New Jerusalem News

by John Enright

  According to informed sources familiar with the construction plans for the Hercules Corp facility, the explosion took place in the approximate location where sea-floor pipelines would enter the terminal from an offshore tanker pump-out station. A project engineer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he lacked authorization, speculated that the purpose of the attack was to expose vulnerabilities in the design of the facility.

  By late afternoon there were reports of large numbers of dead fish washing ashore in Old Grofton and as far north along the bay as Destin Roads.

  Dominick was reading the News as he ate breakfast in the Harbor House Hotel restaurant. He had had to plead for his breakfast. Breakfast was only served until eleven, and he had arrived at a quarter past. Luncheon menu only. The only other customers in the place were an old couple in a window booth. “So, the chef is too busy to fry some bacon and eggs?” he asked the waitress, who went off to get the older woman from behind the cash register. Just what Dominick needed to start his day—a little confrontation over arbitrary rules.

  The older woman’s name tag pegged her as an Elinor. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I was hoping for breakfast.” Dominick knew he should smile, but he couldn’t manage it.

  “You’re late,” she said. “You want coffee?”

  “For starters. Checkout is not until twelve. One should be able to buy breakfast at least until then.”

  “Says who? You a guest here?”

  “I just checked out. Elinor, I had a bad night and I am asking for your mercy, and a little breakfast.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Pancakes, bacon, orange juice, coffee. Please.”

  “No problem. I don’t know why they don’t serve breakfast all day long. It’s what a lot of people feel safest eating when they travel.” She sent the young waitress off with the order. “That wouldn’t be decaf, would it?” When she came back with his coffee she brought a refolded copy of the morning’s newspaper as well. “You can hide behind this till you feel better.”

  Dominick’s bad night had begun when he left The Harp. The brandies and Guinnesses had mellowed him out to the point where he got lost in the backstreets of New Jerusalem on his way to the ferry dock. He stopped in another pub to ask directions and saw on the clock behind the bar that he had already missed the boat. He stayed for another shot and draft beer and watched silent sports highlights on the wide-screen TV above all the back-bar bottles. He seldom got tipsy anymore. Those Superman days were behind him, the pot and red wine then the cocaine and Stolichnaya years. He had forgotten this pleasant confident glow. Not until you get older and have learned to live with all the small and various pains of a body past its prime does the phrase feeling no pain take on any real meaning.

  So, Sir John Starks thought that Dominick was just a made-up name of the moment. Maybe he should rename himself then. A new name to go with his new beard and northern exposure. Vladimir. He had always liked that name, but you needed an accent. How about just Nick? Shit, he could try out whatever he wanted until one clicked. But with whom? He introduced himself as Nick to the man sitting on the next bar stool, who couldn’t have cared less if his name was Barbara. “The Celtics are going to suck again this year,” he said.

  The Harbor House Hotel was close by the ferry dock, which he found by remembering to always turn downhill when faced with a choice. He checked in around midnight. No, no luggage. He was suddenly very tired, and the soft hotel bed felt good when he hit it. But he was denied sleep. On the other side of his thin bedroom wall was another bedroom, this one occupied by a pair of heterosexual humanoids in a state of persistent lust. She was a yelper; he was a bed-banging groaner. In the time-outs between coital trysts they partied and laughed. Dominick couldn’t bring himself to knock on the wall or complain to the front desk. Their use of a hotel room seemed more legitimate than his. He had just missed his boat. They were the reason his species prevailed. But he had a bad night nonetheless.

  Breakfast was good. The news was bad. In addition to the front-page article there was an editorial denouncing the terrorist bombings, which somehow turned the LNG terminal project into a sacred patriotic commitment. The editorial questioned the naiveté of opponents of the project, warning them about their “anarchist or worse bedfellows.” Atticus’s group, Bay Savers, was mentioned by name. The editorial ended with a call for the authorities to spare no effort or expense in searching out the perpetrators and saving the bay community from further such atrocities.

