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Closer All the Time Page 14
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Johnny rolls his bag into the back, climbs in the front.
Turns out his benefactor is a former Marine who stopped because of the sea bag. When he learns Johnny was a recon medic, he’s even friendlier, and as they jounce along he blows billows of pipe smoke and tells Johnny all about the Common Ground Fair and the blue ribbon he should’ve won if the fix wasn’t in, if the judge hadn’t decided to give it to his own goddamn son-in-law.
“That sounds about right,” Johnny says.
“Don’t it?” the farmer says. “What a world we live in.”
They swap battle tales for a few miles and then the farmer decides he’ll take Johnny all the way to North Union. He’d take him right to his doorstep, he says, except he’s got another stop to make and he can’t be late.
“You’re already doing too much.”
“Not for you, Doc,” the farmer says.
It bucks Johnny up a little. A Marine calling you “Doc” was always a good thing.
In Union the farmer pulls over onto the shoulder. Johnny grabs his duffel out of the back, leans in to shake hands.
“You take care of yourself,” the farmer says. “I mean it.”
He pulls a U-turn, and as he drives off the hog inside the trailer grunts resoundingly, like some kind of mythic beast.
Early stops in town to get a cup of coffee for the ride.
Tomi Lambert takes his money and gives him one of her sweet smiles.
“How are those girls of yours?” Early asks.
“They’re a handful.”
“Just like their mama.”
“Stop it.” Tomi hands him his change, and when he drops it into the tip cup, smiles again. Early brushes aside a quick yearning, like he’s done for thirty-odd years now. Vangie ruined him for anyone else, but that’s never stopped the feeling from coming along now and then on its own. He chides himself for a silly old fool and heads for the door, scanning the pictures on the walls. Sometimes Alva Potter will come up with somebody new. But Early doesn’t see anything different. Rocky still has his spot by the window, and Ali is still dancing over the bar, glaring down at Sonny Liston.
Johnny walks onto the little bridge and holds the rail. The Baxter is fast up here, a little frantic. He watches it toss and swirl, then hefts the bag and crosses to the other side.
He looks at the long stretch of road ahead and wishes he still had the old Indian. He’d love to be flying along, letting the wind knock the wicked out of him. But he hasn’t had that bike for five years, since he wiped out on the flats between Baxter and Rockland. They said he was three sheets to the wind, but that patch of oil would’ve gotten anyone, and he was sober enough to lay the bike down. It would’ve been just scrapes and bruises if somebody hadn’t put a guardrail in just the wrong place.
As it was he came out of it with a broken leg, a ruptured spleen, a dislocated shoulder, a grade-three concussion, and about an acre of missing skin. Johnny thinks he must have looked like one of his old combat patients, hobbling out of the VA a month later in a walking cast.
Early’s favorite route to Togus is to follow the Baxter on country roads as far as he can, and then to go cross-country past Damariscotta Lake and come into the facility from the south. It’s a little bit longer, but he hates the traffic on Route 17, which is a two-lane with lots of curves and hills. It’s not that he wants to go fast, either; it’s just that other vehicles do, and they end up tailgating him.
When Early checks in, the woman at the desk smiles and tells him to have a seat while they go after Corpsman Lunden. He eases into a heavy wooden chair, crosses his legs, and stares at the framed portraits of famous Maine soldiers on the wall across the room. Joshua Chamberlain is the only one he recognizes, because of the walrus mustache. He looks a little like Johnny, now that Early thinks about it.
Early shifts on the hard seat—damn his bony ass—and rehearses what he’ll say when they bring Johnny down. Probably nothing about Eric. Johnny’s never known how to talk about his kids, and there’s no reason to think it’d be any different now. He’ll just take him down to the farm for a meal. Then he’ll put them together.
But when the same woman comes over a few minutes later, it’s to tell him they can’t seem to find Corpsman Lunden. She’s wondering if there was a mix-up and he got a ride with someone else, and apologizes if that’s the case. She’d hate to think he came all this way for nothing.
Johnny has a very hard time walking past the Town Line Market, because he happens to know it houses one of the finest beer coolers in the region. He can almost feel the ice-cold can on his cheek, can almost taste the lovely, bitter, frosty liquid going down his dusty throat.
A dozen rationalizations form in his mind, and it becomes almost impossible to keep moving; it’s like getting caught on the flats after the tide has turned, wading through knee-deep water toward shore.
But just as he reaches the store’s driveway, an old, two-door Plymouth Valiant comes chattering past, slows with its brake lights on, and pulls over to stop in front of him.
Johnny knows right off it’s Early Blake, who’s been driving that same push-button rig since Christ was a corporal. He lugs the bag up and looks in the driver’s-side window, and it warms his heart to see old Early almost smiling back. He’s always figured a near smile from Early was worth a horse laugh from anyone else.
“Mr. Blake,” Johnny says.
“Mr. Lunden,” Early says. “Hop in.”
Early’s got to be in his mid-seventies, but he looks younger except for his hair, which has gone all white.
