Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

  “The brother who died in the blizzard.”

  “Along with Maddie, what a sweetheart she was. Both of them were! But Adam, even as a boy—he had this velocity, even sitting still. You could almost hear it. Remember those toy buzz saws kids used to make, out of buttons and string?”

  “Adam Leer oscillates faster than you,” I recalled, from the Esquire piece.

  “I guess,” she said with an odd look, and described staying with her Leer cousins in the summer when she was small: how Adam would recite the alphabet backward at top speed to impress her, or lapse into a private pig Latin of his own invention in order to make fun of Richard. “Adam could never stand his brother.”

  “How come?”

  “I think he hated how Spurlock loved him,” she said. “Everyone loved Richard, really— so charming and hardworking and funny. Only Adam could resist him, but then he had an advanced capacity for hatred. It came to him easily and fully formed.” She gave a sad half-joking smile. “He was a prodigy that way.”

  The turnoff to Leer’s was a mile farther through gusts of pellet-like snow. The place had noticeably changed. While pocks and humps of snow covered the yard, Jerry Fandeen’s work was apparent. The aspens had been cut and dragged to a slash pile away from the house. The guest cottage had been retrimmed and fitted with new gutters. It was dark-windowed, and I wondered how Lucy had sidestepped Leer’s wish that she stay. He’d gone to some trouble and expense, hiring Jerry to fix the place up.

  “Come in,” Leer said, opening the door before I could knock.

  “Thank you.”

  “Still not driving,” he observed—he was slightly flushed, his hair damp.

  “No.”

  “Good for you. I like the bike. A bold winter choice.” Leer seemed amused.

  I told him the place looked improved. Jerry Fandeen had done fine work.

  “He had no idea he was up to it. Daily he surprises himself.”

  “Does he? His ceiling is high, then?”

  Leer smiled. “I’m always on the lookout for lofty ceilings.”

  I followed him in. His kitchen was mostly barren with a box of oranges on the counter and a pair of plucked game birds laid out on a long wooden table. The birds smelled fresh and slightly bloody. He had coffee ready in a French press and water ticking in a kettle.

  “I’ve come at a bad time,” I said.

  “Not at all. What can I do for you?” He nodded me into a kind of parlor with built-in bookshelves and a globe on a stand.

  “The event in the spring,” I said. “The city’s decided to go a different way. I hope you aren’t let down.”

  “Ah! You’re sacking me,” he said. “Thank God. I didn’t come willingly in the first place, you’ll recall.” The pot whistled and he said, “Hang on.”

  I heard him pour and set a timer and lay cups on the countertop. “Just be a few minutes,” he called. “Look around if you like.”

  I did. It was an impressive bookshelf, full of Plutarch and Ovid, Tacitus, Pliny, others in this vein, books I haven’t read. They bunched up on the shelves in twos and threes, some standing with heads together, others propped open on cracking spines. Many had pages folded cornerwise in lieu of bookmarks, as with any drugstore beach read. There were biographies, volumes of botany, oceanography, astronomy, calligraphy. I took down an architectural treatise on cathedrals that smelled like a shovelful of earth. Scattered among these antiquities were what I took to be Leer’s own mementos, small framed photos of his parents; his long-dead brother Richard; the waiflike wife of his youth, Simone. There was a badge from an old GTO, a cracked teacup like those brought up from the Titanic, and what looked like a metacarpal bone from a human hand leaning casually against a tarnished Union Carbide belt buckle.

  Leer came in with the coffee and cups, setting them on a sideboard. Lucy’s advice Keep it brief came to mind. I should’ve obeyed it. Instead I said, “Why did you change your mind in the first place, if I may ask? Why agree to speak?”

  “Ms. Fandeen is persuasive,” he said with a smile, filling both cups and handing me one. “Beyond that, a simple change of heart. That’s allowed, correct? We are all changing into something else, wouldn’t you agree?”

  His words emerged kindly enough yet put me at odds with myself. I experienced again a servile longing for Leer’s approval. Compensating with an air of hostility, I ignored the coffee and met his gaze. He pulled back, adjusting his tone.

