Stillriver

by Andrew Rosenheim

  If it were the case, would this account for his father’s change in his will? Henry had held his generation’s conventional view about homosexuals – it was not a lifestyle he would have chosen for his son – but for all his disdain for groups and his cynicism about causes, Michael’s father had never been a bigoted man. There had been a tempered tolerance there, which made Michael think it was something else that had precipitated the new instructions for his father’s lawyer, Atkinson.

  He walked back along the track, jumping in surprise when he flushed a grouse gorging on the choke cherries. He sat in his car for several minutes with the door open and the radio on, then he pushed hard on the horn, giving it half a dozen long blasts, and got out and walked back to the trailer. This time as he approached the front door opened and Bubba came out and stood at the top of the steps. He had added to his costume and now was wearing an enormous pair of blue jean overalls, with the white T-shirt on underneath, and the same tan work boots Michael remembered from Gary’s house. There was nothing to suggest he had company, or what he had company for.

  He didn’t seem pleased to see Michael. ‘You just get here?’

  ‘Yep. I parked up the track so I wouldn’t get stuck.’

  Bubba scowled. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for Gary. I thought you might know where I could find him.’

  ‘You thought wrong.’

  ‘All right,’ said Michael. ‘If you say so.’ He turned to go, and added, ‘I thought you two were friends. Guess I got that wrong, too.’

  ‘We are friends,’ Bubba protested.

  ‘Then help me find my brother, will you? If he doesn’t turn up soon, the police are going to issue a warrant for his arrest.’

  ‘Arrest for what?’

  ‘Arrest for my father’s murder,’ he said, though he decided not to mention the baseball bat. ‘Sure, it’s ridiculous, and no, I don’t think Gary had anything to do with it. But why has Gary run away? Maybe he’s scared of Maguire, but this disappearing act isn’t going to help.’

  ‘Maguire’s not after your brother. It’s someone else he wants.’

  ‘Somerset?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Gary hasn’t told you anything?’

  No, he thought, strictly speaking he hadn’t. But he wasn’t going to admit that to Bubba. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you mean about the dynamite.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bubba. ‘Maguire was in charge of that one and he thought he had Raleigh dead to rights. He was fit to be tied when Raleigh got off. Who wasn’t?’

  ‘I thought you and Raleigh were brothers-in-arms.’

  Bubba snorted and spat, an inch-long plug of saliva that fell like a wad of goose shit onto the grass. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea, mister. There are plenty of things I believe in, including the right to bear arms. But I’m not a racist.’

  Michael wondered where the Mexican boy was. ‘And Raleigh is?’

  Bubba looked at him as if he were irretrievably stupid. ‘Do fish swim? Pigs fuck? Of course he’s a racist. You ask me, Raleigh’s no different than a Nazi. Anything out of the ordinary, Raleigh wants them in an oven.’

  ‘Like gays,’ said Michael to be provocative.

  Bubba didn’t flinch. He stared at Michael and said, ‘It’s usually the Jews he likes to go on about.’

  ‘So why did you have anything to do with this guy?’

  Bubba shrugged. ‘You might laugh at this, but to begin with it was all kind of social. I like guns.’ He gestured back towards the trailer. ‘I got a lot of them inside. Some of us would get together and practice target shooting at Scotch Haven, then drink a couple of beers at the Spring Valley Tavern. Your brother was one of them. Raleigh would be there, too, always talking politics. Then one time he brought somebody along from downstate who started talking, and the next thing you know we’re a branch of the Michigan Marines. No big deal – it’s still mainly target practice and drinking beer, only now we sometimes had enactments.’

  ‘Enactments?’

  ‘You’d call it war games, I guess. You know, one guy would set out and the rest of us would track him down. Or we’d do survival weekends. You get set down in the national forest, miles from nowhere, they’d blindfold you on the way, and then see how you got on. Shelter-building, making fire with flints, catching fish with a hawthorn hook – survival skills. It was a lot of fun,’ said Bubba with a small, recollecting smile.

  ‘How does that get you to dynamite?’

