Return to Oakpine (15 page)

Mason said, “Larry, bring me back a mop and charcoal lighter. Any.” And as the boy waved and departed, Mason stepped over and sat on the grass in the dappled shade, and Craig joined him. “I'm halfway inside, and I will say it is white, but not too white.”

The baguettes were Muenster and chicken salad with Chinese mustard. Mason tore off half and took a bite and said, “My god, we're rescued.”

“I love it when we eat like lawyers,” Craig said. “These are from Edelman's just to show we have some capable luncheries in Oakpine.”

Mason, still chewing, pointed at the open garage with his sandwich and said, “What do you think, old friend, of our band's new rehearsal hall?”

“Okay,” Craig said. “Good, good. But what is our name? Did we have a name?”

Mason said quietly, “Life on Earth. We were mainly called ‘Those four guys from Oakpine,' which is kind of truth in advertising, but I remember Jimmy wanting ‘Life on Earth.'” They were talking and chewing and gesturing with their paper cups of pop.

“Whatever fits on the flyer,” Craig said.

“How much paint have you got?”

“Plenty,” Craig said. “Do you want to paint this?” He indicated the garage.

“I do. Tomorrow afternoon. I'd like to spray it like the enemy and move in.”

Craig sat still, unnerved to be happy this way, his old friend in town, all this old new stuff ringing his ears. “Done,” Craig said. “I'll finish in the morning and bring out the gear.”

They were silent for a while after eating, old friends, and the day ticked in them, leaves falling along the street and the sun rolling away, weaker every day. “Okay,” Craig said finally. “I'll finish upstairs by six or so, and then we can make plans for tomorrow.” They'd talked like that the whole time, measuring the steps.

After lunch Mason found the little brass pressure nozzle for the hose and hooked it up. When he turned on the water, the old green rubber hose snared and bulged and then shot a sharp narrow stream twenty feet. Mason grabbed two loops of hose and marched into the open garage, shooting his avenging water into the upper corners of the little building and then back and forth along the walls, as scraps and splinters and dirt and spider webs flew free in the powerful wash. He was having fun. The place would blow-dry overnight and he could spray it tomorrow, but when he turned to the back wall, the jet of water caught the window and two panes blew out, and as he moved the spray to the sidewall to assess the damage, the pressure slapped two planks loose, and so he gave the entire room the careful once-over, loosening ten or twelve wallboards, smiling, thinking, I'm going to wash this house down.

Having found a project he hadn't anticipated, Mason climbed into it with both feet. He bought a dozen fresh one-by-eights and laid them on sawhorses the next day before the doorless garage shell. He could see light between the planks in many places. He was able to cinch about half the loosened boards, running two screws into each end. Then he pried off the five or six that were worn and weathered beyond reclaiming and threw them in the dumpster. He measured each missing slot and cut his new lumber with Craig's bright circular saw, tapping them into the wall with his hammer, each piece snug as a puzzle. The golden sawdust misted up into the afternoon sunlight, and he was happy to have a good day. At one point he was on his knees behind the building, laying in a bright new board along the base of the foundation, and he caught a motion in the corner of his eye: Jimmy Brand waving from his chair just outside the Brands' garage.

“Be careful!” Jimmy called.

“I know you!” Mason shouted back. He stood and waved his drill motor. “The new clubhouse. The band is going to sound real good at this distance. When I get cleaned up, I'll come down for a drink.” Again, standing in the weak pure light looking down through the gardens of the backyards and calling to his friend rushed Mason with a vertigo that he couldn't understand, a gravity, a recognition. It wasn't déjà vu. He waved and smiled. Waving a drill—it was a wonder.

He brushed the new spots and the rough spots inside and out with gray wood primer, and then he cleaned the doorframe of the old hinges and plugged the old screw holes with split shims and mashed them flush with the head of his hammer, and then he measured the aperture twice and wrote down the numbers on a card in his pocket. He'd install a new door, a lift door on tracks. Craig would know how.

