The Museum of Stars- 3 of 4

The Museum of Stars- 3 of 4

Chapter 9

New students would come and go from Mrs. Powell’s, but

I never hung out with any of them. After the first

group left I barely got to know anyone by anything

other than dinnertime conversation. If they asked me

questions about things in the city I would give them

the answers I could, but it never went any further

than that. I wasn’t going to volunteer to be

anybody’s tour guide. They might want to write home

about me.

Mrs. Powell began to rely on me to help take care of

everything, which I was more than happy to do. She

talked about sending Ewan back north, to the sister

who had been taking care of him. He was more trouble

than he was worth. He’d get drunk and loud and upset

the neighbors. A few times he had trouble with the

police. Mrs. Powell grew less patient with every

episode. Ewan’s only goal in life was to hang about

and inherit the house when Mrs. Powell was gone.

He had me pegged. He never bothered to say anything.

He just showed up where I didn’t expect. He drank at

Simon and Sally’s pub sometimes, even though he’d

never set foot in there until I showed up. A couple

of times he even showed up at the stone shop with what

he claimed was an important message from Mrs. Powell.

I knew he was a risk and I had moments when I thought

about taking a room someplace else. But I loved

living with Mrs. Powell and just couldn’t bring myself

to do it. The less Ewan had to do, the more he hung

about in the garden, smoking and drinking. At night I

could see him sitting outside his shed in the dark,

the glow from his cigarette ember giving him away.

One weekend Sally took me to the British Museum to

show me Greek and Roman carvings, because I had never

seen them. As we wandered around we came across a

display of ancient bridal jewelry. She stood for a

long time and looked at them. I knew what she was

thinking, and I wanted to marry her. But there was

just no way I could without being legal. And there

was no way to get legal without facing the

consequences. I wondered how long she would wait, if

my days with her were numbered.

When I got back to the house that night, someone had

gone through my room. My passport was gone. I

marched down to Ewan’s shed and kicked him off his

cot. He denied everything, but my anger made him

smile, as if he knew he had already won. I sensed

Mrs. Powell watching us from her window on the top

floor. How could I explain my anger to her?

I spent the next month looking over my shoulder more

than normal. I grew paranoid and thought people were

following me. I only left the house to go to work.

Sally accused me of acting strange, but I told her I

was just trying to save money for something. Before

long, my paranoia faded and I went back to my old

routine. I’d been in England five years. I figured I

was old news and no one would waste his time trying to

find me.

It was a Friday. Simon and I were carving the

entrance to a new church. The project had gone well

and was almost completed. We were standing around

having a cup of tea and looking over the marks we had

drawn on the last couple of pieces. Unc walked in.

I had a twisted feeling where I wanted to bolt and in

the same instant was excited to see someone I knew.

There were two cops behind him and they walked right

up to me. Everybody stopped working. Unc stood in

front of me. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or sad.

“Hey Unc,” I said. “This is Simon. Simon, this is my

Uncle Peter.”

Unc stuck out his hand and shook Simon’s. “Pleased to

meet you sir,” Simon kind of whispered. Unc nodded.

He looked around the place. “You know how to make

this stuff now?”

“Yeah, Simon taught me.”

“Well, at least you made something of yourself.”

“You know Unc, you can let it go at that. I haven’t

hurt anyone over here or anything.”

“What’s going on?” Simon asked, but we ignored him.

“It’s out of my hands Tim. I talked them into letting

you come with dignity, so don’t mess it up. You fight

and they’re getting out the cuffs. I ain’t kidding

you.”

Unc’s being at the stone shop suddenly sunk to the

bottom of my stomach. My adrenaline really kicked in

and I began to panic. It was like clinging to sleep

as you awoke from a beautiful dream. But they had me.

“Unc, leave me alone with Simon for a minute.”

“I’ll be outside, you come when you’re ready. No

funny stuff.”

“What funny stuff? You guys have my passport, right?”

“They do. Yeah. We’ll be outside.”

I turned back. “Simon, listen. When I was a kid I

was drunk driving and I hurt a girl. I was in prison

and escaped and came here. I didn’t mean to lie to

anyone. But this is it.”

“Jesus man, a convict?”

“Yeah, I’m a convict.”

The other guys in the shop went back to work. Simon

kicked the dust with his toe and looked down at the

ground. “So they’re going to take you back?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re gonna leave Sally?”

“Yeah. As you can see, not by choice.”

“This is going to break her heart man.”

“I know. Listen.”

“Don’t you ‘listen’ me you fucking liar. This isn’t

fair. This isn’t fair to her.”

“I know.”

“Who do you think you are to put us on like this? Go

on then. Get the fuck out of here and don’t ever come

back.”

“I’m sorry Simon.” I stuck out my hand, but he turned

away. I walked out the door. There were tons of

police cars out there. The cops got on their radios

when they saw me come out. They had the place

surrounded, and police walked from behind the

building. Unc was standing by a van and they opened

up a door near him for me to get in. I saw my duffel

lying in the back seat and knew they had been to Mrs.

Powell’s. I couldn’t even imagine what she thought

about me. I sat in the seat between two cops. One of

them cuffed me to him.

Simon walked out just before we pulled away, wooden

toolbox in hand. The cop got out of the front seat

and walked up to him, taking the box.

“These are his. His tools,” Simon said, and then

walked back into the shop without looking my way. The

cop put them on the floor in the front seat. I could

see a ton of carving chisels and a few hammers. They

were all Simon’s.

I felt like a little boy. Most of the cop cars peeled

off and left us with only another escort in front.

There were no sirens, no fanfare. I looked around at

the places I’d never see again. We weaved in and out

of cars going down the narrow streets. We turned onto

the main street in order to head toward Heathrow. We

drove past Barbie’s Snacks, past the local pub, past

the Greek restaurant where Sally and I had our first

date. Then we went past the bakery. Sally was

working. I looked at her through the front window as

she leaned on the counter, her black hair falling down

over her shoulder. She was staring off into space,

deep in thought. She looked tired and a little

worried. I wondered what was bothering her. I wanted

to go to her, comfort her in some way. Ask her about

her thoughts. But we didn’t stop. The van sped on,

past the rows of identical brick houses, past the

warmth and the joy, past the first place I had ever

known as my own.

I went right to prison when I got back. A real one

this time, with adults. I don’t remember much of it.

Nothing traumatic happened. I kept to myself as much

as I could, remembering where I had been. The air in

my cell was heavy and clogged with the stench of those

who had been there before me. I felt claustrophobic.

The only bearable time was when we were let out in the

exercise yard.

I wanted to dream about Sally, about Mrs. Powell’s

garden. But I always dreamt about the crash, as if

that were part of the program of punishment. I got no

mail. Unc came to see me every now and then, but he

was nervous about being there and didn’t even stay the

full time allotted for a visit. He talked to

Robertson about me before I was released and got me

the stone carving job. I got turned down my first

time before the parole board. They said, considering

the circumstances, I hadn’t served enough time. They

transferred me to a medium security prison so I had

more time outside. On my second time before the board

I was given work release. I worked at Robertson

during the day and then went back to jail at night. I

completed my sentence that way and once again became a

free man.

Seven years went by just like that. I worked and

spent my free time reading about the great explorers

up in the green cubicles at the library. Vince Potter

taught me more about stonecutting than even Simon

had. At first it seemed like I’d stay at the Works

forever, but then Jerry died and it all went

downhill. Gabby the foreman began to pull out his

hair. He started to gain weight and smoke his pipe

even more. He seldom left his office. We went into

company wide panic mode, even before we began our

sabotage. Colfax called it our dog and pony show.

