Nelson Demille Read online

  He'd finished his training at Fort Dix, but, instead of getting leave time, his training battalion had been given a crash course in riot control and sent to Philadelphia because of antiwar protests that had turned ugly. Again the world had intruded, as it did in time of war, but it was a new experience for him.

  He'd managed to call her from a pay phone, but she wasn't in her apartment, and there were no answering machines in those days. He'd had a second brief opportunity to call, late at night, but her line was busy. He'd finally written her, but it took a few weeks before her reply found him back at Fort Dix. Communication was not easy in those days, and it became more difficult in a larger sense in the following months.

  Keith found himself at the farm and turned into the drive that led to the house. He pulled the Blazer around the back near the garden and sat at the wheel.

  He wanted to tell himself that everything would be all right now, that love conquers all. He thought he knew how he felt about her, but, aside from the memories and the letters and now seeing her, he didn't know her. And how did she feel about him? And what were they going to do about it? And what was her husband going to do about it?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was seven P.M. when Keith Landry pulled up to Gail and Jeffrey Porter's place, the old Bauer farm. The evenings were getting shorter and cooler, and the sky was that deep purple and magenta that Keith associated with the end of summer.

  The farmhouse, a white clapboard building in need of paint, sat near the road.

  Gail came out the front door and across the crabgrass lawn and met him as he climbed out of the Blazer with the wine bottles and Jeffrey's umbrella. She hugged and kissed him and said, Keith Landry, you look terrific.

  He replied, I'm the delivery boy, ma'am. But you look pretty good yourself, and you kiss good.

  She laughed. Still the same.

  We wish. Actually, he'd only known her in their senior year when Jeffrey started seeing her, and he barely remembered what she looked like, because she had looked like a lot of thin-faced, lithe-bodied, granny-glassed, long-haired, no-makeup, peasant-dressed, barefoot girls of the time. In fact, she was still wearing a peasant dress, probably an original, her hair was still long, and she was indeed barefoot. Keith wondered if he was supposed to dress sixties for occasion. She was still thin, too, and still braless, as he saw by the low-cut dress. She wasn't pretty then and wasn't pretty now, but she had been, and still was, sexy. He handed her the umbrella. Jeffrey left this.

  It's a wonder he remembered where he lived. You guys had a good time, I gather.

  We did.

  She took his arm and walked him toward the house. She said, Jeffrey tells me you were a spy.

  I have laid down my cloak and dagger.

  Good. No politics tonight. Just old times.

  Hard to separate the two.

  True.

  They entered the house through a battered wooden screen door, and Keith found himself in a barely furnished living room, lit only by the setting sun. From what he could make out, the furniture was sort of minimalist European modern, and it probably came in boxes with instructions badly translated from Swedish.

  Gail threw the umbrella in a corner, and they passed through the dining room, which had the same sort of furniture, and into the big kitchen, a blend of original country kitchen and 1950s updates. Keith put the wine on the counter, and Gail took the bottles out of the bag. Oh, apple wine and spiked grape juice! I love it!

  Kind of a joke. But there's a good Chianti, too. Remember Julio's, the little Italian place near campus?

  How could I forget? Bad spaghetti before it was called pasta, checkered tablecloths, and melted candles stuck in straw-covered Chianti bottles—what happened to the straw?

  Good question.

  She put the apple and grape wine in the refrigerator and gave Keith a corkscrew to open the Chianti. She found two wineglasses, and he poured. They touched glasses, and she toasted, To Bowling Green.

  Cheers.

  She said, Jeffrey is out back, gathering herbs.

  Keith saw a big pot simmering on the stove, and the kitchen table was set for three, with a loaf of dark bread in a basket.

  Gail asked, Did you bring meat for yourself?

  No, but I looked for roadkill on the way here.

  She laughed. Disgusting.

  He asked her, Do you like it here?

  She shrugged. It's all right. Quiet. Plenty of empty farmhouses at rents we can afford. And Jeffrey's people are still here, and he's been doing his memory-lane thing for the last two years. I come from Fort Recovery, so it's not much different. How about you? You okay here?

