TWENTY-ONE

Joe

H ickock was right: they were good boots. I wore them all two years, six months, three weeks, and six days I spent in the care of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, the first eight months at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institute in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, the rest at the prison camp attached to the army psychiatric hospital at Fort Devens, just outside Boston. I was assigned to the laundry, and when a few months had passed and I had proved myself a model prisoner—silent, incurious, interested only in making my way through the small business of each day and on to the next—I got myself reassigned to an orderly detail, pushing carts of soggy food from room to room and cleaning out pans and breaking up fights over the channel changer and Ping-Pong table. It was easy time to do; it was all the time in the world, with a world of nothing in it.

I had been sentenced to thirty-six months. This in itself was a shock, but my lawyer assured me that the chances were small I’d have to do all of it, so long as I kept my nose clean. Draft resisters had become a political hot potato; almost certainly some kind of clemency was going to be granted now that the last troops had pulled out of Southeast Asia, and the fact that I had turned myself in (not quite true, but that was how we spun it, with a little help from Darryl Tanner) would count in my favor. Once this Watergate thing got really cooking, he joked, they’d be needing the cell space for half the Republican National Committee, most of the CIA, and every last asshole in the Nixon White House, right down to the wives. Twenty months max, he assured me. Probably a little less.

Of course, that wasn’t what happened, at least not soon enough for me. My lawyer’s earnest letters to the review board about my dying father (“a decorated hero of the Second World War”), the infant daughter I had barely held in my arms, my flawless record as a guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons—all were met with stony silence. As I turned the corner on year two and looked down the long corridor of my remaining federal time, with no sign at all that I was going to get out ahead of schedule, I pulled my mind back from all thoughts of home like a turtle tucking his head into his shell. I figured I was in for the full bite, clemency or no. So when, with just six months to go, the block PO came to find me and announced that the word had come down, the troops were going home for Christmas, that I should pack my things and report to the watch commander’s office on the double because the hour of my liberty was at hand, I heard the sound of a string being pulled, and knew whose finger was upon it.

Kate, the camp itself, my final days with my father, good days of talk when at last we spoke of my mother and made our peace—it was Harry Wainwright who gave all these things to me. Many times I’ve thought I hated him for it, as any man might who feels the power of another over his life. And I’ve hated myself for this as much as I’ve hated Harry, who did nothing wrong but love a place and the people in it, so deeply that he would want to die only there. So there’s that, too: my envy of him. Not for his money, which I have never cared about; nor Kate, who might have been Harry’s the day she was made but became my own on those nights of cold and snow; or even Lucy, who thought I had given her up. None of these. I envied him the fact that it was always his, who loved it, more than it had ever been mine, who would have left it if he could.

Five o’clock, the day ticking away: back at camp, I knew, Harry had either gotten his wish, or not. My goal was to keep the lawyers on the water until six or so—enough time, I calculated, to let things run their course at home and give everybody their money’s worth. Bill and Pete had been circling each other all day like a pair of alley cats itching for a scrap, but I doubted they had anything serious in mind: these were lawyers, after all, pure paper tigers who could beat you to death with their diplomas but hadn’t thrown an actual punch since seventh grade, and a few hours in the Maine woods wasn’t going to change that. Whatever Bill knew or thought he knew—and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel for the poor son of a bitch, who, beneath all the bluster, seemed as lost as Corduroy the Bear—it would all come out in the wash, no question. But when it did, this would happen over a long table with glasses of water nobody touched and a court stenographer tapping away in a corner, and I would be long gone, not even a memory.

At least the fish were being cooperative. After the morning’s struggles, the wind had settled down to an easy breeze, and even Pete seemed to have gotten the hang of things, hauling the Atlantics and brookies in like a pro. I sat on the shore with nothing to do but watch; I even treated myself to a few casts when one or the other of them broke for beer or a sandwich and handed me his rod. Not a bad day, I thought, under the circumstances. Not a bad day at all.

Which only goes to show that you should never tempt fate like this, not when you’re miles from the nearest highway with two men who are sleeping with the same woman. It started with a shout, a hundred yards below me; I turned into the sun to see two figures, backlighted in shadow, squaring off in an awkward posture of bent elbows and tucked chins that I recognized at once: men who didn’t know how to fight, getting ready to give it a go.

Carl Jr., seated beside me on the rocks, rolled his eyes. “Now what? Those two, they’re like a couple of kids in grade school.”

But by the time we got there—Marathon Mike joined us, splashing up from the shallows—enough time had passed that the momentum toward an actual fight seemed to have abated, and it looked like we were going to get off easy, not with fists but words. Bill was bent at the waist, taking big gulps of air, his hands riding his hips; I thought for a moment he was about to be sick. Pete didn’t look a whole lot better; he was drunker than the rest of them, for starters, was working on a bad sunburn, and hadn’t had a bite of lunch, taking it from his flask instead. He was standing in a few inches of water, his rod lying half in the sand, where the reel was sure to gum up good, and his face was twisted up like he was about to cry.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“Go on,” Bill said, “tell everybody what you told me. I’m sure they’ll think it’s just as hilarious as I do.”

“Shut up. Shut up, you prick.”

“Oh, I’m the prick. Listen to you.”

“Christ almighty,” Carl groaned. “Like I need this on my vacation.”

“Hear that?” Bill said to Pete. “Hear how stupid you sound?”

“I love her.”