Four would get us a job we couldn’t produce for the

amount of money he bid or in the time frame he

promised. But we really needed the down payment from

the job just to stay afloat, so none of the other

stuff mattered. A couple of days before the promised

date of completion for the job, Four would call Gabby

into his office and ask how it was going. Gabby was

never one to mince words- he’d tell him straight up

that it was completely unreasonable to expect the job

would get done in an orderly fashion without

interrupting everything else that was in progress.

Gabby was an old military man, and had a deep respect for a rational world in which order ruled. Four would tell him, again, that the job had to get done or he would find somebody else who could make it happen.
Gabby would go back to his office and have another pipe, then he would walk into the shop. This was an event to us. The sight of that wide body in the shop was humorous. He was in such poor health he couldn’t stand very long without leaning on something. It was as if his spindly little legs knew they were never intended to carry that mass. Unc had a friend who farmed turkeys and said that sometimes they would get so fat their legs wouldn’t support their own weight. I’d imagine Gabby was pretty close to that point.
It was like the ringmaster entering the circus. All he needed was his top hat and cane. He would gather us around and begin assigning tasks. Every other thing stopped aside from the job at hand, which was to complete this one particular project. He would smoke his pipe and bark out orders like Macarthur. We became dogs and ponies, cutting stone after stone in a line. Everyone had to call home and cancel anything they had planned. Life outside the shop was not to be imagined if you wanted a job at the end of this never-ending day. It was chaos directed by the reluctant ringmaster. Gabby would walk and then lean and then walk some more. If he thought you were slacking he would tell you so in no uncertain terms. Every single motion was monitored for efficiency. His discipline during one of these crises was amazing. No one every saw him eat or drink or even go to the bathroom. He gofer boys brought him fully loaded and lit pipes. His was a presence of immense magnitude. His stare was like a bullwhip. Mistakes were met with an unholy wrath. It was the least enjoyable time any of us ever had, and inevitably it meant we would lose one of our guys because he would just say fuck it. It just wasn’t worth it to them. We thought these episodes would be rare, but they began to get more and more common. One by one, all of our best guys were gone. The circus tent was collapsing under its own weight.

Chapter 10
Arm in cast, I began my work as junior supervisor on just another Monday. I continued to create wrong work tickets and help kill the company that had sustained me for all of these years.
I couldn’t waiter anymore but Joe asked me what I had been making on average and simply gave it to me. My life drifted into this limbo where was I was a non-contributing member of society. I was getting paid for not waitering and for helping to destroy a company. My fury at Four had become a sort of job, which in a sense made it something I didn’t think about on a continual basis. I wasn’t tired anymore, since I didn’t do anything at work except write on a notepad and fill out forms. I started hanging out at the restaurant at the end of the night and catching a ride with Melissa. Sitting there at the bar I often thought of Sally and what had become of her. I wondered if she had looked for me. I wondered if she would have liked I who I really was instead of who she thought I was. I didn’t think the two were that different. My life hadn’t turned out all that bad. I had the same job I’d had in England, even if the company I was working for was kind of shady. Maybe things would have worked out differently, somehow, if she had come over. Maybe I would have done everything I could have to help out Four. Maybe, somehow, that would have kept our insurance good. I ran through every possible scenario as I sat there. For a while after I got out of prison I really wanted to call her, to find her. But I knew that was only being selfish. I’d hurt a lot of people and it would only be reopening an old wound. And I think, in a way, I was afraid of finding out. Afraid she was miserable and things had gone really badly. Maybe afraid she had found someone else, someone better, and things had gone really well. The whole damn thing was foolish, sitting at a bar waiting for a girl I was in love with thinking about a girl I had loved in what seemed like another life.
We hung out at Melissa’s apartment a lot. The bars were full of students and she was pretty tired at the end of the day. Plus, my hand was still really damaged. The doctors told me if I wanted it to be even close to normal I would need two, possibly three more operations. I had no intention of having any more surgery. Still, she didn’t want me to hang out in a crowded place for fear of getting my hand smashed by accident.
Melissa had a fantastic music collection and she loved to play concerts for me. She would quiz me on music and then we’d sit around and listen to songs I had never heard before. She’d explain their significance to me- why they were groundbreaking. Her attention to the arts was amazing to me. I remembered in high school how art and music class was something to be suffered through. Names and dates to be remembered. But to her they were alive. She’d let albums play all the way through and get down a book on art. We would look at pictures and sculptures and she would explain them to me. She wanted me to understand if only for the sake of understanding. She was passionate about it all. It didn’t matter to her if it all fit together in the end, the important thing was to understand the pieces as they were presented to you. To me it was like taking art and music all over again, only this time from 1 to 3 a.m. and wine was included.
I never stayed over. She gave me a kiss at the door as she showed me out. I walked home or caught the all night bus. It was beginning to get cold at night, and I brought along an extra stocking cap to put over my hand so my fingers didn’t get too cold.
And so began another routine. I would arrive at work every morning and misdirect traffic to the best of my ability. It was apparent we were in deep trouble, because the dog and pony show was coming more frequently. Gabby was looking stretched thin.
September went by quickly. Unc told me to get ready for the first weekend in October, because duck hunting was starting. There was a huge wetland nearby us, and we generally spent most weekends in October and November at a pothole in the middle of the place. The river that fed the marsh weaved back and forth through it and most of the guys had duck boats and stuck to them. We paddled Unc’s boat out to our pothole and stayed there. I don’t think any of the other hunters even knew it was there.
Unc had a boat that was about thirty- five years old. Most of the bottom was gone and filled in with epoxy from the car shop. He didn’t even have his guys put it on. He would flip the boat over in his garage in the spring and spread another layer of epoxy on. This would get him through a season of fishing and hunting with only minor leaks. He could have had any boat he wanted, but he stuck with this one.
He and I and his dog Molly would jump in the boat and I would paddle us up the river toward the pothole. Usually it would be pitch black outside and the lights that Unc had on the boat only worked some of the time. The guys in the big boats would zoom past us and rock us back and forth in their wake. We took it in stride.
We aimed for a metal pole on the side of the bank that was difficult to pick out from the brush. When we saw it we would always head slightly upstream from it and glide past into an enclosed embankment. Molly was too anxious and could never wait. As soon as we began to angle for the shore she would jump out and swim for it, meeting us on the bank. She’d shake the water from her coat and pace back and forth until we had the boat secured.
At Unc’s insistence we would cover the boat with grass. Why anyone would steal that boat was a mystery to me, but I didn’t question. Then, we’d stand and take a compass reading. It was only about two hundred yards, but the grass was ten feet tall and we had no visual landmarks. It was essential to know where you were going.
Walking through the grass with Unc was moving in a dream. The early morning frost would drop onto us in light layers, and Molly would appear as if someone had dipped her in powdered sugar. She’d coat up for about twenty yards and then shake vigorously and start all over again. The only tree in the vicinity was our landmark. We could see it at about twenty yards. It wasn’t a monster, but it was base camp for duck hunting. We’d stow our lunches at the tree, tie up Molly, and have a cup of coffee. We only tied her up because she was convinced she could catch the ducks by herself. One year she scared away a dozen mallards before we even had our guns out of their cases.
The pothole was a simple spring fed pond in the middle of the marsh. It was about an acre in size and pretty shallow. The ducks thought it was perfect.
After coffee, we’d walk to the pothole on opposite sides and jump any ducks that had spent the night. Then, Unc would send me out in my waders to set the decoys. He would direct me from our blind, a makeshift clearing in the grass we would throw together every year. It was my job to set the decoys exactly how he pictured them in his head. I would move them time and time again until he felt they were perfect.
After that we would situate ourselves in the blind and wait, drinking more coffee as we did. All around us the other hunters would be trying to call in the ducks that appeared overhead. Unc was good at calling ducks, but seldom did. He preferred to let the ducks make up their own mind as to the safety of the spot. Calling ducks was a little like advertising, something more in league with what my father would have done. Only when a duck was on the very edge of committing to the pothole would Unc maybe make a reassuring call or two.
On opening day, it was almost never necessary to make much of an effort. There were ducks all around and it was only a matter of waiting for them and taking good shots. It was easy to get the limit. The first couple hours of the season were action filled, but then things would calm down and we’d have coffee and some doughnuts that Unc brought along. They all tasted sickly sweet to me. They also made me think of Sally in the bakery. Sipping a cup of coffee in the middle of an American marsh her image still came to me and made me wonder.
I had gotten my job at Robertson because of Unc and figured I owed it to him to tell him about our plans to shut the place down. It wasn’t that I wanted his approval or anything. I just wanted him to understand why.
Unc was sitting silent with Molly at his feet. She’d already gone on a half dozen retrieves that day and looked tired.
“Unc,” I said and then paused, not knowing where to start. “There’s some bad stuff going down at work. It’s Robertson’s fault, but it’s not just him.”
“Yeah well, that’s work for ya. You’re never gonna find a perfect job. No sense in looking for that.”
“Yeah Unc, but its more than that. I mean, the place is going to go under. Four can barely pay his bills right now to begin with.”
“Don’t surprise me. He’s not the businessman his father was.”
“But that’s not just it. He’s cheated all of us and he doesn’t give a fuck. We’re helping to bankrupt the company. We’ve been sabotaging the place for a couple of years now.” I explained it all to him, about Thahn and Le Han’s baby and about my hand and never again being able to carve.
Unc didn’t say anything for a minute. He took a couple of drinks of coffee and looked out at the horizon, where all ducks come from.
“What are you going to do when you don’t have that job?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get another job. I don’t care what it is, especially now, with this hand. I’ve got no future there anyway.”
He took another sip of coffee and dropped the rest of his doughnut to Molly. She opened her eyes and gobbled it down, returning to sleep as quickly as she had exited from it.
“Tim, listen. You messed up once and ran from it. You wanna take down some guy’s business, more power to ya. But you better ask yourself why you’re doin it. Is it really about some dead baby?”
I hadn’t expected this kind of response from him. I didn’t know what to say.
“Just think how you got here. Would you have learned anything worth knowing if you had just grown up and taken over the company? That’s all.”
We hunted for the rest of the day, but hardly said a word. The ducks stopped flying early, and we headed for home.
I called Melissa when I got back.
“Is the slaughter done?” she asked. None of her family hunted and she didn’t know what to think about my doing it. “Did they suffer much?”
“As little as possible.”
“That doesn’t help. I’m not going to eat them.”
“Unc took em all.”
“Why can’t he be more like Santa Claus than some gun toting old man? He’d make a great Santa if he had a beard.”
I asked her if she was working tonight.
“No, I’ve got to study. Do you want to go to the museum tomorrow?”
“Sure. You bet.”
“Yup, you betcha,” she said, laughing. “You didn’t learn that in England.”

