Denise looked at me and her face was troubled. She said, “This isn’t easy, is it?” A moment later she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Janeway…could Michael and I have a few minutes alone?”
Erin and I went out on the porch and stood quietly at the edge of things. “Well, old man,” she said. “You do make for an interesting first date.”
“Next time I’ll take you on a tour of Denver’s best pawnshops.”
“That would be good. I’ve been wondering where I can hock my virtue.”
Half a dozen crazy answers wafted up from my funny bone, but the moment trickled away: the mood was different now. I looked back at the door and said, “I wonder what they’ll do,” and Erin said, “Trust me, they are going with you. If I know anything about people, they’re going all the way. That woman in there’s got more heart and soul than I’ve ever seen in a stranger.”
I tried to look hurt in the moonlight. “Hey, I’ve got heart, I’ve got soul.”
“Yes,” she said, “but you were no stranger. I had heard so much about you from Miranda that I knew you long before we met.” And I thought, wow. Round three to me for heart. Extra points for soul.
“Denise is special,” Erin said. “I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just something I know. Goes way beyond class. She has already decided what needs to be done and now she’s got to break the bad news to him. But he will do whatever she says. He would lie down and die for her.”
“He’s smart.”
“Yes. And they’re both very lucky.”
A moment later I said, “So what’s next now that you’re back from the wilderness?”
“Tomorrow I’m going to disappear for a week into the real wilderness. I have a cabin in the mountains, where I shall write, eat very little, drink lots of liquids, meditate, and commune with nature. It’s a serious hike just to get up there. No roads, no electricity, best of all, no telephones. If I take a bath at all it will be in very cold water.”
“Can I come?”
“That would defeat my purpose, wouldn’t it? And you’ve got plenty enough to do here.”
“I’ll think about nothing all week but you getting eaten by a bear.”
“Oh, I can take care of myself. I do this every year.”
I pretended to sulk and she said, “I’ll call you when I get back.”
“That’s what they all say.”
I walked out into the yard and looked up at the sky. The old lady was still on my mind. She haunted me and I cursed myself for not listening to her better. I believed she had been trying to tell me something important, but I had heard only half of it and now none of it made any sense. How could Burton have had anything to do with our civil war? He had come to the States in 1860, a year before the war began. What could he have said or done that had gone off like a time bomb a year later?
It was crazy, almost impossible to believe.
But what a story if it were true.
I imagined Burton walking up into the yard. I saw him as a young man, just arrived from that other time, straight from the jungles of unknown Africa. How would we like each other? The first minutes would tell that tale, as they must have done with Charlie Warren. Burton formed his opinions quickly, and so did I.
Erin came down and stood beside me. For a long time we watched the sky. It was a night like I hadn’t seen in Denver since my childhood in the late fifties, long before the big buildings came with the big lights, before crowds of people flooded into the state from California and Mexico and the East Coast, leaving crud on the landscape and poison in the air. In those days I could stand in City Park and look deep into the universe. From Lookout Mountain I could see everything the big god saw before she broke it all apart and hurled it into that endless expanse of empty space. I must have had faith then. I certainly had something. How had I lost it? When had I stopped believing the god thing? I didn’t need to worry it to death, I knew when it was: the night I looked down into the bloodless face of the little girl who had been raped and strangled by her father.
I had grown cynical and easy with my disbelief. But in that moment I thought of Mrs. Gallant and, I swear, a meteor streaked across the western sky. I watched it disappear beyond the mountains and I shivered in the warm morning air.
CHAPTER 9
Erin and I parted company at the store, where she picked up her car and headed wearily home. I sat for a while watching the empty street and thinking about restraint. The word had become almost extinct in the sexual sixties, when I was coming of age and everybody groped everybody at first sight. I had done my share of that but time and age had dimmed its appeal. In my younger days I might have made too much out of Erin’s verbal horseplay and groped my way into hot water. I knew something strong was brewing between us and tonight, that was enough.
I got to my house at dawn, only four hours before I had to open for business, and I did what I always do after a sleepless night: put on my sweats and went for a torturous run in the park. I did my three miles in well over twenty minutes, then I jogged out another two miles and walked myself cool. All along the way I thought of Denise and how personally encumbered she had felt by the promise I had given in her home. I knew she’d keep pushing me until there was no margin left in the book for any of us, and I was okay with that.
We had agreed to meet again tonight, to formulate some plan of action. Denise would expect me to have some ideas, but everything I considered was immediately swamped on the rocks of the great time barrier. Eighty years! Jesus, where would I start? I could get on an airplane and fly off half-cocked to Baltimore. I could waltz into Treadwell’s and ask a few stupid questions, and then what? As soon as they figured out how little I knew and what I really wanted, I’d be laughed out of there and jeered down the street into the harbor.
But even a fool must start somewhere. At eleven o’clock, having disposed of a few customers and rung up a few sales, I decided to defy the odds and call the home in Baltimore where Mrs. Gallant had been living. Maybe something she had left there would lead to something else. Neither of the Ralstons knew or remembered the name of the place, and when I called Baltimore Information I was told what I already knew. You don’t just ask for the number of Shady Pines: there are dozens of entries under “Assisted Living Facilities.” This would be a substantial trial-and-error job that could take days to pan out.
I went in another direction that might have been just as futile. From Information I got to Social Services, and from there I bumped my way from one extension to another until I got to the old woman’s caseworker. I had hoped and assumed she’d be in the system, and there she was.
I knew the caseworker wouldn’t blurt a client’s affairs to a voice on the phone, but I had to try. I got a woman named Roberta Brewer and I told her the straight story, beginning with the news of Mrs. Gallant’s death in Denver. No one had called her on that as yet, and she was sorry but grateful for the information. Then I told her what I wanted and why: I explained about the book and why I was searching for the others, and she understood it the first time and seemed to believe it. “Let me call around and check you out,” she said. “Then I’ll call the home where Jo was living and they can call you if they want to.”
This was the best I was going to get, so I thanked her, hung up, and hoped for some luck.
Two hours later I got a collect call from a woman named Gwen Perkins at a place called Perkins Manor in Catonsville, Maryland. Ms. Perkins was defensive, uneasy that Mrs. Gallant had simply walked out of there. Of course they had been worried sick over her, and yes, of course they were distressed at her death. Ms. Perkins was obviously worried about her liability: she assured me that no one was a prisoner at Perkins, people often went out into the care of relatives or friends, and I said I understood and I said this in my caring voice, full of understanding. At last I got to ask a question.