Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

  “They’re a few old movies—they’re hardly imps,” I said, though a draft stroked my neck at his description.

  “Nevertheless, they are in your closet.” His face grew small and lonely. “Do you know I miss them, Virgil. I dream about them, sometimes. I used to lace them up and watch them by myself. All alone. It wasn’t healthy, no.”

  I didn’t mention I was already some distance down that road.

  He said, “I was wrong not to disclose. If I’m ever to sleep, I must make the offer.”

  “What offer is that?” I was suddenly alert—defensive, even.

  He looked briefly away. “If you now believe the purchase were a vital error, say the word. I’ve hardly spent a dollar—say the word, is all, and I will forgo my San Diego, and buy the Empress back.”

  He met my eyes and there I stood dumbfounded. It’s true by this point I was eating my inheritance. How many mornings had I sweated at the calculator learning black from red? Already it was plain a second job was necessary, and I’d begun to consider selling my pleasant bungalow and moving to the Empress apartment. Here was a chance to recoup. I was young. I could go to school, adjust my course. Investigate a sequence of less permanent mistakes.

  Edgar watched me think it out, his left hand on the ticket counter, pinkie finger quivering. To this day I can’t tell you whether he hoped I’d turn him down—freeing him to go watch seals in San Diego—or accept his offer, and return to him the life he seemed to miss.

  I really did think it over. True, I was jumpy about the north closet. Yet in a devilish paradox, the cache itself made me loath to give it up. Thrall is too strong a word, then one day it isn’t. Only that morning I’d brushed against the closet door and felt a scatter of life inside. Maybe the films were imps at that. In some undeclared sense Edgar seemed to want them back—but now, God help me, I wanted them too.

  I said, “Actually, Mr. Poe, I think we’re on good terms. It’s a gracious offer but there are ways to make the business work. You’re a good man. I wish you well in California.”

  He pulled back, forlorn yet still somehow expectant, as though my decision came too fast. I took a breath, caught his eye, and made it not just formal but a little grandiose: “As for the imps, they are with me now. I forthwith take possession of their stewardship.”

  His face seemed to collapse, then refill; his old melancholy kindness returned. “Well then,” he said, “no doubt it’s for the best. However,” he added, unable to help himself, “I fear you’ll lose your shirt at this. It’s not an easy road. In two years you will be shirtless, and then it’s me you’ll blame.”

  “Ha,” I said to this grim prophecy, then shook his hand and watched him go down the street. The triumph in my gut had an apprehensive shade but it was triumph all the same. It was Saturday, a few kids were lining up. I had a matinee to screen.

  2

  WE BURIED SHAD PEA ON A COLD SATURDAY WITH SNOW CLOUDS AND brittle sun. The cemetery overlooks the lake and a late October easterly was stacking up waves and pounding them over the fetch. Folding chairs flanked a small mound of dirt beside a round hole eight inches across. A posthole digger lay on the grass. An old man wearing a military flight cap and a shrunken Army jacket told me some of Shad’s friends from the service were “stepping in to provide the honors.” Moments later the shudder of motorcycles came up through the ground. The old man had tears in his eyes. He touched my shoulder as the men rode in on their Harleys and Indians and Hondas. They were led by a graybeard on an olive-drab Triumph. In they rolled, gloves on, black helmets squeezing faces red from the wind, a pack of paunchy old centaurs come to bury their own.

  I didn’t even know Shad was a veteran. He would talk as long as you stood there about his deceased brother or whipsmart kids or his wife Maria whom he adored even after she forgot his face and his name and their tale of burning love—a generous talker, Shad, but his Army time never came up.

  The riders lined up their bikes and shut them off and stood beside them. They outnumbered the locals and came to shambling attention as Shad’s family appeared and walked down the line of folding chairs. Lily then Galen then Shad’s wife Maria, whom a group-home staffer had driven six hours north to tell Shad good-bye. Maria wore blue rubber boots and a black coat of nubbly wool. When she sat in the folding chair it dug into the earth at a tilt.

  Rune raised his hand at Nadine wending her way through the gravestones. She saw him and altered course toward us.