  Dominick caught the early afternoon ferry back to the island and walked to where he had left his car the day before. When he got home, Atticus and Lydia were there. Or at least their car was there. They were nowhere around. Then he noticed that the door to their room was shut. None of his business. Now, with daylight savings time over, the sun set a little after four p.m. It was disorienting. Rising late, as Dominick normally did, that gave him only five or six hours of daylight. That day’s light was fading already, and he had done nothing. He went to his room, changed into his night clothes, and got into bed. There were no winter sunset bird songs, only some distant crow calls. Darkness came quickly and so did sleep.

  Lydia was painting again. Her doctor in New Jerusalem had gotten her onto a new pharmaceutical regimen, and she had decided she wanted to return home and paint. Atticus seemed pleased to be back home, but tired. They both had aged—a click or two more frail and uncertain. Another one of those little folds in time where a week or two might as well have been a year for its effect. Dominick kept to himself as best he could. The house was frigid now in the mornings. They no longer ate together. A sort of hibernation had set in. Then one afternoon several days into their new routine, Atticus caught Dominick coming in from a run to the store and asked a favor of him.

  “Lydia’s been out in her studio for some time now. Would you mind walking out there to check on her? She just yells at me if I go out there.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then would you take her this tea as well?” Atticus had a tray ready with a teapot under a cozy and a cup and saucer.

  Lydia’s studio at the far end of the garden was unheated. Being just one end of a potting shed, it wasn’t meant for habitation—all that uninsulated glass. She had an electric space heater there, but it wasn’t turned on. Lydia was dressed in many layers—a long cotton nightdress over jeans and boots, a cardigan sweater beneath her green down vest. On her hands were her painter’s gloves with the fingers cut off. In her ears were her iPod earphones, their white cord disappearing into a down vest pocket. Her back was to him. She must have seen his reflection in the windows, She couldn’t have heard him come in. He could hear the hum and thud of the music from her earphones. She half-turned to look at him, a bothered look on her face. “Oh, it’s you, whoever you are,” she said a bit too loud. “Put it down anywhere.”

  On the easel in front of Lydia was the large pastoral landscape that Dominick had last seen her working at—cows and a distant windmill, with lots of sky. She had divided the canvas up with randomly spaced parallel horizontal and vertical lines, making different sized rectangles, which she was randomly filling in, Mondrian style, with solid blocks of deep Rothko-like colors.

  Lydia watched Dominick curiously as he placed the tea tray on a workbench. She took off her ear buds. “Now, which one are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Dominick, ma’am.”

  “Yes, of course you are, but which bitch are you married to, and why are you here spying on me?”

  “I’m not one of your sons-in-law, Lydia. I’m a boarder, a friend of Atticus.”

  “And where is useless Atticus?”

  “Atticus is busy up at the house. Why are you doing that?” Dominick stepped sideways to get a better view of the painting on the easel.

  “Why, I’m fixing it, putting in the holes that I left out.”

  “So, those holes go through the painting?”

  “Yes, those are the colors behind the painting. I was always too la
zy before to show them.”

  “All right corners?”

  “That’s not my fault. It’s so that other people can see them.”

  “I like it.”

  “Then here, you can finish up. It’s all pretty obvious.” Lydia handed Dominick the long-handled paintbrush she was holding and went to pour herself some tea. “I was getting bored with it.”

  Dominick stood there with the paintbrush awkwardly in his hand. He could see his breath. “I’m afraid I don’t do my colors well. I’d ruin it.”

  Lydia poured herself a cup of tea. There was no sugar or cream on the tray. She didn’t seem to miss them. “Tell me . . . I’m sorry; I’ve forgotten your name already.”

  “Nick,” Dominick said.

  “Tell me, Nick, does madness run in your family?”

  “Not that I know of, at least nothing dramatic.” He looked around for a place to put down the brush. “Mostly they die fairly young, though. So they don’t get a shot at that late-stage crazy stuff.” He laid the brush along the lip of the easel.

  “So, you haven’t had the chance to be much around mad people.”

