Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

  Just to be sure, I tried it again—backed up the film and ran it, this time staying up in the booth. The credit boomed, the doorbell rang. Nausea answered. In a drawer I found a pair of foam earplugs employed by machinists and skeet shooters—I pinched them in, waited for them to expand. I rewound and went for a third try, even though my stomach had issued a warning about what was certain to happen. It did.

  So I’d done all I could to bring off a comeback, and now couldn’t project the movie. I needed a plan, and here I was goofing around, hoping to fly a kite.

  About this time Rune, still tinkering, switched gears and began musing about what it was like to suddenly acquire a grandson.

  “I’m a large disappointment,” he said. “An old man never understands what a large disappointment he is going to be.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Bjorn must have hoped I would be like his dad. Of course he would hope this! And I would, if I knew how. Do you know I have filled two notebooks with nothing but stories of Alec? Yet I can’t find enough of him to matter. I am unable to be some different way.”

  “I doubt Bjorn wants you to be Alec,” I told him, cautiously.

  “I embarrassed him the other day,” Rune said. “Flying on the shore, some kids along. Everyone wanted the string. We went around a point of land and there was Bjorn out in the water. Sitting on his surfboard in the small waves. I knew he did this but hadn’t seen it. I wasn’t sure it was him. The hood shows only his eyes. I shouted, ‘Bjorn, Bjorn, is that you?’ And this group of kids thought it was funny. Extremely hilarious. They started yelling, ‘Bjorn, is that you? Is that you?’”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “I made them stop, but Bjorn was humiliated. He turned around and put his chest on the board. He paddled out a long way.” Rune sighed, his face slumped.

  “Maybe you should give Bjorn more credit,” I suggested.

  “I have the wrong approach,” Rune said in a tone of resignation.

  He looked at me to speak, but I kept quiet. What I couldn’t say was that Bjorn wanted a future as something besides the son of an unsolved problem, and that meant the best thing might be for Rune to forsake his inquiry and go home to the Arctic Circle. Maybe he was meant to be the final post, after all.

  But I couldn’t say that to Rune—I couldn’t. Therefore I took sanctuary in my ravaged vocabulary, and watched him work on the bicycle kite. He repaired its broken spars, retied its cat’s cradle of a flight harness; he wrapped a final splice with thread, then bit it off and asked, “Do you want to try this now?”

  He must’ve made several adjustments, because it wasn’t the chaos machine of earlier. It was hardly domesticated, but I paid out some line, maybe two hundred feet, and the bicycle didn’t crash or break in midair. Flying it I felt my panic about the Empress subside. Hither and yon it zipped across the bright cold sky, wheels spinning with a lively purr that came down into my fingers. I let out more line. A buoyancy expanded in my chest and I seemed to rise toward a small cumulus cloud scudding toward the province of Ontario. The cloud misted me with a greeting and went on its way. A brace of late snow geese moved south along the shoreline; their black wing tips whistled as they passed. Far below Bjorn rested on his board, suited up and waiting for a wave. I saw the modest rooftop of the Empress.

  “What are you laughing about?” Rune said, a little time later.

  “Was I laughing?”

  “You were.”

  “It’s a fine flyer. I don’t know how you did it.”

  “Any adjustments I should make?” He beamed at my praise—he already knew it was a brilliant kite.

  All I could do was shake my head. Any kite that pulls you up and makes you laugh shouldn’t be tinkered with further.

  I never did explain to Rune the effect of his painted wings—the lift, the ease, the entrance into something else. The flights had a dreamlike fragility. What if they were ruined by talk? Likewise Rune never elucidated his discipline or theory of flight. He was more practitioner than advocate, in the way of believers whose religion is so intimate they keep it to themselves.

  Flying the bicycle gave me an idea, though. I knew what to do, and handed Rune the string.

  Bjorn met me at the Empress. He was curious and quick to understand the machinery. He did a lot of vaguely acerbic smiling, saying Sure thing boss, with cryptic remarks about analog gear, calling it “steampunk” as though it were all cogs and coal shovels. I showed him how to lace up a movie from several reels onto the single platter, keeping heads and tails in proper order; how to run the primitive Mackie soundboard; how to perform a quick splice if the projector stalled and the hot bulb melted through the print.

