Tumbledown (57 page)

Deer have approached the cabin to nibble the grass; fish have made circles on the lake’s surface, flipping their silver bodies joyously into the air; a hawk has coasted serenely overhead; and the chipmunks that live under the porch have skittered and scrambled about aimlessly; but Bob Whitman is the first human Candler has seen in three days.

“How’s it going?” Bob asks. Candler helps him unload the container—a trash barrel with snap locks for the lid. The barrel has to go back and forth each time anyone visits the cabin. “Otherwise you get bears,” Bob explains. He tells a story Candler has heard before about arriving to find a big black bear stretched out on the porch, a battered trash barrel spilled across the plank floor. “Scared him off with the car horn,” Bob says, “or I don’t know what I’d’ve done.”

Traffic in the street below sounds almost composed, like the impossible piano music of Joseph Andujar Freeman, like the impossible portraits of Candler’s big brother, like all the impossible things that haunt the living. Candler has cut himself off from everyone he loves, but he is not about to jump. He has no intention of jumping. And yet he cannot help but imagine Pook standing on a similar balcony, and he understands that his brother did not jump.
Jump
is the wrong word. He would have thrown one leg over and then the other, seated himself on the rail, perhaps for a long time, resting there,
noticing,
and then he would have let himself slide off; perhaps he would have taken one step. But he did not jump. This is not something Candler can know definitively, and yet he does.

A pelican skims the surface of the ocean, the sun sinking behind it. The dying light is the purple of a dead boy’s exhausted flesh, and the skimming bird, in that crazy light, seeks fish foolish enough to swim near the surface. A shout comes from the street or beach, exultant or angry, male or female, from this distance it is impossible to tell. This is his third night in the hotel. Except to step onto the balcony, he has not set foot outside his room. He is getting to know the staff. He has read and reread the note that Lise left him, but he has not listened to the messages on his phone. Most seem to be from John Egri, but not all of them. He does not want to listen to them, but he wonders who sent them. Clay Hao has called, as has Kat McIntyre, but they may have called and hung up. If the call goes to voicemail, is that a missed call or a received call? He resolves the mystery by erasing all the messages and turning the phone off. On the day he arrived, he read one email before packing away his laptop. Genevieve Coury emailed to say the service would be private and she knows he will understand.

“I just got the window unit repaired,” Bob Whitman tells him, opening the Jeep’s rear hatch. “This time of year, you need the a.c. during the day and a sweater at night.” He and Candler carry the unit to the back of the cabin. Candler has not walked to this side of the cabin, and he is surprised by a wide, green yard with a reclining chair. The grass is mildly overgrown. There’s likely a mower here somewhere, he thinks. They remove the screen and set the unit in place. Wings on either side of the device close the gaps.

“I appreciate this,” Candler says, meaning the cabin, the a.c., the trash barrel, Bob’s trek up the mountain.

Bob sidles up to him and pats him gently on the back. “Solitude,” Bob says. “Sometimes it’s the only cure for what ails us.”

What does ail him? He has withdrawn from the promotion. He has moved out of his house and away from his fiancée. He has sold his car. He has inadvertently helped his best friend bed a client. He has run Lise out of California. He messed up the conversation between Mick and Karly, causing Mick to have a breakdown. But Mick seems to be better. It is Mick, after all, leading the others to the ocean. They should be there by now. They may even be on their way home.

“I brought you a few supplies,” Bob says, retracing his steps around the house and to the Jeep. He lifts a cooler from the rear seat and hauls it to the porch—a metal cooler with dents in the side. “If you decide to fish,” Bob tells him, “you can set this right in the lake. Stay cold forever.” Inside the dinged metal box: sandwich meat, a loaf of bread, shards of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cheddar cheese, Dijon mustard, dill pickles, hamburger patties, several bottles of beer. “And the kitchen cupboard ought to be full of canned goods,” Bob continues, gesturing to the door. “Soup and corn and whatall. I hope you’ve helped yourself to whatever you need.” He unfolds chairs from a slanting rack against the wall. “Sit down and have a beer with me,” he says, “and then I’ll leave you to your business.”

Candler leans back in the folding chair, rocks back until the front legs rise from the porch. He takes in a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. He has not seen a bear up here, but a bear has watched him. It watches him now, from the forest, standing on all fours. What the bear sees through the porch screen are the blurred forms of two humans. The screen makes them mysterious. Their voices remind him of moving water.

