The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(51)

Clouds had moved over the sun and it grew colder. The muskrat was gone and a wind stirred the water. He got up and swiped at the seat of his trousers and went on up along the west side of the creek. When he got to the fence he took the trail up the mountain, climbing among ilex and laurel here on the north slope. A few old standing chestnut trunks dead and gray these fifty years or more. He reached the crest of the ridge in less than an hour and sat in the broken sun on a fallen log and looked out over the countryside below. He could see his grandmother’s house and the barn and the road and the adjoining small farms beyond, the pieced fields and the fencelines and woodlots. The rolling hills and ridges to the east. Somewhere beyond that the installation at Oak Ridge for enriching uranium that had led his father here from Princeton in 1943 and where he’d met the beauty queen he would marry. Western fully understood that he owed his existence to Adolf Hitler. That the forces of history which had ushered his troubled life into the tapestry were those of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the sister events that sealed forever the fate of the West.

A hawk appeared out of the woods below and rose effortlessly and came about and drifted quarterwise down the wind and turned and rose again and hovered. Broadwing. Buteo platypterus. It passed so close he could see its eye. Eleven millimeters. The great horned owl’s were twenty-two. The same as the whitetailed deer. But rich in rods. Nighthunter. The hawk turned and dipped and skated off down the slope and then rose again, standing into the wind. Motionless. You should have migrated by now. The hawk turned once more and then it was gone. He looked again for his grandmother’s house. The green metal roof. The red brick chimney in need of tuckpointing. Her car in the driveway. How far is that? Two miles? He rose and hiked out along the crest of the ridge. A cold wind in the sun. Fox scat in the pathway. A twelvebore shotshell case trodden into the dirt. The small bent hardwood trees rooted in rock and pointing out the way the wind had gone.

He came down the mountain by a different route and crossed the creek and came out into the road a half mile below the house. When he walked up the driveway his grandmother was coming from the barn. She was dressed in coveralls and wore her gardening hat and a denim barncoat and she carried a stainless steel milkpail with a cloth over it. When she saw him she smiled and smiled.

He met her at the gate and took the pail from her and she put her arms around him and held him. Oh Bobby, she said. I’m so happy to see you.

How are you, Granellen.

Dont ask.

All right.

Well you can ask a little.

Are you okay?

I’m not braggin, Bobby. I’m still above ground.

He had turned to deal with the gate behind her. Here, she said. Let me have that.

He handed her the pail while he latched the gate. I just hate to see people set a milkpail on the ground.

He smiled and turned and took the pail again and they went on toward the house.

How’s Royal?

She shook her head. He’s not doin much good, Bobby. I dont know what all I’m goin to do with him if he gets much crazier. I went down to Clinton to look at that place they’ve got down there and I thought, well, I wouldnt want for somebody to stick me in here. There’s a place over in Nashville he could go to that I hear is pretty good but that’s a long ways. And I dont know how much longer I’m going to be drivin, neither. Is the problem. I dont know, Bobby. We may wind up down there together. Mostly I’m just in prayer mode about it.

She wiped the bottom of the pail with a cloth and set the milk in the galvanized cooler on the back porch and stepped out of the green rubber kneeboots she was wearing. These are Royal’s. But I wear em cause they’re easy to get off and on and I aint goin that far anyways.

They went into the kitchen. I hate to ask anybody how long they’re stayin cause it sounds like you dont want em to. But you aint fixin to do me like you done last time and just drink a cup of coffee are you?

No. I can stay a few days.

She took off her hat and shook out her hair and took off the coat and hung it on a rack of coats by the door. Set down, she said. I’m goin to go up and get out of these here coveralls. I hate to milk in the middle of the day but sometimes you dont have a choice about it. Take off your coat and set down, Bobby.

All right.

He pulled out a chair and hung his leather jacket over the back of it and sat. The chairs had come out of the mountains and were made of ash, the spindles and rails turned on a treadle lathe in a world no longer even imaginable. The seats were of woven rush much worn and mended back in places with heavy rough twine. When she came back down she went to the refrigerator. I know you’ve not eat, she said. Let me fix you somethin.

You dont have to fix me anything.

I know it. What would you like?

I’d like a garden tomato sandwich on lightbread with mayonnaise and salt and pepper and a sliced hardboiled egg on top.

We had the last tomato here about six weeks ago. I have to say that sounds pretty good though. I’ve got some store tomatoes.

I’m not hungry, Granellen. I’ll keep till supper.

Well I’ve put some beans on. Bart’s girl brought over some country ham they cut and I was fixin to make biscuits and gravy.

That sounds good.

Did you want some iced tea?

Okay.

They sat at the table and drank the tea from tall green fairground glasses.

How do you get parts for that thing? he said.

What thing?