  “Actual buttons,” was his deadpan observation. “Razor blades. Sticky tape.”

  Old-school as it was, he caught on fast. When I learned the ropes from Edgar I was a slow study, clumsy with celluloid and wary of gear—every splice seemed a victory, every screening without a melt-through or a print jumping the tracks was me squeaking past on grace and good fortune. By contrast, Bjorn in the booth seemed inherently poised. He flourished two spools on the flats of his hands, threaded the old machine as though buttering up a favorite aunt. He stretched out his long fingers and rotated dials that seemed to have called to him from former times.

  I’d bought a yellow legal notebook and written down each step of my process. He gave this finicky list a once-over, eyed me indulgently, and proceeded on his own. When the red bulb lit above the door, letting me know the landline was ringing, I quite comfortably left him and went down to answer the phone.

  Normally in the afternoon I let it ring through to the recording, which gives the current movie and showtimes. Today I didn’t. Tom Beeman had run a short item in the Observer about the reopening, which might lead to some curiosity or even other media showing up—years earlier Duluth TV had profiled the Empress during the summer news vacuum, and for two weeks we averaged thirty-five tickets per night. Feeble numbers for your metro screens but a world-shifting deluge for my dissipating palace. That fall I renovated four rows of seats and had the screen professionally cleaned; it made a bright and beautiful difference. Therefore I picked up the phone and with what I imagined was forthright energy said, “It’s the Empress Theater, good day.”

  “Virgil? Jerry Fandeen.”

  “Ah, Jerry.” I won’t deny my vocal élan took a hit, but Jerry didn’t notice. His own voice sounded stressed and oddly hollow.

  “In a small little bind here,” he said. “I wonder if I could just tap into your knowledge of plumbing.”

  I pleaded ignorance but he shook this off. After seeing my organized tool storage, Jerry had begun to imagine I was a capable handyman. I told him I knew nothing of plumbing, but he was sure it was only something else I had clean forgot, like adjectives, and balance, and the many useful tools he had lent me. At the moment he was fixing Adam Leer’s main-floor toilet. Something was jammed way down there and wouldn’t come loose. Leer was out on mysterious errands. Jerry was desperate to get it fixed before he returned.

  “Try one of those flexible snake deals,” I suggested.

  “I did. No luck.”

  “Call a plumber,” I recommended. “Call Benedict.” Clarence Benedict was Greenstone’s last remaining plumber, and a good one. He was eighty and wore striped coveralls everywhere he went. He kept trying to retire.

  “I can’t call Benedict. I’m supposed to be the one fixing things. If I can’t unplug a toilet, Mr. Leer will find someone else to do his repairs.”

  “Up to you, Jerry. Benedict is fast and good. Or you could wait until Leer gets home and let him make the decision. All right? Good luck, Jerry,” I said, and hung up.

  Back in the booth I found Bjorn lacing up an old outtake reel I’d gotten down.

  I’d planned to show it to Rune after Butch Cassidy, but he was so reflective after the movie I forgot. The screen lit up. There were Newman and Redford in their western clothes.

  Bjorn said, “Hey-o, what�
�s this?”

  They sat on a bench in a darkened room. They’d removed their hats and were gazing slightly upward, into the camera—Butch amused, Sundance guarded as usual. The seconds passed and there they sat. There was no repartee. Butch cleared his throat once.

  “I remember this movie,” Bjorn said. “I think Dad liked it.”

  I had to smile. In all my secret trove this was my rarest pearl, a clip from Butch Cassidy that didn’t make the cut. Few living people know it exists—not that many would care, I fully understand.

  The shot widened to include Katharine Ross, sitting next to Redford. Of the three she looked the most delighted. Behind them sat a few gauchos with sunburned faces and dirty kerchiefs. All sat quietly on creaking benches. Shadows played across their faces. Because of their silence and steady gaze there was the sensation they were watching us back.

