Spoonwood (2 page)

“Oh-oh. You better let me have a look before you put any money down,” Howard says.

“I already gave him a couple hundred.”

Elenore prevents Howard from using the ignoramus word by kicking him under the table.

Howard makes a pistol out of his hand and points the barrel at Elenore. “What day is it?” he says.

“It's your birthday, Howie—the big six-oh—maybe.”

Howard bows toward Pitchfork and Cooty.

“I thought you were older,” Pitchfork says.

“I'm ancient.”

“Actually, Howie's not sure how old he is,” Elenore says. “We were both fosters, but we celebrate Howard's birthday in the marrying month of June.”

“You ever going to retire, Howie?” Pitchfork asks, his voice shrewder than usual.

“Never,” Howard says.

“You can't say never,” Pitchfork says. “You'll kick the bucket one of these days.”

“Not me. I'm neither going to die nor weaken.”

“Leg hurts him, various other aches and pains,” Elenore says.

“Not retiring today or on the morrow,” Howard says, “and if I do it won't be because of any ache or pain.”

“When you do retire—Freddie, he going to take over the business?” Pitchfork asks.

“There's times, Pitchfork, when I'd just as soon duct tape your mouth to your backside.”

“I was just making conversation.”

“It's a sensitive area with both of them,” Elenore says.

“I should of guessed,” Pitchfork says.

“Everything is guessing—don't you just love it,” Cooty says. He nibbles at his food, leaving most of it. It pains Grandma Elenore that Cooty prefers his own cooking to hers, accomplished in his stew pot, which has been on his wood stove for a decade without ever being emptied and which has produced a crust on the rim an inch thick all the way around.

“How about we celebrate my birthday?” Howard looks at Elenore.

“Tomorrow, Howie.”

“What's wrong with today?”

“I'm driving up to St. Johnsbury on genealogy business and likely will be late for supper. I'm going to see a lady up there who claims to have a line on us. You remember that farm we worked at where it was said the Indians used to come?”

“After all these years, what difference does it make now?”

“Roots, heritage—for our grandchildren. Don't you think they have have a right to know where they came from?” she says.

“I live in the here and now,” says Howard.

Elenore turns to Pitchfork, says, “He's a liar,” then looks Howard in the eye. “Tell me you don't miss your mother.”

“I refuse to submit to the calling of bad dreams, and that's that.” Howard turns away from Elenore to Cooty. “How old are you, old man?”

“It varies from day to day,” Cooty says.

Dad says to Elenore, “If you're leaving town, where's Birch going to stay?”

“Why, I'll take him with me, that's a simple simon.”

“Oh,” Dad pulls at his beard and long, greasy hair. Dad is not what you would call a snappy dresser. He wears blue jeans, solid-colored tee shirts with no messages, and work boots. Only his belt is distinctive, wide, Western style with a brass buckle; Dad bought the belt at Wall Drug when he was traveling the roads of America because he liked the jackknife inscribed on the buckle. Dad has been whittling since he was a kid. In learning to keep his knife blade honed, Dad developed
a knack for sharpening tools. He can sharpen anything, always at the correct angle, and he works fast. He sharpens all of grandfather's tools. Sharpening is a talent Dad has that even Howard acknowledges and appreciates. Since you died, Mother, Dad does two things in his spare time—he drinks and he whittles.

While Howard and Pitchfork argue and Cooty and Elenore play the audience, Dad removes one of his boot laces and drags it on the counter.

“Watch this,” says Spontaneous Combustion, and he leaps off Cooty's lap. He stalks the string, then pounces on it as if it were a mouse.

I'm fascinated, trying to gauge the relative importance of the string, the cat, the man. And then it hits me: Spontaneous Combustion can be found on the furniture, on the floor, even climbing the walls, but he is never on the ceiling. The ceiling, which is the part of the building I view for most of my waking hours, is a separate realm. The ceiling is up, everything else is down. It's taken me quite a while to arrive at this starting point for reality, because I was tricked by my relative position, in my crib on my back looking up, into thinking up was straight ahead. Spontaneous Combustion has shown me the true way.

Spontaneous Combustion soon grows bored with Dad and assumes his sentry position on top of the fridge. Dad laces up his boot.

“Dad likes you,” I say to Spontaneous Combustion.