Chapter 11

Vince Potter came up to me on the next Monday. He wasn’t the easygoing Vince we had always known. The miscut pieces were stacked behind the building as far as the eye could see.
“There’s a lot of screwed up stone here Tim.”
“Yeah, it’s a real mess.”
He was silent for a moment. “Listen, it’s not too late to change this. I mean, we could still probably save the company if we wanted to. Are we really going through with this?”
“Yeah, we are. You said yourself it’s the right thing to do.”
“I know what I said. It’s just that, I don’t know where I’m going to get another job after this. I mean, I can’t even remember what it’s like to not come to work and cut stone.”
“Vince, you’re way past retirement. Don’t you have some money saved? Don’t you want to do something else for a while? See some sights?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“What about traveling, seeing the great cathedrals and all that?”
“I saw them in the war. Lots of them were smashed to pieces. I don’t care to remember that stuff. Besides, the guys that built those places don’t have anything to do with me.”
“But you’re a stonecutter. Those guys were stonecutters.”
“It’s not the same.”
I didn’t know what to say. Vince had never been much of a drinker, but lately he’d been coming in hung over more often.
“Listen Tim, forget I said it. I know a bastard when I meet one. Pulling the rug out from under Four is exactly the right thing to do. I shouldn’t be thinking about just me.”
He walked away and began to cut another piece with great skill and precision, all the while knowing it was too short.
We had so many jobs going it was easy to keep goofing things up. Everyone was going to share some sort of blame for the mistakes as well. The jobs backed up enough that Ray, Gabby’s assistant, came out and got me. Ray didn’t know anything about stone. He’d come along with Gabby when they hired him as foreman. He wore cowboy boots and his hair slicked back. They did something with metal in the last factory he was in. His favorite thing was kicking ass.
“Gabby wants to see you. Now.”
I walked into the office. It was quite a place. There was one of those enormous and comfortable office chairs in there. It enclosed Gabby, which was no small feat.
“Tim,” he said in his authoritative voice, “sit down.”
I sat down on one of those rolling office chairs that was set a little too low. I thought he probably did it on purpose to make himself a little more imposing. You had no choice but to look up at him.
“What in the hell is going on out there? Man to man. We got nothing going out the door and the stuff that is going out is all fucked up. Please tell me what is goin on.”
I had my clipboard with me. I went through the list. It was a litany of miscut pieces, wrong use of stone, poor material handling, and wrong shipments.
Gabby was silent for a moment. He lit his pipe once again, took a deep drag, and exhaled.
“And how many mistakes are yours?”
“Just the last one. I really thought the black granite was for Chicago, but it was supposed to go to Minneapolis. And the guys broke it when they got it, so we have to make it over.”
“Uh huh,” he said, quite non-committal. “You ask me you’re all goddam screw ups.”
“Gabby, we’ve been doing a good job for years. Don’t start writing us off now.”
“No one’s done a goddam thing right since Jerry died. No one.”
Ray was standing beside him, leaning against the bookcase where the guys stood when they took orders.
“Go on,” Gabby said. “Get out of here.”
“Righty O.”
Ray followed me out the door and back into the shop.
“Don’t fuck this up Tim,” he said. “No reason for all this shit. I ain’t buyin all these mistakes, no for one minute. You been warned.”
He walked back into the office, leaving me in the noise and dust. We kept on. It didn’t matter what threats were leveled. It was a done deal. Some nights I dreamt about that dead baby as if it were my own, holding it in my arms as we both tried to overcome our nightmares.