  “What are they doing?” Bjorn whispered.

  “Same thing you are—hush.”

  We watched the clip to the end. It throws a spell. It’s fifty-two seconds in which no one speaks, an edit, I suspect, from a rumored scene where the desperadoes visit a movie house in South America. There’s no music, no suspense. For nearly a minute you simply relax in the company of three fine-looking people you feel you’ve always known. Moments before the end, Butch grins right at you—his grin spreads to Etta, but not to Sundance.

  “It’s like a window.” The actors were no longer on-screen, but Bjorn kept his voice low, as if they might still be listening. “You look in and there are your friends, looking out.”

  He spun the film back and we watched it again.

  “It feels like we all know each other.”

  “Like we have certain matters in common,” I said.

  “Which we maybe do,” Bjorn said, with a cagey look. “We’re all outlaws, for example.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “We’re outlaws. Tell me this isn’t a stolen clip.”

  I admitted it probably was.

  “And all those movies, up in your secret vault? Are they all nicked?”

  “It’s the most likely scenario.”

  Bjorn was pleased. “It’s all contraband! You’re an outlaw and I’m your accomplice. Who else has seen this clip?”

  “A few studio people, years ago. George Roy Hill, I imagine. An editor or two. Most of them would be dead now. And then yourself.”

  Bjorn liked that. “And how illegal is this stuff? Fine? Jail?”

  “No one would care about most of it. It’s a gray area. You don’t really know until you turn the stuff in.”

  “It’s just as well,” he replied. “That clip is a holy relic. It belongs with you. You want to keep possession.”

  I was pleased he liked the outtake, but later I began to wonder. If something’s a relic, what’s your obligation? Is an attic with a sticky door really its best home?

  What was I hanging onto?

  We put the clip aside and I had Bjorn break down the Langella picture, then splice it back up—he had good solid process, almost right away.

  The red bulb over the door lit up again. This time I took the call in the booth.

  “Virgil? Jerry Fandeen.”

  “Did you sort that plumbing?”

  In a dry voice he implied the job had gone badly.

  “Still plugged?”

  “Obstructed, yes. I tried Benedict but he’s in Iowa. Can you come help with this?”

  In the end, I didn’t go help. For the record I didn’t ask Bjorn to go either, but off he went anyway on his gangly pins, looking alarmingly pleased. Much later, Nadine would tell me that was a banner afternoon for Bjorn—he learned to thread a projector and splice film with a razor; he watched a rare lost clip from a classic movie. And he got to witness with his two eyes the matchless spectacle of a grown man employing a dynamite blasting cap to unplug a toilet.

  That was also the afternoon Bjorn met Mr. Leer—or, more properly, met him again. I didn’t remind Nadine of that fact, however. Acquaintance with Adam Leer seemed rarely to anyone’s benefit, and I didn’t want her to hold it against me.

  5

  NINETY.

  There were ninety people at the Empress. I kept count while selling tickets. There hadn’t been ninety since the last Harry Potter. Word had gone round about my splendid accident. Rune was sitting halfway back, Nadine beside him on the aisle; Tom Beeman was on hand with his camera and a woman I had never met or else did not remember; Marcus Jetty came, and Margaret from the Agate, and even Lanie Plume who sold me the sunglasses—Lanie, sitting with a row of friends, held up her phone and waited until I looked at her to turn it boldly off.

  The speech is the other thing I always do. It starts, The Empress welcomes you.

  Kids think this is deeply lame, adults think it self-indulgent. Both things are true, but standing up to introduce a film is one of the little pleasures of ownership—most of them are little, as you may well imagine.

  I’d thought about what to say, of course I had. You want to be properly grateful. Those warm faces, those expectant smiles—you don’t get many chances to return from the dead. I confess to a tightrope moment, a wobble in which I nearly tottered into some sort of maudlin spillover. But something reined me in. In the end I just said a few words about the movie, as always. I said it was good, with a wistful turn from Mr. Langella and a wily script by Christopher Ford. I had gone to the thesaurus earlier for wistful and wily and written both on the back of my hand. I hoped they all liked the picture and thanked them for coming out and supporting local cinema.

