The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (5 page)

He stepped toward me and hugged me out of sympathy. I surprised myself by being grateful for it. He took off his rose-colored Thompson glasses and hung them by one stem from the collar of his shirt, and regarded me with ancient eyes. The ponderous bags under his watery hound-dog eyes made him look thirty years older.

“When I was a kid,” Bayard said, with a vague, wistful smile, “I came walking out of the town library and saw something big and black in the grass next to the sidewalk. I went to go see what it was and it turned out to be a raven, lying there on his back, looking up at me and cawing. I guess it got hit by a passing car and knocked onto the median.

“Well, that big dumb bird let me pick him up and carry him home. He had a busted wing and a broken leg. My dad, he was a doctor, he had a little clinic in Ohio, he helped me put splints on that raven.”

I smirked in spite of myself. “Does this story have a point?”

Bayard took a box of Camels out of his pocket and started packing them against the palm of his hand. “Walk outside with me.”

We hung out in the funeral home carport. Golden rays of sunlight filtered through the filthy washrag clouds and lit up the green leaves of the dogwoods flanking the driveway. The listless hiss and roar of oblivious traffic passing on the street down the hill was soothing in its detachment.

The literary agent lit a cigarette, took a deep draw, and blew the smoke across the carport in a thin stream. “A couple months later, that fat-assed raven was one hundred percent back to health. I didn’t want to, but my dad made me take him outside and let him go.

“No matter what I did, he absolutely would not leave. I shook the shit out of that dumb bird trying to get him off my arm. He knew he had a good thing and he didn’t want to leave. I took him out every day that week trying to let him go and he refused to do it.”

I gave him a Clint Eastwood squint from the corner of my eye and folded my arms. “Are you about to tell me that that bird never forgot how to fly and if I just believe in myself and quit resting on my laurels expecting the world to hand me a living, I can fly too?”

“A few days later he got ahold of my brother and tore him up, so my dad had to take him out and shoot him,” Bayard said, flicking his ashes onto the carport floor. “I’m telling you that if you don’t start flying, I’m going to shoot you.”

I laughed and he took a deadpan drag off the unfiltered Camel.

“Those things will kill you,” I said.

“World War II didn’t kill my dad, and neither did Camels, and if my wife couldn’t do it, this Camel ain’t gonna do it either.”

We stood there a minute, listening to the traffic. “I always wondered how Carl got that scar on his neck.”

“Well, now you know. So what are you gonna do, Ross?”

At that point, it hit me that over the course of my life, I’d probably seen more of this man than I had my own father. The idea stunned me. I managed to say, “Not sure. I guess write the damn book.”

“Attaboy. What made you change your mind?”

“Those people’s faces.”

“Very commendable. You sure it wasn’t the money?”

“No. Maybe that Winton guy’s right. Maybe I’m not so bad. Maybe I can do it. I don’t owe them anything, but...what kind of guy would I be if I didn’t even try?”

“It wasn’t the fame? Not even a little bit?”

“No. I just don’t—well, I guess I don’t really want to let them down after all.”

“You’re a damned liar.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, smirking at him. “Maybe the fame. Just a little bit.”

“Attaboy.”

_______

My mom, Bayard, and I were the last ones to leave—or at least I thought we were. On the way out, I passed the doorway into a little kitchenette and spotted Sawyer Winton sitting at the table inside, drinking a cup of coffee, his camera off and lying on the table.

As soon as he saw me, he spoke up, “Hey, Mr. Brigham!” and started to get out of his chair.

I told my companions I would be out in a minute and ducked into the little break room. “Don’t get up, Sawyer,” I said, settling into a chair myself. “And you can call me Ross.”

“Okay...Ross,” said Sawyer, sitting back down. But when he saw the expression on my face, he tensed up again. We sat there for a long moment like this, staring at each other. He pretended to fiddle with the camera, turning it on, and put it back down at an angle that captured both of us. No doubt some sort of documentation, experience footage, for YouTube.

At long last, Sawyer blurted, instead of whatever he had meant to discuss with me, “...What? What is it?”

“I’m a wee bit pissed,” I said. “What possessed you two to bring up the petition in the middle of my father’s viewing? Call me up in front of my dead dad and put me on the spot in front of my mother and God and everybody? That reporter? Did you both lose your minds? What the hell, dude.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at the table as he picked his fingernails. “I guess that wasn’t the most tactful thing to do, yeah, maybe. I guess I just thought something like that deserved some kind of—I don’t know, ceremonial feel, you know? A couple of the others thought it was kinda bad form, too. I’m sorry, Mr. Brigham.”

“Well...I know you meant well.”

I let the moment linger for emphasis, then added, “So what did you want to talk about?”

“I just wanted to thank you for considering the book, and to let you know that I’m always available if you have any questions about the lore and canon of the series. I’ve been a lifelong fan ever since I read the first book when I was in third grade. I’m gonna be in town a couple days visiting with a few of the other fans while I’m here.”

“Third grade, huh?” I said, taking out my cellphone. “What’s your cellphone number?”

As I entered his number into my contacts list, Sawyer said, “My teacher, Mrs. Kirby, was reading it, gave it to me when she was done with it. I finished it in like, a week or two, and she was so impressed and stuff that she went out and bought me my own copy of the second one as soon as it came out, later that year.”

“That’s cool.”

“Look, uhh...Ross,” said Sawyer, taking something out of his jacket. It was an elderly, dog-eared copy of my father’s second book,
The Cape and The Castle.
The pages were yellowed, the art on the paperback’s cover was faded by time and sun, gone green-blue. The picture of my father on the back depicted a much younger man, his hair and beard lush and dark.