Kathleen

The next day by noon, Mason had run one more spray of house-white exterior latex along the bottom plate of the wooden garage. He'd given a good coat to the inside and the outside, and he backed out of the space looking right and left for any streaky holidays. The backs of his legs were pinging, and his eyebrows were dusted white. Craig was geared to go with the airless sprayer, and as he began painting the interior with the first of twelve gallons of Navajo white, which he would use by nightfall, Mason went out and cleaned the yard once again and then cut the front lawn. The day rose and held on the fulcrum of the ripe summer morning, then tipped without a breeze or a weighty cloud into a fall afternoon, the yellow light now an ounce removed and shadows drawn from the old book, unmistakable; the season had capitulated. Mason edged the front walk with a shovel, realizing he was just hanging out. He washed the shovel and leaned it inside the bright garage with his rake and broom. The old cracked cement inside the garage was clean; he'd scrubbed it with the charcoal lighter, a solvent. From the house he could hear the periodic hissing of the airless. His furniture, such as it was, was all covered with tarpaulins, and he'd spend tonight up with Craig and Marci while the paint dried. For a moment he lifted the rake and thought about pulling through the lawn one more time, the satisfaction, but he put it back. Mason walked down the old block to the Brands and stood at the end of the driveway for a moment. He approached Mr. Brand's boat and put a hand on it, a boat he hadn't touched in thirty years, and as he did he heard voices, a female voice, and by the cadence he could hear that a woman was reading. By the open side door he stood and listened for a minute, the words coming steady in a young woman's voice. Mrs. Brand's garden had stepped out of its bed. Several pumpkins showed their orange shoulders in the dusty green growth. The voice stopped, and Mason considered knocking, calling hello, and then he heard Jimmy Brand's voice, the same voice in a tenor whisper. Jimmy was remarking on whatever she had read, and Mason heard only parts: “No, it's going to tell you where to go now. It'll take all your attention, but you're in. Well done.”

Before Mason could move, the young woman came past him, her face flushed, agitated and glorious, smiling, and she said, “Excuse me,” and settled her papers into a folder as she grabbed up her bicycle and wheeled toward the street.

“Hello, Jimmy?” Mason called into the dim garage as he entered.

“Mason, for chrissakes.”

“Something like that,” Mason said. Jimmy stood from where'd been sitting on the bed. Mason hugged his old friend. He said quietly, “You're sick then.”

Jimmy smiled, rolling his head back in the pillow. “I've been slightly worse. Kathleen Gunderson got me on some killer drugs. She told me you were back in town.”

“We're neighbors again, big boy. We're going to be seeing each other.” Mason sat in the armchair at the foot of Jimmy's bed. “What I mean is, Jimmy, I'm sorry I haven't been down here sooner.” As he said the sentence, it felt inane to him and it hurt, but he claimed it and continued: “I came back to this weird planet, and that was one kind of tough, and I didn't know you'd be here, and all the days in these years I wanted to call you, how many, hundreds, they suddenly stacked up and . . .”

“Got heavy,” Jimmy said. “Don't let them. I am glad to see you, mister. You were kind to me, and I knew you were all right or doing all right, and I also knew that I'd see you again. I always knew it, but I didn't know it would be like this, with this.”

Mason sat and looked at Jimmy and felt again his heart beating the seconds away. It felt unreal to be in the same room again. “Thirty years,” he said. “What is that?”

“Minutes,” Jimmy said. “Yes? Is it still you?”

“I see now that it could be,” Mason said. “I like your place.” He leaned forward and put his hand on the bed. “You got my letter, my one letter.”

“I did, and you got mine.”

“I didn't say it all right in there.”

“That book upset you.”

“It did, but I loved it. I didn't want you to blur what had happened. It was all simple to me: Matt was at fault.”

“It was a novel,” Jimmy said. “I know what you're saying.”

“No, it's a good book,” Mason said. “I think I was angry because I didn't write it.”

“And you know I didn't really have a choice,” Jimmy said.

