Pike's Folly (7 page)

II

The Independence
Project

1

“Why are people always so quick to assume the worst of their government?” Henry Savage demanded. “We make mistakes, sure, but we're not fundamentally bad people. That's Hollywood.”

It was early in December, and the view outside his office was a study in two shades of gray—the overcast sky, and the sleet-covered buildings across the street from the Federal Reserve. He was on the phone with Cathy Diego of the Public Interest Research Group in Concord, New Hampshire. A Clinton-era Democrat, Cathy had begun her career in Washington but was too raw and unabashedly partisan to make it inside the Beltway, where nothing ever happened without compromise. As much as Henry disliked dealing with her, he sometimes wished he had her job, which was closer to the roots-level activism he'd envisioned when signing on with the Feds.

“Have you seen it yet?” he asked, meaning the seven and a half acres of New Hampshire woodlands he'd sold to Nathaniel Pike in June. Circumstances had changed since their last face-to-face meeting, and Pike's subsequent behavior hadn't done much to inspire the confidence of Henry's department.

“No, he's got it all roped off, like he owns the place,” Cathy said.

“He
does
own it.”

“Thanks to you.” Cathy's voice sounded scratchy on the phone, and he could hear her chewing gum, a sound he particularly detested. “You know, I can name a half dozen nonprofit agencies here in New Hampshire who would've loved to buy that land if you'd given them a chance. You could've donated the whole acreage to the local protection society instead of selling it to Pike. Alice Shepperton would've been glad to help you out.”

Henry switched her over to speakerphone. He knew that his secretary, Rochelle, would be listening in from the outer office, and he wanted her to appreciate what he was up against. “You might not believe this,” he said, “but I had no idea what Pike's intentions were when I sold that land to him. I hardly even knew him!”

“Everyone in Rhode Island knows all about Nathaniel Pike.”

“I'm not from Rhode Island.”

“That's no excuse. You can still pick up the phone and get all of the information you need from Irene Jacobs at the RIPIRG. That's how we keep tabs on these lunatics.”

“I wouldn't exactly call Pike a lunatic.” Henry'd had to defend himself to his colleagues so many times over the past few weeks that he almost felt as if he and Pike were in this together.

“Oh, no? Answer me this: why would someone buy a house, tear it down, then start rebuilding it two weeks later? I'll tell you why—because he's a
lunatic.
”

“Maybe. At any rate, I'd really appreciate it if you'd just back off and let me handle this. You and Alice have a lot of sway with the college kids up there. I don't want every young person in this country thinking their government's a drag.”

“You can't blame kids for siding against you. You're a bureaucrat.”

“We're
all
bureaucrats! What's wrong with that?
This
bureaucracy—where I'm sitting right now—is responsible for more good in the world than Nathaniel Pike. It's thanks to us that we've managed to keep so many of our national forests in service. That's the Big Brother bureaucracy in action. Every man and woman in this building is deeply committed to his or her job. Yes, they're bureaucrats, and God bless them for it. These are people who love our parks, and our waterways, our national landmarks . . . including
you,
Cathy. I know I've been nasty to you in the past, but I've always respected you for doing your job.”

“Don't even. I've got a migraine, my daughter has a dance recital in three weeks, and my husband forgot to pay the frickin' cable bill this month.”

“Fine.” Henry sighed. “You're probably right. Maybe I should do a little more research into what Pike's been up to lately.”

“That's easy. One quick call to the IRS should tell you everything you need to know.”

“Nah. If I'm gonna get through to him, I've got to do it honestly. This whole thing is about principles. Nathaniel Pike might not have any principles, but
I
do.”

“Sounds like a pipe dream, but go ahead. Celia Shriver might be able to help you out. She works for the Reese Foundation. The only person who hates Pike more than Celia is Reese's mother, Keeny.”

“Good. The Reese Foundation's in my Rolodex. I'll give 'em a call. And thanks for the tip.”

“Don't even.”

“Don't even what?”

“Just don't even.”

