Oliver grabbed a menu. “What’s good?”
“Nothing,” said his father. “That’s the way we like it, here. Everything is mediocre. Keeps the frou-frous out.”
“Mom always ordered Fletch and me the steak when we came.”
“The steak’s all right. Unless you don’t eat meat anymore, in solidarity with the poor oppressed animals, slain to feed our raging appetites.”
“Poultry of the world unite,” said Oliver. “You’re right. I’ll have a salad.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to town?”
“I didn’t need to, not with Finn around.”
“He’s a good boy, that Finnegan. I had my doubts when you were palling around with him, I thought he was a bad influence, but I’ve had to reconsider who was influencing whom. It’s nice to see him come into his own.”
“With your help.”
“I try to be useful.” He turned to the waiter who had silently appeared. “I’ll have the New York strip, blood rare. My son will have a salad. What kind of salad, Oliver?”
“The salad nicoise,” said Oliver.
“There’s tuna in that, isn’t there?” said Oliver’s father.
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter.
“Fish okay, then, Oliver?”
“Yes, fish is okay.”
“Splendid. I’ve always said consistency is overrated. Hobgoblins and such. And I’ll have another martini. Oliver, something to drink?”
“Gin.”
“With tonic?” said Oliver’s father.
“No, just gin.”
“It’s going to be like that, is it?”
“Over ice,” said Oliver.
“Very good,” said the waiter before sliding away as quietly as he arrived.
“So what are you up to these days, Oliver? What great achievements have you brought back from California?”
“I have a pretty decent tan.”
“And I thought you just hadn’t bathed. The dean of Northwestern Law School is a friend of mine. Just this morning I was speaking to him about you.”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
“He’s intrigued. He believes you could contribute a unique voice to the campus discussion. And he was impressed with your grades at Michigan.”
“Aren’t those confidential?”
“Just a proud papa bragging about his boy.”
“I’m on my way to Colorado.”
“Boulder has an acceptable law school, too. I could make some calls.”
“There’s a farm at the foot of the mountains and some like-minded folk. We’re going to try to create something new.”
“Farming, is it? Ah, the farming life. Sleep late, soak up the sun for a few hours, flit around the rest of the day like mayflies. That’s why people keep running back to the farm. The lifestyle is so leisurely. And you want to create something new, you say? They’ve only been farming for ten thousand years. I’m sure you’ll revolutionize the thing.”
“A new type of farm, based on equality of work and reward, of community, of family, of something that’s not fouled by the rawness of capitalism or the judgments imposed by false religions. Something clean and free and beautiful.”
“It’s amazing that hasn’t been tried yet. Maybe you ought to call Brezhnev, tell him what you’re attempting. Put him on the right path.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
“How many would give their eyeteeth for what you’ve turned your back on.”
“Talk to the dean about them. I’m living my own life.”
“You’re throwing it away is what you’re doing. Ah, the drinks. Yes, thank you. To your future . . . shoveling cow shit.”
As his father tippled the martini, Oliver took a long swallow of the gin. Hard and tart and cold. Just what he needed for a lunch with his father, though to be honest, this was more pleasant than he imagined. His father was almost cheery in his raging disappointment, which added a nice note to the meeting, sort of like the juniper in the gin.
“Helen’s pregnant,” said Oliver, with a touch of bravery brought on by the bite of the alcohol.
“She’s the girl from Bryn Mawr, right, the redhead with all the freckles?”
“That’s right.”
“Who’s the father?”
“I’m the father.”
“You sure? I keep on reading about free love in Time magazine. It makes one wonder.”
“I’m the father.”
“Well then, congratulations are in order. I suppose you’ll be making an honest woman of her.”
“She is an honest woman, the most honest I’ve ever met.”
“Your mother was married when she had Fletcher and you. Something honest about that, wouldn’t you say?”
“Mom would have loved Helen. She would have been thrilled to her boots by all this. I can hear her crying with joy.”
“Or maybe just crying. So you’re going to raise this child on the farm. In the dirt.”
“At one with the earth, you mean? Yes, that’s the plan.”
“I’m sure that will work just dandy.”
“Why can’t you be happy for me, Dad? I’m going to be a father. You’re going to be a grandfather.”
“To a bastard.”
“If it’s a girl we’re going to name her Saffron. The color of a Buddhist robe.”
“Yes, that will go over well in junior high.”
“And if it’s a boy, we’re going to name him Fletcher,” said Oliver, and when he did something cracked in the grotesquery of his father’s performance. The smile dimmed, the eyes widened and leaked a sorrow that all the bluster was designed to hide. For a moment he looked like Nixon on the day he resigned, the upper lip stiff in front of a cracking veneer—Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself—and suddenly father and son weren’t adversaries, apostles of two lives so different they could have been lived on different planets. They were just two men linked by a single loss, neither one yet fully recovered.
“Do you still miss him?” said Oliver’s father. “I sometimes miss him so much it takes my breath away. And your mother, too. Never got over that one, I can tell you. Never will.”