Melissa and I kept seeing each other at night after work. She expanded my education into movies. We would rent some obscure one only she would know about and watch it deep into the night. Sometimes it was so late when the movie was done there was no sense in my going home. I spent the night on the couch. The awkwardness that had been with us in the beginning was gone and I felt at peace with her leaning back against me, munching on popcorn. I remember the smell of her hair and the way her skin was so soft on the backs of her hands as I rested my calloused fingertips upon them. She’d explain and translate during the slow times, but during the crucial moments she was always silent and I had to figure them out myself. Sometimes she wept openly.
She brought a huge world of art and planted it into that spacious apartment. Inside those walls it all felt appropriate, as if the act of creation itself were brought down to size.
The situation at the Works continued to worsen. Four had planned on having a bunch of jobs done that weren’t even close. Gabby appeared more often, stepping into the big top and commencing the dog and pony show. Each time, he looked a little wearier. Every two steps forward were met by three steps back. Even things out of my control seemed to be going my way. Floods in Brazil choked off our supply of granite. Gas prices rose, increasing deliver costs. Italian dockworkers went on strike and wouldn’t let any marble leave the country until they had better pensions.
Gabby was walking on the edge of a knife. We all knew Four was coming down hard on him to produce. The entire place took on a different tone. Bankers and lawyers began to visit Four in his office. It was almost impossible for us to get all the supplies we needed. Replacing a tool meant buying it yourself, and no one was willing to do that.
The job Four wanted done most of all was the Projects. When we had completed it all there was an enormous check waiting. The pieces were so simple I didn’t even try to sabotage them. And yet, to no one’s surprise, the job still went poorly. After we’d shipped out all the pieces the masons from the job called to tell us they weren’t fitting together properly. We’d have to send someone out to fix them.
Ray came out of Gabby’s office to watch everybody work. Colfax was busy working on a fireplace surround. It was really complex, with inlayed marble and carving everywhere. And it was precisely two and three eights inches too short for the opening.
Vince Potter was carving an arched entryway for a new business building at the University. Ray told Potter that Gabby wanted to see him. He grabbed me and brought me in too. We sat down in front of his towering figure.
“Potter, I’m sending you and Tim to the city to straighten out this stuff at the Projects. Don’t come back until everything’s done.”

Chapter 12

That night Unc called me up and asked me to come over because he had something for me. I took the bus once again and walked the long wooded driveway. The trees were almost at their peak autumn colors and the forest glowed in the sunset hour. I kicked the dried leaves as I did when I was a child. I remembered all of the deadfall forts I had made when we would come over to visit.
Unc was busy with the harvest from his garden. The boat was still on the trailer. The hunting jackets were hanging in the garage. There were carts full of cut corn stalks and a barrel full of potatoes. There were a couple of baskets full of apples as well.
“Come on in,” he said when he saw me walk up. He kicked off his boots at the door and put on his slippers and we headed into the kitchen. He got down a bottle and a couple of glasses. He poured us each about three fingers and then put on the coffee pot. He took an envelope off the counter and threw it on the table in front of me. There was a thick wad of hundred dollar bills inside.
“If you don’t sue Joe, that’s what he’ll give you for the accident.”
“But why should I sue him?”
“Yeah well, that’s the world. No room for quaint old doors anymore. Too many lawyers. Joe’s runnin scared, thinking anyday you’re gonna send of them over. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
Unc sat down and took a long swallow of whiskey.
“Now listen. This is cash. I should make you give it to her, but I won’t. I don’t know nothing about this money, understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Hey, you got a job and a place to stay for now. Take this and put it away somewhere for maybe a day when you’re gonna need it. No foolin.”
I wasn’t one to dwell much on the future, and this came as a kind of shock to me. I could save it. It could be a down payment on a house or a piece of land somewhere.
“For god sakes just don’t blow it. Too damn much money given away or spent on toys in your family. Coffee?”
Unc looked a little pathetic, the big strong man with the dishtowel over his shoulder, pouring coffee. I had a couple of cups after the whiskey and we talked about ducks and pheasants again. Then I took off, my pocket thick with bills. Melissa was busy studying, so I went to sleep early.
I got up the next morning and called in sick. In my opinion, the Projects could wait. I took the bus out of town to the north and started walking from there. When they built the new airport in the south of the city, the small northern one had been pretty much abandoned to the people who couldn’t afford the higher hangar rents. I’d been taking flying lessons at the north airport for a couple of years. I’d passed all the steps required to get my license but I’d never gone through with the test. Once I did I’d have to fly every so often in order to keep it and I wasn’t really schedule oriented or flush enough to do something like that.
I knew Lou would be there. He was an older guy who had about ten antique planes he loved to work on. He was out there all the time in order to get away from the chores his wife tried to get him to do. Every morning she’d make a list for him of stuff she felt he should accomplish that day. The lists were long and full of busybody stuff. I’d have spent as much time out of the house as I could too.
Lou had always been a pilot, starting with the Navy when he was a young man in WWII.
He could always be counted on for the weather forecast in terms of how it was going to affect the day’s flying. It didn’t matter if you wanted nice weather for a ballgame or a day at the beach. Lou didn’t care about that stuff. Weather was only a factor as far as how it affected lift and direction and currents.
I was in love with one of his planes. It was an open cockpit biplane that had been used as a trainer for navy pilots during the war. He called it the ‘Jenny’. Lou had been stationed in Iowa where they made up these mock carriers in the middle of cornfields. He helped train the pilots before he went off to the Pacific himself and became an ace.
I found him in one of his hangars.
“How is the young man today?” he asked.
“Flush for a change and ready to make a deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to but the Jenny. I’ll pay cash.” I pulled out the folded over wad of cash from my pocket.
“You don’t say? Break your piggy bank?”
“Broke a lot more than that.”
I showed him my hand and explained what had happened.
We walked around the plane together. Lou wiped it off on a few spots. It was a brilliant yellow, a two seater with a new engine. He’d been hesitant to replace the original, but it had just been through too many seasons. One of his friends had to emergency land it in a field and that was the final straw. The retro fit was done really well and aside from the abnormal newness of some of the engine parts, you couldn’t tell that plane and engine hadn’t always been a pair.
“You know,” he told as, “I don’t need to sell her.”
“I know. But who’s going to love this plane more than I am?”
“I don’t know,” he said, considering. “Tell ya what. Let’s go for a little ride so I remember how you fly her. If you handle it well, I’ll think about it.”
My mouth was dry at the thought of flying with him again. Before, he had been at the controls and allowed me a couple of turns. Now, he was going to be judging me. How could I compete with sixty years of flying? But then again, he didn’t fly anymore. He thought he was just too old and didn’t trust himself. I don’t think he was afraid to crash. I think he was afraid of what he might crash into.
I was nervous, but this was the opportunity he was giving me and I took it. We rolled her out of the hangar and Lou walked over and filed a quick flight plan. A little sightseeing was all. No mention of the fact that I would be the pilot.
As he was filling out the paperwork and I was doing my pre-flight checklist on the plane, it occurred to me that most of the people whom I considered my friends were old. I’d never really thought of it before, but now it hit me like a ton of bricks. When Unc went on and on about my future, it really was pretty much my future alone. Colfax was the youngster in the group at forty-five. What the hell did it matter what job I had, as long as I had enough food and money to pay the rent. I surely wasn’t trying to compete with any of my peers for fame and fortune.
The weather was going to be beautiful for flying, so I dismissed my bad thoughts and concentrated on the task at hand. Lou had a few modern instruments as well as an intercom system installed, just to make the flying a little more enjoyable. With the new engine blowing the historical integrity, what the hell.
We topped off the tank with gas and then taxied to the end of the runway. If ten planes landed here a day that was a lot, so there was no need to hurry. Lou walked us through his own checklist and let me take over the controls. Taxiing down the runway was not all that different than when I flew with the instructor in the other planes. We raced down and the tremendous wind of the open cockpit was a rush. The motor poured out noise upon us and we were airborne long before the end of the runway. The little plane was rocked and buffeted by a few light breezes, but for the most part the flight was really smooth. I held the stick with my good hand and kept everything stable. Lou would chirp in over the intercom every now and then to let me know how I was doing. He’d made so many slight adjustments to the plane over the years that it flew quite easily. Thoughts were racing through my mind even as I was trying hard to concentrate on the task at hand. I thought about Sally and big jets across oceans and Snoopy as the WWI ace pilot on top of his doghouse with his two-arm machine gun. Lou led me though a series of maneuvers, banking this way and that. I knew where we were for the most part, but I had no idea where he was leading us. The farm fields below were mostly harvested, but here and there the farmers still worked at bringing in the crops. Lou told me to take it down a bit and circle. And circle again. I knew suddenly we must be over Lou’s house. He had me tip the wings back and forth in the traditional airplane greeting. I kept waiting for Lou’s wife to come out of the house. I was curious as to what she would do. I imagined her running out to wave or maybe shake a fist, or maybe even hold up the list of chores he still hadn’t done, so long that it dragged on the ground behind her all the way to the door. But she didn’t show. We circled a half dozen times before he had me straighten out.
We kept on a straight line for a while, the rolling fields below us. Then, in a kind of tired voice, Lou guided us back to the airport. He told me I had to land it. I was tense, but the plane was handling so perfectly I brought it right down. We touched and bounced a couple of times, and when the rear wheel touched I felt a slight sense that the plane might fishtail. But it held firm and we rolled to a stop in front of his hangar. I shut down the engine and helped Lou out.
“Hadn’t done that in a while,” was all Lou said. He leaned up against the plane. “Let’s talk.”
I had enough money. We agreed on a price and shook hands.
“She’ll be here,” he told me. I walked away feeling I had accomplished something, but I didn’t know what.