  So far.

  Nostalgic? Sad? Bored? Happy?

  All of the above. I have to sort it out.

  Gail filled their glasses again and poured one for Jeffrey. Come on outside. I want to show you our gardens.

  They walked out the back door, and Gail called out, Company!

  About fifty yards away in a garden, Keith saw Jeffrey stand up and wave. He came toward them wearing baggy shorts and a T-shirt, carrying a wicker basket piled with vegetation that Keith hoped was weeds destined for the garbage can and not something he was supposed to eat.

  Jeffrey wiped his hand on his shorts and extended it to Keith. Good to see you.

  Keith asked, You made it home all right?

  Sure. He took his glass of wine from Gail and said, I'm becoming a juicehead in my old age. We only do grass on special occasions.

  Gail added, We put on oldies, turn out the lights, get naked, get high, and fuck.

  Keith didn't comment but looked around the yard. Good gardens.

  Jeffrey replied, Yeah, we've got use of four acres and all the corn we can steal from the fields. Thank God this guy grows sweet corn, or we'd be eating cattle feed.

  Keith looked out over the acres of gardens. This was more kitchen garden than the average farmer kept, and he figured that the Porters depended on this for much of their food. He stopped feeling sorry for himself with his adequate government pension and his family-owned acres.

  Jeffrey said, Come on, we'll show you around.

  They toured the garden plots. There was a plot devoted entirely to root vegetables, another with vine vegetables such as tomatoes and squash, and another garden was planted with more varieties of beans than Keith knew existed. The most interesting thing was the herb gardens, the likes of which were rarely seen in Spencer County. There was a culinary herb garden with over forty different varieties, and also what Jeffrey called a garden of historical and medicinal herbs, plus a garden of herbs used for dyes and miscellaneous household needs such as soap and cologne. And beyond the gardens, stretching out to where the cornfield began, was a profusion of wildflowers that had no use at all except to please the eye and ease the mind. Very nice, Keith said.

  Gail said, I make perfume, potpourri, tea, hand lotion, bath scents, that sort of thing.

  Anything to smoke?

  Jeffrey laughed. God, I wish we could. Can't risk it here.

  Gail said, I think we could, but Jeffrey is chicken.

  Jeffrey defended himself. The county sheriff is a little brighter than the Spencerville police chief, and he's keeping an eye on us. He thinks all this stuff is psychedelic.

  Gail said, Oh, Jeffrey, you have to treat the fuzz the way you grow mushrooms—keep them in the dark and feed them shit.

  They all laughed.

  Jeffrey said, apropos of the subject, I have a source in Antioch. I make a run about once a month. He added, I just made a run. He winked at Keith.

  It was almost dark now, and they went inside. Gail put the herbs in a colander and washed them while Jeffrey stirred the contents of the pot, which looked like stew sans meat. Gail poured some of the Chianti into the pot and added the herbs. Let that simmer awhile.

  Keith had a strange feeling of déjà vu, then recalled his first dinner with Jeffrey and Gail in their little apartment off campus. Not much had changed.

  Gail p
oured the remainder of the Chianti into their glasses and said to Keith, You probably think we're stuck in the sixties.

  No. Yes.

  Actually, we're selectively sixties people. There's good and bad in each era, each decade. We've totally rejected the new feminism, for instance, in favor of the old feminism. Yet we've adopted the new radical ecology.

  Keith remarked dryly, That's very astute.

  Jeffrey laughed. Same old wiseass.

  Gail smiled. We're weird.

  Keith felt compelled to say something nice to his hosts, and offered, I think we can be as weird as we want to be. We've earned it.

  You said it, Jeffrey agreed.

  Keith continued, And you've put your money where your mouth is by resigning as a matter of principle.

  Gail nodded. Partly principle. Partly, we felt uncomfortable there. Two old radicals who got laughed at behind our backs. She added, These kids have no heroes, and we were heroes. Heroes of the revolution. But the kids think the history of the world began on their birthdays.

