A further note: The reader may wonder why I did not include with my earlier selections from Rochelle’s novel (specifically in Chapter Three, with the three tales from his childhood) a schematic breakdown of the name and place correspondences between the two novels and “reality,” such as I have included here in the note above. My decision was essentially founded on stylistic premises, but also I did not want to introduce too many characters into the novel too early for even the most organized and devoted reader to keep separate from one another. But the reader might well ask why, then, didn’t I choose simply to continue here with my earlier practice of using the same names, the same as in my novel, for the excerpts from Rochelle’s novel? Yes, I would answer, but then the reader might tend to believe that both Rochelle and I were writing about the same character, Hamilton Stark, when, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Therefore, I reasoned, at some point I would be obliged to make the distinctions explicit, and this seemed to me the appropriate point for it.
Chapter 8
RETURN AND DEPART
Alvin came home to Crawford, a veteran, not a hero, for there was no war just then. He had spent all his discharge money traveling east and slowly north across the country, seeing his friends home, visiting a few days with each, eating large meals with the family, meeting the girlfriend, taking her friend to a movie or on a blind date, drinking afterward with his buddy until the local bars closed, and then catching the morning train, bus or plane as far as his next friend’s home town, where he would repeat the ritual. It was a casual yet methodical itinerary, one the group of young veterans had worked out together with affectionate care during their last few weeks in Vietnam. Its logical and necessary conclusion, that Alvin would arrive home in Crawford, New Hampshire, last, alone, with no one left to pass through his home town on his way to someplace farther east or north, was a geographical accident. Consequently, when finally Alvin had been greeted at the Loudon bus station by his own family and in Crawford by his local friends, had put away his blue uniform, and had unpacked his duffel, his entire experience as an American soldier abroad as one of the military “advisers” in Southeast Asia was placed neatly into his past, as if into a trunk, and was stored away with his uniform in the attic.
This act, however, was not solely the result of an accident of geography (his having been discharged on the West Coast and returning home to a place farther north and east than that of any of his friends), though that was of course of some importance. But rather, it was also something he himself desired — to compartmentalize his past. He did not want any of his old Air Force buddies dropping by to spend several days drinking and talking about the past. He did not want any of his previous life overlapping his present and smearing onto his future. In a way, it was how he made himself available to himself: he now consciously thought of his past as a batch of differently shaped and variously colored boxes or blocks, all strung together in simple chronological order, like a chain of islands that happened to fall along a single meridian or degree of latitude. Among these blocks, Alvin numbered: Early Childhood; Early Adolescent Period of Self-Recrimination; The Religious Conversion Period; The Two Years He Wanted To Become a Minister; The Year He Wanted To Go to College; Giving Up; and In the Air Force.* To Alvin, no coherent relationship existed among these blocks of time except, of course, that of simple sequence. And by the time he was twenty-two, he was beginning to feel comfortable with that absence of relation. In fact, he was learning how to utilize and even to depend upon it — just to keep moving.
“Well, what d’you plan on doing now?” his father asked him across the table.
It was at breakfast, Alvin’s first morning home. Having served him bacon, fried eggs, orange juice and coffee, his mother was now bustling silently, smilingly around the kitchen. “I don’t know,” Alvin said. “I just thought I’d call up a few people, maybe go see some old friends. You know…”
“I don’t mean this morning.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, do. For a living. Or are you just up early because it’s a nice fall day?”
Alvin wasn’t sure he understood. “Where are the girls?” he asked his mother.
“Oh, they’re still sleeping, Alvin. You forget, they’re teenagers, and this is Saturday. No school.” She smiled apologetically.
His father snorted.
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just excited about being home and all.”
“What’re you planning to do now?” his father asked again.
Alvin put down his coffee cup and lit a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he stared down at his half-emptied cup. “Pa,” he said, “I don’t think I know for sure what you’re asking.”
The older man looked straight ahead, across the table and out the window. “For work. A man has to do something. You’re a man now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. What’re you going to do?”
Alvin’s mother had stopped her busy movement and now, looking down at her hands, stood motionless by the stove. None of the three people in the room was looking at any of the others. A gust of wind cracked against the house and whistled along its sides from north to south. Outside, the sky was stone dry and blue, a cool, windy, October morning. The ground was gone all to browns and yellows, and the trees had turned violently red, orange, yellow, purple. The dry leaves, about to fall from the branches to the parchmentlike ground, were clattering noisily in the wind and could be heard even from inside the house.
“Well,” Alvin began, “I’ve thought about it. A lot. And I thought I’d drive over to Loudon on Monday and see if I could get a job working for the state. Department of Public Works, maybe. Then I’d take it from there — I mean, about where I’d be living and all, and when.” Alvin spoke slowly, with care, obviously tense, as if he were lying.
“Okay. But before you do that,” his father said, “I want you to consider this.” The older man was still staring out the window. “Say you come to work for me again. But not part-time, not as a helper. As a pipefitter this time. Gradually, working together, we can take on a few bigger jobs. Schools. Maybe a hospital or something. Apartment houses. You know a few things about engineering now, and I know a lot about installation.” He paused, as if waiting for Alvin to answer.
When his son remained silent, he went on. “We can get capital from the bank or the government. In a few years we can turn this one-man plumbing business into a regular contracting outfit. Fifteen, twenty, thirty men laying pipe. Maybe doing some good-sized jobs all over the state.”
Again, the older man paused, as if to gauge his son’s response, and getting none, continued speaking, but more rapidly. “Here’s the deal. You go to work for me on Monday, day after tomorrow, as an apprentice pipefitter. I can get you into the union. Easy. The Loudon local. I’ve already talked to the business agent over there. I’ll pay you apprentice wages, what anybody else’d pay you. It’ll take you five years before you can get your journeyman’s license. If you’re still at it then, and if you’ve given all you’ve got to make this into a solid, medium-sized plumbing and heating company, I’ll make you an equal partner in the business. Where it goes from there depends on what we both decide. Together. In fifteen years or so I’ll retire. Then the whole thing’ll be yours. Assuming you’re still at it and want it.” He finally looked over at Alvin’s face. “How does that sound to you?” he asked somberly.