Empire Falls (5 page)

“I wouldn’t,” Horace counseled. “Somebody’s got to inherit Empire Falls. It might as well be Miles Roby.”

“I’d have a better chance of winning the MegaBucks lottery,” Miles said, sliding the platter onto the counter and noticing, which he hadn’t for a long time, the purple fibroid cyst that grew out of Horace’s forehead. Had it gotten larger, or was it just that Miles had been away and was seeing it afresh after even a short absence? The cyst had taken over half of Horace’s right eyebrow, where hairless skin stretched tight and shiny over the knot, its web of veins fanning outward from its dark center. One of the good things about small towns, Miles’s mother had always maintained, was that they accommodated just about everyone; the lame and the disfigured were all your neighbors, and seeing them every day meant that after a while you stopped noticing what made them different.

Miles hadn’t seen much in the way of physical oddity on Martha’s Vineyard, where he and his daughter had vacationed last week. Almost everyone on the island appeared to be rich, slender and beautiful. When he’d remarked on this, his old friend Peter said that he should come live in L.A. for a while. There, he argued, ugliness was rapidly and systematically being bred out of the species. “He doesn’t really mean L.A.,” Peter’s wife, Dawn, had corrected when Miles appeared dubious. “He means Beverly Hills.” “And Bel Air,” Peter added. “And Malibu,” Dawn said. And then they named a baker’s dozen other places where unattractiveness had been eradicated. Peter and Dawn were full of such worldly wisdom, which, for the most part, Miles enjoyed. The three had been undergraduates together at a small Catholic college outside of Portland, and he admired that they were barely recognizable as the students he’d known. Peter and Dawn had become other people entirely, and Miles concluded that this was what was supposed to happen, though it hadn’t happened to him. If disappointed by their old friend’s lack of personal evolution, they concealed that disappointment well, even going so far as to claim that he restored their faith in humanity by remaining the same old Miles. Since they apparently meant this as a compliment, Miles tried hard to take it that way. They did seem genuinely glad to see him every August, and even though each year he half expected his old friends not to renew the invitation for the following summer, he was always wrong.

Horace picked the thin slice of Bermuda off the plate with his thumb and forefinger, as if to suggest great offense at the idea that onions should be in such close proximity to anything he was expected to eat. “I don’t eat onions, Miles. I know you’ve been away, but I haven’t changed. I read the
Globe
, I write for the
Empire Gazette
, I never send Christmas cards, and I don’t eat onions.”

Miles accepted the onion slice and deposited it in the garbage. It was true he’d been slightly off all day, still sluggish and stupid from vacation, forgetting things that were second nature. He’d intended to work himself back in gradually by supervising the first couple shifts, but Buster, with whom Miles alternated at the grill, always took his revenge by going on a bender as soon as Miles returned from the island, forcing him back behind the grill before he was ready.

“She’s better than MegaBucks,” Horace said, still on the subject of Mrs. Whiting, who each year spent less and less time in Maine, wintering in Florida and doing what Miles’s long dead Irish maternal grandmother, who liked to stay put, would have called “gallivanting.” Apparently Mrs. Whiting had just returned from an Alaskan cruise. “If I was a member of the family I’d be out there kissing her bony ass every day.”

Miles watched Horace assemble his burger, relieved to see a red stain spreading over the bun.

Miles Roby was not, of course, a member of Mrs. Whiting’s family. What Horace referred to was the fact that the old woman’s maiden name had been Robideaux, and some maintained that the Robys and the Robideauxs of Dexter County were, if you went back far enough, the same family. Miles’s own father, Max, believed this to be true, though for him it was purely a matter of wishful thinking. Lacking any evidence that he and the richest woman in central Maine weren’t related, Max decided they must be. Miles knew that if his father had been the one with the money and somebody named Robideaux felt entitled to even a dime of it, he naturally would’ve seen the whole thing differently.