“I...I know...you didn’t really have a good relationship with your dad. And I know you couldn’t give two damns about his novels. My dad died in a car accident and left me and my mother when I was seven, so I can understand, maybe. You just sit in your room and you think and think and think and you just wanna know—you just wanna know
why,
right?”

I studied my hands as they rested on the table in front of me, and glanced over at the accusatory eye of the GoPro camera.

“This series is what kept me company, man. You said you didn’t see much of your dad. Well, I never saw my dad ever again,” Sawyer said. “I would lie up at night reading your dad’s books until I got sleepy. Then for Christmas one year, my mom bought me the audiobook for the third book in the series. You know, the one Sam Elliott did in ‘95.

“At the time, I didn’t know who he was, so I pretended it was E. R. Brigham reading to me. Like...a bedtime story, I guess. It probably sounds weird, but in a way, I liked to think of him as a—as a sort of dad. Those times. Since I didn’t have one.”

When I looked up, Sawyer was gazing intently into my face. “That’s why I want this so bad. He did something very special for me, even if he didn’t know it. And I want to give back, y’know? I want to see his dream get finished. And after reading the stuff you’ve done—the autobiography about the dude in the mountains
Bear With Me
, the comic book you did a few years ago...I even caught the play in Chattanooga you cowrote with Marshall Davies right before you went into the Army.”

“Really?” I asked. I didn’t bother asking how he knew I’d been in the Army. Most readers knew at least the largest events of my life. “What were you doing in Chattanooga?”

“I was on my way home from college and my layover got cancelled. The snow.”

“Oh, right. That was a fun night.”

“Mm-hmm,” nodded Sawyer. “I actually went hoping your dad would be there, but no such luck.”

“Yeah, he didn’t get around to my things. He didn’t go to my graduation from Basic Training, either. Nobody did.”

“That sucks. I’m sorry, dude.”

“No big thing. What’s your email address?” He gave it to me and I entered it into my phone with his number. “This way if you need to send me large passages of text—or vice versa—you can,” I said, standing up. “Hey, I gotta go. Gotta catch up with my mom. Talk to you later.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer said. He picked up the camera, but didn’t turn it off.

When I got outside, everybody was already in the car, my mother driving, the Pontiac idling. They were listening to the latest pop music fad song on the radio, at such a low volume I didn’t realize there was anything playing until I walked up and leaned on the window. The car was spotless but still smelled of the agent’s cigarettes.

Bayard glanced at me over his shoulder. “Hey kid, you gonna be in town for a while?”

“Yep. I want to look through my dad’s working notes and take a look at some of his old haunts. See if anything inspires me.”

“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll be heading back to California in the next day or two myself.”

The clouds were darkening again, threatening the green birches and pines of Blackfield with warm, dirty rain as they danced their swaying tango, flickering paler shades of money green in the cooling September breeze.

“Thank you for doing the right thing,” she said, tucking a lock of her graying, once-auburn hair behind her ear. “Agreeing to at least attempt the book really made all the difference. I was back there and heard the sweetest things they were saying to each other about you. They’re all excited, son.”

“Kid, if it makes a difference, I can send out one of my other guys to help you. I’m sure one of them will be more than happy to collaborate on the final
Fiddle
book,” said Bayard.

I was beginning to feel introspective and morose. If this was a movie, I’m sure the poignant, haunting, minimalist piano score would have started playing around the time I had walked up to the car.

“No,” I said, “I think this is something I have to do on my own. My dad did it alone.”

All alone,
I thought, gazing out at the scenery, the aging country storefronts, the gas stations, the mom-and-pop restaurants, the dead and dying commercial vestiges of yesteryear—drugstores, craft knick-knack shops, local-owned department stores—and seeing none of it.

_______

I sat in my motel room, watching the darkness gather between the curtains, until the only light I could see by was the ferocious glow of my laptop screen. I felt as if I were floating in a black void without end or beginning, my last remaining anchor the blinding empty-white rectangle in front of me, like some window in the wall of reality that opened onto the featureless wasteland of my brain. I wanted to reach through, pull the words out by the neck, and shake them until a story came out.

I turned on the lamp. On the table next to the laptop was one of three boxes of my father’s notes on the
Fiddle
series.

I had been looking through them in the hour since I’d gotten back from the funeral, but nothing was registering. All I could think of was the sight of my father in the coffin and how
old
he’d looked. That was the point in which it had struck me just how long it had been since I’d seen him last.

I’d never even gotten the chance to say goodbye, and what dug even deeper than that was the epiphany that until now, I had
always
had the opportunity, I hadn’t cared about taking it.

“Why didn’t you call?” I asked the box.

I got up and went out, putting on my shoes as I fled the question.

_______

A few minutes’ walk from the motel was a burger joint named Jackson’s, staffed by local college kids. Blackfield is a school town, so just about everywhere you went your transactions were handled by children, the vast majority of them as slender and attractive as the cast of your average cable TV teen drama. It was like living in Neverland.

When I walked in (pulling open a door that had a baseball bat for a handle), it felt as if I’d walked into some sort of cave overgrown with a strange green fungus.

Once my eyes acclimated to the dim interior of the dive, I realized that the walls and ceiling were wallpapered with dollar bills. They were taped, glued, and stapled to every structural surface in eyesight, and signed with everything from Sharpies to ink pens.

I took a booth in the very back of the L-shaped restaurant, by the restroom, out of sight of both the front door and the bar, where a television was touting a football game at top volume. After a few minutes of ogling the dollars on the walls and wondering what the insurance policy on the place could possibly be, a waitress approached me and took my order.