Fun With Problems (7 page)

She had been taken by surprise by the sudden necessity of entertaining a guest, a situation she shamefacedly knew she
had brought on herself. The Shumways were not dinner-party people. Taylor Shumway, who worked on the ferry, kept a boat and lobster traps; his days began well before autumn light. Annie Sorenson-Shumway did not drink, and Taylor couldn't. He particularly did not enjoy company at home. On her side, Annie was indifferent. She had plenty of social life around her Sunday Meeting, the island school and her botany column in the weekly paper. For Taylor, a pleasurable group activity after work might be driving across the island with his power jacks to help a crew raise the corner of a house. He would leave before the beer was opened.

But that morning, after Eric had made clear who he was, she had impulsively invited him for dinner. He seemed to have sort of expected it, and she was a bit of a people pleaser. Then too, she was plain curious about any guy Lou had taken up with—Looie was a world traveler and collector of what she called "types," but the individuals Annie had met seemed pretty unique. She was also curious about what Eric was on to, as a freelance journalist, in terms of the big-shot gathering on the Neck. She and Taylor had both been activists. Taylor had gone to prison, though it was only drinking that had moved him to hurt anyone.

Annie realized that if Taylor had answered the telephone, he would have told Eric Floss to piss off, or to do something along those lines. She herself had been amazed when Eric had patently angled for shelter. But she had offered him the couch. What else could a civilized person do?

"What the shit?" Taylor had demanded when she reached him between ferry trips.

His manner got her back up, and of course she felt foolish.

"Well, gee," she said, "people dropping in. That used to be all right."

"When was that?" he asked.

On the mainland, Eric paced Harbor Street, trying not to look at his watch too often. Dead time was hard for him. His recent rehabilitation had been partly paid for by a prosperous former girlfriend, a television producer, who had sent him for treatment at her favorite facility. They had treated him at Possibilities for what she called virtual addiction. She used the word "virtual" in the old journalistic way, as a nifty reinforcing adjective. However, Eric's addictions were substantial, to marijuana, alcohol and so on. The docs at Possibilities had pronounced him bipolar, a condition formerly known as manic depression. He had then been virtually imprisoned with loons, and a very expensive confinement it was.

Possibilities was well named, since anything could happen to you there, from being whacked with a chair leg in a locked corridor by a brother or sister bipolaroid to a lightning-fast heave-ho if your money ran out. The idea was to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and you became Mr. or Ms. In Between. There were pills to zonk or stun. There were even pills to encourage, but Eric was not allowed them. Dope was around, but of course getting thrown out was a waste of time and money. Eric managed not to use it. Hitting the street, he had felt ready for sobriety. Some unremembered misstep had betrayed him into his own lower nature.

Annie, the Steadman's Island lady he had spoken to—importuned somewhat—sounded nicer than her sister. Anyway, Eric was used to soliciting contacts and hospitality in a variety of places. For quite a few years he had been traveling the world, scratching a living from his trade. He had written about the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and had seen disturbing things along the way. At times he had experienced the elation of being in new cities and new landscapes that were dangerous and fascinating. As a younger man he had been able to truly rejoice in those things.

In the early afternoon, Eric found his way to the comfortably unpreserved back streets of town. In the shadow of a fog-wrapped railroad underpass he came on a tavern called the Fisher's Inn. It had an anchor over the door, always a good sign. The place was empty except for a couple of old-timers in ragged team jackets and baseball hats. At the Fisher's Inn, where no one bought drinks for Eric, the fog seen through dim windows was seamless. Eric sauntered out and took up headquarters in a yo-ho netting-and-knotboard joint that overlooked the water, or would have if there had been anything to see through the gray shroud. He was waiting for the hour when the public might be carried across the bay. Beefeater was prohibitively expensive in the harbor spot, but Eric allowed himself several. He had drunk more modestly at the Inn. On the walk to the dock he had been shocked to discover two joints of the finest pakalolo in his raincoat pocket. A left hand had faked out the right again.