Candler is not exactly pleased to have Bob Whitman dawdle on the porch, but what does it matter? So what if he is forced to spend time with someone who is not at all important to him—a minor player in his life? The man has done him a favor. Several favors. The small-time players in our lives often wind up mattering more than any one of us can possibly predict.

Someone is at the door. Tapping professionally at the door. Room service. Candler hasn’t eaten. Pook’s painting is propped against the mini bar, and Candler has to step around it, Candler’s brother’s limpid body
(mon, two, wen, thrus, fry).
The painting stares out at the ocean, at the pelican, at the purple light. Candler opens the door on a man in a red jacket, white shirt, black pants. He holds a silver tray on one shoulder. A new face, the weekend crew.
Welcome to my humble abode,
Candler thinks. He says, “You can put it on the bed.”

“Motherfucker,” the man replies and follows Candler in. He sets the tray on the bed.

Candler is not deaf. He has heard the man but thinks he must have misunderstood. He reconciles the line by recalling that he has been drinking. More than he realized, evidently, as now he’s hearing things. “The tip is added in,” he says, “right?” He knows the tip is included. He has eaten nothing but room service since arriving.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the man asks.

Candler examines him then. His bland, pale, bumpy face is like a sack filled with miniature doughnuts. It’s Les Crews. Candler blinks and refocuses to be certain: Les Crews who once ran the sheltered workshop.

“I’ll be damned,” Candler says. “I wondered what became of you.”

“Bob Whitman fired me,” he says. “I got this job a few days after. Sorry ’bout messing up. I owed you for that job, and I let you down.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Bob Whitman says, snapping open a bottle and passing it to Candler. It’s a big bottle. Bob is in no hurry to depart. “This is the only beer I drink these days,” he goes on, levering another bottle cap, which bounces against the plank floor of the porch. The bottle opener is part of his key ring, and he deposits it in his pants pocket. His pants have enormous pockets outlined with discontinuous yellow thread. In the sci-fi novel Candler is reading, keys play a big part, and key rings are talismanic objects. Everything electronic has been replaced with mechanical parts. Even spaceships have no computers and must be run by the manipulation of levers and pulleys and cranks that swirl around the pilots, requiring a constant dance to stay afloat. Everything has changed since the collapse.

“You bring a sweater?” Bob asks. “Coat? Has it been brisk at night?” He points with the beer bottle to a stack of wood and what looks to be a new red ax at the far end of the porch. “Build a fire if you want. You won’t really need it, but a fire can be comforting.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Candler says. “I’m fine.” The beer complicates his mouth, a cold stew of flavors. He swallows and examines the bottle.

“It’s a double IPA made up in Sonoma.” Bob savors a sip and shakes his head in appreciation. “Let me just say, I don’t blame you for dropping out of the race,” he says, imagining this prying so subtle as to defy recognition. “And don’t feel you have to talk about it.”

“You never owed me,” Candler says.

“Like hell I didn’t,” Crews responds. “It’s just that I needed money and took a second job, which was fine till I started cheating on the workshop. I shouldn’t’ve done that. It’s just that my girlfriend was pregnant, and I wanted to show her something. You get me? Wanted to put some cash in the bank. Wanted her to move in with me and start thinking that I could be a permanent solution.”

It takes this conversation for Candler to recall that he recommended Crews for the job. Before he moved from Onyx Springs to the Corners, Candler played basketball every Sunday morning with a group of guys, and Les Crews was one of them. That Sunday game seems like something out of the distant past, played outside on a concrete court, and Les Crews with a decent set shot—easy to block but effective if he could get it off. He had been looking for a job just as Candler got approval for the sheltered workshop.

“I’m not the most easy guy to be with, I’ve been told,” Crews is saying, “but she liked me some. I liked her. It’s just that it takes money to make a family.”

“Want a beer?” Candler asks, indicating the bottle on the tray that Crews himself delivered. “Or I’ve got a bottle of pretty good scotch.”

“None of the hard stuff for me,” Bob Whitman replies. “I used to enjoy a good whiskey, but I’ve got too many miles on the old pumper. I stick to beer.” He takes another swallow. “You think Clay’ll do a good job, then?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Candler asks. “Look, Bob, I don’t have a good reason for withdrawing. I can tell you’re interested, but I just decided . . . I don’t know. It’s not what I want to do. I could use the money, and there are plenty of things to like about being in charge, but it’s not what I intended to do when I picked this line of work. I was in a PhD program—”

“That weekend program,” Bob says.

