Early Warning (37 page)

Joe said, “Are you bringing anyone?”

“The pilot, but he'll stay in Des Moines,” said Frank.

Jesse said, “But at least she uses her seat belt all the time.”

“What about Andy?” said Joe, but Frank had already hung up.

“Who was that?” said Jesse.

“Your uncle Frank is flying out in his new Learjet.”

They attacked their food as if this were at least reasonably routine news, on a par with the tornado that touched down out by County Road 27 a month before—not the one that killed two people the same day and cut a swath of destruction from Ankeny to Carlisle,
right through East Des Moines, convincing Paul Darnell to expand his bomb shelter from one room the size of a closet to three rooms.

That afternoon, Joe called Rosanna. She said she would be happy to eat supper the next night with Frank, but the morning after that, she was leaving for Minneapolis, planning to spend the night at a Holiday Inn in Bloomington.

“By yourself?”

“You want to come along?”

“Why are you going?”

“I figure Interstate Thirty-five is a better road to practice going seventy on than Interstate Eighty.”

In other words, after that first supper, he was on his own with his brother. Joe wondered if that had ever happened on a voluntary basis—yes, they had slept together as boys, but Frank had hated it. If Joe had a bad dream, Frank shook him awake and told him to roll over and shut up. If Joe had to go to the outhouse, Frank sometimes wouldn't let him back in until he had said various “magic words,” which could be anything. Frank had tossed water on him, slapped him, poked him with sticks, tickled him, hidden his nightshirts. They laughed about these antics once they were grown up, but there was that residual reluctance to be alone with Frank, wasn't there?

He tried to talk his mother into going to Minneapolis over the weekend. (“Roads too busy,” she said. Didn't she want to see Frank? She said, “I've seen Frank.”)

Frank showed up in khakis and a short-sleeved pink shirt, a little sweaty from the hot day, carrying a suspiciously large suitcase, and hugged everyone, including Joe. He hugged Joe rather tightly, actually, as if he meant it.

When he went out for a walk after supper—“just to look around”—Rosanna said, “I guarantee you, he's getting a divorce.” But when he came in after an hour, he didn't offer any news, and he didn't seem tense or upset. They talked about Watergate. That's what everyone talked about these days. Frank, of course, had already read
All the President's Men
, which had only been out a couple of weeks, and he wasn't buying it, not really. Didn't trust Woodward.
Arthur
didn't trust Woodward. And he thought Bernstein was the beard. “What's that?” said Rosanna.

“Oh, when a homosexual gets married, you know. His wife is the ‘beard.' ”

Rosanna tossed her hands in the air and said, “Good heavens!”

Joe and Lois exchanged a glance.

Frank said, “Anyway, you ask me, Bernstein thinks all this is on the up-and-up, and he wrote the book. Woodward knows better. He just shaped the corners. I mean, it's a good story, and people seem to be buying it. Anyway, I figured Nixon would be out of there once Agnew was gone, but he's hung on this long, so maybe he'll stick it out.”

Lois started going on about what her new best friend, Pastor Campbell of the Harvest Home Light of Day Church, thought, evidence of the sinful nature of human beings, and powerful human beings in particular, while Jesse sat near Rosanna, holding out his hands so she could roll skeins of yarn into balls. Joe watched Jesse watch Frank, both at supper and afterward. But he couldn't tell anything. He guessed maybe Jesse just saw an old man, fifty-four now, and his gaze passed over him as over every old man. But Joe saw a hunter, lean and avid. Though what Frank might be hunting, Joe had no idea.

Frank was gone before breakfast, and out all day. Joe and Jesse were sitting on the front porch, waiting for an evening breeze, when Frank pulled up. He threw open the door and jumped out, clearly in a good mood, then trotted up the steps and sat down in the empty chair. He said, “I wonder where my old shotgun is.”

Joe said, “There's a rifle in the gun cupboard at Mom's.”

“I do wonder if I've still got the eye.” He said to Jesse, “You shoot?” Jesse shook his head.

“You want to learn?”

“What's in season?” said Jesse.

“Targets, anyway. Tin cans.”

