Spencerville (6 page)

This was not a random incident of fascistic behavior toward a man with out-of-state license plates and a funny car. And Spencerville was not some southern backwater town where the cops sometimes got nasty with strangers. This was a nice, civilized, and friendly midwestern town where strangers were usually treated with some courtesy. Therefore, this was planned, and you didn't have to be a former intelligence officer to figure out who planned it.

So at least one of the questions in Keith's mind was answered: Police Chief Baxter knew he was in Spencerville. But did Mrs. Baxter know?

He'd thought about Cliff Baxter's reaction upon hearing that his wife's former lover was back in town. Big cities were full of ex-lovers, and it was usually no problem. Even here in Spencerville, there were undoubtedly many married men and women who'd done it with other people, pre-marriage, and still lived in town. The problem in this case was Cliff Baxter, who, if Keith guessed correctly, probably lacked a certain sophistication and savoir faire.

Annie had never written a word against him in any of her letters, not on the lines or between the lines. But it was more what wasn't said, coupled with what Keith remembered about Cliff Baxter and what he'd heard over the years from his family.

Keith had never solicited anything about Cliff Baxter, but his mother — God bless her — always dropped a word or two about the Baxters. These were not overly subtle remarks, but more in the category of, "I just don't know what that woman sees in him." Or more to the point, "I saw Annie Baxter on the street the other day, and she asked about you. She still looks like a young girl."

His mother had always liked Annie and wanted her stupid son to marry the girl. In his mother's day, a courtship was prelude to marriage, and a reticent beau could actually get sued for breach of promise if he ruined a girl's reputation by taking her on picnics unchaperoned, and then not doing the decent thing and marrying her. Keith smiled. How the world had changed.

His father, a man of few words, had nevertheless spoken badly of the current police chief, but he'd confined his remarks to areas of public concern. Neither sex, love, marriage, nor the name Annie ever came out of his mouth. But basically he felt as his wife did — the kid blew it.

But they could not comprehend the world of the late 1960s, the stresses and social dislocations felt more by the young than by the old. Truly, the country had gone mad, and somewhere during that madness, Keith and Annie had lost their way, then lost each other.

In the last five years since his parents had moved away, he'd had no other news of Spencerville, of Chief Baxter, or of how pretty Annie looked in a flowery sundress, walking through the courthouse park.

And that was just as well, because his mother, though she meant well, had caused him a lot of pain.

Keith drove slowly through town, then turned south on Chestnut Street, crossed the tracks, and continued through the poor part of town, past the warehouses and industrial park, and out into the open country.

He looked in his rearview mirror again but did not see a police car.

He had no idea what Chief of Police Baxter's game plan was, but it really didn't matter, as long as both of them stayed within the law. Keith didn't mind petty harassment and, in fact, thrived on it. In the old Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc, harassment was the highest form of compliment; it meant you were doing your job, and they took the time to express their displeasure.

Cliff Baxter, however, could have shown a little more cleverness if he'd lain low for a while.

But Keith suspected that Baxter was not patient or subtle. He was no doubt cunning and dangerous, but, like the police in a police state, he was too used to getting instant gratification.

Keith tried to put himself in Baxter's place. On the one hand, the man wanted to run Keith Landry out of town very quickly. But the cunning side of him wanted to provoke an incident that would lead to anything from arrest to a bullet.

In the final analysis, Keith understood, there wasn't room in this town for Keith Landry and Cliff Baxter, and if Keith stayed, someone was probably going to be hurt.

The next week passed uneventfully, and Keith used the time to work around the farmyard and the house. He cleared the bush and weeds from the kitchen garden, turned over the ground, and threw straw in the garden to keep the weeds down and the topsoil from blowing away. He harvested a few grapes from the overgrown arbor and cut back the vines.

Keith gathered deadfall from around the trees, sawed and split it into firewood, and stacked the wood near the back door. He spent two days mending fences and began the process of cleaning out the toolshed and barn. He was in good shape, but there was something uniquely exhausting about farm work, and he remembered days as a boy when he barely had the energy to meet his friends after dinner. His father had done this for fifty years, and the old man deserved to sit on his patio in Florida and stare at his orange tree. He didn't fault his brother for not wanting to continue the hundred-and-fifty-year tradition of backbreaking labor for very little money, and certainly he didn't fault himself or his sister. Yet, it would have been nice if an Uncle Ned type had continued on. At least his father had not sold the land and had kept the farmhouse in the family. Most farmers these days sold out, lock, stock, and barrel, and if they had any regrets, you never heard about it. No one he knew ever returned from Florida, or wherever they went.

In the tool shed, he saw the old anvil sitting on the workbench. Stamped into the anvil was the word Erfurt, and a date, 1817. He recalled that this was the anvil that his great-great-grandfather had brought with him from Germany, had loaded onto a sailing ship, then probably a series of riverboats, and finally a horse-drawn wagon until it came to rest here in the New World. Two hundred pounds of steel, dragged halfway around the globe to a new frontier inhabited by hostile Indians and strange flora and fauna. Surely his ancestors must have had second thoughts about leaving their homes and families, their civilized, settled environment, for a lonely and unforgiving land. But they stayed and built a civilization. Now, however, what Indians and swamp diseases couldn't do, civilization itself had done, and this farm, and others, were abandoned.

