Joe Burke's Last Stand

by John Moncure Wetterau

  He had left his slayer channel-lock pliers in his truck, however, along with the rest of his tools. They now belonged to Maxie and were somewhere in New England. He walked to the shopping center and bought a toolkit cased in aluminum with foam cut out for each individual tool. It looked like a briefcase. He went to Sears for a package of faucet washers and some thread sealer.

  “Joe Burke, executive plumber,” he announced at Mo's door.

  “Well, come right in.” She looked rested. He took off his shoes and advanced into a clean living room furnished with a long couch, an armchair, a wooden rocking chair, a gray rug, several expensively framed photographs, and two floor lamps. Orchids hung by a large window. Lush greenery rose steeply behind the house.

  “Nice, mighty nice.” The house was small, built above and behind a separate garage that fronted the street. Steps led up to a porch and the door through which he'd entered. The air was cool and quiet. The house seemed to breathe in a wooded space just large enough for it and for the walls of vegetation on either side that separated it from its neighbors. A sense of privacy lay in the living room like an expensive gift.

  Mo led him into a neatly organized kitchen. “I know who he is.” Joe pointed at a photograph of her father that hung above a table.

  “Ah yes. My father. Do I look so much like him?”

  “Very similar in the eyes and mouth.” What else was there?

  “Professor Soule,” she said.

  “I read his book,” Joe confessed. “Pretty good writer.” An expression both arrogant and helpless flashed across her face. “Clear,” Joe added.

  “Yes. He's a worker.” Her expression neutralized. Joe put a hand behind his ear.

  “I don't hear any dripping . . . “

  “Let me show you. The kitchen doesn't drip all the time; the bathroom is the worst.” Joe leaned over the bathroom sink, thumped it, and listened to its heartbeat.

  “Operation iss required.” He opened the aluminum case.

  “Snazzo, so shiny,” she said staring at the tools. “I'll fix the salad.”

  Joe shut the water off and began dismantling a faucet, eventually reaching the washer, held by a brass screw. He replaced both washers in the bathroom and both in the kitchen.

  “As new,” he said, washing his hands.

  “Wonderful.” She carried a dark salad bowl one step down into a dining room that had a tile floor and large windows. “I eat in the kitchen, usually, but when I have company it's nice to be out here. Should we have more light? It's sprinkling again.” She switched on a paper globe suspended over the table.

  “I don't know . . . I like the natural light.” She switched it off and lit a sage colored candle. “There, that's better. We had this end of the porch extended and made into a dining room. When it's clear, you can see across the valley.”

  “Who we?”

  “It was Thurston, really. It was Thurston's house. We lived together for eight years. He ran off with his secretary to Texas.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ran isn't the right word. Thurston didn't run anywhere; he was rather deliberate, actually. He gave me a deal on the house.”

  “That was good,” Joe said.

  “I didn't want him to go . . . Men just can't keep their thing in their pants,” she said angrily.

  Joe remembered that silence was golden. Mo reached for a baguette of French bread and broke it sharply. Joe took a piece and investigated the cheese.

  “Chevre?”

  “Yes.”

  “Finest kind. Yummy salad.” Fresh olive oil, Manoa lettuce, avocado, scallions, a hint of lime or maybe Meyer lemon-delicious with the crusty bread. “Vino?” She nodded and he poured them each a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from a half empty bottle. “Here's to your cozy place,” he toasted. Mo raised her glass and sipped.

  “I had fun last week with your friends,” she said. “Quite a character, that Morgan.”

  “I had a card from them in Kauai. They found Hamura's.” Mo listened as she chewed salad. “Yeah, we go way back,” Joe said. “What did you think of Edie?”

  “Dynamite,” Mo said.

  “She got me thinking about writing a story. I tried, but I'm not satisfied.” He told Mo about Alphonse. “I've been reading about fiction. I'm not really getting it.”

  “Schools can be useful,” she suggested. “Sometimes it's good to be around others doing the same kind of work. I like to go to a seminar once in a while—the trouble is, it costs so much. Have you heard of Goddard, in Vermont?”

