The Mt. Monadnock Blues Read online

  Tim knew the answers (or the questions), he just couldn’t transpose them quickly amid the bells and whistles. “February 29!” Alex Trebek shouted and you were supposed to shout back, instantly, “What day comes once every four years!?”

  “February 30!” Tim shouted instead, helplessly.

  “Unk had a long day,” said Cindy, afterwards, by way of excusing Tim’s dismal third place finish.

  “Thanks, but the truth is your brother’s brain works better backwards than it does forwards.”

  “Better than yours,” said Billy.

  “That’s for sure. Anyway, here are your prizes. I brought you each a present.”

  “Neat-O,” said Cindy, unwrapping a small wooden boat.

  “They’re a little oldfashioned,” said Tim, who always felt on shaky ground offering gifts that had no power source.

  “They’re cool,” said Billy. “Thanks, Unk.”

  “The sails are real canvas, correctly rigged and all. So they should actually go across a lake.”

  “Supercool. We launch them and follow in the canoe.”

  “But what if they go different ways?” asked Cindy.

  “They won’t, Simp. It’ll be the same wind and current.”

  “If they do,” said Tim, “we’ll just have to think fast. But forwards.”

  “When can we try them, Unk?”

  “Why not tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow we can’t. We said we’d help Ms. Whitman set up her classroom.”

  “Good for you. So we’ll try them on Saturday.”

  “Can’t do that either. Saturday we have to go you-know-where.”

  This Tim had forgotten completely. They would be at Earl and Erica’s house for what Billy was calling Alien 2. And Tim would be alone in Jill’s house. No Jill, no Monty, but no kids either: a skewed stanza of the Mt. Monadnock Blues.

  “Well, that should be fun,” he said, purging irony, going for upbeat.

  “Tons,” said Billy, purging everything except irony.

  “I love my boat,” said Cindy. “It’s really pretty.”

  Saturday afternoon, on his own, Tim hiked up Barrett Mountain and crossed a gap to New Ipswich Mountain. Just rambling under a cool bright sky. Apart from the absence of rain, it struck him that this was not so different from what he might be doing in Donegal. Part of what he might be doing, at any rate.

  Sixty-five miles from Boston (which he could make out from the high ledges: the Pru, the Hancock, the gas tanks on Morrissey Boulevard) these peaks were surprisingly wild. The forest lay thick and unbroken below. Only from the summits could he discern villages (church steeples ascending through the crown of greenery) and one large farm. No visible roads, no cars.

  That night he drove to the Souhegan River town of Wilton to see a Spanish film he’d never heard of. The movie had such wonderful faces, children’s faces in particular, that it pleased him in spite of all their troubles. When it ended, he stood outside on a quiet hill, gazing at the moon and at the moonlike clockface on the theater’s old brick tower. A cigarette break without the cigarette.

  Then he went back in to watch the film again. Why rush back to an empty house? And it worked for fifteen minutes, or as long as the popcorn lasted. After that, the story was entirely too recent and a bit thin. It was just the faces, really. Why watch it twice?

  The answer was to take himself closer to bedtime, for there were limitations on a gay country squire with the Blues. Time would solve this, he told himself on the ride home, he would locate the outposts of gay life in the Monadnocks. Such outposts were inevitable, and the percentages were incontrovertible. This was one of the statistical Big Three, according to Peter Clippinger, who after all had a bloody Ph. D. in statistics.

  If you flipped one thousand coins, five hundred would be heads and five hundred tails. Of any one thousand favorites at any racetrack in the world, three hundred and thirty-three would win. And if you met one thousand men, one hundred of them would be gay.

  If not, someone was lying.

  Around midnight, it began to rain. A new record for sunshine had been set, but now finally rain was pounding the roof and Tim woke to the rattling and blowing. He heard a drip somewhere inside the house, a leak. When dawn came, technically, it remained dark: water bucketed down from a sky as black as licorice.