“Your Dad doesn't like anybody,” Spontaneous Combustion says. “He patronizes me out of envy, because I'm free and he's burdened with the likes of you, you pitiful hopeless fool.”

Eventually, Howard rubs a hand over his bald head, pinches the crack in his chin, grimaces. “Production calls, my friends,” he says, and lights a Camel cigarette. Which is the signal: breakfast meeting over, time to go to work.

In a few minutes Howard and Pitchfork drive off in the Old Honeywagon, Dad and Cooty in the New Honeywagon; Elenore does the dishes, then takes off with me in search of her identity.

I'm not good company. I don't remember the trip to St. Johnsbury very clearly, because I sleep through most of it. (Riding in a car does that to me.) In the town I do remember being lugged here, lugged there, fawned over by various strangers, and then the drive back, Grandma Elenore crying her eyes out.

2

FREDERICK ELMAN

T
here's no air conditioning in the cab of the Old Honeywagon, so Cooty Patterson and I drive with the windows rolled down and converse in the roar of engine and wind. It's like the sound of a blizzard. I devised our system for picking up trash. I do the work and Cooty does the psychotherapy. Cooty doesn't work even when he's riding with Howard or Pitchfork. Of course, he isn't paid either.

“You like your baby, Freddie?” Cooty shouts into the roar.

“I don't know,” I say.

“I like him too. I like all babies,” Cooty says.

“They don't do much,” I say.

“You've got to admire them for that,” Cooty says.

A minute goes by. We leave the hardtop on Upper Darby Road. The dirt lane narrows, and I slow down. I like driving slow, unlike Pitchfork.

We're on a downgrade and someone passes, but it's not a car. It's Garvin Prell on his bicycle. He wears a European racing suit and helmet. I gun the engine and roar on by. It doesn't bother him. It's well known around Darby that Garvin has no fear of motorists. He treats us as if we were not there. It's that arrogance
more than anything else that infuriates me about Garvin and his kind. Not that my kind is any better. We're just arrogant in different ways.

It's quieter now. You'd think I could relax, but it's the other way around. In the quiet, pressure builds inside of me. Strange thoughts flash in and out of my mind. It occurs to me that I could relieve the pressure caused by my resentment of Garvin Prell by shoving Cooty through the window.

“You like being a father?” Cooty asks.

I shrug my shoulders.

“You're afraid of it, right?”

“I feel bad for the kid,” I say. “Mother dead, and his only parent not fit to care for him.”

“You still sad, Freddie. I thought you'd be cheering up by now.”

“Don't you start in on me, Cooty.”

“Gets on your nerves, living at home?”

“Cooty, I don't know who I am, what I am, I don't know anything. I got this kid who just creates resentment in me. I'm all bottled up. I hate to think what will happen when I blow.”

“Make a move.”

“What do you mean, a move?”

“Do something even if it's wrong.”

“I'm thinking about a road trip. I hate to burden her, but Mom would take care of Birch while I thought things out.”

“You have a destiny in mind?”

“Cooty, the word is destination, not destiny.”

“Isn't that funny. You got—what?—a year of college and know destiny from destination and me, well, it all seems like one thing.”

“Cooty, you ever get hemmed in by the damn trees? Ever have the urge to go someplace with wide open spaces?”

“No, I don't have any urges at all. But I do plan to retire to the wide open spaces.”

“Retire from what? You haven't had a job since the mill closed down.”

“Retire from the cold winter, to South Texas to live with my half-brother, Kenneth Riley.”

“I didn't know you had a brother. Is he as crazy as you, old man?”

“I like to think so. He owns a nice trailer.”

“Cooty, what do you believe in?”

“Wow! What a great question.”

“It's not a great question, Cooty. It's an obvious question.”

“Let me think.” Cooty rolls up the window, rolls down the window, rolls up the window. “I believe in my stew pot. What about you, Freddie, what do you believe in?”

“Nothing right now.”

We're in the heart of Upper Darby, traveling through the deep forest of the Salmon Forest Trust Conservancy, which Lilith's father established before he died. The landscape hurts me with its beauty—the great sugar bush of maples, stands of pine and hemlocks, but mainly a mixed forest of white birch, yellow birch, red maple, sugar maple, moose wood, white pine, cedar, red spruce, ash, red oak, white oak, shagbark hickory, and other species. Underneath the canopy, new ferns sway gently in the breeze. On each side of the road are stone walls. Lilith's spirit still resides in these woods. I try not to think selfish thoughts.

