Vandal Love (13 page)

No lights were on, and now, in the darkening room, Bart spoke. His voice had an odd quality, trying, it seemed, both to hurry, as if there were little time, and to slow in order to give an impression of earnestness. He repeated things he’d already told her, his mother’s death, how he’d been handed off between relatives, that his mother hadn’t been so close to the family.

For a while I lived with her younger brother, he said, in Louisiana.

That year had been a rare calm spell during which the uncle taught him to play electric guitar, Bart dreaming of being a musician. They’d listened to Motorhead and Iron Maiden, spending entire days flopped on couches, staring at album sleeves as if they were the spirals and symbols of Hindu mysticism. But the uncle had been in love with another man and had left a note to that effect. Bart never would have guessed. The uncle hanged himself. Then there had been foster homes and
detention centres, and sometime during that period Bart had been taken with Kerouac’s America. He’d envisioned freight trains running misted coastline, car trips into Mexico. It seemed the only way to redeem his life.

He paused on this, and she considered that these might be stories he was used to telling. He was twenty-six, and he’d been with Diamondstone little more than a year and from before that the only thing he’d clearly conveyed about his life was travelling. He’d tried to make that period sound like one adventure after another, at times down-and-out but always chosen: living in a rat-infested mansion that had been for sale for years or in a seasonal cabin on a frozen lake where he’d eaten icy canned foods. She’d enjoyed the stories, but what had brought Bart to someone like Diamondstone couldn’t have been simple.

I had a lot of adventures, he said. I guess by now I’ve probably done more travelling than Kerouac ever did … But I had some hard … months. I remember once, I was stranded in the middle of Nevada. I slept for a few weeks in an abandoned dinosaur park, in the belly of a brontosaurus. I got so hungry I imagined I was a holy man in a cave.

From the way he chose his words she could tell that he wanted her to believe him.

I was homeless, he said. Things weren’t always good. I mean, I wanted all that at first. I thought it would be freedom. I don’t know. I guess I thought about my father a lot. It’s just, when I met Diamondstone, I didn’t think things could be better.

But I knew, he said —I know about what you told me. I knew that Levon was your husband.

She was confused only briefly. Everything that Bart was telling now was his justifications. He’d wanted her to understand what had gone before.

We always do it this way, he said. When we get into an area, we look for rich recluses. Diamondstone, Morris and Andrew, they’re all good at finding things out. And a guy that everyone calls the Mexican, I mean, we heard about him right away. It was just a matter of getting permission to camp in the field down there.

He blinked slowly as if tired. She wasn’t sure why he was telling her this.

A lot of lonely rich people give us money, he said.

Have you ever seen it?

What?

The money.

He considered. No. I haven’t. But Diamondstone isn’t bad. We’re not pretending to be religious. He always tells us, You believe, but you have to put food on the table. People are … too greedy to give willingly. But they’ll go to God with lighter burdens and fewer sins even if we were to rob them. But we don’t. It’s like in Job—

Actually, she said, it sounds more like Robin Hood.

You don’t understand. Diamondstone did a lot for me. It’s hard to explain. Whenever I tried to make my life better, I felt guilty. It was like I was leaving my family behind. And I did try to get jobs but look at me. When a little man is angry, it’s okay. When I’m angry, people see
a monster. And I was more angry than I can describe. For years. That stopped after I met Diamondstone.

But who is he? Where’s he from?

She hadn’t noticed the colour coming into Bart’s face, and it startled her to think that he might cry. Slowly he pushed back his chair and stood.

I’m sorry. I wasn’t pretending. He hesitated, then added softly, I’m as stuck in this as you are with your husband.

He walked out to the porch. His footsteps stopped. She didn’t have the strength to stand or call him back. Then he went down the stairs and she was alone in the quiet house.

