“In Enosburg Falls tonight, a two-car accident has left a Chittenden County man with a broken leg. That story and your warm weekend weather still ahead here on Channel 3.”
22
Trance and Perry were sprawled across the two twin beds in the motel room, boots up on the dingy bedspreads. Vern sat in a wobbly chair by the tiny desk, idly playing with the drinking glass, “sanitarily wrapped for your protection.” The place stank of stale smoke, and he thought of how strange the smell seemed now. For most of his life, it had meant “restaurant” or “bar” or “airplane,” and he hadn’t hardly ever even noticed. But two decades of no smoking laws meant it was now exotic, and linked tight to poverty. Only the lowest end of clubs or motels still let anyone light up. It actually smelled okay, he thought.
“So what do we do now?” he asked, and then proceeded to provide an answer, since that seemed to have become his role. “I guess we better get back up on the air and put out some more podcasts—see if we can build our momentum back up. Do we have what we need?” he asked Perry.
“Well, I took the most important equipment from Sylvia’s house,” Perry said. “I’ve got the modem, and the microphone, and my laptop. If we’ve got a phone line, we can probably do it, though it won’t be simple going through a motel switchboard. But”—and here he paused for a long minute—“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea?”
“Why not?” said Vern. “We can find another phone line.”
“No, not that,” said Perry. “It’s—the timing seems wrong. I mean, right now they’re going around telling everyone we’re dead. That means we’re ghosts, kind of? So if we jump out and go ‘boo,’ everyone will notice. But—the longer we wait maybe the more they’ll notice?”
“I see the point,” said Trance. “We’re not dead, which is nice. But we’re kind of dead, which is nice in a way too. If we lie low for a little while, people will have to figure out what to do on their own a little—it’s like when you were coaching us. At a certain point you’d say, ‘You know your own bodies now, you know what they need.’ It made us feel more . . . independent. Which is kind of the idea?”
“Anyway,” said Perry. “Don’t you think those lawyers helping Sylvia are going to keep things going for a little while? Won’t they kind of ‘keep the story alive,’ like you’re always saying? And that way we can plan a real return? Something that will wow people more than another podcast?”
Vern thought for a moment, unwrapping the drinking glass from its hygienic jacket and then wrapping it back up. He’d gotten used to being in charge, he thought—he’d just made them all burn down Sylvia’s house. But as he thought a little harder, he realized the only real argument for his plan was that it would let him talk sooner, and he liked to talk. After a lifetime at the radio, talk was his default setting; if he wasn’t talking, then it felt like events were just passing him by. But of course, he reminded himself, that’s how most people felt most of the time, and anyway even if you did have a microphone and a signal, it usually was just chatter anyway. “You’re right,” he said. “If we wait, we can maybe make it count for more. Good call.
“But,” he added, “we’re going to need a new base of operations. We’ve got ten days to go till town meeting—after that Perry and I are going to have to turn ourselves in, I imagine. But we want to keep this running for as long as we can, so we need someplace they’re not going to find us. I have an idea—you might think it’s a little creepy, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe.”
Five hours later, shortly after midnight, Trance steered the old Saab up to a loading dock at the back of a building with a single security light. A door opened at the top of the ramp, and the three piled out of the car, grabbing their few bags and walking quickly up and into an industrial kitchen, where they were greeted by a very old woman wearing slippers and a down jacket with the U.S. Olympic logo.
“Hi, Trance,” the woman said, giving her a hug. “Glad to see you. And you must be Perry,” she said, moving in for another embrace. “I like your hair. I think I’m going to do that. Is it true you never have to wash it?
“Hello, son,” the woman added, turning to Vern. “I was worried you were dead there for a few minutes till I saw that Sylvia woman. She was practically winking at Horace, that dummy. You remember I had him in second grade. And Tommy Augustus—a policeman?”
“Hi, Mother,” said Vern, a little sheepishly. “I missed you.”
