by Jeffrey Lent
The day was still clear and growing hot but as she passed into Machias she felt herself grow cool, slightly remote, calculating. As if what lay ahead would be happening only to some unknown version of herself. She drove through the town, peering at street signs and doubled back and stopped at an ice cream stand and asked the girl directions to Cannon Street and made her repeat them and got back in the truck and turned back once again. She went two blocks and pulled a right and went two more blocks and turned left and glided along, the radio now on but the music low, a thrum in the background.
Cannon Street was only a few blocks long and dead-ended at a low fence beyond which stretched the ball fields of a school, the long low two-story pale brick building of the school out ahead in the heat-haze, a school recently built. She sat parked for a moment trying to take it all in. The houses just passed were mostly familiar to her, old two-over-four houses that had been expanded over the years, most white with green or black trim and shutters, a couple painted yellow with cream trim. But there stood a difference between these houses and those from home and it came to her: it was the expanse of sky, the lack of hills. She was upon a tableland, close to the ocean. She wiped sweat from her brow and reversed in a three-point tight turn and went back down the street. Now peering close, seeking numbers on doors, above doors, some houses lacking them altogether or hidden from her sight. Where she could spot them. Then saw 64 on the left-hand side and changed her focus to the other side and slid along a block easily and then slowed and nudged the truck almost against the curb, peering into the shade of the trees, the halos of sunlight. She passed a man out mowing his lawn in green workpants and a white T-shirt and behind him saw the oval plaque that read 47. She drifted along and counted and stopped and looked. A white house, green trim. A garage that once had been a small barn. A blacktop driveway. The lawn recently mowed, modest flower beds. A pair of yellow birch between the street and the house and a larger silver maple just back from where the driveway met the street. The garage door was swung open and she saw the tail end of a station wagon and thought That’s what I guessed. He’s got a wife and family. She sucked in a corner of her lower lip and bit it and thought Or he lives alone but raises golden retrievers and needs a big car to get them around. Nodding her head in time to a music that was not playing anywhere except within her. And she let out the clutch before she let herself think again and spun the wheel easily and pulled up into the drive and came to a stop. She reached and killed the engine.
For a moment silence swelled over her, silence and heat of day. She ran both hands curled to fists down the tops of her thighs and considered the packet of letters in the glove box and knew this was not the time for them, wondered if there ever would be such a time and stopped herself. Ran her fingers through her wind-tossed hair and opened the door and stepped down onto the driveway. His driveway. And felt the heat of her jeans sticking to the backs of her thighs and wondered if she hadn’t better have worn a dress and then wondered why. Out loud but just audible to herself she said, “Stop being such a chickenshit.” Then walked up to the house.
No one she knew used the front door so she went into the garage and beyond the station wagon saw the three steps up into the back entry but also, there against the back wall sat a man at a workbench. A pair of bare lightbulbs were suspended over the bench, the back wall fitted with pegboards that held tools and brackets for tools and spread out on an old oil-stained towel were the disassembled pieces of some small mechanical device. The man wore a green checked short-sleeved shirt and old khaki trousers and he was twisted around on his metal stool, peering at her. A pair of metal rimmed glasses well down his nose, he looked at her above the lenses. His face showed weather, lines and creases, the red-burn of a man used to being outside year-round and his hair was combed over but neat and gray. White. He looked at her a beat, then turned and carefully placed a pair of needle-nose pliers down on the towel, depositing some small part. Then he turned back.
“Can I help you?”
She was flustered. “I think I might have the wrong place.”
“Could be.” He kept his eyes upon her, waiting.
“I had this address. I just drove in—”
He leaned and looked beyond her and then back and said, “That your truck?”
This was clearly not who she was looking for but it was an unsettling question. And he was looking at her as if he was seeing something he wasn’t sure of. She said, “That’s an odd question. Of course it’s my truck. Why do you ask?”
He said, “Not many girls favor a truck. Specially an older one. What is that? A ’56?”
“Look, I have this address. I’m looking for a man named Brian Potter.”
