He was at a halt, there at the bridge. His pant cuffs were drenched dark. He was forty-eight. Of the friends who would be there, Gruen was the youngest. Nina was thirty-seven. He would be meeting Douglas’s widow for the first time. She would be a wreck. Douglas’s son was fourteen, and Ned had met him briefly when he was a toddler. Elliot would be there, stooping down for embraces, and Joris, all of them.
He was hesitating. He wanted to go back down to the general store. It seemed urgent.
He needed to hurry. There could be more rain. The forest didn’t offer much prospect of shelter. Visible here and there among the trees were boulders, huge and mottled with great scabs of lichen. A little lichen goes a long way, he thought. As shelter, the boulders were irrelevant.
He was proud of his life but he wasn’t enjoying it as much as he should. The thought surprised him. It was his own formulation, not an echo of a quote. It was probably true a lot of the time. Recently, though, he couldn’t complain.
He turned back.
5
This was a store Douglas must have frequented for years. The Vale, it was called. It was clearly from the nineteen twenties or so, a shrine to the period, in its way. The signage said they sold Sundries, along with Bait, Lotto, News, Coffee, and Adult.
The Vale was a collection of disparate buildings populating a flat, boggy strip of land fronting the highway. Going up, Ned had skirted the place. If he’d known he was going to come back down, he could have parked his rucksack at the place. He liked his Swiss Army–issue rucksack. He liked carrying the rucksack of an army that had never fought a war. His enjoyment of that fact was enough to outweigh the pack’s unwieldiness.
The Vale’s centerpiece was the general store, a barnlike log structure set on an unusually high stone foundation, with verandas along the sides and a deep front porch on which was arrayed a miscellany of seating—barstools, a piano bench, a porch glider, car seats, a church pew. A cinderblock annex housed a propane sales and service operation. Adjoined to that was a decommissioned sky-blue double-wide trailer connected to the annex by an improvised tunnel formed by stretching plastic sheeting over a succession of metal arches. Strings of ancient faded blue-and-yellow Grand Opening pennants encircled the three buildings at the roof line, drawing the elements of the Vale together. Western music and occasional indications of hilarity leaked from the trailer.
Ned set foot on the broken lattice of planks and duckboard that had been laid out on the mud in front of the
store entrance. Splendid single lodgepole pines stood at the four corners of the general store. Ned had observed, coming down the mountain, that the personal hinterland of the Vale was essentially a dump site for derelict machinery and other ejecta—there were cairns of hubcaps, short columns of discarded tires, piles of scrap lumber, huge bins wreathed in vines.
Ned mounted the front steps. He stepped into a fluorescent blaze. He felt at first that he was alone in all the light and music of the cavernous establishment. Nina called fluorescent lighting lighting for robots. Music from a ballroom dancing exhibition showing on a TV set fixed high in an angle of the room contended with pop singing from someplace else. A police scanner interjected occasionally. The pop music was, he saw, due to a radio on the checkout counter behind which someone was sitting and watching. Ned had missed him initially because he was half hidden by the monumental antediluvian cash register and he was seated in a wheelchair.
The place was packed with things. Shelving rose almost to the ceiling. The aisles were narrow. Overhead a web of clothesline had been strung, to which articles like swim fins, butterfly nets, snorkel tubes, packs of sparklers, and saw blades had been clipped. An umbrella stand held a collection of gripsticks to be used for securing items from the web or the top shelves. In urgent printing, the sign on the container warned that these devices should be used only with the help of staff, and that any injury, damage, or product breakage resulting from unsupervised use would be the sole responsibility of the customer. There seemed to be no organizing principle: a display case contained fantasy knives and stuffed animals. A rotatable cylindrical rack bore condoms,
sunglasses, shrink-wrapped jerky, and pink plastic cap guns. He had to conquer his distraction. He needed to be a customer if he was going to use the toilet. He had to buy something. All of the newspapers that were left were local. But he needed …
Visine
. And he needed a comb. He needed to check himself out before the encounter with his friends. Ridiculously, that was why he had turned around on the road and come back to this place. Men weren’t allowed to carry pocket mirrors around with them.