As he worked, he was aware that chopping firewood for the winter was a commitment of sorts, though he could give away the firewood, come to his senses, and leave. But for now, he felt good taking care of his parents' farm, his ancestors' bequeathal. His muscles ached in a pleasant way; he was fit, tan, and too tired to indulge himself in urban-type anxieties, or to think about sex. Well, he thought about it but tried not to.

He'd gotten the phone connected and called his parents, brother, and sister to tell them he was home. In Washington, not only was his number unlisted, but the phone company had no record of his name. Here in Spencerville, he'd decided to put his name and number in the book, but he hadn't gotten any calls so far, which was fine.

His mail was forwarded from Washington, but there wasn't anything important, except a few final bills which he could pay now that he'd opened a checking account at the old Farmers and Merchants Bank in town. UPS had delivered his odds and ends, and the boxes sat in the cellar, unopened.

It was interesting, he thought, how fast a complicated life could wind down. No more home fax or telex, no car phone, no office, no secretary, no airplane tickets on his desk, no pile of pink message slips, no monthly status meetings, no briefings to deliver at the White House, no communiques to read, and nothing to decipher except life.

In fact, though he'd finally informed the National Security Council of his whereabouts, he hadn't heard a word from them officially, and hadn't even heard from his Washington friends and colleagues. This reinforced his opinion that his former life was all nonsense anyway, and that the game was for the players only, not the former stars.

As he worked, he reflected on his years with the Defense Department and then the National Security Council, and it occurred to him that Spencerville, as well as the rest of the country, was filled with monuments to the men and women of the armed forces who served and who gave their lives, and there was the monument in Arlington to the unknown soldier who represented all the unidentified dead, and there were parades and special days set aside for the armed forces. But for the dead, disabled, and discharged veterans of the secret war, there were only private memorials in the lobbies or gardens of a few nonpublic buildings. Keith thought it was time to erect a public monument in the Mall, a tribute to the Cold Warriors who served, who got burned-out, whose marriages went to hell, who got shafted in bureaucratic shuffling, and who died, physically, mentally, and sometimes spiritually. The exact nature of this monument escaped him, but sometimes he pictured a huge hole in the middle of the Mall, sort of a vortex, with a perpetual fog rising from the bottom, and if there was any inscription at all, it should read: Dedicated to the Cold Warriors, 1945-1989? Thanks.

But this war ended, he thought, not with a bang, but a whimper, and the transition from war to peace was mostly quiet and unremarked. There was no cohesiveness among the Cold Warriors, no sense of victory, no pomp and ceremony as divisions were deactivated, ships decommissioned, bomber squadrons put out into the desert. There was just a fading away, a piece of paper, a pension check in the mail. In fact, Keith thought, no one in Washington, nor anywhere, even said thank you.

But he was not bitter, and, in fact, he was very happy to see these events transpire in his lifetime. He thought, however, the government and the people should have made more of it, but he understood his own country, and understood the innate tendency of the American people to treat war and history as something that usually happened somewhere else to someone else, and is, at best, a nuisance. Back to normalcy.

Time to chop wood. He pruned the old oaks around the house, gathered up the branches in a pull cart, and took them to the sawhorses. He cut, split, and stacked.

Aunt Betty had stopped by, and so had some of his distant relatives. The Mullers from the next farm to the south came by, and so had Martin and Sue Jenkins from the farm across the road. Everyone brought something in the way of food, everyone seemed a little awkward, and everyone asked the same questions... "So, you stayin' awhile? Miss the big city yet? Been downtown? Seen anybody?" And so forth. No one had asked what was on their minds, which was, "Are you nuts?"

Keith got a cold beer and took a break on the front porch. He stared at the lonely farm road and watched the fields and trees moving in the wind. Butterflies, bumblebees, and birds. Then a blue and white police cruiser came by. They came by once or twice a day, he figured, maybe more. It occurred to him that, if by some miracle Annie drove up, there could be a problem. He thought about getting word to her through her sister, but he felt foolish doing that and didn't know quite what to say. Hi, I'm back and being watched by your husband. Stay away.

Obviously, her husband would also be watching her. But, most likely, she had no intention of stopping by, so why worry about it? Whatever was going to happen would happen. He'd spent too many years manipulating events, then worrying about his manipulations, then trying to discover if his manipulations were working, then doing damage control when things blew up, and so forth and so on "Be alert, be on guard, be prepared. Do nothing." Sounded like good advice. But he was getting itchy.

The following morning, Keith drove to Toledo and exchanged the Saab for a Chevy Blazer. The Blazer was dark green, like half the ones he'd seen around, and it blended well. The dealer secured Ohio plates for him, and Keith put his Washington plates under the seat. He had to send them back to where they came from, which was not the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Late in the afternoon, he started for home. By the time he reached the outskirts of Spencerville, it was dusk, and by the time he reached the farm, long purple shadows lay over the farmyard. He passed the mailbox and turned into the drive, then stopped. He backed up and saw that the red flag was up, which was odd because he'd gotten his mail that morning. He opened the mailbox and took out an unstamped envelope addressed simply "Keith." There was no mistaking the handwriting.

