Carry Me Home (83 page)

At breakfast the next morning Ivanov raved about Tony’s strength, Tony’s fighting ability. “You shoulda seen im! These three guys were giving us the evil eye, ya know? Tony just lit into em. Man, I’d follow that guy anywhere.”

Later, alone, Bobby confronted Tony in the tractor garage. “What the hell’s this fighting shit?”

“I didn’t start it,” Tony said.

“You can’t go hitting somebody because they give you the evil eye.” Bobby was angry, tired, acting like a tired father with a nine-year-old son.

“Forget it, Man.” Tony clammed up.

“Damn it. I don’t want to forget it,” Bobby snapped.

“It’ll never happen again.” Tony was tense, defensive, angry.

“Fuckin better not!” Bobby stormed away.

Three days later, over dinner, Ivanov gave Sara a sheet of paper. “I’m going to dedicate it to you,” he said.

“Wha ...” Bobby looked at Sara reading.

“‘High Meadow,’” Ivanov said. “The song about a man trying to recapture feelings he had as a boy. I’m never going to forget you. And Sara. All you’ve done ...”

“Bobby ...” Sara nodded at him. Then to Dale she said, “This is very good.” Again she looked at Bobby. Bobby shook his head. Sara handed him the lyrics. “I think you should say it now,” Sara said.

Bobby cleared his throat. Glanced at Tony, at Sara, then looked at Dale. “Okay,” he said. “Dale, we’ll lend you the money to get your instrument out of hock. You can pay us back a little from each gig.”

Ivanov’s appreciation was excessive.

“I’m glad I finally caught you,” Bobby said into the phone. “How was your vacation?”

“We haven’t been on vacation,” Jasper Vertsborg answered.

“Ah ... Oh. I’ve finished the redesign of the Conner house. I think you’ll be impressed. The greenhouse is truly elegant. By shifting the staircase, the dining room flows in—”

“We’re not sure about a two-story greenhouse,” Jasper said.

“Let me just show it to you,” Bobby said quickly. “I’ve built a detailed model and it’s on the siting table right now. You can see exactly ...”

“Mr. Wapinski, we’ve changed our minds.”

“You’ve changed ...”

“Yes. You knew we were just exploring our options.”

“Of course. So at least look at it. It’s really beautiful.”

“Well, you know they’re developing a new country club—Whirl’s End ... I’m certain you already know—”

“Whirl’s ... No. No, I don’t know.”

“Oh, it’s going to be fabulous. Ernest Hartley’s one of the partners. It’s just above the section they call South Hill, or New New Town ...”

Bobby had to think fast. “Then you’re going to build?” he asked.

“Yes. The streets should be in this fall. We’re going to build in the spring.”

“Then let me design it for you,” Bobby said.

“Oh.” Jasper Vertsborg laughed amiably. “We’ve already found a splendid architect. Barnett and Robins. You’ve probably heard of them. They’re the best in the Northeast and ...”

Bobby heard no more.

“How many gallons of syrup did you end up with?” Linda asked. She was in the tractor garage with Tony. Bobby was in the house, making phone calls. EES did not yet have a separate line to the big barn. Sara, the twins, and Noah were on a “nature hike” to the apple orchard.

“Less than forty,” Tony said.

They were in the same state of gentle ambivalence that had generally characterized their relationship for the past seven months.

“Are the trees okay?”

“Seem to be.”

“Then Mr. Lutz ... where he broke ...”

“I don’t know. Maples need lots of water. Maybe that was a different seam. Or maybe just the top. Maybe the trees reached deeper but they needed the whole spring.”

“Oh. I hope it comes back.” Linda moved closer to where Tony was installing a new oil filter. His hands were black and shiny. “What about the strawberries?”

Tony looked at her. A dark feeling descended upon him. His tone changed. “I’m not making squat, you know.”

“Huh?” Linda was taken aback. She had lost six pounds and she’d hoped Tony would notice.

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” Tony tightened the can filter, cleaned the oil smear from the can and the drippings from the frame below.

“What what’s about?” Linda was hurt, defensive.

“This ‘how much did we make’ stuff.”

“I just asked because I—”

“You know what Ivanushka says?” Tony didn’t give Linda a chance to respond. “He said his wife says she lived it more than him.”

“Lived what?” Linda assumed the crossed-arm stance she used to scold the twins.

“His craziness,” Tony blurted. “His combat schizo shit.”

Linda squinted, pursed her lips. “Where is this coming from?”

