We're All in This Together (14 page)

I stared at the mint.

"So be it." He unwrapped the peppermint and tossed it in his mouth.

We slid away from the curb.

"How did you know to come find me at the airport?" I asked.

Dr. Vic shrugged. "I figured you might have gone to see—" but he was wrong.

"You're wrong," I told him.

10.

The woods around the house were growing dusky by the time we returned to the house by the lake, but there still remained a
couple of hours of good light. Dr. Vic told me there was something he wanted to show me. "There's something I want to show
you, too," I said.

"Okay, that's super," he said, so eager that I almost felt sorry for him.

He told me to give him a second, and when he returned from the house he was accompanied by his Pekinese. At this sight, the
minuscule insect of sympathy that had just hatched within my heart and was only beginning to take its first tentative steps,
gave a brief spasm, and wilted to a husk.

Dr. Vic started for the woods, the dogs bolting out in front of him. I climbed onto my bike and pedaled behind.

He turned at the squeak of my gears. Dr. Vic clicked his tongue and gave his bald spot a dubious scratch. This was the absolute
extent of his temper. "I thought we were going to walk."

"I prefer to ride," I said.

"All righty," said Dr. Vic.

We moved away from the house along the footpath that looped around Lake Keynes, passing under the spruce eaves and between
the white stilts of birch trees. Around us the ground cover was lush with bursts of fern and checkerberry. The Laddies strained
and whined and pitched their weight against Dr. Vic's double leash, like frantic little mops. I rode standing up, stoically
grinding out the hard-packed bumps in the path. Odd chips of light, flashing off the lake, shot through the gaps in the foliage.
There was a faint scent of char.

"They don't know they're small, do they?" Dr. Vic staggered after them, swiveling awkwardly to smile at me.

"They don't know anything," I said.

"Maybe so," said Dr. Vic, as always, ambushed by my dislike.

After about a half mile the footpath broke and we followed the split to the right, away from the lake and toward the hills.

"How's your granddad?" Dr. Vic talked to me now without looking back.

"He's all right."

"Sounds like this Sugar kid is a real little punk."

"Papa says he's just your basic, garden-variety fascist."

"Maybe so."

We walked a bit farther.

"What are you two fellas up to over there every day, George?" Dr. Vic held back a branch and looked straight at me. A small
frown played across his mouth.

"Nothing," I said, and slipped by, then pulled up and waited for him to go ahead again. He let the long black branch snap
back. "Horseshit," said Dr. Vic.

"What do you mean?"

"You're up to something."

"Whatever." Again, I caught a whiff of the burnt smell, like old charcoal.

"And I don't suppose you'll care to shed any more light than your mother did, about what you and she were doing last night?"

"You suppose right."

"Listen, George. I agree with everything he put on that sign. Al Gore got a stiff one in the backdoor, and not so much as
the courtesy of a wraparound." He coughed. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell your mother I put it just that way, but you
know what I mean."

"Sure," I said. "I won't tell her that you think Al Gore got fucked up the ass."

Dr. Vic exhaled.

After a few seconds, though, he went on: "Still, at the same time, it's not like they put Adolf Hitler in the White House.
Look, Bush might not be the worst thing that's ever happened. He seems like a decent enough guy. I mean, he's a lot of things,
but he's not, like your granddad would say, 'a garden-variety fascist.' He's just a good old boy. The country'11 survive."

Dr. Vic stopped to pick up the Laddies. They squawked and slobbered with pleasure. In the manner of a commuter with a rolled
up newspaper, he neatly stuck one sausage-shaped dog under each arm, and ported them as he squatted to climb under a low,
heavy branch. I dismounted and left my bike propped against a tree.

"So whatever it is you two are up to, you better have some sense about it. And it better not be dangerous."

I crawled under the branch. "Or what?"

There was a muddy dip in the path. The Laddies immediately scrambled into the mud and began to wrestle and yip. Dr. Vic pointed
to a mossy log in the brush. He took one end and I took the other. We set it across the dip and strolled across. He poked
the dogs with a branch; they raced ahead, knowing the way, whipping through the underbrush.

"Well?" I asked. "Or what?"

"Does your grandfather blame me for Gerry dying, too?"

They had barely been able to squeeze Nana's full name onto her headstone:
Geraldine Sarah Niven McGlaughlin.
Her epitaph had read:
Wife, Mother, Worker, "Don't Mourn! Organize!" 1928
2000.

"No, he doesn't. I don't blame you, either. That's just something I told Mom to make her feel bad."

He tramped a few more yards before responding. "I'm glad. I like your grandfather. I like you, George." I heard the telltale
click of his tongue. "I don't think you're a mean kid, either, but that's a nasty thing to say, even if you didn't mean it.
Nasty to me, and to your mother. You can't do that."

