Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

  Orry had received my flood of voice mails at last. She’d been three weeks on a boat in the French canals, her friend Jeffrey along for conversation and gastronomy. Jeffrey is a New England chef whose hobby is auditioning for Food Network reality shows—he never gets called back.

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me,” Orry said.

  “No problem. Where was Dinesh?”

  “Someplace with burn victims. Listen, I went to your Empress page. There are seventy get-well notes, none of which mention your illness. Usually that means cancer. Do you have cancer, Virgil?”

  “I left you messages, Orry.”

  “They were nonspecific.”

  “No cancer,” I told her.

  “Could you have said that on the message? It’s two words.”

  I gave her an abbreviated version, punching it up a little. I kept the heavy snow and the dive off 61 but left out the vertigo and rumors of my expiry. My ransacked vocabulary also went unmentioned, though Orry sensed something amiss.

  “You’re editing,” she said. “What gives? Short declaratives aren’t like you.”

  “I’m told I sound decisive.”

  “Virgil, you had a near-death experience. You drove off a cliff and went in the hospital and got back out. Now you are home sounding strangely staccato. It makes me worry.”

  “I’ve decided to get rid of the film collection.”

  “Well that’s abrupt,” she said.

  “You offered one time to put me in touch with an attorney. I’m hoping you still can.”

  This was a discussion we’d had long before, when in a weak late-night moment I fretted about the bottle imps. Orry was acquainted with a Hollywood lawyer whom she trusted because he so disliked the movie business. Sinatra had threatened him once, in the dim light of a hotel back entrance. He saw the entertainer’s legendary knuckles up close. They were genuinely hairy. The lawyer said the only way to have a soul in Hollywood was to exasperate the thugs. The lawyer’s wife was a surgeon who worked with Dinesh in his grueling medical excursions.

  Orry said, “How did you come to this decision?”

  “It’s been on my mind.”

  “Be honest, Virgil—is this a lightning bolt thing, after peering at the void? Because it might not hurt to wait a little.”

  “Like I said, it’s been simmering. Does your lawyer friend still practice?”

  She thought so. She’d check into it, give the man my number. Again, she asked how I was.

  “I’m right here, showing movies like always.”

  “I can be there tomorrow.”

  “Orry, don’t. You just got home. Anyway, the guest room is full right now.”

  She was slightly affronted to hear about Rune, and this put me at ease. Orry is happiest when affronted on my behalf. Something in her needs to believe I am routinely taken advantage of.

  “So you’re recovering from a deadly accident while lodging gratis a bizarre stranger there to ease his conscience.”

  My laptop was open—I typed bizarre into the online thesaurus. “Let’s go with eccentric. He flies kites and asks questions.”

  “How long does he plan to stay?”

  “No idea.”

  “I suppose I could get a room at the Voyageur,” she mused, then: “Hang on—this fellow is whose biological father?”

  “Alec Sandstrom’s.”

  “Friend of yours,” she vaguely assayed. “Baseball player.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Wait …” she said. It clicked. “Wait, this is the vanished pitcher. And—oh Virgil!—he of the gorgeous wife! Nadine,” she said, in triumph.

  “Excellent recall.” I felt wary—my sister had actually met Nadine during one of her visits. It was years past the post office incident, yet Orry claimed to detect some moony element in my behavior.

  “Nadine,” she repeated now, with surprising tenderness. “So, what about Nadine? Does the torch still smolder?”

  “Getting another call, I’ll have to ring you back.”

  “I’m your sister, ring them back. It’s a plain enough question.”

  It was, so I attempted a plain answer. I told Orry I was done with torches. At least that torch. That torch was pointless, as a long succession of men had learned. Certainly some of the men were predatory or disingenuous but others were earnest, smart, even rich. A torchlight parade is what happened, but to no avail. Nadine raised her son and grew the neon business and added to herself the glow of lonely persistence. I admired her too much to appear on her doorstep, one more earnest moron carrying the predictable flame.

  I didn’t say all that in exactly that way, but Orry got the idea. “Nice, Virgil. You build an impressive pedestal. No wonder you can’t just call her.”