Johnny tries to figure how long it’s been. Not that it matters; things stay pretty much the same between them. Early’s had a soft spot for him since he used to ride his bicycle down the River Road to play with Earl Jr., and Johnny’s always felt the same about Early, a man who would let a stray kid hang around for hours on end, and never treat him any different than his own.
Johnny gives the store a last look, works his bag onto the backseat, and squeezes into the front. Early punches buttons, eases out onto the road, and accelerates slowly. He won’t be hurried, and five other vehicles whip around the Valiant and race off ahead of them before he finally gets up to speed.
Johnny smiles. It’s nice that some things never change.
James and Eric ran downriver almost to the Keag and now are slowly making their way back. The breeze changed with the tide and it’s a slow, cool, and choppy ride. James is on the rear thwart, hand on the throttle, and Eric is trolling off to the side, keeping the line well out so it won’t tangle in the prop. They haven’t hit any stripers, but it’s late in the season, so that’s no surprise. They’re mostly out just to give Eric something to do. Fixing the dock was supposed to do the trick, but you couldn’t hurry Early, and they were all through with it by the time he finally hit the road.
Eric jerks the rod higher, holds it there a moment.
“Get a nibble?” James says.
“I thought I felt something. Maybe not.”
“Sometimes it’ll trick you.”
Eric lets the rod down again.
The river loops back under the road, and they come up on Ragged Pond and then climb a long, wooded incline. They ride to the top, slow but steady, like the Little Engine That Could.
“That was quite a show you put on uptown,” Early says to Johnny Lunden.
“So I heard,” Johnny says.
Early huffs a little laugh. “I hope they helped you out at Togus.”
“They gave it the old college try,” Johnny says.
Early gives him a look.
They ride down the backside of the hill and stop at the Route 90 light. A flatbed hauling a skidder turns in front of them and starts back the way they came, gears grinding and engine growling as it crawls up the grade.
Johnny turns to watch it go over the crest of the hill. He’s worked in the woods some, and has always liked skidders, how strange they look, like machines built on another planet.
“Do you still have a
place to go?” Early says.
“I should be fine.”
Johnny hopes his stuff is still in his little apartment, and that his key will still work. He’s lived there for years and has always gotten along with the landlord; in fact, they’ve played cards and drunk together many times, which ought to count for something.
“You’re welcome to come down to the farm,” Early says.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Dinah would give you hell.”
The light changes and Early punches buttons and drives them through the intersection. “She’s already signed off on it,” he says, and after a moment Johnny knows this means something, but it takes him a little while longer to figure out what.
They pass a pond and one of those old, fenced-in family graveyards. Then Johnny says, “Wait—you were the volunteer?”
“Did you think it was pure luck?”
“I thought it was some kind of a sign.”
“It still might be,” Early says.
They ride past a greenhouse on Johnny’s side. It has young trees with bagged roots leaning against the office and one of those message signs beside the road that always has a different gardening pun.
“POTTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW!” it says today.
Johnny watches the sign go by. He’s still a little confounded.
Early turns onto the Old County Road so they can skip Rockland. They pass farmhouses and a used-car business, a big cemetery and the long, flooded Rockland quarry. Johnny has a quick thought about another quarry, and realizes how shaky he still is when it brings him close to tears.
He shuts his eyes and keeps them that way until they turn right, roll into Baxter, and stop at the light. Then he blinks and looks at Early.
Early looks back with his eyebrows up.
And Johnny tries, he really does. He tries to envision walking into the farmhouse with Early, saying hello to Dinah and ancient old Primus, standing there waiting for whatever came next. But the image won’t quite settle into something plausible, and finally he tells Early he probably ought to check out his own place before he does anything else.
“It’ll still be here when you get back,” Early says.
“I know, but I’m kind of anxious.”
The light turns green and Early shoots them over to the hardware store. This is just about at the scene of the crime, Johnny realizes. Not that he remembers it all that well, but he does know where it took place, and he has flashes of reeling into the street to direct traffic; he remembers drunkenly supple bows and flourishes. He doesn’t remember why he thought it was necessary, but people were laughing, and that made him angry, and he remembers kicking at car doors, and fighting with somebody who didn’t appreciate it, and he thinks it might have ended with him taking a poke at Chief Foss, although the chief didn’t mention that when they were trying to decide between jail and Togus.
“How about I wait for you, then,” Early says.
And Johnny almost lets it happen. If Early would say one more thing, in fact, he probably would. But Early’s gone as far as he can now, asking twice, and eventually Johnny lays his head over and says, “I sure did appreciate the ride, Mr. Blake.”
“Go on, then,” Early says.
Johnny knows his feelings are hurt. But when he slides out and blows Early a kiss, Early can’t help a little smile. That seems to tick him off even more, though, and he doesn’t look at Johnny again as he backs away from the curb and drives off, punching buttons.
“Skunked, huh?” old Primus says when James comes up to the porch. He laughs until it turns into a cough that hunches him over.
“Easy there,” James says.
“Skunked!” Primus says through the coughing.
Eric comes out of the barn. He’s cleaned all the fishing gear and put it away, but still can’t hold still. “Got anything else that needs doing?”
“You can split up some firewood.” James nods toward the woodpile.
“Sounds good.” Eric starts over.
“Don’t cut your foot off,” James calls after him.
