Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

  “What can I help you with, Jerry?”

  He eyed me uneasily. The white of his left eye was shot with scarlet. It was hard to look at. He said, “You went out to Adam Leer’s place, right? With Ann?”

  “She drove me there, yes. I understand Mr. Leer wants to hire you.”

  “Did you hear him say so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Jerry said. “That’s what Ann told me, but I wasn’t sure. Ann’s always saying this person or that person wants to hire me, then it never turns out to be true. I told her I wasn’t about to go see Mr. Leer about a job and embarrass myself, but she said to ask you if I didn’t believe her. I tried your cell phone but you didn’t answer.”

  “The offer is real as far as I know. He has some yard work in mind, if you can get to it before the snow. Maybe some other jobs too.”

  “Like mechanical jobs?”

  “He wasn’t specific. He mentioned taking out that stand of aspens. And the driveway’s in pretty rough shape.”

  Jerry walked over to my concession stand and set the toolbox on the counter. With his back to me he said, “I just came by to collect my socket set.”

  “Your socket set.”

  He opened the big box. It was a nest of cords, screwdrivers, ball-peen hammers, loose washers, and other bits. “Remember a couple of years ago? I lent you my set.”

  I didn’t remember. Jerry said, “You were working on something and needed some sockets. I brought you mine. Now I need them back.” At my doubtful expression he added, “Ann warned me you wouldn’t recall. She said you’re pretty forgetful right now, because of your brain thing.” He sighed, pawed through his toolbox a few moments as if making absolutely sure, then held it open for my inspection. “You see—they’re missing,” he said, as though his jumbly toolbox were proof that I was hoarding his sockets.

  “Jerry, I don’t have your socket set.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked, startled. Then, with deep concern, “How could you know it, for sure, old friend?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. My brain wasn’t at full power—just then it felt less like a brain than a barely sentient dumpling—yet I was sure Jerry was inventing. In fact I was reasonably sure this was the longest conversation Jerry and I had ever had.

  “Ann said you wouldn’t recall,” he said, sorrowfully. He looked up from the chaotic toolbox to me. I held his gaze. He didn’t look away and neither did I. Eventually something crept into his eyes. It was slight, but it was there—the rash nerve of the boy thief, sticking to his story. Jerry didn’t blink. I felt admiration and enormous sadness. Greenstone was full of people who could make you sad just by strolling into view. Jerry was one of them. Shad was another. I realized I was one of them too—maybe always had been. He said, “Ann feels real bad how forgetful you’ve become.”

  I asked what he needed the sockets for and he replied simply, “Work.” Any work Leer had for him would require tools. He couldn’t just show up unprepared. Ever since Ann told him about this opportunity he’d been out in his garage, sorting through tools.

  It was clear to me this part of his story was true. I watched his moist and mottled brow. Talking about Adam Leer made him anxious. “The guy is not regular,” he said. “Guy killed his own brother when they were just kids, I don’t know if you’re aware.”

  “That’s just a story, Jerry. And a pretty mean one.”

  Jerry said he didn’t know about that. He said Leer was never even sorry, not about the dead brother, not about anything he did—he sure went through the wives, too. Not to even mention making dirty movies, and then letting his decent old parents’ house fall apart. Now he, Jerry, was supposed to go fix what Leer hadn’t cared enough to keep in shape. The whole thing made Jerry nervous. He needed the work, but it was hard to work when you were nervous, and had lent out half your tools.

  His face had gone red and patchy while he talked. “Come on downstairs,” I said. “Maybe you’re right about the sockets.”

  Descending into chilly gloom I tried to recall what I knew of Jerry Fandeen. He was way older than Ann. He’d worked one time or another for most of the taconite outfits on the Mesabi Range—driving trucks, welding, keeping equipment in trim. Eventually he became something of a specialist at setting the sequential explosive charges that pulverize taconite ore into rubble for processing. When I moved in there were still a few former blasters in Greenstone, decent old deaf union men who described the years in cubic tons. In 1987 I sold a ticket for Peggy Sue Got Married to a bald man with a grin and a stout handshake—“You owe me your basement,” he said, an inscrutable remark until he explained he’d been on a municipal blasting crew back in ’53. Lots of us owed him our basements. Mine is smooth and vertical, the cool square walls interrupted every two feet with the half-pipe tracks of drill bits. I wondered what Jerry thought of the workmanship. He’d lost his job because of a work-related calamity, details of which I could not remember. Afterward, Jerry’s employment was haphazard. He washed dishes, cut grass, collected government assistance. It seemed likely Ann rolled her eyes whenever Jerry spoke. In fact it seemed certain. By the time we reached the basement I had accrued a large fund of sympathy for Jerry.