He studied her another long moment, then said, “Why?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
He waited again, then reached under his bench and pulled out a three-step stepladder, snapped it open and set it a couple of feet away from him. He said, “Why don’t you set there on that ladder and tell me your kinda long story. I got time.”
Upon her was a remembrance of the afternoon out on the rocks in the ocean and the unsettling pull of the ocean and her own upwelling fear, the two twined. She swallowed and swallowed again and said, “I think I got the wrong place.”
He’d tilted his head and after she spoke he shot one wiry white eyebrow up and then nodded toward the stepladder. “Could be. But I’m Thornton Potter, Brian’s father. Why don’t you set and tell me what you’re after. What’d you say your name was?”
She sat upon the stepladder, her feet up on the bottom rung so her knees jutted up and she held them together, let her arms swing loose at her sides. She said, “My name’s Katey Snow. My dad’s Oliver Snow, of Moorefield, Vermont.”
He took up a thrice-folded leather pouch and opened it and took out a briar pipe with a charred bowl, then took fingerfuls of tobacco from the pouch and filled the pipe. He did this slowly and with deliberation, as if he was thinking or meditating through his actions. He reached and took a kitchen match from a box on the workbench and struck fire from the thumbnail that cupped the pipe and shot jets of smoke until he was satisfied, then took another long draw and let the smoke dribble from his mouth and float upward, the pipe cupped in his hand. Throughout he’d not looked at her and now he did. He said, “In the war. Spring of ’45 in Germany. Your father saved my boy’s life. You know the story?”
“I don’t.”
“Your father never told you?”
She took a breath. Then said, “He doesn’t talk about the war. Any of it.”
Thornton Potter nodded. “How old are you? Eighteen?”
“I’m seventeen.”
He said, “Most men don’t. Talk about it.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“Brian didn’t. Much.”
“He came to see my dad. Before I was born. He came to thank him.”
“I know he did.” Thornton smoked a bit and then said, “From the first he got home, he wanted to. But he went to work and was trying to get his life back on track, figuring out what to do next. As did many. But it was on his mind—he lived here with Mother and me a good many years. It was the summer of 1949 that he was able to make that trip. It seemed he just couldn’t buckle down until he had that behind him. I never been in that place, so I can’t judge but I can imagine it’s a powerful pull for a young man. To see and thank the man saved his life. He’d been working up north through the winter with the paper company but out in the woods, cruising timber. And they cut him loose come spring. He drove back in that summer, had a old Chevrolet rumble seat that got him around. And some money saved. Well, Brian always had some money saved—I taught him a thing or two along the way. And he told us it was time for him to go and see your dad. And he did. Was gone a few weeks, although I got the sense when he returned that he’d done a bit more than just visit with your dad. I could see that—a young man still, with some money in his pocket and the feeling of having time to kill. He never said where all h
e’d been when he rolled back in. September it was.”
He paused to fire his pipe again and said, “What is it you’re after?”
“Is he here?”
He looked about the garage as if he might discover his son hidden someplace and looked back and said, “No.” And nothing more.
“Could you tell me where he is?”
Again he said, “What is it you’re after?”
She put her elbows on her knees and lowered her face to cup with her hands, the long swath of hair a further veil between them. She’d come prepared to lie to whoever she had to lie to but hadn’t truly expected she’d have to—she’d come expecting Brian Potter. And thought of her father and not for the first time silently asked him to forgive her and then lifted her head and reached to push back her hair.
Her voice steady as if held in a glass she said, “I’m not sure. My dad’s not well. He hasn’t been, maybe your son told you, but he’s gotten worse. I don’t know. I guess I was thinking because of their history, maybe he’d come see Dad again. Maybe that’d help. And maybe Brian could tell me things that could help me understand my dad. I just don’t know. I’m sorry. I just thought—I heard that story about Brian coming to see Dad, and why, and I seized on it and well, I guess it’s stupid but here I am.”
Thornton Potter smoked and set his pipe down on the bench, leaning it against a set of fused metal tubes so it wouldn’t tip and said, “There, then, Katey Snow. Hold on, hold on. What we need I think, what we need, is Mother. You wait right here a moment. I’ll be right back and with the best help a person could ask for.”