“All the more reason to go west,” says a voice inside my head. “Even in death she's smothering your freedom.”

“What was that?” says Cooty.

“Just talking to myself,” I say.

The old man pats my shoulder. Cooty can tell when I'm in my grief.

“I'm going to pull over for a sec,” I say. “I want to shut the engine and listen to the woods.”

Cooty's puzzled. He doesn't know what I mean. That's all right. Cooty has lived a lifetime in uncertainty and confusion. He's grown to accept this condition as normal and even, in its own way, exciting. I wish I had a little bit of him inside of me.

I park the Honeywagon as close to the ditch as I dare. Even so, the big truck fills a third of the road. I shut down the engine.

“See that path?” I point.

Cooty nods. “Deer run?”

“Deer run, coyote run, hiker run, snowmobile run—all the critters run that path. Lilith and I often walked it.”

“Where's it come out?”

“Lonesome Hill.”

“The old hippie commune?”

“Right. Lilith always liked that hollow between the summits. We would go there and picnic.”

I get out of the truck. Cooty remains inside. It's an effort for him to mount and dismount the high steps into the cab. I stand in the middle of the road, looking at the stone walls, the trees, listening, trying somehow to connect with Lilith's spirit. But I don't really believe in spirits. Did she cheat on me? Did she have her baby at the ledges to get rid of it? To get away from me? To spite me? To spite herself? These thoughts make no sense, but they're in my head, as if put there by some malevolent being. Lilith's spirit—if it was ever with me—must surely have departed in disgust. Now I'm visualizing a road out west someplace, long and disappearing into the horizon.

I'm still standing in the middle of the road when an old Chevy Impala, traveling very slowly, approaches from town and comes to a stop just as I make way. The car has Louisiana plates, which give me a stab of nostalgia for a state I'd lived in for a brief period some years back. Behind the wheel is a woman of about twenty-five with a serious face, skin light-brown, hair long and blue-black and straight, her face broad, nose wide and flat, eyes green, lips delicate and curved.

“Excuse me,” she says. “I'm looking for the Salmon estate.”

“You're almost there,” I say.

“I thought so, I just wanted to check.” She looks around, not nervous really, just wary.

“You one of the new people, right?” I say.

“Not exactly.” The woman speaks softly and with confidence in an accent that is slightly British, slightly American southern, and slightly . . . I search in my mind for language and come up with the word “musical.” I've never quite heard anything like this woman's lingo before.

I point. “The estate is about a half-mile on the left. Drive in between the stone pillars. You won't see the house from the road.”

“Oh, yes. I remember the pillars now. Thank you.”

I watch the woman drive off. I'm thinking about the Salmon mansion, the Italianate architecture in the middle of a New England setting, the greenhouse where Lilith grew flowers, the lane where she planted lilac bushes on the day she gave birth and died. Even my nostalgia goes sour. Now I'm thinking about Persephone Salmon, Lilith's mother, and how much I hate her and how much she hates me.

Cooty hollers down from the cab. “What—what was that?”

“I said, no doubt Persephone Salmon hates me for good reason,” I say.

“Right—right,” Cooty says, blinking, in awe at the incomprehensibility of everything.

At the end of the day I drop Cooty at his cabin in Donaldson and return to my parents' place in Darby. I park the Old Honeywagon near the barn and go right to my camper, break out a bottle of Old Crow, and get a cold beer from my propane fridge. I pour myself a double shot, glug it down, and follow it with suds. It's deathly hot in the camper, but I don't intend to leave it until I get a good buzz on. I could drive right to the bar, but I want to be alone to enjoy the first hit of the booze. When it starts to wear down, I'm headed for a bar in Bellows Falls. I'm not even going to bother to shower—let the bastards smell the garbage, in the seams of my clothes, in the pores of my skin, in the interstices of my soul. Let them know what I am, even if I do not.

Through the little aluminum frame window I can see my parents' place. It used to consist of forty or more acres, but Howard had to sell off most of his land when he lost his job and the house burned down. My people are reduced to less than an acre. Every square foot is used—mobile home, barn, garden, shrine to the Virgin, junked cars (for parts), and just junk that Howard keeps for reasons of his own. My father recovered from his down days, a fact that gives me hope for myself.