“Why don’t you quit, Dad? Get out of the race.”
“You want me to farm? Like a fool.”
“Do something else, anything else. Head toward the sun. Hike the Grand Canyon. Hell, hike the Himalayas.”
“I can’t, boy. I have responsibilities.”
“What responsibilities?”
“To the firm. To my love for your mother. To the memory of your brother. To the very order of things. It matters, the life we live, the burdens we take on, it all matters. You don’t seem to get that. I tell you, Oliver, I sometimes think the wrong child went to war. You were the one who should have gone.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“No, you would have survived. I fully believe that. You have the instinct that would have found a cushy job in Saigon to last your enlistment. Just like you’re whiling away your life out of the fray. You wouldn’t have rushed to organize a counterattack against an ambush like your brother. The captain said it was an act of bravery above and beyond. I wouldn’t have had to worry about that with you. I should have known better.”
Oliver caught a flinch from his father, just a slight narrowing of the eyes, but it was enough. “Better than what?”
“Where’s our food? How long does it take to cook a steak rare? Not long, that’s the point of it.”
“Why did Fletcher enlist?” said Oliver. “I was never really clear on that.”
“He did it because it was the right thing to do. Because you can’t let other people fight your wars.”
“Nice bumper sticker. But that can’t be all of it. Did you push him to go? Did you set him up for a commission just like you’re trying to set me up to return to law school?”
“He enlisted because he was taking control of his future. He h
ad a great future destroyed by a communist bullet. You destroyed your future all on your own.”
“It was on your advice, wasn’t it?”
“Good cross-examination technique, that. Something got drummed in during your single year.”
“Answer the question.”
“Fletcher made his own decision.”
“And that’s what I’m doing,” said Oliver, bunching his napkin off his lap before tossing it onto the table. “Thank you for the lunch. Funny thing was that visiting Finn, and then being here in the club, seeing you, I was starting to have regrets. But you solved them for me. This life of yours, what has it gotten you? A big house, a big job, a place at this grotesque club. But who’s left to share it with?”
“Just know you get not a penny from me for you and your bastard until you live up to your responsibilities.”
“And what are those? Following your lead in all things, like Fletcher did? For you, it all comes down to money, doesn’t it? Well I don’t want or need your money. I’m off that train.”
“You’ll come back begging for it. And when you do, you know where to find me.”
Oliver stood, kicked off the oxfords, yanked off the jacket and tossed it on the chair. “Let me tell you something, Dad. If I ever become as bitter as you, I’ll just shoot myself and get it over with.”
As he made his barefooted way out of the grillroom, his father called after him, “What about your salad, Oliver? Think of the poor tuna that gave its life for your salad.”
Still retreating, Oliver turned his head and yelled behind him, “Fuck the fish.”
“That a boy,” yelled back Oliver’s father with a broad smile as the other diners looked on with horror on their pasty faces. “Now you’re getting it. There might be hope for you yet.”
He kept it together, Oliver Cross, kept it together as he rode the elevator down, and grabbed his sandals from the front desk, and stooped to buckle them back on, and walked to the train, and rode it back to Hyde Park and Helen. He kept it together until they were back in the van and Helen was driving them west, past Iowa City on Route 80, when he broke down into tears.
“What?” said Helen in response to the sobs that erupted seemingly out of nowhere. “Oliver, what?”
“We need to make this work,” said Oliver. “This has to work.”
“It will, darling,” she said. “For all of us.”
When Helen and Oliver finally arrived at the foothills of the Rockies, they made the turn at the bottom of a hill shaped like a pyramid, as if a marker had been left for just their generation. The van rattled like a broken vase and spewed smoke as they made their way down the pitted drive, flanked by rising hills covered with brush. The road passed a reservoir before opening onto a long magic valley hidden within the comforting arms of the mountain. Helen parked the van by a large juniper tree, its bright branches spreading out like a gorgeous Japanese fan. A thin woman in a long shift, who had been stooping in a field by the end of the road, raised herself to standing.
Gracie.
All around her, amidst the weathered buildings, were well-tended patches of growth, with larger fields and their neat rows of crops stretching out between two running ridges of the mountain. Gracie’s back was straight, her long blonde hair was tossed by the breeze. She raised a hand full of carrots streaked with dirt, and positioned the bright-green tops to shield the sun as she peered at their approach. Standing there with her back straight, the wind ruffling her hair, and the sun shining through the gauzy fabric of her loose skirt, she looked to be the very symbol of their rich and fertile futures.
Oliver put his hand on Helen’s swelling belly and said to his unborn child, “Wake up, little darling, we’re finally home.”
17
REBEL REBEL
Oliver Cross has been here before, let loose on the highway, both chasing and running away at the very same time, a king of the road.
