Go, then . . . get rid of it.
“Louis?”
“I have something to tell you, Joe.”
She was silent, waiting.
“But I can’t do it until I get home.”
There was another long pause. It was so quiet he could hear a purring sound and suddenly he could see her, sitting on that lumpy blue denim sofa cradling her big orange tabby cat.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
CHAPTER 12
It was Sunday morning. Frances had left early to go to church. Phillip had slept late on the sofa again. Louis fixed himself a bowl of cereal and read every section of the Sunday Free Press. He was standing in the hallway looking at the gallery of pictures on the wall when Phillip finally came down from his shower.
“You get any sleep?” Louis asked.
“Not much,” Phillip answered.
Louis’s gaze went back to the photographs. “Is that me?” he asked.
Phillip pulled his glasses from his shirt pocket to peer at the photograph. It showed three boys sitting on a bench holding ice cream cones, a tan-skinned boy sandwiched between two bigger white kids. They wore T-shirts and jeans and the background looked like an amusement park.
“That’s you in the middle,” Phillip said.
“Was that Edgewater?” Louis asked.
“Yes.”
“Who are the other two boys?”
“You don’t remember them?” Phillip asked.
“No, sorry.”
Phillip didn’t seem to be in any mood to talk, but finally he pointed. “The one on the left is named Kevin. He’s a doctor now. The other one is Jimmy. He’s in Marquette Prison for murder.”
Louis’s eyes moved over the faces again. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember the other boys, but he had been too miserable to care when he first got here. Phillip had been the one who had changed that, pulling him out of his isolation, holding his head above the pain until he could feel solid ground for himself.
“I need to get out for a while,” Louis said. “Let’s go for a drive.”
Phillip slipped off his glasses. “Fran is—”
“She’s at church,” Louis said. “She said she wouldn’t be home before three.”
It was cold but sunny as Louis headed the Impala west on U.S. 12. Phillip was quiet, looking out at the cornfields. Louis was glad Phillip hadn’t asked why they were going out to the Irish Hills. He wouldn’t have been able to explain, because it was nothing more than a feeling. A feeling that Phillip was drowning and needed something to grab on to right now.
And Frances . . .
She needed something, too. This morning, before she left for church, Louis had sat her down at the kitchen table and talked to her. He had apologized for his role in Phillip’s deception, and she had accepted it. But there was a lingering hurt in her eyes. When he told her he wanted to take Phillip back out to the Irish Hills, he expected tears. But she just nodded.
“If going out there helps him, then do it,” she said. “Help him finish this, Louis. Help him bury this so we can move on.”
The monotony of the soy and corn fields was giving way to gently rolling pasture lands now. They were entering the Irish Hills. The road bent and dipped, dotted with small businesses. An antique store housed in an old brick tavern. A grocery with signs for bait fish and LaBatt’s hanging in the dusty windows. A plain clapboard building called the Sand Lake Inn with a flicking neon leprechaun and a menu boasting deep-fried walleye dinner, $4.25.
They passed several tourist attractions—the Stagecoach Stop with its empty parking lot, the Mystery Hill with its shuttered ticket window. And the Prehistoric Forest with crumbling plaster dinosaurs and a weather-beaten woolly mammoth, its tusks propped up with cinder blocks.
Louis noticed that Phillip was taking it all in, his elbow propped on the window, his hand under his chin. The road curved and climbed and suddenly, two giant wood towers loomed ahead. At the crest of the hill, Louis slowed.
The towers looked like two stocky lighthouses, with peeling white paint and huge fading letters that spelled out WELCOME TO THE IRISH HILLS.
“Let’s stop for a second,” Phillip said.
Louis pulled into the empty parking lot that faced a deserted miniature golf course. Phillip got out and started away from the car. Louis joined him.
“I could have sworn they were taller,” Phillip said, his eyes moving up over the towers.
“Memories can be unreliable,” Louis said.
Phillip glanced back at him and smiled slightly. “When did you become so philosophic?”
“It’s not mine. It’s from a friend.”
Phillip looked back up at the towers. “There wasn’t supposed to be two of them,” he said, “but after the first guy built his, the fellow who owned the property next door got jealous and built one even higher. They kept adding on and adding on, waging their little war, and finally one day they just gave up. Those men are gone but the towers are still here.” He paused. “They don’t even look like they belong together, do they?”
Louis shrugged, deciding it was best to let Phillip wander.
“See that little bridge up there?” Phillip said, pointing. “One day somebody got the idea that the towers needed to be joined together forever. So they built a bridge between them.”
Phillip pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. He drew in heavily, then let it out in one long, slow breath. For several minutes, they just stood there in the cold sun while Phillip smoked his cigarette. Finally, Phillip tossed the butt to the dirt.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I have something I want to show you.”
They backtracked on U.S. 12 until Phillip steered him down a side road. It wound among small cottages, every once in a while offering up a glimpse of water beyond. Phillip pointed to a place called Jerry’s Pub and told Louis to pull in.
Inside, a fire was burning and the guys at the bar—a gregarious mix of young longhairs in down vests and old guys in flannel—were watching the football game. Louis ordered beers and they took them outside to the leaf-strewn deck. Phillip stood at the railing looking out over the green-gray lake. He was quiet for a long time.
“This is Wampler’s Lake. It hasn’t changed that much since I was last here,” Phillip said finally.
“When was that?” Louis asked.
“September 1951.” Phillip set his beer bottle on the railing, his eyes scanning the far shoreline.
Louis could see something change in Phillip, a loosening in his shoulders, a softening in his eyes. Instinct was telling him this lake was where he had brought Claudia. And that bringing Phillip here now had been the right thing to do.
“It was Labor Day weekend,” Phillip said. “Rodney brought her to the park near her house—her mother was away—and I picked her up on my motorcycle.” A small smile tipped his lips. “She was afraid and clung to my back the whole way out. I drove faster so she’d hold on harder.”
Phillip looked to the left, pointing. “There was a pavilion over there with an arcade. It had one of those machines where you could put in a dime and make this claw thing pick up a prize. I won her this