Early Autumn

by Robert B. Parker

  It was late when we were through. Most of our clothing was scattered about and the bedspread was badly wrinkled. I lay on my back with my heart pounding and my chest heaving in air. Susan lay beside me. She held my hand.

  “Have you overexerted?” she said.

  “Your resistance was fierce,” I said.

  “Umm,” she said.

  From the living room there was the faint sound of the television, which Paul had left on. The image of it gesticulating to an empty room pleased me.

  “Just what do you plan to do with that boy, cookie?” Susan said.

  “I thought we might want to talk that out,” I said.

  “We?”

  “You know about kids.”

  “I know about guidance,” Susan said. “There’s a difference.”

  “I’ll need help.”

  “You’ll need more than that. The boy is bound to be difficult. Even without knowing him one could predict that. My God, he’s chattel in a divorce settlement. What do you know about the needs of a neurotic adolescent?”

  “I thought I’d ask you,” I said.

  “Based on my experience with you?” she said.

  “I’m not neurotic,” I said.

  Susan turned her face toward me. In the half-light she was smiling. She squeezed my hand. “No,” she said, “you aren’t. You’re complicated, but you are not even a little bit neurotic”

  “The kid needs to get away from his parents,” I said.

  “That’s not the conventional wisdom, except in cases more extreme than this.”

  “Maybe the conventional wisdom is right,” I said, “if the choice is to get into the welfare-youth services—foster-home system.”

  “But not if he’s going to be with you?”

  “Not if he’s going to be with me,” I said.

  “You think you can make life better for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long do you plan to keep him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard enough to raise children you love,” Susan said. “I’ve seen it from the failure end, over and over, parents whose kids are just a goddamned mess. Parents who love them and have presided over the complete botching of their lives. I think your eyes are bigger than your stomach on this one, dear heart.”

  “How about that property in Maine,” I said.

  Susan propped up on one elbow. “Fryeburg?” she said.

  “Yeah. I told you I’d build a house on it.”

  “When you got a chance, you said.”

  “This is the chance.”

  “You and Paul?”

  “Yes.”

  She was quiet lying naked beside me, on her right side with her head propped on her right elbow. Her lipstick was smeared. The intelligence in her face was like energy. It seemed almost to shimmer. That she was beautiful was only the first thing you noticed.

  “Work release,” she said.

  “The kid’s never been taught how to act,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s got no pride. He’s got nothing he’s good at He’s got nothing but the tube.”

  “And you plan to teach him.”

  “I’ll teach him what I know. I know how to do carpentry. I know how to cook. I know how to punch. I know how to act.”

  “You’re not so bad in the rack either, big fella.”

  I grinned. “We’ll let him work that out on his own, maybe.”

  She shook her head. “You make it sound simple. It’s not. You don’t teach people unless they want to learn. It’s not just an intellectual exercise. It’s a matter of emotion, of psychology. I mean the boy may be positively pathological.”

  “He’s got nothing to lose,” I said. “Compared to an afternoon of game shows on TV, anything is up. For crissake, the kid watches soap operas,” I said.

  “So do I,” Susan said.

  “Well, your degeneracy is already established,” I said. “Besides you do others things.”

  “Only with you, sweet potato.”

  “You want to get in on this?” I said.

  “The salvation of Paul Giacomin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m willing to consult,” she said. “But I don’t want to see you overinvested in this. The chances of success are slight. What happens if next week his mother runs out of money?”

  “Well worry about that when it happens.”

  “It’ll happen soon,” Susan said.

  “Woman’s intuition?”

  “Believe me,” Susan said. “It’ll be soon.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’ll keep him anyway,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You will,” she said, “you big goddamned sap. You know you will.”

  “He needs to grow up quick,” I said. “He needs to get autonomous. It’s the only hope he’s got. For him he’s gotta stop being a kid at fifteen. His parents are shit. He can’t depend on them anymore, He’s gotta get autonomous.”

  “And you’re going to show him how?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, no one better. You’re the most autonomous human being I’ve ever seen. It’s a grim prospect for a fifteen-year-old boy though.”

  “How do you like his prospects if he doesn’t grow up quick?”

  Susan was quiet, looking down at me. “Spring will be a little late this year,” she said.

  “For Paul? Yeah.” I laughed with no pleasure. “Spring is gone. It’s early autumn for Paul. If I can do it.”

  “And if he can,” Susan said.

  CHAPTER 15

  It was early May and the sun was thick and warm. The forsythias had begun. The birds were about and the joggers were out of their sweat pants, legs gleaming white in the spring sun. Paul Giacomin came out of his house with a big green plaid suitcase and a white drawstring laundry bag. He was still wearing his pea coat He needed a haircut. His corduroy pants were too short. He was straining to carry the two bags.