"I can do anything I want," I said.

We made the last quarter mile in silence and emerged from the trees into a clearing that held the desiccated hulk of an old
Studebaker truck. The ground beneath the vehicle had sunk, as if the Studebaker were gradually burying itself. A sapling grew
up through the empty trunk and all that remained of the seats were the metal frames. Nearby, a pile of blackened stones and
charred sticks marked a recent campfire.

"Neat, huh?"

"Sure," I said. "Neat."

The big man sat down on the Studebaker's running board and patted the space beside him. Pretending not to notice, I strolled
over to the campfire and kicked a stone. I stuck my hand under my arm and squeezed off a few indiscreet pops, the way Gil
had taught me.

Dr. Vic nodded. Dark patterns of sweat had formed at his armpits and at the crease of his belly, and again, I nearly found
it possible to sympathize with him. He was a big man, soft and awkward, gone gray and losing what there was of that, his life
held hostage by a fifteen-year-old boy. I guessed he was weary of it. Maybe I was, too.

"I came across this truck one time a couple of years ago. I was just wandering, you know? And, here's this amazing artifact,
in what's really a very unlikely place. It really struck me, George, and I've given a lot of thought about how it got here.

"You see, the thing that stumped me is that the fire road's a mile away. So whoever drove through the woods had a rough go
of it. Which means the truck must have been in pretty good shape."

The dogs lay down in a heap at his feet, panting happily. He rubbed their heads. "From that point, George, I can conceive
of only three possible scenarios:

"First, that it was a bootlegger's truck. Some old gangster jackknifed it right off the road, came barreling through here,
dumped the wheels, the hooch, and headed for the hills."

The ghost of a rawboned country bootlegger, overalls and rubber boots and a pencil-thin mustache, ran through the underbrush
in my mind, holding down his straw boater with one hand, and gripping a sawed-off shotgun in the other. He cast a desperate
glance over his shoulder, and disappeared into a stand of white pine.

"You like that one, huh?" Dr. Vic grinned at me.

I shrugged, but couldn't restrain a little grin of my own.

"Okay, right. Now in my second scenario I have a guy—a husband, a father—and he lost it, totally lost it. Got completely fed
up with everything, and said, 'Forget it all. My job, my wife, my kids, I don't give a good goddamn about anything, anymore.
Forget the whole thing.' This guy, he drove the car real deep in here so no one would find it. Then, he walked out to the
road, stuck a thumb, and never looked back."

In my mind I heard the dull, painful thud of a patent leather shoe striking a long-vanished hubcap, as the man who just didn't
care anymore gave his life one last kick. He limped away, his foot dragging like a snake.

"But"—Dr. Vic held up his hand—"neither of those scenarios completely satisfies me, George, and I'll tell you why. In the
first place, a bootlegger—a criminal—might hide his truck out here, but I don't think he'd ditch it. Too greedy.

"And in the second place, a man who'd leave his family, quit on all his responsibilities, I don't think that kind of son-of-a-bitch
would even consider ditching his vehicle. Why would he? A guy like that hasn't got a conscience, so how could he be ashamed
enough to try and conceal what he'd done? No, I'm nearly positive that our man would just take the truck and drive like hell,
try and get himself a head start on screwing up some more folks' lives."

"Okay," I said. I squatted beside the dead campfire and absently picked out a singed paper canister, the wrapper for a firework
or a flare. I saw the gangster and the runaway husband hunched around another campfire, this one tucked away somewhere deep
in the hills. It was a starless night and the shadows of the flames played wildly across the jagged face of the ravine. Each
man held a smoldering a sausage on a stick and regarded the other with a wolfish sneer.

"Which leads me to a third scenario, and this one is where I prefer to lay down my chips. You with me here, George?"

Dr. Vic's wide, soft face was serious now. It occurred to me that this must be the same tone he used when he told a person
they were terminal, that the black vines growing in their body could not be weeded out by surgery, or burned away by chemotherapy.
I glanced at him and nodded, ready for the diagnosis.

"What I've come to think happened is that the guy who owned this truck was maybe a bit of a loner to start, and that, maybe
as time passed, something started to wear him down—I don't know what, bad business, bad love, bad luck. I don't know, something.
But whatever it was, inside the guy, he was terrified, and at some stage, when a part of his life changed, he was overwhelmed.
What had always scared him most was right up in his face. And suddenly, the guy decided that he couldn't trust anyone anymore.
So he withdrew more and more. He hid. He got tough.

"And you know what?"

I crumbled the paper canister between my palms and let the ash trickle through my fingers.