Tony turned to her. He was leaning forward, one hand out as if ready to jab. “Look. When this place starts making money, I’ll give you my share. I don’t give a shit about money. I owe you. I know. I know you pay everything. Or maybe Denham helps—”

“Denham!” Linda yelled.

Tony clammed up.

“Is that what you think? You think I’ve come here for
money
?! You think Denham gives me money?! You ... you ...” Linda held her tongue. Then she blurted, “Your daughters’ daughters will live with your psychosis long after you and I are gone.”

That night Aaron Holtz called the Wapinskis. “Bobby ...”

“Speaking.”

“Holtz here.”

“How you doing, Aaron?”

“Good. Hey, this Ivanushka guy ... You give him some money?”

“Yeah. To get his guitar out of hock.”

“You can kiss it good-bye. He just left with some bimbo. They’re headin for the Jersey shore.”

“What?!”

“You might catch im. They were in a big brown Olds with a dented right front fender. Headlight’s cocked out.”

“Shit.”

“You want me to call the cops?”

“Naw. Thanks Aaron. I’ll ... ah ... call ...”

S
UMMER PASSED, AUTUMN CAME
. The gloom at High Meadow was palpable. On the morning of Saturday, 30 October 1976, in the tractor garage, Bobby ordered Tony to pack.

“Fuck it, Man,” Tony said. “Don’t mean nothin. Give me a couple a days.”

“No. That’s not what I mean.” Bobby’s head ached. As things had deteriorated, disillusionment had turned into disappointment with himself. He was about as communicative as the cold forge.

“Fuck, Man,” Tony grumbled. “It’s goina take a few days. I got things here.”

“Pack a ruck,” Wapinski said. “Field pack. Knapsack. Whatever you fuckin Marines called em. There’s one in the shop. We’re movin out in an hour.”

Bobby scowled, left, returned. “There’s rations there too. Three-day resupply.”

The day was crisp, clear. They barely spoke. It was a patrol of two. Tony was acquiescent, pliant. He’d seen Bobby’s enthusiasm die and Bobby’s despair had in turn left him without hope, with nothing but his final-bunker mentality. He had harvested lackadaisically in the attitude of “What the fuck for? To give her money for new dresses to impress Denham?” But he had not given up completely. He’d achieved a state of minimal subsistence, with one and only one, cause. By the time Gina and Michelle entered first grade, Tony’s bunker room was ten-by-ten-by-seven and was shored up with every scrap of pipe, beam and post he could scavenge from every corner of the farm.

They dropped to the pond, picked up the knoll trail through the orchard, up to the cliff edge where they paused to scan the pond. They descended to the spillway, crossed the dam, climbed the back trail, pushed on, scrambled over the old stone wall in the woods, crested the ridge into the sugarbush, into territory Tony knew intimately. Bobby did not stop, slowed only to allow a pair of squirrels the right of way in their trek across the wood. Tony looked out to the high meadow, to the tractor road he’d improved. At the far edge the sugarbush gave way to scrub pines, ash and deformed beech, which grew in the shallow soil above the rock ledge. This gave way to the barren crest rock that led to the gap.

Tony did not know of the Indian ladder, the hand and footholds in the rock face. Still he followed without question. The movement, with direction, with purpose even if he did not know the purpose, charged him. On the gap floor stagnant pools rimmed with ice looked lifeless. They crossed quickly as if crossing an exposed rice paddy, then ascended into the forest of virgin eastern hemlocks and picked up the narrow and ancient Lenape trail that meandered under the 150-foot trees.

“This is the cathedral.” There was reverence in Bobby’s voice. He led slowly, paused for full minutes. His concentration was returning. Occasional sun rays filtered in but the cathedral was dim. At the trail spur Bobby whispered, “Tonight we’ll come back. NDP there.” Quietly he moved on. Twenty minutes later at a small, once-cleared site Bobby de-rucked. “We’ll set up here,” he said quietly. “This is where the survivors of the Pennamite War hid. Recon the north and west. I’ll check out the east.”

An hour later Tony returned. Clouds had begun to form. Crispness gave way to rawness. “Sit rep, negative,” Tony said quietly.

Bobby nodded. He had cleared a small sleeping area, had cut a few branches and made a tight, low lean-to.

“Want me to clear an area for a campfire?” Tony asked.

“No. No fire here. Relax. I’ll be back in a bit ...”

