All the Dead Yale Men (38 page)

“I know, I know,” she said. “We've got six minutes. Let's go.”

The landscape slid by, the pines still green, the sky in the distance a pale blue. Those vultures still turned in the air over the kill in the woods. On the way, I said, “You're sure about this?”

“Yes,” she said.

“No second thoughts?” I said.

“No,” she said.

The approach to the chapel is along the river, and from a distance it appeared as a white, clean building, a sugar cube on a brown tablecloth, and as we got closer, as it grew in size, as the cars around it appeared as individual objects, not just clutter, she took my hand. Then we pulled up to the church: the white siding, black shutters, the black fence around the churchyard, although in front, where two pillars stood, bouquets of delphinium had been tied with a white ribbon. Pia held her flowers, the ones she was going to carry, in her lap.

We stopped in front of the door. Three men walked toward us, out of the heat, their shapes momentarily obscured by that shimmering blacktop. I went around and opened the passenger side door, and Pia stepped out, her presence, her dress so white it made an afterimage in the sunlight. Stas, Seymon, and Timofei walked along the cars, their swagger different from the boys from California, as though they meant it not for fun, but another matter all together. The scars on Stas's face were the color
of the fieldstone that was visible in the cliffs along the river, and Seymon and Timofei looked as before, like hired help for the spooks my father had worked with. They were dressed in gray jackets and black shirts, a sort of gangster chic.

“Psssst,” said Stas. “Frank.”

“Get away from me,” I said.

“You keep saying that,” said Stas. “And what good does it get you?”

“So this is your daughter?” said Timofei.

“What's going on?” said Pia.

“I'll talk to you,” I said to Stas.

“Where are you going to talk to us?” said Stas.

“Right over there,” I said. “There.”

A large gravestone stood in the middle of the cemetery, the color of it the same as the old scars on Stas's face. Around it the sanded paths were yellow and clean.

“Just as soon as this is over,” I said.

“All right,” said Stas. “We've got a date.”

They walked through the gate of the cemetery, the hinge of it making a long, low moan.

An usher, one of the grooms from California, opened the door with a bounce and swagger as though he was taking his surfboard down to the beach. The organ began to play and Pia and I stood for a moment in the foyer of the chapel. Then we began, one step at a time, all of the faces turned toward us, including Tim and the two men from Boston and the local constable.

“That's them?” said Tim.

“Yes,” I said.

“Come on,” said Tim to the men from Boston.

The local constable stood up, too, in his green jacket and his wrinkled pants, although he was wearing an obvious holster where he carried, I knew from long association, a .357 magnum.
They went by us, as though they were getting off a subway and we were getting on. Then Pia and I slowly worked our way down the aisle, where, at the end, Robert and his best man, the one with the stutter, waited, although they glanced now not only at us, but at Tim and the men from Boston as they went out the door, not slamming it but going fast to that squeaky gate of the cemetery. Stas, Seymon, and Timofei smoked by the large headstone, their eyes now set on Tim and the others. The smoke seemed to drift away over the stones like ghosts.

The faces in the crowd stayed on us, but every now and then one turned toward the men outside, the two groups getting closer. The organ played. Pia had her arm through mine, but she gave me a tug, a loving, warm pull.

Outside, Stas, Seymon, and Timofei spoke, and while I couldn't hear the words, it looked like “Hey, fuck you.” Then Tim spoke and the detectives and the local constable said something, too. Timofei put a hand in the middle of Tim's chest, and Tim, like an old bartender opening a bottle of beer with a quick snap, put his palm on the back of Timofei's hand and leaned forward. Timofei's mouth opened in an O, as though a pain he had only heard about was now here. He stepped back, one hand cradled in another. Tim spoke again, and while I couldn't hear what he said, the expression suggested, the shape of his lips seemed to say, Am I making myself clear? Timofei nodded, as though he had some things to say, too, that would clarify matters. He reached under his jacket, to the left side, under his armpit. Tim shook his head and spoke, just once, which looked like “No.” Stas said, or his lips seemed to say, “What? What? You've got that shithead Aurlon?”

Then we came up to the altar, and the minister said, “Who gives this woman in matrimony?”

“Her mother and I do,” I said.

Alexandra glanced at me and then I sat next to her.

Outside Timofei still had his hand under his coat, but as he began to bring it out, with something the size of a small brick in it, or just a lump under his jacket, one of those men from Boston, who glanced in our direction first, as though timing his action with the ceremony, made a quick movement, part with his elbow and then part with the palm of heel of hand. Timofei sat down on the clean yellow sand, not far from where my father was buried. The blood appeared between his fingers, the color of it like a Christmas ball, and as shiny, too.

The congregation strained with the effort not to look, but half-turned to the churchyard for a glance, the faces of these witnesses to the wedding at once solemn and horrified, but intrigued, too, and blinking with surprise, if not something like enjoyment. At least they were that way until Seymon reached under his coat and took out a revolver the color of those tombstones. Then, as though they could make this go away by pretending it wasn't happening, they turned back to the altar. There, at least, they found something they could depend on.

“And do you, Robert . . . ?” said the minister. But he glanced, too. Silence seeped into the church with such intensity that even the ordinary human sounds, breathing, shifting, sighing, the bubbling of indigestion, the creak of an old joint stopped, too.