  “I only mean that a man deserves a second act. Maybe even a third.” He nodded toward the window. “Look at Jerry. Once a steady hand, then a lost stray, now shifting yet again before our eyes—into what, would you say? A man of substance?”

  “Of sadness, I would say.”

  Leer watched me, sipping his coffee, the fingers of his free hand making a habitual cigarette motion although there was no cigarette in them. “He is anyway transformed, at least transforming.” He seemed to want to expand on his point. “Look at yourself. A keeper of Greenstone all these years, doing the city’s thankless jobs, maintaining your nostalgic theater—I mean that in the best sense. Head down, mouth shut, yes? Until at last you drive”—his face brightened—“literally drive off a cliff. Honestly, I talked to Marcus, what a spectacle you made, the car in the air, drifting through the snow. What a declaration! Yet you survive, and now look at you—”

  “Declaration? You think I went over on purpose?”

  “Does it matter? Into the dark you went, like Orpheus! And lived. And here you sit today—to my point, hardly the same man.”

  “You know nothing of it. We never even met before Ann and I came out that day,” I said, but not with much mojo. The truth is, I wasn’t the same man. For better or worse, who could tell? The jury was in recess. Abruptly I felt distant and sodden. Leer’s voice retreated. A shadowy coolness passed overhead like a great fish swimming between me and the sun.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Obviously we met. I bought tickets from your own hand more than once—I’ve eaten your popcorn, sat in your derelict seats. Congenial, that’s what you were. The man at the Empress. A little soft if you don’t mind my saying, a little eager to please. But that’s all finished, isn’t it?”

  He watched me over the rim of his cup.

  “What’s finished?”

  “Soft old heads-down Virgil. That version is gone, that’s what I believe.” He leaned forward. “You’re changing rapidly into the next. Some rangy ascetic if I had to guess. Lasering in on what’s important in life, now that you’ve nearly died. Why not? Everyone wants to start again. Rebuild with new bones and fresh skin. Why are we here if not to grow! Plus, aren’t you discovering it’s attractive?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Attractive to others. Keep up with me Virgil! People are drawn to rebirth.” He leaned forward. His breath was cool and his teeth were perfect. “People notice you now—Nadine is a package, isn’t it true? And Bjorn is special, that’s what I think. Out on his board in the freezing rollers! Bjorn will always bear watching.”

  “I’m done here,” I said, and stood. I wanted to say more but couldn’t. My insides twitched—I seemed to have caught a bug in rapid progression. My head whirled and he pointed to the bathroom. I just made it, sweating at the temples and the soles of my feet. I barked and rinsed. When I came out Leer offered me a ride home which I did not accept. He handed me my coat.

  The cold wind cleared my head straight off. The bicycle leaned against the porch rail. I carried it down the steps, swung a leg over, and rested a moment before setting off. The wind was whacking the treetops around. Then I was distracted by movement in an upper window.

  A hand was wiping steam from the glass. The hand belonged to a woman who came into view as the glass cleared. Her dark blonde hair was wet as if from a shower. She wore a man’s light-blue dress shirt and a pair of cat-eye glasses. Intent on the window she didn’t notice me right away but then peered down and caught me looking up. I felt abashed but she seemed unbothered by my boorish manne
rs. After a moment’s hesitation she smiled, then offered a good-natured wave.

  What could I do but wave in return? It was Ann Fandeen.

  6

  IT WAS SO GUSTY ON THE HIGHWAY THAT I GOT OFF THE SCHWINN and walked it home. I was trying to make sense of things, Ann Fandeen for starters, in the upstairs window, an image that returned in high-def. If nothing else it gave me some understanding of Jerry’s devotion—her unguarded smile, her guileless wave. I had to wonder if Ann was okay, yet she looked pleased to be there.

  More than anything else I felt bad for Jerry, who was still for Ann, though she wasn’t for him, and who felt so honored when Mr. Leer took an interest in him, and gave him work to do.

  As I neared home, still walking the bike, a coyote trotted out of someone’s backyard—I admire coyotes, they persevere smiling, but this one carried a gigantic turkey carcass, which reminded me of Thanksgiving, which made me realize I had missed Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday. It was over already, we were into December. I watched the coyote recede in the gloom.