Bobby disappeared like a spirit. At first Tony sat back, rested, but immediately felt antsy. He fiddled with the backpack he’d taken from the barn, dug inside, pulled out a can of soup, opened it, drank it cold. His anxiety rose. He turned at every crinkle of leaf, at every woodpecker’s drumming, every creaking branch in the light breeze. Then he rose. He could not see more than a few yards into the woods. Quietly he cleared the low brush. Within paces he found stones, logs, chunks of sod. He raised the back of the lean-to, dragged in a thick log, clawed out a trench for it, rolled it in place. At the sides he placed stones and sod, more logs, more stone. From the brush he carefully chose the most natural pieces to camouflage the low berms and the lean-to. He cleared fields of fire in all directions—not clear-cutting but thinning so from outside the campsite appeared natural. Even in Bobby’s quietness, Tony spied him on his return at fifty feet.

“What’s this?” Bobby still quiet.

“You can never overimprove a defensive position,” Tony said. He laid another rock onto the revetment he’d built off one side of the trail.

“You can build a Maginot Line,” Bobby said.

Tony eyed him. He hadn’t busted his ass to be challenged.

“False security,” Bobby said. “Makes you less secure because you lose flexibility, agility, vigilance.”

“This?” Tony gestured to the berm.

Bobby shook his head. “Me,” he said. “The plan’s not working. I gotta regroup. I’ve been a fuckin jerk.”

Tony chortled. “Yep.”

“A sucker, huh?”

“You bet your sweet ass, Man.”

“You knew about Ivanov?”

“All he wanted to do, Man, was to fuck your wife,” Tony said. They were now sitting side-by-side, looking out from the shelter. Bobby stared forward. “How come you let him in the house?”

“How else—” Bobby began, changed thoughts midsentence. “What about you?”

“I’d like to fuck her, too,” Tony blurted, laughed, sputtered between laughs. “Naw. I’m kidding. I mean I would but I’d never do it. Never even hint ... you know ...”

“Why?”

“Why?!”

“Yeah. Why? How come you wouldn’t think of fuckin me over but Ivanov couldn’t think of anything but?”

“I don’t know.”

“I got to understand this, Tony. I’ve got to understand. Otherwise, it’ll never work.”

“Bringing in guys?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we ought ta put a separate kitchen in the barn. And a bath.”

“Um.”

“You can’t be havin guys goin upstairs when like maybe Sara’s in the shower.”

“It’s a matter of showing trust.”

“It’s a matter of stupidity, Man. I been there. I been in RRVMC. You’re talkin about bringing in psychos ...”

“I was talking about bringin in guys who were down and out.”

“Some of em are schitzo, Man. Fox in the henhouse. Maybe you want to help the fox, but you don’t kill the hens.”

“Umph.” That was hard for Bobby to take.

“Better for us anyway,” Tony said.

“How?”

“Bein separate. Responsible for ourselves.”

“We’d need a new septic system. New well.”

“Piece a cake.”

“God damn it.” Bobby balled his fist, hammered his knee. “I still gotta understand somethin. Why is it that a guy like you, who comes from such a caring family, drops off the deep end? And ...”

“I ...” Now Tony clamped his jaw. How much easier it was to advise than to be advised, to analyze another than to be asked to analyze oneself. “Maybe I was kinda the odd man out.”

“Oh,” Bobby said, not sympathetically, not to draw Tony out, but in simple acceptance.

“Naw. I wasn’t really like outside it. I wasn’t like the black sheep. I was just tee-tee to the side of the main current.”

Again the simple, “Oh,” followed by, “Then why ...”

“Maybe ...” Tony paused. “Maybe because I expected everybody to be like my family. You know, in Nam, the villagers were like that. Not if you were on a sweep going through a ville, but the villagers if you lived with them. My platoon was like that, too. We were family. Even the guys I was with in Philly. We were like brothers. But gettin out, Man. The World hasn’t been like that. I thought people cared. Nobody gives a shit. Maybe I felt not like pushed out, but not looked at. You know, like when somebody keeps their eyes down when you walk into a room. Then like I reacted to it with, ‘Well fuck you too.’”

“Um.” Again the pause to understand, to assimilate. “Like, ‘Fuck it. Don’t mean nothin’?”

“Yeah. But not us. It’s those motherfuckers don’t give a shit. They’re goina blow the whole place up anyway.”

Bobby turned his head, his brow furrowed.

“Nuke it, Man. Bobby, they’re goina blow everybody off the face a the map. Why should we give a fuck?”

“That’s a cop-out.”

“Like hell.”

“Sure it is. If you didn’t give a shit you’d be like Ivanov. Damn it. I can’t figure ... I tried but I fucked up.”

Tony had no more to say. Bobby too was silent. He’d put himself back in the funk he’d been in for months. Overhead the clouds thickened and the air gusted in sporadic dips. The two men lay back, closed their eyes, slept.