  I waved and prepared myself. I’d long found it difficult to speak with Nadine. It shouldn’t have been. We were all friends. But early on—less than a year after Alec vanished—I made a key mistake.

  We were both at the post office, waiting in line, not really talking but just idling while the creaky postmaster wafted around the back room hunting for somebody’s mail. A sleepy malaise fell over the post office. An interval passed. Abruptly I realized I was holding Nadine’s hand. What a thing to find yourself doing! When had I reached for her? What must she have thought? I don’t remember what I said but am confident it was stupid. Maybe she laughed, maybe I should’ve laughed but didn’t. Maybe I turned away and waited for the postmaster and finally sent whatever I was sending that day.

  How did this happen? What did it mean? I would answer differently now but then, in my fraught solitude, it meant I’d lost track of myself. It meant I was no different from the hapless entrepreneurs and BMW owners and polyester track guys who thought the lovely widow should be that night’s entertainment and maybe appear on next year’s Christmas card. It meant in fact I was worse than them, and by quite a bit. They were only unworthy. As Alec’s good friend, I was also disloyal.

  Her hand, though—that capable hand, holding mine right there in the post office. I never forgot the cool strength of her fingers.

  Nadine veered over and spoke to Lily a moment, Galen too. She knelt beside Maria and coaxed out the only smile we would see from her that day, then came and greeted Rune with a hug—you could tell from her shine and low laugh she was glad Alec’s father had dropped into her life.

  “Virgil,” she said—whispering, because a chaplain had appeared and seemed about to start. “How are you?”

  I nodded and smiled. To my surprise I felt no anxiety, no sense of impending futility. Except for immediate family it was a standing service and Nadine stood between Rune and me. “I came to see you in the hospital,” she said in my ear. “Twice. Not that you’d remember—the nurse said you were out like a mackerel.” She smiled at the breach of medical jargon and whispered, “Did you know there was a rumor about you? That you died in the lake?”

  “So I’m told. It’s good to see you, Nadine.” Saying it made me remember her laughing once that she had a name made to be embroidered on bowling shirts.

  “Lily used to sit for Bjorn sometimes. What a sweet girl.”

  “She is.”

  As we watched, the old man in the flight cap walked up through the cemetery holding a trumpet. He spoke to the chaplain who nodded at his notes and pointed toward a slight rise. The old trumpet moved slowly away through the tombstones and took a position near a leaning white pine. The music is supposed to float in from a distance. The chaplain stepped forward coughing into his fist.

  He kept the talk short. After a few minutes the clouds parted briefly. Sunlight glittered off Lily’s bright earrings and Shad’s cylindrical urn which turned out to be a Hills Bros. coffee can painted with silver Rust-Oleum. In that sunny moment I glimpsed our shadows stretching forward on the ground—Nadine’s skirt blowing toward me a little, her hair and scarf likewise. Rune’s shadow was oddly lanky and big-handed, as though Alec were making a brief return.

  Then clouds took over, the chaplain wrapped up, and the trumpeter, leaning back slightly, lifted taps into the air over the coastal pulse of the waves. Lily cried quietly and Maria, accepting the folded flag, let out a scratchy wail. One of the riders took her elbow and guided her out through the leaning stones. The rest of us followed. It was only when we were
some distance away that the motorcycles started coming awake, coughing and clearing their throats, at last snaking out in a long southwest line on Highway 61.

  Rune offered a lift, but I decided to walk. It felt good to be on my feet in the breeze coming off the water. I had on my charcoal Men’s Wearhouse suit from Orry’s wedding all those years ago—it was quite baggy now, plus I forgot my wing tips and wore ruinous Nike trainers. At least I could walk the stony shoreline in comfort back to town.

  “Virgil. Ride?” Nadine rolled up in her tired Wagoneer.

  “Thanks, I’ll walk.”

  She nodded. The Jeep rolled on a few feet, then stopped and reversed so Nadine came back into view. The window slid down. “I’m glad you lived, Virgil.”

  “Me too.”

  I tapped a light good-bye on the roof of the Jeep and started down to the water.