Spry, he popped up from his stool and went up the stairs and out of sight through the woodshed entry. She heard a door open but not shut and then heard him calling low, “Louise? Louise! Get down here.” Then, muffled, she heard steady slow steps descending a staircase and then from within she heard the murmur of muted voices, indistinct. Only slightly louder she heard Thornton say, “All right then. But you see for yourself.” He walked back through the shed and she was standing when he reached the outer door, where he stopped at the top of the stairs.
“She said to have you come in. She won’t come talk to you in the garage as if you were some boy or stranger that just washed up here. Tell me, have you had dinner?”
“I had a late breakfast,” she lied. “I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re here. Perhaps that’s a bother, perhaps not. You came after something and Mother would know what that is. And she’s only warming leftovers—we ate a hour or more ago. I’d say, looking at you, there’s not much extra meat on those bones. Come along.” He stepped back and held open the door and waited.
She went up the steps and into the entry, onward toward the kitchen. He fell into step behind her.
The kitchen was small and yellow, the windows throwing light dimmed by curtains tied back with ruffled edges, the stove and refrigerator both pale green, the table and chairs deeply polished honey-toned wood, chunky colonial reproductions. The walls held photographs and also framed floral needlepoints, two of the frames encrusted with small white seashells and on one wall there hung a cuckoo clock of darker wood, with wooden oak leaves and acorns, two brass pinecones suspended as weights on chains beneath the clock. She could hear it marking time.
The woman turned from the stove. She was slight and trim with a mass of chestnut hair curled tight in waves above her forehead, layered down over the ears so only the lobes showed, those filled with elegant round pearl earrings. She reminded her of Lady Bird Johnson in an everyday dress. But she was prettier, her features more delicate, her mouth a neat bow of deep pink lipstick.
Thornton introduced Katey.
Louise extended a hand and shook neatly, once. Her eyes in some appraisal, she said, “Oliver Snow. It’s been years since I heard that name but then a mother never forgets such a thing, how important it was, he was, to our son. And now you’re looking for Brian? It’s not much but last winter’s chowder out of the deep freeze, warmed up, a tossed salad and some Parker House rolls baked this morning. Why don’t you sit? There’s milk or water. I don’t have soda.”
While speaking she’d ladled chowder into a bowl and placed it on the table, alongside another bowl with chopped dressed lettuce, a plate of rolls. She turned to the refrigerator and lifted out a carton of milk and poured a glass and set it on the table.
Katey felt she was on a rolling deck but she sat at the table. She said, “I’m really not hungry.”
“Of course you are.”
The bowl before her was steaming curls down into her stomach and she lifted her spoon and turned it over in the chowder, a stew of cream thick with fish and cubes of potato, translucent shreds of onion all in the steam rising. She could also smell the yeast rolls. She was ravenous and off-kilter and knew it. She paused and said, “Thank you.”
“Tell me then. What it is you need from Brian?”
Katey had buttered a roll and she chewed it slowly, taking time, assessing. She then took a long swallow of milk, thinking Lie but stay as close to the truth as possible.
“Now that I’m here,” she said, looking at her, “I’m not so sure. My dad, he’s not been right since he came home from the war. From before I was born. Lately it seems he’s worse. Tell the truth, I thought maybe Brian might visit him, help him somehow. Now I’m here that doesn’t make sense. Maybe, I was thinking Brian could tell me the story of what happened, that changed my father so. No one else can, really.”
She looked at the two watching waiting faces and ate a spoonful of the chowder, then another. “Mother won’t tell me, if she even knows. He’s a quiet man, my dad. Messes with fiddles and people come to see him about them but he’s in his shop most of the time. So I thought,”—she shook her head—“I don’t know what I was thinking. Except maybe Brian Potter might help, one way or another. Going to visit my dad was the idea I set out with but maybe he could just explain things to me. Enough so I could go home. Understand my dad a little better.”