  Tim set a plastic tub beneath the drip, by the staircase, marvelling that it would be his responsibility (not Monty’s, not some landlord’s) to fix the roof. A radical concept. Tim had never owned a house.

  He brought in the Sunday Globe (still delivered, still billed to Montgomery Hergesheimer) and made coffee. He read his way to nine o’clock, when the rain slackened. After that, a time-release capsule of changes, by the half-hour: a mist, a brightening haze, then the sun boring through. The road was like honed slate, a slick dark gray, and Jill’s nasturtiums spilled over the rims of wooden tubs in cousinly reds and oranges.

  Neighbors came out to work their gardens, but Tim wasn’t ready for chatting or even friendly waving. He kept to the kitchen, hiding among the endless vapid sections of newsprint. Drinking more coffee. It was not that he yearned to be elsewhere. Donegal? Not really. He yearned to be nowhere, and to be no one in particular, a little while longer. There was the roof, however.

  He pulled an extension ladder from the garage and climbed up to find the leak. Not that he knew what to look for. Would there be a symptom he could recognize, a gash or gaping hole in the asphalt? Tim had helped his father with roof repairs, but he never bothered to pay attention; he fetched things on command and handed them to Rex.

  He should have paid attention. There was so much he should have learned from Rex, skills that now, as a householder, he would find invaluable. In the country, people still saw to their own houses; in the city, they watched a million fixit shows on TV and then called in workmen.

  The good news was that he didn’t fall off. The pitch was gentle and there was a comfortable enough friction underfoot. The bad news was that the roof looked fine. It looked like a roof. Tim considered a run to the hardware store, to ask intelligent questions, but the timing was iffy. The kids were due home soon.

  On the ground below, all colors had been heightened by the rain and focussed by a spectacular clarity in the air. This air, with no aroma of its own, blended ambient gusts from the damp earth and steaming fields. If there were airtasters, equivalent to wine-tasters, they would pronounce upon a rare vintage indeed here in the Monadnocks. Caught between deep breaths and not such deep thoughts, Tim realized he had not spoken to a human being all day.

  Maybe Billy knew about roofs. He really might. But when Billy arrived, he did not seem up to much. Tim was stunned by the change in him. Had vampires done this? Both of them were pale and puffy in the bright light, and so small. So silent. Of course Erica, who had brought them back, was still present. Between her opaque expression and their silence, Tim wondered if something truly awful had transpired at you-know-where. Had Earl shot, cooked, and eaten the little ad litem?

  As he cast about for a pleasant remark, something mending, it occurred to Tim that he and Ric must look like bitterly divorced parents making the dread Sunday exchange. Ric was pale and puffy herself, so maybe it was just the soaking rain, the general sogginess of the morning. Maybe Tim looked every bit as puffy. But she seemed worse than that. Her large green eyes were moist, her shoulders sloped low. The children had literally run into the house.

  “Did it go okay?” he said, gently.

  “Not especially. No.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. They mostly ate. I mean, I bought five sacks of groceries and I think they ate it all. I’m not so sure they didn’t eat the bags.”

  “They can definitely eat, those two.”

  “Like raccoons,” said Erica, with a halting giggle. There was relief in spilling some of this out. “That little boy is systematic. He goes through the cupboards by category, you know. First he eats all the fruit, then he eats all the cereal
—”

  “You are allowed to tell him things.”

  “I know that, Tim. I didn’t want to. I didn’t mind him eating, I’m just telling you.”

  “Sorry. I appreciate your telling me. A lot.”

  Which he did. A friendly give-and-take with Erica? Unprecedented this quarter century. Still, Tim did come close to mocking her about the words she used. Systematic. Category. Those were four syllable words. Did Earl allow that many syllables in his house?

  But Earl was not the point. Ric was his sister and the point was they were connecting. She seemed almost glad to see him.

  “So it was a normalcy thing. Kids, food, hanging around.…”

  “You might say that. Personally I had a real hard time with it. I found it very painful.”

