She’d been wanting to go since the first day they’d arrived, but everything had been so hectic, they’d been so busy unpacking and rearranging and getting the long-neglected yard into some semblance of order, that he simply hadn’t had the time to take her.
Today, though, she had demanded and he had acquiesced, and now the two of them stood in the dirt parking lot in front of the church, she leaning heavily on his arm. He’d wanted to drive down, but she’d insisted that they walk, like they had in the old days, and although it had taken nearly forty minutes to get here, with frequent rest stops, they’d finally arrived.
Gregory looked around: at the variety store, which began the block of businesses on the other side of the vacant lot to the left of the church, at the wood-frame house on the building’s right flank that had been turned into a nursery. He looked up at the church itself as the two of them approached. He’d expected to have a better memory of the place—after all, his family had spent a lot of time here—but he must have blocked it out, because the church seemed no more familiar to him than the mine office or the town hall or any of the other buildings he’d seen as a child but with which he had had no real involvement. He recognized the church, but it was an impartial, impersonal recognition that contradicted the intimate acquaintance he’d had with the place.
They walked up the three short steps, went in. Like the church in East L.A., it was simple. A wooden structure with one big open room and a small adjoining kitchen. There were benches stacked against one wall, and an old man with a white beard that hung down to his stomach was sweeping the hardwood floor.
“Jim?” his mother said, stopping. She squinted. “Jim Ivanovitch?”
The old man broke into a huge grin. “Agafia?”
The two of them hobbled across the floor toward each other, meeting somewhere around the middle of the room for a big bear hug. Gregory smiled. He didn’t recognize the old man, but his mother did, and she was clearly delighted. He hadn’t seen her this happy since they’d left California.
She turned toward him. “Gregory?” She spoke in Russian. “You may not remember, but this is Jim Petrovin, our old minister.” She laughed a strangely girlish laugh he didn’t recognize. “And my old boyfriend before your father.”
The minister nodded and grinned, the expression on his face impossible to read behind the huge beard. Gregory stared at him, maintaining his own now meaningless smile. He suddenly didn’t know what to say or how to act. It was childish of him, but he felt an instant antipathy toward the old man, a defensive rivalry on his father’s behalf. The minister was ancient, practically on the verge of death, but it seemed somehow disloyal for him to accept the man, to feel anything positive toward him. He thought of his mother’s laugh, that girlish laugh he didn’t recognize, that laugh from an earlier time of her life, before he had been born, and he realized that there were a lot of things about his mother that he didn’t know, whole segments of her life, whole aspects of her personality that were shielded from him and entirely unfamiliar.
He understood for the first time that he did not really know his mother.
“Jim followed my family to McGuane,” she said. “Hoping to win me back.”
The minister nodded. “I did not covet,” he said. “But I hoped.”
Gregory didn’t want to hear this. “You two probably have a lot to talk about.” He was suddenly aware of how rusty his Russian sounded, how long it had been since he’d spoken more than a few words at a time in the language. “I am going to walk around town. I will come back in an hour or so and pick you up.”
His mother nodded. “I will be here.”
She smiled at him and waved, and he walked out of the church, across the dirt, out to the street. He felt like a child again, confused and conflicted, and though he knew it was silly, knew that there was nothing going on—and that even if there was, his mother had a perfect right to resume a romantic life this many years after his father’s death—he felt uncomfortable. The fact that she had known this minister before she had known his father trivialized the life of their family, implied somehow that this man was her one true love and that her husband, his father, had been merely an impediment that had temporarily gotten in the way. It was a dumb thought, immature, but there it was, stuck in his mind, and he had to force himself not to think it, to at least attempt to look at the situation objectively.
He headed downtown to the shopping district. He’d been too busy or too lazy to come down here sooner and, despite occasional trips to the grocery store, he hadn’t seen the area up close since the Copper Days celebration that first weekend.
The throngs of people were gone now, and the side-walks were empty, only parked cars and an occasional pickup or broken-down Jeep clattering up the canyon roads to indicate that McGuane was anything other than a ghost town.
He walked along the cracked sidewalk, peering into the windows of the shops—some open, some closed—that fronted the street in a series of connected rock and brick buildings. There was a used bookstore, an antique store, a pawnshop, a jewelry store, a shoe repair shop, a pharmacy.
Halfway down the block, between the shoe repair and a western wear shop, he came across a narrow building with no windows and a dark, open doorway.
A bar.
He stopped walking.
The same bar he’d passed with his father all those years ago on the way to church.
He hesitated only a second before stepping inside.
He didn’t know what he expected. Hostile rednecks gathered around the counter? The same men who’d insulted his father all those years ago, now grown old? He wasn’t sure, but his muscles were tensed as he walked through the door.
He needn’t have worried. The interior of the bar was neither threatening nor intimidating. It looked like a typical small-town tavern. Only a few patrons occupied the dimly lit room: a couple in a back booth, two uniformed sheriff’s deputies at a small table.
And Paul.
His old friend was seated at the front counter of the bar, next to an older man, and he called out Gregory’s name and happily waved him over.
“Hey,” Gregory said, walking up. He sat down on an adjacent stool. “Didn’t expect to find you here.”
“I’m here most days.” Paul grinned. “Where everybody knows my name.” He motioned to the bartender. “A beer for my friend here.”
Gregory shook his head. “No. Thanks. It’s a little early for me.”
“It’s ten o’clock!”
Gregory smiled. “Coffee,” he told the bartender.
Paul turned to the old man next to him, nodded in Gregory’s direction. “This is Gregory Tomasov, my best friend from… hell, kindergarten through high school. He just moved back to town.”
The man reached around, held out a weathered hand. “Howdy. I’m Odd Morrison.”
Gregory smiled. “That’s an odd name.”
“Never heard that one before,” the other man said dryly.
Gregory laughed.
“Odd’s my right-hand man. Plumber, carpenter, brick-layer, carpet installer, and all-around fix-it dude.”
“I get it,” Gregory said. “He does odd jobs.”
“You’re a wit,” the old man said. He sipped his beer. “Or at least half a one.”
“He doesn’t take too kindly to people making fun of his name. Especially strangers.”
Gregory reddened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just…”
Both Paul and Odd burst out laughing.
“Same old Gregory,” Paul said. “Still afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings.” He clapped him on the back. “Insult Odd all you want. He doesn’t give a shit.”
“As long as I can do the same to you.”