Closer All the Time Read online

  Johnny backed off as quietly as he could. Then he tiptoed off the bridge, counted to ten, and stomped back, clapping his hands and howling an old Martian ditty he’d sung to Eric and his brother many times:

  Mr. Mordak came to Earth,

  From the planet of his birth,

  Full of beauty, brains, and grace

  Hoping to improve the race!

  Eric appeared then, climbing lightly over the railing onto the footbridge. He didn’t look at Johnny, just stood there with his head down and his hands in his jacket pockets.

  Johnny said, “Second verse!”

  “You can stop,” Eric said. “I’ll come back.”

  “Killjoy,” Johnny said. “You’ve never accepted your Martian blood.”

  “Just shut up, Dad.”

  They started back to the house. When they turned onto Water Street it was quiet enough to hear the streetlight buzzing at the corner.

  Eric still had his head down and his hands in his pockets. As they walked silently along, the river came up close and danced along under the streetlights and then shied away again.

  “That’s a good spot,” Johnny said, finally.

  Eric kicked at the mud without breaking stride.

  “When I was your age,” Johnny said, “I’d hide under the front porch.”

  He remembered ducking behind the rain barrel, crawling over the damp soil, huddling next to the foundation while his father stomped around the house, muttering angrily. He remembered praying for angels to come, something that he’d learned in Sunday school might be possible.

  “So why were you hiding?” Eric said after a moment.

  “Oh, the old man,” Johnny said. “He’d get drinking. Sometimes he was a little mean.”

  “My grandfather?”

  “Technically speaking,” Johnny said.

  They walked another few steps.

  “Well,” Eric said, “at least you’re not mean.”

  It took a moment for Eric’s words to sink in. But then they fell straight through Johnny and smashed on the ice. He felt it like glass as they trudged past close-set homes with dark windows and the pale light of TVs, past the machine shop with the ham radio antenna on its roof. Nothing came to mind that he might say, and they followed the river silently to the end of the block, stopping diagonally across from their driveway.

  When the downstairs lights winked on, Eric took a step into the street, as if it had been some kind of signal. But at that same moment a pickup thumped off the bridge, skidding their way, and Johnny quickly grabbed his son and pulled him back. The truck rushed furiously up, fishtailing on the wet pavement, straightening then and rushing by so close they had to pinch back against the guardrail. The pickup slid out of sight around a curve, tires squawking, and Johnny held his breath, dreading a crash.

  He was on the town ambulance crew, drafted because he’d been a recon medic, and it would be his duty to run and try to help them. But nothing happened; the pickup just kept speeding along, headlights leading the way out of the curve and off down the street—and finally Johnny let himself exhale. Then he felt Eric shiver.

  He drew him in closer. “You all right, kiddo?”

  “Uh-huh,” Eric said. But he shivered again.

  “It can be scary, can’t it?” Johnny said. “This old planet of yours.”

  There was another loud squeal from far down the street.

  “Who says it’s my planet?” Eric said then.

  Johnny would have given anything at that moment to be able to say exactly the right thing, but he hadn’t been doing so well in that department. Also, he was afraid his voice would crack, and then Eric might spook and try to squirm free. Johnny couldn’t stand the thought of that.

  He held on and looked toward the bridge. It was all clear, and he checked the other way, where the speeding truck had gone. That was all right, too. He knew he was stalling, but still couldn’t trust himself to speak. Then Eric started to fidget, and it felt like the last desperate moment when Johnny finally thought of something that he could do.

  It had to be better than nothing, right?

  What he could do was lean away from his son, as if he were only taking one more look at the street. Eric would be paying attention—kids always paid attention—and Johnny could cock his head left and right, ever so nonchalant, smiling innocently . . . and then suddenly take off! Yes, he could run with lots of arm motion, but not really that fast! He could run just slowly enough so that a boy could catch up.

  Boys were like dogs: They couldn’t resist a chase. And when Eric pulled even, why, they could turn on the jets. Johnny could practically see it. They could run as fast as any two earthlings, straight across the Baxter Speedway, zooming up the bank toward the well-lighted house.

  Early

  I never had any trouble getting up in the morning, and was usually the first one out on the flats. That’s why everyone called me Early instead of Earl, which was my real name. But when I lost my Evangeline I seemed to lose all my ambition, too. I’d lie awake all hours and then morning would come and I’d feel ninety years old.

  Finally my daughter-in-law got fed up.

  “Life goes on, Early!” Dinah said, among a few other things.

  She had that right—hadn’t she lost Earl Jr. at Normandy?—and she kept at me until eventually it sank in.

  One morning I heard the foghorns, and that’s all it took. I remembered I’d been looking for the right tide and weather, and I hauled out of bed, figuring it was time to go and make myself some money.

  I guess it was about three thirty. We only had one boarder at that time—Frank Stover was his name—and Dinah had put him in the corner room opposite the river, so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t wake him. Not that he’d give a damn about me going out poaching; Frank Stover wasn’t above sneaking around some himself. It was just that he did a lot of driving, and when he took a day off he liked to catch up on his sleep.