  “You did?” New enough she was speaking to him. That she was speaking of emotion, confiding in him, was downright extreme. Erica experienced pain? (And said so?) But it was real, it carried no hint of manipulation.

  “The little girl looks exactly like her, you know. Exactly like Jilly did. To me, anyway.”

  “I agree. And it can get to you.”

  “It’s like seeing a ghost. She kept on hitting these ghostly notes, and I just felt so bad about everything.”

  Tim put out his arm and Erica leaned into him, snug against his shoulder. Molten lava flowing down Mt. Monadnock could not have stunned him more.

  “Feel bad about what, though? You didn’t do anything.”

  “I sure as shit didn’t.”

  Erica pulled back to deal with her nose, but she didn’t break away. Leaned back, leaned in again. For her the connection was literal, as though a live wire ran from her, through Tim, to Jill. She had been shaken by these hours with Jill’s kids and Earl didn’t get it, hadn’t noticed. There was no room for sadness or reflection in his day-planner.

  “All of it. Mama and Daddy. Jill. And you, you lousy—”

  “Faggot.”

  “Creep. Lousy creep. You act like I don’t count you as human, or something. Well guess what, Tim, you don’t count me either. You don’t. I’m just this dumb bunny to you.”

  “Come on,” he said. It was the best he could muster, since Erica was right.

  “Don’t lie. If you won’t I won’t. I know we’re both to blame, but it’s Mama who suffered. And Jilly.”

  “Jilly didn’t suffer, she just got hit by a car. Really, Ric, she was fine. She was one of the happiest people I know.”

  “Like that’s not suffering.”

  Tim wanted the weight of her head again, the tickle of her long hair on his cheek, but the spell was broken. It was so simple to connect physically, so much harder to connect emotionally. Determined to push through barriers, he reached for her hand.

  “Let me show you something,” he said, steering her to where a grassy lane, farmwagon wide, snaked its way through sumac.

  “What?”

  “Just this.”

  “What about it, though?”

  “Does it remind you of anything?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Come on, you’re not trying. Look at it.”

  “Tim, it’s nice and all, but—”

  “The path to the fort. Behind the Dreyers’ barn. It’s been transported across time and space.”

  “You really are messed up,” she said, but with a softness; with affection.

  “You don’t see it?”

  “A little, maybe. I mean, I forgot the silly fort to begin with. It was a lot more important to you.”

  “No way. It was all of ours.”

  “You thought. I never wanted to go hide in the woods and pretend we were starving to death. To me that was a sicko game.”

  “We had all different games there. Fun times. And I happen to know you and Sibby used to go there, later.”

  “I forgot that too,” she grinned.

  Back in the driveway, she leaned against her car. She seemed to require a leaning-post, of one sort or another. And she did seem reluctant to leave.

  “You could hang out with us if you want,” said Tim. “We might take the canoe someplace, but there’s room for a fourth.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Erica had made a firm decision not to cry until she found herself completely alone. From everyone’s sight. But her brother was being so sweet it wasn’t easy—to hold back her tears or to get going so she could release them. The most annoying part was that her nose kept running. She had a crying nose.

  “I’d love it if you did stay a while.”

  “I’m fine, Timmy, don’t worry about me. Sometimes a person can wake up a little, that’s all.”

  “I hear you.”

  “It takes you and shakes you, as Earl would say.”

  “Noted philosopher that he is.”

  “You’re hard on him too, you know. Earl’s not what you think.”

  Tim scanned his mind for some way to squeeze out a drop of praise onto Earl, if only to maintain them conversationally. Failing, he settled for hugging her again, and patting the rump of her car as she climbed inside.

  “Thanks, Tim,” she said, though she could not say what for. Erica was intrigued by the contradiction: she had defended Earl, while she remained distinctly pissed off at him. Maybe it was in honor of that oily little preacher in Gideon Township. For better and for worse? That would be Earl.

  Tim kept waving as she backed out, but Erica’s hands and eyes were busy. She waved once, a hand flung out the window, as she negotiated the bend at the mailbox. Then she accelerated. She had gone a quarter of a mile down the road before she pulled onto a grass siding and finally let herself cry for her sister.