  Jeffrey said, Well, it wasn't that bad. But professionally we felt unfulfilled.

  Keith pointed out, That's not exactly what you said last night.

  Yeah, well, I was drunk last night. He thought a moment, then confessed, But maybe I was closer to the truth last night. Anyway, here we are, tutoring high school dull normals.

  Gail said to Keith, Jeffrey tells me you were sacked.

  Yes, and none too soon.

  Were they laughing at you?

  No, I don't think so. Old warriors are still honored within the imperialist military-intelligence community.

  Then why were you sacked? Gail asked.

  Budget cuts, end of the Cold War . . . no, that's not the whole truth. I was sacked because I was tottering between burnout and epiphany. They can smell that a mile away, and they don't like either. He thought a moment and said, I was starting to ask questions.

  Such as?

  Well . . . I was at a White House briefing once . . . I was there to give answers, not ask questions"—Keith smiled at the memory of what he was about to relate—"and I asked the secretary of state, 'Sir, could you explain to me this country's foreign policy, if any, so that I can figure out what you want?' Keith added, Well, you could have heard a pink slip drop in the room.

  Jeffrey inquired, Did he explain it to you?

  Actually, he was polite enough to do so. I still didn't get it. Six months later, I got a letter on my desk explaining budget cuts and the joys of early retirement. There was a place for my signature. I signed.

  They sipped their wine, Jeffrey turned his attention to the stew, which he stirred, and Gail took a platter of raw vegetables and bean dip out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter. They all nibbled on the vegetables.

  Jeffrey said finally, Sounds as if you resigned on principle, too.

  No, I was asked to accept an early retirement for budget reasons. That's what the press release and the internal memo said. So that's the way it was. Keith added, My job was to discover objective truths, but the truth needs two people to make it work—the speaker and the listener. The listeners weren't listening. In fact, in the last two decades, they rarely did, but it took me a while to figure it out. He thought a moment, then said, I'm happy to be out of there.

  Gail nodded. We can relate to that. So here we all are, back on the farm where the bullshit is good for the garden. She opened the refrigerator and took out the apple and the grape wine that Keith brought, saying to Jeffrey, Remember this? Eighty-nine cents a bottle. What did you pay for these, Keith?

  Oh, about four bucks each.

  Robbery, said Jeffrey. He unscrewed the cap of the apple wine and sniffed it. It's ready. He emptied the bottle into three water tumblers, Gail added sprigs of peppermint, and they touched glasses. Jeffrey said, To days past, to absent friends of our youth, to ideals and humanity.

  Keith added, And to a bright future without the nightmare of nuclear extinction.

  They drained off the wine, put down their glasses, and made exaggerated smacking sounds of pleasure, then laughed. Jeffrey said to Keith, Actually, not bad. You have any more?

  No, but I have a source.

  Gail said, I'm getting a buzz. She went to the kitchen table, carrying the grape wine, and sat. Jeffrey brought over the vegetable platter and turned off the lights, then lit two candles on the table.

  Keith sat and poured wine for them. They ate the raw vegetables and dip, and Keith praised their gardening abilities, which they took as a high compliment from a farmer's son.

  They made small talk for a while, Jeffrey and Keith reminisced about high school, Gail told them they were boring her, and they pitched to their senior year at Bowling Green. Gail found a jug of wine and put it on the table. Jeffrey was apparently in charge of stirring and got up now and then to perform this task while Gail kept the glasses filled.

  Keith was having a good enough time despite the fact that he had little in common with his hosts, except a shared experience in school. Even then, he hadn't had much in common with skinny little Jeffrey porter, though they always got along well in high school, probably Because they were intellectual peers, and as teenagers, neither had any opinions about politics, war, or life.

  In college, they'd been drawn together at first because they were from the same hometown and had the same problems adjusting to a new environment. In fact, Keith thought, though he wouldn't admit it afterward, they'd become friends.

