A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  Feeling exposed and ridiculous, Daniel puts the magazine back in the rack and goes to the counter to pay for the gasoline, the coffee, and the bagel.“Will zat be ull?”the Egyptian asks, as ifchallenging Daniel to pur-chase one ofthe magazines.

  “That’s it for me,”says Daniel, forcing his voice to sound cheerful.

  ”How are you, Eddie?”Derek asks.He slaps a five-dollar bill onto the counter.“Let me have a pack ofCamel Lights.”He accepts the pack of cigarettes, the few pieces ofchange.Eddie acts frightened ofDerek, dis-playing the almost ritualized respect ofa man who has been warned.

  Derek eagerly tears the pack open, lights up.“Since Stephanie got the new furniture delivered, she won’t let me smoke in the house,”he says, smoke streaming out ofhis large, dark nostrils.

  Daniel and Derek stand beneath the eaves ofthe gas station and watch the pelting rain.

  “How’s Stephanie doing?”Daniel asks.

  ”She’s okay.She says she’s going to give Kate a call, put together a dinner or something.”

  Daniel’s heart sinks.He knows Kate will decline Stephanie’s invitation, he only hopes she does it without being too blunt.Hurting Stephanie’s feelings will only hurt Derek’s.

  “The kids could play, too,”Derek adds.He takes another long drag of his cigarette.“How’s Kate doing?”

  “Hanging in there.”

  “You really scored on that one,”Derek says.“She’s a great lady.She’s so pretty, and so fucking smart.You know what I like about her? Her laugh.She’s got a great laugh.I look for that, you know.It’s a sign.”

  Daniel raises his to-go cup, shrugs.“I’m sort ofrunning late.”It sounds too abrupt to Daniel, and so he extends the excuse.“I’m going over to Eight Chimneys, finally getting to wet my beak in some ofthat river gen-try cash-o-rama.”He grins, rubs his thumb against his first two fingers.

  But Derek, fully aware that money doesn’t mean very much to Daniel, acts as ifDaniel hasn’t said a thing.“I had a runaway kid this morning,”Derek says.“At large and dangerous.I picked him up at the train station.”

  “Whose kid?”

  “One ofthe boys from Star ofBethlehem.I swear, the people running that place don’t have the slightest fucking idea what they’re doing.

  They keep trying torespectthose boys, orrehabilitatethem, and mean-while it’s a fucking jungle, with some ofthe worst juvenile offenders in the state, with nothing to keep them in but a couple ofcounselors and an electric fence.”He looks at Daniel, trying to gauge the level ofagree-ment or disagreement.“These are the‘boys’that made you decide to get your white liberal ass out ofthe city and come back home.The kid I picked up? First ofall, his mother, who was probably twelve or some-thing when she had him, names him Bruce, probably after some Bruce Lee movie, and then, just to be Ebonic and make sure he never learns how to spell, she spells it B-r-e-w-s-e.”

  “Since when do you care so much about spelling?”

  “I learned how to spell.You used to cram it into my head before spelling tests.”

  “I don’t remember it doing all that much good.Anyhow, spelling’s just custom.African-Americans are making their own customs.”

  “Yeah, well this kid makes alotofhis own customs.Like the custom ofcapping the first motherfucker who stands between him and a new pair ofNikes.”

  There’s a sourness in Derek’s voice, a disdain, which Daniel believes is an occupational hazard for cops, like squinting for a jeweler, or grisly jokes for a surgeon, but there’s an element ofracial scorn that Daniel can’t recall ever having heard from Derek before.Is it because he caught Daniel looking at theAfrican-American porn magazines? Or does Derek somehow sense that Daniel has fallen in love with a black woman? Did Daniel ever, in some swoon ofnostalgia for their old boyhood closeness, talk to Derek about Iris?

  Derek draws on his cigarette and pulls the smoke deep into his lungs—he smoked marijuana before cigarettes and it shows.When he fi-nally exhales, very little ofthe smoke comes back out.

  “What about tonight?”he asks Daniel.“Want to get a bite to eat orsomething?”

  “I don’t know, Derek.It’s really hard to get Kate to go out, you know that.”And, for all Daniel knows, Derek may sense that Kate finds him dull company and that Stephanie is a sort ofparadigm for suburban fu-tility, with her mall bangs and turquoise spandex tights, her exhausting cheerfulness—Kate calls her the last ofthe StepfordWives.