Chapter 13

Potter and I had all the tools packed up we would need in order to fix anything that could come our way at the Projects. We were just about to leave for the jobsite when Ray came out and told us we were all wanted in the break room. It was eerie to walk back into the shop during the daylight hours and not hear all the machinery running. I stopped for a moment and wondered about the silence. Then, I went in and sat down.
Ray had set up the room with a board in front. Gabby staggered into the room and leaned against the table in front of the board. He threw down a notebook he’d been carrying and leafed through it until he to got to the page he was looking for. The whole day shift sat in front of him, silent.
“Alright,” he said, still looking down, “we’re not going to leave this room until we get things straightened out. You guys are fucking up left and right and we’re going to put an end to it once and for all. The carelessness around here is appalling and we’re going to nip it in the bud.”
He started listing mistakes one by one. Everyone was involved- no one could say they had not messed something up, even when they had not. Colfax and I had made sure of that. The paperwork told no lies. Gabby had a stack of papers before him, each one of which represented a mistake. We’d had lectures before about being accurate with our measurements, but this was unprecedented.
“Maybe you only make one mistake and you say, no big deal. But just look around and think that each one of you making a mistake and then blowing it off is unacceptable. These mistakes are threatening the very existence of this company. Our lack of production speed is threatening the existence of this company.”
There was a groan from the crowd and I had to hold a smile inside. It didn’t take a genius to see all the money wasted on the unused machines sitting out back. Blaming the production guys was bound to make things worse.
“Look,” said Gabby, “I’m not going to say we work for the best businessman in the world. But let me remind you that these are our jobs. These are our jobs and we need them to survive. You looked around this town lately for opportunity? You guys don’t get back on the straight and narrow I’ll come down hard on each one of you. Personally.”
He left the room and Ray followed him out. Some of the guys were pretty pissed, yelling about how they knew they weren’t making the mistakes they were accused of. There was a lot of finger pointing. Some of the international guys got so excited not a man in the room could understand what in the hell they were trying to say. Vince walked out to the truck and I followed him, waving goodbye to Colfax, who rolled his eyes back at me. On our way out of the parking lot, we met a county sheriff followed by an empty flatbed truck. They were there to repossess one of the forklifts we hadn’t been making our payments on.

