Closer All the Time Page 15
They all turn at the same time and look up at Johnny’s window.
But they don’t see Johnny, because he’s already on his way into the kitchen. He’s stepping over the sea bag and standing near the door, a little short of breath, a bit dizzy from the sudden movement.
He listens as they start up the steps. Then they’re on the landing, making it creak.
Johnny waits, holding his breath, but nothing happens. It goes quiet and nobody moves. He leans closer, and when three firm knocks finally come, it makes him jump. But he recovers quickly and pulls the door open. And sees his son grinning back at him, flanked by Early and James.
“Mordak,” Eric says then, “we come in peace.”
Which puzzles Early and young James, you can see it in their faces.
But which strikes Johnny as just perfect.
“Age before beauty,” Eric says, and gestures for Johnny to climb into the shotgun seat.
Then he and James squeeze into the back. Early punches buttons and backs away from the curb. He makes a blatantly illegal U-turn on Main Street and points the Valiant down Knox. They ride past the church and turn onto the Speedway and go past the house sitting up on its high bank. When they cross the bridge Johnny looks back at Eric.
Eric nods. “I remember.”
“What’s that?” James says. He was looking out the other way.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me nothing.”
They go back and forth, pretending to argue, and Johnny turns around, feeling warm, like something has thawed inside him. They bump off the bridge and Early steers the Valiant doggedly up a hill. The road levels off on the other side and drifts up close to the river and Johnny watches it flicker behind the trees, silvery in the fading light.
“How’s old Primus doing, anyway?” he thinks to ask.
“Not bad, for a hundred years old.”
“He’s a hundred?” Johnny says.
“Just last month.”
“Imagine sticking around for a hundred years.”
“Well,” Early says, “you’ll be dead a lot longer.”
“There’s that,” Johnny says.
They ride along for another mile and a field opens up. Primus’s old barn appears with its faded red roof. Behind it is still the river, and there’s just enough light left to see how it widens and deepens on its way to the bay.
An Interview with Jim Nichols
1. Closer All the Time stitches together stories from the lives of the inhabitants of Baxter, Maine, all of whom seem to be pretty ordinary—at least on the surface. What aspects of character bring them together and force them apart?
It all comes down to that fumbling around to find someone. It seems we’re all born with this longing; we’re made to think that someone exists for each of us, but we’re not given the best tools to find them. So we knock around, dodging various obstacles like bad families and wars and accidents and illnesses, searching and hoping. We’re handicapped in that we don’t have a way to truly see into another’s heart, and we can’t ever communicate without approximation; it’s this sort of haplessness that makes for the comedy and tragedy of our lives. A few of us are lucky, some make do while keeping an eye out, others are heroic and never give up, and there are those who despair and quit altogether. I hope in Closer All the Time there are examples of all of these categories, along with some of the comedy and tragedy.
2. You have a knack for portraying people who are down and out. What experiences have you had that have informed your writing?
Well, I grew up in a small, blue-collar town, and the advantage to this is that you know everyone, so the down-and-outers are not strangers. You know them and their families and their history. I’m sure that helped. And then, also, I’ve worked various hardscrabble jobs: I’ve been a cabbie, a bartender, a club singer; I’ve built fences, worked in a shoe shop, and on a dairy farm. I’ve drunk too much, gotten in fights, been in jail. I traveled for a time in circles that contain a fair sampling of the down-and-out. There but for the grace of God, etc.
3. In the book, many of the relationships are entangled. How does this relate to your understanding of small-town living, and, in particular, small-town New England life?
Closer All the Time takes place between World War II and the computer age, when things were a lot more static. People grew up, went to school, and then to work in the same little town (or in a neighboring town). In many instances you married someone you’d known since childhood, and if the marriage didn’t work out, you married someone else you’d known since childhood and your ex-spouse married someone that all three of you had known! It’s just the small-town-ness. I know tracing back my own family, you’d find a Nichols marrying a Pomeroy, and then their grandchild Nichols marrying another Pomeroy. And so on. In such a closed system there are bound to be complicated relationships, don’t you think?