  “She believes Alec is alive,” I said.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “She believes he landed safely in Canada and evaded pursuit all these years.”

  At the time I had no idea whether that’s what Nadine believed—I lobbed it out there only to distract Orry. She was quiet, wavering between romance and snark.

  I said, “She believes he will walk in the door one morning and fall to his knees before her.”

  At this Orry took a large breath and let it out with a sigh. “I’m not a fool, Virgil, I know you’re only dodging—but wouldn’t that be a story?”

  My sister comes on like a box of nails, but her devotion to the mythic is profound.

  When I arrived at the lookout Beeman was already up there. He’d told me days earlier he wanted to interview Rune—he meant to write a retrospective about Alec as legendary absconder, pin it to the forthcoming ten-year mark, and add this new wrinkle of the wayward father showing up at last. He said, “One morning you open the mail, you got a family across the ocean you knew nothing about. If I don’t write this story I might as well sell the paper.”

  “You tried selling the paper. Does Rune want to do it?”

  “I’m still trying. Yeah he does. We’re going to fly some of his kites.”

  But I didn’t realize Beeman would pursue the idea so quickly. When I emerged onto the roof-deck after fencing with Orry, two kites were sailing around above the lookout—just specks at first, but through binoculars I made out the bicycle spinning its furious wheels and alongside it the ribby dog. Two figures were visible on the ground.

  After my conversation with Bjorn, the thought of his illegitimate grandfather showing up on the front page of the Observer—in fact Beeman’s whole retrospective on Alec—seemed an untimely idea. Surely he could be persuaded to hold the story off.

  It’s a long walk to the lookout. I felt some urgency about getting there, so helped myself to an unlocked bike in a weed patch next to somebody’s house. The bike was a Walmart disposable with rusty spokes and a big gear cluster making for clanky downshifts on steep climbs. My breath was short and my balance poor yet I felt a corporeal joy in both ride and theft. The joy was lessened when I noticed I was wearing a bathrobe and boxers instead of my clothes, but I was halfway there so too late. Eventually the two kites reappeared much closer and I came gasping over the final crest to the sight of Rune laughing.

  “Here’s Virgil,” he said, as I dropped the bike and sat down quite forcefully on the gravel. Beeman greeted me with a wave but did not interrupt the story he was telling. It was about the time Alec was pitching and a monkey bolted onto the field. The Dukes like many minor-league clubs sought to arouse their fans with offbeat promotions; in this case they’d hired a dinky warlike rhesus monkey to carry a cane and wear a top hat for on-field stunts. The monkey was a crude entertainer who pleased the crowd by strutting triumphantly, pointing at its own butt or, when the team was losing, emerging in late innings to whiz on the umpire. The Dukes had been fined repeatedly for its behavior, but kept trotting it out there anyway. Plain and simple, the monkey sold tickets. That night in the eighth, game on the line, the hitter laid down a standard bunt—Alec was nearly on it when the monkey flashed past and the ball w
as gone. The little beast zigzagged through the infield to the gap in right-center, hugging the ball to its scraggly chest while the hitter circled the bases laughing. You’d think the officials would call interference. Not a chance. The umpires were tired of the monkey. The Dukes lost. Alec refused to be angry. He subscribed to the vintage notion that monkeys are inherently funny.

  By now I’d got my breath back and got to my feet. I took a nonchalant stance, narrowing my eyes ironically, as though the mint-green bathrobe were a deliberate choice. Beeman talked cheerfully on. He told about Alec finding a deer leg in the ditch at Christmas and making reindeer tracks on the roof so Bjorn would wake to proof of Santa. Rune’s kite string was tied to the arm of a nearby bench. Beeman had gone up to interview Rune, but it was Rune jotting crisp notes while the bicycle flew itself overhead. This reversal strengthened my suspicion that these kites had the same effect on others as they had on me. The irresistible hum was not exclusive. It was disappointing but also reassuring. Beeman was enjoying himself. When Rune threw me a look of pure gladness I had the same feeling I’d had the day we met—that he was a variety new to me but very old, with the recklessness of innocence. I felt that anything at all might happen. Maybe it was happening already.