He approached the cashier, a delicate old man, handsome, with perfect silver hair, someone who could be a spokesman for dignified old age, except of course that he was in a wheelchair. On closer inspection, he seemed to be a mouth breather. Tacked to the wall behind the old man was a POW/MIA flag showing a GI prisoner, in silhouette, hunched over in dejection. Ned took off his rucksack and set it down where the old man could see it, to reassure him.
“Hello,” Ned said, suppressing an impulse to extend his hand to this person who was so neatly gotten up. He was wearing a starched dress shirt buttoned to the neck, a red cardigan without a spot on it, and he gave off a pleasant scent of aftershave. Ned knew what the man reminded him of. He was the patrician Dutchman, the old burgomaster, or even Count, who stands up to the Nazis in a movie written by Lillian Hellman.
Ned said, “I wonder if you have Visine. Eye drops. And a pocket comb.”
“Acourse,”
the old man said. So not the patrician, then, Ned thought.
Ned was directed to the bottom shelf where the Visine should be. It was somewhere among the goods in the shelving
directly opposite the cashier. Ned understood that there would be another place to look if the Visine failed to be there. The Visine he found was actually Murine. The shoulders of the tiny bottle were coated with grime. It would do. He quickly paid for it and the comb that had appeared on the counter next to it. He wondered if the old man had procured it from his own pocket.
Paying for the purchases, Ned understood something correctly that he’d misinterpreted. There were two black streamers hanging down, one on either side of the MIA flag. Ned had perceived them as something like crepe, something to emphasize the message of the thing. But in fact they were ribbons of tape black with dead flies. Little cylinders of flytrap tape were also counter-top impulse items. He collected his change.
Ned said, “The other thing is the
New York Times
. I’m going to be around here for a few days. I’m staying up the hill …” He waited to see if this information brought any reaction from the old man, who pursed his lips and held them pursed for what was arguably an unusually long time.
Ned established that the
Times
came most days, early afternoon, and that the old man would try to save a copy for him,
if
it came. Ned sensed a little coldness now, coming toward him. By asking for the
Times
, Ned had obviously identified himself as a beloathed liberal. This man was concerned with the victims of war and now there was going to be another one. There could be more MIAs for him. Ned was tempted to say something useless.
A large soft mouse-colored old dog, a Labrador, came out from behind the counter and stared at him.
“Could I use your restroom?” Ned asked.
“Acourse,”
the old man said, gesturing unclearly to his right. Ned worked it out. The restroom required a key, which was hanging on a hook at the end of the front counter. Ned reached for the key without realizing that the fine chain running through the hoop of the key also ran down through holes punched in two tire hubs. So there was a certain clangor, of course. Ostensibly this arrangement would be to keep the key from being lost or mislaid, but probably it was also for merriment when the uninitiated grabbed for the key without paying that much attention, as he had done. The restroom was straight back and to the left. He had to pass a vast display of periodicals taking up all the wall space between the counter area and the cross aisle at the back.
He scanned the selection as he passed. Pornorama! he thought.
There was everything. A man could want.
Naughty Neighbors
through
Gent
through
Plumpers
through a startling one,
Whorientals
. Breasts for all. Back near the counter the main newsweeklies formed a thin right-hand margin to this field of pink plenty, and there the
Weekly Standard
predominated, with the last three issues preserved for sale whereas only the current issues of
Time
and
Newsweek
were available. Interestingly, a shower curtain shielded the last quarter of the array of porn. It could be slid aside. The design on the curtain represented the world: through the blue translucencies between the continents, images of handsome male heads and muscular bodies were discernible. Picturesque as all this was, Ned couldn’t linger.
