The Excellent Lombards(36)

“I—don’t think he’s anyone’s worker. I was only asking if you thought—”

“Always trying to run everyone’s lives. That’s what you do.”

My father wasn’t prepared for the biannual argument. It was still early in the spring. For a few seconds he did nothing but stand, holding the wooden gate he’d been about to tie to the makeshift fence. “I run no one’s life,” he said. “That I’m aware of. It would be convenient if I could. It would be great to run a life or two.”

“Philip is none of your concern,” Sherwood said, picking up his wrench. And then somehow or other they were deep into the classic dispute, Sherwood saying, “When I went into the army my dad made clear the business would be here for me, that it would be mine when I got back. All of a sudden I learn that you’re on the place. I knew then, Jim, I knew how it would turn out, knew Aunt Florence would keep you, that you’d prove to the—”

“You were away,” my father said. “Your dad and Aunt Florence—they needed young energy for the harvest.”

“I was serving, as a matter of fact.”

That was another facet of the argument, the deep cut about the war that had shaped their youth, my father with Conscientious Objector status, working at an old-fashioned state insane asylum in Minnesota, while Sherwood enlisted in the army. Even though he had spent most of his time at Fort Rucker as an informational specialist he had been in some danger when he was in Saigon.

“Yes, you were serving,” my father conceded.

“I come back, you’re running the operation, you act like you own the—”

“Sherwood! Florence and your dad needed young energy for those years you were away.” My father finally set down the wooden gate he’d been holding.

“Young energy,” Sherwood echoed in an unpleasant singsong voice.

“Whatever you want to call our strength at the time, our energy,” my father said stiffly. “The older generation needed help. Call it what you want.”

Even though the Lombard partners had the same argument over and over again their skills hadn’t improved much and so far there hadn’t been a real breakthrough. Sherwood never punched my father, which might have made him feel momentarily better, in that instant before my father turned the other cheek.

“You think I couldn’t run this place by myself?” Sherwood at least was now shouting. He’d remained in his inventor’s corner, his shoulders thrust back, his mouth pursed, his nose wrinkled up, an alarming puggish face. That was not the Sherwood we were at all used to seeing. “You’re always shooting down every idea I have. Every single idea—you say no—”

“You don’t ever communicate!” My father’s voice had also become shrill. “How can I say no when you don’t tell me what you’re going to do? You planted that block of Galas without talking to me. A major decision and you just—”

“There you go, criticizing my work. Criticizing when I’m the one who grew up here. I’m the one who learned from Dad. I’m the one who didn’t go out for sports in high school, didn’t go to a fancy college, the one who was working—working, Jim, throughout the year, the one who had the long apprenticeship. I’m the one who learned the business.”

“It happened, Sherwood!” My father’s anger still flaring. “We, you and I, became partners. More than thirty years ago. Time for you to get over it, to get used—”

All at once that wrench was in my father’s face. “Shove grass—shove grass, Jim, way, way up your ass.”

What? Grass? Grass up— How would you—? Why—? William and I, the two of us nearby in the old cistern with the salamanders, we stared at each other. Did warring men put grass there because then there’d be an explosion, the way wet hay could ignite a barn?

No one, not a single person anywhere had ever said such an ugly, bewildering, violent thing to my father. That was not the way any of the Lombards ever spoke. And yet Sherwood, a Lombard through and through, had shouted the demand, the two of them near the back barn at that point. Those words were far worse than having a wrench rattling near your face. What would have happened next will never be known because at that moment Dolly cried out, pure distress penetrating the war zone. She may beforehand have been calling for her great-nephews, for Jax and Mason, but when we took notice she was screaming, first at them—“What are you two doing in there?”—and then she was screeching “Sherwood! Jim! Sherwood!” The two men sprang from the back barn, running around the long building to the forbidden shed where the spray materials were stored.

Those Muellenbach boys had walked right into the spray room, the door somehow unlocked. Because Dolly was yelling at them they were afraid to come out. She herself seemed too unnerved to go farther in than the doorstep, Dolly shrieking to no one, “Poison control! Poison control!”

Before the men could storm inside Philip Lombard was flying across the driveway from the basement and blasting into the shed; also before we knew it he’d emerged with the three-and the five-year-old in his arms. Dolly snatched Jax’s hands from his eyes. “Do you want to be blind? Don’t touch anything, you hear me?”

Both of those boys started to howl. One of them was able to say that they’d only been trying to find Uncle Sherwood. Philip set the nephews down and began to examine their fingers and their clothing. My father, who had gone into the shed, said that a bag he thought had been sealed was open, Dolly crying out that they had to go to the emergency room immediately. Sherwood said, “Let’s be calm, let’s—”