The next morning, Joe heard them through the open front window, talking as they went out the door. He was still lying in bed, planning to feed the ewes at about seven. All he heard was Frank's voice saying, “Fox was all I hunted back then. Twenty dollars a hide, which is a hundred dollars today, or more. Had to shoot it in the head, though, so you didn't damage the pelt. I knew a guy in New York, when I first moved there, who fed himself by shooting ducks in Central
Park early Sunday mornings, which was fine, because they are a terrible nuisance.”

Jesse said, “Where is Central Park?”

Frank laughed and said, “You come visit me and I'll show you.”

Joe's heart sank, not because he had never visited Central Park, but because he had never even thought to visit Central Park.

They were back by noon. It was ninety-six degrees, and they set their guns down, splashed their faces with water from the outside pump, and flopped in the shade of the back stoop. Joe said, “How'd you do?”

Jesse was grinning. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and said, “I did get a squirrel. Uncle Frank got two jays and a crow.”

“That crow was sitting on the branch, screaming at me, daring me to shoot him, so I did. We killed about a hundred bottles, too. I'm surprised there was that much ammo around.”

Jesse said, “Do Richie and Michael hunt?”

“They learned to shoot at school, but they aren't fond of it.”

“Did you ever kill a person?”

Frank looked at Jesse with a steady gaze, but didn't say anything. Jesse looked at Joe. Joe could not help his eyebrows lifting. But he said, “You two hungry? There's plenty of that rolled roast left.”

Frank said, “Where's Lois?”

“Getting her shop ready. She wants to open in two weeks. She called and told me she found a perforated veneer rocking chair. Out in someone's barn, right beside an old Pierce-Arrow.”

“Say…” said Frank.

Joe stiffened.

“Can I borrow a couple of things?”

“Like what?”

“Pair of overalls, your truck.”

“You're up to no good,” said Joe, but he said it jovially.

“Always,” said Frank.

“That's what Pop said.”

Jesse looked back and forth between them.

The truth came out at supper—Frank was looking for farms to buy. He had a friend named Jim someone who had decided that farmland was going to appreciate now that grain prices were up. Jim was
thinking of buying himself a farm in the south of France, growing lavender and poppies.

“Staples,” said Joe.

“There are farms in France that only grow plums. Or sunflowers. Or blond cows. You need a couple of those. Blonde d'Aquitaine. Beautiful cattle. Quiet as mice; bigger than Angus, too.”

“Now you tell me,” said Joe. His overalls were roomy on Frank. When Frank brought the truck back, he had put two hundred miles on it.

He left three days later. Joe thought they'd gotten along pretty well. They were certainly too old to wrestle, and maybe even to argue, and they had nothing to argue about. Frank had walked through the fields and looked in the barn. It wouldn't be Joe telling him what the price of land was these days, it would be some appraiser in Usherton, or even in Des Moines. What made him sad was Jesse's reaction. The first thing Jesse did was take the rifle out and shoot things—targets, jays, barn swallows, rabbits, squirrels—and the second thing he did was quiz Joe and Rosanna about all of Frank's adventures. What did he do in the army? Was it true he shot some people? Where did he go besides Italy? Did he really live in a tent over in Ames? Did he really invent gunpowder? Did he really steal German documents at the end of the war? Joe could not set him straight, so Jesse started writing Frank letters, and Frank started writing back, and, sure enough, Jesse asked in August if it was too late to go to Iowa State. Minnie said no, it wasn't, and that she was proud of him. To Joe she said, “I always thought he was a self-starter. That's why I didn't say a word about college. I wanted it to be his idea.” Joe just said, “Well, I'll miss him.”

—

HENRY HAD NEVER ASKED
himself where he got his methodical ways, but as the fall progressed and Rosanna crept toward Chicago bit by bit, he saw that she must have been the source. Her goal was to come in early October, when the trees would be at their peak—she wanted nothing fancy in the way of food or sightseeing, but she did want to go to the Sears Tower and look out at the lake, to walk around the campus and look at the changing leaves. Henry made a reservation at an inexpensive Italian place famous for meatballs, gave
her a map with clear instructions for getting from 80 to 55 to Lake Shore Drive and then to his duplex. He scrubbed his kitchen sink, his bathtub, and his baseboards, and he laundered not only the sheets in the second bedroom, but also the bedspread. He walked around sniffing—he could smell nothing untoward. He bought some chrysanthemums (chrysanthema, really) for the hall table, and a nice coffee cake from the bakery. He pretended to himself that all of this was a pain in the neck, but it wasn't. At what point would he decide that Rosanna had been forced off Lake Shore Drive into Lake Michigan and he needed to call the State Police?

