Spencerville (7 page)

He sat at the base of the birch tree and looked out at the stars. In Washington, he could barely see the stars, but here in the country, the night sky was breathtaking, mind-boggling. He stared up at the universe, picking out the constellations he knew, and remembered doing this with her.

After his post-Vietnam leave, he had less than a year of service remaining, but he'd decided to stay in a while longer, and requested and was accepted to Army Intelligence School in Fort Holabird, Maryland. This was an interesting field, and he actually enjoyed the work. He received orders for a second tour in the never-ending war, but this time as an intelligence analyst. He'd been promoted to captain, the pay was all right, the duty not bad. Better than combat, better than Spencerville, better than returning to a nation going crazy. They stopped corresponding, but he heard she'd dropped out of the doctorate program and traveled to Europe, then returned to Spencerville for a cousin's wedding. It was then, at the wedding, according to a friend who had been there, that she'd met Cliff Baxter. Apparently, they had a good time at or after the wedding, because they married a few months later. This was what he'd heard, anyway, but by that time, it was a subject he no longer wanted to be informed about.

Keith took the letter out of his pocket but couldn't read it in the fading light. Nevertheless, he stared at it and recalled most of it. The sentences, the words, were innocuous, but as a product of everything that had come before, it was everything he wanted to hear. He knew what it took for her to write that letter, he knew there was an element of danger for her to put it in his mailbox and to say that she'd stop by. And the danger was not only physical in the form of Cliff Baxter but emotional as well. Neither of them needed another disappointment or a broken heart. But she'd decided to take a chance, to in fact take the lead, and he liked that.

Keith put the letter in his pocket and plucked at the grass around him.

After he heard she was married, he put her out of his mind. That lasted about a week, and against his better judgment, he wrote her a short note of congratulations, care of her parents. She wrote a shorter note thanking him for his good wishes and asked him not to write again, ever.

He had always thought, and perhaps she thought, that they'd somehow get together again. In truth, neither of them could have forgotten the other. For six years, they'd been friends, soulmates, and lovers, and had formed each other's lives and personalities, shared the pains and happiness of growing up, and never imagined a life apart. But the world had finally intruded, and her letter made it clear that, indeed, it was now over between them, forever. But he never believed that.

After he was stationed in Europe, some months after her wedding, she wrote again, apologizing for the tone of her last letter, and suggested that writing was okay, but to please write care of her sister Terry in the next county.

He waited until he returned to the States, then wrote from Washington, saying little, except that he was back and would be at the Pentagon for a year or so. Thus began a two-decade-long correspondence, a few letters a year, updates, the births of her children, changes of address, his transfer to the Defense Department, her local news from Spencerville, his postings all over the world.

They had never exchanged photographs; neither had asked for a picture and neither had offered one. It was, Keith thought, as though they each wanted to hold on to the moving, living memory of the other, uncomplicated by a succession of rigid snapshots.

There had never been the hint of anything but an old and maturing friendship — well, perhaps once in a while, a letter written late at night with a line or two that could be taken as more than "Hello, how are you?" He wrote once from Italy, "I saw the Colosseum at night for the first time and wished you could have seen it, too."

She wrote back, "I did see it, Keith, when I was in Europe, and funny, I had the same thought about you."

But these types of letters were rare, and neither of them went too far out of bounds.

Whenever his address changed to some new, exotic locale, she wrote, "How I envy you all your traveling and excitement. I always thought I'd be the one leading the adventurous life, and you'd wind up in Spencerville."

He usually replied with words like, "How I envy you your stability, children, community."

He'd never married, Annie never divorced, and Cliff Baxter did not conveniently die. Life went on, the world moved forward.

He was in Saigon on his third tour when the North Vietnamese arrived in 1975, and he took one of the last helicopters out. He wrote to Annie from Tokyo, "I knew this war was lost five years ago. What fools we've all been. Some of my staff have resigned. I'm considering the same."

She replied, "When we played Highland, we were down 36-0 at the half. You went out there for the second half and played the best game I ever saw you play. We lost, but what do you remember best, the score or the game?"

Keith listened to a nightingale in the far-off tree line, then looked out at the Mullers' farmhouse. The kitchen was lit, and dinner was probably being served. He supposed that he'd played a more interesting game than the Mullers, but at the end of the day, they gathered together for dinner. He honestly missed having children, but in some odd way, he was happy that Annie did. He closed his eyes and listened to the night.