  “I was thinking just you and me, Danny,”Derek says.His face colors and Daniel realizes with a helpless lurch that his old friend feels embar-rassed asking him to sit down and share a meal.But the embarrassment, rather than make Derek shrink back, somehow propels him forward.He has nothing more to lose.“I really would like that,”he says.“We—”

  “No, that would be great,”Daniel says, not being able to bear the awkwardness a moment longer.“I’ll just make sure nothing’s pending at home.

  I’ll call you around six, six-thirty.”Who knows?They might go to a restau-rant and end up accidentally seeing Iris.Wouldn’t that be something?

  Derek flicks his Camel Light into the rain.“How cool is it that you moved back here?”he says, grinning, shaking his head.His cruiser is parked next to Daniel’s car, blue lights slowly revolving, and every car that passes on the highway slows down at the sight ofit.He has left the window open and the sound ofhis radio can be heard.The dispatcher’s voice, static moving through it like whitewater.Daniel cannot under-stand a word, and Derek seems not even to hear it.

  “How’s Mercy Crane working out?”he asks.

  ”She’s great.Thanks for putting us in touch with her.”

  “She used to baby-sit for Chelsea.”He clasps his hands behind his back and stretches extravagantly.“She’s really something.”

  “Mercy?”

  “Real strict parents, though.Especially Jeff.He’s nuts, you gotta watch out for him.He’s the kind ofcop that gives cops a bad name.”

  “She likes movies.I always try and rent something interesting for her to watch.”

  “Oh yeah, she likes movies.And music, and just laughing her ass off.

  She’s an amazing girl.And sexy, don’t you think? Not that I would ever do anything, but God, she is so fucking hot, those big eyes and those little spindly wrists and always wearing just enough perfume to let you know she knows exactly what you’re thinking.”He claps Daniel on the back.

  ”All right, buddy, go back in there and do your business, I’m out ofhere.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Yeah?What about your magazines?”

  “Just looking.”

  “I didn’t mean to bust you, Danny.Feel free.Our age, a nice jerk-off helps keep the lid on.Though I could never, not with a black lady.It just doesn’t do it for me.”

  “I’ll call you tonight, then,”Daniel says.

  ”Okay, good.I really need to talk to you.”

  “Is everything okay, Derek?”

  Derek looks at him as ifhe were insane.“Ofcourse not,”he says, and then laughs.Daniel stands there and watches Derek get into his cruiser and drive away.He gets into his own car and drives into Leyden, through the rain that is now just beginning to include a few intermittent streaks ofsnow, loose skeins ofwhite woven into the gray ofthe day.

  Daniel arrives at his office building, swings around back, where there is parking for tenants and clients only.The first thing he sees is a green Volvo station wagon, with the license plateWDC785.

  Iris.

  What’s she doing here?It’s unlikely she is doing business at Software Solutions, and the financial planner is inAustria for the month.She must be here to see the child psychologist, Warren Maltby, an exceptionally small man, with tar-black hair.The thought ofIris up there, with Nelson or without him, strikes Daniel with sudden force.What could the trouble be?Were they taking him to a shrink because he supposedly hit a kid at day care? Daniel sensed that Nelson is one ofthe teachers’favorites—with his clean cubby, princely table manners, perfect diction, and star-tling beaut
y.Ruby has actually enjoyed a rise in status since becoming Nelson’s best friend.Like the homecoming queen on the arm ofthe school’s football hero.

  By now he has wandered over to Iris’sVolvo and peers into it.The baby seat is strapped into an otherwise empty and immaculate backseat.

  The family dog, an elderlyAustralian shepherd named Scarecrow, sleeps deeply in the way back, her eyelids trembling while she dreams.Daniel raps a knuckle against the side window and Scarecrow opens one red-dened eye.“Hi, Crow,”he says, currying the dog’s favor.Then he looks into the front ofthe car.In the passenger seat is a stack ofbooks with li-brary markings on their spines.On top ofthe books is a spiral notebook, opened to a page ofher handwriting, black flowing letters, old-fashioned in their shapeliness.Through the glare and his reflection, he reads,Harlem Ren.economic engine B.intell.repudiate Marx 19% unem.extend.fam“A safety net made not of government giveaways and fashioned by would-be social engi-neers, but consisting of a weave of family structure, rural communalism and Chris-tianity.”And then he opens the door and picks up the notebook.He riffles through the pages like a spy, and then, miraculously, and terribly, he sees, on an otherwise blank page, his initials.DE,written small, in the center ofthe page, the exact center, with a circle drawn around them.His heart accelerates as ifhe has suddenly sprouted wings and begun to fly.