  I had not been thankful enough—I, who should be a corpse in a sunken sedan. I was dizzy again and slowed way down. The last few blocks were hard going. I kept my eyes on the ground, looking up only when cars passed. Above all I took care not to glance out at Superior. It was exactly the sort of day when the man would appear, standing on the waves, long pale hands at his sides. I sure didn’t want to see him.

  Bjorn showed that night’s movie, a bad one; I remember the dazed look of exiting patrons. He vacuumed the lobby, put the machine away, and came out rubbing his neck. When he stood for a moment in the open door there was the illusion of looking through him at the street beyond. He said, “I forgot to say earlier, Mom wants you to call.”

  One sentence, a crack of light.

  “What about?”

  He shrugged and blinked out.

  It was much too late to call Nadine—it took her six rings to answer, in a sleepy voice. “It’s Virgil,” I said and she didn’t mind. She’d thought of something earlier but forgot it, then got tired and fell into bed. The rustle of shifting covers tightened my throat. I offered to call back in the morning but she said, “Now I remember,” and her voice came close to the phone. “Do you have a minute?”

  She’d been working in her studio, creating her first neon in months. A bookstore in Wisconsin, a small independent, had acquired a liquor license and the owners wanted a sense of coziness. She designed a neon hardcover, an open book of blue and white, with a page curling back as though turning itself. The curling page was key, she said—if you got it right, the whole sign gave an impression of magic. It should look like a book that would open each time to the words you needed that moment. She was nearly done with the sign and thought it the best she had made. Sophisticated, a little sexy, fit for a dimly lit bookstore or literary tavern. She was happy. Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it and right there inside my ear. “I wanted to tell you because of what I said at the Wise Old, that I’m good at the work but don’t love it. I need to amend that. Sometimes I do love it. I loved it today.” She shifted in the covers. “I didn’t want you to think of me as joyless.”

  I laughed. The day had not shattered records for gladness. Yet a small thing had gone right for Nadine—she bent a glass tube, and it pleased her. I’d lived years without a woman to tell me small things. Her work went well and she wanted to say so, and I was the man who was listening. That fact swung open and light came in.

  “When you have a chance,” she said, “come over and see it.”

  “I will.”

  “Call first,” she said, then, “I hear the door—Bjorn’s home.”

  “I’ll let you go.” I didn’t want to let her go, of course—what I wanted was to hold her tight, to keep hearing her soft, near, barely-awake voice. There is no better sound than whom you adore when they are sleepy and pleased. I wanted to hear about many small things, the smaller the better. I wanted to tell her small things in return. It came to me that you can’t retrieve a lost holiday but you can pick up the next one and honor it well. I said, “What are you and Bjorn doing for Christmas?”

  “Not really sure.”

  “Spend it with us. Here at the Empress. Not for a movie,” I clarified, “just come for dinner, for Christmas dinner.” She didn’t reply. “Or anytime really—doesn’t have to be dinner—you could come by early, or late if that’s better, just come knock at the door. Don’t do anything else, Nadine.” You’ll notice my run-on technique but there was no way around it. I had a sudden horror that she might, after all, do something else—she might have other plans, might’ve committed to being with other people on Christmas Day, instead of being with me. The previous tenant would’ve borne this bravely, would’ve expected it, embraced it, shouldered up under it. A proper stoic, him—me, I couldn’t stand it.

  “All right, Virgil,” she said, laughing. “Yes to Christmas Day, all right, yes.”

  I floated upstairs like a man in space.