One of the detectives with short hair and the earring put his hand on Seymon's wrist, moved to one side, and then, with his back to the congregation, as though breaking someone's arm could be done in a manner that was at once discreet and polite, brought his weight to bear. The pistol, as blue as fieldstone, dropped onto that sandy path. Seymon looked up and screamed, a harsh, guttural sound, which seemed to come from the steppes, from the Ukraine, or from someplace a long way from here, came into the church.

The congregation stared straight ahead.

“Go on,” said Robert to the minister. “Finish. I'll take care of that later.”

He stood up a little straighter. Pia held his hand.

That left Stas. He walked through the blood on the path, not bothering to put his hand under his coat, since he was too smart for that, and while Tim and one of the detectives leaned over the two men on the ground (do you put a handcuff on a man with a broken arm?), Stas came up to the window, directly opposite the altar. His eyes lingered on Robert, who turned once in his direction.

Stas's eyes came to the first row and then to me. Then he put one knuckle on the church window and tapped, once and then harder, his pale face with those scars against the glass, his breath making a cloud, but even so his expression was obvious, not exasperated but more profound than that, as though he had come up out of the ground to get what he had assumed was his only to find he had been cheated. He tapped the window.

“You,” he said. He tapped the window, pointed at me. “You. You think I'll forget? Didn't we understand each other? Didn't we?”

•
  
•
  
•

“What did I tell you?” said Robert to the minister. “Are we having trouble understanding each other?”

Tim Marshall appeared behind Stas. I supposed Stas didn't even hear him coming. And, of course, like any good half-drunk cop who is ready to retire, he simply made Stas drop straight down, below the window, but we still heard against the side of the church a bone-hard
thump-thump
, where some part of Stas's anatomy, a knee, a hip, an elbow, hit the hard white siding twice and then stopped. The silence flowed back into the church.
Outside, Timofei kept his hands to his face, as though to hide what had happened, but the blood ran down his fingers and even his forearms, over his jacket, now dripping from his elbows onto the yellow sand.

“Do you, Robert, take this woman, Pia Mackinnon, to be your lawful wedded wife . . . ”

Alexandra began to cry. Stas appeared again, like a figure in a jack-in-the-box, standing up now with some help from Tim, although he was wearing some silver cuffs, his shoulders broad, his posture bent forward as he went back to the center of the cemetery.

The minister continued, and as he came to “I now pronounce . . . ,” Tim and the men from Boston pushed Stas and the others out of the cemetery, around the headstones and out to a car, where Tim now pushed them in, and the local constable and the two cops from Boston got in, too, a close fit, and drove down the river, toward the closest town. Tim stood in the dust. The river was in the distance, so calm and constant, its movement as always.

Robert and Pia came out the church door and got into Robert's car, both of them glowing. Then the guests came out, too, all of them pretending that nothing had happened, aside from the man with a walker, who said, “Jesus. And I thought a graveyard was a dull place. I wonder if anything like that will happen when I'm here?”

Then his wife helped him into a car, and everyone, minister included, drove up to the reception. That left just Tim, me, and Alexandra, and Tim said, “Well, I've got to tell you one thing. That Aurlon Miller? Boy, was he pissed off when we picked him up on a rape warrant from Florida. He said he had a deal with you.”

“Well, not quite,” I said.

“That old girlfriend of yours?” said Tim. “She was crying when she called me. So, maybe she isn't so bitter anymore.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Let's have a glass of champagne.”

“You know, Frank,” said Alexandra. “I think you're going to have to keep your word to me, though.”

“And what's that?”

“You remember the trip to Rome?”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

We went through the churchyard, and there, by the small stone that marked my father's ashes, I rubbed those crimson spots, some as big as a silver dollar, into the soil, and when I couldn't do it with the dirt that was there, Tim scraped some sandy loam, too, to cover it up.

“Let's have a little respect for the dead,” he said. “Right, Frank?”

•
  
•
  
•

At the reception, at the farm, with that white tent in front of the trout ponds, with the guests in their cheerful clothes, with that band playing a schmaltzy version of an old song, “As Time Goes By,” Pia and I had that dance that is required of all fathers and all brides. She put her palm in mine, and her hand on my shoulder. I was reminded of those hours we had spent on the river, with those chips of light, so much like an impressionist painting.

She said, “So, that little bastard was trying to blackmail you?”

“Let's not talk about it,” I said.

“You're beginning to sound like your father,” she said. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“They could make it look like I had gotten rid of Aurlon and because of that, I might lose you. And a lot of other things. But mostly you.”

We swayed to that schmaltzy but still effecting sound of “Just remember this . . . ”

“I see,” said Pia. “Well. I think Robert is right.”

“About what?” I said.

“You know what he said?” said Pia. “Loving someone takes a lot more balls than you'd think.”

“He said the same thing to me about marriage,” I said.

“It's the same thing,” said Pia.

IN LOS ANGELES
,
before the trip to Rome, Alexandra and I went to a party for a classmate of mine from Yale, Jack Middleton, who had worked for the studios in public relations and was going to retire. The party was in his house off Mulholland Drive, and we stood where we could see the hillside, which was more like Greece than anything else. At least that's what it probably looked like before they built all those houses. Jack told me that when he first bought this house thirty years ago, deer had come into the backyard, but now the deer were gone although the coyotes were moving in. I asked him if he was going to miss working at the studio, and he glanced at that brown hillside, where the coyotes hunted, and he said, “You can't imagine what scandals we faced. Fatty Arbuckle seemed shocking a hundred years ago, but let me tell you, things have gone downhill from there. You can't believe.” He shook his head. “You can't believe.”