“But what have you been up to all these years?” he asked Marcus now. “What happened to you after I left?”
“I moved to Athol when they cleared the valley. Worked there for a while. Then there was the war. Then I came back, got married — Annemarie Scanlon, you probably don’t remember her — and we had three kids. I sold insurance, thirty years. Annemarie died in ‘74.”
Marcus paused and ran his fingers over the dash. He had tufts of white hair in his ears, Brendan saw. They made him look like an old cat. “Two of my kids live in Michigan now. One’s on the West Coast. I live here.” Marcus gestured toward a shabby white house across the square. “I’ve got a nice room there, and a nice part-time job — you know. It’s just a life.”
Just a life, thought Brendan. As if anyone’s were ever that. He longed for details, but when he tried to imagine telling Marcus about his own life, he could see why Marcus had been so brief. It would take hours, days, for them to explain themselves to each other, and the telling would mean reliving everything. And who could stand that? Just surviving was work enough.
He felt tired, suddenly — enormously, overwhelmingly tired — and he wished he’d found Marcus a decade ago, when he’d still had some energy. His hands shaped a few signs in the air, the first signs of the Lord’s Prayer, but he didn’t realize they’d done so until he looked up and saw Marcus watching him curiously. “We used to hear you guys talked to each other with your hands,” Marcus said.
“True enough,” Brendan said, but he tucked his hands under his shirt and willed them to be still. Bongo, who’d been watching them patiently, sighed and yawned and flopped to the floor and closed his eyes. Brendan wished he could lie down beside him.
“Nice dog.” Marcus reached down and scratched Bongo’s ears. “Yours?”
“My nephew’s. He’s the one who’s driving — he went to get some coffee.” Brendan was so tired he thought he might be asleep already, his eyes open but his brain completely disconnected. He struggled to keep the conversation going. “This job you have. What is it?”
But before Marcus could answer, Henry opened the door and stood before them with his hands full of paper sacks. “Hello?” he said. “Who’s this?”
“This—” Brendan said, but it was all so complicated, how could he ever explain? Years ago, his abbot had told him that there were no true coincidences. There were lesser plans and greater plans, plans that might influence only the comets or a pair of paramecia. But every conjunction of events or people had a purpose, however small. Why had Marcus been sitting just there, feeding the pigeons just then?
Marcus shot out his hand and took over. “Marcus O’Brian,” he said to Henry. “I was sitting here feeding the birds and I noticed Brendan watching me, so I came over to make a little conversation. And wouldn’t you know, it’s the damnedest thing. Brendan and I knew each other when we were boys.”
“You’re kidding,” Henry said.
“No,” Marcus said. “It’s true.” His hand still hung in the air, waiting for Henry to grasp it. “Brendan and his brother and I used to play together.”
Henry’s face paled. “You knew my father?”
Marcus looked at Brendan, who nodded. “This is Henry. My nephew.”
“You’re Frankie’s boy?”
Henry grasped Marcus’s hand. “I am.”
“But we’ve met. You wouldn’t remember, you were so little — your father and I were in the service together, and I visited him and your mother a few times after we came home, before … didn’t you have a sister? A little girl, curly brown hair?”
“Wiloma,” Henry said. “You saw Wiloma.”
Brendan leaned his head back and wished he were not so tired. Henry seemed to feel all the excitement at meeting Marcus that he should have felt himself, that he would have felt if his head had not grown so heavy that even his brace could hardly hold it up. The coincidence didn’t seem to bother Henry at all. What kind of mind did he have? Brendan wondered. He had come to St. Benedict’s for a routine visit, agreed to an unexpected trip, accepted the improbable gift of a van without a question. Now he accepted the appearance of this stranger who was no stranger equally easily. And yet it meant something that Marcus was here. It had to mean something.
Brendan let Marcus chatter on, filling Henry in on the details of how his family had known theirs, how he and Frank junior had done this and that, and how he remembered the very night Henry’s mother and father had gotten engaged at the Farewell Ball. Brendan thought how he’d missed all of that. He’d been in the abbey when Marcus and Frank junior had been in high school; he’d been on his way to China during the Farewell Ball and had heard about it only years later, from his parents. He had never known Henry’s mother, and it was strange to think that Marcus knew more of Henry’s family than he did himself.
His throat was dry and sore. Quietly, interrupting the flow of talk, he said, “Henry? Did you happen to get some coffee?”
Henry looked down at the paper sacks. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He dug out a steaming cup and offered it to Brendan. “You want something to eat? I didn’t have much money left, but I got us some fried-egg sandwiches and a couple of Danish.”
“Nothing for me,” Brendan said.
“Marcus?”
“I’d take one of those egg sandwiches. If you’ve got no use for it.”
Bongo sat up and drooled and whined as Marcus and Henry unwrapped their sandwiches. “Why, the poor thing’s hungry,” Marcus said. He plucked the egg from his roll and looked at Henry. “Do you mind?”
“I forgot,” Henry said, looking abashed. “We’ve been driving half the night. Go ahead.” Marcus tossed the egg to Bongo, who snapped it up and then wagged his tail so hard it thumped on the floor. Henry tossed him half a cheese Danish. “You lie down now,” he said. “That’s all you’re getting.” Bongo collapsed, licking his whiskers.
Marcus bit into his empty roll. “So, what are you two doing here? Not that I’m not thrilled to see you.”
Brendan’s left hand rose into the air and hung there for a minute before he was conscious of it. He was too tired to talk anymore. Henry spoke for both of them; to Brendan’s surprise, he spoke clearly and well.
“Uncle Brendan never saw the reservoir,” he told Marcus. “He left before the dam was finished, even before they’d cleared most of the valley, and he wanted to see what it looks like now. And he wanted to show me the place where I was born. Da — my grandfather, you might have known him—”
“Sure, I knew him. He was a fine man.”
“Da had some land in East Pomeroy, outside the reservoir, that he gave to my father and Uncle Brendan — maybe you’ve seen it, if you visited my parents. We thought we’d go take a look at the part Uncle Brendan hung on to, if we can find it.”
Marcus nodded. “That’s nice land. That’s a nice bit of woods.”
Brendan raised his head. “You know it? Still? You know where it is?” It was meant, he thought. It was meant to be. He should have understood.
“Of course I do,” Marcus said. “It’s my job.”
“What job?” Henry said. “You have a job?”
“Sure. I was just telling your uncle. I have a part-time job at the new reservoir Visitors’ Center. Nice park — you ought to see it. Nice building, nice people. These kids fresh out of college put together exhibits about the valley’s history, and what things were like before the reservoir, and I’m who they ask about the old times. I am the old times. They’ve dug up all these pictures and things and they want to know who the people were, and where the houses used to be, and … you know.” Marcus laughed. “I have a desk there, nameplate and all. Not bad for an old coot.”