There had been luck in all this, she told herself later, that Bart had left and she hadn’t tried to stop him. Levon had returned shortly afterwards. She asked where he’d been, and he told her he’d planned on attending the gallery opening but that his heart had gone out of it. He’d turned around on the highway. He stood in the hall, slight and stoop shouldered. He was wearing his best suit with the perennially flowering buttonhole, the gold accoutrements.

I can’t stop thinking about my conversation with Diamondstone, he said. I’m not a fool. I know he wants my money. It just made me think. That’s all.

He stood a moment longer, then climbed the stairs to his room.

Isa went onto the porch. Could love and fear exist
together, just one of many combinations, like greed and piety? Hadn’t, for her, love and fear always been joined?

She was surprised to see Levon come outside. Without so much as glancing at her, he descended the steps. He walked almost gingerly as he made his way down the pasture. She watched until he disappeared. The moonlit bands of telephone poles hovered out across the dark.

How odd that what was animal, what was physical—simple attraction, lust—could draw two people so close. When she’d lain against Bart, she’d imagined telling him how similar their lives were: to be haunted by a family that was impossible to grasp or let go. His restlessness and contained energy was Jude’s. But perhaps her fear was right, and Bart’s stories meant more than she realized. Still, had she come so far from Jude, whose life could have been no better? How much might Jude have been able to tell if there had been someone to love him?

She went up to her room and waited for Levon to return so that she could go and find Bart. It frightened her to think she could be that brave.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting when she looked at the clock. She counted the minutes as if to test the continuity of time. She went into Levon’s room. She walked through the house, seeing—foolishly, she thought—it was so obvious—how afraid she’d been to give all this up for a life like the one that had shipwrecked her and Jude. She gazed from the porch. It was
well past eleven, the sycamore by the well house invisible, the stone wall a faint border. Levon had never stayed at the stream so late. She sat until long after midnight, the spring air warm and faintly humid. Around one in the morning she went in and called the police.

Two police cruisers and an ambulance arrived not long afterwards. Isa spoke with an officer on the porch while in the woods below, flashlights swept in along the trees, catching across each pale trunk like a slow strobe. When she’d first realized Levon hadn’t come in, she’d felt a twinge of relief, afraid only of seeing him brought up, dead of some natural cause. But the officers returned and told her they’d found nothing. She walked down with them. The older of the two, a greying man with a trim moustache, asked if she’d seen anyone
around, and only then, with the cold bracing of nerves, did she consider the degree to which Bart was suspect. She explained the story, that each evening Levon waited by the stream. She tried to make it sound believable.

Excuse me, the officer told her, but that’s absurd.

I know, but he believed in things like that.

The officer asked her dozens of questions. Why had she married? Who were her friends? He said he would look in on the farm where she’d been raised. She told him about the religious group living in the field. Later he radioed the information back. She made out the words
missing, yeah that guy, the Mexican, who would believe?
Another police car arrived as well as a red pickup with a few men from the volunteer fire department to help search. The rain had started again.

One officer had been to neighbouring farms, and he returned with descriptions of the religious group, which, he said, had disappeared. The older of the two asked her more questions based on this, and she told him only that they’d been around and she’d known them a little. His concerned, friendly attitude was gone. The rain had become a downpour, pounding the fields and house, driving in against the mountains so that the searchers gave up. He told her to lock her doors.

Keep a phone by your bed. God knows what this is about.

The next dawn she looked from her porch. The fields glistened. There was no trace of the van, barely even a hint of its beaten tracks. She heard a knocking at the back door.

She went slowly, not quite afraid now but tired. Bart filled the windows, his shoulders bunched. He was pale and soaked. She opened the door.

Diamondstone left me behind, he said.

What do you want?

I saw the police and I … I didn’t know where to go.

Levon’s missing.

She studied his face. A giant, she supposed, would always look guilty. She thought of Jude and the degrees of betrayal.

Look, she told him. If you didn’t do anything —

I didn’t.

Then okay. The police will be back in the morning. I guess … I guess we need to hide you.