2

They rode in two cars—Pike, Stuart and Gregg in Pike's hunter green SUV, Allison and Heath in her hatchback, which she'd picked up cheap right after college. Allison made a point of driving a modest vehicle, even though her father had offered to buy her something more expensive as a graduation gift. Instead she got a trip to Vail, which turned out to be a bummer; skiing season was long over and the Feds were out in swarms, busting crystal meth dealers or anyone who looked like a Deadhead. Allison spent the entire week by the pool, writing in her dream journal. There was a cute guy, she remembered; they made out one night but didn't have sex. Other than that, nothing doing.

“This would be a really cool state to live in,” Allison said to Heath as they drove north into New Hampshire. They'd both packed light for the trip; Heath had taken along the digital video camera that Pike had given him for the purpose of following him around the mountains. “Maybe I'll move up here. I don't know what I'd do, though. Just hang out, I guess.”

“I'll come with you,” he said, then wished he hadn't. If they moved anywhere, it would be to Cranston, or North Providence, maybe Pawtucket. Equal rent, equal division of utilities. No help from Mr. Reese, either, unless Gregg wanted to pay her share.

Out of the blue, she said, “I think I'd like to join a writers' colony someday. What's a good one?”

Heath shrugged. “I dunno. Ask Stuart.”

“Yeah, right,” she laughed. Both of them were reading Stuart's novel,
My Private Apocalypse,
though she was about fifty pages further into it than he was. Heath's progress was slowed by his habit of flipping back to the author photo after nearly every paragraph, trying to find a connection between Stuart's face and his rather chilly prose style.

Allison checked both side-view mirrors before pulling into the passing lane. She'd been tailgating the same station wagon for miles, and when they went by, the driver glared accusingly at Heath. “I can't ask Stuart,” she said. “Stuart Breen is a
real
writer. Real writers don't go to writers' colonies.”

“Real writers go to colonies all the time.”

“Yeah, but not like
Stuart.
” She veered in front of the station wagon and slowed to her original speed. “Maybe he teaches at one, but I'm sure he doesn't take classes.”

Another mile up the road, they stopped at a rest area just outside of Nashua, where they saw Gregg and the others coming out of the refreshment kiosk. A dusting of snow swirled gently around them, settling on windshields before swooping across the turnpike, where an identical rest area catered to the stream of traffic heading south.

Joining the others, Alison said, “Hey, Stuart, did Heath tell you? He wants to make a movie out of your book.”

Heath, who'd said no such thing, shrugged. “I still have to finish reading it.”

“Don't bother,” Stuart muttered. His thin dark hair wavered in the breeze that made the prominent tips of his ears turn red. Watching him, Allison remembered nothing of his book, only the fact that he'd written one. His presence in the Pike camp continued to amaze her. How could a man with the sensitivity to write a novel waste his time with a sleazeball like Nathaniel Pike? It called into question the motivations of every creative person she'd ever met.

“Hurry and wash up, people,” Pike said. “I don't want to keep Sarah waiting.”

“I thought this was some old friend of yours,” Allison said.

Pike looked annoyed. “That's right. I don't want to keep an old friend waiting.”

They used the bathrooms, then returned to their cars and forged ahead. The main road was a smoothly paved highway that skirted east around Lake Winnipesaukee, then plowed through a straight, deep crevice, rising occasionally to break along a curve or a steep drop-off filled with snowy pines. Stuart sat in the back of Pike's SUV, directly behind Gregg, whose stiff, grayish-blondish hair he could see over the leather headrest. Riding in cars always made him nauseous, particularly at the speeds at which Pike liked to drive.

“I'm serious about your wife, Stuart,” Pike called over his shoulder. “I'll fly her up for a few days. She deserves some time off. I can't imagine working in a bank, all that mindless paperwork, having to . . . fucking MOVE!” He honked his horn, and a squat Festiva pulled over so the SUV could pass. “Anyway, just let me know.”