He'd almost married, twice in fact, during the next five or six years; once to a colleague he served with in Moscow, once to a neighbor in Georgetown. Each time, he broke it off, knowing he wasn't ready. In fact, he was never going to be ready, and he knew it.

He decided that the letters had to stop, but he couldn't make the break completely. Instead, he let months go by before answering her, and his letters were always short and remote.

She never commented on the change in tone, or the infrequency of his letters, but went on writing her two or three pages of news, and once in a while, reminisced. Eventually, though, she followed his lead, and they wrote less frequently, and by the mid-eighties, it seemed as though the letter relationship had ended, except for Christmas cards and birthday cards.

He had returned to Spencerville now and then, of course, but he never told her in advance, intending each time to see her when he was there, but he never did.

Sometime around 1985, she'd written to him after one of his visits, "I heard you were in town for your aunt's funeral, but by then you'd left. I would have liked to have a cup of coffee with you, but maybe not. Before I found out for sure you'd left, I was a nervous wreck thinking you were in town. After I was sure you'd gone, I felt relieved. What a coward I am."

He had replied, "I'm afraid I'm the coward. I'd rather go into combat again than run into you on the street. I did drive past your house. I remember when old Mrs. Wallace lived there. You've done a nice job restoring it. The flowers are very nice. I felt very happy for you." He'd added, "Our lives took different paths in 1968, and those paths cannot cross again. For us to meet again would mean leaving our paths and traveling into dangerous territory. When I'm in Spencerville, I'm just passing through, and I intend to do no harm while I'm there. If, on the other hand, you ever find yourself in Washington, I'd be happy to have that cup of coffee with you. I'm leaving in two months for London."

She did not reply immediately, but wrote him in London, and never mentioned the last exchange of letters, but he remembered her reply. She'd written, "My son, Tom, played his first football game on Saturday, and I thought of the first time I sat in the stadium and saw you come onto the field in uniform. You don't have all these familiar places and things around you, but I do, and sometimes something like a football game makes me remember, and I get teary. Sorry."

He'd replied immediately, and without any pretense at being cool, wrote, "No, I don't have those familiar places and things around to remind me of you, but whenever I'm very lonely or frightened, I think of you."

After that, their correspondence increased, but more to the point, it had taken on a more intimate tone. They were not kids anymore, but were approaching middle age, with all that implied. She wrote to him, "I can't imagine not seeing you one more time."

He'd replied, "I promise you, God willing, we'll meet again."

Apparently, God was willing.

Yet the last six years or so had passed without that promised meeting, and perhaps he was waiting for something to happen, something like a divorce, or her falling ill. But nothing of the sort happened. His parents moved from Spencerville, and he had no reason to return.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and he was there to see it, then he was posted again to Moscow and witnessed the attempted coup of August 1991. He was at the very top of his career and was helping to make policy in Washington. His name was mentioned in the newspapers now and then, and he felt somewhat fulfilled professionally; but personally, he knew very well there was something missing.

The euphoria of the late 1980s became the letdown of the early '90s. There was a Churchill paraphrase that had been making the rounds among his colleagues — The war of the giants is over, the pygmies have begun. Needing fewer people for the wars of the wars of the pygmies, his colleagues were being told to go home, and finally he, too, was asked to leave, and here he was.

Keith opened his eyes and stood. "Here I am."

He looked around at the burial mound and, for the first time, made the connection between this mound and the similar burial mounds he'd seen in Vietnam. The burial mounds being the only high terrain in otherwise flat wet rice paddies, his platoon would often dig into them for night defensive positions. This was desecration, of course, but good tactics. Once, an old Buddhist monk had come up to him while his platoon was digging and said to him, "May you live in interesting times." Young Lieutenant Landry had taken it as a blessing of some sort, and only afterward learned that it was an ancient curse. And much afterward, he came to understand it.

The sun had set, but the moon illuminated the fields as far as he could see. It was quiet here, and the air smelled of good earth and crops. It was one of those beautiful evenings that would stick in your mind for years afterward.

