by Micah Nathan
Dan, as I did, had good social camouflage. It wasn’t that he was ignored, it was that his presence filled the blind spot, shoring up the sides while others—Howie, Dan, Dr. Cade—took front and center. He was the person in the photo you didn’t notice until someone pointed him out. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly cynical, I think that’s why it took so long to find his body. His uncanny ability to blend in with his surroundings extended even to his death.
Horsehead Hills was farther than I expected, an hour and a half from Dr. Cade’s house heading west, into ski country that during the warm months lay fallow as a stripped field, only to explode with expensive cars and whooping college students after first snowfall. We were first going to the Whistle Stop Café, a posh little restaurant built into the side of a hill, famous for its cantilevered design that had it jutting out over a rushing stream. We drove until the glare of the sun began to dip below the swooping hills in the distance, passing the time playing twenty questions and a similar game that Dan liked called Smoke, involving metaphors and famous people. I told Dan more about my childhood, and about my parents’ farm on the plains and the intensity of the storms that lashed at anything sticking out from the unending flatness of the Midwest. Dan was fascinated with the Midwest, he told me, having grown up in Ithaca, New York, where his father had been a tax attorney and his mother taught philology at Cornell University. He had always lived among lush hills and gorges with waterfalls spilling over ravines, and the concept of being surrounded by an infinite ocean of earth was terrifying, as he put it.
“So it doesn’t stop,” he repeated what I had just said. “It just stays flat, as far as you can see.”
I nodded, staring ahead at the rising road.
“I think I’d develop agoraphobia. Didn’t you ever feel insignificant? Maybe that’s not the right word.” He fingered his seat belt. “Vulnerable, maybe? All alone with nothing around you, and those clouds you described, like giant hands pressing down on your house…”
“I loved it,” I said. This was true. I couldn’t imagine any place more beautiful. For me, there’s nothing more sublime than an unbroken vista, absolutely uniform despite all of nature’s inclination toward chaos and variety. And while I agree that forests and streams and meadows are more traditionally beautiful, the scope of far-stretching plains is the equivalent of natural modern art: minimalist, brutalist, evoking uneasiness and uncertainty.
We talked about Aberdeen for a while, our classes and professors and so forth, and Dan told me he was a senior.
“But I thought you were only seventeen,” I said.
“I am. I skipped two grades at Camden.”
“Wow,” I said. I felt an unexpected pang of envy. Grade-skipping, I had thought, was my household claim to fame. “No one told me.”
“We didn’t want to steal your thunder.” He chuckled and started to play with the automatic door locks. Up, down, up, down. “It’s nice having you in the house, though. Sometimes I feel too young around those guys.”
I wanted to tell him I understood, but I said nothing.
“How long have you been at the house?” I said.
“About two years, now,” Dan said. “My family’s known Professor Cade for a long time. Mother met him about six years ago at some conference at Brown. She’s had a crush on him ever since. After my dad died she wanted something more but it didn’t work out. That’s all I know…”
“I didn’t know you lost your dad,” I said.
Dan looked out his window. “When I was fourteen. He used to fly his Cessna from Ithaca to Buffalo, to visit some friends he had there, some law firm in downtown, old law school buddies, I think. One night something went wrong and that was that. They found the fuselage about six hundred yards from the crash site.”
“That sucks,” I said.
“Yeah…” Dan sighed and shrugged. “What can you do?”
We said nothing else for a few moments, to let the memories dissipate.
I had so many questions I didn’t know where to start so I just blurted it out:
“Last month I found Art passed out on the couch. He claimed he was sleeping but I don’t believe him. I think he was drugged.”
Dan looked at his fingernails, seemingly unconcerned. “Probably had too much to drink,” he said.
“I don’t think so. I didn’t smell any alcohol.”
“Hmm.” That’s all Dan said.
“Don’t you think that’s strange?” I said.
He widened his eyes and looked at me, surprised, I think, at my continuation of the topic. “Do you?”