Potter didn’t say much on the trip to the city. I caught a couple hours of sleep. He woke me up when we got near the suburbs. It took me a minute to get my bearings. He saw a building he recognized, one he had worked on as a young man. His eyes grew bright. We exited and he tried to direct us to the place. The streets had all changed, so we had a tough time finding a route. When we finally made it, he was shocked at the sight. The building had originally been the city headquarters of a bank, but now it was subdivided into office space for several companies.
We parked in front and got out to look it over. Vince shook his head at what he saw. He described to me what had originally been there. The front entrance was all carved stone, with the name of the bank and address on ornamental panels. It was all gone, replaced by a tacky looking glass entrance with a revolving door. He was dumbfounded.
“I wonder where it all went.”
“I don’t know Vince. Maybe they used it on another building or something.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
We got back in the truck. I think we both knew it was all probably smashed and land filled somewhere.
He was silent for a long time.
“I still remember some of the measurements of those pieces,” he said out of the blue. “I don’t know why. Just how my mind works.”
We drove into the Projects and looked around at all of the stone we had done for the place. The mason met us there and walked us around to see the repairs he wanted done. It was clear the guy and his crew didn’t know what they were doing. Even the stone caps that were cut correctly had been set poorly and looked crooked. Hell, it was the Projects. They didn’t care about quality, they just wanted a paycheck. We got out our generator and gunned it up. Vince plugged in his grinder and began to cut the stones where I marked them. He fell into a shitty mood. I couldn’t blame him. We were fixing stones around a trash area in the Projects. If there was much further down to fall in the stone business, I didn’t want to see it.
We worked for a couple hours. Then one of the other contractors came over and told us we’d better quit and get our stuff packed up. It was early afternoon.
“When three o’clock hits,” he said, “we all convoy out of here to safety. You better follow, or whatever happens to you is your own fault.”
It was stupid to knock off so early, but we weren’t about to test the reason why they all left. We followed them out and drove to our motel. At dinner Vince had four rum and cokes. He got sentimental and began to tell me about the old days, when stone was for important buildings and the men who cut stone were treated with respect. I had to help him out to the truck, but he insisted on driving. It was stupid to let him, but we didn’t have far to go and I still couldn’t bring myself to sit behind the wheel. We made it back to the hotel and he parked crookedly, taking up two spaces.
In the morning, we got up and moved our tools from the hotel room to the truck and drove to the jobsite to begin another day of repairs. After we packed up our tools at the end of the day we drove around to try and find more buildings Vince had worked on. Some were gone because of urban renewal. Most were still there but had been sorely neglected or adapted to the point of being almost unrecognizable to him. It was torture, driving around with a guy just to see part of his life’s work down the shitter. But each day after our work was done he made us drive around, despite my protests. It was ridiculous.
He was amazing for his ability to renew his enthusiasm for the trip day after day. I knew the outcome would be bad, but each time we got in the truck it was like he was going to visit an old friend. On Thursday night, our last night there, he took me to the row of beautiful homes near the lake. We took this drive slowly, because many of these homes were still standing, much as they had ever been when he worked on them.
He was pretty shy about going up to the houses. I could have cared less. If your house is built with a lot of stuff on the outside you can’t blame somebody for wanting to look at it, no matter what kind of menacing signs you put at the front of your driveway.
There was one house in particular Vince was interested in seeing. Of all the homes he had ever worked on this one was his favorite. He had a little trouble finding it because a couple of big homes had been built in front of it, on land that had once been the front yard. The family must have fallen on some kind of hard times since Vince had worked on the house. We found it eventually when we tried a driveway that snaked through the other two houses. It was a grand house, with a full limestone façade. There was a ton of carving on it, with details around each of the windows and random carvings on some of the blocks in the walls. Against his protests, I drove Vince into the circle driveway in front and parked. I wanted to get a good look at this house.
He pointed out detail after detail. His main mentor, Luigi, had done much of the carving on the house and Vince was very proud to have been taught by him. He went carving by carving and showed me which ones he had done and which ones were by Luigi. There were a few that were done by other carvers, but they were just accent pieces, off to the side. All of the carvers were long gone now, mostly through wars and cancer.
He didn’t stop with just who carved what. He showed me what each of the carvings meant to the architectural form or story it represented.
He was in the middle of showing me a detail when an old woman appeared at the front door. Vince wanted us to take off, but she began to walk slowly down the steps. I insisted Vince get out and introduce himself.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” she asked.
“Sorry to trespass ma’am,” said Vince. “It’s just that when I was younger I did some of the carvings on the house. I wanted to show my friend Tim some of the things that I carved. So much of the other stuff is gone.”
“Isn’t it a shame though,” she said. She stuck out her hand and shook Vince’s and mine. “Ethel Frederick. Pleased to meet you.”
“Vince Potter. Nice to meet you mam.”
“My husband Jim handled most of the details when we built the house. Do you remember him?”
“Yes ma’am, like it was yesterday.”
“He’s long passed. I think building the house was a sort of highlight for him. He loved to be on the site and plan and think things through with the men. When it was all done I think he was a little lonely just living in the house. I told him we could build another and sell this one, but that just wasn’t his way. He did love this place. He’s buried out back. Forever.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man.”
“Yes he was. They just don’t make them like that anymore. Please, come in. Since you are here I have a question for you.”
We walked into the house. It was like a place from another era. All of the woodwork was dark and very ornate. There were well-worn marble floors and wood floors of various kinds that I didn’t recognize. There was even a ballroom in it with a huge carved marble fireplace. That was where she led us.
“We had some water damage years ago and when the carpenters replaced the wood they did it differently from the original. Now you see both sides are exposed and uncarved. I think the motifs should continue all the way back, is it not so?”
“Yes ma’am, that’s right. There were built in bookshelves on both sides, so we didn’t finish any of the carvings. They just would have been covered up.”
“Yes, I’ve been trying for years to find someone who would finish it. I called the company that did the work originally and of course they are long out of business.”
“Yes ma’am, for decades.”
“Yes, so I understand. Would you be interested in finishing this carving?”
Vince walked up to it and looked it over. There were several angels flying on delicately carved wings that were unfinished. Their faces and bodies were half done.
“My teacher Luigi carved this. It was really one of his finest works. It would be a pleasure to finish it for you. I could come back next week and start.”
“I would love that. It would just make the house seem complete once again. I’m afraid my eyesight is very poor. I won’t really be able to enjoy your work. But every time I come into this room I think how it would have bothered Jim to see it so. It will bring me some closure.”
“I’ll just have to notify my work and then I’ll come back next week.”
“I’ll be here. I don’t get out much. Just ring the bell several times when you arrive and I will eventually appear at the doorway.”
We left the house and Vince was in a good mood for a change. He took me to one of the old neighborhoods that he lived in when he worked in the city. Most of the older writing on the buildings was in Polish. We went out to one of the old bars. It was still there, but the crowd was mostly Latino now.
We drank for most of the night. I guided Vince back to the hotel room and we put in one more day at the Projects. We finished up all the things we had to do and then headed back home.
We knew things were kind of strange when we got back to the shop. Colfax met us at the door.
“Gabby’s gone,” he said. “Fired. Four is going to take over his place and shape everybody up. His words.”
Vince was deflated. “So this is it. The real beginning of the end.”
“Afraid so,” was all Colfax had to say.