  “I don’t think they’re called mad people anymore. Addled, perhaps, or people with special needs or of diminished capacity. The terms you hear most now are Alzheimer’s and dementia.”

  “I like addled, and dementia has a nice sound to it, but what’s wrong with just mad?’

  “It could mean just angry, and only temporary. As a term meaning whacko, mad has lost a lot of power.”

  “Things do change, don’t they?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Ask about what? Oh, about mad people in your family. Because I think I may be going mad, and I was thinking . . . you know . . . I don’t know . . . that you might offer an opinion.”

  “What do the doctors say?” Dominick hugged himself, sticking his hands into his armpits. The dampness of the room sucked the heat from your clothes.

  “Oh, the doctors don’t tell me anything. They’ll talk with Atticus, but what good is that? What could they know anyway except what Atticus tells them?”

  “What is mad anyway?” Dominick was struck by how much Lydia’s eyes resembled Angelica’s—their distance apart, how there seemed to be no sockets surrounding them.

  “I don’t remember yesterday,” she said.

  “Perhaps it’s not worth remembering.”

  Lydia looked at Dominick and laughed. Her eyes laughed, too. “I like you. You’re freezing, run along. But I do hope you come to visit again.” Still carrying her teacup she pulled a fresh brush from a jar of them beside the easel. “What color is a cow inside, in the dark, where no one can see it?” She dipped the brush in black and then red pigment. “How streaked should dementia be?”

  There was no reason for Dominick to answer. Lydia already knew the answers. He left as he had come in and went back to the house. Atticus was waiting for him in the kitchen. Dominick assured him that his wife was fine, happily working away. “You know how artists are. They get lost sometimes.”

  It was a week before Dominick got back to New Jerusalem and the historical society museum. Hibernation. It was a Saturday, and for some reason he rose early and was out of the house in time to catch the midmorning ferry. John Starks seemed neither surprised to see him nor curious about his absence. The museum closed at noon on Saturdays, and Starks was just closing up for the weekend when Dominick arrived.

  “I’ve developed your film. It’s at the house. If you’re not busy we can go there to get it when I’m done here.” Starks was putting things away. “I’ve had Mormons in here all week doing genealogical searches. Did you know that if you are a Mormon you can save your ancestors who are already dead? Now there’s a twist. You’re not Mormon by any chance are you?”

  “No, and I have no progeny, so I guess I will never be saved. What exactly does that mean, anyway? Saved?”

  “Not sure.” Starks went around turning off the amber lights inside display cases. “The opposite of lost, I guess.”

  “Don’t you save things for later?”

  “Well, they do call themselves the Latter-day Saints.”

  “Later or latter?”

  “What’s the difference?” Starks came back with his coat on. “By the way, the beard is looking much better. It’s almost time to start trimming it. You should think about shaving your neck, though. That is so geriatric. Have you ever done this before?”

  “Done what?”

  “Grown a beard.”

  “No, never.”

  “It’s coming in all white, you know. Do you want that?”

  “It’s just a disguise.”

  “Are you pretending to be hiding from someone?”

  They drove to Starks’s house in his Jaguar, the only car left in the parking lot. It was an old Jag sedan, maybe thirty years old. Its fawn leather seats were worn, but it drove well. In no time they were on the tree-lined roads outside of town. This was new country for Dominick—two-lane country roads winding around the fields of large estates, big old houses set up on knolls way off the road. They had the roads to themselves. They pulled into a paved driveway and parked beside what once had been the gatehouse or carriage house of the big ramshackle mansion farther up the drive. The first floor was all garages, but the second story was a residence. Wordlessly Starks led the way up the stairs at the side.

  From the living room windows you could just see the ocean on the horizon. The room was furnished sparsely but with antiques, except for a long, low red sofa facing a fireplace. The ceilings were high and peaked and beamed. The only artworks on the walls were framed and matted photographs, all black-and-white. The broad-planked wood floor was polished and bare. There was a Spartan feel to the place, which surprised Dominick. At the museum Starks was so immersed in collectibles on display that one assumed it was his natural habitat, but here in his home it was all open space and clean sight lines.