  It’s a demanding route home—that part of the shore is all oval rocks that shift underfoot like turtles. I picked carefully through and still fell four times, nailing my shin once but doing no real harm. A gang of seagulls joined me along the way, making covetous cries, sometimes hovering a yard or two off my lakeward shoulder. When they suddenly dispersed I looked up.

  The man on the water stood forty yards out.

  He was facing away, dark coat on like the one I wore except better tailored, standing in the troughs so the waves struck his knees and flew into spray. It was my second glimpse of him. I shouted Hey but got no response. He took his hands from his pockets and clasped them behind his back. The hands were very white. The wind shivered his trouser legs. You can know it’s not real and still be spooked. To shake it off I picked up a couple of small rocks and heaved them out there. One got within three feet of him but he paid no mind. After a minute I turned and kept picking my way home over the turtley stones, now and then glancing over my shoulder. To my relief the man stayed where he was—relaxed, evidently unconcerned, as if watching for rain, or waiting for a light to change.

  3

  MONDAY MORNING I WALKED TO CITY HALL WHERE THE MAYOR, evidently euphoric, had left this note on my desk.

  Virgil—Bob Dylan!

  the Greenstone Retrospective

  See me Lydia.

  “You want me to book Dylan,” I said, poking my head into her office.

  Lydia beamed. “Wouldn’t it be so nice? Come in and shut the door.”

  Her fondness for Dylan was no secret—the Blood on the Tracks album cover was framed on her office wall—but until that day I had no idea Lydia had seen him perform twenty-seven times, or that she’d written him a Christmas letter every year since 1965, when he went electric, or that sometimes he wrote funny disjointed cards back. She showed me one that said, Sorry for the penmanship John Wayne shook my hand and man did he bust it.

  “Dylan on the Empress stage,” she sighed.

  I thought about it. Sometimes I still think about it, right down to the lighting, as though it had actually happened. Lydia asked me to reach out to Dylan’s booking agent and “start a dialogue.” She said he’d grown up nearby so he couldn’t fail to remember Greenstone—maybe he’d enjoy coming back.

  “We might have a better chance if you start the dialogue,” I ventured. “On account of being his longtime correspondent.”

  “I would, but I am too tired,” she said—she did look worn thin. “Please do it for me, Virgil.”

  I said of course I would.

  When I got home Bjorn was just climbing the steps to my landing. He carried a six-foot length of driftwood. It was light gray with a gentle curve and looked like a great old crackly rib plucked from the desert floor.

  “This washed up on the beach,” he said. “It’s light but real strong. I thought you might want it for a …” I could see him struggling not to say cane, since canes are for ancients. Would he go with stick? Walking stick? Staff?

  “Stout quarterstaff,” he said at last, and I remembered one after-party he actually may have stayed awake for, the MGM Robin Hood with Errol Flynn. Who wants a cane if you can get a stout quarterstaff? It was smooth and sturdy with a few tiny knots like sparrow eyes, a tight coil in the grain. It felt cool and eternal in my grasp. Bjorn had drilled a hole two inches from the thick end and tied a loop of leather through it.

  “Why Bjorn, thank you.” Another effect of the accident—I choked up easily. “Come in if you like. Rune made bread.”

  Bjorn looked past me. “Is he here?”

  “No, out flying.”

  “Okay.” Bjorn stepped in peering around the apartment, which he’d never seen. “Hey, this view is all right. You got a little porch out there.”

  “Have a look if you want.”

  He stepped across and went out on the deck. While he stood in the cold, blowing rings with his breath, I got out Rune’s bread and tore off a couple of lumps and set them on a plate. It was the simplest possible loaf, just flour and water and yeast and salt. It was the best I ever tasted. Many days it was all I ate.

  When Bjorn came back in he said, “Is that where he sleeps?” nodding at the open door of the guest room where Rune’s rod cylinders and satchel were stacked in a corner.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mom’s pleased he’s got a place for now. She invited him to stay with us, but he wouldn’t.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t want to intrude. Besides, I can use the company. I just about burned it all down, you know.”