  “Tom,” Rune said, when Beeman paused for breath, “when did you move to Greenstone?”

  “Bought the paper in ninety-nine.”

  “You wrote about it, then—when Alec disappeared.”

  Beeman started paying close attention to the kite, reeling in a bit of line and then letting it out. “I covered that story.”

  “Do you believe any of the sightings have merit?”

  “No,” Beeman said, gently. “But I do have some materials you might be interested in—bits and pieces about Alec from over the years. I should have thought of giving them to you earlier. Come by the office and I’ll see what there is.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Not before noon, though.”

  Rune slipped his notebook into his pocket, then unwrapped his string from the bench and reeled in.

  “Now hold on,” Beeman complained. “You didn’t give me any interview—I’ve talked the whole time and got nothing for the paper. You’re a devious operator, is what I think.” But Beeman wasn’t truly upset. It was tough to be annoyed with Rune. He was a likable strange old man yearning to know his lost son. Who wouldn’t try to help him?

  7

  THE BIKE I STOLE BELONGED TO A SEVENTH GRADER WHOSE MOTHER, name of Mazy, worked a split shift at the Duluth paper mill. A friend of hers observed the doofus bathrobed city clerk clattering uphill and got hold of Mazy during her coffee break. Mazy finished her cigarette and called the county sheriff.

  I was dressed by the time he climbed the steps and knocked.

  “Why Don,” I said. “Come in, there’s coffee.”

  Whatever you think when you hear the word sheriff our sheriff is not that. He is not laconic or severe. His gaze does not pierce. He in no way reminds you of Mr. Remington’s paintings. His name is Lean, which he is not, nor did he come to the office through police work or investigative proficiency. He is a former banker and insurance salesman who failed as both. His calm demeanor suggests a native honesty hazardous in those careers.

  He said, “I wanted to come to the movie last night, welcome you back, but I had a livestock call it took a while to sort.”

  I thanked him for his part in my survival—it seems he drove out right behind the ambulance when Marcus called 911.

  He said, “I feel terrible I didn’t come back to the hospital and check on you. I meant to. It just got away. Next thing I know you’re back showing movies again. Like it didn’t even happen.”

  It didn’t feel that way to me, but there was no need to explain this. I poured us both coffee which we carried onto the roof-deck in the wind. Don had put on weight. His shoulders were hunched as though in anticipation of some descending burden. He wanted to talk about Shad Pea, whom he’d treated like a friend instead of a habitual drunk—a mistake, he now believed. Maybe if he’d locked Shad up more often, Shad would’ve begun to consider the upshot. Maybe Shad would have moderated the intake. Maybe Galen would still have his dad. Don Lean’s eyes were moist. “That Galen’s a good kid. Every few weeks I used to haul him back to school. Lily keeps him on a shorter line. I sure like him.”

  “So do I. He holds the fish responsible.”

  “That’s fair. Ever fish for sturgeon?”

  “No.”

  “Friend of mine hooked one up on Rainy River. Eighteen-foot skiff, forty-horse Evinrude, himself in the boat plus two long oars and a cooler and live tank. Fish pulled the whole rig eleven miles upriver before the line broke. Eleven miles against a decent current. Think about this. Monster like that on the hook, a little rum in your bloodstream. Anyone would lose their balance.”

  Don finished his coffee and went back in and poured himself some more. He sat on the roof-deck with his shoulders up around his neck. He said, “Do you know if Beeman’s raccoon is around?”

  “No, he took off. If you want your raccoon to be docile, possibly don’t name him Genghis.”

  Don said, “Was Genghis up to date on his vaccinations?”

  “Do people vaccinate raccoons?”

  “I wish they would. Last night while you were showing your movie I got calls about four separate animals in two hours. They all showed like rabies. Two raccoons, a dog, a cat.”

  “One of the raccoons was Genghis?”

  “No. Both little skinny specimens. But the owners of one cat saw a blobby old raccoon fighting their cat in their front yard a few nights ago.”

