Giovanni's Gift (7 page)

He was overreacting, sure, but couldn't help himself. From the kitchen window he observed Noah backing his car until it faced the rutted lane that would take him down along the creek for several miles, where it widened, fed by uproarious tributaries, and became a deepening river, even as the dirt lane widened into a road and intersected a county highway to town.

The car quickly disappeared into scrims of greenery. It was early afternoon. He took a tomato from the windowsill, I imagine, where Edmé had laid out a row of them to ripen in the sun. After rinsing the dirt off its bright-red skin, under the cold column of spring water from the tap, he wrenched off the pliant stem and bit into it. The tomato tasted rich and sweet and earthy. At once, his mood lightened. He walked down the stairs, across the foreyard, and past the rows of squash, beans, carrots, peas, in the kitchen garden, through a paddock of waist-high grass that led to the rocky beach of the creek. In spring, when it had warmed enough to melt the high snows, these copious stones were burnished in cold water. By August the creek had receded, leaving a treacherous beach for the walker to negotiate. Henry knew which stones would hold his weight without rocking and which wouldn't. He crossed the creek not on the narrow footbridge but by leaping from rock to rock, and climbed the path on the far shore. There were two Henrys who lived at Ash Creek, he thought, as he finished the tomato, which he'd eaten like an apple. The primitive, juvenile, rustic Henry who lived in the tiny rivalries of youth and who moments ago could contemplate the pure barbarism of such a violent response to the boy who taunted him. And then there was the Henry he was more accustomed to, the Henry who had matured, he supposed—and this was the Henry who walked toward the glass and cedar studio that rose into view.

Here it was that he worked for several hours a day, continuing to draw buildings for his megalopolis, his Taliesen of sorts, the Utopian city that obsessed him, more and more fanciful structures that would go into his supercity which would very probably never be built. Here he sat down to gaze out at the wild waters of the creek and reflect on what Giovanni's shoe—for he had come to believe that this was what Noah Daiches had discovered up on the hill, the shoe that the intruder had waved over his head the previous night before he lit out into the woods—could possibly imply. That is, what it could mean beyond the fact it disproved for once and all that the left foot of his friend's corpse had not been removed by some poor famished animal come upon the body and taken it for a lucky gift of nature. The shoe had not been there a week earlier, when last he had hiked through that nearby stretch of woods. It was a problem for both Henrys to contemplate.

Twenty-three hours was how long it took for me to arrive at this sleepy little bus depot bathed in the dusty light of dawn. Delays and circling and connections and sitting and more sitting, all the usual tedium of travel. Hours of marching beside others under the anemic fluorescents of airport terminals, with eyes too weary to see. Hours of overhearing monotonous exhausted voices of fellow travelers in concourse after concourse. Moments of temporary resurrection as I washed my face, somewhere, during a layover. And then back into the demimonde of voyagers.

When I arrived finally at the last of these airports, a vast sprawl of runways carved into the high plains, I decided against any more flying. I still had quite some distance to cover, but it was better accomplished without leaving the earth. The bus departed the city, followed the highway up into the foothills and then into the mountains as the sun went down, so that we were soon shrouded in a consummate darkness punctuated only by headlights descending the sinuous canyons. The steady lament of the engine lulled me to sleep finally, before we crossed the continental divide, passing through places like Hideaway and Troublesome, so when I stepped down out of the warm interior of the bus and got my first breath of chilly mountain air, I was very awake.

On my face must have spread the most unguarded smile of boyish recognition. I retrieved my suitcase from the baggage hold and set out to find a cafe that might be open at this early hour, walking through the heart of my favorite childhood town, and as I did, warm euphoria flooded through me. Such a welling of elation, so very present and palpable despite my fatigue—such
happiness.
These were unexpected passions, which I hadn't experienced in some time.