  Bubba looked at him thoughtfully. ‘It doesn’t. That’s what I’m trying to explain. The problem was always Raleigh. He wanted action – we always had to be rehearsing for something. Not just the end of the world,’ he said with his cartoon giggle, ‘but real things. Like taking an IRS man hostage, or defending your house from the state police.’

  ‘And the dynamite?’ he insisted.

  ‘That was a big mistake,’ Bubba said appreciatively, then suddenly realized what he was saying. ‘On Raleigh’s part. I never knew anything about it.’

  ‘Did my brother?’

  The gradual warming he had found in Bubba during the course of the conversation abruptly came to a halt. ‘Time for you to go. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for your brother.’

  ‘Where should I be looking?’

  Bubba said, ‘How long is a piece of string?’

  He bought a new filled gas can and a quart of oil at the Shell station, grateful that he no longer knew anyone working there. At home, he got the old mower out and soon had it started. He had hated cutting the grass as a boy, but now found the simple monotony of the chore calming. As cars passed, sometimes the occupants stared, and he tried to ignore them, though he found it hard not to stare back. Yes, he wanted to stop and tell them, even when your father’s been murdered you still have to cut the grass.

  When he had first been sent out of the New York office on projects, Streatley (who was as close to a mentor as he had) would ask on his return from the field, ‘So what did you learn?’ And forced to take stock, he would find that usually he had learned more than he imagined. He performed the same exercise now, hoping to reduce his persisting bafflement.

  So what had he learned from his day’s forays? Bubba didn’t like Somerset and vice versa, and Bubba seemed less involved in Marine matters than Michael had expected, or feared, since clearly Bubba and Gary were pals . . . or whatever. The games side of the Marines had served as a lure to the kind of gun-owning outdoorsmen who would enjoy something more organized than their usual hunting and range practice activities. Throw in the odd diatribe about gas taxes and the gun control lobby, and this hardly constituted subversive activity. But then there was the dynamite, which manifestly crossed a line. Michael couldn’t figure out how either Bubba or his brother had got that far if their involvement in the Marines were as innocent as they claimed – but then, if Gary were entirely in the clear, why had he panicked at the mention of dynamite, and taken off?

  Then there was the matter of Maguire, who according to Jimmy Olds was single-minded and relentless behind the friendly manner. But what exactly was he pursuing? If both Bubba and Jimmy Olds (improbable bedmates) were to be believed, Maguire was pursuing his own agenda, a continuation of his previous pursuit of the Marines. And that was peculiar too, for Maguire obviously had some pre-existing relationship with Gary that was Marine-linked; yet neither Gary nor Maguire had mentioned this to Michael.

  He wasn’t really sure where to head next. He could try and track down the other figures from Gary’s bungalow – asshole mouth, the guy drinking beer, the other one whose face he struggled to visualize. But he wasn’t at all sure he’d find out anything new from them. He had the feeling that if anyone could function as a spokesman, it would be Bubba – he remembered how asshole mouth had turned to him when Michael got annoyed in Gary’s bungalow.

  No, increasingly, everything and everyone, including Bubba, seemed to point in Raleigh Somerset’s direction. Michael had trouble a
ligning his recent sighting of him at the Homecoming Parade – large and swaggering in his fatigues – with the big, child-like adolescent who had been his classmate for, how long? Two years at least, maybe three. Would Raleigh even remember him? After his experience with Bubba, he did not want to show up unannounced. But he didn’t want to phone ahead: Raleigh might well tell him to stay away and leave him alone. And if Raleigh were involved in his father’s murder did Michael really want to go to his house, expected or not?

  He had to get to him somehow. He went inside and got online again with his laptop. He found the Marines’ site again and discovered an updated page with a fresh list of meetings, courses, and forthcoming events. Unarmed Combat, Rifle Range, Survival #1 and Survival #2. Then two talks being given in Muskegon: The Right Way to Bear Arms, Local Politics and Federal Danger. And a list of get-togethers: dinners, picnic lunches, barbecues. It was here he discovered that on Saturday, two days hence, there was a barbecue for the Atlantic County branch of the Marines (families welcome). Tickets would be sold at the door, the charge was $7.50 a head ($2.50 for children under twelve) and the venue was the backyard of the Spring Valley Tavern.

