The voice sounds familiar in a way that makes his head break apart and swarm, searching for which decade it hurtles at him from. Not as far back as Tante Ida’s pink pies.
The van is patchy-looking and has a sorry-sounding skip to the engine. The guy still has a ponytail, though he’s looking a bit thin on top. Long skinny jaw. Professional-class teeth. No beard. A laugh like hiccups, like Goofy, the big cartoon dog.
Jack Holmes. Gordon embraces him. Jack laughs. “We got lost and rode all over hell or I’d have been here earlier. Then for a second, I thought no one was here. I thought maybe you sold this place and moved up back with the others. With your . . . uh . . . harem.” He laughs.
Jack Holmes, yes. One of those guys who started out in law school, headed for “success,” then descended into social work and educational newsletter stuff, sporadically funded statehouse lobbying for ridiculous things like support for prisoners’ rights, which don’t exist, and the rights of all races of ex-cons, minimum wagers of all races, welfare recipients of all races, animals, trees, clean water, and breathable air. So Jack Holmes pitched “success” overboard. And yes, the descent has continued, Gordon suspects, eyeing the mottled van.
Gordon stands now with his hands in his pockets, smiling funnyish. “Well, it’s good to see you. You’re looking good for an old warrior on the losing side. Howzit goin’? I mean personally.”
“Gordie, I don’t have a personal life,” Jack says with his little hiccupy laugh. Then he grinds his fists into his sides. “Cold. Feels like a frost. Shit, you’d think this was the Alps. The difference in the weather here is mighty noticeable.”
“Come in then.”
The guy turns back to the van, kind of hops over to the door, which is still hanging open, wiggles a finger for Gordon to come. Then stops, turns with his back to the van, and says, “We need to talk. I want you to meet these people. You can’t get the picture unless you . . . see the picture, okay? These are neighbors of mine. You remember Aaron Rosenthal?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I heard somethin’ . . . from the grapevine . . . that you . . . well, tell me if it’s not true . . . but I heard you took in a kid . . . an orphan of the drug war. The newsworthy dangerous-as-the-day-is-long Lisa Meserve, her little girl?”
Gordon stares into his eyes, says nothing, but wiggles both eyebrows.
“Okay, I thought so. Well, Aaron, he—it’s bad news. You probably heard he went to federal prison.”
Gordon lowers his eyes.
“In fact, Aaron doesn’t exist anymore. He, ah, killed himself in prison . . . down in Georgia. He uh . . . beat himself to death.” He laughs his burbly laugh.
Gordon looks back into Jack’s face. He says without expression, “Pretty funny.” Then the Tourette’s flinch.
“Real funny. And neat. I mean, it would take a certain gift, wouldn’t you say?”
Gordon nods.
Jack hugs himself now, gets a shiver. “Jesus, it feels like snow.” He looks up. “Well, anyway, Aaron had that place over in Norridgewock . . . nice chunk of land . . . it was actually his great-aunt’s . . . she left it to him . . . but just this little bungalow . . . I mean a big dog couldn’t turn around in it, but, man, there was land. Seventy acres. Pretty spot. You know, something somebody would want to grab from a person too poor to finance a team of lawyers. Well, Aaron’s wife dies, Michele. You didn’t know her. She was after the days. She died of breast cancer, age of thirtysomething. And guess what. There’s two kids . . .”
Gordon’s eyes leave Jack’s face and slide over to the van. Then back to Jack’s eyes.
“. . . then he marries Sarah,† who adopts his kids legal smeagle. You know Aaron, attuned to details. He might have had too many interests but you can’t deny his clearheaded perfectionism. I mean, he was a complex man. And life goes on. Sarah started a little kennel. Raised Dobies. And, well, you know Aaron had a . . . green thumb . . . just enjoyed organic farming and . . . and . . . marijuana retailing. You know Aaron . . . wouldn’t hurt a soul . . . no stealing, no drunk driving, a million friends, a million customers . . . and one enemy . . . that’s all it takes is one enemy . . . a spy or somebody mad at you and their finger dialing the drug war hotline . . . one call. In this case, it was a spy.” He lowers his voice. Jerks his thumb toward the darkness beyond the open van door. “These guys have seen action, Gordie.” Shakes his head. No laugh this time. “They broke her arm. Blinded and loosened one eye.” Points at the van. “Had the kids in foster homes . . . two different ones, for two years.” Jack jerks his thumb toward the van again.
“And the narcs grabbed their house and land,” says Gordon, folding his arms across his chest.
Jack snorts. “You psychic?” He snorts again. “Yeah, the usual. A great tradition. Like the cavalry and the surveyors behind them riding in to save the day . . . from those goddamn hostiles . . . yep, very American tradition. Oily as clockworks.” He opens his palm on the van roof. “Come look here and see what’s been made homeless, roaming from one relative’s place to another. No one wants them. Though of course the DHS would steal the kids again if she hadn’t lost their hounds in the dust. It’s one of the DHS rules . . . you can’t move a lot.”
Gordon steps closer, looks inside. A woman about forty with straight white-blond hair and dark roots, haggard face, her gray eyes on him. Neither eye looks very “loose” but she has an expression like a dog that wants to rip out his throat, like a dog that’s been poked and poked and kicked and kicked and kicked again. Her face is the color of ice. Her shoulders are small. She’s bunched up in a big sweater but she still looks cold, even with the heater blasting away and the engine running.
Two preteen or early teen kids. Painfully beautiful faces. Thick blond brushy haircuts, deep Jewish eyes, both sitting up perfectly straight like two bright mushrooms that have appeared under a dark damp porch. He remembers Aaron so well now, ever alert. Aaron, always joking. The kind of jokes that tried to be funny but his sense of irony was usually poorly timed. But you laughed because Aaron was sometimes a little too sad. You wanted to stand between him and that blue-tinged zone. Maybe he did beat himself to death.
“Hey,” Gordon says to the woman.
She stares at him, looks him over. Her mouth opens as if to snarl. She’s missing a tooth. She says, “Hey.”
Jack whispers, “You want them, don’t you?”
Gordon looks again into the fierce weary eyes of the woman and then backs out of the van doorway, then nudges a finger along down one side of his mustache. “For how long?”
“Forever, I guess.”
Gordon steps off the porch of the old gray farmplace with intentions of heading up to the Settlement along the woodsy path, a shortcut with a little bridge and large, sort of fantasy trees leaning in. Tonight is his night with Misty in her cottage with her cats who all despise him, his body usually occupying the best of Misty’s sunporch chairs as he and she gab about their day. And then he of course always takes up most of the bed. For the cats he doesn’t even make an effort. No invitations to his lap. No stroking them to set off purrs. Also he groans in his sleep and sleepwalks corpselike, which causes all the tails to flick in disdain.
Now, just as he takes a deep breath of the evening, he sees someone standing by the monster ash tree in the sandy lot next to the road, a small elderly person with a two-fisted grip on a leatherlike pocketbook bigger than a bread box. He veers in her direction. There is no parked car and he only vaguely recalls a vehicle slowing down a half hour ago, maybe stopping on the tar road, maybe a thump that would be a slammed door, but he