  I was driving Susan’s Bronco. I got out and took the suitcase from Paul and put it in the back. He stuck the laundry bag in beside it and left the drawstring hanging out over the tailgate. I flipped the string inside and put the power window up with the key. Patty Giacomin came out and stood by the Bronco. Pale green slacks, lavender shirt, white blazer. Big sunglasses, bright lipstick. Stephen was with her. He was as beautiful as she—jeans with a Pierre Cardin patch on them, Frye boots, a half-buttoned tailored collarless shirt in vertical blue-on-blue stripes, a gray sharkskin vest, unbuttoned. His dark maroon Pontiac Firebird was parked in the Giacomin driveway.

  “The Firebird’s not right,” I said. “It doesn’t go with the rest of the look.”

  “Oh, really,” Stephen said. “What would you suggest?”

  “A Z maybe, or a Porsche. Extend that clean sophisticated continental look, you know?”

  Stephen smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.

  Patty said to her son, “I’ll write you a letter.”

  He nodded. She made an awkward gesture of hugging him. But she didn’t seem able to carry through and ended up putting one arm across his shoulders for a moment and patting him slightly on the back. He stood silently while this happened. Then he got into the Bronco. The high step into the front seat was difficult and he had to struggle, and finally squirm up onto the seat. I got in the driver’s side.

  Patty said, “Bye.”

  Paul said, “Bye,” and we drove off. As we turned off Emerson Road I saw tears fill Paul’s eyes. I kept watching the road. He didn’t cry. We took Route 3 to 495, 495 to 95 and went north on 95 to the Portsmouth Circle. In that time Paul didn’t say anything. He sat and stared out the window at the unvarying landscaping along the highways. I plugged a Johnny Hartman tape into the stereo on the assumption that it was never too soon to start his education. He paid no attention. At the Portsmouth Circle we took the Spaulding Turnpike and then Route 16. We were in rural New England now. An hour from Boston cows grazed. There were barns and feed stores and tow
ns with a mill that no longer milled at the center.

  We got to North Conway, New Hampshire, about one thirty in the afternoon. I stopped at a restaurant called Horsefeathers opposite the green in the center of town. There was a softball diamond on the green and some kids were playing a game without umpires.

  I said, “Let’s eat.”

  He said nothing, but got out of the car and went into the restaurant with me. We’d been in rural New England. Now we were in rural chic North Conway is a major ski resort in the winter, and summer homes abound around it in New Hampshire and across the border in Maine. Horsefeathers had brass and hanging plants and looked just like restaurants in San Francisco.

  The food was good and at two twenty we were in the car again heading for Fryeburg. At a quarter to three we were parked at the edge of Kimball Lake. The land Susan had gotten from her husband as part of the divorce settlement was nearly three quarters of an acre at the end of a dirt road with woods all around. There were cabins along the lake close enough to keep you from feeling like Henry Thoreau, but it was secluded. Susan’s ex-husband had used the place for hunting and fishing. At one edge of the property he’d built a small cabin with running lake water for showering, a well for drinking water, electricity, and a flush toilet, but no central heat. There was a free-standing fireplace in the living room, a small electric stove and an old electric refrigerator in the galleylike kitchen, and two small bedrooms with metal bunk beds in them, and no closets. Susan and I came up occasionally to cook steaks over a wood fire, swim in the lake, and stroll in the woods until the bugs closed in.

  Paul said, “We’re gonna stay here?”

  “Yes. We’ll live in that cabin and tomorrow we’ll start building a new and better one.”

  Paul said, “What do you mean?”

  I said, “We’re going to build a house. You and me.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Yeah, we can. I know how. I’ll teach you.”

  “How do you know how to build a house?”

  “My father was a carpenter.”

  The kid just looked at me. It never occurred to him that houses were built by people. Sometimes they were built by construction companies and sometimes they probably just generated spontaneously.

  “Come on, unload. We’re going to be very busy up here. There’s a lot to do.”

  “I don’t want to build a house,” Paul said.

  “I’ll need help. I can’t do it alone. It’ll be good to work with your hands. You’ll like it.”

  “I won’t.”

  I shrugged. “We’ll see,” I said. “Help me unload.”

  The back seat of the Bronco folded forward, leaving a lot of cargo space. The cargo space was full. There was the big old tool chest that had been my father’s. And there was a radial arm saw I’d bought last year and used in Susan’s cellar sometimes. There was also a set of barbells, a weight bench, a heavy bag, a speed bag, my suitcase, a large green cooler with perishables in it, a big carton with other food, a pump-action Ithaca shotgun, ammunition, some fishing equipment, two sleeping bags, some boots, a five-cell flashlight, an ax, some books, a machete, a carton of records, two shovels, a mattock, and one hundred feet of rope.

  I unlocked the cabin and opened all the windows. We started to carry and stow. A lot of the things were too heavy for Paul and everything he carried he seemed to handle badly. He picked things up only with the tips of his fingers. When I told him to take the shotgun in, he carried it awkwardly by the butt rather than where it balanced. He carried one of the shovels by its blade. When we were through, there was sweat on his face and he seemed red and hot. He still wore his pea coat

  It was after five when we finished. The bugs were out and it was getting cool. Last fall Susan and I had bought a cheap stereo and put it in the cabin. I put on the Benny Goodman 1938 jazz concert while I made a fire. I had a beer while I started supper. Paul came in from looking at the lake and got a Coke out of the refrigerator. He went into the living room. In a minute he was back.