“Well, we’ve all been listening to your tape recordings,” she said. “I put them on my Facebook page. Except no more pussyfooting around with Social Security—just say that Vermont is going to pay it instead. We don’t care who pays it as long as it comes. We’re old and we vote!” she added. “Anyway, come with me to your new hideout.”
She led the way through the deserted kitchen, and into a service elevator, and onto a third-floor hall, dark except for lights above each door. “This is the Memory Care wing,” she said. “Which means that no one here remembers anything. And this is Martha Oxbow’s room. Perry, Martha’s my age, and she was practically a second mom to Vern growing up. And practically a second grandmother to Trance.” They entered the door without knocking and closed it behind them. An old woman lay under a blanket on one bed, breathing evenly. She appeared to be awake, and turned to look at them, but her stare was blank.
“Good evening, dear,” said Mrs. Barclay, taking her hands. “I’ve brought Vern and Trance and their friend Perry to stay with you. That kind of hair is just the fashion now.”
She turned to the others. “The other bed is empty because her roommate checked out yesterday, if you know what I mean. And I’ve told the director to leave it empty for a while—she knows something’s up, obviously, but ever since I organized the march on the capitol for more Medicare reimbursement last winter, she’s pretty much gone along with whatever I want.”
She kept stroking her friend’s hands, which were almost rigid. “Those two extra cots are for family to sleep with their loved ones. Martha has a private nurse, but they gave her a week off; there’s no family left to visit, which is one reason I thought this would be good for her. She spent half her life listening to your voice, son—it will make her calm. And they say that any kind of activity is good; just remember that somewhere in there she can hear you. I’ll be bringing you your food. And Perry—Vern says you need a phone line—there’s a jack right there next to the bed. No switchboard. But shouldn’t I just plug you into the home’s Ethernet? We’ve got monster bandwidth.”
23
At eight the next morning the door to the room burst open, and a rolling cart came clattering in, pushed by an unseen force that turned out to be Mrs. Barclay, barely tall enough to see over the stack of trays.
“Breakfast this morning is Cream of Wheat, which is very popular with the management because it’s difficult to choke on,” she said. “Of course, it’s also difficult to eat, so I also got you a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. I know we don’t like Starbucks, but Dunkin’ Donuts is okay, don’t you think? They advertised on your program for years, and they bring the orphans to Fenway Park every game. Anyway, their coffee is much better than Starbucks, not that I’ve had Starbucks except on rest stops on I-89 where you don’t really have much choice do you? I have honey-dipped, and for Trance chocolate honey-dipped. Perry, I didn’t know what you liked.”
They’d all been sleeping when this small explosion of smell and talk went off, and by the time they were fully awake, Mrs. Barclay was already up on the bed spoon-feeding hot cereal to her old friend. “What do you think, Martha? Exciting in here for once. Nice to have a roommate that isn’t about to croak, though these guys could be hauled off to jail at any moment, I suppose. Trance, see, this is easy—she can’t hold the spoon, but she’ll suck the food right off it.”
“I can do that,” said Perry. “I used to feed my grandmother.” He climbed up on the bed, with a cruller in one hand, and took the spoon from Vern’s mother.
“Now you’ve got a handsome young man bringing you breakfast in bed, Martha,” said Mrs. Barclay. “And he’s got more hair than you and I combined.”
“Doughnuts,” groaned Trance, grabbing one. “Mama Barclay, I haven’t had any exercise in weeks, not since I started hanging out with these fugitives. I can’t tell you how stir-crazy I’m going. And how fat I’m getting.”
