by John Enright
“What exactly did you do to yourself?” Barnett asked as he pulled a chair up beside Dominick’s.
“Some broken ribs, and it was done unto me as I was being accidentally gallant. Nice place you have here.”
“Think so? I hadn’t thought rustic could get so ostentatious. It’s almost Southern in its pretension, though, so I can feel at home.” Barnett laughed and gestured down toward the driveway where it curved in front of the veranda. “That helps.”
Vernon had pulled his aging Caddy up under the shade of a high tree by the driveway and was out with a chamois cloth dusting off its faded paint job. Dominick was fairly sure this was Vernon’s idea of a joke, a comment upon where they were. Dominick had never seen Vernon dust off his cab before. It wasn’t dirty.
“So, you and Morgan have gotten together?” Dominick said. Vernon looked up at the veranda, and Dominick gave him a quick knowing smile.
“No point in denying that—fine lady—but only exploratory, private, not public news.”
“So, is Morgan staying here, too, or did she just drop you off?”
“No, I am checked in here solo. I could hardly go on with her to Diligence, a house full of women. Good god.”
“You got that right,” Dominick said.
“Although I do get the feeling that all the other rooms here are occupied either by honeymooners or older couples trying to pretend it’s a honeymoon.”
The pills were already failing, and Dominick twisted in his chair, trying to find a comfort zone. He had the vial of pills in his pocket. Perhaps if he took a few more he could beat the pain to the departure threshold. He pulled the small orange vial of pills out from his pocket. “Frank, do you think I could get something to wash a few of these down with? Doctor’s orders.”
“Certainly. I am a sorry plantation host. What would you like? In spite of all the show, this place is just a bed and breakfast, no restaurant or bar, but I can bring something from my room. Water, white wine, Scotch?”
“The first and last of those would be grand, separate, with ice if there is any to be had. Thank you.”
Barnett went off. The view from the veranda was south and west, looking down the Hudson Valley. An avenue had been opened in the forest to frame the panorama. The afternoon sun was creeping deeper beneath the porch eaves. Down on the driveway Vernon was not to be seen, probably back in his driver’s seat taking a nap. Dominick wondered how the man who built this house had made all his money. His had been an age of exploitative industry, something taken from the land—minerals, coal, grain, or just space itself turned into railroad rights-of-way—after slavery but before Dominick’s father’s generation of capitalists who just took money from the people whose money they were supposedly managing. A manor from that Gilded Age. Dominick liked the provenance of the house in Diligence better. Barnett returned with a silver tray bearing an ice bucket, glasses, bottled water, and a bottle of aged single-malt Scotch that Dominick had never heard of. The pills went down with the water. The Scotch went down without any ice, an ancient smoky taste. Also on the tray was a file of papers.
Barnett was businesslike, which Dominick appreciated. He said that while he was in no position to offer investment advice, much less about real estate in a market he knew nothing about, he had reviewed the agreement and corporation papers that Morgan had had drawn up, and they seemed in order. He had done that gratis, but if Dominick wanted him to follow through representing him, he would be happy to accommodate and put Dominick back on the hourly clock. Why didn’t Dominick take the papers and look them over, then get back to him? Barnett would be there through the weekend. He was sure Ms. Custis would be open to negotiating any changes Dominick might suggest.
The Scotch was mellow. The pills were firing for effect again. The slanting sun had reached his feet. Dominick was enjoying his palatial surroundings and the privileged destination view. He was no longer down in Vernon’s little hollow. From his pocket container he extracted a fresh cigar and lit it up. Barnett refused one. Dominick felt like chatting, but he did not know about what. He had noticed before that the pills had a way of inhibiting thinking.
“Did you know about the attack on the house last night?” Barnett asked.
“Attack on the house? What house?”
“Why, your place in Diligence. Some local Fourth of July rowdies, I gather.”
“That article,” Dominick said.