“It’s a legitimate program,” Candler says patiently, “a really
good
program, actually. I’ll re-enroll. If all goes well, I’ll be a psychologist in a few years’ time. That’s more in line with my plans. I never wanted to be an administrator. I just didn’t have the sense to say no to it.”

“I understand completely,” Bob says. “Leadership takes something out of you. All that stress. The decision making. The weight of the world on your shoulders. The part I wouldn’t like is fund-raising. I don’t think Clay will care for that part of it, either.” He lifts the bottle again but before it touches his lips, he says, “Is John Egri angry with you?”

Candler sighs. “I imagine that he’s furious. I haven’t returned his calls. Or even listened to them. Fortunately, my cell phone doesn’t work up here.”

Bob nods. “What about that fiancée of yours? Lovely girl, by the way.”

“After I got fired, she picked this guy who installs cable over me,” Crews says. “I told her it’s a bad job ’cause everything’ll be wireless in another hour or two, but how can I talk now? What am I now but some guy in a red jacket running errands a child could do—toting trays and picking up laundry and parking cars. Some people put their shoes out to be polished.”

Candler takes a beer from the tray and hands it to him.

“I shouldn’t,” Crews says, sitting on the bed as he accepts the beer. “I know you’ve got a house out on Liberty Highway. What’s got you holed up here?”

“Something happened,” Candler says.

“I guessed that much.”

“I got distracted by one thing and another, and a boy who was under my care, he killed himself.”

“Wasn’t Mick Coury, was it?” Crews drinks from the bottle of beer.

“How’d you know that?”

He swallows and shrugs. “That retarded girl give him the bounce?” Candler nods, and Crews continues. “You shouldn’t blame yourself too much. You weren’t cutting lawns on the side. Blame me. I should’ve told you weeks ago that he was gonna be in for a tough fall.”

“I worked it out anyway,” Candler says, “but I didn’t handle the whole business very well, and it cost Mick his life.”

“I can’t figure it that way.” Crews takes another long drink and the bottle is empty. He holds the bottle at eye level and shakes it. “The kid’s got some loose wires and something’s going to cause a short sooner or later. That Karly is heating up his wires something fierce, and so, okay, he shorts out. It’s not her fault and it’s definitely not yours. It’s the wiring.”

“Everything’s on hold at the moment,” Candler explains.

“She wanted you to take the promotion,” Bob Whitman says, “didn’t she?”

“She may have, but she’d support whatev . . . Aw hell, Bob, do we have to talk about this?”

“No, of course not,” Bob says, “though it might be the best thing for you. Here’s what I think, the success of a marriage—or any romantic bond—is two parts mystical and three parts practical. The mystical, that’s what everybody thinks about, the magical sense of attraction, sex, and all that locomotion. But the practical—making a living, sharing duties around the house, talking over troubles—that’s the heart and soul of a marriage.”

“Well,” Candler says. “Okay.” He upends the beer bottle and takes a long chug. He is desperate now to drive Bob Whitman away. He considers inventing lies about his sex life with Lolly—dark, disturbing episodes that would make Bob worry for his cabin and hurry home to tell his wife. The beer is delicious.

“Not that there’s any reason you should listen to me,” Bob says, “except that I’ve been happily married forty-two years. Longer than you’ve been alive, I daresay.”

“I’ve been unfair to Lolly,” Candler says, “and coming up here is another chapter of it, I’m sure. But I had to take bold steps. My life was . . . I don’t know. It was . . .”

“Spinning out of control?”

“Another way to look at it,” Crews says, “you and me, we’ve been fucked over lately by various shit. But we’re stronger than Mick. We’re not about to kill ourselves. We’re men and we’ll tough it out. We’ll maybe break some furniture and move to a different neighborhood and sit in the dark doing nothing for hours and hours until finally we think it’s maybe possible to sleep, but we’re not going to kill ourselves. You got to be strong—ah, fuck, I’m not
strong,
but you know . . . not
too
weak.
Durable.
Or something like that. And Mick wasn’t. I’m sorry he’s dead and all, but it’s like—”