  As the lights dimmed I walked up through surprising applause and climbed to projection. Bjorn was up there and had everything set. I gave him a redundant checklist and he gave me a dead stare, his version of Ann’s eye roll, fitting many occasions. In this case it implied he had everything in hand. The projector hummed at the ready—God bless the old Simplex, I loved its enginey smell. “You got it from here?” I said.

  “Got it, Virgil. Enjoy the night off.”

  I went down the steps and walked outside and down the street. Even out in the wind I could hear splashy credits, waggish voice-over, trailer bombast. I turned at the corner and went toward the lake, the sidewalk lightly spinning, until the movie music vanished in the waves against the seawall.

  6

  IN THE MORNING I ROSE AND MADE COFFEE. RUNE WAS OFF FLYING. The sun was an inch off the lake.

  I lit the blue candle.

  After the derailment I spent a year living with Orry. She was stunningly calm and let me shout. I shouted a lot that year, then enrolled in a Bible college and studied with what now seems forensic intensity. I wrote exegetical papers, absorbed apologetics and hermeneutics until they pooled up and ran off. My professors were learned theologians, a tight group, occasionally competitive about their publications—they had crisp elocution and penetrating rhetoric, and best of all did not seem haunted but were confident in their convictions. I admired their pursuit of divine mysteries. It seemed to me that they, if anyone, might understand why God wished my parents to die in a torn train car with people shrieking around them. God’s mercy was a popular theme in their classes, even though the required texts suggested this mercy was provisional. At bottom, what God seemed to want was affirmation. Basically praise in every circumstance. Without it he could turn menacing in a hurry. Ask the Israelites. For that matter, ask Mom and Dad—they praised God in every circumstance, then their train derailed and smashed all their bones. Their deaths provided me with the spiritual dudgeon to buttonhole professors. One said God usually kept his reasons to himself, only occasionally revealing them through his Word or through special insight, or sometimes through other people, apparently not himself in this instance. Another believed that God allowed tragedy in order to draw us into closer communion with him. “Why not some easier way?” I suggested; which the professor received as impertinence. The third was a man with white hair and renowned decorum, a man you might see in a crowd of thousands and know for a theologian—th
e gravitas, the gaunt suit and ascetic nose. He saw me coming and became elusive but I caught him and stuck. He finally revealed that it took a long time to develop the “eternal perspective,” from which things like this made sense or were in any way acceptable. I cautiously remarked that the eternal perspective was much to ask of creatures as temporary as ourselves. Snapping turtles live longer. The professor looked at his watch and wrote down the names of three books I should read. He spoke reverently of the books. He promised they would guide me correctly. At the library I discovered he had written all three.

  In discouragement I headed to the nearby Benchmark Theater. It’s gone now and was derelict then, screening second-run and classic and would-be classic movies, admission one dollar. It was showing Ghostbusters. In the row behind me slumped Rufus Delaney, another professor. He was in his fifties, dowdy and cardiganed, glasses atilt, a known disappointment to the faculty. A few years ago he’d stepped away from Bible courses and taught some English literature. In the lobby I told Rufus my story. His skewed bifocals amplified his eyes which to my astonishment brimmed with sorrow. We walked to a tavern where he asked about my parents, their ambitions, their burdens, and my own. The other profs had appeared to gauge their remarks for appropriate heft. Not Rufus. He asked what he could do. He bought us some french fries, a pitcher of beer. Eventually he confessed that while theology had infected him young, he’d recently come to prefer movies, where the questions posed were smaller and could actually be answered. What’s making that noise in the forest? What do these strangers really want? Will he reach her in time? He wheezed when he laughed. He was a twinkly old failure and I’ll never forget him. His favorite Ghostbusters bit was Bill Murray remarking of a demon-possessed refrigerator, “Generally you don’t see that kind of behavior in a major appliance.”

  Orry called at last. I was drinking coffee on the roof in my bathrobe, savoring the successful Empress reopening as well as the startling sunshine—the morning was warm, after that early illustration of winter.