  “Didn’t you bring a television?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  He snorted angrily and went back in the living room. I figured he’d stare at the record player. Anything in a pinch.

  I opened a large can of beans and put them in a pan to heat. While they heated I put out some pickles and rye bread, ketchup, plates, and utensils. Then I panfried two steaks. We ate at a table in the living room, the kitchen was too small, listening to the Goodman band, watching the fire move, and smelling the wood smoke. Paul still wore the pea coat although the room was warm from the fire.

  After supper I got out my book and started to read. Paul picked up the record albums and looked at them and put them back in disgust. He looked out the window. He went outside to look around but came back in almost at once. The bugs were out as it got dark.

  “You should a brought a TV,” he said once.

  “Read,” I said. “There’s books there.”

  “I don’t like to read.”

  “It’s better than looking at the lamp fixtures till bedtime, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  I kept reading.

  Paul said, “What’s that book?”

  “A Distant Mirror,” I said.

  “What’s it about?”

  “The fourteenth century.”

  He was quiet. Sap oozed out of the end of a log and sputtered onto the hot ash beneath it.

  “What do you want to read about the fourteen hundreds for?” Paul said.

  “Thirteen hundreds,” I said. “Just like the nineteen hundreds are the twentieth century.”

  Paul shrugged. “So why do you want to read about it?”

  I put the book down. “I like to know what life was like for them,” I said. “I like the sense of connection over six hundred years that I can get.”

  “I think it’s boring,” Paul said.

  “Compared to what?” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “I think it’s boring compared to taking Susan Silverman to Paris,” I said. “Things are relative.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I know more about being human when I know more about their lives. I get a certain amount of perspective. The time was full of people that killed, tortured, suffered, struggled, and agonized for things that seemed worth anything to them. Now they’ve been dead for six hundred years. What’s it all about, Ozymandias?”

  “Huh?”

  “‘Ozymandias’? It’s a poem. Here, I’ll show you.” I got up and found a book in the box I hadn’t unpacked yet.

  “Listen,” I said. I read the poem to him. Deliberately in the firelit room. It was about his level.

  He said, “She your girl friend?”

  I said, “What?”

  He said, “Susan Silverman. She your girl friend?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You going to get married?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about her?” he said.

  “Does she love me?”

  He nodded.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you get married?”

  “I’m not sure. Mostly it’s a question of how we’d affect each other, I suppose. Would I interfere with her work? Would she interfere with mine? That sort of thing.”

  “Wouldn’t she quit work?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I would. I wouldn’t work if I didn’t have to.”

  “She likes her work. Makes her feel good about herself. Me too. If you just did it for money, of course you’d want to quit. But if you do it because you like to …” I gestured with my hand. “What do you like to do?”

  He shrugged. “That guy Hawk your friend?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You like him?”

  “Sort of. I can count on him.”

  “He seems scary to me.”

  “Well, he is. He’s
not good. But he’s a good man. You know the difference?”

  “No.”

  “You will,” I said “It’s a difference I’m going to help you learn.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning I woke Paul up at seven.

  “Why do I have to get up?” he said. “There’s no school.”

  “We got a lot to do,” I said.

  “I don’t want to get up.”

  “Well, you have to. I’m going to make breakfast. Anything special you want?”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But there’s nothing to eat till lunch.”

  He stared at me, squinting, and not entirely awake.

  I went out to the kitchen and mixed up some batter for corn bread. While the bread was baking and the coffee perking, I took a shower and dressed, took the corn bread out, and went into Paul’s room. He had gone back to sleep. I shook him awake.

  “Come on, kid,” I said. “I know you don’t want to, but you have to. You’ll get used to the schedule. Eventually you’ll even like it.”

  Paul pushed his head deeper into the sleeping bag and shook his head.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You gotta. Once you’re up and showered you’ll feel fine. Don’t make me get tough.”

  “What’ll you do if I don’t,” Paul muttered into the sleeping bag.

  “Pull you out,” I said. “Hold you under the shower. Dry you, dress you, Et cetera.”

  “I won’t get up,” he said.

  I pulled him out, undressed him, and held him under the shower, It took about a half an hour. It’s not easy to control someone, even a kid, if you don’t want to hurt them. I shampooed his hair and held him under to rinse, then I pulled him out and handed him a towel.

  “You want me to dress you?” I said.

  He shook his head, and wrapped the towel around himself, and went to his room. I went to the kitchen and put out the corn bread and strawberry jam and a bowl of assorted fruit. While I waited for him I ate an orange and a banana. I poured a cup of coffee. I sipped a little of it. I had not warned him against going back to bed. Somehow I’d had a sense that would be insulting. I wanted him to come out on his own. If he didn’t I had lost some ground. I sipped some more coffee. The corn bread was cooling. I looked at his bedroom door. I didn’t like cool corn bread.