He drove the Blazer around to the back of the house, so it couldn't be seen, got out, and went inside. He put the envelope on the kitchen table, got a beer, put it back, and made himself a stiff Scotch and soda instead.

He sat at the table and sipped his drink, poured a little more Scotch into it, and did this a few times until he looked at the envelope again. "Well."

He thought about things, about her: They'd had a monogamous and intense relationship for two years in high school, then four years of college, and they'd graduated Bowling Green State University together. Annie, a bright and enthusiastic student, chose to accept a fellowship at Ohio State. He, bored with school, restless, and in any case not in a financial position to do graduate work, chose not to apply to Ohio State. He did follow her to Columbus, but before the summer was over, he was swept up in the draft as soon as the Spencerville draft board learned of his status.

Keith opened the envelope and read the first line. "Dear Keith, I heard you were back and living at your folks' place."

He looked out into the dark yard and listened to the locusts.

They had that summer together, a magic two months in Columbus, living in her new apartment, exploring the city and the university. In September, he had to go. He said he would return; she said she'd wait. But neither of those things happened, nor were they likely to happen in America in 1968.

Keith took a deep breath and focused again on the letter. He read, "The local gossip is that you're staying awhile. True?"

Maybe. He poured a little more Scotch and thought back.

He'd gone to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for his basic and advanced training, then to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and within a year was commissioned a second lieutenant. Not bad for a farm kid. They wrote, often at first, then less frequently, of course, and the letters were not good. She found her monogamy hard to defend or justify and let him know she was seeing other men. He understood. He didn't understand. He spent his pre-embarkation leave in Spencerville, not Columbus. They spoke on the phone. She was very busy with difficult classes. He was very anxious about going into a combat zone and really didn't care about her classes. He asked her if she was seeing anyone at the moment. She was, but it was not serious. After about ten minutes of this, he looked forward to combat. He said to her, "You've changed." She replied, "We've all changed, Keith. Look around you."

He said, "Well, I've got to go. Good luck in school."

"Thanks. Take care, Keith. Home safe."

"Yup."

"Bye."

"Bye."

But they couldn't hang up, and she said, "You understand, I'm making this easy for both of us."

"I understand. Thanks." He hung up.

They continued to write, neither of them able to comprehend that it was over.

Keith pushed the Scotch aside. The alcohol wasn't working, his hands were trembling, and his mind was not getting pleasantly numb. He read, "Well, welcome home, Keith, and good luck."

"Thank you, Annie."

He'd served as an infantry platoon leader, saw too many dead people lying on the ground, fresh blood running, or bloating in the hot sun. He had no frame of reference for this, except the stockyards in Maumee. Very nice villages and farms were blown to hell, and sandbags and barbed wire were all over the place, and he'd wept for the farmers and their families. He'd completed his tour and returned to Spencerville on leave.

Keith wiped the sweat off his lip and focused on the letter, read it from the beginning, then read, "I'm leaving tomorrow to drive Wendy to school. She's starting as a freshman at our old alma mater. Can't wait to see it again. Be gone a week or so." He nodded and took a deep breath.

He'd spent his thirty-day post-combat leave in Spencerville, and did mostly nothing but eat, drink, and take long rides. His mother suggested he drive to Columbus. Instead, he'd called. She was working on her doctorate by then. It was a very strained conversation, he recalled. He hadn't asked her about other men, because he'd come to accept that. He'd had other women. It didn't matter. But she'd changed in a more profound way in the last year. She'd become more politically active, and she had ambivalent feelings about a man in uniform and had given him a lecture on the war.

He was angry, she was cool; he'd barely controlled his anger, and she kept her tone frigid. He was about to hang up on her when she said, "I have to go," and he realized she was crying, or close to it. He offered to come see her, she said that would be all right. But he did not go to Columbus, and she did not come to Spencerville, nor did they meet halfway.

Keith read the final lines of her letter. "My Aunt Louise still lives out by you, and next time I'm that way, I'll stop and say hello. Take care. Annie."

He put the letter in his pocket, stood, and went out the back door. The hot wind had died down, and it was cooler now. There was some sun left on the western horizon, but in the east he could see stars.

Keith went out to where the corn began and walked between the tall rows, a few hundred yards to a small hill that was thought to be an Indian burial mound. The rise was gentle and tillable, but no one in his family had ever planted there, and the Mullers were asked to do the same. Rye grass grew tall on the hill, and a single birch had been planted or had taken root on its own near the top of the hill.

Keith stood beside the birch and looked out over the corn. He'd played here as a boy and come here to think as a young man.

Nor did they meet halfway. It was his pride, his ego, or whatever. He simply could not accept the fact that she'd been sexually involved with other men when they were supposed to be going together. But then again, he hadn't proposed marriage, perhaps because he didn't want to make her a young widow. It was the classic dilemma of wartime: to marry or not to marry? He couldn't recall exactly what had transpired between them regarding this subject, but he was certain she'd remember.