Stuart kept quiet—Pike wouldn't have listened to him anyway—and instead focused on the shops of North Conway blurring by, one parking lot after another, three or four outlets grouped together in strip malls identical to those in Seekonk or West Warwick. Pike's idea to pave over part of a foothill near Mount Independence, fifteen miles south of here, was, if anything, counterrevolutionary. The land was already spoiled, with parking lots as commonplace as anything else in the region, natural or man made. It occurred to Stuart how quaint his employer's conceits were—how ordinary and dull and ultimately old-fashioned. Yet he had to admit there was something fun about it. “Fun” was a word he had trouble relating to, even in his own writing. It scared him. To have fun was to acknowledge that nothing one might accomplish would ever amount to anything important. It was the spiritual equivalent of committing suicide.

Lighten the fuck up,
he told himself and pulled a Certs out of his coat pocket.

Leaving town, they passed a brown, wedge-shaped sign announcing the entrance to the White Mountains National Forest. Restricted, the sign said. Pike smiled. “What the hell's that mean?” he asked.

“I think it's to make sure that people don't start forest fires,” Gregg suggested.

True enough, another sign farther along informed them: Fire Risk Low. “Oh, that's a good idea,” Pike said sarcastically. He watched the sign in his rearview mirror, then shifted his eyes to Stuart. “We really need a sign to tell us that.”

Continuing on, they followed a gravel road that broke off from the highway. The sun was clouded over, and the shadows of bare branches crept across the hood of the SUV. Nathaniel drove past a clearing, where a steel lift cable rose out of view above them.

“Looks like we've got the place to ourselves,” said Gregg. Up ahead, the Echo Lake Ski Lodge belched smoke from a stone chimney jutting from the center of its steeply pitched roof. For thirteen years, Pike's friend Sarah Cranberry had owned and operated the lodge, where she also lived during the off-season. A truck was parked on the lawn out front, and a small thicket of pines separated the main building from a row of cabins. A dark forest surrounded the premises.

Peering into the forest, Gregg felt the strain of his life at home—where everything seemed so cloistered, so oppressive— easing away from him. Providence was small enough that, standing outside the train station, one could pivot and take in a three-hundred-sixty-degree panorama of the entire downtown: the glass prow of the Providence Place shopping center, the old colonial homes perched on College Hill, the red lights atop the Biltmore Hotel, the Foundry, the Westin, then back to Providence Place. But when Gregg stood in the same spot, he felt— perhaps unique to anyone in Rhode Island—confronted by the various buildings and landmarks. The Gregg Reese Unitarian Chapel. The Gregg Reese Community Theater. Not to mention the Keeny Esther Reese Shelter for Abused Women and Children, or the Salmon Samuel Reese Center for World Hunger Relief. Everywhere he looked, he saw the name Reese on libraries and hospitals and public parks. In Providence, his forebears were preserved not in the typical New England–gothic fashion, as ghosts, but as institutions.

The men unloaded their bags and carried them into the lodge, where a fireplace glowed in the middle of the large room. Board games for kids to play with were stacked by the hearth; above them, a topographic map showed the many trails leading up and down the mountains. Another wall at the back of the room consisted entirely of sliding glass doors that looked out onto the meadow behind the lodge. The building was quiet, except for the remote sound of someone doing the dishes in another room.

The water shut off, and a woman called out, “Nate, is that you?”

Nathaniel proceeded a few steps ahead of Gregg and Stuart. “Hey, girl!” he shouted back.

The woman emerged from the kitchen, a look of happy, sweaty exertion on her face. “Welcome home, chief,” she said, and pressed her lips to Pike's cheek.

Nathaniel patted her on the butt. “We're hungry,” he said, indicating the others.

Gregg blushed. “Oh, we're okay,” he insisted.

The woman broke away from Pike to shake Stuart's hand. She looked in her mid-forties, with short, muscular legs that bulged in a pair of dark blue denims. She'd gathered her hair— black but white at the roots—into a wispy bun held in swirling disarray by a chopstick. “I'm Sarah,” she said. “You've got two more coming, I know. We'll eat as soon as I get this ham out of the oven.”

“No hurry,” Gregg said. He'd been expecting someone younger than Sarah. In twenty years, he'd never known Pike to have a lady friend even remotely his own age.