Of course, it was a moot point. Mrs. Whiting had married all that money in the person of C. B. Whiting, who had owned the paper mill and the shirt factory and the textile mill before selling them all to multinational corporations so they could be pillaged and then closed. The Whiting family still owned half the real estate in Empire Falls, including the grill, which Miles had managed for Mrs. Whiting these last fifteen years with the understanding that the business would devolve upon him at her passing, an event Miles continued to anticipate without, somehow, being able to imagine it. What would happen to the rest of the old woman’s estate was a matter of great speculation. Normally, it would have been inherited by her daughter, but Cindy Whiting had been in and out of the state mental hospital in Augusta all her adult life, and it was widely believed that Mrs. Whiting would never entrust her daughter with anything more than her continued maintenance required. In truth, no one in Dexter County knew much about Mrs. Whiting’s actual wealth or her plans for it. She never dealt with local lawyers or accountants, preferring to employ a Boston firm that the Whitings had used for nearly a century. She did little to discourage the notion that a significant legacy would one day go to the town itself, but neither did she offer any concrete assurances. Mrs. Whiting was not known for philanthropy. In times of crisis, such as the most recent flood of the Knox River, she occasionally contributed, though she always insisted that the community match her donation. Similar restrictions were applied to seed money for a new wing of the hospital and a grant to upgrade computers at the high school. Such gifts, though sizable, were judged to be little more than shavings off the tip of a financial iceberg. When the woman was dead, it was hoped, the money would flow more freely.

Miles wasn’t so sure. Mrs. Whiting’s generosity toward the town, like that she extended to him, was puzzlingly ambiguous. Some years ago, for instance, she’d donated the decaying old Whiting mansion, which occupied a large section of the downtown, with the proviso that it be preserved. It was only after accepting her gift that the mayor and town council came to understand the extent of the burden they’d been handed. They could no longer collect taxes on the property, which they were not permitted to use for social events, and maintenance costs were considerable. Similarly, if Mrs. Whiting did end up giving the restaurant to Miles, he feared that the gift would be too costly to accept.

In fact, now that the mills were all closed down, it sometimes appeared that Mrs. Whiting had cornered the market on business failure. She owned most of the commercial space in town and was all too happy to help new enterprises start up in one of her buildings. But then rents had a way of going up, and none of the businesses seemed to get anywhere, nor did their owners when they appealed to Mrs. Whiting for more favorable terms.

“I don’t know, Miles,” Horace said. “You seem to have a special place in that old woman’s heart. Her treatment of you is unique in my experience. The fact that she hasn’t closed the grill down suggests just how deep her affection runs. Either that or she enjoys watching you suffer.”

Though Miles understood this last observation to be a joke, he found himself—and not for the first time—considering whether it might not be the simple literal truth. Viewed objectively, Mrs. Whiting did appear to cut him more slack than was her custom, and yet there were times when Miles got the distinct impression that she bore him no particular fondness. Which probably explained why he was not all that eager to meet with her now, though he knew their annual meeting could not be postponed for long. Each autumn she left for Florida earlier than the last, and while their annual “State of the Grill” meetings were little more than a pro forma ritual, Mrs. Whiting refused to forgo them; and in her company he could not shake the feeling that for all these years the old woman had been expecting him to show her some sign—of what, he had no idea. Still, he left every encounter with the sense that he’d yet again failed some secret test.

T
HE BELL JINGLED
above the door, and Walt Comeau danced inside, his arms extended like an old-fashioned crooner’s, his silver hair slicked back on the sides, fifties style. “Don’t let the stars get in your eyes,” he warbled, “don’t let the moon break your heart.”

Several of the regulars at the lunch counter, knowing what was expected of them, swiveled on their stools, leaned into the aisle, right arms extended in a row, and returned, in a different key altogether, “Pa pa pa paya.”

“Perry Como,” Horace said when he realized, without actually looking, that the seat next to him at the counter had been filled. “Right on time.”

“Big Boy,” Walt said, addressing Miles, “you hear the news?”

“Oh, please,” said Miles, who’d been hearing little else all morning. Over the weekend a black Lincoln Town Car with Massachusetts plates had been reported in the lot outside the textile mill. Last year it had been a BMW, the year before that a Cadillac limo. The color of the vehicle seemed to alternate between black and white, but the plates were always Massachusetts, which made Miles smile. The hordes of visitors who poured into Maine every summer were commonly referred to as Massholes, and yet when Empire Falls fantasized about deliverance, it invariably had Massachusetts plates.

