“Then a month or two later, when she started writing me letters, I figured it was because we shared this moment, you know? But I think she was just trying to hurt you. It wasn’t like she wanted me. She wanted to get back at you. I didn’t know that beforehand. It was only the one time—but you already know that from the letters.” Warren handed them back to Ellis.
“We were in the back of her car parked in the corner of a Denny’s parking lot where we went after the bar had closed. Both of us were drunk. Wasn’t my finest hour by a long shot. I guess I thought I was helping her—and I was, just not the way I thought. I figured I was lending comfort to a woman cut off from her husband. Instead, I was providing her with the means to punish you. Course it didn’t turn out that way, because you never found out—until now. Like one of those World War II mines that blows off a kid’s foot fifty years later. She could have told you—don’t know why she didn’t. She’d also said she was going to get a divorce. Didn’t do that either. If you want to know what I think, I honestly believe that even though she wanted to, she just couldn’t stop loving you.”
Warren swallowed the last of his tea—Ellis just swallowed.
“Her revenge backfired in the end. After you did your vanishing act, Peggy became convinced you killed yourself because of those letters. I tried to tell her about the time machine, but you can imagine her reaction. When I insisted that’s what happened, she stopped taking my calls. Never got any response to my emails. She moved to Florida about a year later—but I doubt it was just to get away from me. Never remarried.”
Ellis’s gaze had drifted away from Warren to the fields, but snapped back at the sound of those last two words.
“How’d she die?”
Warren raised an eyebrow. “How should I know?”
“You said she never remarried. If she was still alive when you left, you would have said you don’t know if she ever remarried.”
“Mr. M.I.T.”
“So how did she die?”
Warren sighed. “Car accident.”
“Anyone else hurt?”
“She was alone. Hit a cement freeway viaduct.”
Ellis narrowed his eyes. “Bad weather?”
“Drunk, I was told.” Warren held his stare for half a minute. “At the funeral, her sister, what’s-her-name—the one in Omaha—Sandy! Sandy mentioned Peggy had begun drinking after you left. They tried to get her help. Tried to get her to AA or something. Didn’t work, I guess.” Warren watched him a second. He must have looked upset, because Warren felt it was necessary to add, “She, ah—she finally forgave you—for Isley and such.”
“How would you know?”
“That photo, the one she took of you and Isley at Cedar Point—the one she folded you out of? Sandy said she found it among her things. The fold was bent back, and Peggy had written the words I’m sorryacross it with a black Sharpie.”
Ellis began to sob.
The kitchen of the Firestone Farm smelled wonderful. Moist air, born of baking bread, bubbling pots on a cast-iron stove, and meat cooking in the oven made Ellis think of childhood Thanksgivings, Christmases, and Easters. Shadowy figures worked in the streams of light entering the windows and screen door. That, too, reminded Ellis of holidays—of years ago when he was very young, and they used to visit his grandmother. Her house was old enough to have a coal chute, and in the basement she had an icebox and a concrete basin with an angled side where a washboard would attach. His grandmother’s place had been wired for electricity but wasn’t native to it, and many of the rooms were left dark.
The Firestone Farm lacked sound as well as light. The silence was surprising and far more noticeable than Ellis would have expected. For nearly sixty years he’d known the sounds of the inside: air-conditioning fans, the rattle and hum of refrigerators, the buzz of fluorescents, the squawk of television, and the music of radios and stereos. The farm had only the scuffle of bare feet, and the slow tick of a wall clock, which dominated the audio landscape as a metronome setting the room’s tempo. Unlike the coziness of smells and light, the lack of sound was disturbing—the dead atmosphere of a power outage.
They had all paused when he entered, turning while holding clay pots of steaming vegetables. They stared with the same looks Ellis had seen on the students at the crime scene. Maybe they had heard him crying. He’d sobbed for some time while Warren politely took his pistol for a walk to the barn, granting him some privacy. By the time he had returned, Ellis had stopped crying and was feeling empty and achy, as if he’d thrown up. They sat for a long while in silence before someone called them in for dinner.
“Quit your gawking, and get the food on the table,” Warren snapped, coming in behind Ellis. “Have to excuse them. To the baldies we’re like Marilyn Monroe, a unicorn, or maybe even Jesus. Been two years, and I still catch them looking up my skirt. Isn’t that right, Yal?”
Yal was the one with the apron. Despite each of them wearing the same Amish-style black pants and white button shirt, Ellis could tell them apart because each had their names stitched on their right breasts like old-fashioned gas station attendants. Yal had been the one peeking out the door, who now turned away sheepishly to resume stirring a big blackened kettle.
“Have a seat,” Warren said, dragging a chair. Then he walked to the butcher’s block and began sharpening a big knife on a strap that hung from the wall. “I slaughtered the fatted lamb for you.” He grinned. “Except that ole cotton ballwas ancient, and I butchered her early this morning before I even knew you were coming—but hey, let’s not squabble with details, right?”
The table was already set with several homemade bowls filled with thick-cut carrots, potatoes, sausage and sauerkraut, and a basket of big fresh rolls. On a plate was a clump of butter, and it took Ellis a moment to recognize it, not having seen butter that didn’t come in a plastic tub or wax wrap. The fist-size glob had finger prints.
“You’re in for a treat, Ellis,” Warren declared. He covered his hand in a towel and threw open the oven’s door. “This is how a man was meant to eat. Everything’s fresh from the garden, the barn, or the woods.” He hauled out a big pan, holding what looked like a quarter of a lamb, the flesh golden brown. As he set the roast at the head of the table, the others took their seats. Besides himself and Warren, there were five—each with Pax’s face but not quite—too somber, too blank.
When they were all seated, Warren folded his hands, and the others imitated him.
“Dear Lord, thank you for this food, and for not frying Ellis’s ass like we’d thought you’d done,” Warren said briskly, followed by, “Amen.”
“Amen,” the others replied in chorus.
In all the meals Ellis had eaten with Warren, his friend had never said grace before. To his knowledge, while the man had always proudly declared himself a Christian, he’d never been to church—not even on Christmas. Thinking about it, Ellis wasn’t sure what denomination Warren was, and he wondered if even Warren knew.
“May I get you more tea?” one of the others asked from across the table.
“We also have milk and wine,” another said with eager-to-please eyes.
They all stared in anticipation of his next word.
Ellis didn’t care. “Ah—tea’s fine.”
The one who suggested it failed to suppress a smile and jumped up as if having received a great honor.
Standing at the head of the table, carving the meat, Warren smirked and shook his head. The scene reminded Ellis of a Norman Rockwell painting, if the artist had grown up in a community of identical Mennonite gas-station attendants.
“I didn’t think religion existed anymore,” Ellis said as Yal passed a bowl of carrots into his hands.
“One of the things I’m working at fixing,” Warren said. “Never thought I’d be a missionary called to spread the word of God among heathens. I guess that comes with that whole being-born-again experience. Got Dex to dig me up a copy of the Bible, and I have them all reading it. Oh—right. Guess I should introduce you.” Warren pointed with the carving knife that was dripping grease. “Dex, Hig, Ved One and Ved Two, and Yal. Dex is our resident surgeon and my third in command. He popped a new heart in my chest not long after we first met. Took care of the cancer and inoculated me against the new viruses too.”