  I went down the stairs and fed the fire in the kitchen stove from the basket of sticks young James kept filled in the corner. I let the coffeepot heat up to a boil and filled my vacuum bottle that was a present from Vangie the Christmas before she got sick. It was to keep me warm when she couldn’t do it herself. I held the bottle against my cheek, then grabbed a handful of hard-boiled eggs out of the icebox, and went out the door past the chicken coop.

  The foghorns were still blowing down the bay and the stuff was so thick I could feel it on my face. I walked past Frank Stover’s Rambler and my old truck and on down the path to the rickety dock Primus had built thirty years before. I’d been after James for some time to shore it up, but so far he hadn’t listened. But he was a teenager with no daddy, and you had to allow.

  I took care where the planks were missing and went down to the outboard and got in. There were the usual clunky sounds of moving around in a boat, but the fog muffled it so there wasn’t noise enough to wake anybody. My boots and rubber gloves and rollers and rake were already in the boat, and I cast her off and paddled out slow and quiet into the river.

  Man, it was some thick of fog. The tide was just starting to turn and there was plenty of water. I let myself drift down below the house a ways, then pulled on the outboard a couple of times, and she fired up. I leaned her out until she ran smooth. Paddling out I’d heard some kind of fish rising, just popping the surface, and once I got going I put a line over the side with a dried-up old worm on the hook, but nothing bit, and I went on up the river.

  A ways along a boat passed me going the other direction, but I never saw him. Sounded like a lobster boat, though, or maybe a warden. They ran the same kind of boat, and they liked to go out in the fog.

  If it was a warden he was probably on his way down to where all the pot buoys were, where it got saltier down near the bay. In years past I might’ve turned back anyway, but it seemed to have gotten harder to change my mind once I was set on something, and I was set on Preacher’s Cove. It had been off limits for a while now, and I’d been saving it for the ri
ght day.

  I could picture all those clams waiting in the mud. I could see myself pulling in a boatload of steamers and making a week’s pay in one night. I could damn sure use the money. It wasn’t easy getting by this time of year. Or any other time, for that matter. You did a little of this and a little of that. Took in boarders. Redcapped at the train station. Hired out to work the hayfields or pick cabbage for the sauerkraut farm. Dug clams, mostly, which no one had done in Preacher’s Cove for near two years. At first it had been the red tide; then afterward they’d decided to keep it closed, because they could. They said the clam population needed it, but I had my doubts. It seemed to me there were as many clams around as there ever were.

  It took me near an hour to run upriver to town. I swung in close to where I could see the pier and the new streetlights, the ones that looked like old-time oil lanterns, then went back out and under the bridge and up to where the river hooked north. The water was ripping through here now, and it was slow going with my twelve-horse. It was almost five o’clock, still an hour from sunrise, and still foggy as hell.

  I ran over near the east side so I wouldn’t miss where the bank broke away. The water had dropped a foot or so; you could tell from the wet marks on the rocks. When the break came I throttled down and went real slow into the cove. There was a place I knew about just inside where the bushes grew down, where you could hide a small boat. I took one turn around to look things over and it was all clear so I went in there and cut my power. I swung the prop up and let the boat drift forward and I grabbed the bushes and hauled myself in. A branch snatched my cap off but I caught it before it got wet. I stepped into my boots and got out into the water and tied her up.

  I couldn’t see well enough yet to pull the clams by hand the way I liked to in soft mud, so I took the rake and two of the rollers and walked around through the bushes to the head of the cove, where the mud was just starting to show. I was moving quiet as I could in the dark, so I heard it without any trouble when somebody whistled soft from the trees.

  I listened to see if it would come again and it did, so low this time I could barely hear it. I thought about running, then laughed at myself and carried my gear on over. A clam cop wouldn’t whistle.

  There was an old homestead foundation over there, just a hole lined with rocks, and a dirt road that came in through the woods. When I got to the foundation a tall, blond man stepped out from behind one of the big pines and I saw it was Johnny Lunden. There were a couple rollers and a clam rake on the ground where he’d been hiding. I knew he’d been digging again since he’d lost his bartending job. I’d seen him out on the river, waved at him going by, but I never figured him for a poacher. I guess it didn’t seem like his kind of trouble.

  “Early Blake,” he said. “You better not be sneaking up on me.”

  I laughed because of the serious look on his face.

  “I’m glad you think something’s funny,” he said.

  “Lots of things are funny, Mr. Lunden.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it, Mr. Blake.”

  We liked to call each other “mister” for a joke, see.

  “You do know these flats are closed?”

  “Just on my way around to the river.”

  “Well, ain’t that a coincidence!” He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head over. He always could make me laugh ever since he was a little towheaded kid and would come downriver and play with Earl Jr. He was always just lively and comical like that. Which you wouldn’t have expected with all he had going on at home, with those parents he was blessed with.

  He grabbed his gear and we walked back to the cove.

  Then we started right in, driving the rakes into the mud, sifting around for clams, loading up our rollers. We worked in a long curve along near the shore and were halfway to the river when he said, “I was awful sorry to hear about Evangeline.”