“I’ll try not to.”
Primus starts coughing again, deep croaks that leave him breathless, and James sits down with his great-grandfather and pats him between the shoulder blades. He has to be exquisitely careful. It feels like he’s patting a little bundle of brittle sticks.
Johnny drops the bag on the landing and digs the key out of the flowerpot on the railing. He brushes it clean, tries it in the door, and finds it still works. Thank God for small favors, he thinks, and hauls the bag into the kitchen.
The next thing he does is walk around to the front room and open the window. There’s a nice breeze off the river, and he sticks his head out to take a look around. Straight down is the green awning over the hardware store; to the left is the monument—a Union soldier, rifle on shoulder—and farther down the town cemetery.
Past the cemetery, behind a weeping willow, he catches glimpses of the house where he grew up, the white clapboards, the front porch. He’s lost track of who lives there now—his own parents sold out while he was in the Pacific; he hasn’t seen them since—but they’ve done a good job fixing it up.
Johnny pulls a chair close to the window. He’s always liked to people-watch from here, especially on a Saturday when everybody is in town. It’s like being an anthropologist, he thinks, observing the Baxterian in his native habitat. Or an alien, maybe, studying life on Earth.
But that thought brings to mind another house and another family, and he’s in no shape to think about them just now.
Johnny looks toward the stoplight, watches the traffic come up.
There’s a pickup loaded with rollers and rakes, a convertible with four young people—the driver turning to swat at one of his backseat passengers—and Sonny Philips’s oil truck, air brakes wheezing as it decelerates. Then a little red VW joins the queue, and Johnny thinks: Susie O’Leary!
He’s seen her riding around in that bug.
The light changes, and the vehicles move slowly into town. Susie is steering with one hand, her other elbow out the window. She was always an easy and elegant driver, the first one of their little gang to have a car, and he remembers riding around with her just like those kids in the convertible.
Opposite his window she looks up and makes a mock-surprised face. Then she smiles. Johnny waves, but she’s looking ahead again, tooling down the street until she disappears past the Masonic Hall.
Johnny doesn’t see anything else for the next few minutes. He’s remembering how they always gathered at her house, because it had a widow’s walk with a view down the river, and how they’d sit up there and drink lemonade and joke with her parents—he envied her her parents—until they were ready to pile into her secondhand Pontiac and go off jitterbugging.
They were crazy about jitterbugging!
Alva Potter and Carolyn Mitchell and Earl Blake Jr. and Dinah Swain and Mike Mitchell and Lois Kilby and Susie and him. Roger Lambert, too, and whoever he was squiring around.
Graduation night there was one last expedition—they always called them expeditions—to the official town celebration at the Sahara, the best place ever for a bonfire. He remembers trying to dance on the sand and finally giving that up to sit talking together, and he remembers divulging that he and Earl Jr. and Alva Potter were planning to join the Navy. And how Roger Lambert trumped them by boasting that he’d already signed up, and not only that, but had been accepted for pilot training.
Johnny rolls his eyes to think that Lambert ended up with Susie.
But it was never going to be him. They’d been best friends forever, an accident of living across the street, and he remembers putting an arm around her that night and almost thinking they might kiss. But he hadn’t dared try. She may have stayed a loyal friend, but he’d understood for a long time that Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary’s little girl wasn’t going to take up with someone who lived in that neglected house, with those awful p
arents.
He still wishes he’d tried, though. He never got another chance.
They went off to enlist a week later, Early driving him and Earl Jr.—Alva Potter had backed out at the last minute—to Portland. And now he remembers coming back from the recruitment office to find Dinah sobbing on the porch, because she and Earl Jr. had gotten married the day before, and now she didn’t want him to leave. And he remembers Earl Jr. taking her in his arms and telling her everything would be all right.
When Early drives into the yard Eric drops the ax and wipes his hands on his jeans. Then he walks over, tipping his head to see if there’s anyone else inside the Valiant. But Early gets out of the car by himself.
Then James comes out onto the porch.
“Did you take Primus inside?” Early says.
“Yeah, he needed to lie down.”
Early looks at Eric.
“I couldn’t get him to come along without spilling the beans. You ready for plan B?”
“Sure,” Eric says. “I guess so.”
“Hop in, then. No time like the present.”
Eric opens the door and gets into the front.
“Mind if I go?” James says.
“More the merrier.”
Early opens the driver’s door, and James squeezes past him into the back. Early gets in and backs them around and they head out the driveway to the River Road.
“How long’s it been?” James asks Eric.
“Oh, God. Since I was fifteen?”
“What are you going to say?”
“I’ll think of something,” Eric says.
It’s gotten cool in the breeze, and Johnny is reaching to close the window when he spots the old Valiant at the top of Knox Street. He leaves the window up and sits forward, wondering if Early’s decided to give him one more chance.
He hopes so, and thinks maybe he’ll go, if that’s the case.
But when the Valiant shoots across and parks in front of the hardware store, there are three of them who climb out. There’s Early, and that must be young James, who looks a lot like Earl Jr., and there’s a third fellow, a rangy guy who slaps his hands on his hips and grins lopsidedly at the other two men.