The Business of Naming Things (4 page)

He said hello to Jack Trudeau, who was having coffee with a few men in the bright dining room that overlooked Mirror Lake, stolid and black with cold but still open. Jack was Garry's father. Claimer'd met him at Garry and Jane's house on the Sound a year or so ago in the course of doing the Southport job. He couldn't remember if Jack had a piece of the inn or not.

“What's this about Jump Hill?” he asked Jack—a handsome gray-haired man with a fast smile.

“Don't know, Bill. The return of John Brown? I don't know.”

The conversation deteriorated into introductions and then moved on quickly to “Nice to meet you” and “Say hello to Garry and Jane” before any more detail on Timbucto was possible. Claimer sat over his decaf and muffins—he passed on the venison sausage and duck eggs—trying to remember John Brown.

Claimer called ahead and spoke directly with Ms. Kallie Ford. She answered, “Timbucto. Can I help you?” somewhat embarrassed at the rhyme. You could tell the greeting was still new in her mouth.

Reading from the deed, he explained to her that he was the shareholder in unit 3 and was in Placid on business and was planning to stop by later in the morning. She laughed like a sparrow being freed. It was quick and disappearing.

“We look forward to seeing you then,” she said.

As he drove through the streets of Lake Placid, the snow squeaked and crunched beneath the tires like Styrofoam. Claimer wondered what advantage was smuggled in Ms. Ford's voice. He'd noted the “we” as well.

The upstate environs had not really changed much over the years. When Claimer was a boy, there was Plattsburgh, the only genuine city north of Glens Falls, with traffic lights and Canadians and an air force base, and politicians dressed in suits. And it was probably still the only place in the whole of the Adirondacks with a gay bar and a Chinese restaurant. The rest of the area was poor, a lapsed rural economy given over to a corrections industry and truck repair. All the officeholders from the surrounding little towns wore plaid shirts in their election posters. You could still see them posted in the stores and on telephone poles. Placid and Saranac Lake had a bit of shine, by virtue of the winter Olympics of 1980. Some new structures thrown up, and some fancy stores; a Hilton. But it couldn't hide the long-term effects of tough winters on the architecture, not to mention the people. Claimer's wife had once called them “wolfen.”

Still, Claimer was moved by things that would not change. He admired them. It's what made him a Republican. In immutability Claimer sensed a certain godliness, a peculiar
mix of faith and fear that kept things stable. And he could feel it here, in the North Country. There were even scarecrows in the fields.

The ski jumps came into view like two Chinese ideograms sketched on a surface of white, each a thin rising stroke that plummeted, dark and thick, to the ground. High up on the hill, he could see the clutter of cedar homes and cars parked obliquely to some design. This was Timbucto.

Claimer despaired for a moment at the loss of Jump Hill. It was exactly right—the eye was led, as he had just been reminded, from the jumps up the hill. Even the spondaic meter of the name Jump Hill conveyed a stepping up. Too, too bad.

The new name was burned into a wooden sign hanging by chains from a deep post. There was an ugly stone trough, as big as a bus, set off behind the tree, as if for the feeding of some Yeti. A sculpture, no doubt. Ah well . . .

When Claimer parked the car in the lot in front of the management office—the sign said
COMMUNAL CENTER
—there was a man standing in the walk, his face unseeable within the tunnel of the fur-edged hood. He greeted Claimer with an extended right hand and Claimer saw that it was his son.

He repressed the urge to ask him if he'd escaped. “Pall,” he said.

“River Phoenix died last night,” his son said vacantly. “We're all a little fucked-up—worked up—about it here, you know. Like, you can't believe it.”

Like, I can, thought Claimer, but he said, “Who?”

Pall took his father's bag and headed up the walk.

“You know, Dad,” said Pall as they reached the door to the communal center. “You used to mock the guy. The name is
Phoenix. River Phoenix. Some James Bond thing you'd do, remember?”