I looked away, toward the road. A yellow BUMP sign riddled with pellet holes rushed past.
“Art’s not a druggie,” Dan said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I said. I felt surprisingly nervous. “What was that big argument you guys got into?”
He looked like he didn’t understand.
“Last month, in the ornamental garden,” I said. “He was screaming at you and you stormed off. You guys didn’t talk for a couple of days, and that’s when I found him passed out on the couch.”
Dan shrugged. “Who knows. I can’t remember. It probably had to do with Dr. Cade’s project. I don’t always make my deadlines, and you know how Art can get really moody sometimes…”
“Is it because of Ellen?” I said.
“Is what because of Ellen?”
“Art’s moods,” I said. “Are he and Ellen having problems?”
Dan started to play with the locks again. “If he is you can’t blame him. Art’s under incredible pressure. He has his schoolwork, the project, and then there’s the whole Ellen and Howie situation.”
That hit me like a punch to the gut.
“Ellen and Howie have a situation?” I said. I couldn’t imagine it. In some way I could see how Howie might be attractive to the right kind of girl. He was big, and loud, and brash, and charismatic in the way big loud brash men are. But Ellen seemed far too sophisticated for him. If anything she seemed amused by Howie, but that was as far as it went.
Dan popped the lock up, pushed it back down. “I have my suspicions about them,” he said. “They drive each other crazy. Crazy in that grammar school kind of way. You know—the boy you tease is the boy you like.”
“Does Art know about this?” I was incredulous.
“I think so. I don’t know if he cares. Ellen and him…they’re a strange couple.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. Actually, I didn’t, but I wanted Dan to keep talking.
“I don’t know if Art really cares about Ellen. I mean, he loves her and all, but she’s certainly not a top priority. Sometimes I think Art forgets what he has. Ellen’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.”
I nodded. I know.
“Art can be obsessive,” Dan said. “When he sets his mind on something…he shuts everything else out.”
“He came into my room one night,” I said, excited at having something to contribute, “and asked me to check his back for skin cancer. He didn’t believe me when I told him it was only a freckle.”
Dan shook his head. “You should see when he gets a cold. He’s always afraid it’s something like the plague or tuberculosis.”
The road curved sharply and Dan directed me up a narrow driveway, gravel crunching under our tires, toward a small white home with a screened, wraparound porch. I saw people on the porch, sitting at tables covered in white linen, and when I parked and turned off the ignition the sound of rushing water rose up, and I walked to the edge of the driveway and looked over the hill and saw a stream far below, cutting through dense pine trees and bubbling past water-smoothed boulders. We were surrounded by green hills and a blue, cloud-dotted sky. The air smelled like fresh, cold water.
Dan got out of the car and stretched his arms overhead. He took off his ridiculous hunting cap and smoothed his hair. He looked around, rocked back on his heels, and cleared his throat like he was abou
t to make a speech.
“Would you do me a favor?” he said. He was wringing his cap in his hands.
“Depends on what it is,” I said, smiling.
Dan didn’t smile back. “Please don’t tell Art what I said about him and Ellen. And definitely don’t say a thing to Howie.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“I’m serious,” Dan said. He looked pretty nervous. “I don’t think they’d appreciate it, know what I mean?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m very good at keeping secrets.”
The maitre d’ seated us on the porch, in the corner, next to an older couple who barely talked and instead just sat there and ate their food slowly and purposefully. The woman was wearing a floral dress and she looked very proper, and her husband had on a dark wool suit like he was dressed for a funeral, and when he dropped his napkin and bent down to pick it up he let out a fart that sounded like a buzz saw.
Dan and I shot each other looks, and then we burst out laughing. We couldn’t help it. The waiter came over as I was wiping my eyes with my napkin.
“Maybe we should move,” Dan said. He stared at me and threw a sidelong glance to the older couple. From the corner of my eye I could see the woman was glaring at us.
