The Old Man(57)

“Why did you want me to come and see you?” Julian asked.

“Before I divorced Taylor I did a lot of thinking, and after the decree I kept thinking.”

“What about?”

“About a lot of things. Mostly about what I know, and what my life has been like so far, and the choices and decisions, and how they worked out. And I’ve thought about what went wrong and what I should do next. Taylor has always been a drinker, and so I went to a couple of Al-Anon meetings. That’s what they call Alcoholics Anonymous now. He wouldn’t go with me.”

“It wasn’t a bad idea, though. Did you learn anything?”

“Some things. They have these steps you follow to straighten yourself out. One of them is to go around and find all the people you’ve harmed, and try to make things right.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Julian said.

She turned to look at him. “You’re one of the people I harmed.”

“I don’t remember that,” he said.

“It was when we were young—like seventeen. I knew you had a big crush on me, but I pretended I didn’t.”

“That’s not taking anything from me.”

“I knew that you were serious when you tried to ask me to go to the prom with you, and you really wanted me to go. I knew that you would have been so happy if I would just say yes. But I pretended I thought you were just joking around, so I could laugh and say no in a way that would make you stop, but not be able to say I was being mean.”

“That’s not being mean. You just didn’t want to go with me. That’s no harm.”

“It hurt me,” she said. “Not right away, but later. I kind of knew it would then. Most girls were looking forward to going to the prom with somebody, but I was mainly interested in staying unclaimed and seeing who asked, and how many there were, and picking the best one. You were the first one to ask, and at that age I was two inches taller than you, and we had known each other since we were three. After I said no I had second thoughts because you were the only one who really cared about me. But I told myself that no matter what I did, you’d still be around. So I went with Lawrence Coles. Then right after graduation you were gone. A couple of years later, you were back from the army for a few days, and everybody could see who you really were. I was sorry then—but not for you. For me.”

“Just forget it,” he said. “If you go around to all the guys who wanted you and say you’re sorry, you’ll be apologizing to everybody in Craighead County.”

“It doesn’t say that.”

“What?”

“The twelve-step thing. It doesn’t say you apologize. It says to make amends.”





20


Hank Dixon swung the ax, brought it down on the end of the upright log, and split it. He set the next one upright on the stump and took another swing. After about ten minutes he had filled the bin with split pieces he could use to start fires. He carried the wooden bin to the porch under the roof, and then went back for two loads of larger pieces from the cord of wood in the yard. Then he tugged the tarp back over the woodpile and tied it down to keep the wood dry.

He saw Marcia coming back up the path from the lake. She said, “Does this mean we’re in for a cold night tonight?”

“I think so. The forecast says that places over six thousand feet will drop into the thirties tonight.”

“It sounds cozy,” she said. She stepped close and kissed him, and he could feel the cold of her nose on his cheek. “But try not to hit yourself in the shin with the ax.”

“Wood chopping happens to be something I’m good at,” he said. “All those years in New England made me an expert at fire starting, walking on ice, and snow shoveling. I never thought I’d need that knowledge in Southern California, but here I am.” He paused. “Run into anyone down the hill?”

“No,” she said. “Things looked pretty deserted.” She looked down the mountain at the small town below. “Tell me the truth. How do you think we’re doing at this? I mean living here and everything.”

“All you ever know is that they haven’t got you yet.”

Marcia shrugged. “No sense in running up the score beyond that anyway, right? It’s poor sportsmanship.”

They walked to the porch of the cabin and went inside. The cabin was bigger and fancier than most houses. A Los Angeles stockbroker and his wife had built it as a mountain retreat. The stockbroker told Hank that he had imagined they would be retreating to the mountains during the summer to escape the heat, and coming during the winter to ski. Maybe they would visit during the fall to see the leaves on the deciduous trees on the lower altitudes and smell the sap of the tall pines up near the house. In the spring they might come to do some trout fishing in the mountain streams that fed the lake. This fall the cabin was for rent.

When Hank had looked online and seen the photographs of the interior of the house and its furnishings, he had e-mailed and then called the owner to strike a deal. He wondered why the rent was so reasonable.

Shortly after the cabin was completed, the stockbroker’s wife had observed that coming all the way up here from Los Angeles took nearly all day, and the homeward drive took most of another day, much of it through places that weren’t scenic. That meant weekends were too short to make the trip worth taking. After that she had announced that the longer trips he proposed had turned out to be boring. There was nothing to do, with just the two of them in such an isolated place.