“I’m sorry for calling,” Gran says. “I know you don’t want to be disturbed.”
“What’s up?” Maggie asks, wondering how Gran got the number, thinking it must have been the operator. They should have asked for an unlisted number.
“I’m worried about your father,” says Gran. “Has he been in touch with you?” Maggie says he hasn’t. “He said he’d phone me Monday from a town near the mission, but he never called.”
Maggie tries to suppress a feeling of alarm. “Maybe his ride got a flat tire,” she suggests. “Maybe the weather was bad. If you’re concerned, you should call the head office in Laos.”
“I did. They said they’d look into it.”
Maggie tries to think of how to reply. Whenever she talks with Gran, she feels adulthood slip away until once more she’s the little girl who argued with her every chance she got. Then she remembers her conversation with Wale in the screening room.
“Gran, did Dad ever mention meeting a friend of mine over there?”
“What sort of friend?” Gran sounds suspicious.
“Just a guy here at the farm. His name’s Wale.”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Maggie takes the telephone cord and winds it about her hand. “Listen, don’t get uptight about the missed call. I bet Dad phones next week and says he just slept in or something.”
“He never sleeps in,” Gran retorts, then goes quiet as if waiting for further reassurance. From the living room come the sounds of voices shouting at each other.
“You’ll tell me if it turns out something’s wrong?” Maggie asks, and Gran says she will. Maggie edges down the hall, unlooping the cord from her hand as she goes, trying to make out what’s being said in the living room.
“Are you all right up there?” Gran asks.
“I’m great. I’m very happy. Hey, I even went to church a while back.” Why is she telling Gran that? It’s the last thing she wants to be talking about. “The farm’s a big hit,” she adds quickly. “You should come and see it for yourself.” But that’s no better; she can’t believe what she’s saying, and it seems Gran can’t either, because there’s only silence at the other end.
“Yes, well, I’m sorry for bothering you,” says Gran finally, then bids her goodbye.
Maggie puts down the phone, telling herself it’s ridiculous of Gran to get worked up over one missed call. Her son is in a war zone. What did she expect? This is what she gets for urging him to go, as if it were heroic, not stupid and dangerous. Now she wants Maggie to fret along with her just because he hasn’t been in touch as planned.
But there could have been a bombing raid. He could be laid up with malaria. Maggie tries to put the images out of her head. This is why she doesn’t want to hear from him at all. It isn’t right to make them worry like this.
She returns to the living room only to find people passing into the hallway. When Fletcher emerges, he murmurs to her, “I’m going to kill him, I really am.” He continues onto the porch and lets the screen door slap shut behind him. Maggie waits in the hall until Dimitri appears. Rhea is with him, but Maggie doesn’t care.
“I know what you’re doing,” she tells him.
“Of course you do,” he says, seeming unperturbed. “You’re a real bright chick.” Putting his arm around Rhea, he heads upstairs. It’s only for the briefest of moments that Maggie could swear she detects a nervousness in his face.
She decides to wait until morning before talking to Fletcher about Gran’s call, but when she wakes up, he’s gone. After searching the house, she pokes her head out the mud room door and hears the sound of an axe falling in the orchard. On a hunch she starts toward it, the dry grass of the back lawn scratchy under her bare feet. Upon entering the trees, she walks by piles of branches gathered at the ends of the lanes, newly cut limbs thrown on top of debris from the hurricane. The strike of the axe grows louder until she sees Fletcher chopping at a tree, the ground beneath him littered with wood chips, twigs, and bark. His axe hitting the trunk has a hollow, unsatisfying ring.
“Look at this,” he says, bending down to the place where the blade has done its work. He rips away a handful of mealy wood. “Rotten right through.”
“Wouldn’t it be quicker with the chainsaw?”
“For some reason, I find this more gratifying.”
“It lets you exorcise your demons,” she suggests.
“What demons? There aren’t any demons.” He takes another swing with the axe. “Richard Nixon, maybe. Spiro fucking Agnew.” He’s wearing khaki shorts with a leather belt and she notices he’s missed a loop, but she doesn’t mention it. “My father phoned this morning,” he says between swings. “He wants to sell the farm.”
The shock keeps her from replying right away.
“But he promised we could buy it, didn’t he?” she finally exclaims.
“He says it’s different now that no one else is being sent to Vietnam. He doesn’t want me up here anymore.” Letting the axe drop to the ground, he begins to push on the cherry tree. It seems to struggle against him, until finally there’s a snap like a bone being broken. He retrieves the axe and starts to work on the branches.
“What if we asked him to visit?” she says. Then she remembers proposing the same thing to Gran and decides she should have her head examined. Neither Gran nor Fletcher’s father would be persuaded of anything if they saw this place. More likely it would only confirm their fears. Fletcher must be thinking the same thing, because he makes a face.
“I’m sick of it all,” he says. “I’m sick of the way he tries to call the shots.” Picking up the end of a branch, he drags it down the lane. Maggie grabs another and pulls it after him. “I’m sick of all these people. I go downtown and the storekeepers chew me out because some idiot’s been shoplifting again. I’m sick of the slobs and the layabouts, and the ones who hate me because of who my father is. They don’t complain about taking a ride on his money, though, do they?” He heaves his branch onto the nearest pile, then bends to snatch up a hubcap from the ground. “Fucking car parts. You know, I bet Frank Dodd throws this stuff over the fence just to piss me off.” He hurls the hubcap toward the wrecking yard, but it falls short of the fence. When Maggie embraces him, he stands stiffly in her arms.
“You should have seen my dad in March,” he says, his voice now little more than a whisper. “When I told him about dropping out of law school, he looked scared. I’d never seen him scared. Did I tell you that?”
“You didn’t,” she says, holding him tighter.
“At first I figured it was about the draft, but then I realized it was worse. I was killing all his plans for me. Partner at a law firm, politics. The old man was panicking. I realized I could ask him for just about anything right then and he’d agree, so long as it involved some kind of future for me.”
“Fletcher, we’re going to make this work,” she tells him. “We got a rough start here. Your father will understand. I’ll talk to him if you like.” She says this even though it’s the last thing she wants to do. “We’re not leaving. You said next year we could grow enough cherries to start making a profit, right?”
He seems unconsoled. His moustache tickles her forehead as he kisses it, while a squirrel rebukes them from a nearby tree.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s not worry about it right now. Let’s just go inside.” She takes his soft, blistered hand and with slow steps leads him back toward the house.