to Eric’s mother.

  It was getting dark when they reached a big communal cell with bunks at one end and showers at the other, and eight other occupants. The door clanged shut with a sound just like in the movies, and the sheriff shuffled off without a backward glance.

  Eric tried not to seem too nervous, but stuck pretty close to his new friend, who seemed to know people from the way he was reaching out, tapping fingers, mumbling greetings.

  “Who’s your friend, Jerrod?”

  The speaker was sitting on a cot under the single barred window. He was probably forty, and had a definite air of authority. He looked sort of fierce, actually.

  “Caught us the same place, X,” Jerrod said.

  The older man stood up and looked into Eric’s eyes. They were the same height, but he outweighed Eric by forty pounds or so.

  “What’s a skinny little boy like you doing in ja
il?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Eric said. “I was trying to steal something to eat.”

  “Trying to steal you some supper!” He looked around the cell. “I guess we got us a hard case here!” Everybody laughed, and he looked back at Eric. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Eric.” It seemed like a silly name, compared to X.

  Eric felt awkward, standing there while the other man gave him the once-over, wondering whether he was supposed to say something more. But then the other man nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “You heard him call me X?”

  “Yes, sir,” Eric said.

  “That’s because I rejected the white man’s slave name.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Eric said, ludicrously.

  X stared a little harder, but let it go. He held a hand upright, and after Eric figured out what was expected, they shook, brother-style. Then X nodded and said, “You can call me X, too, since you in here with the rest of us.”

  “I think I’ll just go with ‘sir.’”

  X grinned at Jerrod. “Your friend’s all right.”

  Then he looked back at Eric. “All right, come on and join us. Come on, y’all,” he said, turning to include everybody else. “Fall in.”

  They lined up and he led them in small-space calisthenics, talking the whole time, exhorting them to work hard, to stay strong. They went at it long enough that when X called a stop, Eric was exhausted. He was proud he’d made it through, though.

  Everybody headed for the showers, so he fell in and took his turn. There were two stations with four showerheads each, and they stood in two circles, sneaking looks at one another as the water hissed down. There was a pile of rough towels, and they dried off and put their clothes back on.

  Eric stretched out on the cot next to Jerrod’s and lay quietly. Voices rumbled, the men conversing in twos and threes. Eric could hear yelling and swearing from other cells, some of it in Spanish. Then the lights went low and it got relatively quiet, but you could still hear doors opening and shutting, people calling out. At one point something rang like a school bell, then there was a loud, extended buzz.

  Eric wouldn’t have thought he’d be able to sleep, but sometime later, when he heard his name called, then called loudly again, he realized he’d been lost to the world. He sat up, remembering where he was. There was a beefy guard hulking outside the cell door.

  “I said get on out here,” he said.

  There are two empty cabs at the taxi stand, Trang’s and James’s. Nobody’s in the baggage area, so Eric goes into the little coffee shop and gets a cup to go. Trang’s sitting at the counter, and he smiles and says hello.

  Eric walks down to the new end of the terminal and finds James by the door opposite the ticket counter, talking to Early and Tate, both old-timers sitting in plastic chairs against the wall. James is waving his arms and stalking around tight-assed, and the two older men are leaning against each other, lifting their feet up and down, helpless expressions on their faces.

  When Eric walks up, James turns with leftover tears in his eyes.

  “What’s so funny?” Eric says.

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  The old-timers giggle, and James rolls his eyes. “Foolish old men. Let’s get outside.”

  “Gentlemen,” Eric says to the skycaps. He turns to follow James.

  “So long, brother,” Tate croaks behind him.

  “Hush, now,” Early Blake says.

  James looks back at them but doesn’t say anything. Eric catches up and they walk to the baggage area, pass through the double doors, and cross the lane to the taxi stand.

  Trang is standing at attention by his cab, first up, and he waves and smiles. Eric waves back and leans against James’s vehicle, turning his face up to the sun. It’s still nice, with just enough breeze to keep things comfortable. He waits like that until James clears his throat and says, “Well, let’s hear the rest of it.”

  But Eric just says, “That’s all right,” because he’s changed his mind about Florida. It’s not just that business in the terminal, either. He was already having second thoughts, because in reviewing the story, in taking it all the way to the end, he’d remembered a couple of things. Like how after letting him out of the cell, the guard matter-of-factly locked the rest of them back in, as if that was a normal thing to do. And how when Eric said, “Take it easy, you guys,” nobody in the cell acknowledged him—not X, not even Jerrod.