  I just kept working my rake. I didn’t like talking about her. Just thinking about her I could imagine she was listening, but it didn’t work when somebody else was involved.

  Johnny didn’t say anything more and we kept working until the rollers were full, then walked over to the water and rocked them so the clams circled up and around—that’s why they’re called rollers, see—and got rinsed off. We carried them back to shore, over to the side where I’d hidden my boat. A full roller weighs about forty pounds, and with one in each hand we were breathing pretty hard by the time we set them down.

  Johnny looked at our footprints leading around the cove.

  “Probably should have started the other way,” he said. So he could have ended up by where he’d come in, he meant.

  “I’ll take you up the river when we’re done; you can cut through from there.”

  “That’ll work,” he said.

  We sat down to take a breather and Johnny offered me a smoke. I offered him some coffee back, and a hard-boiled egg, but he said no thanks. He blew out smoke like a sigh and drew his legs up and put his elbows on his knees. He took another drag and stared out at the fog and for a second he looked pretty sad. I guess he was thinking about some things. Then he realized I was watching and he put the wise-guy grin back on, the way it generally was.

  “I heard you had some hard luck, too,” I said.

  The story was that his wife had run off with her boss and taken the kids with her, and I decided I should mention it because he’d been kind enough to speak of Evangeline. He was all right, Johnny Lunden was, and I felt for him. Like I said, he’d been friends with Earl Jr. growing up, and later on one of his own boys was tight with young James, and Johnny used to come down to the farm and pick James up and take them all to the drive-in.

  Then I used to go up to the Neutral Corner for the Friday-night fights after they put the television set in, and when Johnny was bartending he always treated me good. I never had that feeling he’d be nice to my face and call me names behind my back, like some folks would. He’d slip me a beer now and then, too.

  “Hard luck,” he said now. “I guess I did, but it was my own fault.”

  “Well, I was sorry to hear it, anyway.”

  He took a last drag on the cigarette and snapped it off into the bushes. I capped my vacuum bottle and we took a couple more rollers each back to the mud. We started where we’d left off and went back the other way. The sun was up and everything was brighter; we followed our own footprints around the cove, working without our rakes now that we could see good enough to find the little holes the clams make when they suck the water in.

  We’d swing the rollers ahead, step up beside them, dig as many out as we could reach. Then we’d move up again. There’s a rhythm you get into and it makes the time go. We worked all the way across and started back, and we weren’t talking and I was starting to feel a little dreamy, what with the short night and the rhythm of working. Vangie was back in my head, too, although a little sideways of where she usually was.

  We filled the rollers, rinsed them, and took them back and sat down for another cigarette. Johnny leaned sideways and pulled a little silver flask out of his hip pocket and offered it to me. It ruins me to drink in the morning, but he went ahead and helped himself and kept at it pretty steady. He’d hold the flask to his mouth and sort of flip up the tail end. Then he’d take a drag off the butt and bring the flask up again. When we went back out it didn’t seem to slow him down or affect him much, except he got a little more talkative.

  Maybe the fog helped, too, in that regard. It was still thick as hell—you couldn’t see twenty feet ahead—so it was like we were the only people in the world. He laughed and told me how he couldn’t figure himself out sometimes, why he drank so much and got in fistfights and chased after girls who weren’t worth half of what he had at home.

  “Or used to have,” he said.

  He said it’d been like this since he came home. He’d go along all right but something would just set him off. Everything would start to get tight around him and he’d have to do something to loosen it up. Then he loo
ked at me like he expected me to come up with an explanation, but I didn’t have anything useful to say. I could remember some things I’d done, too, when I was married to about the best girl in the world.

  It wasn’t more than a half hour after that when we heard the boat coming up the rip. The current was such that they had to pour on the coal, and that made them pretty loud. It sounded like it was maybe the same boat I’d heard before, and after I told Johnny we took off at a sloppy kind of gallop back across the mud.

  We sloshed through shallow water up to the bushes and set the rollers into the boat. Then we got in too and listened as the other guy worked closer. Sure enough, they came right into the cove. I caught a shadow of them passing by. There was still enough water and it was still foggy enough that they had to ride a ways in to see if anyone had been poaching, and as soon as they were clear of us we took our chance. There wasn’t any way they could hear us scratching through the bushes over their motor, so we pulled on the branches and slid out and hugged close to the bank until we were in the river.

  I paddled us out into the current and let it take us down toward the hook. We picked up speed and a half mile from the cove I fired up the outboard and we took off downstream at a pretty good clip. I might have waited longer, I suppose. Anyway, about ten seconds later I heard them torque up and come right along after us. I hoped we had enough of a head start. If we could get to Baxter, we could just tie up at the landing and hide somewhere. Then after a while we could reappear and they’d have no proof we’d been doing anything wrong. Hiding along the river was out, because the tide had shrunk back enough so that we couldn’t get to shore. There were a couple of long docks, but I was pretty sure they’d check them out. So we raced around the hook and started down the stretch toward the bridge, and it was right there that the outboard up and quit.