  “So, how did it go over there?” said Tim, back in business. Billy and Cindy were in the kitchen, still eating. He had collected just three bags of groceries, so they were apt to make short work of it. Come to think, one bag contained nothing but paper goods.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing special. Did you have an okay time?”

  Cindy shrugged, her mezzo mezzo. Billy stared the slack-jawed teenage stare which translates, roughly, as “the grownup is perhaps insane?”

  “Was our Ms. Taggart any nicer to you?”

  This time Billy did the shrugging, while Cindy made her I-just-stepped-on-a-slug face. Tim kept needing another next sentence. Until he figured out what he needed was another next topic.

  “So, what’s the plan?”

  “Can we try the boats?” said Cindy.

  “Why not. We’ll take them to Gilmore and race them.”

  “Like Pooh-Sticks!” said Cindy.

  “No way, Simp. There’s no bridge.”

  “Pooh-Sticks without the bridge. Open water Pooh-Sticks,” said Tim, glad for this first small sign of life from his nephew. “And if someone should happen to win—”

  “Someone has to win,” said Billy, more engaged by the perceived inaccuracy than by the prize. He had no desire to be engaged by anything; had craved an escape, some time alone. Earl had behaved so strangely that Billy spent a lot of energy propping up the situation, patching over the blanks. Right now, he would welcome any blanks, maybe a whole blank week’s worth.

  “It could be a flatfooted tie,” Tim pointed out. “Or both vessels could capsize.”

  What was it with Billy? Had he gone over to Earl, with his guns and tin cans and fishing poles? It could be age. Billy had aged in recent weeks, much more so than his sister. As her knight and protector, he stood staunch. But he was a child and she was a child, not long ago, where now he was something different—a tweener, between childhood and adolescence. So it could be confusion.

  Whatever it was, Tim had sat around long enough. It was time for action and by God if they don’t enlist you draft them. That was Rex Bannon’s ringing pronunciamento on the Vietnam War. Naturally, Tim had disagreed; had hated his father’s oversimplification. He even dared to argue the point (though never too far, with Rex) as the tide was already turning against the draft, and the war. �
�Hut hut,” he said now, nevertheless, and with an almost Marinely timbre. “Let’s gear it up for full dress canoe drill.”

  Secretly, he disagreed with Rex on everything in those years. Constantly he pondered how he could have been assigned to a father so unlike himself. He had to turn forty and lose a sister before he grasped the obvious, that kids never get to pick their parents, or their parentis. It was like lightning or tornadoes, a natural cataclysm. Authority Happens.

  “Do I have to come?” Billy demurred.

  Testing? If so, Tim was ready. “Indeed you do, Billy Boy Billy Boy. This outfit would be seriously undermanned without you.”

  “It’s the real estate,” said Karl that night. “It has to be. And Wal-Mart could be part of the picture.”

  “Wal-Mart the store?”

  “They are looking at locations in the area.”

  “Here?”

  “Here is one of the possibilities. Earl’s buying up every buildable lot in sight of Cedar Street. He’s playing Monopoly.”

  “Karl, he can’t sell the house. Or, at least, he can’t keep the money from a sale.”

  “Can’t he? Isn’t that a bit naïve?”

  Undeniably, it was. Who knew all the moves a realtor-wheeler-dealer had (legal and otherwise) for shaping a fiscal reality? Certainly not Timothy Bannon. He reconsidered the glaze on Erica’s face, her half-articulated distress. Had Ric glimpsed a future in which Earl dumped the kids on her and ran off with a younger version?

  “Hell,” he said, still Marinely. “Why don’t I go over there and ask him about it, point blank?”

  “Over where? To Earl’s house?”

  “Why not? I’ll just shake the truth out of him.”

  Karl eyed Tim with considerable unspoken sarcasm. Recognizing the stirrings of a “Rex Attack,” however, he played along—pretended Tim might really turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger.