Old Newgate Road

by Keith Scribner

  “And he’s happy?”

  “I think so,” Cole says. She doesn’t respond, and after a beat he realizes she’s weeping. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just glad he’s not spending all his time conspiring with thirty-year-old freegans. I never thought I’d be so relieved that my son’s behaving like an average American.”

  “That might be an overstatement, but he’s definitely got a spark that I haven’t seen in a while. He hasn’t said ‘the world’s in the toilet’ for weeks.”

  “Ha! He might as well join the positivity movement.”

  “He’ll be putting aphorisms on the fridge.”

  “ ‘Dare to be regular!’ ”

  “Yeah,” Cole says, “but I’m not sure you’ll get traction with that one. He does seem good, though, and he’s really been a help with my father, too.”

  “That I’m less thrilled about.”

  “It’s just that he’s another sane person in the house to raise the standard of rationality. My father seems to need reasonable lives to anchor himself to. Otherwise, he spins out. Yesterday we were watching them burn the fields around the house—”

  “Who’s burning fields?”

  “Taybro. One of the big companies. There was a breakout of blue mold.”

  “In the plants?”

  “Yeah, on the leaves.”

  “Can’t they spray something?”

  “There’s nothing to do but burn it. And they never wait even a second, since it can jump from field to field. It’s what the growers fear more than anything. That and smoking bans in New York City.”

  “Blue mold and Bloomberg.”

  “Exactly.” Cole feels the old ease between them—back to those days they sprawled on his couch watching black-and-white movies. Dialed into each other.

  She covers the phone, though he still hears a muffled “Thanks. One more.”

  “Where are you?”

  She hesitates. “The Batignolles.” It was always their favorite bar.

  “On the patio?”

  “Yep.”

  “Vouvray?”

  She doesn’t answer, but he listens to her settling into one of those soft chairs in the shade of the bamboo. The clink of a glass.

  “Are you alone?”

  Again she hesitates, then says, “Yeah.” She takes a sip. “Tell me about burning these fields.”

  The sudden intimacy between them is so profound that he can’t remember when he last felt this close to her. “It was wild. The fields run up to the side yard, then wrap around the back, and it was all on fire. It really seemed like we were staring into the apocalypse. Either that or we were acting in a movie about men who fight brush fires.”

  “Hell’s Firemen. In theaters this summer.”

  “So hot your corn will pop by itself.”

  “But it’s dangerous, isn’t it?” she says. “Couldn’t it catch the house on fire?”

  “There’s a pretty wide tractor road all the way around. Plus the tobacco’s really wet right now so it burns at a low smolder. The smoke smells like a very skanky cigar mixed with rotting cabbage. Burning.”

  “Nice,” she says. “What a place to grow up.”

  “I only remember this happening once when I was a kid.”

  “Couldn’t they try to just rip out the bad plants?”

  “Too much risk of it spreading. There were a few infamous years where the whole valley lost its crop.”

  “It’s all so primitive. With GMOs and Frankenfoods it seems they could just fix this.”

  “It’s a very old-fashioned business. And a dying one. I guess you don’t pour money into revamping something that’s shrinking year by year. Which is one of the things Daniel likes about it. No one even makes the machines for sewing the leaves together—”

  “There’s sewing involved?”

  “They sew the leaves together for hanging, and the machines, they just keep fixing and rebuilding the same ones they’ve been using for fifty years. The buses, the sheds, the tractors—I swear it’s all the same stuff they were using when I was a kid, and even then it was the same stuff from when my father was young.”

  “If I’d known about the sewing I might’ve asked you to get me a job too.”

  He wonders why she says this. A trial balloon? Fishing for an invitation? She’d never come. He knows she’s curious about this place, the house, his father. She’s never met him, only seen Cole’s few photos from back when they were still a family. For her, Phil is frozen in time: a man in 1970s Kodacolor with long sideburns and black-framed glasses, never looking at the camera but caught carrying a sheet of drywall or a sack of chicken feed, carving a turkey, stringing lights on the Christmas tree. A father and husband who will, in a year or three or six, become a murderer. He’s as fixed in time for her as Cole’s mother is for him.

  “So where’s Tony tonight? What are you doing off leash?”

  She lets that one pass. “How are things holding up for you?”

  “Without Ben, Greenworks would be sunk. I’m giving him a raise. He checks in every couple days. I lost a big job, but we’ll survive it. And he’s keeping everything else on track. He even bid out two small additions.”

  “That’s good,” she says, “but I meant you personally. Being there.”

  “Well, my father needs help, so I’m working on that. And I’m trying to get him to confront what he did, which is probably futile. What I really want to ask him is, even if he didn’t mean to kill her, even if he hadn’t killed her, did he know what living under the threat of violence was doing to his kids? Even if he didn’t love his wife, did he love us? Was he aware of all the trauma he was inflicting? I actually think the answer’s no, he wasn’t aware. So does that make it more forgivable? And then I think about how my failure to forgive him has diminished me. Is diminishing me. And what you said about my fear of losing control. Basically, I think you’re right—I mean, you are right.”

  In the long silence he can hear only his breathing, and hers, the ring of plates and silverware and laughter at the Batignolles.

  “To answer your earlier question,” she finally says, “Tony’s at his house. And I came here, apparently, to call you.”

  15

  He goes out for grinders most days and brings them back to the house, but it’s so damn hot he figures they’d all like half an hour in the AC. Cole’s capicola with provolone tastes just like it did back then; he remembers cleaning the slicer at midnight in Simsbury and jonesing for that first Scotch with Tilly, but more he’s reminded of sitting right here, at this very table, eating grinders with Liz.

  The four of them are quiet—hungry and tired and cooling off—and he can see that Little Kirk’s keeping an eye on two men a few tables over—workingmen in oily caps and coveralls. “Who are they?” Cole asks.

  “Nobody,” he says. “Matt used to be friends with my dad.”

  “Matt Gosling,” Cole says. “Sure enough.” No neck and fat hands—he looks the same.

  “They had a big blowup,” LK says. “I don’t even know what about.” He steals another glance, then takes a wolfish bite of his grinder and wipes his chin with the back of his hand.

  In high school, Matt and Kirk were best friends. Bullies and all-around assholes, cruising town in Kirk’s Chevelle looking for trouble. When Kirk was arrested for burning down the sheds, the cops and most everybody else thought Matt was his accomplice, but even when Kirk was offered a deal to rat him out, he wouldn’t do it. They kept Kirk in juvie until he was twenty-one.

  He’s suddenly worried about Daniel. Even back then everyone knew Kirk got such a harsh sentence because he’d burned a multinational corporation’s property. If they were the barns of local dairy and truck farms, there would’ve been no FBI and no federal court or federal prosecutors. Daniel, trying to make the world right by taki
ng potshots at Safeway and Bank of America, was picking a fight with some very big dogs.

  Cole pats him on the back. “You guys want to take the afternoon off?”

  With his mouth full, Daniel says, “I’m good.”

  “Me too, Mr. Callahan. I want to get that baseboard in.”

  “How about you?” he says to his father.

  “Let’s get those water lines connected. Half my life I’ve been dreaming of taking a dump up there.”

  The boys laugh and after a moment Phil joins in. He’s better today, as he is most days until the afternoon. As the hours click away so does his mind. He resets overnight and by morning he’s okay again. But it seems that his reset comes up a little shorter with each passing day—another thin slice of him lost. It’s really in the morning that Cole should talk to him about the incompetency declaration, though he never wants to trouble the waters in the hours when his father is doing well. Still, it frustrates him that as soon as Cole brings up anything important, his father’s instantly absent.

  “Speaking of which,” Phil says, “we had two pairs of Chinese geese. Regal birds. Pure white except for their orange beaks and feet. Long graceful necks.”

  “Ian might remember it differently,” Cole tells him. “They were fiercely territorial. If he didn’t give them a wide berth, they’d drop their heads down low and run after him, swooping in like fighter jets, and bite his butt or the backs of his thighs and not let go.”

  “I’ve seen it happen,” LK says, laughing. “They’re vicious.”

  “Once he came in the house crying and smeared with their shit. They’d gotten him so bad he tripped and fell and they attacked. No mercy. And that was the other thing about those regal birds of yours.” He looks at Phil. “In a week they’d covered the entire backyard with shit.”

  “Nature,” Daniel says flatly.

  “Were they tasty?” LK asks.

  Cole waits for a moment, giving his father a chance to pick up the story, but he’s staring down at his plate, so he continues himself. “They were so damn loud that a German shepherd from that house by the creek got curious enough to come check them out. I was upstairs in my room and heard all the honking and barking and went to the window just as the dog split one of them off from the flock. The goose flapped its wings and pecked at the dog’s eyes with these quick powerful strikes, and I was about to run downstairs to chase the dog off, but then he got his jaws around the goose’s neck, and I still remember watching through the window as the dog made three quick shakes of his head and the goose went limp. He dropped her on the ground and trotted off.”

  The boys are staring at him, and when he picks up his can of soda he realizes his hands are shaking.

  “Are you okay?” Daniel says.

  He takes a big swallow of root beer and tries to slough it off. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just remember feeling so helpless watching it all from behind the glass, with no time to get out there.”

  “Did you eat the others?” LK asks.

  “The dead one was a female,” Cole says, “and for the next couple days the two males fought for the remaining mate. By the third morning the weaker male was gone. I don’t remember what happened with the pair that was left. Do you, Dad?”

  “Probably that shepherd got them.”

  “I was so pissed at that dog.” Cole smiles and tips his can toward Daniel. “I guess I still am. Ha! Still mad at a dead dog.”

  “It’s the Baxters you should be mad at,” his father says. “They shouldn’t’ve let their dog wander all over like that.” He bites into his grinder and keeps talking while he chews. “The dog didn’t have any malice. Just doing what comes natural. Just thinking it’d be fun to get that neck in my teeth and shake it around.”

  * * *

  —

  The humidity is still a surprise, still suffocating. The car, parked in the sun, is like an oven. The boys get in back, Phil up front, and Cole guns it across the parking lot to move some air through. At the far end of the lot they come up on a pickup with a compressor and tangles of greasy hoses and a fuel tank in the bed, with Matt and his friend standing beside it having a smoke. As Cole drives by, Matt flicks his cigarette at his windshield: the ember hits the glass in front of his face and sparks fly. He stomps the brakes. “I wouldn’t do that,” Phil says quietly, but by now he’s slammed the car in reverse, the engine’s whining, and he’s backing up straight at them. He jerks the car to a stop, flings open the door, and jumps out. “What’s your fucking problem?!”

  Matt forces a smile.

  Cole stares dead at him. “I’ll knock your teeth down your throat, asshole.”

  Matt takes half a step at him.

  “Don’t even touch me,” Cole snaps. “I’ll break your fucking arm.”

  Matt stops, puffs up his chest, broadens his shoulders, and his buddy struts up beside him doing the same. Matt’s teeth are bad, the stubble on his chin is gray. “Mouth off like that, you’re liable to get hurt.”

  “Grow up, Matt”—he spits out the name with all the derision he can. “You’re practically an old man still acting like a delinquent. How long you been flicking cigarettes at people? Since you were like eleven?”

  “I didn’t even see you there,” he says, then grins at his pal. “It was an accident.”

  “You’re a loser.”

  Matt’s face twitches, his jaw clenches, his eyes narrow. Cole has gotten under his skin. “You best get the hell out of here”—Matt’s voice drops to a more serious register—“before things turn against you.”

  In the corner of his eye Cole sees somebody else. It’s Phil, coming around the car and stepping between them. “That’s right, fellas,” he says. “Gotta run. There’s some kids and an old man roasting in the car.” And he nudges Cole back toward the open door.

  For a mile no one says a thing. The air blowing in the window is too hot to cool him down. His heart’s racing. The rage is nameless, shapeless. He can hardly see, like the veins in his eyes are bursting with blood. He’s ashamed to have done that in front of Daniel. He hears nothing from the backseat and looks in the rearview mirror; his son’s gazing blankly out the window, wind whipping his hair. Damn, he was right on the edge. If Matt had come at him, he would’ve unloaded. What the fuck’s gotten into him?

  He feels like they’re doing ninety and checks the speedometer. Thirty-five. They’re almost home when Little Kirk says, “Way to go, Mr. Callahan. My dad’s gonna love hearing about that.”

  “Nothing to be proud of,” Cole says. “I lost my temper is all.” He squeezes the steering wheel, bites his lower lip. “Nothing to tell stories about.”

  “Knucklehead like that,” Phil says, “he’ll hit you with a tire iron without giving it a thought. Next minute you’ve got a permanent drool.”

  In the driveway, Cole holds the seat forward and Daniel slides out with his head down. Cole walks out to the apple tree. The chickens run to the wire, crowding and chirping, frantically watching him for a handful of feed. He picks over a few apples before finding one without worms and takes a bite, green and sour. He eats it slowly and stares out at the burnt fields, not plowed under yet. The chickens are making a racket and the blood’s still pounding in his ears.

  “You wanted to hit him with a tire iron, am I right?” It’s his father, just behind him.

  Cole keeps staring ahead.

  “Easy to do. The anger builds and builds, makes you a little crazy, makes it so you don’t know what you’re thinking or who you are. Mister High and Mighty swooping in here, gonna show me how bad I’ve been, how bad I am compared to you.” He comes up beside him, and when Cole doesn’t turn he stands in front of him, facing him down. “You’re just like me,” he says.

  Cole steps away and throws the apple core as hard as he can into the fields. At least his father had the decency to not say it in front of Daniel.

&n
bsp; * * *

  —

  The rage is physical. Weight and mass pressing on his lungs, his skull. Heat and odor. He has a clear, almost mystical vision of himself eventually dying from a heart attack. The rage will get its grip on him someday, too strong for his heart to endure. Rage at the doctors who almost let Nikki die, the cop who gave him a ticket for double-parking to unload twenty sheets of five-eighths drywall in the rain, the woman who flipped him the bird at the intersection of Hawthorne and Forty-First. “You’re just not present,” Nikki told him once. “You’re muttering.” And thank God she can’t hear what he’s saying under his breath—“Go fuck yourself!” directed at the woman who ten years earlier gave him the finger at Hawthorne and Forty-First.

  Or the time he was washing dishes in the kitchen, rinsing suds off the chef’s knife and watching Nikki swing the car door closed with a hip and start across their quiet street with her arms full of groceries, and then a passing car honked and swerved, the man at the wheel yelling, “Watch where you’re going, bitch!” and speeding away.

  Cole raced out the door with his keys, blurted “Are you hurt?” and dashed by, as she picked up oranges rolling across the pavement.

  “No!” she called after him in a panic. “I’m fine. Cole—stop!” But he was already in the car and flooring it after the guy.

  He flew down the street, screeching to a stop at every corner, looking both ways for the white Camaro, then gunning ahead. He turned east on Hawthorne and slowed his speed, scanning every parked car, the side streets and parking lots for a mile. But not a trace of the asshole. So he sped back to their neighborhood, up and down every street, searching driveways and alleys, and then heading west on Hawthorne—where’s that bastard?—with blood rushing in his ears, grinding his teeth, when a woman screamed, “Stop!” He jerked his head and his stomach dropped as he slammed on the brakes, his tires squealing. In the crosswalk, a few feet in front of his growling car, were a woman and a stroller and a little boy and girl hanging on the sides, their faces turned toward him, scrambling, stumbling, the mother’s back arched like a cat ready to pounce. Somehow she whisked up both toddlers and was thrusting the stroller ahead, her piercing eyes locked on Cole. She didn’t look frightened. She was far beyond that, like she might drop her kids on the sidewalk, stick her head in Cole’s window, and rip him to shreds with her teeth.