  “Make yourself at home,” Starks said and headed off down a hallway. When he returned he had shed his overcoat and suit jacket and tie and was wearing a crimson old-style letter sweater, one of those ones with buttons down the front—unbuttoned—and with a large gold capital E on the breast. He was carrying a manila envelope, which he dropped on a table beneath the seaside windows. “Can I get you something? An ale or something stronger?”

  “An ale would be fine,” Dominick said. Starks kept on walking toward the kitchen. “What does the E stand for?” Dominick asked.

  Starks answered from the next room, “Enfield Academy, one of the places where I went to school. This old thing is still the most comfortable sweater I own.” He returned carrying two brown bottles of ale.

  “And your letter was in?”

  “Track and field, hundred yard dash. I always came in second. I like your photographs, Dominick. You have been doing this a while.” He handed Dominick his ale and went to the table beneath the window. “I made contact sheets of all your rolls and printed out some eight by tens of a few that especially jumped out at me. I hope you don’t mind. Sit down.”

  They sat at the table—old straight-back dining room chairs—but Starks didn’t open the envelope. Instead he reached out and pulled toward him an ornately carved wooden box, which he opened, and took out a film canister and a long-stemmed pipe. “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill,” he said. “Do you smoke, Dominick?”

  The pipe was a beauty—a delicately decorated blue-and-white porcelain bowl with a slender, intricately worked pewter stem—an object from a place and time that no longer existed. “An opium pipe?” Dominick asked.

  “Yes, very old, but only hashish to smoke today. Will you join me? My afternoon off.”

  Starks packed the pipe, and they passed it back and forth in silence, sipping their ales in between tokes to soothe their throats. The sun was trying and failing to break through the clouds. If it ever won, it would be a fine sunset. When the pipe was done, Starks set it back in its box. “Now for your pho
tographs,” he said, opening the manila envelope. “I’ll tell you what I like about them.

  “First, there are no people in them. Not only are there no people, there is no evidence that people even exist, nothing human at all. In a way they could be historical photos, as there are no temporal markers. They are timeless in that sense. But at the same time they are ahistorical because they are also placeless. They could be from just about any temperate zone place.” Starks laid out three eight-by-ten prints from the envelope. Then he opened the carved box again, repacked the pipe, lit it, smoked, and passed it to Dominick. “This could be a Sung Dynasty crow.”

  “Second is your incredibly narrow depth of field, the tight focus, foreground and background all indistinct shades of gray.” Starks retrieved the pipe from Dominick and took another long toke. “There are features within the frame that the viewer is denied the possibility of identifying. The tight focus and use of light creates multiple secrets while showing one thing delicately clear. This one, for instance.” A lone bare oak in a foggy pasture—what is called a wolf tree—stenciled against a troublesome sky.

  “Third is their anonymity. The photos are so cold and impersonal that not even the photographer is present. They should never be signed. It’s like the omniscient narrator in prose, never projecting himself into the story, no need to.”

  The hashish buzz was so peaceful and familiar that it was like slipping into an old comfy letter sweater. Dominick saw what Starks meant in the photos, but he was more interested in what he could see out the window. The photos seemed like dim memories now. They were, after all, shots he had already taken. There were no trees in the view of sepia pastures rolling toward the sea, just as in the old photos. The sun was shining now on the ocean’s distant horizon, a bright stripe like a strip of chrome on a two-tone gray ’50s muscle car. This was a full-depth-of-field shot, not a true color in it. Of course, he didn’t have a camera with him.

  Starks was still talking. “Dustin Hamlin, the photojournalist, once told me that all good photographs were merely accidents, and that all a good photographer could do was increase the incidence of happy accident. You have a high incidence of such happy accidents here.” Starks put down the pipe. “Perhaps happy is an inappropriate adjective for these; entrapping would be more accurate. Are you stoned?”