  “I have.”

  “They offer MFA programs—non—resident, or close to it.”

  “It's an idea. I'll think about it.”

  Time slipped by. Mo told stories about summers on Nantucket where her grandmother had a twelve room “cottage” on the water. So that's where she developed her beach strut, Joe thought. Mo's father had slyly dominated the family even though her mother had all the money. Mo was ambivalent toward her father. She was proud of his intellect and accomplishments, but she had an inside view of what he had taken from every one around him and the price he himself had paid for academic success. She was looking for a way to be like him without being like him, Joe decided.

  Mo tried her new espresso machine. She was having dinner guests the following evening. Joe visited the bathroom and noticed that she had left open the door to her bedroom. The bed was freshly made with lilac purple sheets. A huge white flower by Georgia O'Keeffe waited on the wall.

  He thought it would be nice to listen to music, but he didn't say anything. He was tuning into Mo's way of inhabiting her space, her large eyes, quiet, cat-like. He talked about Kate and Max and then fell silent.

  “So how's your love life?” she asked suddenly. Her eyebrows were raised. She bent forward, making herself smaller.

  “Nothing to write home about—if I had a home.”

  “You're a good looking man, Joe Burke. Just the right amount of gray in your mustache. Aristocrat. Rebel. How did your nose get that crook in it, by the way. I've been meaning to ask.”

  “Oh, that,” Joe said, “the rebounding wars—in high school.” She had surprised him. He thought she was moving away from him, and now he sensed the outlines of an offer, the second one in two months. He and Mo could be lovers; he would ride shotgun, do things her way, and she would do her best for him in time left over from her busy life. The lilac sheets beckoned, but as suddenly as it had come, the offer, if it had been one, was gone, swept off the table with the crumbs she brushed with one hand into the other.

  She stood and said, “The ladies better watch it. O.K., I still have work to do today. I've got some orders I'm trying to get out by the weekend.” Again he was surprised, but he went on as though nothing had happened. She drove him home, his tool case on his lap.

  “I'll call you when I get back from the wedding,” he said with his hand on her car door.

  “Have fun,” she said and pulled away with a thoughtful frown. Joe walked up the stairs to his apartment. What did she want? What did he want? He didn't know, he had to admit. Probably that was why the offer vanished. He'd paid attention to the plumbing and flunked passion.

  Joe slung the aluminum case across the room onto the mattress. The tools, in their foam cushion, didn't even rattle. “I kept my Goddamned Thing in my Goddamned Pants, Batman!” Batman maintained a dignified silence.

  The next day Joe went to a bookstore and wrote down the addresses of several graduate schools that offered non-resident programs. At home, he hunted around on the Internet and found a writers group that discussed the pros and cons of different programs. Montpelier, also in Vermont, was well regarded.

  He polished up his non-story, wrote a long letter explaining why an ex-computer programmer wanted to write fiction, signed a check, threw in some poems for good measure, and officially applied to Montpelier.

  He walked to the Moana and watched the sunset. It had been a year since he arrived in Hawaii. Had he really left Maine? Or was this just an extended visit t
hat was coming to an end? Joe liked Maine. Portland was a comfortable little city . . . the Standard Bakery, fresh ale at Gritty's, lattes at a dozen different coffee shops. He remembered the small Hispanic/Indian man who pushed a shopping cart down the street in all seasons, accepting Joe's returnable bottles with a grateful smile, always saluting as though Joe were a superior.

  Should he go back to Maine? Or to Woodstock? He had many old friends in Woodstock. Daisy. Morgan had passed along her best wishes. Joe looked down the beach at the lights circling the base of Diamond Head. Did he want to go back east? It felt better to sit under the banyan tree and watch it get dark. It seemed a more forward direction, whatever happened. He decided to say goodbye to Maine and to Woodstock, but he couldn't. No wonder we say, “See you,” he thought. Anything but goodbye. “Aloha” is a much better word—hello and goodbye, gladness and grief, love, all of it.

  11

  The lobby of the Edgewater Hotel was busy. “My home away from home,” Joe said, checking in.