“We have another table inside,” our waiter said. He looked Art’s age, tall and lanky, with longish, black hair and a slow, easy manner that reminded me of the popular stoners in my Stulton high school. His eyes were soft and sleepy, and he looked like he was smiling even when he wasn’t. I didn’t know Connecticut had anybody like that.
“We’re cool,” I said. The waiter nodded and filled our glasses with water.
“You guys go to Horsehead East?” he said.
Dan took a sip of his water. “We’re not in high school.”
“We go to Aberdeen College,” I said. “It’s about two hours—”
“I know Aberdeen,” the waiter said, sounding annoyed. “I used to go there.”
Dan’s eyebrows raised. “What year did you graduate?”
“I didn’t.” The waiter pushed his hair off his forehead. “I finished up at FCC,” he said. He smiled, daring us to say something.
FCC was Fairwich Community College, also known as “Fucked” among the Aberdeen College snobs. It was like our boogeyman. Flunk out of Aberdeen and you’re Fucked.
We ordered our food, and four drinks later we were acting like idiots, making toasts to everything from Art’s cancerous freckle to St. Benedict of Nursia, whom Dan had been asked to rewrite because my work had been “unsatisfactory,” according to Dr. Cade. I was too drunk to do anything but laugh.
The older couple next to us were long gone, and the early dinner crowd had thinned out, so it felt like Dan and I were the only ones in the restaurant, surrounded by an alcohol haze and plates and plates of food. Dan ordered another bottle of wine, and dessert and then after-dinner drinks, and I drank so much I threw up in the bathroom.
“Ubi est vomitorium?” Dan asked when I returned to the table. I pointed to the restrooms and buried my face in my hands. The room was spinning.
“Hey, man.”
I looked up and there was our waiter. I’d forgotten about him. The Stultonesque Stoner. I sat up and tried to clear my thoughts.
“We’re finished,” I said. “Seriously. I think I left half my dinner in the toilet.”
“I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “But my manager would like you guys to leave.”
Across the room I saw a short man standing at the bar, his arms crossed. The maitre d’ was next to him, and they were both fixing me with a hard stare.
“Is something wrong?” I said.
The waiter glanced at our bottles of wine and empty glasses.
“No problem,” I said, taking out my wallet. “No problem at all. You know, I’m normally not like this.” I couldn’t stop babbling. “I never drank in high school. Honest.”
“Aberdeen will do that,” the waiter said. He sounded completely uninterested in my impromptu confession. “Hey man,” he looked over his shoulder again, then back to me. “Is that crazy old librarian still there?”
I looked up. “Cornelius?”
“That’s the one. Crazy like a fox.”
“I don’t know if he’s crazy,” I said, feeling suddenly defensive. “He might be a little senile. He’s really old.”
“Yeah, well you didn’t work for him,” the waiter said.
“Actually, I do.”
“No shit? Does he talk to you in Latin?”
“Yes. But I know Latin so I—”
“How about pigeons? He ask you to catch pigeons for him?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. Pigeons? I said.
The waiter nodded. “Yep. He’d give me a bag of seed and have me sit in the Quad first thing in the morning and round them up in a little cage.”
I couldn’t believe it. If he tells me he helped Cornelius sacrifice them to Satan, I’ll run out of here screaming, I thought.
“What did he do with the pigeons?” I said.
“I don’t know,” the waiter said. “I didn’t want to know. I’d just give him the cage and that’d be it for the day. And the whole time I’m like, I’m supposed to be a library assistant for this old geezer, not a fucking pigeon poacher. So you know what I did? I said to hell with all of you. Take your elitist bullshit,” he started counting off on his fingers, “and your social cronyism, and your institutionalized racism—you ever see an African-American on campus, other than the help?—and shove it up your gold-rimmed asses.”
It clicked into place. Our waiter was the boy Professor Lang had told me about. The boy who’d dropped out.
The waiter smiled sarcastically at me. “No offense, man.”
“None taken,” I said. “I’m not rich.”