“I know. There were many days when I wanted to talk to you about the books, all of them.”

Mason had read all of Jimmy Brand's books and had some of his feature writing printed off the Internet in his office. He'd followed Jimmy's career, at first because he had the same vague ache to write that all lawyers have, but then simply to see which way Jimmy was going to use the moments they'd shared in his stories. They were good books, and Mason had noted the reviews and awards, but he hadn't read the books the way America had. He'd read them to see Jimmy's take on the life they'd known. Only two of the books, both novels, centered on their hometown. One was actually set in New York and had flashbacks to a little town in Montana, which Mason knew to be Oakpine. The other was a rites-of-passage book, Jimmy's first novel, and it used street names and places, and it captured and delivered a feeling of growing up in Oakpine like nothing Mason had ever known before.

“They're all good books,” Mason told his friend. “More than books to me.”

“Thanks, Mason.”

“
Reservoir
taught me an important lesson.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It did. It showed me that I didn't know how to read. That book made me crazy, because you—”

“Because it's a novel.”

“Exactly. It's a novel and I was there, and I got pulled into a story I know pretty well, and when it turned, it threw me out on my ear. I know exactly what you were doing.”

“Maybe you do know how to read. I'm glad to see you. How have you been?

Mason let the question rise and fall. “I don't know,” he said. “Being honest, I don't know.”

“Good,” Jimmy said. “It's no help knowing. I can still see your real face in the years.”

“That old face,” Mason said. “And I can see you. It feels like I saw you last week.”

“I still owe you for the Trail's End, the room rate.”

“I've been worried about the money.”

“Last week,” Jimmy said. “That must be what thirty years is. I am so glad to see you again.”

•   •   •

Mason stayed at the Ralstons' house on Oakpine Mountain for two nights while the paint at his place dried, and the second night in the thick early dusk, Kathleen Gunderson took him down to the care center. He'd been having a drink with Craig and Marci in their glassy kitchen, watching the lights of the town come on below them. Craig and Mason had already laid out their new campaign: treat and seal the floors, rebuild the basement stairs, install a banister and seven new windows, refurbish the fireplace, check the boiler. Mason rattled the ice in his scotch, gratified to have these things before him.

“You're going to make it so nice, you'll have to stay,” Marci said. She'd come in while they were making their strategy, listing tools, materials, inventory. “Start a new life.”

“I just want to stay until it snows.” Mason turned to her, as she rolled the sleeves of a white shirt. After work, she wore a big shirt and Levi's. “Get some good out of that new roof. Until the snow falls, I'm just a sidekick to Handy here.”

Marci crossed the room with her glass of merlot and sat at the butcher-block table with the two men. “Well, I want to get everybody up here once before that, a dinner or something. Could Jimmy come?”

“There are days,” Mason said. “Kathleen told me he could go out.” They watched a car turn up from the street, its lights now coming up the long drive. “There's Kathleen,” Marci said. “She's giving you the tour.”

“It's a date,” Craig Ralston said.

“It's my hometown,” Mason said, standing up.

“What should I do about Frank and Kathleen?” Marci asked.

Craig shrugged and said, “Invite them both. They're big kids. It's been long enough. I'll tell Frank not to bring the girl. It'll just be the old-timers.”

They saw Kathleen stand out of her blue Volvo and wave. “It'd be good to get everybody together,” Mason said. “Let's do it. I'll bring the keg and my tambourine.”

“Don't joke,” Craig said. “We'll fire up the drums at least.”

“I'm gone,” Mason said. “You two behave. I'll be home by ten.”

“Touch-up tomorrow,” Craig said. “And I'll rent that sander for the floors.”

•   •   •

In Kathleen's automobile they talked about Jimmy. Mason had made arrangements to pay for the medications, but Kathleen had filed under the state Medicaid plan. “I'll just get it all,” he had told her.

“He's indigent,” she said. “It's covered.”

“We want more than just the standard stuff,” he told her. “I know there are levels of these things.”