The main street had changed, of course. The proliferation of gift shops implied what I already knew, that I was not returning to the same simple paradisal province I'd known as a child. The old five-and-dime was replaced by a store in whose windows was outdoor gear: designer mountain-climbing equipment; crampons and carabiners and bright-yellow nylon rope; a tooled-leather golf bag filled with fresh irons, wedges, woods; fancy saddles and fly-fishing tackle. Here was a natural foods store, its window papered with handbills advertising nutritional retreats and reflexology seminars, and within were bins of organic nuts and shelves of herbal tinctures. Gentrification had not completely seized the day, but I could see it was beginning to make inroads.

The bank building, with its corner entrance and its great round clock extended like an inefficient awning above, was, on the other hand, just as it always had been, massive blocks of local granite piled two stories high—still the tallest edifice in town. I passed by its sturdy facade, then entered the cafe next door, sat, ordered coffee, asking for what had been on the brewer longest, in hope of getting something black rather than the usual American transparent brown, coffee miming tea, then settled to consider what next to do.

Ash Creek was way too far from town for me to walk. I doubted there were cabs here, and the bus wouldn't take me any closer. In fact, I had no choice but to telephone my aunt and break the news that I'd not abided by her wishes, as she had expressed them when we spoke just yesterday in Rome, and that I had come. I could offer to check into the local hotel, I thought. Though, of course, that wouldn't make much sense, given I'd come to see Edmé and Henry, and to learn what I could about the night visits. The giddiness I felt at being back in my cherished childhood haunt began to fade.

As it happens, my apprehension was misplaced. “Grant, how wonderful,” Edmé said. “One of us will be down to pick you up in an hour. Just stay where you are.”

Whether it was the caffeine from the third oily cup of coffee that rekindled my confidence; or whether it was relief at Edmé's reaction to my impetuous trip that brought me careening into their solitude, wholly uninvited; or my awareness, however impudent and gauche, that the waitress, whose name was May and whose hair was the fiery orange of the earlier sunrise, had taken notice of me … whether it was any of these things that caused my self-assurance to swell, I don't know. But I was grateful for this quaint spirit of hope that visited me again as I sat there, for this hope that coursed through me like pure adrenaline.

My past did not have to dictate my future, I thought. How unique it might be to climb out from under the usual
guilt quilt,
as Mary used to refer to it: that steadfast melancholy, for want of a better term, that blanketed me day in and out, and had—with the exception of those first giddy months we spent together—for many years. It was what some people refer to as a glimpse, this moment. Here, now, the loyal guilt quilt had lifted, so that I sensed maybe there was something possible for me, that I might start anew, invent someone fresh in this body of mine, here in this place which no one whom I had ever harmed called home. Maybe, I thought, there could be life after Mary. Maybe I could find some way to reassemble all these tangents into some kind of coherent existence.

Even for the illusion, I was saturated with gratitude. I paid my bill, left a tip on the table, said goodbye to May, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The clock on the bank read eight. Already, the town was quite alive with people. May, Mary—May's name was
Mary,
but shy one crucial, growling letter—it wasn't long before she and the hope I'd been feeling were gently erased.

Henry, not Edmé, retrieved me from my muddled musings. “That's all you brought?” he asked, swinging my leather bag into the back of the car. “That's it,” and I climbed in beside him, and we took off for Ash Creek.

“You look well,” my uncle glanced at me sidelong.

“I do?”

“You could use a haircut. Other than that—”

“You look well yourself,” twisting my hair, which did hang down to my shoulders.

“You've got to be tired. Edmé's making up your room.”

“Thanks for letting me stay on such short notice—I mean, on
no
notice.”

“We're always happy to have you, Grant. You know that.”

The conversation continued along these simple lines, my uncle and I never having developed over the years much skill at make-talk.

As we spoke, I marveled at what I saw outside the window.

The sun was higher now. It spread a lazy light across the wide valley, a vast moraine many millennia ago and now a fertile expanse of green crisscrossed by serpentine glacial streams. Small hanging glaciers and sparkly ice faces clung to shadowy crevices and gullies in the highest ranges surrounding this great bowl. Snow that never melted, centuries-old slush. Magpies alit on barbed wiring. Cattle grazed in the distance. The world was constituted of primary and secondary colors. The bright-yellow center line of the highway, the black of the road itself. Green upon green out across the valley and into the sierras below timberline. Purple ridges and spires and summits. And above all this, blue. Blue-from-some-god's-palette blue. I was awed.

