Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(101)
They were close enough now to begin picking out the individual structures. A rambling white frame farmhouse stood in a stand of maples off to one side, but the road led directly to a wide cement apron between a pair of matching stone barns.
These were not like the usual broken-down barns Peter had seen every day of his young life in northern Wisconsin, or the long low metal sheds of a pig or chicken farm. They had the traditional gambrel rooflines of a child’s farm drawing, but their walls and gables were built of black granite with black-painted trim and they were three stories tall, bigger than any barn he had ever seen. They looked more like something built to house a hedge fund manager’s collection of antique tractors, thought Peter. Or maybe a herd of vampire cows.
The barns had wide doors in their sides for big equipment, but instead of the usual sliding wood doors that swayed in the breeze and allowed cats to come and go unimpeded, these doors were gleaming stainless roll-ups like delivery doors at the Federal Reserve.
There were also smaller doors for people, each under an overhang for shelter from the weather. Beside the people-doors were little boxes that looked like security keypads. Those weren’t to keep the farm help from looking at the antique tractors.
One door opened, and a man walked out.
It was difficult to tell the scale of him, set against the big barns and the grand landscape. It wasn’t until he got closer that Peter saw again how big he was, six-eight and broad in the shoulders. His hair fell below his shoulders, his beard reached his chest, and both were full and tangled and white as snow.
He was the same man they’d seen on the floatplane pier in Seattle.
June’s dad. The Yeti.
Lewis had said the man was in his late fifties, but he moved like someone ten years younger, like someone who used his body. He wore a shapeless tweed jacket over a denim shirt, green corduroys frayed at the pockets and cuffs, and enormous scuffed leather hiking boots. His shirt pocket was stuffed with pens and a notebook peeked out of his jacket pocket. There were pine needles in his beard and hair.
Peter could understand why his friends had called him Sasquatch, until his hair had turned.
“Hello, Juniper.”
His voice was deep enough to rattle the windows or calm a fussy baby. His face was craggy and creased, and his eyes were a keen, unearthly blue, projecting a wild, implacable intelligence.
The overall effect was somewhere between a youthful grandfather and the face of God from the Old Testament.
It wasn’t hard to imagine him at the forefront of a technological revolution.
Or arranging the death of his wife.
June didn’t move from beside Peter, her whole body thrumming with tension. “Hello, Dad.”
The Yeti’s face crinkled up in a beatific smile. “It’s so good to have you home,” he said. “You know how worried I get when you go away. How was your conference? Get any good ideas?”
June stared at him. “Dad, it’s me. June. Your daughter.”
“Oh,” he said, startled. “Of course.” Then the smile came back, slightly dimmed. “You looked just like your mother for a minute. I got a little confused. How’s your day, honey? Catch any frogs for your terrarium?”
“Dad? What the fuck?” June looked at Peter. “I made that terrarium when I was like ten.”
The Yeti gave her a stern look. “Language, Juniper, please. What would your mother say?”
“Dad,” she said. “I’m thirty years old. Mom’s dead. She was killed by a plumber’s truck in San Francisco.”
A spasm of grief washed across his face like rain across a plate-glass window, then drained away. “No,” he said, filled with conviction. “We’ve talked about this, Junebug. Just because your mother’s away on a trip doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. She loves you a lot. She just has to be away right now.”
June opened her mouth and closed it again. She was trembling. Peter put his hand on her arm.
He was thinking about his own grandfather.
At first they’d thought his age was catching up to him in fits and starts. He’d have calm weeks of fishing in the bay and splitting firewood, then misplace his checkbook and storm around thinking someone had been in his house. He’d come for dinner, then stand up after coffee, pat his pockets for his keys, and accuse Peter’s dad of taking the car without permission when the keys were still hanging in the ignition of his old Buick.
He’d work himself into a rage, this old man who’d been a paratrooper in the Second World War at nineteen, and was still strong and fit at seventy-nine. He became furious at the Russians and spent most of his eightieth summer hand-digging the foundation for a bomb shelter behind his house. This almost half a decade after the wall had come down in Germany.
When Peter’s aunt discovered the giant hole in his yard, she made an appointment in Rochester and the pieces fell together. Alzheimer’s wasn’t any less difficult, but at least they knew what was happening. His grandfather would call Peter by his dad’s name and leave the stove burner on all day, but he could still rebuild old boat motors and lawn mower engines in his garage, which was both retirement income and a survival strategy, a way to plant himself in the living moment. He’d died of a heart attack on the cracked floor of that garage during Peter’s first tour, with a newly rebuilt Mercury twelve-horse clamped to a sawhorse and ready to be picked up by its owner.