  7

  RUNE SPENT THE NEXT MORNING LISTENING TO BEEMAN’S cassettes—interviews with the police, with a missing-persons specialist from Minneapolis, with the Coast Guard during the early search. These were tough on Rune because of their impersonal tone, as though Alec were only an unsatisfying job, or at best a challenging riddle. But tougher still were the personal interviews—those with Alec’s friends and neighbors, his longtime people, with whom Beeman spoke in order to write a eulogistic story once it seemed he wouldn’t be found. Among these were Lou Chandler, a few former Dukes, Shad Pea, and yours truly—I happened to walk in on Rune and was relieved to hear myself sounding suitably regretful. Not as regretful as Shad, though—Shad was in a terrible way, alternately angry and crying, obviously quite drunk. What broke him up was the idea he’d been last to see Alec alive. He and Maria had fought the previous night and she suggested he sleep elsewhere, so he drove out to a spot on the bank of the Burnt River, half a mile from the Wise Old and Lou’s grass airstrip. At first light he woke to the strange sight of a naked man emerging from the rushes on the far bank—it was Adam Leer, he said. “Walked down into the water and saw me and smiled, the big turd,” Shad said. “Then he ducked under and swam away.” An hour or so later Alec flew out, jiggling his wingtips when he saw Shad. Shad waved back, and that was the last time he ever saw his friend.

  At City Hall that afternoon Lily came in and set a white bakery box on my desk. There was snow on her shoulders, and her knuckles were red. She looked older, with a careworn expression. When I stood and came around the desk to shake hands she hugged me instead and kissed my cheek.

  “Are you well, Virgil?”

  “Yes.”

  “Getting your meals?”

  “You’re pretty young to be mothering me.”

  “Open the box.”

  It contained half a dozen chocolate croissants. I thanked her—I’d often seen these deep-brown beauties in the bakery window, but never tried one.

  “Go ahead,” Lily said.

  “Join me.” I offered her the box.

  “Not a chance, those are for you.” Seeing I was about to flag down Lydia, who was passing my door peering in, Lily hissed, “Not for them. For you. I’m not leaving until you have one.”

  “What’s on your mind, Lily?”

  “Nothing, except there’s less of you every time I look. You totter around with that stick, I can hear all your joints, clickety-clack. Please have a croissant now.”

  I smiled and took a bite, making a show of it. It really was delectable. “Sometimes I forget to eat, that’s all. I’m actually fine.”

  She watched me eat the rest of the pastry. I must’ve been hungry because without thinking I launched into another—that made her smile.

  “Galen told me you saw the fish,” she said.

  “It’s really big.”

  “I thought he was making it up. Now he wants me to let him shoot it, which wouldn’t be legal. Anyway he’s too young for a gun.”

 
; “What are you hoping will happen, Lily?”

  “I was hoping he could let this go. Instead he’s down there every night. I don’t want to be paranoid but what if something goes wrong? It’s freezing, and what if he falls in? What if that fish takes the bait and pulls him in?”

  “Make him wear a life jacket.”

  “He won’t unless he’s in a boat—it’s against his manhood.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this. Galen Pea was staunch about his manhood as only a ten-year-old can be.

  Lily said, “I’m in Duluth three evenings a week. If someone could only check on him, you know? Like you did the other night. But I know you have the theater to run.”

  I sighed. Don’t let anyone tell you that looking out for your vulnerable is less than a full-time deal.

  “I got to run,” she said, squeezing my arm. “If you decide to cut your hair I am good at it. And buy some new pants, honestly, yours are falling off. Good-bye now.” She kissed me awkwardly on the ear.

  As Lily left, Lydia came in. Council members had been calling her about Hard Luck Days—they loved the idea, thought Ann Fandeen was a genius. “Now it’s inevitable,” she said, sadly. “Barrett’s pushing ‘Hard Luck Days,’ oof. Do you think anything can be done?”

  “I doubt it, Lydia.”

  She sat down on my desk and considered the open box of croissants. “I’m old,” she said. “I didn’t see it coming, I’m old and tired of irony. What’s the matter with people? Hard Luck Days. Irony isn’t going to save us.”

  “Maybe it won’t kill us, either,” I suggested. “Maybe it can do us good.” I felt gentle toward Lydia. She was probably the kindest mayor in the history of mayors. Across her long tenure she’d done ever more with ever less and always without complaint. I said, “Irony doesn’t seem to have hurt Bob Dylan, and he’s a longtime practitioner.”

  Lydia sighed. I offered her a chocolate croissant and took another myself. She chewed with her eyes closed. When she opened them Ann Fandeen was standing in front of her, which seemed to make Lydia uncomfortable. She said, “Well, then, anyway.”