Golden Age (28 page)

Henry’s new project, therefore, was to read everything that had been written since he’d more or less lost interest, and to add to that archeology, anthropology, paleobiology. It was a huge project, and he expected to die before he finished it. A very invigorating thought. Who was that scholar, in Germany somewhere, who had spent her life putting together a Gothic-Germanic-Nordic dictionary, and when she died her filing cabinets were discovered to be filled with empty brandy bottles? But scholarship was different now, with conferences and computers and cheap travel, no longer lonely and cold. Especially, no longer cold. He was not looking forward to going back to Chicago, back into his cave of books. Maybe Lois, who was living at his place while he lingered in D.C., would sell them—she was practical like that. Minnie and Claire burbled on about Lois “abandoning the farm, her whole life,” but Lois herself didn’t seem to feel it as a crisis. Henry admired her.

Every week, he saw Charlie and Riley, and sometimes, he saw Richie and the new girlfriend. He had them all convinced that he was very, very busy. He made it a practice to refer to people that he met in the library, what they said, what they were like, when, really, he was only overhearing something or other from time to time. The person in the library that he talked to was one of the security guards, an African American man who lived in Alexandria, whose hobby was the Civil War, or, as he called it, the War Between the States. Twice he took Henry to visit battlefields, Spotsylvania and Manassas. Henry could tell that the man—Forrest La France was his name—felt sorry for him. But Henry didn’t feel sorry for himself. Every single day when he put on a pair of lightweight khakis and a pima-cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled twice, every day when he put on his straw hat, every day when he took a clean handkerchief out of his drawer and knew that he would be using it to pat the sweat off his brow, he was happy, because he was not in Chicago, it was not winter, the wind off the lake was not laden with snow.

He had accepted that if you were a bookish person the events in your life took place in your head. Once upon a time for Henry, those events had been dramatic; as the years went by, his skin prickling when Heathcliff ran out of the house calling “Cathy!” had given way
to a gasp when Mr. Carker the Manager was hit by a train, and then to a quiet thrill when Beowulf found himself in Grendel’s mother’s cave. He had learned early on not to look up from the book and say, “Listen to this.” In graduate school, his pleasure in the dramatic gave way to something more abstract—yes, there had been the pleasures of words and their roots. Not only was “foot” connected to “fetlock” and “pedal,” but it was also connected to “impeccable” and “appoggiatura.” Not only was Artemis the sister of Apollo and the virgin goddess of the hunt, she was also Britomartis on Crete, an archaic mother goddess, no relation to Apollo at all. There were books that Henry remembered so clearly that he could still picture the pages he had read and the places where he had read them. One of these was
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
. Henry was in Berkeley and he dared to say to his cousin Rosa, “Who is Joseph Campbell?” She handed him the book, and he read it in a day, sitting on her mother, Eloise’s, porch in the sunshine. Gods and goddesses had eventually paled in comparison with wheat, rice, and corn, thanks to
Les Structures du quotidien
—that would have been on the beach beside Lake Michigan, sitting under an umbrella with Philip (he kept looking at Philip, the way you did when someone fascinated you), grinding his heels into the sand nearby. All of these books were carefully sorted and shelved in his apartment, and though he had loved them, perhaps they had held him back—they had been so lordly in their tone, so sure of themselves, so hardbacked and dense. Lost in the library, Henry had forgotten that the very men who wrote these books were out and about—some of Eloise’s friends of friends remembered Campbell himself on the beach, yakking it up about crabs and sea urchins with Ed Ricketts. The two men would have been half the age that Henry was now.

His problem was Chicago, not books, but he was retired, wasn’t he? Didn’t have to go back to Chicago at all. If your life remained in your mind, complex and busy, full of what you had read as well as what you had done and whom you had met, you could carry it into the future, and it would all, somehow, flow together. That was his hope, and his superstition, and he planned to stay in D.C. as long as he could.

—

RILEY SAID THAT
deciding to hike the Appalachian Trail was not something that you did by waking up in the middle of the night the day before Halloween, and, as always, Charlie had nodded and agreed with her. Nevertheless, when he got to work at the outdoor outfitters Monday morning, he went straight to the book-and-guide department and pulled out a guide. By lunch, he saw that he could start down in Georgia, where the weather was still pleasant, and just keep walking until it got too cold to go on. He had the equipment, even the orange vest (obviously, there would be plenty of people hunting, since it would be November), and he could get the trail provisions at a discount. His manager would give him the time off—their busy time was the spring and summer, and Charlie hadn’t taken any vacation in two years.

By his afternoon break, he was walking around the shoes-and-boots department, wondering if he needed a new pair: you never wanted to break in your boots on the trail, but his were getting pretty worn. Supposedly, you would start out hiking eight miles a day, but Charlie thought he could do twelve or more. After work, he ran to Dupont Circle double-quick, got an earlier train than usual, and could not keep his mind on his book, which was
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. Henry made him alternate, man’s book, woman’s book; the last one he’d read was
Northanger Abbey
. Riley had him reading books, too—next to his bed was
A Sand County Almanac
. Riley was powering through
Guns, Germs, and Steel
, marveling from time to time that those Menominee ancestors (but really “Mamaceqtaw”) had managed to survive at all, and Charlie glanced at her surreptitiously while suppressing the yawns that came from his own reading material. More than once, he lost his place and started over, only dimly recognizing passages he’d read minutes before. He had two books on his side of the bed. Her side was close to the window, and her “currently reading” set ran in a line along the sill, blocking out the morning light almost as well as the shades they hadn’t bothered to buy yet.

He got home. He helped make dinner very pleasantly, broccoli soup, veggie omelet. He chopped the vegetables and warmed the day-old whole-wheat baguette. She set the table.

