I got my duffel bag out of my car and parked it inside the front door of the house. Then I started walking toward town on the left shoulder of the road. The sun had just set, the shadows were darkening, and the evening’s chill was now coming up around me like a blanket. The radio had predicted a low in the mid-twenties tonight. Gannet had no sidewalks, just the road cutting across driveways and the occasional scraggly front yard. A few of the houses, on my left, didn’t even face the street. The mobile homes, none of which would ever be mobile again, had a stranded look, as if they’d reluctantly put down roots after being abandoned beside someone else’s house.
There was a fence or two, a swing set, a few stray dogs.
Properties blended into one another, making it difficult to figure who might lay claim to the odd, rusted weed-strangled car that lay somewhere between two homes-what Gail, with her realtor’s acerbic eye, called “Vermont planters.” If there was a nucleus to Gannet, it lay in the large island of land ahead on my right, hemmed in by Gannet’s four streets. There, the houses were older but equally dilapidated. They faced the road like circled wagons, with unfenced back yards abutting one another, forming an untamed field of sorts in the middle, pockmarked by seemingly stray gardens, bushes, or leafless shade trees. During summers past, Leo and I had used this inner field, about the size and length of two football fields end to end, as a communal playground, and it was a natural magnet for every kid in the area.
As I came abreast of South Street, I saw the first real sign of life-four children playing with an incredibly mangy dog. They were dashing back and forth in the middle of the dirt road, chasing stones, sending up a thin cloud of dust that glowed in the dying light. I was struck by their identical tattered-quilt suits, reminiscent of what Chinese troops wore in the fifties, when I was being underpaid to fight them in Korea. I couldn’t tell if the kids were boys or girls-they all had long hair, tied back at the nape of the neck to keep it out of their faces. They stopped playing when one of them saw me. I waved, but to no response. They stood stock-still, ignoring the barking dog, staring at me not in wonder or curiosity, but as nervous animals might, transfixed by the sight of a dreaded predator. I was chilled by both implications: that I might be seen as a threat to these youngsters; and that they had been trained to see me, and presumably others like me, as blatant enemies. It made me feel there was a larger presence among us, an invisible authority dictating how people should be perceived.
The ominous spell only lasted a moment. The dog finally bumped one of the kids to gain its attention, and they all returned to their game with the same enthusiasm as before. But the episode startled me, and concerned me, too.
Buster had mentioned these people once on the phone. Oddballs, he’d said, members of a back-to-nature group that had bought most of the buildings on South Street and on the lower half of Atlantic. They didn’t use electricity, didn’t believe in money, didn’t own cars, and, according to Buster, had set up the only legitimate business enterprise the town had ever seen-something called The Kingdom Restaurant. The contradiction about money threw me off at the time, but Buster had merely laughed and said he wasn’t going to probe. Some of the people who came to eat there also topped up their cars at Buster’s garage.
The garage, on my left, was locked up tight, looking like a rusty beached Liberty ship, far from the sea. What little I knew about cars, I’d learned here, tinkering on an assortment of wrecks. I’d never known if they belonged to Buster, were headed for the dump, or were actually the property of paying customers. Directly opposite-once a demurely rotting erstwhile farmhouse-stood the Kingdom Restaurant, its windows glowing yellow. Several cars were parked out front.
I cut diagonally across the street to where a familiar figure was putting the final shine on the roof of a 1943 Chevrolet fire truck. He was standing on the running board and had his back to me, caught in the circular gleam from the sole streetlight by the road. The truck was parked in front of a two-bay firehouse with GANNET VOLUNTEER FIRE
COMPANY carefully painted in red on the wall between the first and second floors.
“Hello, Rennie.” Rennie, a man about my own age, turned with the rag still in his hand. He didn’t get down, but just looked at me from where he stood and smiled. “Joe Gunther, you son of a bitch. How the fuck are you?” I laughed and shook my head. “I’ve been better. How are you?” His familiar round, florid face broke into a theatrical scowl. He was a barrel of a man, short, square, and muscular, his body more a monument to hard work and fatty foods than to genetics. The diet had undoubtedly also contributed to his increasingly flushed skin tone, which by now had progressed to the stage where he looked either on the brink of blowing sky-high, or of having a major heart attack. He stepped down and shook my hand. “Pissed off. I told the others to be here to give the trucks their last wash and wax before winter, and I’m the only one that showed up. I’ve been here the whole fucking day.”
“Can’t compete with the deer.” “Deer, shit. Just a bunch of drunks with rifles. What’re you doing’ up here?” His eyes were shining, and he still hadn’t released my hand. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his company.
“Temporary job for the State’s Attorney-moonlighting.” Rennie snorted, dropped my hand, and retrieved a can of car wax from the roof of the cab. “Well, that chicken shit needs all the help he can get.
What’s the job?” “Some town clerk dipping into the till. I’m supposed to dig up the proof.” “Murial’s dipping? Damn, you’d think she’d live better than she does.” “Not Murial, different town. I just thought I’d stay with Buster while I’m in the area.” He got behind the wheel of the fire truck. “Yeah?” he said nonchalantly, looking completely uninterested. “What town?” I grinned at him. “Nice try.” He started the engine with a tremendous roar and eased the truck backward into the station. The clearance between vehicle and doorframe was about an inch and a half on all three sides. Another truck-a ‘55 Chevy-stood at gleaming attention at the mouth of the second door. I crossed over to it as Rennie killed the motor and came around the front.
“Memory row, huh?” I smiled and patted the red fender. “I remember when Buster first rode this into town.” “Yeah, the only brand-new truck we ever had.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m still partial to Engine 1, though, even if it is Army surplus. That son of a bitch has never been a problem.” “And this has?” Rennie shrugged. “I don’t like it as much.” I knew it wasn’t the truck-it was the fact that it was Buster’s baby. Buster was Chief-seemingly always had been-while Rennie had worked his way up to Assistant Chief through pure attrition.
During my first vacations up here, Rennie and I had been “junior firemen,” duped by that meaningless title into sweeping, cleaning, washing, polishing, waxing until we’d qualified as Grade-A maids, all seemingly under the stern direction of anyone and everyone in the department eighteen years or older. My willingness to “shovel the shit,” as Rennie put it, despite my connection to the Chief, had formed the initial basis of our friendship.
That had later blossomed as we’d graduated to manning equipment and fighting fires-albeit only the minor ones-always together, always a team. We’d even exchanged letters throughout the school year, comparing notes on how many ways adults conspire to torture teenagers.
We were young men by the time Buster rolled into town on the new Chevy in 1955-both veterans. That was the last time I was to spend more than a couple of days in Gannet at one time. My connection to Rennie faded in intensity after I signed on as a policeman in Brattleboro; the correspondence died of neglect and memories began to replace an updated friendship.