In a day or two, the conferees at Heron's Neck would hold a press conference on their deliberations at a media center on the mainland. From Eric's point of view, the only interesting thing about the event were the rumors of the Secretary's spectacular mood swings. Insider material, not funny if you were a ragged peasant in the shadow of his gleaming wings. Not funny for his undermanned, under-equipped and underinformed legions either. A few insiders had suggested in print that the main event of the conference might be some maneuvering by the Secretary's enemies to test his grip on things. There would be leaks—controlled burns, as they said in the Forest Service. That kind of thing, even considering Eric's perspective, was hard to resist.

Security officials had canceled a bird census for the duration of the conference, not that anyone could see a bird that week. It was a gesture by the Secretary's office. They were contemptuous of the sort of folks who might object to the cancellation, as they imagined such people. Around the Secretary's office they imagined such people a lot, and felt certain that the fine, all-believing yeomanry they claimed to represent hated such people as much as they did.

The trip over to Steadman's was agonizingly slow. The small two-deck ferry proceeded through swells that presented a glassy surface but set the boat into long fore-and-aft glides. The dope was good for nausea, so Eric found himself a gear box and let the breeze carry his smoke over the wake. There was nothing to be seen except the water; everything else was invisible, even the squawking gulls that attended the ferry. When, after an hour and a half, the boat eased into the island's principal town, Eric had no idea what the place looked like. His first sight of the island as the ferry came about to tie up was of Feds in raincoats on the dock, backed up by armed Navy men in jump suits. He flicked his roach into the harbor.

The houses of town were white clapboard, and there were a couple of old buildings with cupolas out of Currier and Ives. Putting the place together was akin to a blind person's feeling out an elephant, so thick was the going. It was not so hard to find a liquor store. There, a glum Portuguese man sold him two bottles of California cabernet for an all-time record price. The wine would be his house offering, one he ought to have bought off-island. He bought cigarettes too, Marlboros, the red-and-white packs that had once bought taxi rides across emerging nations. These also cost a lot.

The liquor store clerk gave him directions to the Shumways' house, which turned out to be not far but an uphill trudge. He was a little unsteady on the way. After a few minutes of walking he turned to look down on the harbor, but of course it had disappeared behind him. No up, he thought. Neither down nor sideways. It was liberating, the complete obscurity. Past gone, present solitary, future fading out. A crazy little whoop of joy inside. Must be a rush, he thought.

At twelve-step meetings and to nurturing females Eric liked to give the impression that dreadful sights had brought him to the booze- and drug-examined life. He liked, in fact, to give himself the same impression.

In his heart he knew better than to blame his ways on bad experience. No one would convince him that character was fate; he had seen too much of each to believe it. Everyone was tempted by bad choices great and small, everyone was subject to bad luck. But he had always been a boozy, druggy person, and he would have been one had he lived to middle age in the bosom of mercy itself.

All at once he thought he heard laughter, somewhere distant, at the heart of the fog. Laughter and convivial chat, a strong sound carrying many voices. Something about it made him shudder. Then the voices were subsumed in the rattle of dead leaves underfoot and his interior noises. For all he could tell the laughter had started there. Listening for whatever it was, he became aware of the foghorn on the island. He had been hearing foghorns for hours. He incautiously took the second joint out, turned from the breeze and lit it for two quick tokes.

After a few minutes the slope evened out and the blacktop road he followed looked recently surfaced. He saw that there was an old house on his right, fronted by moss-covered old stone, and beyond that a sagging porch with a defunct oil furnace sitting on it. There was a light on in the back. He walked on and saw more houses, widely spaced on both sides of the road. They appeared and disappeared behind him. Then he heard singing, the real thing, a single voice.

Steps on, he came upon a young woman in gardening gloves cutting and gathering flowers, pulling clumps of nettle and pigweed as she worked. She was tall and pretty with graying black hair. No kid was she, but she seemed very youthful.

She looked up and saw him step out of the fog and put a hand to her hair, which was to him—as they said at AA—a trigger. Her eyes were blue, her look unguarded. She seemed to be shy and sweet and much nicer than his former girlfriend.

"Hi, Annie," he said to her. "Eric." They shook hands. "What kind of flowers?"