She took him to the cellar, a low room with exposed pipes and insulation and heating ducts, a furnace at the centre. When she opened the crawlspace door, rust sifted from the hinges. Bart was sweating in the cool air, wiping his palms on his jeans. Dust speckled his forehead and the backs of his hands.

Wouldn’t the attic be better?

You’re too big. They’d hear you moving around. She handed him a flashlight. I’ll be back as soon as they’re gone. She tried not to look at him as she closed the door.

There was a larger search party this time, the entire volunteer fire department and various locals, though she figured they’d come mostly out of curiosity. When the forensics team arrived in the afternoon, whatever clues
might have been imprinted in the mud had either been washed away or trampled beyond hope. She heard a man swearing about incompetent hicks. Others wandered the woods and fields, and the officers gave a quick look-see, they called it, to the stables and house. By evening they’d found nothing. All day, on the road, cars slowed past. She stayed in a chair and thought less about Levon or even Bart than how Jude would react when the police contacted him. She was stronger, and after so many years she would understand him better, perhaps be able to make him speak. She’d never let herself think about this, and now that she did, she was startled by how much she longed for it. She waited near the front window as the sun’s light moved in and along the wall and faded.

Again the officer questioned her. She told him what she knew. Regarding Levon, she spoke of friendship but not love.

Diamondstone didn’t have another name? he asked.

Not that I know of. Can’t you track down the van?

The van, he said and sighed. This is a big country. You don’t know how easy it is for people to disappear.

When he left, he gave the same warning as the previous night. He seemed disappointed that he hadn’t found any reason to think she was guilty.

We’ll keep an eye out, he told her. There’s not much we can do now but wait.

It was almost midnight when Isa went to the cellar.

Bart’s face was smudged, and she stood back as he climbed out.

I’m sorry, she said. She’d turned off the lights throughout the house and drawn a few blinds. Come upstairs. Quietly though. Just in case.

Tell me what happened.

He listened gravely. His breathing was laboured. Each time he wiped his sweat away, he rubbed more dirt onto his face. I need to get out of here, he told her.

We need to wait. Maybe they’ll find him tomorrow.

I’ll be blamed.

We can’t do anything until tomorrow night. The police will be back soon. It’s almost dawn.

I didn’t do it, he said.

I know.

In the hour before sunrise they ate silently though neither was hungry. She asked if he wanted to take a bath, and he nodded.

In the end they didn’t discuss what he would do. She went to the fridge and gave him some fruit and a bottle of water. He stood at the cellar door, wet hair pushed back from his forehead. She wished she’d dried it, but she was worried that the police would return or that someone was watching.

This might be long, she told him. He nodded, then stooped into the cellar to hide.

The police came in the morning and there were more questions and searches, and again, that night, lights out and blinds drawn, she went down to Bart. He said he’d lost track of time in the crawl space. He hadn’t slept.

I need to leave.

I know. I’ll take you somewhere.

She went to Levon’s bedroom. There was a safe whose combination he’d had her memorize years ago when there had been trust between them. He’d kept ten thousand dollars of what he’d called crisis money—Not much, he’d said, but the banks have failed before. It’s in the history books.

Isa gave it all to Bart.

You can wait for me somewhere. I’ll join you as soon as things calm down.

Where? he asked, looking away from the brick of bills he was holding.

Go to Maine. I’ll come and meet you.

In Lewiston?

You can call me every now and then, she said and touched his hand. Besides, you have family there. And this should get you—us through for a while. I’ll bring more. Okay?

He wasn’t looking at her.

Bart, she said. She tried to stand against him. Bart. Is that okay?

I should go. He sweated, smelling strongly.

Wait, she said. She told him what they should do though she knew it was humiliating.

He went outside and climbed into the hatch of her Honda. It was after midnight. She stood on the back porch. Across the pasture were the still figures of horses in moonlight. Realizing that she believed in Bart’s innocence, she thought of how frightening it would be to return.