Once Connie Mulligan, who knew Ray in high school, said she was sure she saw him on a TV game show but Connie had been losing her mind bit by bit and no one flinched at the possibility. Still, I wrote the TV station, sent them a picture, but never heard back. It was futile all around.
No, I was done searching.
Then, about ten years ago, Ray would have been nearing fifty, a letter came in the mail, addressed to me. That didn’t stop Pa from ripping it open.
“Looks like your brother’s surfaced” he said with a mouth full of cheese sandwich, tossing the wrinkled letter to me like it was a used Kleenex. That was Pa. Once he crossed a line it stayed crossed. He had wanted no part of his pot-smoking draft-dodging son, no part of his memory. It fell on me to do all the grieving there was to grieve.
The note didn’t say much but I did keep it in my nightstand for some years to come. Put it in one of those plastic sheets to prevent it from yellowing. The plastic sheet protector was worth more than the note, really. Just said “H. Some day you will understand. I wish I could have taken you with me. R.”
“Take you with me where?” I shouted at the sorry piece of paper, not even a nice little note card just some worthless sheet of yellow lined paper he pulled from a three-ring binder with the frayed nubby edges where it tore loose from the spiral bind. Week after week I’d pull another nub off until the side was smooth. That’s how he faded, one nub at a time.
“Hannah, you’re making a big mistake. This is going to add 20 years on you.” Darlene was talking about the gray again. I’m not even sure she heard the part about getting my brother’s land.
“It may be the best 20 years yet,” I say, slipping an extra five in her apron pocket. “I’ll be back in two weeks. No color next time. Just a trim.”
“I’m telling you. You’re making a big mistake.”
Darlene cared about me. She really did care.
4.
WINSTON BACKED HIS TRUCK down the driveway onto Blind Shady Bend and became aware of a new groaning sound, a painful metallic gasp as he shifted gears, heading toward the first bend in the road. The truck had one hell of a time bumping over the potholes that came at regular intervals from the edge of his property down past the old fill site, and only barely pshutted its way down the hairpin turn at the defunct water tower. He couldn’t recall the last oil change, and figured it was overdue for new rotors. He sighed at the very thought of it.
Winston didn’t feel like waving this morning. Lately, he’d been getting lazier with his waves and today he had no interest at all. There were fewer and fewer folks around that he recognized and none of the new ones bothered to wave back. The Henleys gone to a nursing home somewhere in Cornville. He’d meant to pay a visit but time got away from him and they were likely dead by now anyway. Mrs. Heilsbrun after the second turn and before the car cemetery, she and him had a wave going on some twenty years now. Phil Heilsbrun used to come into the store, stocking up on roofing nails in late autumn, hose attachments in late winter, always ahead of the game that guy was. But he stopped coming around some years back and sure enough, heart attack had got him. With Vera it was the cancer. In her breasts. Winston sometimes thought it was his fault, that if he’d only touched her more, he might have noticed the lump before it was too late.
But since their spouses passed, it seemed like he and Mrs. Heilsbrun had grown shyer, their waves more timid. Used to be one of them would sing over the motor of his car, “Looks like we’re in for a warm streak,” or “Hope you had better luck with your huckleberries. Mine just fell rotten.” Something cheery and short while he slowed down to make the curve. These last few years it was just half a wave, neither wanting the other to make too much of the friendliness.
He had one hand on the steering wheel and his waving hand poised and ready, just in case, when Pete came running out into the road. Winston slammed on his brakes which brought out yet another new sound, a more troubling one, high pitched and haunting, like it came from the dead.
“Hey, did you hear?” called Pete, breathless and still in his pajamas.
“Hear what?”
“Lundale got a call from some old lady asking about my land” pointing to the vacant site adjacent to his. “Can you beat that?”
“It’s not your land, Pete” Winston reminded him, then wished he hadn’t. Last thing he wanted was to engage Pete in this kind of half-baked gossip that spread like wildfires in these parts and died down just as quickly.
“Heard it from the source. Turns out Blackwell left the land to his sister. Can you beat that?”
The idea of someone coming in to claim this property, maybe clean it up a bit, did capture Winston’s interest. Against his better judgment, he pulled up the emergency brake, resigned to getting the whole story.
“Lundale says she sounded strange but wouldn’t say much more than that. Wonder if she’s anything like her brother?”
Winston never knew the man but remembered the rash of motorcycle noise that roared through the trees back when Vera was bedridden. In those days he was exhausted all the time, with Vera needing constant tending, keeping up the hardware store, trying to cook himself and the boy a decent dinner. Last thing he needed was to be awakened by roaring engines in the middle of the night. But he didn’t inquire, figured other neighbors would complain if it got too bad.
“That was a long time ago, Pete. I’d guess 15 years at least.” His son Robin was grown, a father himself now, so it had to be a decade, at least, maybe more. At the time, Winston had worried about his son getting into trouble over there but the trouble went away on its own. Once every few months or so, a lone motorcycle would ride up and Winston figured it to be the owner, came to recognize the harmonica wailing through the madrones in the late night air. There’d be that sweet skunky smell mixing with honeysuckle in late September but by and large the place was quiet. Apparently this mystery neighbor wanted no trouble, caused no trouble, and deserved his tranquility as much as the next man.
Winston didn’t dare open his mouth, but he did recall reading something a few months back about a motorcycle crash on Highway 49 that killed the Blackwell fellow. It happened all the time. Bikers thinking they could make it across the 4-lane stretch, trying to outrun the semis that came barreling down the winding highway. This time the motorcyclist had lost out to a produce truck heading north. Newspaper said the guy lived on Blind Shady Bend, which is why he’d taken notice.
“Don’t get yourself riled up,” was all he said to Pete. “The property’s been a dump for years. Might be a good thing for all of us if someone cleaned it up.”
With that, he raised his hand, giving Pete a full-on no-nonsense wave, and headed on down Blind Shady Bend and into town.
Winston held the title of General Manager of Highway Hardware, complete with his own office (a huge closet really), two tall metal file cabinets (bottom drawers stuck shut), and a sense of stature and significance that no one thing before in his life had come close to providing. He’d started as a stock boy almost thirty-seven years before, and he still felt just a little more upright when he walked through the front door, past Joyce and Gladys at the registers, quick nod to Roger in Paint, Gil in Electric, and Frank, too old to fire, Frank who barely fit between the aisles but knew plumbing like nobody else.
Winston took pleasure in shaking out his heavy metal spray of keys, the longest of which unlocked the metal door marked “W. TILL – MANAGER.” He’d automatically take a quick shy glance behind before entering. Even at this point in life, when doubts and fatigue and burgeoning confusion interrupted him at unexpected intervals, the certainty of his relationship to that one small place kept him from feeling that his life was all but past.
Most customers preferred to stand around and wait for