He felt the bracing jolt of liberation when he dashed over the county line, and another when he headed out of Pennsylvania, as if he had been signing his own Declaration of Independence—I hold this truth to be self-evident, that I am finally traveling free and oh so easy, and all the rest of you sons of bitches can suck it—and that sense of elation has stayed with him. He grew accustomed to staying in one place, with the rootedness of an ancient oak, tied down first by family, later by Helen’s illness and his own treatments, and then by the criminal justice system as it twisted its screws into his neck, but here, now, shuddering ever forward as the miles churn beneath him, he is again traveling hopefully—even if his hope is as cratered and singed as a battlefield—and it is as if he is traveling back to himself.
It was the way he felt when he drove with his pregnant wife to make a go of it on Gracie’s farm, and before that the way he felt when he hitchhiked west to California the first time with Helen, and before that the way he felt when he boarded the bus on his way to Philadelphia to seize a life of utter freedom with his one true love. And yes, he knows it is illusory, this euphoria, and that the sum total of those other journeys somehow turned to shit, and yet he can’t help but revel in the emotions of it. The sheer intoxication of unbounded expectation.
Somehow it makes him want to cry.
Somehow it makes him want to sob out huge honking tears, the kind he hasn’t let loose since the moment Helen slipped away from the world like a thief into the eternal night, taking everything he gave a damn about with her. And he would have let loose like a wailing red-faced infant if the girl, Ayana, weren’t sitting there in the front seat, with only the dog between them.
The dog barks as if he can sense Oliver’s welling emotion. Oliver looks over and sees the dog staring at him like a hypnotist.
“I think he needs to go,” says the girl.
“Dog bites man,” grunts Oliver.
“Hunter doesn’t bite, does he?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then why did you say it? It was like you were giving him an order. You wouldn’t bite me, would you, Hunter? No, you wouldn’t, you good little boy.”
Oliver doesn’t try to educate her on the expression, but the idea of the dog pissing raises the urge in himself. It doesn’t take much anymore. He pulls the truck to the shoulder of the road.
“I’ll walk him,” she says.
“No, stay by the truck,” says Oliver. “I’ll do it. I could use a little relief myself. This shouldn’t take more than ten or twenty minutes. Thirty tops.”
She looks at him like he’s grown another head.
With his back bent and his feet splayed, Oliver walks the dog across a strip of weeds on the edge of the highway and stands before a stand of trees. Cars scream by as he lowers his fly. He is waiting for something to happen as Hunter squats, pisses, sniffs, and craps, and then goes about sniffing all over again. If there were a bitch around, Hunter would mount her, finish her off, and share a cigarette while Oliver waits for the first dribble. Oliver was feeling good about himself, almost young again, but the dog has set him straight.
When his pathetic splattering is as over as it’s going to get, Oliver leads the dog back to the truck, walking right past the pile of crap.
“You’re just going to leave it there?” says Ayana, leaning against the passenger door.
“Fertilizer,” says Oliver.
“I’m sure the guy who steps in it will agree.”
“Then he shouldn’t have bought such fancy shoes.”
The girl laughs before looking down at the weathered brown boots Oliver wears. “I suppose that’s not a problem for you.”
“I used to muck the fields with a wheelbarrow, black army boots, and my bare fists.”
“Remind me not to shake your hand, old man.”
“Now you’re learning,” says Oliver.
Oliver hears a clatter churning down the road and stops to look. A motorcycle, red and black with twin exhaust pipes and a helmeted rider wearing a jacket of the same colors, roars past and Oliver feels a bout of reb
el solidarity. That would have been him fifty years ago, maybe, except motorbikes are always so loud, and the vibrations jangle the bones, and the bugs get caught in your teeth. Yeah, rebel rebel. Slowly and painfully he climbs into the truck and jams the stick shift into gear.
The miles churn beneath them as they bounce along on a rutted asphalt road surrounded by wild green hills. Every so often the speed limit lowers and they hit a little cluster of strip malls, big-box craperaries, fast-food poisonaries. The sight saddens him, as if the great capitalist dog has crapped on the road and no one has bagged it and trashed it. It makes him feel a little guilty about leaving Hunter’s leavings all over the place, but only a little. In the congested stretches Oliver dutifully slows down to stay safely within the limits of the law, keeping an eye on any cop he sees in the rearview mirror.
Reminding himself that he is indeed on the run gives Oliver a jolt of joy, until he remembers he’s not just running. He is heading into Ohio with a purpose other than escape, and as they grow closer to Frank’s brother with every mile, he begins to reconsider his plan. Plan? Truth is, other than chasing after Frank Cormack, overtaking the son of a bitch, and throttling him senseless before sending his granddaughter back home, Oliver doesn’t have a plan.
“Do we know the brother’s address in Chillicothe?” says Oliver.
“Not now we don’t.”
“A name?”
“Cormack, probs. It’s his brother. Unless it’s his half brother. Then we might be screwed.”
“When was the asshole there?”
“Right after he stole the shipment and they flew the coop. He didn’t stay long.”
“Why not?”
“Because Teddy had someone waiting on him, that’s why.”
“But they didn’t get him.”
“He slipped through. That’s why Teddy came to you.”
“Still, he might have spilled his next move before he ran. We need the brother’s address.”
Freedom Road Page 12
