38

“YOUR MOTHER TELLS ME YOU SMOKE,” MAX SAID.

This, coming out of nowhere, surprised David. He shrugged and poked uncomfortably at the fire with a stick.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“You’re a runner. I’d think you wouldn’t want to do that.”

David had no idea how to respond. But this had been the way Max had been years ago, too. Still, he’d give him a chance.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. You want to get serious about running, you’ll have to cut it out.”

David wanted to tell him he was serious, he’d already set a state record, for sophomores, for Christ’s sake.

“Your uncle Bobby smoke?”

David nodded, and Max grinned to himself, a so-that’s-it sort of grin, and David said, “It wasn’t Uncle Bobby. I’ve never smoked around him.”

“You don’t.”

“No,” David said. He felt exasperated at all of this. Why were they talking about smoking?

And then Max said, “Hey, I’m sorry.” He tossed a piece of wood into the fire and a burst of sparks climbed into the night over them. “I went through hell giving it up.”

“You smoked?”

“Sure, everybody in the army did.” Max turned, stretched on the ground, his head braced on his palm, his face turned into the firelight. “Remember that place down near the Mississippi we used to hike with Len?” David had loved Leonard, but then they’d moved away.

Max laughed, but it was a melancholy laugh. “We called it the secret place.”

Just those words evoked another world altogether, as if the boy, five or six, were still alive in David somewhere, and that world, even here, had that magical look of possibility.

“You liked to swing on the fox-grape vines, play at Tarzan.”

“Did I?”

“You don’t remember?”

But he did, and he remembered, back then, too, there’d been the trips out to construction sites, where Max was having homes built, and there was the smell of greenwood, and that heavy, earthy smell of freshly poured cement, and they’d have dinner after, and David always got the hot roast beef sandwich, and apple pie, and he cautiously eyed these real-estate people his father was doing business with, always sensing Max’s disappointment in him—he had sometimes had trouble talking with one or another of these men, who were, to David, all very loud, and false, and forward, pumped his small hand in theirs, just because it was the thing to do. But with Leonard it had been different.

Len with a voice loud with some infectious enthusiasm, overweight, always eating pastries, drinking “highballs,” driving recklessly in his big Cadillacs.

And there’d been others, friends of Max’s, more calm, and affable. Men he’d liked. Eddie Green, Ray Shelton, Don Lavender.

“Do you remember?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I just hadn’t thought of that for . . . I don’t know how long.”

He wanted, then, to tell Max about Rick Buddy, or about how hard things had been, about, even, how Rachel had been and how he worried about her. He wanted to tell Max about what she’d done with the knife that night, but Max wasn’t altogether invited in yet. Or back, or whatever it was.

“How would you like to go up to Alaska sometime?” Max asked.

When David didn’t answer right away, Max jumped back in, something almost hurt in his voice: “I mean, we’d have a guide and all that, maybe fly in, something like that. Go with somebody who really knew the area around Denali, something like that.”

David was smiling, a wry, odd kind of smile. Yes, he liked the idea of Alaska. And even with Max, well, fuck it, they could tough it out.

“Really?” he said.

Max laughed. “Remember when you went off on that Jack London kick?”

David wasn’t so sure. “Did I?”

“I read all that to you when you were sick.”

This was a memory so old, it brought with it the smell of Vicks VapoRub, and damp air from the steamer, and that room upstairs, and the lamp on.

“You were crazy for all that,” Max said.

“I was, wasn’t I.”

Max winked. “Bet it never occurred to you that reading all of that to you got me thinking about it. And I have been, sort of, all these years.”

David had to look away. Yes. That was what he said to himself, just then. Okay then, yes. But he wouldn’t say it, Yes, let’s go, because he realized that saying it would be saying much more.

He’d be saying, Yes, come back, and maybe even he’d be saying, Yes, I forgive you, which he certainly wasn’t.

But he wanted to, which surprised him. Oh, how he wanted to.

He wanted to say yes, but he only prodded the fire with a stick, and wanted, almost desperately, to smoke, for some strange reason. And all the while he waited for Max to prod, as he always had in the past, waited for Max to tell him, You’re not feeling what you’re feeling, or to say, Why not, when Max knew, David was sure, why he, David, couldn’t answer why not, why not go to Alaska, not without saying the things he needed to say but couldn’t.

And so they sat watching the fire, and Max turned away, there, out on the lake nothing at all but darkness, and here the fire between them, and warm, but the two terribly uncomfortable, and the silence went on so long, Max finally cleared his throat, and David nearly startled at it, afraid of what Max might say.

“You know,” Max said, “if I had a chance to do it all over, I’d do things differently.”

David did not answer.

“Things aren’t always what they seem, David.”

Lifting the stick out of the fire, David held it up to his face, the flame on the end of it flickering.

“I thought you said not to make excuses,” David said.

Max scratched the back of his head, pursed his mouth.

“You can’t live like that, David,” Max said. “Sometimes you can only do the best you can.”

David jabbed the stick back into the fire. Was this Max’s idea of an apology? And that he seemed to be excusing himself, for all those nights, made David suddenly angry again. No, furious.

But he was heartsick, too. He stood to make some gesture, to march off, or to say something harsh, but it wasn’t in him to do it. Instead he let his head drop back, the wash of cold stars overhead, and torn like that, felt the fire on his legs, one moment his mouth working with all he could say, and had said to his father in moments of quiet all these years, those things that rose hot in him, all indignation, and outrage, and there, too, in it a kind of helplessness, or loss, that kept his mouth shut, because, after all, why ask for what wasn’t there, or wouldn’t be there?

But what was all this, then? This trip, and talking like this now, and what Max had just said? What about his having asked him to go up to Alaska?

How long would he hold on to all that, what happened in those bad years?