Annie had chosen mainly asters, zinnias and gerbera daisies, all of them dripping wet. Gathering flowers, which was something Annie did all season long, never failed to remind her of the days in her childhood when she was appalled at cutting them at all. She was practically ten before she could truly believe that they did not experience pain. The thought came back to her in various forms, borne on different memories.

She told him with a smile what kind they were. "I always think they have feelings," she said.

As she straightened up, he asked, "You think the flowers have feelings?"

"Well, not really." She brushed the soil and stems from her hands and smiled.

A chatterbox, he thought. Goofy like Lou, the ex.

"I understand. Too much pain, right?"

Annie affected to laugh heartily and turned away, blushing, toward the door. Eric followed her inside.

Taylor was sipping apple juice from a fruit jar at the kitchen table.

"This is Taylor, Eric," Annie told him.

"Neat," Eric said, glancing at the fireplace, at Taylor, and at the fifty-year-old furniture that had never made its way back to the mainland.

Annie hastened to display the garden flowers to her husband. "What do you think of these, Taylor? They'll work, don't you think?"

Taylor looked over his uninvited guest and burped rudely. He stared at the backpack Eric was removing.

"Good of you to join us, there, Eric."

Eric laughed as politely as he could.

A garlicky vegetable stew Taylor had made days before was simmering on the stove. "Eric is Lou's ex," said Annie.

"I heard," said Taylor.

Though he had passed forty that very summer, there was a quality about Taylor of late lingering adolescence. He kept staring at Eric's backpack.

Outside the kitchen window that looked on Annie's befogged garden, a male cardinal was fiercely attacking his own reflection in the glass. The cardinal was searching for a mate and was determined to drive off rivals. He had become obsessed by the house's windows; a tireless challenger kept appearing in them, matching him cry for cry, dealing him hurtful thumps. The bird's every sally was checked by this relentless enemy. But the love-driven red bird had heart. For days, from misty dawn until the dissolving of the light it had been fighting itself. Annie and Eric looked toward the window.

"Sad," Annie said.

"That's life, isn't it?" Eric said, turning to Taylor. Taylor looked at him without expression.

"It shouldn't be," Annie said.

Annie and Eric turned back to the window and then took a sneaking look at each other.

"Speaking of how life ought to be," Eric said after a moment, "I have some wine for us."

Annie blushed again.

"We don't..." she began.

"We don't drink it," Taylor said sharply. He stood up as Eric took his two bottles of cabernet out of the bag and put them on the table. Taylor took a pair of metal-rimmed
glasses from his blue chambray shirt pocket. Then he picked up one bottle after the other and examined them.

"God damn, man," he said softly. He was looking at the price stickers over the labels.

One thing Annie had learned to live with was Taylor's anger. In her case, that anger threatened only her peace of mind because Taylor never hit her. He had, however, served twenty-three months in an Oregon state prison for an act of violence. During the period when she and Taylor had been eco-activists in the Northwest, he had responded to a taunt from a local logger. The response caused him to become one of the few individuals in that state ever charged, under an old frontier law, with the crime of mayhem, which the movement lawyers were able to plead down from felonious assault. Taylor's removable dental bridge had caused disfiguring damage to the logger's nose. Taylor was passionate, and in certain situations he could lose control. Situations involving alcohol were dangerous for him and for others.

"God damn, man," he said again, and smiled. He had never replaced the bridge.

Taylor stood a couple of inches taller than Eric. Thin and tanned, he managed to look frail in spite of his size. He was long-necked, floating a prominent Adam's apple. His eyes were blue and bright. It was impossible not to notice the humps of muscle on his narrow shoulders and the rippling of sinew down the length of his tanned bony arms. He would never look exactly athletic, but the work he did as a deckhand on the island ferry had made him extremely strong. His hands were scarred and callused, the knuckles battered, split, fractured and healed over. He showed a high forehead, prominent cheekbones and a strong jaw. His fair hair was as soft and fine as a girl's, cut short and lying slack on the top of his skull like a tonsured knight's. Annie's sister, Lou, had described him as an ectomorph, a word previously unknown to Annie. It apparently meant a tall, skinny guy who brooded and couldn't drink. That was Taylor.