  But he doesn’t have a chance to obsess, not just then.He turns around to see her walking across the parking lot.She is alone, not a hun-dred feet away.It’s always so startling to see her, like spotting a celebrity.

  She seems to float toward him.

  “I thought your lights were on,”he says, dropping her notebook and swinging the door shut.It closes with a sturdy Swedish finality that he hopes will prevent her from asking any questions.

  “You’re all dressed up,”she says.

  Daniel touches the knot ofhis tie.“I was in court.”

  “Did you win?”

  “That’s the thing about court, you rarely win and you rarely lose.”

  “I once thought I was going to be a lawyer,”Iris says.“My dad always said I should be one, but just because I argued over everything, you know that way slightly spoiled kids do.I thought I could talk him into anything.”

  The thought ofher as a child both stuns and provokes Daniel, imagining her that way, in that distant world.

  She senses his mind is elsewhere and moves her face a little closer to his.

  ”Is that why you wanted to be a lawyer?”she asks.

  ”I never argued with my parents, I was too afraid ofthem.I thought they’d fire me.”

  “I like to think ofpeople when they were little kids.You must have been one ofthose heartbreaking little kids, with a serious face and se-cretive, really secretive.The kind ofkid that a mother sort ofhas to spy on to figure out what’s really going on.”Distress courses across her eyes, like speeded-up film ofclouds moving through the sky.Daniel guesses she is thinking about Nelson.

  “That was fun Friday night,”she says.Her voice rises with what seems like forced gaiety.

  “My office is here,”Daniel says, gesturing toward the building.

  ”I know,”says Iris.She opens her oversized purse and pokes around for her car keys, finds them.“I knocked on your door on my way out.”

  “You did?”

  “I guess you were down here.”

  “Yes, I was.”A little more explanation seems called for.“I’m on my way to see a client…butIstarted looking at the snow.Early for snow, isn’t it?”

  She gets into her car, turns on the engine.The windshield wipers cut protractors into the fuzzy coating ofsnow.While Daniel watches her Volvo backing up, he thinks:She knocked on my door.

  [4]

  They reached the top of the small hill they’d been climbing, but the sight lines were no better than below.The only sky they could see was directly above them, gray, going black.

  “What do you think?”said Daniel. “I think we’re lost,”Hampton said, shaking his head. “Next they’ll be sending a search party after us,”Daniel said.He noticed some-

  thing on the ground and peered more closely at it.A dead coyote like a flat gray shadow.Sometimes at night, he and Kate could hear coyotes in the distance, a pack whipping themselves up into a frenzy of howls and yips, but this desiccated pelt, eyeless, tongueless, was the closest he had come to actually seeing one.He won-dered what had killed it.

  “What do you have there?”Hampton asked. “The animal formerly known as coyote,”Daniel said. Breaking off a low, bare branch from a dead hemlock, Daniel poked the coyote’s

  remains.Curious, Hampton stood next to him, frowning.A puff of colorless dust rose up.The world seemed inhospitable—but, of course, it wasn’t:they were just in the part of it that wasn’t made for them.Here, it was for deer, foxes, raccoons, birds and mice and hard-shelled insects, fish, toads, sloths, maggots.Hampton stepped back and covered his mouth and nose with his hand, as if breathing in the little puff that had arisen from the coyote would imperil him.Iris had often bemoaned her hus-band’s fastidiousness, his loathing of mess, his fear of germs.He had turned their

  water heater up and now the water came out scalding, hot enough to kill most household bacteria.There were pump-and-squirt bottles of antibacterial soap next to every sink in the house;if Iris had a cold, Hampton slept in the guest room, and if Nelson had so much as a sniffle, Hampton would eschew kissing the little boy good night, he would literally shake hands with him instead and then, within min-utes, he’d be squirting that bright emerald-green soap into his palm, scrubbing up a lather, and then rinsing in steaming water.