  “Because of the brain damage,” Bjorn said, looking away.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t know where to go after brain damage so buttered a piece of bread and took a bite. Through the mouthful he said, “Geez Louise.”

  “I know. I’m wrecked for store bread. Now you are too.”

  He sat down at the table and ate both chunks with butter and then tore off a third and ate that too. I poured us coffee. It was lukewarm and on the strong side but Bjorn drank it up and helped himself to more.

  I said, “Tell me about your face.” A crescent-shaped abrasion curved from his left cheekbone to the corner of his eye.

  I could see he was proud of the injury. I called him brave and he laughed, said brave had nothing to do with it, he just stumbled on some YouTube surfers and wanted to try. How many people live a block from the sea? He nicked a sweet board for only two hundo, then a scabby old wetsuit. He was a poor swimmer but liked the cool solitude, sitting alone in the swells. At first there were two or three concerned citizens who would see him floating in the distance and call 911, but he kept at it. You had to keep at it. They can’t make you stay on land if you want to go in the water.

  What I suddenly missed, as Bjorn talked away, was the easy arrival of interests. Of obsessions. I remembered stumbling onto things I loved, almost by accident—it used to happen a lot. I admired Bjorn’s courage, his sense of why-not, his easy appropriation of language—nicked a sweet board, only two hundo.

  “It looks easy if you’re doing it right,” he said. “I’m still pretty bad but I won’t always be. It’s like with guitar: shredders think of a riff and it comes out their fingers. That’s how I’ll surf pretty soon.”

  The hungry way he talked made me realize he had no one else, no local tribe. He’d bought The History of Surfing for a dollar plus shipping, along with titles like Stoked Wisdom and West of Jesus. The literature made it sound like a sport full of monks, but Bjorn said it was practice like anything else. It took him a full floundering afternoon to ride his first wave, lying prone on the board with his elbows tucked in. The next day he got up kneeling. Then came days of calm, weeks with no ridable swell. All he could do was read and watch YouTube. When at last a storm kicked up the sea, he locked the Citgo station where he was working then and left. That was the day he rode upright at last, a waist-high comber into the shallows. Citgo fired him. The ride was worth it.

  “It’s not magic, you know? Just physics,” he said. “But it’s nice physics. Nothing else picks you up and carries you that way.”

  When he talked about being picked up
and carried I thought of him at five or six riding into the Empress on his dad’s shoulders, the way he ducked laughing to get in the door. Who doesn’t want to be carried sometimes? Come to think of it, it sounded a little like how I felt flying Rune’s kites.

  “So you got a new grandpa out of the blue.”

  Bjorn got up and poured a glass of water at the sink. He drank the whole glassful and leaned against the counter wiping his mouth. “First night he came, Mom went upstairs during supper and cried for an hour. We couldn’t hear her crying but that’s what she did. Me and the old man sat there eating potatoes. The whole time he kept looking at me. No idea what he expected. Then Mom came down finally. None of us knew what to do. The two of them ended up looking at pictures. I got out of there—hey, geez.”

  He had spotted Rune’s latest kite, propped against the opposite wall. It was modeled on the old-school English three-speed bicycle and that’s what you’d think it was if you just walked casually past. In fact it was a kite with a split bamboo frame and spoked wheels that spun independently.

  Bjorn crouched in front of it, reached out, but didn’t touch. Rune had spent three evenings on this project, humming small rhymes to himself, re-creating from memory a bike he’d borrowed once decades ago—he even took a fine-line Sharpie and lettered Sturmey Archer on its fat rear hub.

  “Can this thing possibly fly?” Bjorn asked.

  “I wouldn’t bet against it.”

  Now he did lay his hand on the kite—cautiously, just his fingertips, as though expecting voltage. He took his hand away.

  “What’s he doing here, Mr. Wander?”

  “It’s pretty straightforward, I think—he wants to know what he missed.”

  Bjorn gave an agitated laugh. “Well that’s an easy one. Everything until now, that’s what he missed. Dad’s whole life. What’s weird is thinking you can go back and retrieve it. The store’s closed. If I can understand that, why can’t he?”