4. The characters in this book are very different in age, gender, and life phase, and yet in a way they are united in their own sense of alienation. How were you able to embody such varied and different characters? Was it difficult to write from so many points of view?
It’s just a function of observing, of listening. I think if you’ve paid enough attention and you’re persistent, the characters will reveal themselves, and you’ll recognize them from real people you’ve observed. Some act or comment will open them up for you, and from there it’s just a matter of getting to the longing place and writing from there.
5. Do you sympathize with Johnny Lunden? How does he change over the course of the book?
Oh, I do sympathize with Johnny. He has a good heart, and he doesn’t let it go sour despite the challenges he’s faced since childhood. For example, he can be halfway into a life-defining tailspin and still recognize and share a secret wink with another lost child. Johnny gets a chance to change for the better at the end of the book, thanks to circumstance, his own courage, and the help of an unlikely angel, and we can only hope he succeeds.
6. Why is the idea of Baxter, Maine, so central to these stories? Is setting an important device for you as a writer?
Baxter as it exists in the book fixes the various stories to a particular time and place: small-town Maine in the years after World War II. Having it be a river town gave me a way to physically connect lives and stories, to help make everything part of a whole. The river is there at the beginning and at the end, and it frames Johnny Lunden’s book-long presence in what I hope was a resolving sort of way.
7. The role of family is an important subtext in this book, either through blood or proximity. What does the concept of family mean to you? How do you relate it to the larger themes in the book?
This goes back to question number one for me, with the concept contracted a bit to focus on members of a family, rather than the whole of humanity. But it’s the same thing, really—our tragic (and funny) inability to communicate accurately, and the resulting difficulty in connecting.
8. The characters in Closer All the Time all seem to be longing for something. How does this reflect your larger ideas about American culture and society?
I think that like everybody, the characters in the novel just want a place in the world and someone to share it with. Even in good families, that safe place a child inhabits only lasts for so long, and then adolescence arrives and the longing begins.
9. You are an award-winning short-story writer. How was writing Closer All the Time different for you?
Most of the chapters in Closer All the Time were written as stand-alone short stories, but when it came to publishing them as a book, my editor suggested I try and interconnect them to make the book more of a whole. I found this to be a very interesting process, discovering similar characters and circumstances that I could conflate, inventing ways to carry them through a novel-size breadth of experience. It was a process full of surprises and delights that I really enjoyed. I did have to write three new stories, or chapters, and I had to insert other references and transitions. My previous book
was a novel, so I had that experience to fall back on when it came to the expanded scope and different skills involved.
10. How has living in rural Maine impacted your writing, if it has?
I like to write about the people I meet or hear about, from their point of view (rather than that of an outside observer), which definitely has an impact on vocabulary and vernacular. These are the folks I’m interested in, and their voices sing to me. I want to tell their stories the same way they’d tell them.
11. There is a pervasive sense of claustrophobia in this book; how do your characters free themselves from it?
Some, by going out on the river in the fog; others, by giving up control of their lives; others, by sneaking around where nobody is looking. One flies small airplanes through the snow and gloom. Another pretends she’s a famous actress instead of a housewife in a stunted marriage. One boy pushes eagerly into that adolescent emotional separation from his family, another just runs away from home, while a third opens his heart to the wider world his grandfather knew.
12. What elements of your characters’ personalities are revealed in their relationships? Who is your favorite character, and why?
I think when you tell anyone’s story you reveal neediness; heart, or lack of same; courage or weakness; resolve; kindness—whatever dominates. There are bound to be opportunities in all directions, and characters will respond in one way or another. As for my favorite character, I’ve spent so much time with them that I love them all, but my favorite would have to be Early Blake. Early was a late arrival on the scene (his was the first additional chapter I wrote), but he made his continued presence inevitable, and second only to Johnny’s in importance. I love how he turned out. Early was someone who always seemed to get where he absolutely needed to be with a minimum of fuss.