Charlie said, “I talked to Fred. He doesn’t need me after Thursday, so I think I will—”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

Charlie looked at the wall above Riley’s head and assembled his arguments.

“Hey, babe. I need a break, and it’s not that expensive. Say I’m out there for a month, which is not likely; at the most that’s three hundred dollars—well, three fifty. I’ve got all the equipment I need. That old sleeping bag from Aspen that’s good down to ten below, we haven’t used that in years. Perfectly good tent, too.” He tried to sound conversational. “I looked at the boots, but I couldn’t justify getting a new pair at this point. Maybe in the spring or summer—”

“You will be gone for a month?”

“Three weeks, then? I thought a month would be the absolute outside.”

“What if I have to go away for a few days? How will you know?”

Charlie knew she was talking about Thanksgiving, which, as a semi-official Menominee, she would not celebrate, but she didn’t mind spending the day with friends. He said, “The house will be empty and the oven will be off.”

“Oh God.”

But she didn’t raise her voice. She sounded more or less resigned. Charlie pressed on.

“You know that too long in the city makes me jittery, you know that. When we lived in New York, I went upstate every couple of weeks.” He smoothed his voice. “You went, too.”

“I cannot take a month off to walk the Appalachian Trail.”

“Eventually, you will have to take time off.”

“The congressman takes enough time off for both of us.”

This could be a sticking point: Charlie knew that Riley knew that Charlie knew that he liked Richard Langdon better than Riley did. “Hard-hitting” was not the word for Congressman Langdon, but every Congress needed some congeniality, that was Charlie’s view of politics.

“Ivy is pretty strict about sharing the child-care duties, at least when Richie is back in Brooklyn.”

“I don’t disagree with her,” said Riley. But she did. It would have helped if Leo had been a charming, sunny fifth-grader with a smile for everyone, but he was not. He had been known to lie facedown
on the office floor and refuse to move, so that everyone had to step over him. Of course, that had last happened when he was six; he was now ten.

Charlie reorganized himself. “I know you—”

“You should go.” She set down her soup spoon.

“Well, I do think—” But he felt himself backtracking.

“No,” she said, “don’t think. It’s me that hasn’t been thinking. You have to move. You have to walk. You have to— Well, shit. Look at you. All day long you equip people for adventures, and your biggest adventure is running a loop around Dupont Circle.”

Charlie said, “You aren’t seeing someone, are you?”

Finally, Riley laughed a big, hearty laugh, and said, “I am only seeing the light, sweetie pie. I am looking up from my keyboard and recognizing…” She paused, gazed at him. “I am recognizing that you are, indeed, the most patient male I’ve ever met.” Her toe began to rub his ankle, and he had no need of his third and fourth arguments.

The Tercel, he thought, was happy to be out. Fifteen years old, a hundred thousand miles, and why replace it? said Riley. It still got forty-two miles to the gallon. She had her eye on something called a “Prius,” already available in Japan, and supposedly ready to go on sale in the United States, though every time she drove into a Toyota dealership in the Tercel, they said they had no idea when the Prius would be available, and had she ever considered a Corolla? No, she had not.

The Tercel was also perfect for this trip, since it was too old to get stolen. Charlie left D.C. at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, and was in the Chattahoochee National Forest by three; it was bleak, gray, and cold. The trees were nearly leafless, but the trail was hard enough, only muddy here and there. He locked the car with two hours left until sundown, and set off.

Charlie didn’t care much about day and night. His eyesight was good, he had been outdoors in all weathers, and as long as it wasn’t pouring rain he was comfortable enough. He started walking, and almost immediately it came over him, that energy. Inhale. Step. Step. Exhale. Inhale. His boots felt good, the way they conformed to his feet and embraced them. His socks felt comfortably warm, friendly. His old wool pants, hard to find anymore, were warm even when wet. His hat was pushed back on his head. Inhale. Exhale. Ponder the Cherokee—Riley had read him a few things before he left. But
his thoughts kept drifting to Jordan Del Piero, with whom he had smoked some weed in high school (in the bedroom; yes, Mom), who now had three kids and was working for an important law firm in Clayton. And could he believe that Rianna Gray—that little thing, she looked twelve when she was seventeen—had published a novel? His mom had seen Moira Lutz at Kroger’s—in the baby-food aisle. She had two kids, and was married to someone important at Monsanto. His mom always said these things in a gossipy, idle tone, as if she didn’t care, but she did, and he knew what she told them: Oh, Charlie, he’s a late bloomer, I guess. Or: Oh, Charlie, he lets poor Riley do all the work.

To his right, just for fifty feet, the hill fell away in the twilight. With the onset of night, the forest gave up its scents, but Charlie was too far south to recognize what they were. Inhale. Exhale. At parties, Riley did hug him and say, “Oh, this is just Charlie. He works at Hudson’s.” Some of the men then chatted with him, but none of the women, not in Washington. He lengthened his stride. His skin looked like he’d spent years outside without sunblock, but the only way he seemed to be aging was that his hairline was receding. Was it strange that he had given so little thought to the future, that he was so engrossed in the next few steps that he had forgotten about the cliff at the end of the path? It felt good to walk, though. Good, possibly, to be dismissed and given up on. He lengthened his stride again, and thought, Being given up on is the nature of freedom, isn’t it? And then thought that maybe this was the first real thought of the rest of his life.

2000

J
ANET WAS
on the verge of deciding that the whole thing wasn’t her business after all when the last call came in, from Loretta in Antigua. Janet looked at her watch; it was ten in Palo Alto, so it might be two in Antigua, time for lunch. Loretta said, “Did they call you and tell you they found him?”

“Yes, he’s at the ranch. He sneaked in in the night, and your mom found him in one of the guest rooms after the school called her.”