All the Roads That Lead From Home (17 page)

Her
father’s eyes closed once more, and his chin sank to his chest. Soon his
breathing was deep and slow. Cory rose, and made her way through the hall with
her coat already on, down the elevator, through the sliding doors, and into the
cold. The flakes were fat now, meaning the storm was nearly done. A nurse sat
on a bench, wrapped in a parka, smoking. She nodded at Cory, and Cory nodded
back. Cory found her own cigarettes, lit one, and went on standing in the
spinning snow. She stuck out her tongue, let a flake land there and melt.

Lander
came through the door, walking his crooked gait.

“What are
you doing out here?” he asked.

She lifted
her cigarette. He dug his hands into his lower back, then twisted side to side.

“What did
you do to yourself?” Cory asked.

“Shoveled
too much snow.”

“Jesus.”

They
reminisced about the time their father had a similar injury, how he roared and
bellowed and ordered everyone out of his way, then demanded ice packs and a
stiff drink.

Vic came
through the door next, his magazine rolled up under his arm.

“Why
didn’t you come and get me?” he asked Cory.

“I just
had to get outside.”

“I know.
But I can’t give moral support if I’m sitting in there on my ass.”

“Sorry.”

He flapped
his arms. He was probably freezing and didn’t say so. Cory liked that about
him.

Then
Lander turned to Vic and said, “I’d like to talk to Cory.”

“So,
talk.” Vic stayed put. That morning after breakfast Cory heard Lander and Vic
in the kitchen. Vic said he thought the house was great, he’d had no idea that
Cory had grown up in such a place, that he himself had lived in a trailer park
after his father went to jail, and Lander said he hoped Vic wasn’t getting any
ideas about a big inheritance Cory might be in for, at which point Vic asked if
Lander would like to get his ass kicked, free of charge.

“It’s
okay. It’ll just be a minute. Go back and get warm,” said Cory.

“Nah.” Vic
moved off, picked up some snow, packed into a hard ball and pitched it out over
the lawn of the hospital. He turned back and grinned.

Lander
watched Vic throw more snowballs. Then he looked at Cory with their father’s
same eyes, only deeper, and more intense.

“So, how
did it go? Did he say anything important?” he asked.

“Not
really.”

“You
sure?”

“Of course
I’m sure.”

Even when
they were kids, Lander had had keen radar.
Why do you look like that, Cory?
Isn’t there something you want to tell me?
And there usually was.
I spit
on Debbie while she was sleeping. I stole Paula’s pin and threw it in the
woods.

“No hidden
fortunes? No confessions about how one of us was really adopted? No last-minute
revisions to his will?” Lander never did well, trying to be funny.

Even from
about twenty feet away Cory heard Vic’s cell phone sing out a cheerful
up-and-down tune from the depths of his coat pocket. He took it out and looked
at the screen.

“Bernie,”
he called to her. “Think I should take it?”

“Sure. See
what that fat fuck wants now.”

Bernie was
their sometimes roommate. When his wife got sick of him, which she did every
few months, they gave him their spare room in exchange for a couple of hundred
dollars. At the moment he was house-sitting for them. House-sitting amounted to
watering the two ferns, putting the mail where they could find it again, and
making the place look occupied so no one broke in.

Lander was
still looking at Cory, willing her to speak.

The
harm that might come to you, otherwise.

“What is
it?” Lander asked.

“Nothing.
I just feel—”

“Yes?”

“Stupid.”

“He always
makes you feel that way.”

Her gaze
settled on a tree in the near distance, its branches all white and fluffy. A
gust of wind sent flakes and ice crystals around their heads. All of a sudden
she remembered sledding out on the old golf course.

Vic
returned. “He wanted to know if he could rent a movie on our account at the
video place.” Cory looked at him. “No, not porn. Documentary on Africa, if you can believe that.” He blew on his hands, which were pink from the snowballs.
He looked at Cory, then at Lander, then at Cory again.

“You know
how to make snow angels?” he asked.

“What?”

“Isn’t
that what kids do around here? Make snow angels?”

The back
yard full of them, Cory and Lander back inside just long enough to get warm,
then out again to make more.

“I guess,”
said Cory.

“Show me.”

“Go on, I
should get back,” said Lander.

Cory
watched Lander go, his head down, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“Come on.
Show me!” Vic said again. He threw a snowball at her. She ducked. She led him
onto the lawn, lay down on her back, and swung her legs and arms up and down.
The snow was refreshing. It had stopped falling, she realized.

“Cool!”
said Vic. He plopped down, made one of his own, then lay laughing at himself.
He got to his feet and brushed himself off. Then he pulled her up and brushed
her.

“You know,
it’s fucking freezing out here. What say we go in and get a cup of rotgut
coffee?” he asked.

Arm in arm
they walked. Vic shivered. “Fuck. Got some in my boots.”

“That’s
the problem with snow.”

“Still, it
makes everything pretty, don’t you think?”

All around
them the new snowfall took on a silver light under the weak sun, but then as the
clouds moved southward into the valley and opened the sky above the hills, it
became pure white, absolutely clear, and almost too beautiful to bear.

In the Finger Lakes town
of Dunston, New York, the spring rain had fallen for four straight days, and
was falling again when the old man moved in. He carried one box at a time from
the trunk of his Cadillac while Beau stood across the street and watched. He
wondered what it would be like having an old man in the trailer park. Everyone
else was younger. Beau and his wife, Eldeen, were in their twenties. The people
next to them were about the same age, with four kids who slept in bunk beds in
their living room. On the other side of them was a gay guy who worked at
Target, and next to him was a retired cop. No one was friendly or even nice,
something Eldeen often complained about.