  “We try,” the desk clerk said, returning Joe's credit card.

  Joe walked to the Elliot Bay Book Company and asked a woman at the cash register if he could buy a gift certificate. “For a wedding present,” he added.

  “We can do that. How much for?”

  “A thousand dollars.” This would leave him seriously low, but to hell with it.

  She struggled with the computer. “I lied. We can't do that; the computer won't take it.”

  “Two for five hundred each?”

  “That'll work,” she said.

  “O.K., one for Kate Burke and one for Jackson, umm, Arendal. Jackson Arendal.” He would explain that he wasn't trying to tell them how to split it.

  He walked back to the hotel and began writing a story in the bar where he had watched Fanatuua earn his money. Across the room, a sturdy woman seated in a wheelchair studied him through thick glasses. Two hours flew by like minutes; she was gone when he got up from the table.

  In the morning, he put on jeans and his best aloha shirt, walked to the pier next to the hotel, and boarded the Victoria Clipper. The San Juan Islands are a three hour trip from Seattle, north out of Puget Sound, across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, and nearly to Vancouver Island in Canada. The catamaran hummed along while passengers sunned themselves, took pictures, and moved about the cabins. The captain announced the islands as Washington's “banana belt,” free of the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains.

  Friday Harbor is sheltered by low pine covered ridges. Joe walked up Spring Street and checked in at the Friday Harbor Inn where Kate had made reservations. The house she had rented was in Eagle Cove, a few miles from town. He went down toward the ferry to look for a cab and was hailed from across the street. It was Max.

  “Yo, Max!” They decided to have an ale in a brew pub on the corner. They sat by a window looking out on the sidewalk.

  “Here's to Kate,” Joe said, raising his glass.

  “Kate.” Max was cheerful.

  “Is your mom here?”

  “She's supposed to show up later,” Max said.

  “Good deal,” Joe said, “haven't seen her for a couple of years.” He wasn't that anxious to see Ingrid, but in Max's presence he lapsed into old habits. The years might have been weeks, and he might have been just away on a business trip.

  “Wait til you see what I bought,” Max said. He handed Joe a photograph of a farm at the base of a mountain. “It's near Londonderry, in Vermont. Eight acres at the far corner of this farm.” He pointed with his finger. “Just at the end of this highest field, a piece that runs up the hill. One of my friends from school owns the farm. My father came up from Boston and liked it; he gave me the down payment. I made a tent platform and moved out there last month.”

  “It's going to get cold,” Joe said.

  “I'll move into an apartment or a room for the winter. There's a town road that ends at the farm. I have a right of way from there.”

  “Can you get in with the truck?”

  “Yep. It will take a while to get anything built, but it's a start. And then—look at this.” He handed Joe another picture. At the top of a clearing, a long log projected out from under a ledge. It was supported by two shorter logs lashed together in an X. Standing upright on the end of the log was a prehistoric figure with straight arms and large rocks for hands. The hands extended out and below its feet. “Stone Man,” Max said proudly.

  “It looks like a balancing toy,” Joe said. “A balancing giant.”

  “Yep. He's come down out of the mountains to see what man has done.” Joe looked closely. Stone Man was made of small diameter logs and had a strong narrow head.

  “How did you fasten the head? Is that a rock?”

  “It's a piece of slate. I split the end of the log, stuck his head part way down the split, and lashed it—like a tomahawk.”

  “Something else, Max! Giacometti goes to Indonesia.”

  “And Vermont,” Max said. “He sways in the wind. The idea came to me when I first saw the clearing. I knew I had to do it.”

  “Must have been fun getting it up.”

  “I built the perch first, got it solid, and then I made a temporary walkway out of two by sixes, H shaped. We pulled Stone Man out to the end with a come-along, a couple of inches at a time. It was awesome. Bunch of guys helped. We had a few brews.”

  “I'll bet. I like this, Max.”

  “It'll be cool to see him in winter and then in spring. Deer will come. Chickadees . . . “

  “I'd love to have one of these pictures.”

  “I have a bunch of them at home. I'll send you one when I get back.”