“There are. And we're getting him the best. I know you've got money, Mason. It doesn't exactly work like that. I know what's available as it comes available. I've always gone to the top drawer for all our patients. Jimmy Brand is not the first person with AIDS in Oakpine.”

The speech was a scolding, and Mason took it as such. He'd seen Kathleen a couple times since his return, and he understood she was smarting still or something, maybe it was that she was pinched by the embarrassment of Frank's decision; she was stiffer than he'd known her. He had felt familiar with the woman until that moment, and now he saw what it was.

Lights were on in the gigantic new homes well back in the thick scrub oak on Oakpine Mountain—these huge yellow plates printed the branchy imbroglio as Kathleen drove them down. He was a stranger come to town, lording it over everybody. He wondered if he'd been too bossy with Craig as well.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I know you know what to do. If I can help, I will. But don't let me—”

“I won't.” She drove down the mountain road.

After a minute of silence, which then folded and magnified, Mason said, “You want to talk this out, or should we just carry on? I'm real good with the latter. I can do it for years. Correct that: did it for years.” Kathleen turned and made a serious face at him, and the way the lost light fell on her cheekbones, Mason could see her freckles, the shadow of them. Didn't freckles fade?

“There's nothing to talk out, Mason. Please. I'm glad you could get out. Mr. Sturges will be very pleased to see you.” She spoke as if she were reading something she didn't like, and Mason knew she was angry, but he wasn't sure it was all for him.

“I was eighteen. If he remembers me, he gets the prize.”

“He's only eighty. He remembers.”

“Why's he in the center?”

“Had a stroke. Lost his wife.”

“Was she the—”

“Chorus teacher. Were you in a cappella?”

“I only sang in the band. You were in a cappella. Red dress. Hair like this, a bun?”

“It was a hairpiece.” She put her hand on top of her head. “Something we did.”

Mason looked at her until she turned from the road. “You look good,” he said. “You always looked good.”

“I'm fifty. Three years ago my husband found a girlfriend. It's the oldest story in the world. So watch what you say about how I look.”

Mason wasn't going to say it, but he was sick of being judicious and silent, and so he spoke: “I met her.”

“I have too.”

“I meant: whatever it is, this old story, it is not a beauty contest. She's a tall woman, but she's not in your league.”

“Mason, leave it.”

“Kathleen, I don't believe I will. I believe I'll go right on here.” They were at a light downtown, crossing toward the medical complex. Kathleen Gunderson sat at the wheel looking straight ahead. Mason shifted, the way a person does before launching into an explanation. “Frank's deal is not with you or about it. It's a disappointment and, in my opinion a mistake, a common and a large mistake, but it is about Frank and nothing about you.”

“Divorce is divorce, as you well know.”

“I know the legalities and nothing of the rest. I'm learning, but poorly.”

“But you'll feel free to speak to them anyway.”

With the light they crossed the intersection and began following State Street. “Again, old friend,” he said, “I'm sorry.”

The Gables Care Center was adjacent to the four-story hospital, both structures unfamiliar to Mason, and lit in the new night. Kathleen parked, but Mason stopped her before they went inside to see their old teacher. The care center was more a sprawling house with a shake roof; there was something pagodalike about it. When he took her arm, she turned to him, the hospital bright behind her. She spoke: “Jimmy's going to die, Mason. Regardless of who does what. These are powerful drugs right now, but they can't beat it. He won't see Christmas this year, so get ready or leave town or whatever, because you can't stop this train.”

He dropped his hand and said, “I thought so, but I appreciate your saying it.”

“It must be strange for you to be back,” she said, a conciliation.

“I'm strange,” Mason said. “This town is the town, but I'm a little tilted.”

She took his arm and led him toward the care center. They were walking slowly, as if waiting for words to find them.

“It's weird that you and Jimmy are both here. The band.”

“The years,” Mason said.

Kathleen said, “You guys were tight as tight and then gone.”

“I know all about it,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder if anyone else does.”