“I don’t know anything about its causes,” Barnett said. He poured himself a short shot of Scotch. “Just that Morgan asked me to increase the fire insurance on the place.”
“Was the house harmed?”
“Nothing serious, I gather. No need for a police report or a call to the fire department anyway, which would have made the insurance increase more problematic. I do want to get out there. Tomorrow maybe. Will you be free to come along? Or is it too long a ride for your ribs?”
“Attack on the house?” Dominick was having trouble absorbing, picturing such an event.
“What do you think you are doing? Do you know where you are? Who are you anyway?” She looked like a nurse to Dominick—a white dress, a bad haircut, and a pair of black-framed glasses. “Put that out. This is a New Age residence. All tobacco products are strictly forbidden.”
Dominick looked at his Romeo y Juliet, which was just warming up, then glanced up and down the veranda. There were only the three of them there. “Frank, do you mind?”
Barnett smiled, “No, I don’t mind. Actually, I enjoy the aroma of a good cigar.”
“Then, if this offends only you, madam, perhaps you could do yourself the favor of finding something else somewhere else to be offended by.”
“Dominick, this is Mrs. Grant, our proprietress,” Barnett said.
“In that case,” Dominick drained his glass of Scotch and, leaning on his cane, rose from the wingchair, “ta-ta. This cigar, madam, is worth more to me than your approbation.” He picked up the file from the silver tray. “Frank, I will get back to you. I will see if I feel up to a trip tomorrow. You know my number if there is any more news on the house. Good day to you.”
Vernon was asleep in the car, the driver’s seat tilted all the way back and his hat pulled down over his eyes. Dominick had to wake him up.
***
Morgan found Amanda in her room. “I couldn’t reach Ms. Sissy in person,” Morgan said as she came in without knocking, “but I left a message on her voice mail at the paper. This has got me all worked up—inciting a hate crime. I think I’ll go over there in person to talk with one of her bosses. I want to threaten them with a lawsuit, see how they react. At the very least they can publish some sort of correction, don’t you think?”
Amanda wasn’t sure what she thought any more. She knew she did not like being attacked, but she also did not want to start dragging others into it. She wanted the whole thing to blow over.
“You didn’t report this to the sheriff? “ Morgan asked.
“No. Denise didn’t want to, and after all she fired the first shots, both nights.”
“Both nights?”
“Well, the first night, two nights ago, there were just some kids in the drive yelling things at the house, and Denise took a shot at them. Last night, same thing. She just started firing away down at the gate. Look, if we call in the county authorities, it will just bring more attention, make things worse.”
“I want this Sissy chick fired,” Morgan said.
During their short career together, one thing Amanda had learned about Morgan was that you did not want her for an enemy. In Morgan’s world there were the good guys and the other guys. The good guys had proven their loyalty, and you could do whatever you wanted to the other guys; they were like a different species altogether. “Morgan, are we still partners?” Amanda asked. She wanted an answer.
“More than ever, girl. Now we got some real enemies. We re in this together.”
“The kids who came out here aren’t our enemies. They don’t even know us. They just feel free to haras
s an available target. And the target is not the house or you and me but whatever their idea of the Wiccans is. They’ve had their little hate fling, made their point. They won’t be back. We have to concentrate on getting Denise and her gang out of here, and making them victims only strengthens their hand for staying. Leave it alone.”
“This isn’t tactics we’re talking about here, partner. This is strategy. You cannot just let people attack you and walk away. Sissy attacked us. The thugs—whether they come back or not—are just fallout. She stirred the community up against us for some reason. She fired the first shot, not Denise. Sissy has got to pay. I will not let the bitch get away with it. A cheap shot besides—Christians versus pagans. What century is this?”
From her window Amanda watched Morgan drive away in her little red sports car. It was getting on to late afternoon, but the sun was still high behind the house, casting a stark shadow onto the untended grounds, a silhouette of rooflines with the cupola tower sticking up like a short thick circumcised penis.