Dan returned. His shirt was half-untucked and he looked flushed. He saluted our waiter and handed him a credit card.
“It’s on me,” Dan said, patting my shoulder. His sleeves were rolled up. “I insist.”
The waiter glanced at the credit card—I could see it was a platinum card of some kind—then looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and walked away.
“You making friends with the locals?” Dan said. He put his hunting cap back on and tucked his shirt in.
The short man and the maitre d’ were still staring at me. There was a young, well-dressed couple seated in the middle of the restaurant, and they were watching us also. I suddenly felt unbearably self-conscious.
“Hardly,” I said.
I drove like a madman to Wiktor’s Orchard, Dan unsure if it was still open but both of us too drunk to come up with a better idea. Luckily it was close to the Whistle Stop, and we soon came upon a hand-painted sign nailed to a massive tree by the side of the road, with a smiling, cartoonish worm sticking out from an apple and pointing the way with one of its three fingers.
WIKTOR’S ORCHARD
50 CENTS A POUND FOR THE BEST APPLES AROUND!
The farmer—a surprisingly young, businesslike man dressed in a Yale sweatshirt, tan khakis, and work boots—was dragging a yellow chain across the road when I pulled into the entrance. He stood still for a moment, eyeing us through the cloud of dust the Jag had kicked up, and then walked over.
“We’re closed,” he said, leaning on his arm, which he had pressed against the roof rim over my window. He had a long face, short blond hair, and his skin was very tan, standing out against his white teeth.
“We drove a long way,” Dan said. “From Fairwich.”
“You two Aberdeen students?” He was talking to me, after glancing briefly at Dan and scanning his bizarre outfit with a troubled frown.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I looked at my hands, wrapped around the leather steering wheel of Howie’s Jag. We must look like spoiled college kids, I thought. And we definitely smell like drunks.
“Well,” he looked away, and then back. “I’m sorry you made the drive all the
way for nothing.” His tone indicated the opposite. “But we’re closing for the day. Come back tomorrow. You know,” he stepped back and eyed his watch, “we do open early.”
“We won’t have the time tomorrow,” Dan said. “We came last year, at this time. You let us stay after dark, and we got our flashlights out of the trunk and wandered around. We bought almost twenty pounds that night.”
“Is that so?” He started for the chain again. “Must’ve been a slow day. I can’t imagine keeping this—”
“My friend said he’d send you some seeds. Arthur Fitch, remember him? You told him about using Foxwhelp apples for cider.”
The farmer stopped and looked up in thought. “Oh, the tall guy, right?” His face loosened a bit and he stood there, chain in hand. “He sent me some rootstock, actually. Awfully kind of him. Claygate Pear-main. It’s still in the nursery, about this high now.” He held his hand at chest height and smiled. “How’d that cider turn out?”
Because I was around Art so much, I often took his charisma for granted. There was a side to him so concerned with etiquette and protocol that at times he seemed prissy. Contrasted with his love of non-conformity the two appeared incompatible, until I realized both achieved the same end. Had Art promised to send that farmer exotic apple seeds and then not delivered, Art would’ve been just like any other punky Aberdeen kid. But he’d gone so far as to pay for rootstock, shipped from some nursery in California, and it was that extravagant, august behavior that made Art so unforgettable, and, if I thought more about it, so false as well. It should’ve been no surprise to me, then, that Art had adamantly refuted Kantian notions of intent being paramount over action. Regardless of a man’s intent, he once told me, while we rode in his car en route to the store, if his actions are virtuous then what’s the problem? You mean you’d rather have good intent and evil actions than vice versa?
The farmer dropped the chain and waved us in, telling us that if we needed them, there was a basket of burlap sacks up the road.
I realized I had never been in an orchard before. My idea of an orchard had been a perfect grid of well-worn dirt trails, a flat colony of trees lined up, each identical in height, with bright red shiny fruit dotting their perfectly rounded crowns.