Chapter 14

I called Melissa and told her to be ready to go away for the weekend.
“What do you mean? I can’t just go away. I’ve got tons of studying to do.”
“Bring your books. We’re going someplace peaceful. You’ll be able to study.”
I called up Lou and asked him to file a flight plan for me so there would be no trouble with getting permission to take off. He wasn’t too thrilled about doing it, but I promised him I wouldn’t fly again until I got my license for real.
I picked up Melissa in a taxi the next day. She was groggy and beautiful. I’d cleared out my toolbox and put a bunch of food in it. It was kind of strange because it was the box Simon had sent with me from England. But I didn’t really have another picnic box. I wrapped a clean blanket around it so it looked nice. She was puzzled when we got to the airport.
“Is someone taking us on a plane ride?”
“I am.”
“You fly?”
“Yeah, for the most part.”
“What do you mean ‘for the most part’?”
“I mean, I’ve been taking lessons for a long time but don’t have the money to get my license and keep it.”
We walked over to the plane I had bought from Lou. He had it all ready for us.
“Are we going to fly in this? I mean, can you fly this?”
“Yup. Already have.”
“This is crazy. I mean, you’re sure you can do this? You can really fly an airplane?”
“I can really fly an airplane. Jump in.”
She hesitated for a moment, but then jumped in and buckled herself up and put on her goggles and headset. I checked everything over to make sure she was secured correctly, then I touched base with Lou. He saluted me and wished me luck.
After I checked out the plane I buckled myself in we taxied into position. I told her to hold on. We gathered momentum as we rolled down the runway. We bounced off the ground once, and then we were airborne. I was careful to gain altitude slowly, trying to make the flight as uneventful as possible. I didn’t want anything to give her a doubt that I knew exactly what I was doing. After we were in the air for about two minutes and everything was going well she let out a whoop over the intercom and laughed.
“You can really fly!”
We banked northwest and head toward the farm my great grandparents had owned. It was tucked away in the hills in the western part of the state and I knew it would be a perfect place to keep the plane. One of the hayfields had been used for years as a landing strip by some doctors from the city who would fly up to trout fish and hunt for deer. They had the field groomed so well the landing was pretty uneventful for them. I figured it would be the same for us. They also kept airplane fuel up at the farm, so I knew I would be able to buy some from them if I ever needed to.
The day was an amazing one to fly. The sun was bright in the blue sky and the air was cold and fresh. The west of the state was all hills and forest. The trees were at their peak colors. It was like flying over a lake of fire, with the taller trees like flames shooting out and trying to scorch the bottom of the plane.
Melissa was silent, taking it all in. I could tell she was having a good time, looking all around. The white-knuckle grip she had when we took off was gone and she looked quite relaxed.
We stayed low so I could see the valleys and roads and use them as my navigation markers. It was easy to do on such a clear day. We flew for about an hour. Whenever I saw a landmark of some interest I would point it out to her. When we got to the farm I backed off the throttle and we circled a few times to make sure the landing strip was clear from obstructions. I had called Aunt Elizabeth’s neighbor to check ahead. He told me the doctors had just used the strip to land when they were up scouting deer stands. I would have called Aunt Elizabeth but she didn’t have a phone. She wasn’t really a phone kind of person. In case the landing strip was blocked for some reason I had planned to land on the road in front of the farm. It would be tricky, but I believed it could be done.
Lucky for us there was nothing in our way. As we circled we saw the sheer limestone cliffs poking out of the trees like faces trying to escape from the fire. I got a little nervous. I’d never had trouble with landings, but they still scared me. I told Melissa to hold on and we banked into our final approach position. We dipped down into the valley and gradually lowered ourselves closer and closer to the trees. As soon as I got on line I could see the tracks where the doctors had landed and took off again. I headed for them. We lowered closer until we hung over the grass. The wheels touched, bounced, and then touched for good. The back wheel came down gradually and touched and I let the plane roll to a stop. Melissa yelled congratulations over the intercom. I rolled the plane forward, toward the barn I was planning on storing it in.
We stopped just shy of the building and I killed the motor. Melissa had her arms raised as the propeller stopped turning.
“That was fantastic! I’m amazed.”
I climbed out and helped her down. “How did you learn to do that?”
“Just a lot of practice.”
I grabbed the basket of food and my duffel. Melissa grabbed her books and bag and we headed toward Aunt Elizabeth’s house. It was the farmhouse my great grandfather had built when he moved to the state. Elizabeth was the only one of his grandkids who lived anywhere near the old farmstead. Grandpa had one brother killed in the war and one sister who became a nun. His clan was the only one that kept the family name alive.
Elizabeth was the family eccentric. She was some sort of witch, for real. She had a way about her that nobody could explain, and she tended to disappear for long periods of time. All her neighbors were Republican farmers and they only tolerated her because she kept to herself and had an amazing way with livestock. If one of them had a sick cow or horse they usually came to her first before they called the vet. If she couldn’t handle it they went to the vet. That wasn’t very often.
She had the biggest garden I had ever seen. It was quite wild and full of things that were useful as opposed to beautiful. There was some sort of order to it, but Elizabeth was the only one who understood why certain plants grew next to other ones. She was in a continual state of planting and harvest. Even in the winter she was with her plants every day, drying them or collecting seeds or chopping roots. She’d lived alone for longer than anyone I had ever heard of. She was well into her seventies with no signs of slowing down. I’d been to the farm with Unc more times than I could remember, and lately each time I had carved a new statue for her garden. This was the first time I’d been to her farm without Unc. She had changed little for as long as I could remember. She had grown thinner and her long brown hair had gone almost all white, but that was about all. She still wore the same flowing gray wool and cotton things. She made her own clothes. I never understood where her fashion came from. Every time I saw her I could have sworn it was going to be the last, but she kept going, living on.
The house was in a perpetual state of disrepair, but never looked like it was about to fall down. The neighbors made sure she always had a good wood stove and a good roof, but no one ever volunteered to paint her house. I couldn’t remember it ever being painted. It seemed like it should have been in the beginning, but maybe it never was. The house had no electricity or running water. It was a quiet place.
Aunt Elizabeth saw us coming and came to the door, waving. We walked up onto the porch and she hugged me deeply. She said my name over and over as if it were some kind of mantra. Her cats fled the porch and ran in every direction. She shook Melissa’s hand and told her that her hair was beautiful. Melissa blushed, the first time I had seen that, and thanked her. We were shone in.
The house was dim but clean. The furnishings would all have fit nicely in Mrs. Powell’s Victorian world. The living room was immaculate, as if ladies tea were going to be meeting there in a half hour. The rest of the downstairs, including the kitchen, was devoted to various projects she was working on, most of which had to do with drying certain leaves and berries and roots. It was clear each was a project in motion, resting at various stages but by no means abandoned. She brought us into the kitchen and cleared off the table so we would have an uncluttered space to relax and chat. She made us some kind of homemade tea with honey in it. It could taste mint, but that was the only flavor familiar to me.
She looked over my hand very carefully and got out a bunch of things from different jars. She made me a mixture that she said was like a tea. One cup a day for a year and I would be able to move all my fingers. I thought that sounded a lot better than two or three more surgeries. I promised her I would give it a try.
I asked Elizabeth how she had been and she filled me in on the goings on of her neighborhood. She asked Melissa a lot of questions about her studies. She was thrilled someone still wanted to take the time to study art.
“From what I hear they all leave the farm to go into sales or banking. You two are special. You get a degree in art and you go all the way to England to learn how to carve stones. Did I ever tell you how much I missed you not trout fishing with Peter while you were away.
“Is that what Unc told you? That I went away to study stone carving?”
“He told me you had gone to school in England. Is it not true?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Well then please tell me, what is the truth?”
“I got into trouble and ran away. I learned how to carve stone when I was there, but that’s not the reason I went.”
She smiled a kind of sad smile. “That big brother of mine, always trying to protect me. Does he do that to anyone else? I’ll tell you the answer is probably no. It’s not as though I was weak and unable to handle the truth.”
“I really don’t know Aunt Elizabeth.”
We were silent for a moment as she looked around. Then out of nowhere she laughed quite strongly. “Isn’t that silly,” she said, and then put on some more hot water for tea.
She loaded us up with more food and we headed down to the river for our picnic. We walked through an old pasture thick with dying autumn grass. There was a group of trees at a bend in the river a couple hundred yards behind the house. This was where Unc and I would always begin our fishing. We’d stop by the trees and check our tackle and then start down opposite sides of the river. There was an old fallen log I always had to climb on to cross. I was sure I would fall in someday, but I never did.
I spread out the blanket over some grass near the trees and we took out the food. We were both starving, and started to eat even as we were getting the food out. I had never been on a picnic like this before. My family went to a lot of outings where we would eat at picnic tables, but Dad wasn’t the kind of guy who had a picnic basket. I don’t ever remember him sitting on the ground.
I’d loaded up my tool chest with fruit and sliced meat and odd sounding cheese and crackers in very European looking packaging. I had no idea what people actually brought on picnics. I asked Colfax, but he didn’t seem all that knowledgeable about picnics either, so I read up a little on what the great explorers ate when they went on their airplane journeys. I also picked out a couple bottles of wine. I got them out and put them in the stream to cool down.
We bunched up our jackets and used them as pillows after a while. We drank wine and looked at the clouds and lounged. The wine went right to my head and softened the edges on everything. Lying there under the sun, some of the moments felt perfect.
“I’m still amazed that we flew up here. Whose plane is it?”
“It’s my plane.”
Melissa sat up. “But I don’t understand how you could afford to buy a plane.”
I held up my bum hand for her to see. “I got a check from the restaurant as a thank you for not suing them.”
“So you used it to buy a plane? What about buying a house or going back to school?”
“Now you sound like Unc,” I said laughing. I rolled onto my back and let the sun beat down on my face.
“It’s just that you don’t have many opportunities for stuff like that. You should use them when you get them. I mean, you have to figure out something.”
“What, get some kind of degree and become a banker or salesman. Sure would disappoint Aunt Elizabeth. Besides, don’t they want you to finish high school first?”
“So finish high school. And why study business? What about architecture? You certainly seem to know a lot about it.”
“An join the ex-con architect’s union, right”
“All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t waste what you’ve got. You’ve got to make forward progress.”
“I know.”
“I mean, what about the future?”
“Yeah, what about the future? Robertson closes. Good riddance. You move away. I’m still eating cheese sandwiches off paper plates by myself. Only now I’m flipping burgers instead of delivering pizza because I’m still afraid to drive. Does that count as progress?”
“You can be as short sighted as you want, but the sun is still going to come up tomorrow.”
“Maybe you set me up with a younger co-ed. As long as she majors in something different, is that progress?”
She waved a disgusted hand at me and grabbed the drawing pad she had brought along. She wandered off by herself and I lost sight of her as she went round the bend in the river.
I fell asleep in the sun. The wine went right to my head and before I knew it I was gone. I dreamed of Sally again. We were drinking wine behind the stone shop. Simon was nowhere to be seen. She was wearing a tacky white wedding dress. It certainly wasn’t the style she would have chosen, but it just screamed out ‘wedding’. We were talking but I couldn’t recall what we were saying. It began to rain, a huge downpour. Still we sat, talking and drinking our wine. Sally’s glass filled to the point where it overflowed with the water and wine and spilled onto her dress. We still kept talking and drinking.
Melissa was sitting next to me when I awoke. She was trying to take the cork out of the bottle of wine she’d fished from the stream, only she was having no luck at all with the cheap corkscrew I’d bought at the liquor store.
“Morning,” she said, shoving the bottle toward me. It was mid afternoon and the shadows were growing long in the valley. I opened the bottle and handed it back to her. She poured us each a cup.
“I drew a picture of the valley for your Aunt.”
“She’ll love it. Thank you.”
“Were we planning on spending the night?”
“If you think you can study by lantern light. Otherwise Elizabeth’s neighbor could give us a ride into town and we could catch the late bus.”
“The lantern sounds lovely.”
A huge silence overtook the valley as we packed up our picnic. Melissa watched the stream for a long time, lost in thought. Then, we walked back to Aunt’s house. It grew dark quickly as we did.
We shared the rest of our picnic with Aunt and she cooked some other stuff to go along with it, including an apple pie. We finished off the wine and then sat in the living room. Melissa studied as Elizabeth filled me in on what all my Aunts, Uncles and cousins were doing these days. It was truly a family spread across the globe.
When Melissa grew tired Aunt showed us up to where we would sleep. Melissa got the main guest bedroom and I got the small one. The other bedrooms were too full of her stuff to get a bed into. Elizabeth put a couple of logs into the woodstove and then went to sleep herself.
I fell asleep quickly. It was black outside when I awoke, looking out the rippled window at the full moon. I knew somehow that Melissa would be in the garden. I crept down the stairs and out the back door. I hadn’t gone very far into the wild when she appeared. She wrapped her bare arms around me and brought me into her blanket.
Aunt Elizabeth shook me awake gently at dawn. She had made a nice breakfast for us and had hot tea ready. Melissa dragged herself down from the upstairs, groggy and yawning. She had borrowed one of my sweatshirts to stay warm.
Aunt had arranged for one of the neighbors to give us a ride into town to catch the early bus. He showed up like clockwork. We gave Elizabeth hugs and kisses, jammed our duffle bags into the car, and jumped into the back seat. Harold, the driver, asked me whole bunch of questions about my family. I was glad Elizabeth had filled me in, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to answer a single one.
He drove slowly, as if there were an accident waiting around every curve. We took forever to get into town. It was a place that had thrived when you could farm 100 acres and support a family. Now, fifty years later, the place was in its death throes. The last restaurant had closed years earlier and the grocery store folded shortly after that. There was still a bar where you could get food, but mostly everyone hung out at the Kwik Stop. It was strange to see elderly men seated at a table talking about the weather while enjoying a freshly nuked burrito.
We sat on a bench outside and waited for the bus. Lucky for us it was late, because we never would have made the scheduled time the way Harold was driving.
I bought us each a juice and a bottle of water for the ride. Melissa had taken out her sketchpad and was busy drawing. She thanked me for the juice and water and said, “I just gotta finish this.”
I understood, so I walked down the street a little ways. The root beer stand where Unc had taken me for ice cream as a kid was closed. It looked like it had been abandoned for at least a summer or two. The hills around the town hovered over me. I sat down for a minute at one of the rusted, paint chipped picnic tables. Some kids had converted a couple of the others into a fort, and broken toys were scattered all around the parking lot.
It was a quiet, beautiful day and I thought it was a damn shame places like this had to close. I wondered where those kids with the broken toys got their ice cream. Probably at the Kwik Stop. The thrill wouldn’t be the same. I was sure of it.
I walked back slowly, seeing the bus there as I did. Melissa was talking to the driver about something as he ate a sandwich out of a plastic wrapper. We threw our bags in the luggage container and got on.
There were all of six people on the bus. We sat in the middle, away from most of them. I got the feeling everyone wanted to have some privacy.
The bus pulled away and carried us through the twisted valleys, thick with the blaze of the autumn leaves. And then, slowly, we dropped down onto the wide plateau where our city was.
Melissa looked out the window with me for a little while, but her eyes were tired. She leaned her head against my shoulder and went to sleep. I balled up a sweatshirt for her so she could have a pillow.
The bus kept rolling, and for the first time in a long time there was someone with me on a journey. I’d been so much in love with Sally the thought of someone else never crossed my mind. But, at this moment, having someone there to share my life with was a great relief, even if it was temporary.
Melissa slept almost the whole way. I woke her up when we got to the outskirts of the city. We arrived at the station and got out things. It was another perfect fall day, so we walked back to her place.
“I hate to say it, but I really have to study. I mean, I do.”
“No problem,” I said.
She gave me a hug and a kiss. “I had a great time. Call me tonight.”
“Yeah, I will.”
I watched her walk into the building. I knew as soon as she did that some part of our relationship had come to an end.
Walking home was a huge let down. I had waves of loneliness and dread crash over me before I was six blocks away. I wanted to turn around and go back, but I knew that would accomplish nothing at all. I didn’t want to look weak in her eyes, no matter what kind of macho bullshit that was.
Getting home was the same. No mail, no messages. I sat down at the kitchen table and emptied out my pockets. The pain and suffering money was almost gone. I was pretty much back where I started.
I felt like Melissa was right, that I was at the point where I had to make some decisions about my life. If I was a normal person I would have been able to sit down and chart out a course. But I didn’t feel like that kind of person. I didn’t want to look at what was realistic.
I sat still for a long time. It got dark outside. I called Melissa and said good night and then I went to bed.