I note now that the Ford wagon, my mother's vehicle of choice, is not in the lot. She must still be in transit from St. Johnsbury. I do some quick calculating. I have one chore that must be done—dump my camper toilet in the mobile home system. If I do it now, I'll be able to avoid my mother and Birch. But first I must enjoy my fifteen minutes of euphoria.

I go in just as Howard has finished his supper, beans and hot dogs. When he comes home from work he wants to eat right away. He'll wait for no man and no wife. We exchange grunts for greetings. I've finished my business when my mother shows up with Birch. It's her third trip to St. Johnsbury, and something about the way she looks at me catches my attention. Usually I can read her face—fallen with a bout of sadness, glowing when she prays, furrowed brow when she's displeased, peaceful and open when she talks on the phone to my older sisters far away. But this evening I cannot tell what is on my mother's mind. She certainly doesn't look like a woman who has failed in her mission, because she's smiling as if she's about to tell a joke. At the same time she's twitchy, as if she'd seen some bad news on TV. I tell myself she's just tired, or maybe I'm projecting onto her a wedge of my own despair.

“Stick around, I have some news,” she says to me. She puts Birch on his back in the easy chair behind the dining table. I look at him for a second and he looks at me. “Why did you have to happen to me?” I say in a low voice so Howard and Elenore don't hear.

Birch responds with some spit-up, as if he understood me.

“Sit down, have something to eat,” my father says to my mother in a slack tone of gruffness that is as close as he can come to tenderness. “I'll make you a plate.” He gets up from the table.

“Thanks, Howie. I'm pooped.” She sits down. I sit down.

“You want something?” he says to me.

“No, I'm not hungry,” I lie. I'm planning to grab a bite at the bar.

Howard warms the beans and two hot dogs in the microwave.

“Tea?” my father says.

“Please,” my mother says.

Howard turns up the kettle, removes the plate from the microwave, and with a theatrical gesture places the meal in front of his wife.

“Toast?” he says.

“Just one,” she says.

Instead of placing the slice on her plate, he tosses it artfully and it falls on the side of her plate. He stands, waiting for orders.

“Sit down, Howie,” Elenore says.

Howard sits down.

Spontaneous Combustion and Birch watch from the sidelines as if they know something is going to go pop. I just want my mother to finish her meal and dispense her news, so I can head out. I understand now what my father must have known from the start. My mother has something to say, but she's hungry and she won't deliver her message on an empty stomach.

My mother is a slow, finicky eater, and she soon uses up my father's meager store of patience.

“Well?” he yells.

“I'll finish my
suppah,
thank you.” Two more bites to go.

“Want more tea?” my father says, in a tone suggesting Elenore is about to be indicted by a grand jury.

“Hold your water,” my mother says. One bite to go.

“Sorry,” my father says, and he clasps his hands in something like prayer and looks at the ceiling. It's one of his stock gestures and never fails to infuriate me.

Finished, my mother pushes her plate away. “I got some pretty good information today,” she says. And she goes on, telling the whole story in her exasperating way, the drive up to St. Johnsbury, the weather, the road conditions, getting to her point in her own good time, finally speaking of her profound disappointment in the same chatty tone as the unimportant information. The records of her origins were lost decades ago.

“All's I could find out was that I was put up for adoption, but there were no takers. Imagine that—no takers.”

My mother is left with her childhood memories—the orphanage, the Sisters of Mercy, a series of foster homes—but no knowledge of her roots.

“I'm sorry it turned out that way,” Howard says. “I know it meant a lot to you.”

Suddenly, my mother's face lights up with that funny look I noticed when she came into the house. She focuses the look on my father.

“I didn't find my people but I found yours.”

“This does not bode well,” my father says in a low growl.

“We're not Elmans in this house.” My mother looks at me, and she looks at my father, and then she reaches into her handbag and gives my father a copy of a birth certificate. “This is you, Howie—you.”

My father puts on his reading glasses and cautiously sniffs the document. He's only learned to read in the last few years, and he always makes a big production out of the act, his mouth drawn tight, face puckered. Without a word or even a warning shot over the bow, he hands the paper to me.

My father was born in Caribou, Maine, sixty-one years ago May 29. But it's the name that catches my attention. My father was christened Claude de Repentigny Latour.