  “Lot of fat raccoons out there.”

  “Fewer with collars.”

  The idea of rabies disturbed Don. He had a cat he was attached to—the cat often went with him on sheriff calls, amusing some people but not everyone. “I’ll ask him all right,” he said.

  In the kitchen he rinsed his own cup and set it in the rack to dry. Out the door he went only to put his head back in. “I forgot to ask. Did you steal a bicycle this morning and go for a ride in your bathrobe?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Anything I should know about this?”

  “I needed to get somewhere and don’t have a car right now.”

  “It was the bathrobe part that got my attention,” he said.

  “Sorry about that. I returned the bicycle.”

  He nodded. “I stopped by Mazy’s on the way here, saw it on the porch. Virgil, did you tape a twenty-dollar bill to the seat post?”

  “I might have.”

  “Listen, I have five or six bikes in the garage. I’ll bring you one. Tide you over till you’re driving again.”

  I thanked him. He nodded and went clumping down the stairs. Watching him go it occurred to me Don was too empathetic for law enforcement. The cost showed. From youthful businessman and community optimist he’d progressed speedily to anguished authority. He was graying fast like a high school principal or US president. Down the steps he creaked, holding on to the rail.

  That night I made popcorn and sold twenty-seven tickets and left Bjorn in charge while Rune and I drove out to the Pentecost River to check on Galen Pea. Sure enough Galen stood at the water’s edge with Shad’s tackle box in the tall grass beside him. When we stepped out of the camper van Galen lowered his head to glare at us in the twilight. I was glad to see he wasn’t alone—Lily was there too, sitting in her blue Dodge Dart with engine running and heater on. She waved at us with what looked like relief.

  Rune walked down to consult with Galen while I took the easier job.

  “Get in,” she said when I knocked at the window.

  She had a wool blanket, her dad’s red plaid thermos bottle, and a paperback romance. I asked how she was and she said sick of Galen.

  “He’s obsessed. It’s awfully unpleasant. Last night I didn’t want to come so he took off and walked here alone. Eleven p.m. I gave up and drove down and got him. It’s a damn fish Virgil.�
��

  “Is he getting any nibbles?”

  “No. If he doesn’t catch the thing soon I’m putting him on a Greyhound bus.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t care—here, I brought cocoa.”

  She poured some into a Styrofoam cup. It was extraordinary—creamy and barely sweet at all. She said, “I met this guy from Norway who sends me chocolate bars. I melt them in milk with a cinnamon stick.” With lovely defiance she declared, “I am not wasting one more minute on subpar cocoa.”

  “Is school all right for Galen?”

  “Yeah. Wouldn’t you know it I’m a better enforcer than Dad. His teacher says he’s a good reader. She’s playing up the positive.”

  “He have friends?”

  “Not that I can tell. Maybe Rune.” She nodded at the old man and the boy becoming silhouettes in front of the darkening river. “What do you suppose they’re talking about?”

  It was all sturgeon talk—so Rune told me later. Galen was an expert. Sturgeon lived two hundred years and grew as big as dump trucks. In 1940 a sturgeon swam up this very river and died in a flooded hayfield where a farmer and two spooked horses loaded it onto a wagon. The wagon sank in the mud and people came from all over with knives to butcher the great fish. They lit fires and ate for three days. When only the skeleton remained, the farmer hoisted it on a scale and it still weighed two hundred pounds. Another time an American Indian got swallowed whole right out on Lake Superior. He was fishing in his birch canoe and the sturgeon rose up out of the dark and took him down canoe and all. “Like Pinocchio and the whale,” Rune said, thinking of the old animation, but Galen glared at him. This Indian was an actual guy who got swallowed by a sturgeon and waded around inside its guts until he found the beating heart. He stabbed the heart with his knife. The sturgeon died and washed ashore. The Indian cut his way out. That’s how you had to deal with these bastards.

  “He needs to catch that fish,” Rune said. We were back at the Empress, cleaning up. Bjorn had done the screening and rewound the film and put the booth in order, but in the aisle someone had dumped a large Coke which ran down front and made a nasty pool.