  2

  AT SHERINGHAM’S, SOME of the local farmers had been invited, and they were among the first to eat, sitting on the patio at long trestle tables that had been covered with blue table cloths, eating baked chicken with lemon wedges, and corn on the cob, wrapped in dishcloths to keep it hot, which Lou had boiled in a vast cauldron over a portable tank of bottled gas.

  Michael stood above them, leaning on the wooden rail of the deck that had been extended out from the living room. The view from here, on the back side of the house, was quietly beautiful: the land sloped gently down from the hilltop into a miniature valley studded by lines of peach trees, which gently undulated to the base of another rolling hill in the distance. The light was fading in the minute, indistinguishable increments of dusk, for the setting sun was itself out of view behind the distant dunes of Lake Michigan to the west.

  Donny came out of the sliding door with a fresh can of beer. ‘I’d better go with you,’ he announced, rejoining Michael, who had just been explaining whom he’d seen while searching for Gary, and where he planned to go next.

  Michael was relieved enough not to argue. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I’m not sure Raleigh will be any help. It doesn’t sound as if he and Gary have been on the best of terms.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t make out – why Bubba and Raleigh had a falling out, and whether it had anything to do with Gary. But you know, where Maguire sees a dangerous terrorist, all I can remember is a no-hope dickhead who used to get on everybody’s nerves.’

  ‘He’s still a dickhead, only now he’s a nasty one.’

  Michael laughed. ‘Maybe we should have been nicer to him in school.’

  ‘We weren’t mean to him. We just didn’t take him seriously. That’s what Raleigh wants – to be taken seriously.’

  ‘Speaking of seriously, I’ve run tests on the Junction bridge, and if they don’t protect the abutments and the downstream side of the central pier, then even mild flooding might knock it down. If the dam goes, I’d say the odds of the bridge surviving are minimal.’

  ‘I’ll tell Cassavantes, but the water’s come down a ways since last month, so he’ll say we can take our time. He’ll do the downstream piers eventually to cover himself, but only after enough time’s gone by so it looks like his idea.’

  ‘Well, let’s pray for no rain then,’ said Michael with a sour laugh. ‘Let’s eat.’ They went down the stairs from the deck, took plates and filled them with chicken and corn, green beans topped with sautéed almonds, sliced tomatoes drizzled with vinaigrette, and potato salad laced with chive. Cassie and Nancy were walking in from the orchard, talking intently while Cassie’s kids ran in front. Suddenly Nancy hugged Cassie excitedly and Michael realized Cassie must have shared her news.

  Which he had learned when he’d picked up Cassie and the kids an hour before. He had wanted to talk to her about Gary, and ask her advice about where to look next. But she was beaming as she got into his car. ‘What’s happened? You win the lottery or something?’

  ‘Almost,’ she said, then explained that she’d got a one-year contract to fill in for the no-show teacher from Lansing.

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day when you stepped into Miss Summers’ shoes,’ he said, and saw her smile dissolve.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she said.

  ‘I am, Cassie.’ He reached over and took her hand. ‘I’m thrilled for you.’

  But he wasn’t, and her announcement served to crystallize his own uncertainty about what would happen next. He was back, he told himself, to pursue the matter of his father’s death; equally, he knew he was staying for a while because of Cassie. For a while. What did that mean, precisely? Somewhere inside him there lurked a fantasy – he saw it now for what it was – that he would win Cassie back, then take her (and yes, the children) off to some other world where they would reassemble and reconstitute some new family life.

  And where exactly does this scenario play out? he asked himself for the first time with sceptical force. Ealing Broadway? Of course not. Then where? A construction site in Dubai, on the Gulf where an English-language school could be found for Jack and Sally, and the saltwater winds made the heat bearable? That would be fine and dandy for the five months of his assignment. Then where? Turkey maybe – they always needed help with bridges – or another foray into the water-lands of western Sweden, some inland lake two hundred miles from Stockholm?