  “Suit yourself,” James says. And the brother that he might have added lolls between them, like some kind of ghostly balloon. They’re both quite aware of it, but neither says anything. It could be that they’re a little self-conscious, at least for the moment. Or maybe it’s just gotten too noisy, because inside the terminal the old baggage belt has lurched back to life, and it’s not a bit quieter than it ever was. They listen as it rumbles along its same old track, carrying the same old baggage. They picture it, twisting and swiveling through the archaic end of the building, no doubt just dying to pinch somebody’s unsuspecting ass.

  Johnny and Early

  When the day finally arrives, Johnny Lunden is supposed to hang out until the volunteer shows up. And he tries his best to comply.

  But the volunteer is taking forever, and Johnny’s dying to get away from this old brick compound. It’s not that he’s not grateful; he’s just had enough looking after. They’ve looked after him with drugs, with therapy and pep talks, and he’s had enough. He wants to go home and see if it works. He lasts another hour, pacing around the little room. Then he says, “Balderdash!” and shoves open the window. He horses his sea bag over the sill, works it to the side, and hears it thump to the ground. He folds himself through the window and backs down the fire escape.

  Johnny doesn’t really have to do it this way.

  They’ve signed off on his paperwork, after all. He could just walk out the front door. But then someone would stop him in the lobby and advise him to wait, and they’d have to discuss it.

  “Discussing” is another thing he’s had about enough of.

  There’s a drop at the bottom of the ladder, and when he lands it sends a shock through his bones, which reminds him that he’s no spring chicken anymore. He’s not sure how that happened. Somebody flipped the calendar a few pages when he wasn’t looking. Anyway, he has to crouch there a moment to get his breath back. Then he shoulders the sea bag and skulks away through the shadows.

  James Blake drives the last nail in and walks the length of the dock, using his body weight to test the new boards. Eric Lunden stands on the trampled grass nearby, leaning on a leftover length of planking.

  “Dinah will be happy,” Eric says.

  James looks up the path. “Here they come now.”

  Early Blake and Dinah come up and stand beside Eric.

  “Will wonders never cease!” Dinah says.

  Early and James smile at each other.

  “It was getting to be more holes than boards!”

  “Well, it’s all boards now,” Early says.

  Dinah walks out onto the dock, gives James a hug.

  “We should probably try it out,” James says over her shoulder.

  “You think?” Eric says.

  “Absolutely.” James lets go of Dinah. “How about you, Grandpa?”

  “No, you boys go ahead.”

  “Ma?”

  “You know better than that.”

  James looks at Eric. “I guess it’s just us chickens.”

  Johnny walks down the long drive to Route 17, studying the cars coming into the facility. Maybe one of them is his volunteer, but it’s too late now; he has to keep moving. Things are starting to tighten up a little, and the one thing he’s found that usually helps is movement. Aside from his old friend Jack, of course. But he’s supposed to be leaving Jack alone. That’s sort of the whole point. It’s strange to be on the other side of it, though. He feels it hiking, like some of his joints are slung all wrong.

  Johnny stops to shrug the
sea bag a little higher.

  Give it a chance, he thinks. You wanted this. It’s a good thing.

  He’d always thought that one day he would get fed up and quit, and when they sentenced him to the VA, he figured the time had come. He’d go through the program and get it started, and once he got out he’d find a way to hang on. He imagined it would be prickly but doable.

  He was definitely right about the prickly part.

  Here’s hoping about the rest, Johnny thinks.

  He looks at the fat clouds: You can send those angels anytime.

  This is an old tongue-in-cheek plea, a droll invocation of his childhood prayers, something he’s tossed off at odd moments ever since he can remember. He knows exactly when it started—trying to patch up Rifleman Chester C. Williams in the middle of a fire-fight—but it didn’t work then, any more than it worked when he was eight, hiding under the porch with his hands pressed together. So he doesn’t quite know why he bothers with it now.

  “Can’t hurt,” he says out loud. And he keeps moving.

  “Those boys going fishing?” Primus says from his rocker on the porch. He’s sunken into himself a lot the past couple of years, and is starting to look like one of those wizened little apple people they sell at fairs.

  “I guess they are, Daddy.”

  Early looks toward the river, where James and Eric are stepping gingerly into Early’s wobbly boat. They’ve unloaded all the clamming gear—rollers, rakes, boots, and gloves—and left them in a jumble on the dock. Early watches until they’re safely seated.

  “Never knew you to miss out on a fishing trip,” Primus says.

  “I’ve got an errand to run.” Early pats the old man on his shoulder, goes inside to tell Dinah he’s headed out. She nods toward the river, where James is backing them smokily away from the dock.

  “What about young Lunden?”

  “We decided to make it a surprise.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “That makes two of us,” Early says.

  Johnny’s only a mile down 17 when this old pickup towing a hog trailer comes along, and the driver, after squinting at him, pulls over and sticks his hand out the window, twirling it for Johnny to come on.