  “Been a long time since I've seen Kate's mom,” Joe said. “She's married now. I've never met her husband.”

  “I got here yesterday,” Max said. “Lot of people around, but I haven't seen Sally. Jackson's folks rented a house, too. Jackson's cool.”

  “I'm glad they're getting married,” Joe said.

  “Me, too. So, want to come out with me?”

  Max drove out of town, through open country, and along a dirt road to a house at the top of a heathery field that sloped broadly down to the water. Hedges enclosed a back lawn where a long table was covered with a white cloth. Several chairs were positioned on the grass by an aluminum keg. Kate was in the kitchen preparing the buffet, directing a small army of friends.

  “Dad! Oh, good!” She gave him a hug. “Nice shirt!” She introduced him to Audrey, Jonathan, Monica . . . Names blurred together.

  “A great event, Kate.” He cut a piece of cheddar and broke off the end of a loaf of French bread. He pointed at a quart mason jar. “What's this?”

  “Pear and ginger chutney.”

  “Yumm.” He walked out on the front porch. Jackson was throwing a Frisbee to a border collie—honey colored, white at the throat—scrambling and leaping against a background of blue gray water, boats, and a distant wooded shore. Joe could remember nothing in his life as assured and as photogenic. He was happy for Kate and Jackson. This weekend was a parent's reward; he accepted it gratefully. Yet it was hard to relax. He had social duties, and, besides, he was increasingly something other or more than a parent.

  Jackson rubbed the dog's head and threw the Frisbee as far as he could. He came over and shook hands. “Congratulations,” Joe said.

  “Thank you. How was your trip?”

  “Fine, that's some ferry! Fast.”

  “Did you come on the Clipper?”

  “Yes.”

  “She's a hummer,” Jackson said. “We drove to Anacortes and took the car ferry.”

  “Are your folks here, Jackson?”

  “They'll be over later. Have you met . . . “ There was more frisbee throwing. Joe wandered around the house to the back lawn. Kate's old boyfriend was standing by the keg.

  “Hey, Rolf.”

  “Hello, Joe.”

  “A great event. Nice to see you. How's the history going?”

  “It progresses,” Rolf said. “
I have written several papers on the early Scandinavian settlers in the northwest. You might be surprised to learn that only twenty years after the first settlement . . . “

  “Rolf, you fine driver, you.” Audrey, or Monica, came up and put her hand on Rolf's arm. “Cindy and Jake are at the ferry.” Rolf nodded. “And Kate needs a jar of capers.”

  “A Mediterranean condiment. I'm on my way. Small or large? The capers . . . The jar, I mean.”

  “Better get large,” Audrey Monica said.

  “Well, I shall look forward to hearing about the settlers later,” Joe said, drawing a beer. It was delicious, much like the ale at the brew pub. Jackson came by, filled a paper cup, and told him that it was from the brew pub.

  “Good stuff, no?”

  “Wicked good,” Joe said in Maine speak. “Ono,” he added in pidgin.

  “Hello, there.” It was Sally, happy and more tired than he remembered. She swept up and threw her arms around him, then turned and introduced a stout man waiting at her side. “Gino, this is Joe.”

  “Hi, Gino. You are the second Gino I've known. Congratulations on your marriage, by the way,” They shook hands.

  “Thank you. It has been, what, six years now?” Gino turned to Sally. She was rangy and athletic. Gino came only to her ear, but he was solidly built and did not seem smaller. His eyes were dark and rather impenetrable.

  “Going for seven,” Sally said.

  “Can you believe our little girl is getting married?” Joe asked her.

  “It's time,” she said.

  “Maybe you'll be a grandfather, Joe, ha, ha.”

  “Ha, Gino. I hope so.”

  “Ha. Come Joe, help me with the wine.” He led Joe to his car, and they carried two cases into the house. “One red, one white. Special. I brought them from Denver.”

  “Kate tells me you have a wine store.”

  “Small, yes. But we do all right. People in this country are discovering wine.”

  “Hey Joe, is this one of your father's?” Max was standing in front of an oil painting at the far end of the living room. Gino and Joe went over.