He came down from the mound and walked between the rows of corn. He remembered the first time his father had planted forty acres of corn as a test crop, and, as the corn started to get higher, Keith had been fascinated with it. It formed an incredible maze, acres of high green walls, an enchanted world for him and his friends. They played hide-and-seek, they made up new games, they spent hours getting lost and pretending that there was some danger lurking in the maze. The fields were deliciously scary at night, and they often slept out under the stars, between the rows, armed with BB guns, posting guards through the night, getting themselves worked up into a state of pure terror.

We were all little infantrymen in training, he thought. He didn't know if that was biological or perhaps a cultural memory from the days when this place had been the western frontier. Lacking any real danger, we had to create one, we resurrected long-dead Indians, transported wild beasts to the cornfields, and imagined bogeymen. Then, when the real thing came along — the war — most of us were ready. That was what had really happened to him and Annie in 1968. He knew he could have gone to graduate school with her, they could have married and had kids and roughed it together like so many of their college friends. But he was already programmed for something else, and she understood that. She let him go because she knew he needed to go slay dragons for a while. What happened afterward was a series of missed opportunities, male ego, female reserve, failures to communicate, and just plain bad luck and bad timing. Truly, we were star-crossed lovers.

It rained all day, and it was not one of those summer storms from the west or southwest that came and went. It was a cold, steady rain from over Lake Erie, a taste of autumn. The rain was welcome because the corn was not ready and wouldn't be until sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Keith thought if he was still around then, he'd offer the Mullers and the Jenkinses a hand with their harvests. The machinery did most of the work these days, but an able-bodied man who sat around during the harvest was still thought of as a slothful sinner, predestined for hell. People who pitched in, on the other hand, were quite obviously among the saved. Keith had a little trouble with Protestant predestination and suspected that most of his neighbors, except for the Amish, weren't too sure about it themselves anymore. But to play it safe, most people acted like they were among the saved, and, in any case, Keith wanted to bring in a harvest again.

There was some work to do in the house, so he didn't mind the rain. He had a list of handyman chores — plumbing, electric, ripped screens, things that were too loose and things that were too tight.

His father had left the entire workshop in the cellar, complete with tools and hardware.

Keith found he enjoyed the small chores, which gave him a sense of accomplishment that he hadn't felt in some time.

He began the task of changing all the rubber washers in all the faucets in the house. This may not have been what other former senior intelligence officers were doing at the moment, but it was just mindless enough to give him time to think.

The week had passed without incident, and Keith noticed that the police cars had stopped cruising past his house. This coincided with Annie's absence, and for all he knew, Cliff Baxter had gone to Bowling Green as well, though he doubted it. He doubted it because he understood a man like Baxter. Not only would Cliff Baxter be an anti-intellectual in the worst tradition of small-town America, but on a personal level Baxter would not go to a place where his wife had spent four happy years, pre-marriage.

Another type of man might be secure in the knowledge that his wife had only one lover in four years of college and hadn't screwed the entire football team. But Cliff Baxter probably considered his wife's premarital sex as something he should be pissed off about. Surely, the woman had no life before Mr. Wonderful.

Keith had given some thought to driving to Bowling Green. What better place to run into each other? But she said she'd stop by when she returned. And there was still the possibility that Cliff Baxter had gone with her, to keep an eye on her and to be certain she was miserable while showing their daughter around the town and university. Keith could only imagine what kind of discussions had taken place in the Baxter house when Wendy Baxter announced she'd applied to and been accepted by her mother's alma mater.

Keith understood, too, that now with both son and daughter away at school, Annie Baxter had to do some thinking. Annie had hinted as much in one of her recent letters, but referred only to "making some decisions about finishing my doctorate, or getting a full-time paying job, or doing things I've been putting off too long."

Maybe, Keith thought, there was some preordained destiny at work, as Pastor Wilkes had preached, and life was not the chaos it seemed. After all, hadn't Keith Landry's arrival in Spencerville coincided with Annie Baxter's newly empty nest? But this confluence of events was not totally serendipitous; Keith knew from Annie's letters that Wendy was going away to college, which may have subconsciously influenced his decision to return. On the other hand, his forced retirement could have occurred two or three years ago, or two or three years from now. But more important, he was ready to change his life, and, by the tone of her recent letters, she was long overdue. So coincidence, subconscious planning, or miracle? No doubt a little of each.

