“That’s fine,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you.”
Charley gently tossed his glass, ice and all, off onto the lawn. He said, “Frank, you can play sharp and play flat but still be in tune, you know.” He seemed disappointed, almost perplexed. Then he just strolled off down the gravel path toward his boathouse. “You won’t win ’em all,” I heard him say to himself, theatrically from out of the dark. I let him walk all the way down, pull aside the sliding door, enter and close it behind him (I’m sure he had nothing to do there). After that I walked back around his house, got in my car and waited for my children, who were soon to be there with me and be happy.
Deep River, as I drive hurriedly through, is the epitome of dozing, summery, southern New England ambivalence. A little green-shuttered, swept-sidewalk burg where just-us-regular-folks live in stolid acceptance of watered-down Congregationalist and Roman Catholic moderation; whereas down by the river there’s the usual enclave of self-contented, pseudo-reclusive richies who’ve erected humongous houses on bracken and basswood chases bordering the water, their backs resolutely turned to how the other half lives. Endowed law profs from New Haven, moneyed shysters from Hartford and Springfield, moneyed pensioners from Gotham, all cruise sunnily in to shop at Greta’s Green Grocer, The Flower Basket, Edible Kingdom Meats and Liquid Time Liquors (less often to visit Body Artistry Tattoo, Adult Newz-and-Video or the Friendly Loaner pawn), then cruise sunnily back out, their Rovers heaped with good dog food, pancetta, mesquite, chard, fresh tulips and gin — all primed for evening cocktails, lamb shanks on the grill, an hour of happy schmoozing, then off to bed in the cool, fog-enticed river breeze. It is not such a great place to think of your children living (or your ex-wife).
Nothing extravagant seems planned here for Monday. Droopy bunting decorates a few lampposts. A high-school “Freedom Car Wash” is in semi-full swing out on the fire station driveway, a rake-and-hoe promotion in front of the True Value. Several businesses, in fact, have put up red-and-white maple-leaf flags beside Old Glory, signaling some ancient Canuck connection — a group of hapless white settlers no doubt mercifully if unaccountably spared by a company of Montcalm’s regulars back in ’57, leaving a residuum of “Canadian Currency OK” sentiment in all hearts. Even Donna’s Kut’n Kurl boasts a window sign reading “Time for a trim, eh?” But that’s it — as if Deep River were simply saying, “Given our long establishment (1635), the spirit of true and complex independence is observed and breathed here every day. Silently. So don’t expect much.”
I turn toward the river and head down woodsy Selden Neck Lane, which T’s into even woodsier, laurel-choked Brainard Settlement House Way, which curves, narrows and switches back onto American holly and hickory-thick Swallow Lane, the road where Ann’s, Charley’s and my two children’s mailbox resides unnoticeably on a thin cedar post, its dark-green letters indicating THE KNOLL. Beside it a rough gravel car path disappears into anonymous trees, so that an atmosphere of exclusive, possibly less than welcoming habitation greets whoever wanders past: people live here, but you don’t know them.
My brain, in the time it’s taken me to clear town and wind down into these sylvan purlieus of the rich, has begun to exhibit an unpleasant tightness behind my temples. My neck’s stiff, and there’s a feeling of tissue expansion in my upper thorax, as if I ought to burp, gag or possibly just split open for reliefs sake. I have, of course, slept little and badly. I drank too much at Sally’s last night; I’ve driven too far, devoted too much precious worry time to the Markhams, the McLeods, Ted Houlihan and Karl Bemish, and too little to thinking about my son.
Though of course the most sharp-stick truth is that I’m about to pay my former wife a visit in her subsequent and better life; am about to see my orphaned kids gamboling on the wide lawns of their tonier existence; I may even, in spite of all, have to make humiliating, grinding conversation with Charley O’Dell, whom I’d just as soon tie up on a beach and leave for the crabs. Who wouldn’t have a “swelling” in his brain and generalized thoracic edema? I’m surprised it isn’t a helluva lot worse.
A small plastic sign I haven’t noticed before has been attached to the bottom edge of the mailbox, a little burgundy-colored plaque with green lettering like the box itself, which says: HERE IS A BIRD SANCTUARY. RESPECT IT. PROTECT OUR FUTURE. Karl would be pleased to know vireos are still safe here in Connecticut.
Only directly below the box, on the duffy, weedy ground, lies a bird — a grackle or a big cowbird, its eyes glued shut with death, its stiff feathers swarmed by ants. I peer down on it from behind my window and puzzle: Birds die, we all know that. Birds have coronaries, brain tumors, anemia, suffer bad luck and life’s battering, then croak like the rest of us — even in a sanctuary, where nobody has it in for them and everybody dotes on everything they do.
But here? Under their very own sign? Here is odd. And I am, in my brain-tightened unease, suddenly, instantly certain my son’s to blame (call it a father’s instinct). Plus, animal torture is one of the bad childhood warning signs: meaning he’s begun the guerrilla war of spirit-attrition against his foster home, against Charley, against cool lawns, morning mists, matched goldens, sabots, clay courts and solar panels, against all that’s happened outside his control. (I don’t completely blame him.)
Not that I approve of dispatching blameless tweeties and leaving them by the mailbox as portents of bad things on the wing. I don’t approve. It scares me silly. But as little as I hope to be involved in domestic life here, I also believe an ounce of intervention might deter a pound of cure. So, putting my car in park, I shove open my door and climb out into the heat, my brain still expanding, stoop stiffly down, lift the little dull-feathered, ant-swarmed carcass by its wingtip, take a quick look behind me at Swallow Lane curving out of sight, then quick-flip it like a cow chip off into the bushes, where it falls soundlessly, saving my son (I hope) one peck of trouble in a life that may already stretch out long and full of troubles.
Out of ancient habit I quickly raise my fingers for a sniff-check in case I need to go someplace — back up to the Chevron on Route 9—to wash the death smell off. But just as I do, a small dark-blue car (I believe it is a Yugo) with silver lettering and a silver police-shield door decal inscribed with AGAZZIZ SECURITY pulls in to block me where I’m standing beside my car. (Where has this come from?)
A slender, blond man in a blue uniform gets quickly out, as though I might just take off running into the trees, but then remains behind his door looking at me with an odd, unhumorous smile — a smile any American would recognize as signifying wariness, arrogance, authority and a conviction that outsiders cause trouble. Possibly he thinks I’m filching mail — ten reggae CD offers, or some prime steaks from Idaho, special for high rollers only.
I lower my fingers — unhappily they do smell of feral death — my skull tightened back down into my neck sinews. “Hi,” I say, extra cheerful.
“Hi!” the young man says and nods in some unclear sort of agreement. “Whatcha up to?”
I beam probity at him. “I was just going into the O’Dells’ here. I’ve been driving a ways, so I decided to stretch my legs.”
“Great,” he says, beaming cold indifference back. He is razorish-looking and, although thin, undoubtedly schooled in lethal martial-arts wherewithal. I can’t see a firearm, but he’s wearing a miniature microphone that allows him to talk to someone in another location by speaking straight into his own shoulder. “You friends of the O’Dells, are ya?” he says cheerfully.