  “Nice down here,” he remarked. The rock walls are the color of graphite. Lights bob from the massive old joists. A few small rooms are cobbled up from pallet boards. It looks like a mine in a Howard Hawks western.

  “Nice,” Jerry repeated.

  The storage room is lined with shelving attached to clean bedrock with spikes. The shelves hold boxes, Rubbermaid bins, fruit crates. A tray of tubular maps like scrolls. Every tool I own is down there, in more or less decent arrangement.

  “Aw, nice,” he said in wonder, and I pretty much agreed. There’s a rack of Tarzan paperbacks, a pint of schnapps in a sliding drawer, a cork dartboard I rarely use but like to see hanging in its place. Summer and winter it’s fifty-eight degrees. Kate never liked it down here but this gloomy old room has always lifted my spirits.

  I pulled out an ancient fruit crate with a peeling label. The label said Claudio’s with an orange painted on it like a sun. The crate contained three socket sets. I heaved it onto the big workbench which is also spiked to the rock.

  Jerry opened the cases, laid them on the bench, and ran his fingers over the shiny sockets as if playing scales. He was a big specimen with translucent fuzz on his cheeks and Christmas yearning in his eyes. It began to seem foolish that I owned a giant box of redundant sockets I never used, while Jerry, who needed sockets, had none. Finally I reached out and tapped the biggest set. “I remember now. These are yours.”

  His wariness returned. He thought I was setting a trap. It was a comprehensive socket set in a chromium case with both metric and standard components. Like most of my tools it was here when I arrived. A lovely bit of conflict came into Jerry’s face. He was torn between the joy of good tools and the guilt of ripping me off. It was impossible to guess which way he would go. He watched me a moment, then shut the case and started fast toward the stairs with the sockets under his arm.

  “Hang on, Jerry,” I called after him.

  He turned at the foot of the steps.

  “I think there was something else,” I said. “Didn’t you lend me a few other things?”

  “Electric drill,” he instantly declared.

  I had two. The previous owner had left one behind, a hefty antique with a pewter-like sheen; then my brother-in-law Dinesh gave me a birthday Black and Decker. Jerry got that one, still in the box. He looked pleased and confused. We moved on to shop clamps and claw hammers and wood chisels, where he helped himself more freely. Soon he began telling me about his professional descent. He’d got off track somehow, back in his blast-technician days. He didn’t know how exactly. He used to be sharp and self-directed. A leader. He told his crew what to do and they did it, setting up rolling charges in a series of holes so on detonation the ground rose rippling and it was like shaking out a blanket. His voice grew poignant
at the image. But time passed, his edges got dull. He did not mind a drink in those days. One afternoon on the mine floor he fell asleep driving a dump truck in low gear. The truck moved forward at a slow rate of speed. It rolled over a generator so things came unplugged, and still Jerry didn’t wake up. The truck clipped the edge of a portable toilet, then flattened a Ford Fiesta that shouldn’t have been parked where it was. There wasn’t much to those Fiestas. Flimsy cars. The trouble was that another man on Jerry’s crew was sleeping inside the Fiesta. It was a bad day at the mine. A lot of people yelled at Jerry because of it. He tried to answer them but couldn’t. No answer came to him that would explain how such a thing had occurred. He simply fell asleep—he forgot himself, somehow. Ann took his side, but not for long. She soon turned a corner. She didn’t accuse him, but no longer defended him either. She didn’t really even talk to him, unless it was to tell him about some work he should do. It seemed to Jerry that after he forgot himself, Ann forgot him as well. She forgot he was her husband, or that they had been happy. Eventually she forgot everything she had liked him for in the first place. Thus Jerry’s determination to collect his tools and go to work for Mr. Leer; he felt if he could complete some jobs correctly, really knock them out of the park, even just mowing the grass, he might start to remember himself. If he remembered himself soon enough, maybe Ann would remember him too.