He was torn between action and inaction, between waiting and doing. His Army training had taught him to act, his intelligence training had taught him patience. "There is a time to sow and a time to reap," said his Sunday school teacher. One of his intelligence school instructors had added, "Miss either of those times and you're fucked."

"Amen."

Keith finished the last faucet and paused to wash his hands in the kitchen sink.

He'd accepted an invitation to attend a Labor Day barbecue at his Aunt Betty's house a few miles away. The weather had been good, the steaks were terrific, the salads were all homemade, and the sweet corn, which ripened long before the field corn, was fresh off the stalk.

About twenty people had shown up, and Keith knew most of them or knew of them. Men his own age, not yet fifty, looked old, and this gave him a scare. There were a good number of kids there, too, and the teenage boys seemed interested in his having lived in Washington, and they all wanted to know if he'd ever been to New York. His years of living in Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, and elsewhere in the world were so far removed from their frame of reference that no one seemed curious about those places. Regarding his job, most everyone had heard his parents say that Keith was in the diplomatic corps. Not everyone understood precisely what this meant, but neither would they have understood his last job with the National Security Council; in truth, after over twenty years with Army Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the NSC, Keith himself understood less of his job description with each transfer and promotion. When he'd been an operative, a spy, it was all crystal-clear. Further up the ladder, it got foggy. He'd sat at White House conferences with people from the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Net Assessments Group, the National Security Agency — not to be confused with the National Security Council — and ten other intelligence groups, including his former employers, the Defense Intelligence Agency. In the world of intelligence, overlap equaled maximum security. How could fifteen or twenty different agencies and subagencies completely miss something important? Easy.

The waters may have been muddy in the 1970s and '80s, but at least they were all running in the same direction. After about 1990, things got not only muddier but stagnant. Keith supposed that he'd been saved about five years of confused embarrassment. His last assignment had been on a committee that was seriously considering implementing a secret pension plan for former high-ranking KGB officials. One of his colleagues described it as "a sort of Marshall Plan for our former enemies." Only in America.

Anyway, the Labor Day barbecue ended with a twilight baseball game on a jerry-built diamond in Aunt Betty's yard. Keith had a better time than he thought he would.

The only real awkwardness was as a result of the presence of three unattached women: a third cousin, Sally, unmarried at thirty years old and a hundred and seventy pounds or so, but sweet, and two divorced women, Jenny, with two children, and the unfortunately named Anne, no children, both in their late thirties, both nice-looking. He had the distinct impression they weren't there for the homemade salads.

In truth, Jenny was cute, tomboyish, played a good game of baseball, and was terrific with the kids. Kids and dogs were often better judges of character than peers were, as Keith had learned.

Jenny had informed him that she did light housecleaning to make extra money and to call her if he needed help. He told her he would. In fact, around these parts, a man in his forties who'd never been married was cause for some concern, as well as the subject of speculation regarding his adequacy or orientation. Keith had no idea of what Jenny thought in this regard, but he gave her credit for wanting to find out.

In some odd way, however, since he'd returned, Keith felt he was supposed to be faithful to Annie Baxter. He had no problem with this and wouldn't have had it any other way. On the other hand, he felt it was prudent to show some interest in other women lest people start thinking about Keith Landry and Annie Baxter. So he'd taken Jenny's phone number, thanked his aunt, said his good-byes, and left them to their speculations. He'd had a nice Labor Day.

Keith was about to go up to the attic when the front doorbell rang. He looked out the window and saw an unfamiliar car, a gray compact of some sort. He went to the door and opened it. A middle-aged man with a drooping mustache stood on the porch, a folded umbrella in his hand. He was slightly built, wore wire-rim glasses, and had a fringe of long brown hair around a bald pate. The man said, "The war was obscene and immoral, but I'm sorry I called you a baby killer."

Keith smiled in recognition of the voice. "Hello, Jeffrey."

"Heard you were back. Never too late to apologize." He put out his hand, and Keith took it.

Keith said, "Come on in."

Jeffrey Porter took off his raincoat and hung it on the peg in the big foyer. He said, "Where do we start after all these years?"

"We start by me saying you're bald."

"But not fat."

"No, not fat. Left-wing, Bolshevik, bed-wetting comsymps are always skinny."

Jeffrey laughed. "I haven't heard those sweet words in two decades."