Claimer did remember. Pall had had a picture of the young actor on his wall—a poster from a Rob Reiner film. Claimer couldn't get over the audacity of naming yourself—or perhaps some agent had done it—after a body of water and a city.

“You always said that River was no name for an older man. He'd regret it someday, you said. People'd call him ‘Old Man Ribber.'”

“Gee, son, I don't know what to say.”

“It was his real name, you know.”

Before taking in the high stone and wood interior of the room—an A-frame-type chalet—Claimer had to ask, and he did in a whisper: “What are you doing here? I was set to visit you tomorrow.”

“Oh, real sorry, Dad, sorry to disappoint you,” Pall said sarcastically.

A tense pause. Claimer scanned again the vertical space he was in; he noticed a banner, hanging behind the main counter, which said
AESTHETIC DEMOCRACY
.

“Work release. Kallie—Kallie Ford—arranged it. Can I call you Bill?”

“Sure, son.”

“Call me PM. We've done away with the relational around here, okay?”

“Sure. PM.”

He saw the brassy hair; it swung once like a narrow curtain on the other side of the desk and from behind it the orange bone of her shoulder turned. And then the livid face. It was her all right.

Claimer clomped toward the desk. Her green eyes in the brilliantly speckled composition of her face reminded him
of something—something homey and familiar. And faintly distasteful. He tried to elude it before it settled on him: peas and carrots.

“William Claimer, welcome to Timbucto. We are pleased to have you. PM has told us much about you and now we get to see you with our own eyes.”

For some reason, her words cadenced into a spectral poetry in Claimer's ear. “I'm Kallie Ford,” she said, extending a hand with skin as dark as a toad's. Her fingers were cool. Claimer found nothing to say, and he felt it.

“I could have been Henry,” he blurted out.

Her left eye closed a bit, in a kind of comic discernment. He let her think. A moment passed, and he could hear his son shuffling nervously behind him. Was there something between them?

“You still can be,” she said. “As you know, we renamed ourselves here. We do it all the time.”

PM hustled his father off through a side door. “It's a bit shabby, Dad.
Bill
. Hard habit. But the sheets are clean.”

Claimer hurled over his shoulder to Ms. Ford, “We'll talk about New York. Penn Station? Yesterday morning?” It was too jolly, he feared. Still, she smiled.

PM gave Claimer the rundown, sounding as if he'd rehearsed it. “Six months of this and I'm free. I work with the community here, but it's really based in Canada, through Kallie. I'm doing drug counseling.” Other details came forth about PM's plans as he hurried to anticipate and satisfy the usual fatherlies. But Fatherly was aswirl with the gentle ringings of Ms. Ford's voice and her freckled beauty.

“She's in charge,” said PM, reading in the opaque revolutions of his father's attentions something he recognized as
hunger or want, like when he would suddenly look up from his newspaper and scan the kitchen ceiling.

“I have to talk to her about this Timbucto thing,” Claimer said weakly.

PM offered his view. “It's like this, Bill. They mean no disrespect. It's just that, well, here things are done a little different. People understand the past here. And how it can be used for the future, I guess. You know, did you see that banner out there? Here, it's on this stationery here: Aesthetic Democracy. We vote on everything, and the main thing is what's most artful, you know, like pleasing. Like we're considering a new accent. For everybody. The best spoken English. Wessex or something. And we'll all learn it.”

Claimer said, “Just tell me this, and I'll drop it. What is Timbucto? I looked in my files—you remember?—and there was nothing on it but your little ice capade, ‘Where's my dad?' thing.”

“Okay, Dad. Fuck it! John Brown, the abolitionist. Harpers Ferry? Wanted to attract runaway slaves and set up a free state up here, for black people. They called it Timbucto. Never went anywhere. But it was a beautiful idea, and that's why we voted it in.”

Not bad, thought Claimer.