  What kind of life would that be? He was used to it, but what about Cassie, who had never been east of LaGuardia Airport? Or her children, who after the hellish years with Ronald needed the one thing he couldn’t provide: stability? Yet what alternative was there to an itinerant life? He’d been left a lovely, large and ageing house to live in, tax-free and unencumbered by mortgage, but otherwise had only about four months of savings left. Whatever small economies he practised (get rid of the rental car, buy own-store brands) he would be out of money shortly after Christmas. And then what? His services might be valued by Donny, but he couldn’t imagine Jack Cassavantes feeling anything but threatened should he, Michael, declare himself locally available. And however deep his knowledge of concrete bridges might be, what could he offer in expertise that was needed by the Michigan State Highway Department, who were not themselves exactly novices in the use of the material?

  This bleak, internal argument continued as he watched Cassie guffaw when Jack gave her first one peach, then another, and then another – windfalls he picked from the ground. Michael looked at her, still girlishly angular in her blue jeans and white sneakers, and remembered the happiness of that time so long ago when they had first become lovers. A time when the future was promising but not pressing, because the present was so powerfully alive. A time between the depression and fear of the first year after his mother’s death, and the advent of Ronald Duverson. A time that could have continued on to this very evening, he told himself, had he not destroyed it by running away. There was no one else to blame: not the parson, not Cassie, not Sophie Jansen or Sarah Perkins, not his father, and no, not even Ronald. Michael had done it all himself.

  So he was determined to destroy nothing now, though he had no idea what he could build. I don’t build bridges; I fix them.

  Around him there was laughter and loud, joking voices, fuelled by the bottles of wine set on the table. Cassie was down at the end, between Lou and a woman who looked familiar. Donny was talking baseball with his eldest son. Michael recognized Janie Waters, a tall but uncoordinated girl who had played on the basketball team with Nancy and Cassie, and Archie Willard, who had been a quiet kid who liked to play chess.

  He sat down and ate by himself while contemplating his lack of a clear future. One of the Sheringham girls cleared his plate, then put a bowl of peaches, covered with sugar and cream, in front of him. He ate two helpings of the fruit
, which was marvellously tart and sweet at once, and drank his third glass of Californian Chardonnay, yet he couldn’t shake off the morose mood that was dragging him down like a weight.

  ‘Hello, Michael.’

  He looked up to find the familiar-looking woman sitting down across from him. He looked at her closely. ‘Anthea?’

  ‘Don’t make it so obvious you aren’t sure. I haven’t aged that much,’ she said with a brittle laugh. But Anthea Heaton had, and she looked a good ten years older than the rest of her classmates. She wore a pink tank top that showed the tanned freckles beneath her throat – he remembered how her skin would spot each summer in the sun. But she wore more makeup than he recalled ever seeing on her former, teenage face, and her skin was somehow puffy and wrinkled at the same time. She looked as if in the years since high school she had lived hard.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ he said. ‘I thought you lived in Florida.’

  ‘I’m in Grand Rapids now. With Julie and Eddy.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever met your husband.’

  ‘Eddy’s my son. My husband’s still in Florida.’ Michael smiled blandly, and she said, ‘I’m divorced, Michael.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so am I.’

  ‘But not unattached, I hear,’ she said with a small smile.

  ‘Have your folks still got the house?’ Fromm Street, with the swing sofa on the front porch.

  ‘It’s just my mom now. Daddy passed away three years ago.’

  She told him about the breakdown of her marriage, speaking in a light tone that failed to disguise her resentment: how her husband, a property developer of much energy and no scruples, had started staying out late or not coming home at all, until Anthea gave him an ultimatum that another woman had won. How she and her husband had then fought over the value of the house during the divorce negotiations, their respective avarice separating their appraisals by over half a million dollars. How the children were adjusting ‘pretty well’ to life in Grand Rapids, which to Michael suggested they were complaining every day about their reduced circumstances, lamenting the absence from their lives of expensive restaurants, large bedrooms, and the unavailability of waterskiing in Michigan’s winter months.