  But as the war radicalized and polarized the campus, they'd found they were on different sides of too many issues. Like the Civil War, the Vietnam War and its attendant upheavals pitted brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, and friend against friend. In retrospect, intelligent people of goodwill should have found common ground. But Keith, like many others, lost old friends that he'd cared for and made new ones that he didn't particularly want. He and Jeffrey had wound up exchanging punches in the middle of the student union building. In truth, Jeffrey wasn't much of a fighter, and Keith had knocked him down only as often as Jeffrey insisted on getting up. Finally, Keith had walked away, and Jeffrey was carried away.

  About a year and a half later, Jeffrey had written to Keith in Vietnam, getting his address from Keith's mother, who was happy to give it to one of her son's old friends. Keith had expected the letter to be conciliatory and concerned about Keith's frontline duty, and Keith was preparing a congenial reply in his mind as he opened the letter. Then he read, Dear Keith, Kill any babies today? Keep score of the women and children you murder. The Army will give you a medal. And so on:

  Keith recalled that he hadn't been hurt so much as enraged, and, had Jeffrey been there, Keith would have killed him. Now, looking back, he realized how far along the road to insanity they'd all traveled.

  But a quarter century had passed, Jeffrey had apologized and Keith had accepted, and they were both different people, hopefully.

  On that thought, Keith couldn't help but think about himself and Annie. She'd gone to graduate school, Europe, married, had children, lived with another man for about two decades, had twenty Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries, and thousands of breakfasts and dinners with him. Keith Landry and Annie Baxter surely had no more in common now than he and Jeffrey had. On the other hand, he hadn't slept with Jeffrey Porter for six years. Keith mulled this over.

  Gail said to him, Yo, Keith! Did you check out?

  No . . . I . . .

  Jeffrey got up and went to the stove. Ready. He ladled the stew into three bowls and managed to carry them to the table without incident. Gail sliced the bread and said, Home-baked.

  They ate. The bread smelled like things that Keith used to feed to the livestock and horses, but the stew was good.

  Dessert was a homemade strawberry pie, which was also good, but the smell of the herbal tea reminded Keith of places in Asia he'd just as soon forget.

  Gail said to Keith, Did Jeffrey tell you I'm on the city council?

  He did. Congratulat
ions.

  Sure. My opponent got busted blowing somebody in a men's room.

  Keith smiled. Did that become an issue?

  Gail added, I've blown lots of guys myself, but that's different.

  Clearly, everyone was drunk, but, nevertheless, Keith was a little uncomfortable with that remark.

  Gail said, I never got caught in a men's room. Anyway, come November, I'll be facing some prissy country club Republican lady with shit for brains. The worst thing she ever did was wear white after Labor Day.

  Jeffrey said, There are a lot of us who've gotten together to try to turn this town and county around. We've got a plan to restore downtown to its historic look, to attract tourism, attract new business, to stop the spread of the commercial strip through zoning, to get Amtrak to reinstate passenger service, to get a Spencerville exit put on the interstate. Jeffrey went on, outlining the plans to revive Spencerville and Spencer County.

  Keith listened, then commented, So you've scaled back on your plans to overthrow the United States government?

  Jeffrey smiled and replied, Think globally, act locally. That's the nineties.

  Well, Keith observed, it sounds like good old-fashioned mid-western boosterism. You remember that word?

  Sure, Jeffrey said. But this goes beyond that. We're also interested in ecology, clean government, health care, and other quality-of-life issues that go beyond business and commerce.

  Good. Me, too. In fact, I see what you see here, and I had the same thoughts. But don't assume everyone shares your vision. Keith added, I've been all over the world, guys, and if I learned one thing, it's that people get the kind of government and society they deserve.

  Jeffrey said, Don't be cynical. This is still a country where good people can make a difference.

  I hope so.

  Gail said, Will you two stop the philosophical debate? Here's the problem we face. The city and county governments have become lethargic, partly corrupt, and mostly stupid. She looked at Keith. In fact, your ex-girlfriend's husband, Cliff Baxter, is at the core of most of these problems.