Chapter 15
At work the next day things had grown even worse. Four was waiting for me when I got in. He’d already taken over Gabby’s office.
“Sit,” he said as I entered. He sat down at the desk and calmly took a drink of his coffee. The office had been completely cleaned over the weekend but it still wreaked of cheap cigars.
“Gabby’s gone. I know you’ve heard. Shit doesn’t start to change around here, there’s a whole list of you losing their jobs. I’m doing you a favor keeping you employed. You better bust your balls out there to make sure things go right.”
“What the hell Four? A guy makes a couple of mistakes and you’re giving him the ultimatum? Like I’m not leaps and bounds ahead of most of the incompetent bastards out there.”
“My name is Mr. Robertson. You will refer to me as such. Now get out of here. You know what you need to do.”
I left and walked to my workstation. It must have been some kind of instinctive move. I couldn’t work there, but that didn’t stop my brain from guiding me there every chance it got. That station was like a safe zone. My moral vision of right and wrong was collapsing in the midst of reality, and I was confused if nothing else. I knew what I needed to keep doing. I needed to keep the game going long enough to get the last nail in the coffin, so to speak. But he surprised me. I didn’t know if Four was on to me or just trying to be a bully. But I knew I couldn’t bring him down if I wasn’t working there. I knew we hadn’t found Thahn another job yet either.
Vince came in plowed. He was unshaven and generally disheveled as if he’d been on a bender the whole weekend. We sat him down on the chair next to his toolbox and tried to talk some sense into him. He was so far gone we were amazed he’d managed to get to work at all. We decided to get him back to his house. Colfax guided him into his car and took him home.
I took my cut sheets with the wrong numbers and distributed them around, the same as always. But now I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. Maybe if we laid off the mistakes for a while Four would back off and then we could keep going. But then again, if the mistakes began to disappear after out little chat, he might begin to suspect they were my fault from the start.