T
HE YOUTH OF
T
IMBUCTO
, led by PM, it turned out, had pressed for a midnight vigil for the late Mr. Phoenix. PM worked as industriously as a UAW organizer all afternoon—first on the phone in the kitchen and then speeding to other units to make face-to-face appeals. A quorum was rounded up for the 8:00
P.M.
vote. Claimer begged off, claiming that he had to listen to
Marketplace
on the local public radio station,
but he slipped in the side of the Communal Center at about 8:15. His son had the floor, dark hair brushed back, his face daggered in shadow. He looked amazingly famous, better than an actor. He looked like the young Artaud. Claimer, with a dad's pride, felt there were women and girls swooning as Pall shyly swayed back and forth, his index finger pressed thoughtfully to his lower lip, as he searched for the right words. He broke into a little speech that was obviously memorized from one of the dead actor's parts. A few of the girls and some teenage boys cheered at the end. PM seemed exhausted by the effort; his dark clothes hung loose upon him, as if he had just suddenly lost weight. With nothing left to say, he looked like he would collapse with indecision—should he sit down?—when Ms. Kallie Ford came forth and put an arm around his waist and called for a vote. “Let us hear your voice,” she said, while looking through PM's hanging forelock for his eyes.

It was unanimous; the adults took evident joy in giving their sons and daughters—their coequals in this high-minded community—the right to a ritual they wanted. Ms. Ford and Claimer's son hugged.

Claimer went up to Kallie Ford when the meeting was over. He quickly explained that he had come to Timbucto to investigate the name change—did she know that he had done the original incorporated ID?; she did. But that it really didn't bother him? It didn't. He was now here to see his son. During his little confession, Ms. Ford had been tending to a string of people who needed to have some small thing or another acknowledged, a task she handled with effortless charm. But when he mentioned seeing his son as his current priority, she squared her body and appraised him in a schoolmarmish way, a silent admonition. She knew it was a lie.

“Will you come over for a drink,” he said. And she did.

“W
E ARE VERY FRANK HERE
, Mr. Claimer. I have many lovers.”

Claimer, oddly, was not taken aback. She was in his house, his unit 3, after all; and it was late. Well, ten o'clock. And they were alone.

“I didn't intend to pry,” said Claimer, “about your many lovers.”

“It could not be prying, could it?” she said, swirling the scotch in her glass. “I told you.”

She sat on the hassock in Claimer's open living room. Her loose peasant blouse disguised the secrets of her breasts.

“Where are you from?” he asked. Claimer could have been dressed a little more sportily. He had on gray woolen slacks with a sharp crease and a cotton turtleneck. His loafers struck him as terribly square. “Do you want to smoke some grass?”

She laughed an assassinating laugh, and said no thank you, noncommittal as to whether she ever indulged, though she was working her drink with a veteran's verve.

“I'm an artist,” she said. “I work with stone and steel. I'm from Canada.”

Claimer mentioned the one sculpture exhibit he had seen—the work of Anthony Caro—and the trip he'd made to Storm King.

“My, my,” said Kallie Ford, draining her drink while laughing in it.

She moved forward on the hassock, a signal that she was leaving. Claimer scrambled. “Is that your work, on the drive coming in?”

“Yes,” she said, settling back for a minute and taking an ice cube into her mouth. “Do you like it?”

Claimer actually had an opinion. “It's marble, is it?” he guessed.

She nodded, as if this was a common mistake. “No. Limestone.” She brightly chewed her ice.

She's playing, thought Claimer. She thinks I'm a fool. Well, so then: “What the hell is it?”

“It's a word. A word in the stone.
Ocean
. There's a word in every stone.”

Then she was standing, holding out her glass for him to take. “You should come to the vigil tonight. There will be a movie.” She canted her head to the side. This was a bribe. “C'mon. It won't be that heavy. The kids just want to feel good about this friend they feel they've lost. He was a very gifted actor, you know. And a beautiful boy.”

“I just may do that,” said Claimer, wanting to be a beautiful boy. “Ocean. I'll have to take another look.”