  Ferguson Richmond watches the rain from the front ofhis immense, crumbling house, reclined on an old cane chair, with his work boots propped up on the porch railing.He comes from a long line ofprivileged men and there is nothing he can do to obscure that fact, though it seems he is engaged in a perpetual project ofself-effacement.He is careless about his appearance.He barbers his own hair, ekes out twenty shaves from his disposable razor, and wears large black-framed glasses from the hardware store, which are held together with electrical tape.Today, he is dressed like a garage mechanic, in grease-stained khaki trousers and a shapeless green shirt that had once belonged to aTexaco attendant named Oscar.In a family ofoversized men and strapping women—large-headed people, with broad, bullying shoulders—Richmond is the runt.He is five feet eight inches, with skinny legs and delicate hands, and he is steadfastly uninterested in all sports and games.He neither boxes, nor climbs, nor kayaks, nor shoots;his passions are for strong coffee and old farm machinery.All the same, there is something confident and au-thoritative in his manner.His light blue eyes have that arrogant flicker that comes from a genetic memory ofluxury and power;they are rooms that had been emptied and scrubbed after a legendary party.

  Eight Chimneys is a huge derelict holding, encompassing over a thousand acres on both sides ofa three-mile curve ofblacktop.There is dis-order everywhere, from disintegrating stone gates overgrown with vines and capped by headless lions, to its unmown fields in which are hidden rusted threshers, ancient, abandoned tractors, and dead deer.

  Some people wonder ifFerguson realizes that his once proud ancestral mansion is a wreck, a pile ofweather-beaten stone and crumbling plaster.He is painfully aware ofhis house’s derelict condition.Five- and ten-acre parcels could be put on the market and they’d surely be snapped up by builders, and investors, but the full reach and grandeur ofEight Chimneys had not been diminished by even a solitary acre since it had first been granted to the Richmonds by King George, and, like genera-tions ofhis ancestors, Ferguson felt that his dignity, his manhood, his re-spectability, and his place in history were all dependent upon keeping the property intact.Unfortunately, ifhe doesn’t do something soon to shore things up, the house might be lost forever.But how could he ever get enough money to put it right again?

  He hardly cares about money, except how it might intrude on his right to reside at Eight Chimneys.Though his brothers, Bronson and
Karl, and his sister, Mary, all own shares ofthe estate, each with a wing ofthe house, where they come and go unannounced and even invite friends to stay—none ofthem choose to live there.In fact, they have es-tablished their lives in St.Croix, Santa Barbara, and Nairobi, and they re-turn only for the occasional holiday or funeral, at which time they heap scorn and mockery upon Ferguson for how he’s letting the place go.

  But now he has an idea, suggested by a lovely, surprisingly clever blind girl named MarieThorne, who has been back at Eight Chimneys for the past year and with whom he is having the most exciting and pleasurable love affair ofhis forty-two years on earth.Marie wants to turn a portion ofEight Chimneys into a museum.Result?Taxes slashed, plus extensive renovations at the public’s expense.The taxpayers will foot the bill, and what a sweet thought that is.Foot the bill, foot the bill, there are times when Ferguson literally cannot stop saying it to himself.It’s his new mantra, which is what he said to his spiritually promiscuous wife.Foot the bill om shanti shanti.There are, ofcourse, details to be worked out, pro-posals to be written in the strange language ofsuch things, public support to be marshalled, legislators to be brought on board—and that is what to-day’s meeting with Daniel is, a beginning, a first step in that direction.

  But suddenly Ferguson finds himself staring at something he has never seen before in October.He shifts his weight, the front legs ofhis chair bang down onto the planks ofthe porch, and he stands straight up.

  The rain is turning to snow!Thick, heavy snow.At least a month too early.His father once told him about an early October snow and the de-struction it wrought.On this property alone, thousands oftrees were lost.Nature’s design is for the snows to come after the leaves are offthe trees.That way, the snow falls to the ground.But ifthe leaves are still on the branches, the snow catches in the canopies, until the branches can-not bear the extra weight, and then that’s it, the trees succumb, they bend so far in one direction or another that their roots come right out of the soil, or else they snap in two, like old cigars.