Louise looked at her husband. Thornton Potter knew she was looking but only nodded, his eyes on Katey. Who returned his gaze and hoped she was convincing enough.
Louise said, “You eat up, dear.”
Katey said, “I’ve been driving a couple of days and not eating right. Candy bars and Cokes and that’s about all. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.”
Thornton said, “Louise? Let this girl eat. Why don’t we walk out to the garage and speak to each other?”
The woman looked back at Katey. Who’d buttered another roll and now lifted her salad fork and held it above that bowl. Louise answered her husband but looked at Katey. “All right. We can talk.”
Then they were gone. Footsteps out through the old woodshed and then the soft shutting of the door into the garage. After that, silence. Thinking They don’t buy it. The way the woman looked at her. What she’d overheard the man say to his wife before he summoned her inside. “See for yourself.” She could only guess what he’d meant but thought Whatever they walk back in here with, this food needs to be gone. I need to be right where they expect me to be.
She ate. The food was good and some other way balanced just right for this day. Sitting in the kitchen of the house he’d grown up in, eating food he’d also eaten, made by hands that loved him. Hands that would either send her on to him or not. And how could they not? Accuse her of who she was? They might wonder, might think it but how could they give voice to that question? She ate the last roll and scraped the last of the chowder from the bowl. They could not. She was certain of that. But also this: Surely they’d call their son and alert him that the daughter of his old friend was coming to see him. But there are two in that game, she thought, and his knowing could work in my favor.
She stabbed the last shreds of lettuce as the door opened and they walked back through into their own house and stood, arrayed side by side across the table.
She said, “I feel I’m a huge bother to you. I’m sorry. It wasn’t what I intended.�
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Thornton glanced at his wife, standing with his elbows slightly out, his thumbs tucked into his trouser waistband by his hips, fingers spread below.
Louise said, “I’m sorry about your father. But Brian had his own difficult time. I think it best that you not see him. But Father’s not sure. He’ll walk you out to your car. I have a migraine coming on. If you’ll excuse me I’m going up to lie down.”
Katey pushed back from her chair and speaking as she stood, said, “I’m sorry—”
The woman had turned and was already out of the room.
Katey looked at Thornton Potter and finished her sentence in a diminished voice.
“—if I upset you someway. But thank you for the food.”
Both stood looking at each other as they listened to the footsteps steady and even, so precise as to be a struggle to be so, going up the stairs.
She waited and he crossed to her and extended an elbow and, his voice oddly and sweetly tentative said, “It’s not easy for her but she’ll be all right. Shall we go?”
Katey slipped her hand into his elbow and made there a moment of pressure, acquiescence, complicity. So joined they turned together and walked out through the woodshed, down to the garage and continued on outside, up to her truck.
Blinding sunlight hit both, now apart, blinking. She opened the door of the truck and sat on the edge of the seat with her feet down on the running board, shaded now and this allowed Thornton Potter to move forward enough to also be out of the sun.
Without preamble he said, “That fall after he got back visiting your father, he saw a man killed working in the woods. A sawyer dropping a tree and the butt end of the log kicked back and up and took the lower half of the man’s face off. Brian quit that day—hadn’t been back at work two-three weeks. I told him, You got the G.I. Bill, go over to Orono and talk to the people at the University and he said he’d think about it. But instead he went down to Bucksport, to the tavern down there and came home with a job, tending bar. This did not please his mother but he told her it was too late that year to get in the University and it was just a job, that he could make decent money. And he’d be better set for college the next year. That was the beginning of a long piece of time for us. We didn’t see him much. He’d sleep till early afternoon and leave at four and be gone most nights about twelve hours. Most times when he came in he was quiet and we only knew he was home when we saw that old doodlebug parked in the drive when we got up in the morning. A time or two he woke us, stumbling up the stairs. It bothered Mother but I figured, all he’s been through, he needs to cut loose. Then sometime late winter or early spring he ran into Deedee Springer. Debra, her name was but all called her Deedee. She’d been a year behind him in high school and left town for Rhode Island to work there and was all those years before she returned home.