Bill spat onto the sand and gave a hard laugh. “Sure you love her. You love her. Christ. You think I don’t know about it? I told her to do it, you little douche bag.”

“You’re fucking lying.”

“Is that right? Ask her yourself. Go fuck him, I said. You’ll get a real kick out of that itty-bitty dick of his. Make him fall in love with you while you’re at it.”

Pete looked like he was about to explode. “Shut up shut up shut up.”

“Oh, we had a good laugh about that one. You love her. My prick was in her the whole time, buddy boy. What do you say to that?”

Pete flew at him then, right on cue; with an animal growl he hurled himself forward, arms wide, nothing in him able to organize his attack into anything solid and real. I reached for his sleeve but missed, and in another instant he had his arms around Bill, the two of them grappling like prize-fighters in a corner. Only there was no corner: the momentum was Pete’s. As Bill absorbed the impact, his legs twisted under him and he went down hard, into the rocky river, all of Pete on top of him.

“Get this fucker off me!”

It took all three of us to unhook Pete and haul him to his feet, his face streaked with helpless tears and his arms uselessly flailing. Then he somehow got away from us and threw himself on Bill again. It was me who got to him this time, yanking him by the collar and hurling him away.

“You, onshore, now!”

His breath jammed in his throat. “He—”

“Now, goddamnit!”

Bill had risen to a sitting position in the water. While Mike and Carl took Pete onshore, I knelt beside him. A bit of blood was in his hair; a small cut, an inch or two, split the skin above his right ear.

“This doesn’t look too bad. How do you feel?”

He shook his head, still trying to find his breath. “Little bastard got the jump on me.”

“Wasn’t like you didn’t egg him on.”

He fingered the cut and examined the blood on his fingers. “Christ. Look at this. My fucking head is killing me.”

“It could be a concussion. We should get you to a doctor.”

Bill let his hands fall into the water, cupping his palms and letting the water drain through. “It was all bullshit, you know. About . . . well, all of it.”

“I had a feeling,” I said. “Looks like he bought it, though.”

“I kinda knew, but also kinda didn’t.” He looked past me then, toward shore, where Pete was still being minded by the other two men. “You smug fuck! You miserable piece of shit! When I get through with you, you’ll never work another day in your life!” He returned his eyes to me and lowered his voice again. “That ought to hold him. That’s the trick, to make the other guy think you know more than you do. Which in my case is usually zilch.”

“I doubt that.”

“You’d be surprised.” He frowned dispiritedly. “Truth is, he’s a better lawyer than I am. Probably a better lay too.”

I thought of Pete, lying at the bottom of the Hah-vahd pool; his grass hut and his girlfriend and his fucking short stories. There was no side to take here, nobody even to like when it came right down to it, and mostly I felt sorry for everyone.

“I’m sure he thinks he is.”

“Christ. He loves her.” He shook his head again, looking at nothing. “Help me up?”

I eased him to his feet. He seemed a bit unsteady, favoring one leg, and I kept a hand on his elbow as we stepped from the streambed onto the riverbank. And something else: his right eye was blinking.

“You’re a good guy, Joe. For putting up with this.”

“All in a day’s work.”

“I know you don’t mean that, but thanks.” We had exited the river a short shouting distance from where Pete and the other two still stood. Bill lifted his voice to them. “Hear that? I’m making your apologies to our host, you rude asshole!”

“Let it go,” Carl snapped. “For god’s sake, Bill, just shut up.”

“Oh, the hell with it,” Bill said to me.

I released his elbow and looked him over. Blink, blink, blink. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Nothing an aspirin and a leak won’t cure.” He gave me a hollow smile, like somebody pretending to like an awful present; where this all was headed I hadn’t a guess. “You like lawyer jokes, Joe?”

I shrugged, playing along. “Sure, why not.”

“Here’s my favorite. Why’s divorce so expensive? Give up?”

I told him I did.

“Because it’s worth it!” He laughed and shook his head. “That fucking kills me. Wait here a sec, willya?”

He headed up the path, under the shadow of the dam. I checked my watch; it was a little after six. Suddenly, the only thing I wanted was just to be home, Harry or no. I would have called Lucy to tell her so, if I hadn’t left the radio in the truck, two miles away.

“What’s he doing?”

Carl had come up beside me, holding a hand over his brow. I craned my neck upward to follow his gaze. For a moment I didn’t see a thing, just the dam wall, rising imperiously against the sky. Then I found him: Bill, crossing the narrow catwalk, eighty feet above us. He removed his vest and dropped it on the ground beside him, then drew down his suspenders.

Carl said, “I think he’s . . . taking a piss.”

He was. At the edge of the catwalk, Bill bunched his waders to his knees, unzipped his fly, and released a stream onto the curved wall below, making a little heart-shaped stain on the stone. Mike and Pete were with me now too, the four of us with our faces angled upward, like stargazers following a comet’s path. When Bill was done, he shook it off, redid his pants, tipped his face to the sky with what I took to be a look of satisfaction. Then he stepped backward and disappeared from view.

I turned to Pete. “I think that was for you, buddy boy.”

“No, wait a second,” Pete said. His eyes were still fixed on the dam. “The catwalk is only, what, five feet wide?”

“About that.”

“So we should be able to see him. Where the hell did he go?”

I looked again. Pete was right: Bill was nowhere to be seen. I counted off five seconds, then ten. Still nothing.

Jesus Christ, I thought. Jesus, Jesus Christ.

And then I was running up the dam.