What is wrong with you, girl? Why aren’t you driving off away from all this instead of Morgan? Because you have nowhere to go and she does? All those trips when you had to drive because she couldn’t. What other lies has she been living out with you? A friend rented the car for her? She never mentioned any friend in Albany. Why didn’t she ask you to go with her? In the past she would have. Two Amazons are better than one, Morgan used to say when they faced confrontations—good cop, bad cop, yin and yang, sweet and sour, white meat or dark meat. Maybe it is just as well that she is gone. Whatever happens will be simpler without her.
There had been no cars cruising or stopping on the road today—not that Amanda had noticed anyway—no gawkers or prayer groups. All that drama would be over. What Amanda had wanted to hear from Morgan was that Denise and the others had no legal grounds to delay their eviction. Because the sooner the Wiccans were gone the sooner the events of this Diligence Fourth of July would become just forgotten history and the closer Amanda would be to being free.
Don’t count on her, the voice in her head, Marjorie’s voice, said.
As it turned out, the rest of the daylight and slowly deepening evening passed in rural serenity, the only sounds beside birdsong were the waves of cricket choruses moving up from the river and past them. At some point one of the girls knocked on Amanda’s door and invited her down to a communal supper—fried tofu and brown rice and salad. “We are all in this together,” Denise said as way of grace before meal. Supper was silent but friendly enough—people passed things to Amanda—and she was thankful for the food. Denise appointed sentinels and watch hours. Any activities down on the road or around the house should be reported immediately to her. Amanda noted that not all the girls seemed honored by their assignments. That night was benign as well.
The next morning, Saturday, Amanda discovered that Morgan had not returned. She knew it was silly to worry about her, but she did anyway. Morgan had not said anything about having another place to stay or about returning to Albany. Could she be arrested for driving without a license in somebody else’s rental car? Amanda debated with herself about calling Morgan’s cell phone. She did not want to come across as spying. It was none of her business where Morgan spent her nights, and it was not as if they had an appointment or anything. She tried to come up with some excuse for calling, but could not think of a thing that did not sound bogus.
Then, in the early afternoon, cars started pulling into the driveway, a small caravan of them. Amanda ran to find Denise—she did not want her shooting at anyone in broad daylight, she might actually hit someone—but to her surprise she found Denise at the front door not cocking her shotgun but wearing one of her Wiccan gowns, this one the color of marigolds. Denise went out onto the veranda to greet the arrivals, the first of whom was a tall, gaunt man with a funny sort of Chinese beard, dressed in a tan camouflage uniform. They embraced at the top of the veranda steps. As Denise escorted her guest indoors, she stopped to introduce him to Amanda, still standing on the bottom step of the stairway, “Amanda, this is High Priest Lloyd, with members of his Saugerties coven. Lloyd, Amanda.”
“Ah, finally,” Lloyd said, but he did not extend a hand and barely nodded to her. The downstairs suddenly felt very full as the rest of Lloyd’s eight- or nine-person crew—of both sexes—filed in and were greeted by Denise’s girls. Denise should have told her. This was like an invasion. Amanda retreated back up the stairs.
Nobody ever tells you anything. Ever wonder why that is? All you can ever do is just react.
Back in her room she decided that at least now she had a bona fide reason to call Morgan—to warn her that the Wiccans were here. In her room the wireless reception was good only by the front window. As she stood there listening to Morgan’s phone ring and then the voice-mail message come on, she watched Lloyd’s people unload their cars. There were coolers and bags of groceries, sleeping bags and pillows, day packs and long leather zippered cases that could only be holding rifles. The message she left was just, “Call me. It’s important.”
