2
Fall was gone, vanished in wisps of white cloud that fled across clear blue skies like pale silk scarves snatched by the breeze. Soon it would be Thanksgiving, although it seemed that there was little for which to be thankful as the year drew to its close. People I met on the streets of Portland spoke of working second jobs to make ends meet, of feeding their families with cheap cuts of meat while their savings dwindled and their safety nets fell away. They listened while candidates for high office told them the answer to the country’s problems was to make the wealthy wealthier so that more crumbs from their table might fall into the mouths of the poor, and some, while pondering the unfairness of it, wondered if that was better than no crumbs at all.
Along Commercial Street some tourists still wandered. Behind them a great cruise ship, perhaps the last of the season, loomed impossibly high over the wharves and warehouses, its prow reaching out to touch the buildings facing the sea, the water supporting it invisible from the street so that it seemed a thing discarded, marooned in the aftermath of a tsunami.
Away from the waterfront the tourists petered out entirely, and at the Great Lost Bear there were none at all, not as afternoon melted into evening. The Bear saw only a small but steady stream of locals pass through its doors that day, the kind of familiar faces that ensure bars remain in business even during the quietest of times, and as the light faded and the blue of the sky began to darken, the Bear prepared to ease itself into the kind of gentle, warm mood where conversations were hushed, and music was soft, and there were places in the shadows for lovers and friends, and places, too, for darker conversations.
She was a small woman, a single swath of white running through her short black hair like the coloring of a magpie, with an ‘s’-shaped scar across her neck that resembled the passage of a snake over pale sand. Her eyes were a very bright green, and, rather than detracting from her looks, the crow’s feet at their corners drew attention to her irises, enhancing her good looks when she smiled. She looked neither older nor younger than her years, and her makeup was discreetly applied. I guessed that most of the time she was content to be as God left her, and it was only on those rare occasions when she came down to the cities for business or pleasure that she felt the need to ‘prettify’ herself, as my grandfather used to term it. She wore no wedding ring, and her only jewelry was the small silver cross that hung from a cheap chain around her neck. Her fingernails were cut so close that they might almost have been bitten down, except the ends were too neat, too even. An injury to her black dress pants had been repaired with a small triangle of material on the right thigh, expertly done and barely noticeable. They fitted her well, and had probably been expensive when she bought them. She was not the kind to let a small tear be their ruination. I imagined that she had worked upon them herself, not trusting in another, not willing to waste money on what she knew she could do better with her own hands. A man’s shirt, pristine and white, hung loose over the waist of her pants, the shirt tailored so that it came in tight at the waist. Her breasts were small, and the pattern of her brassiere was barely visible through the material.
The man beside her was twice her age, and then some. He had dressed in a brown serge suit for the occasion, with a yellow shirt and a yellow-and-brown tie that had come as a set, perhaps with a handkerchief for the suit pocket that he had long ago rejected as too ostentatious. ‘Funeral suits’, my grandfather called them, although, with a change of tie, they served equally well for baptisms, and even weddings if the wearer wasn’t one of the main party.
And even though he had brought out the suit for an event that was not linked to a church happening, to an arrival into or departure from this world, and had polished his reddish-brown shoes so that the pale scuffing at the toes looked more like the reflection of light upon them, still he wore a battered cap advertising ‘Scollay’s Guide & Taxidermy’ in a script so ornate and curlicued that it took a while to decipher, by which time the wearer would, in all likelihood, have managed to press a business card upon you, and inquire as to whether you might have an animal that needed stuffing and mounting, and, if not, whether you felt like rectifying that situation by taking a trip into the Maine woods. I felt a tenderness toward him as he sat before me, his hands clasping and unclasping, his mouth half-forming slight, awkward smiles that faded almost as soon as they came into existence, like small waves of emotion breaking upon his face. He was an old man, and a good one, although I had met him for the first time only within the hour. His decency shone brightly from within, and I believed that when he left this world he would be mourned greatly, and the community of which he was a part would be poorer for his passing.
But I understood too that part of my warmth toward him arose from the day’s particular associations. It was the anniversary of my grandfather’s death, and that morning I placed flowers upon his grave, and sat for a time by his side, watching the cars pass by on their way to and from Prouts Neck, and Higgins Beach, and Ferry Beach: locals all.
It was strange, but I had often stood by my father’s grave and felt no sense of his presence; similarly for my mother, who had outlived him by only a few years. They were elsewhere, long gone, but something of my grandfather lingered amid the Scarborough woods and marshes, for he loved that place and it had always brought him peace. I knew that his God – for each man has his own God – let him wander there sometimes, perhaps with the ghost of one of the many dogs that had kept him company through his life yapping at his heels, scaring the birds from the rushes and chasing them for the joy of it. My grandfather used to say that if God did not allow a man to be reunited with his dogs in the next life then He was no God worth worshiping; that if a dog did not have a soul, then nothing had.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What did you say?’
‘An airplane, Mr Parker,’ said Marielle Vetters. ‘They found an airplane.’
We were in a back booth of the Bear, with nobody else near us. Behind the bar, Dave Evans, the owner and manager, was wrestling with a troublesome beer tap, and in the kitchen the line chefs were preparing for the evening’s food orders. I had closed off the area in which we sat with a couple of chairs so that we would remain undisturbed. Dave never objected to such temporary changes of use. Anyway, he would have more significant worries that evening: at a table near the door sat the Fulci brothers with their mother, who was celebrating her birthday.
The Fulcis were almost as wide as they were tall, had cornered the market in polyester clothing that always looked a size too small for them, and were medicated to prevent excessive mood swings, which meant only that any damage caused by nonexcessive mood swings would probably be limited to property and not people. Their mother was a tiny woman with silver hair, and it seemed impossible that those narrow hips could have squeezed out two massive sons who had, it was said, required specially-built cribs to contain them. Whatever the mechanics of their birth, the Fulcis loved their mother a lot, and always wanted her to be happy, but especially so on her birthday. Thus it was that they were nervous about the impending celebrations, which made Dave nervous, which made the line chefs nervous. One of them had already cut himself with a carving knife when informed that he was to be solely responsible for looking after the Fulci family’s orders that evening, and had requested permission to lie down for a while in order to calm his nerves.
Welcome, I thought, to just another night at the Bear.
‘You mind me asking you something?’ Ernie Scollay had said, shortly after he and Marielle had arrived and I’d offered them a drink, which they’d declined, and then a coffee, which they’d accepted.
‘Not at all,’ I replied.
‘You got business cards, right?’
‘Yes.’