  Looking over my shelves he abruptly recalled lending me a circular saw and a set of screwdrivers. Flat-head or Phillips, I asked. Probably both, he replied. We filled a few crates with tools and hauled them up the steps to his pickup.

  10

  JERRY HADN’T BEEN GONE HALF AN HOUR WHEN SNOW STARTED TO fall, accumulating in the gutters and putting his mowing plans in jeopardy. It was one of those deep, drenching, autumn snows, six miserable inches that clung to twigs and windowsills and reminded summer holdouts to bolt while they could. I cruised through the concessions, took a quick inventory of popcorn oil and Hot Tamales and Junior Mints. I hadn’t shown a film since the accident but planned to reopen next week. When I turned on the lights a filament flashed in a lobby fixture, so I was standing on a stepladder with a replacement bulb when Rune appeared at the glass door under the marquee—it gave me a jolt, him standing there, peering inside through cupped hands.

  I unlocked and in he came with a satchel and two cylindrical fishing-rod cases. Snow stuck to his shoulders and slid off the brim of his hat. He stamped it off his shoes in clumps. His eyes were lit, his handshake was cold, he looked disheveled and happy.

  “Would you like me to change that bulb?” he said.

  He’d been watching several minutes, it turned out—watching me paralyzed on the second step of the ladder, looking up, dreading the vertigo that became inevitable as I came close to the ceiling.

  I handed him the bulb. He went up like a Narnian elf—out with the old glass, in with the new—and in a blink he was back on the floor. “Look,” he said, “I’ve brought supper.”

  He reached into the pockets of his long-tailed coat and pulled out a square tin of corned beef, raised a finger to stop my protest, then bobbled up a handful of redskin potatoes, a yellow onion, a head of garlic.

  By now I was laughing. He said, “Is something the matter? What is the matter? Do you not care about hash?”

  “I care deeply about hash,” I said. “Let’s get this stuff upstairs.”

  In my kitchen Rune rustled about, locating dishes and forks, unearthing pans I failed to remember, starting a kettle of water and shooing me into a chair. I would later learn Marcus Jetty was among those who’d wandered down to the harbor and ended up flying the dog. It was Marcus who told Rune about the soaring Pontiac, my mighty splashdown, my unsettled mind. With a grunt Rune hoisted his heavy satchel to the tabletop, zipped it open, and pawed down through, exclaiming Ha ha! as he pulled out a jar of coarse mustard and set it aside. The mustard was followed by Worcestershire, pickles and peppercorns, sausages, cheese, a sturdy tomato, two brown speckled eggs—it was bottomless, that satchel; if he’d contrived to pull a friendly bear cub out of its depths I’d have been delighted but not all that surprised. He hummed and murmured as the goods kept coming: crackers, fruit cocktail, coffee and cream, black bread and black beer, the flask of Shad’s maple syrup, a tiny bright city of bottles and tins. Ha ha! Chopping onions on a plank, Rune advised me to check the bag and see “what’s below,” and reaching down I lifted out half a berry pie still in its foil, a bar of Freia chocolate, and a flask of akevitt which Rune forthrightly allowed was terrible unless poured at the end of a strenuous day, when it was more than a little bit good. Behind the fry hiss I became aware of an aggressive snapping sound—fat wet snowflakes striking the window. Rune rubbed steam from the panes with his hand and EMPRESS became a dozen blue rivers as snow ran melting down the glass. He stood at the stovetop turning the hash a long time, then slid it crackling onto plates and laid a bright fried egg over each.

  It turns out there’s little better than corned beef hash, if you are exhausted, with popping ears and wayward balance. The hash vanished in near silence, but during the coffee afterward, with the berry pie and chocolate, Rune leaned back on two chair legs and began to hold forth. He claimed his English was rudimentary yet he held forth ably, and the day must’ve been strenuous enough for us both, since the akevitt was as mellow as cream.