A bald, youngish man, very heavy, was seated behind a workbench in a slot punched into the middle of the back wall. Ned crossed in front of him and nodded. The man was repairing a fly rod. As he slumped back in his chair to
notice Ned more comfortably, and as his chin sank into his fat throat, his dense, short-cropped yellow beard presented as a sort of Elizabethan ruff along the bottom of his face. Ned thought he had an intelligent look. His arms were lavishly tattooed. He wondered if this could be the fine old man’s son. He hoped not, back there all day and probably expected to keep an eye on porn browsers in case they were tempted to take something or whisk something with them into the toilet. Not much of a life for this fellow.
Ned couldn’t help but be curious about the tattooed images the young man was displaying, which led straight to a question of etiquette, which was whether it was polite to look at the demons and crosses and daggers decorating his giant arms. On the one hand, they were put there to be noticed, and on the other hand, it would make you look gay. If that bothered you. It was best to treat it like wallpaper.
On the restroom door was a primitive cartoon of a figure that was female on one side, half a skirt, and male on the other, half a top hat.
In the restroom, Ned was quick about everything. He was pointlessly a little proud of the thick, shaggy limb of urine he produced. He rinsed his face with cold water, which was all there was. He decided he looked okay. A little red, white, and blue sticker in the corner of the dull mirror read
Pataki? Ptui!
6
The bridge was well behind him. It had seemed sturdy enough.
He was almost there. It was a whole hilltop, green, treeless, broadly convex, like the top of a cupcake. It was
extensive. His feelings reminded him of what Nina had said about Cézanne’s landscapes, that when you see them, you relax. Now he could see the tower, four stories tall, like a stone hatbox. Tower? he thought. Oh, a short one. And roomy-looking. A gravel path branched off from the road and led to the summit, and the tower. He couldn’t believe the tower. It was short and it had a parapet notched for archers or shooters, defenders. He couldn’t imagine anyone he knew living in such a setting.
He was agitated. But maybe something good could come out of this. This disaster. Their group had been talented. Letters they had written to the
Aegis
in college had always gotten attention. Maybe the others and he could collaborate on a statement against the coming invasion, in their old style. Their letters hadn’t all been on the frivolous side. Some hadn’t.
7
“Hi, Ma.”
“Hi yourself. To what do I owe the honor of thisum.”
Nina sighed. It was her mother’s way to break off her sentences once she was satisfied that her respondent knew what she was obviously going to say next. Thisums and theums were major building blocks in Ma’s discourse. It was odd. Her mother was an odd woman, an odd woman but lovable and she loved her. Her mother didn’t trail off as though she were trying to think of the next word. It was just laborsaving. That was how her mother saw it.
“I’m not calling to honor you, I’m calling to give you my whereabouts, such as they are, so you won’t worry.”
“Yeah, but Nina, what about theum?”
It sounded Greek, but Nina knew what she meant. It was the march, the demonstration, the Convergence. Her mother was a sentimental communist, a very nice old communist living in El Nido, a nice old lady communist apartment complex owned by a nice old rich lady communist widow. It was a family, there. Ned called it Birobidjan after the ghetto province Stalin had tried to corral all the Jews in Russia into, to raise chickens. And in fact in El Nido, they had raised chickens, until the city made them stop. They still had a victory garden. Her mother was a communist and a practicing astrologer. She had slept with John Garfield before she got married. Nina’s father had been proud of it and would drop it into conversations.
Nina said, “Where I am is in Kingston New York in a bus station and I’m waiting for a bus to take me to Phoenicia New York. You can only get me on my cell phone, do you understand? And don’t worry, the march is going to be enormous. I’ll tell you about it. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Hey, don’t hang up Neen! I don’t know where you are in New York. And
why
are you in New York?”
“Ma, I wish to God you would get a computer and take a course. I’ll pay for it. It’s so much better for keeping in touch.”
“I have no time. I’m too old.”
“Listen to me while I explain where I am. I can’t talk to you forever.”
“How I wish you could!”
That was her mother being ironical. It was kind of funny.
“Ma, okay, why I’m here. We’re supposed to be getting me pregnant. You know. So Ned gets a phone call saying
that an old friend died,
died
, not even dying,
dead
. But Ned just ran out and got on a plane and left town. I got this in a message on my answering machine …”