But she was early; she knocked rather than rang the bell, and when he opened the door and saw her neat bun and happy face framed against his neighbors' maple trees, he was pleased. She had a paper sack with her. She put it under her arm and carried it in. When Henry realized that her change of clothes was in that paper sack, he felt a slight pang that, even though they all knew she was extending her range, no one had bothered to buy her an overnight bag.

She came in talking. “You look thin. But that's a nice haircut. Oh, look at your couch; I saw that same fabric in Younkers and I liked it. I even said, ‘Henry would like that,' I really did. So bright. Good for a place like Chicago. Have you talked to Claire? Just call her—I'm not saying a word. Well, I will say one word. Insanity. But you'll hear all about it. Those boys! Well, they do fine in school, and why wouldn't they? It's worth their lives to get A's. Of course, I'm exaggerating. Jesse shot a starling right off the roof of my house; I nearly jumped out of my skin. It fell with a giant thud onto the top of the TV room—you know, where you all used to sleep. Jesse is taking it back to Ames, or somewhere down there, to be stuffed. I'm glad he's going to college. He's doing fine, I must say, for a boy who never opened a book in his life. How you children got to be all so different I'll never know, but he made a thousand dollars with that field Pioneer planted between my place and theirs, he had those detasselers practically running. He was very good about making sure they had plenty of water—that was a real hot spell. But—”

Henry offered her a glass of the lightest Riesling he had been able to find, and she sat in the oat-colored armchair and sipped it, looking around. Finally, she said the magic words: “This is a nice place. Small, but clean.”

Henry laughed. He said, “How was your trip?”

“My land, until I got to Chicago, it was fine, but there was a car in flames right beside the highway. I never saw such a thing. No one around it. I nearly drove off the road, staring.”

“You could have taken a plane, Ma.”

“Now, why do that when I have a perfectly good car? I did pass the airport, I believe.” Pause. “Chicago is not at all like Minneapolis.”

“Not at all,” said Henry.

Rosanna took a sip of her wine and looked around again. Henry let the silence fill the room as she stared at his bookcases, as ordered as the stacks in a library. She took another sip, then smiled and said, “Well, that scar has almost disappeared.” The tip of Henry's finger went to the spot just beneath his lip. Rosanna shook her head. “Tsh! What days those were! To think I had to sew that up myself, with you lying in Lillian's lap and screaming your head off. Good thing I had a spool of silk thread. My goodness!” Then, “I think I'm a little tired. I should wash up, too.”

“You can lie down for an hour or so. I made the supper reservation for six.”

He helped her out of the chair, which was deep, and held her elbow lightly—not offensively—into the bedroom. Then he carried in the paper sack. She was sitting on the bed, looking around. She said, “Now, this is a lovely pattern—we used to call it Wild Goose Chase. I don't know what they call it now.” She ran her hand over the quilt. “Black and white with the red is very modern.” She lay back, and he covered her with the extra blanket. He lowered the shades, even though it was darkening toward twilight by five now. After that, he went out and checked to see whether she had parked the car safely; then he sorted through the tests he had to grade by Monday, went into the kitchen, closed the door, and called Philip. They had started laughing about something when Henry felt a surge of alarm and dropped the phone. What was it? Nothing audible, and yet, when he entered the bedroom and turned on the light, his mother was collapsed on the floor, maybe three feet from the bed, between the bed and the door.

Henry exclaimed, “Oh shit!” and Rosanna moved, opened her eyes. Henry knelt down and smoothed her skirt over her legs. When Rosanna spoke, Henry could barely understand her, which provoked
more alarm. There was no phone in this bedroom, so he nearly jumped up to call an ambulance. Instead, he contained himself, and lifted her, eased her onto the bed. She was not at all heavy. She gave out a long sigh that ended in a cough, and then she said something he did understand: “I thought I was the queen, you know, when I used to drive Jake into town. I would wave and smile. Right, left. I would just lift my hands, and Jake would arch his neck.” She lifted her hands maybe an inch off her skirt and smiled. “So silly.”