"Well, you came to the right place, pinko."

They both laughed and belatedly embraced. Jeffrey said, "You look good, Keith."

"Thanks. Let's get a few beers."

They went into the kitchen and filled a cooler with beer, then carried it out to the front porch and sat in rockers, watching the rain, drinking, each thinking his own thoughts. Finally, Jeffrey said, "Where have the years gone, Keith? Is that a trite thing to say?"

"Well, it is and isn't. It's a good question, and we both know too well where they went."

"Yes. Hey, I really was a little rough on you back there."

"We were all a little rough on one another back there," Keith replied. "We were young, we had passion and convictions. We had all the answers."

"We didn't know shit," said Jeffrey, and popped open another beer. He said, "You were the only guy in high school and at Bowling Green who I thought was nearly as smart as me."

"Smart as I. Actually smarter."

"Anyway, that's why I was so pissed that you were such an idiot."

"And I never understood how a smart guy like you bought the whole line of radical bullshit without thinking for yourself."

"I never bought it all, Keith, but I mouthed it."

"Scary. I've seen whole countries like that."

"Yeah. But you bought the whole line of patriotic flag-waving shit without much thought."

"I've learned better since then. How about you?"

Jeffrey nodded. "I learned a lot. Hey, enough politics. We'll wind up having another fistfight. What's the story? Why are you here?"

"Well, I got sacked."

"From where? You still with the Army?"

"No."

"Then who sacked you?"

"The government."

Jeffrey glanced at him, and they fell into silence. Keith watched the rain falling in the fields. There was something very special about watching the rain from a big open porch, and he'd missed this.

Jeffrey asked, "You married?"

"Nope. You ever marry that girl?.. The hippie with hair down to her ass that you met in our senior year?"

"Gail. Yes, we got married. Still married."

"Good for you. Kids?"

"No, too many people in the world. We're doing our part."

"Me, too. Where're you living?"

"Here. Moved back about two years ago as a matter of fact. We stayed at Bowling Green for a few years."

"I heard. Then what?"

"Well, we both got fellowships at Antioch, and we both got tenured and taught there until we retired."

"I think if I'd spent one more year on or around a campus I'd have blown my brains out."

"It's not for everyone," Jeffrey conceded. "Neither is the government."

"Right."

"Hey, have you seen Annie since you've been back?"

"No." Keith opened another beer.

Jeffrey watched his old friend and classmate, and Keith was aware of the eyes on him. Finally, Jeffrey said, "You can't still be messed up about that, can you?"

"No."

"I've run into her a few times. I keep asking if she's heard from you, and she says she never had. Funny how we were all so close... those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end..."

"We knew they would."

Jeffrey nodded. He said, "I've asked her to stop by and have a drink with Gail and me, but she keeps putting me off. I was hurt at first, but then I got to know a little about her husband. He's the fuzz-fuhrer — you know that? Anyway, I saw them at some hospital charity thing at the Elks Lodge once, and Annie was charming, like Annie can be, and this Nazi of a husband was watching her like he was about to make a drug bust — you know what I mean? This Neanderthal was getting himself worked up because she was talking to men — married guys, for Christ sake, doctors, lawyers, and such. She wasn't doing anything really, and he should have been thrilled that his better half was working the room — God knows, he needs all the good public relations he can get. Anyway, he takes her by the arm, and they leave. Just like that. Hey, I may be a socialist and an egalitarian, but I'm also a fucking snob, and when I see a well-bred, college-educated woman putting up with that shit from — where you going?"

"Bathroom."

Keith went into the bathroom and washed his face. He looked in the mirror. Truly, he'd been blessed with the right genes and didn't look much different than his pictures from college. Jeffrey, on the other hand, was barely recognizable. He wondered how Annie looked. Jeffrey would know, but Keith wasn't about to ask him. Anyway, it made no difference what she looked like. He returned to the porch and sat. "How'd you know I was back?"

"Oh... Gail heard it from somebody. Can't remember who." Jeffrey went back to the other subject. "She looks good."

"Gail?"

"Annie." Jeffrey chuckled and said, "I'd encourage you to give it a go, Keith, but that bastard will kill you." He added, "He knows he got lucky, and he's not about to lose her."

"So, Antioch, home of the politically correct crowd. You fit right in there."