  Six weeks earlier Rune Eliassen was a retired widower feeding the juncos and accepting the conclusion of his lineage. He lived in a white house with a steep red roof in Tromsø, two hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, with a small sailboat resting on blocks in the yard and a high round window through which he could watch sturdy Hurtigruten ferries plying to and fro under the soaring bridge. His wife Sofie, a piano teacher and baker of profound loaves at a local café, had died the winter before; his sister Gretchen, a sparkling poet, two winters before that. Neither Sofie nor Gretchen ever had children. As his sister cheerfully told him, “On the day I tip over, you will be the final post in the fence.”

  He’d gotten used to being the final post.

  Oh, he and Sofie had wanted children—wanted them badly. When the early years passed without a baby they’d seen one doctor, then another. A kind of panic took hold, Rune said; they became conversant with schedules and temperatures, they worked the mapped tides of fertility. You might not think so, but a reluctant bachelor understands a little of this. The passing bullet train of years, I mean. The quiet bowl of soup at six. Yet sitting in my kitchen Rune held off sorrow and became if anything more sprightly. He waxed a bit enthusiastic about the spirit and disposition required of a final post. It wasn’t for everyone but a man could get through. He said certain fecund neighbors would always suspect you had brought it on yourself through transgression or frivolity. You might even believe this yourself for a time. There was a period of adjustment while you gave up blood legacy.

  “Sofie recovered first,” he admitted. “A practical one, my wife. A good hard head on those soft shoulders. On the other hand I am fairly slow. I had to wallow. A capable wallower, she called me. Sofie was patient until she couldn’t be anymore. Then it had to be all right.”

  “Why didn’t you adopt a child?”

  “We pursued it, certainly. And twice came close—people gave us baby clothes, the bed with sides, we bought den lille shoes. But both times fell to pieces. A mother can change her mind, you see? But to come so near—and then not. The disappointment is extravagant.” This he stated in a flattened voice like a wall built hastily to conceal ruins.

  The akevitt warmed my eardrums and fingertips. “But then,” I said, “you weren’t the last post after all.”

  “No. How about that?” Rune pointed at the flask which I handed over.

  Six weeks ago today—only six weeks!— he’d gone as usual to Sofie’s grave. She was buried in a churchyard uphill from the water. The hill was covered with stone markers and sparse yellow grasses. The wind rarely stopped up there; it was a beguiling place to fly. That day Rune flew a kite mode
led on the darting sloop he and Sofie sailed weekends for almost thirty years.

  When he got home there was mail in the box. In the mail was a letter from an attorney in South Dakota, United States. The attorney named a woman who had died in Watertown. Per her instructions he was giving Rune the news—delayed and bedazzling, like light from an extinguished star—that long ago he’d fathered a son in America.

  “You see,” Rune said, in a tone of pleased apology, “when I was young, before I ever knew my Sofie, I came to the States for a bit.”

  The whole tale was so unlikely, and so plainly described—the stone markers and yellow grasses, the tidings on a strange letterhead—it began to play in my head like a film. If I shut my eyes I could watch it all. I knew its look and genre, a genial romance in oversaturated hues, with snow falling on eyelashes and little doubt of the outcome. A transatlantic romance of the early sixties. I imagined Rune as a brooding young Terence Stamp—for the girl, say, Tuesday Weld.

  Her name was Roberta. Nimble is the word Rune liked for her—a lively Duluth girl from St. Scholastica, teaching småbarn in Greenstone that year of 1964. Rune was twenty-three and had come to the States to drive through the prairie, a dream of his, and to recover from what he nebulously termed a prøvelse, or affliction. From this I took it he’d been ill or suffered some brute trauma. He was not an explainer of dark areas unless the mood took him. He was happier narrating times of light, and what arrested him that day on the streets of Duluth was a copper-haired girl in a white beret. She stood on the walk outside a downtown bookshop. It was snowing and she held a brand-new book behind crossed arms to protect it from the flakes. Rune still remembered how he squared himself walking and hoped she would look his way. She didn’t, instead peering wistfully into the shop window. As Rune passed on the sidewalk he slowed and looked too.