The old
man was careful as he hauled his boxes inside. Beau had seen old men like that
in Iraq, setting out their fruit in the market, their veined hands slow and
sure. The younger men’s hands were fast and reached his way to greet or beg, or
sometimes were hidden deep in the pockets of their Western pants, which made
him go quiet and cold wondering what they’d pull out.

Beau
wished he had his old slingshot. Even a small rock would make a big noise on
the metal siding of the old man’s trailer. The old man might hit the deck,
thinking he was being shot at. That would be something to see.

The old
man hauled another box to the trailer, and stumbled on the top stair. Beau
laughed. He couldn’t help it. He’d always found that kind of thing funny. Once,
Eldeen stumbled and he laughed for about five minutes. She didn’t talk to him
then for three whole days.

The old
man appeared in the doorway, stared down at his car as if he’d forgotten what
he was doing, and went back inside. Beau wondered if he were loopy. His own
grandfather had lost his marbles in his early seventies and imagined a whole
family of people who’d never existed. Eldeen said he couldn’t have suffered from
Alzheimer’s in that case, because if he did, he’d have forgotten people, not
made them up. Eldeen thought she knew what she was talking about because of her
leg. Suffering might give you wisdom, Beau thought, but then again, it might
not.

Eldeen
drove up in their pickup truck. She was a pretty woman, with wavy brown hair
she liked to put clips in. Today they were shaped like strawberries. She’d had
to go to the grocery store and he didn’t want to go along. Grocery shopping was
the most boring thing he’d ever done. Eldeen didn’t mind it. She went up and
down the aisles talking to herself, commenting on the prices of things,
wondering aloud if she should make this or that for dinner. He used to tell her
not to, because people looked at her.

“They look
at me anyway,” she said, again because of her leg. Sometimes she used a crutch
with a brace that went around her upper arm. It caused a sore just above the
elbow, so she only used it when she had to.

Eldeen got
out of the truck.

“Who’s
that?” she asked Beau.

“Beats
me.”

“Must be a
new neighbor.”

“Must be.”

Eldeen
limped across the road. It was a fairly wide road, and it took her a little
time. When she reached the old man’s car, he came down the stairs and shook
Eldeen’s hand. Eldeen ran her fingers through her hair, something she did when
she was nervous, then pointed behind her.
That’s us, just across there
,
Beau imagined her saying.
Oh, yes, it’s a nice little place here, isn’t it?
Eldeen was upbeat. A little too upbeat at times. The old man lifted his arm toward
his open door, and they both went inside. She didn’t come out for several
minutes.
Why, if this isn’t the cutest old place you have here! Folks that
lived here before weren’t too neighborly
. Eldeen had tried to make friends
with them, too. She and the wife had had words in the end, about what Beau
didn’t know. Eldeen appeared in the door of the old man’s trailer, then limped
down the three concrete steps that all the trailers in the park had, across the
road, and up the stairs to her own home.

Beau brought
in the groceries from the truck. At the store someone else loaded them for her,
and then Beau was always home to bring them inside. Beau had been discharged
from the Army for over six months and still hadn’t found work. He spent a lot
of time eating cereal and watching the news. Eldeen kept the books for a liquor
store three days a week. They’d asked her to go full-time. She didn’t care to,
but would if need be. “And you know what
that
means,” she said. She
threatened to turn all household chores over to him. Beau hadn’t handled a
broom, vacuum cleaner, or dirty dish since he returned. Before he enlisted, he
helped out a lot, even though he had a full-time job then as a cashier at the
drug store.

With the
recession the only place hiring was the gun factory, and Beau didn’t want to
think about guns. A guy he’d gotten close to in Iraq shot himself in the head
one night after another guy they sometimes played cards with got blown up in a
roadside bombing. Beau had tried to wrench the gun free from the dead guy’s
hand, and couldn’t. He didn’t remember trying to remove the gun. The whole
thing was a blank. Someone else had told him what he’d done. He’d tried to put
it together, make sense of his action, and couldn’t. “Maybe you were only
trying to help him. Maybe you didn’t know he was already gone,” Eldeen said.
Beau thought it was possible. His uncle, the one who lost his mind in Vietnam, sat around his parents’ basement and played Russian Roulette with his sidearm. One
day the uncle was passed out drunk, and Beau took the gun and threw it in the
creek. He wasn’t accused of taking it because everyone knew the uncle wasn’t
right in the head. It was said that he had hocked it, or locked it up some
place he couldn’t remember. Eldeen kept a nine-millimeter in the drawer of her
bedside table. “In case we get robbed,” she’d said. Beau thought she was nuts.
For one thing, she didn’t know how to use it. For another, they didn’t have
anything someone would risk getting shot at to come in and steal. He’d like to
get rid of that gun, too, and knew he’d have to explain himself to Eldeen. So,
the gun stayed put.

Summer
came, and everyone’s windows opened. The trailers were in a tight cul-de-sac
and sounds normally kept inside leaked out. From the cop’s place came classic
rock. The big family had Disney tunes. The Target guy, when he was home, liked
opera. Only the old man kept quiet. Beau was charged with keeping the grass cut
along the common strip, and once, as he pushed his mower, he leaned in close
under the old man’s kitchen window and heard a talk radio program discussing
the pros and cons of uniform health coverage.

One
evening Eldeen and Beau sat on their stairs and watched the twilight fall. He
took her hand in his, and after a moment she took it back and ran it through
her hair.

“Guess
what?” she asked.

“Can’t.”

“I asked
Sam if you could drive their delivery truck.” Sam was Eldeen’s boss at the
liquor store.

“I don’t
want to drive a truck.”

“He said
he’d see what he could do.”