“Not very fat,” said Mrs. Barclay. “I mean, I’m an expert. You actually look better than you have for years, dear. Doesn’t she, Martha? But you can use the water aerobics pool tonight if you want—Aquacise ends at six and we’ll figure out a way to sneak you down. You wear a float and you jog in the water—it looks stupid, but Annie Nichols next door to me does it. Of course she’d need to because she has serious cocktails every night. She makes them for the men in the model train club, but they hardly pay her any attention, they’re too busy talking about narrow-gauge this, and Lionel that. Still, they are men, which is something. And speaking of men, you might want to watch the news this morning. Your friend Sylvia and her harem of lawyers will be holding their press conference at ten, which means it should be done in time for your programs, Martha. Martha likes the interview programs with the bad people. I can remember her telling me, ‘I may not have done anything very special with my life, but at least my children didn’t grow up to be Prostitutes and Proud of It.’ Also she likes that man who screams at you about stocks at night, and honks the horn. He reminds us of the men who stood outside the naked lady tent at the Tunbridge Fair when we were girls. We didn’t want to see the naked ladies—we could just look at ourselves—but we liked listening to him talk.” As she talked, she was gathering up the plates and napkins and cups, and pushing her cart out the door. “Goodbye, children, take good care of Martha,” she said as she disappeared.
“Your mother is amazing,” said Perry, wiping the corners of Martha Oxbow’s mouth with a damp napkin.
“It’s never been much secret where you learned to talk, Vern,” said Trance, who was doing sit-ups.
“Maybe we should turn on the TV,” said Vern, who found himself feeling a little weary.
David Fenton was standing once more on the steps of the county courthouse, which Trance and Vern knew was about five hundred yards from where they reclined, watching with Perry and Martha. Fenton had his arm protectively on Sylvia’s shoulder as he read a statement from a sheet of paper.
“We are pleased to announce this morning that after negotiations, Governor Bruce has agreed to settle one phase of our lawsuit in connection with the burning of Ms. Granger’s home. The State of Vermont will pay for the construction of a new home on the site, with work to begin immediately. Happily, Ms. Granger’s former students include two of America’s most renowned architects, A. Archer McClune, the founding partner of McClune McCloskey, and Nathaniel Gunderson, who was responsible for the award-winning art museums in Fort Worth, Oakland, and Montevideo. Out of respect for their new state, they will offer their services pro bono, and indeed have already completed one set of preliminary drawings that includes a fifty-seat theater for Ms. Granger to conduct her classes.
“This settlement in no way prejudices Ms. Granger’s action against the state for mental distress caused by being forced to watch the destruction of her home. However, we have dropped our award demand to forty million dollars from fifty million, given the estimated cost of the new structure. And we’re happy to report that the cost of her new home will be borne not by taxpayers but by the state’s insurers, who are continuing their own investigation of last week’s unfortunate events.
“We have time for a few questions—Mr. Totten?” he said.
“Shay Totten, Seven Days. Do you guys think that this quick settlement has anything to do with the polls that show eighty-seven percent of Vermonters outraged by the state’s handling of the fire scene?”
“We’re not able to speculate as to motive,” said Fenton. “But,” he added with a small smile, “we were impressed by the spirit of urgency the governor’s attorneys brought to the table. It would be nice if all negotiations could be completed in such timely fashion.”
“Dick Drysdale, Randolph Herald. Have your forensic experts uncovered any evidence that Vern Barclay or the others were in the house that night?”
“Our investigators have not been granted full access to the scene by the FBI or the state police, but we understand that to date, those authorities have not recovered any shell casings or other ballistic evidence from sources other than their own weaponry. However, those questions might better be directed to Chief Augustus.”
“Follow-up, if I may. Chief Augustus said last night that the fact that no one’s heard from Barclay or the rest is proof they died in the fire.”
“Perhaps Chief Augustus should read Mr. Conan Doyle’s account of the dog that failed to bark in the night,” said Fenton. “Or, as my ethics professor used to say, ‘Absence of proof is not proof of absence.’ He was, I think, quoting the English poet William Cowper, and if so, that same man also remarked, ‘A fool must now and then be right, by chance.’ So I guess we will have to wait and see what turns up. As Cowper himself further remarked, ‘God moves in mysterious ways.’”
“Mark Johnson, WDEV,” said a man in a sports jacket with a furrowed brow. “A question for Ms. Granger—I know you said that the fugitives weren’t in your house that evening, at least as far as you knew. I’m just wondering whether—if they are still alive—you’d like to meet them in the future?”