“I'm taking jackets,” she said, “and drink orders, if you're interested. I know what
you
want, chief.” She nudged Pike, who'd put his arm around her waist. Gregg still didn't know what to make of her, except that she looked like a lesbian, according to his limited conception of what a lesbian looked like. She wasn't pretty; her face was apple shaped, with ruby dimples and a gently rolling double chin. Pike's former girl-friends had all been of a type: fawning waffle heads with size-two figures. He simply didn't associate with women who weren't exceptionally beautiful. Sarah's ordinary appearance was the most striking thing about her.

“Nathaniel was worried that we might be late,” Gregg said, handing her his jacket.

She laughed. “He must still be on Rhode Island time. I keep telling him, the rules are different up here.”

Allison and Heath joined them twenty minutes later in the dining room, where Sarah had laid the food out buffet-style on a sideboard. The ham smelled delicious, and it steamed in the center of the table. Sarah carved it with an electric knife, telling everyone to help themselves to wine and tossed salad. The knife tore into the meat with the razzing sound of a chainsaw, and she operated it manfully, peeling off thick deli-cut slices with one hand.

Allison stood in front of Heath at the end of the buffet line. The others had got a head start on the booze, and she watched their rowdy jostlings with the detached amusement of a social anthropologist. “I think my dad's drunk,” she whispered to Heath. She was happy for him; as she saw it, her father rarely allowed himself to have the fun in life that he deserved. The feeling was contagious, and she said, “God, I want a toke
so
bad.”

Heath smiled gamely but said nothing. Ever since leaving Providence, he'd regretted coming along on the trip. He could've used the time more productively by staying at home. Solitude was healthy for an artist. There was so much that he wanted to do—write “God Only Knows,” produce
Pet Sounds,
learn to sing like Carl Wilson. What was he doing instead? Hanging out with his girlfriend.

Sarah cut herself a piece of ham and told her guests to sit down and eat. Gregg continued to mellow as the dinner progressed, and at times Allison even thought he might be flirting with their host.

“I can't believe you two went to school together,” he said to Pike and Sarah, who were sitting next to each other at the head of the table. “You don't strike me as a Rhode Islander,” he told Sarah.

She smiled, her mouth full of red wine. They'd gone through two bottles already, with another unopened bottle of Bordeaux on the sideboard. The bottle still had the price tag on it, a green sticker from the state-line liquor store. “I'm not—not anymore,” she said. “There's a whole world out there, you know. There's Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and—”

“Don't forget Maine,” Pike said to the general amusement of all. Only Allison wasn't laughing; she was too busy scrutinizing Pike for clues, wanting to find out exactly why she disliked him so much.

“What was Mr. Pike like in high school?” Heath asked. Allison gripped his right leg under the table and squeezed.

“Oh, kind of a rebel,” Sarah said. “We were a pretty strange couple, he and I.”

“So you guys actually dated?” Allison asked.

Pike took a moment to swallow a bite of ham. “Not really. But I did let her carry my books.”

Sarah grinned, showing her wine-stained teeth. “Don't believe a word that he says, Allison. It's all lies.”

Pike corrected her. “Not lies, dear—fabrications. Peasants
lie.
Gentlemen
fabricate.
”

As their banter continued, Gregg began to understand why Pike had kept her as his secret friend for so long. Being with Sarah had freed up a part of him that was less informed by the public persona he'd taken such care to create in Rhode Island. Like she said, the rules were different up here.

At the end of the meal, Pike made a special announcement, one that he'd been saving all night. This was the first time he'd mentioned the parking-lot project to anyone who wasn't directly involved with it. That group now included Gregg, Allison, and Heath, whether they liked it or not.

“A parking lot?” Allison demanded, reaching for her wine. “What on earth for?”

“Wait and see, my pet, wait and see,” Pike said, pleased with himself.

“How do you plan to get the equipment up there?” Gregg asked. Being in the mountains had a transforming effect on him, and he found himself open to ideas that would've seemed ludicrous back home.

“We'll airlift it,” Pike said, “to a staging area about fifty yards from the main site. It's expensive as hell, but we'll save in other ways.”