“What?” Walt said, indignant. “You weren’t even here.”

“Let him tell you about it,” Horace advised. “Then it’ll be over.”

Walt Comeau looked back and forth between Miles and Horace as if to determine who was the bigger fool, settling finally on Horace, probably because he’d spoken last. “All right, you explain it. Three guys in eight-hundred-dollar suits drive all the way up here from Boston on a Sunday morning, park outside the mill, hike down to the head of the falls in their black patent leather shoes, then stand there for half an hour pointing up at the mill. You tell me who they are and what they’re doing.”

Horace set his hamburger down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Hey, it’s clear to me. They came to invest millions. For a while they were thinking about tech stocks, but then they thought, Hell, no. Let’s go into textiles. That’s where the
real
profits are. Then you know what they did? They decided not to build the factory in Mexico or Thailand where people work for about ten bucks a week. Let’s drive up to Empire Falls, Maine, they said, and look at that gutted old shell of a factory that the river damn near washed away last spring and buy all new equipment and create hundreds of jobs, nothing under twenty dollars an hour.”

Miles couldn’t help smiling. Minus the sarcasm, this was pretty much the scenario he’d been listening to all morning. The annual sighting was born, as far as Miles could tell, of the same need that caused people to spot Elvis in the local Denny’s. But why always autumn? Miles wondered. It seemed an odd season to spawn such desperate optimism. Maybe it had something to do with the kids all going back to school, giving their parents the leisure to contemplate the approach of another savage, relentless winter and to conjure up a pipe dream to help them through it.

“Hey,” Walt said, sounding hurt. “All I’m saying is something nice
could
happen here someday. You never know. That’s all I’m saying, okay?”

Horace had gone back to his hamburger, and this time he didn’t bother to put it down or wipe his mouth before speaking. “Something nice,” he repeated. “Is that what you think? That having money makes people nice?”

“Ah, to hell with you,” Walt said, dismissing both men with a single wave of his hand. “Here’s what I’d like to know, though, smart-ass. How can you sit here and eat one greasy hamburger after another, day after goddamn day? Don’t you have any idea how bad that junk is for you?”

Horace, who had one bite of burger left, put it on his plate and looked up. “What I don’t know is why you have to ruin my lunch every day. Why can’t you leave people in peace?”

“Because I care about you,” Walt said. “I can’t help it.”

“I wish you could,” Horace said, pushing his platter away.

“Well, I can’t.” Walt pushed Horace’s platter even farther down the counter and took a worn deck of cards out of his pocket, slapping it down in front of Horace. “I can’t let you die before I figure out how you’re beating me at gin.”

Horace polished some hamburger grease into the countertop with his napkin before cutting the deck. “You should live so long. Hell,
I
should live so long,” he said, watching the deal, content to wait until he had his whole hand before picking up any cards. He always gave the impression of having played all these hands before, as if the chief difficulty presented by each one was the boredom inherent in pretending over and over again that you didn’t know how everything would eventually play out. By contrast, when Horace dealt, Walt picked up each card on the fly, identifying it eagerly, each hand promising an entirely new experience.

“Nope,” he now said, arranging the cards in his hand one way, then another, uncertain as to which organizing principle—suits or numbers—would be more likely to guarantee victory. “I’m your best friend, Horace. You just don’t know it. And I’ll tell you something else you don’t know. You don’t know who your worst enemy is, either.”

Horace, who seldom seemed to move more than a card or two before his hand made sense, rolled his eyes at Miles. “Who might that be, Perry?” Horace asked, the way a man will when he already knows what’s coming. It wasn’t just these gin hands he’d played before.

Walt nodded at Miles. “It’s Big Boy here,” he said, to no one’s surprise. “You keep eating his greasy burgers, you’re going to look just like him, too, if you don’t have a coronary first.”

“You want some coffee, Walt?” Miles asked. “I always feel better about you undermining my business after I’ve coaxed eighty-five cents out of you.”