"No," I said.

"It didn't matter. People could still see the guy.

"So, the loner decided he needed a place to go, and he found this spot in the woods, and it was his secret. But there was
no shelter, right? Which brings me to how I first imagined this guy: I thought to myself, 'What if someone brought the truck
out here piece by piece?' Hundreds, thousands of parts. From the smallest screws to the mirrors and the tires and the engine.
Then, he reassembled the whole damn thing out here in the middle of the woods.

"What an amazing effort, right? But at the same time, what an absolutely perverse and pointless act. The truck is useless
out here. Out here it's no better than a cave.

"And so I tried to conceive of the kind of person who would feel so bad about themselves that they could waste so much energy,
just in order not to have to try and get along with a new way of doing things. So, that's how I got my loner, and that's how
I think the truck came to be here. He brought it out, one sad little piece at a time."

There was a sustained silence, and I realized that Dr. Vic intended this to be the end of the story.

"What happened then?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe he sat there until he died. Maybe he went home."

"Don't you think people would have noticed that his truck was disappearing? Especially once the guy started carrying away
the engine and the doors and stuff."

"Sure," said Dr. Vic, "I bet they noticed."

"Wouldn't they have done something?"

"They probably tried, but if someone wants to dismantle their own property, who's to stop them?"

Dr. Vic stood up and took a deep breath. "Getting late," he said.

"So you're saying that I'd rather tear everything apart than adjust? Is that what you think, Dr. Vic? Well, maybe some things
get taken apart for a reason: because they don't fucking work. Like us, Dr. Vic. You and I. We don't fucking work." My voice
cracked at the end, but I didn't. I stared him down.

"You're entitled to think whatever you like, George." He gave the rust door of the Studebaker a sharp knock. He held up his
knuckles and blew away the red dust. "All I was talking about was how once upon a time, some odd body up and decided to waste
a perfectly good vehicle."

At dinner, Dr. Vic remembered that I had wanted to show him something, too. "What was it?" he asked.

My mother and I were both eating according to the rules of the engagement, not speaking but with our notebooks at the ready
beside our plates, like third utensils.

This,
I wrote, and drew an
pointing back at myself. I slid the notebook over to him.

He read it, and looked at me.

I slowly raised my middle finger.

Dr. Vic's eyebrow lifted. There was a moment of silence—unbroken by the clinking of silver or the ticking of clock hands—complete
silence. Then, a great, toothy smile broke across the big man's face. He rose halfway and leaned over the table with his own
hand outstretched and flying the proud bird of his meaty middle digit, letting it hang there only a couple of inches in front
of my nose. I flinched slightly, leaned away. Dr. Vic stayed half bent over the table, smiling with all those teeth, letting
his finger hang there for several seconds.

My mother made a small noise, like a punctured inner tube. She stood up and left the room. Dr. Vic slid back down into his
chair. He tucked himself into the table and began to eat. I sat there and tried to find things to look at—the windows facing
out onto the water, the Eakins print of men sculling through light and shadow—but my eyes kept returning to Dr. Vic. He continued
to eat, working blankly and patiently with his knife, pausing to add salt and pepper, thoroughly chewing each bite. When his
plate was cleared, he half rose again, and I flinched back again; but he ignored me and reached for the serving bowl, helping
himself to seconds. I jerked from my chair and went upstairs.

A while later, Papa phoned. He wanted to speak to my mother. "You might want to keep your head down tonight," he said before
I handed him over.

My mother talked to him in the kitchen using the cordless phone. I pressed my ear to the door and made out a few scraps of
conversation; to begin with, my grandfather had some kind of hunch. My mother thought he was being nosy; she tried to change
the subject; she asked what he and I had been doing every day of the summer. Papa's hunch kept popping up, though; my mother
started to sound irritated. Finally, she hung up, pointedly foregoing the usual "I love you."

After that I heard drawers being whammed open and shut. She emerged from the kitchen, glanced at me, frowned, and went outside.
I saw she was carrying a little plastic-covered booklet.

Through glass doors I could see Dr. Vic sitting on the patio and drinking a beer, the floodlights illuminating the mites circling
his head. He glanced up from his crossword to find my mother marching at him. She was holding out the little booklet—a checkbook—carrying
it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, like something filthy.

I didn't have to strain to hear the conversation now; my mother's yells cut clearly through the glass, and Dr. Vic's embarrassed
protest seemed all the more shamefaced for the deep bass of his voice. "Hold on, hold on. You've got this all wrong. He wasn't
my first choice, Emma. I was just covering my bases with some of the guys at the hospital who were involved in the fundraising.
And I gave just as much to Gore. I canceled myself out."