***
Dominick slept late Saturday. The previous day’s trip had worn him out. This convalescent stuff was dangerous. It would have to stop. Vernon was gone. As Dominick fixed himself a fresh pot of coffee, he thought about what Barnett had said about the Van Houten place being under attack. Worrying about the fate of a place was new to Dominick, but somebody picking on the old house for any reason sort of pissed him off. It was like an attack on history. That house—he was beginning to think of it as his house—had not done anything to anyone. And what did “being under attack” actually mean? He resisted the temptation—the voice in his head—to get involved. What could he do anyway? A stranded unarmed semi-invalid many miles away. By the time he finally called Barnett at his fancy B&B, the counselor was no longer in. He thought of calling Amanda, but could not find his little leather notebook where he had written down her number. It must still be in the glove compartment of his car, which was still parked over at Sissy’s place in Hudson.
This time when the phone on the kitchen wall started ringing, Dominick went to answer it. It was his sister Amanda. “I was just thinking of you,” he said. “How did you get this number?”
“The lawyer Barnett gave it to me. He’s here, with Morgan. I thought you would be long gone, but he said you were still here, just up in Catskill.”
“My exit was interrupted. I couldn’t find your number. What’s this about the house being under attack?”
“Thanks to your girlfriend’s article. That’s why I called. I hold you partly to blame for all this, for bringing her out here.”
“What is ‘all this’? What’s going on?”
“Well, right now I have a houseful of armed Wiccans with a siege mentality, and a Christian prayer meeting is setting up down by the gate. Two nights ago it was rockets and gunfire. I don’t suppose your girlfriend wants to come out here and tell these folks it’s nothing to get excited about, just a piece of tabloid hype?”
“I read the article. She is not my girlfriend. Rockets, gunfire?”
“Fireworks rockets shot at the house and gunfire as in bullets.”
“You say Morgan and Barnett are there? Are they staying?”
“Why? What is it to you?”
“I’m coming down there. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Do you need anything? Is there anything I could bring?”
“Look, Nemo, that is not why I called.”
“Nemo? So I am Nemo. What makes me Nemo?”
“I meant Dominick, and it doesn’t matter.”
“Did Marjorie call me Nemo? She had other insulting names for me. Was that one I didn’t know?” Dominick wondered if Marjorie would have known that Nemo was Latin for No One. She knew things like that. She would surprise you. She had had that kind of education. Nemo was Latin for the Greek Outis, the name Odysseus gave himself to fool the Cyclops. Would Marjorie have known that?
“Dominick, what are you talking about? No, I don’t ne
ed anything. I don’t even think I need you here. That is not why I called, and what does our mother have to do with this?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Dominick said. Odysseus escaping the Cyclops’s cave had always been Dominick’s favorite scene. He still sometimes dreamed of it.
“I guess I just wanted to ask you if you could ask your friend if she could write something, I don’t know, corrective, neutralizing, maybe an apology.”
“I have no control over what Sissy writes.”
“If you are coming down, you had better bring whatever you want to eat and drink,” Amanda said. There was a long pause. “And bring me a bottle of vodka.”
Dominick called Vernon on his cell phone. By the time Vernon got home Dominick had packed his small bag, taken some pain pills, and was ready to go. “We are off to Diligence,” Dominick said. “You can just drop me there and get back for your heavy Saturday night business.” As Dominick put his bag and his cane and some pillows into the back seat of the Caddy, he was surprised by Mustang climbing in too, then jumping over into the front seat. When Vernon came out of the house and saw Mustang sitting there he laughed. “Old Mustang knows something is up. He rarely rides shotgun anymore.” As they drove away, Mustang gave one long look at Dominick in the back seat then turned his gaze forward, sticking his head out the open window, sniffing the wind as it passed. On the way out of town they stopped to shop. Dominick even bought a large cooler to stash everything in, including Amanda’s bottle of vodka and a bottle of Scotch for himself.
As they came around the final curve of county road before the Van Houten place, they could see ahead that the road by the missing gate was nearly blocked with vehicles and people. Vernon braked slowly to a stop well before they got there. Someone was speaking or reading something over a poor sound system.