Discourse between me and Henry revived once we turned off the paved road and got onto the rough narrow winding track that edged the marshy mountain delta where Ash Creek split into fingerlets, then rejoined, finally to spill its racy waters into the wide, slow river out on the broad plain. We needed
things
in order to connect.

“What's that?” I asked.

He looked to where I was pointing. “Sandhill crane,” he said. “We see a lot more of them than we used to.”

“That's good,” I said.

“Is it? They're only here because of a freshwater lake some developers got it in their head to dig near here.”

“I thought architects loved development.”

“I'm hardly an architect anymore.”

“You think your night visitor's been hired by some developer to get you off your place, maybe intimidate you into selling?”

Henry cut me off, subtly but firmly, by just not answering. I glanced over at his profile as we were jostled by the thousand ruts and washboarding of the road, and saw there his firmness, his Fulton self-possession, a kind of stern restraint I had always admired in him but also feared.

“The road's bad as ever,” I offered by way of apology, and he warmed again, remarking, “Just the way we want to keep it, all but washed out.”

“That's one way to hold traffic down.”

Behind us rose a great cloud of road dust. We passed the Lewis house, which was set far back off the narrow lane, in a meadow of wildflowers and tall grasses. His gate was closed, padlocked. Soon we reached the lower gate to Ash Creek, and I got out, unhooked it, and allowed gravity to take hold and swing it down until it cleared the road edge. Henry pulled through and braked again, once above the gate. I rehooked the chain over the post, heard the crashing cataract of the creek, hard by the road, whose sides were waist high in yellow scrub. Another mile and the second gate came into view, with its cattle-guard grating and aluminum rails. Once more he stopped, and I stepped out, drew back the same bolt I had drawn many times before, the bolt that held the gate in place, and stood aside to let my uncle drive through.

Above, at the top of the meadow, embraced by a windbreak of pines, was the house. My home on top of the world, or
almost
-home.

August last year, that year before I made my visit, had dissolved into September. And in the wake of Noah's search of the woods above Ash Creek, September passed without trouble into October. The quaking aspens quivered in acre-long clusters across the faces of the mountains, as Edmé would recall, and between them the deep green of conifers lapsed black under the heavy shadows thrown by goliath thunderheads that would crop up in the skies, toss down wind and rain, and then fold up into nothing, or crumple beyond the peak-teeth above timberline. The nights grew cold; frost would come before Halloween.

Edmé and Henry, I gather, had by this time utterly dismissed the night music as the preposterous gambit of some youngster whose notion of fun was different from that of others. Although Henry did not reveal to Edmé anything about the hanging, and also chose not to mention to his wife the discovery of Trentas's miserable shoe, his exclusion of such information did not affect life much, since the passage of those untroubled weeks into months made it possible for Henry himself to begin discounting these details. Perhaps he had leapt to the wrong conclusion; maybe it wasn't the dead man's shoe after all, maybe the effigy strung up in Henry's own clothes was truly the work of some rowdy who didn't know the difference between simple mischief and outright, ugly perversity. Henry hadn't slept much those nights before making the search in the dark up on that knoll at the mouth of the gorge: was it possible, being frazzled, he had hallucinated the whole thing? Time passed, and as it did he couldn't help but begin to question himself on these points. He, moreover, had convinced himself that it had been wise not to fill Edmé in on various particulars. No need to frighten her. So that, when Noah had called a few days after the incident back in summer, to inquire whether there'd been any more trouble at Ash Creek, Henry remarked, —Nothing to report.

—I guess it was a prank, then. There's more goes on in the back hills than any of us would care to believe. I don't know why you two don't consider taking yourselves out of quarantine and coming on down here to live with the rest of us.