Sylvia smiled. “Let me answer this way. The layout of my new house includes a full radio studio and an extensive home gym. Any time Vern Barclay and Trance Harper want to use my home as a base, it will be theirs. When the governor burned down my house, he turned me into a Vermont patriot—there will be a large flagpole at the head of the driveway, and it will fly the Free Vermont flag twenty-four hours a day.”
As they watched Sylvia disappear once more into the Subaru with the tinted windows, her phalanx of lawyers closing ranks behind her, they were all grinning. “I was a little worried about burning down her house—guess I needn’t have been,” said Vern. “And if the governor is building her a mansion, I imagine it means he’s well and truly scared. People may fret about Social Security and farm aid and all the rest, but it’s hard to focus on arguments like that when they’re watching the state police keep a fire chief from putting out a fire in her own home.”
“It’s not just here,” said Perry, who had his laptop out. “It’s the YouTube of the week. Three million views. There are comments from every state.”
“Which means we need to close the sale,” said Vern. “Town meeting is about a week away, and it’s almost the moment for us to come back from the dead. And this time not just a podcast. Perry, we’ve got to figure out a way to do real radio. Live radio.”
24
Vern was sitting in the same straight-backed chair where he’d spent most of the past two days. He’d talked with his mother, with Trance, with Perry, taken a turn feeding Martha Oxbow, watched Jim Cramer holler about natural gas as a countercyclical play, but mostly he’d thought.
First, about the broadcast. He had no doubt people would be listening—ever since he’d called Mark Johnson and told him that he wanted to take over his show for a half hour, the state’s media had talked of little else. He hadn’t spoken with Mark for more than forty seconds when he’d called to set up the broadcast, afraid that the police might be able to track his phone call, but they’d known each other for decades and Johnson was vouching that it was really him. “I listened to his voice every morning for decades,” he’d said. “If it wasn’t him, it was the best impressionist in Vermont.”
So Vern knew people would listen—he just wasn’t certain what he’d say. He’d gotten into this almost by accident; if Perry hadn’t flooded the Walmart, his broadcast from the store would have been a nice way of saying goodbye to radio but not much more. Instead, no
w, people were pasting bumper stickers on their Subarus nominating him for prime minister of a new country. He knew he wasn’t going to run anything—the question was, did it really make sense for there to be something new for anyone to run?
I mean, he thought, the U.S. has worked, not perfectly but perfectly well, for a very long time—as long as I’ve been around, and before that. Trump, true. But we survived Nixon. And Warren Harding. What kind of stunt was it to insist that he’d figured out some better future? He’d spent his life talking on the radio, which meant he “knew” about current affairs—but he’d never gotten his hands dirty in Montpelier, never made a budget, never run a hearing, never had a lobbyist come down hard on him. Am I just being a romantic? Am I just leading people on? He’d already burned down Sylvia’s house, though thank God that seemed to be turning out okay. But Trance’s life had been turned upside down, and now his mother was involved, and that was just the beginning—he was asking tens of thousands of people to do something a little dangerous and more than a little weird. What if they started down this path and their Social Security did get cut off?
The worry was more acute because, now that he had broadband, Perry would show him some new nugget of news every few hours. The idea of breaking away had begun to really spread. In California, polls were showing a quarter of the state wanting out of the Union—and they were the planet’s fifth-largest economy, not some San Marino or Liechtenstein. In the cities sprinkled across the nation’s red interior, people were researching Siena and Florence: why not city-states again, some were asking—after all, most of the country’s wealth, most of its great institutions, most of its “creative class,” most of its brewpubs were housed in the enclaves that blinked blue against the red sea on election night. Serious legal scholars were publishing treatises on Texas v. White, the 1869 Supreme Court case that held secession illegal; how was that really possible, they asked, in a nation that had begun its life by seceding from the British Empire? Four of the NBA’s biggest stars had held a press conference the night before, saying that they wanted to see its name shortened to the Basketball Association because they were none too happy with the nation just now; in south Texas, Hispanic leaders were holding an informal referendum for their constituents: “Which Side of the Wall Do We Want to Be On?”
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