And just when he was about to say . . . something, it had been there, taking shape in his mind, some offering, anyway, of forgiveness, which was going to cost him terribly, Max said, bitterly, “You know, you were always difficult.”

“Difficult,” David said.

The word came out of David’s mouth as though he were spitting out something bitter, it almost had a flavor.

“You didn’t listen to anything,” Max said.

He wanted to say, Maybe it was the way you said things, or asked for them. But then, who was he to say this when, now, he couldn’t say what he, David, needed to?

And so he was struck dumb there, as he so often was around Max, and had been, but a feeling of futility in him now, which brought with it a feeling of being trapped. Yet even then something would not let him leave the fire, let him leave Max. Some hope, or was it just disbelief at the turn their conversation had taken.

“Maybe there was a reason I didn’t listen,” he said.

“Sit down,” Max said.

“No.”

“See?”

David shook his head. There was that burning at the back of his throat that signaled what he thought of as weakness. None of this felt good.

“So you’re saying I was always like that,” he said, but what he meant was, even before he could remember, there was antagonism between them, and Max had caused it.

“Remember the time I tried to show you how to tie your shoelaces?” Max asked.

David did remember.

“You wouldn’t do it.”

“No,” David said. “I wouldn’t do it for you .”

He said it loudly enough that he turned to look up the rise of stone and mottled lichen to the tent, in the dark the tent more gray than green, the mouth of it open, Janie inside, and he wished she hadn’t gone in already, that she were here, and that he and Max were not having this conversation, because he felt just then the rage he’d felt so often, now recalling his father’s thick, muscular hands over his, on the shoelaces, and how, when he’d forced his father’s hands away, he’d tied his laces with a one-looped knot, and how Rachel had come over to see what he’d done, and laughed, and said how clever he was, coming up with his own knot, and how Max had said, It isn’t right, in that way he had, passing judgment too often, and how, with those thick-fingered hands, he’d torn the knots apart and said, Do it. Do it right. And Rachel had said, If he wants to tie them that way, and it works, why shouldn’t he? And Max had looked up at her.

Because it isn’t right, he’d said.

And Rachel had done nothing, but her silence was damning, and when David wouldn’t do it Max’s way, Max had taken his arm and yanked him to his feet and swung him around, and meaning to spank him, had smacked him in the small of his back, knocking him over, then lifting him off the floor and nearly throwing him into one of the chairs at the table.

“You can eat when you do it right,” he said.

By then Rachel was at the stove, and when she brought the eggs to the table, they were burned, and she said nothing, only shoveled them onto Max’s plate, though even worse was her silence, and all David could do was sit and try not to be there.

“You had to do things your own way, even when they weren’t right,” Max said.

“What is right?”

“You know what’s right.”

“No, I don’t.”

He could see this upset Max, because he, too, was holding back all the dark things he could say. And that he had anything to say, after those nights he’d beaten David in the dark, and after all the humiliations he’d heaped on him, made David wonder, with a kind of deep awe, at the wrongness of this man, at how such a person could be in the world, but he knew men such as his father were everywhere, and many of them were successful, in the world’s terms, but he saw his father as some caricature of a person, with his sentiments, his aphorisms, his clear-cut rights and wrongs.

He almost envied his father and his generation of men their rectitude; what power, to think your world was the world itself.

In his mouth were the words, You are so blind, so deaf—he even thought stupid, but no, Max was not stupid—but then, how does a man get to be in his forties and think like his father did?

“You don’t think you had anything to do with all that?” David said now.

“With what?”

“My being”—and he could hardly say it, for the hurt, disgust, and awful wonder he felt at it—“with my being difficult.”

“You were willful.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

There was in Max now his clinical detachment. At his clinic Max was a god. Do this, move here, put this there. All people rushed to his commands. And David could see it rankled him not to have this dynamic work between them. Didn’t he realize, David thought, you couldn’t order people around? Not family.

And he certainly didn’t his peers, or his friends.

Still, he never, never asked for anything, he ordered, always had.

“Let’s not go into this now,” Max said, standing and brushing down his pants. Here, another order.

He was slightly taller than David, and David saw immediately his father had done it to intimidate him, shut him up, and David wasn’t going to tolerate it. Without thinking, he’d lifted the stick out of the fire and stood there with it, a hot poker.

I could jab this through his chest, he thought—which he would recall later, with such pain, he would feel himself shrink at it.

“What if I want to?” David said. “Go into it now?”

“Fine,” Max said. “But I don’t have to if I don’t want to. I say, I’m quits on this. You’re just getting into one of the moods you get into.”

“Moods?” David said.

He glanced up at the tent again; now he didn’t care if he woke Janie. He could feel his heart in his neck, jacking blood into his head, where it made his eyes swell.

“And what was it all about those nights when you beat me, huh, when you hit me, when I was sleeping, right out of my—”

“I don’t want to hear about it, David,” Max said.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” David said.

“Get what?”

“You push, and you push, and you push, you and your—” But David’s voice was cracking now, and what he’d meant to be strong, and forceful, an accusation, came out almost as if he were begging, and he couldn’t stop himself.

“If I ever had to ask you for something, sure, maybe you’d do something about it,” David said, “but it was always as if you were cutting your arm off to do it.”

David felt his eyes glassing up, and he was furious at himself—how odd, he could hate himself enough almost to wish himself dead, but when he turned on Max, all he could feel was this . . . abyss, like some hole he fell into, pulling him in all directions, and him feeling his throat swell, and his body betraying him.

It had always been like this, and he’d felt it when Buddy had come after him, this paralyzing something.

“All you do is take,” he nearly cried. “ Every . . . fucking . . . thing . . . is about you.”

“Stop. Stop it!” Max said.

“No. You listen,” David said, holding the burning stick out.

“Are you threatening me?” Max said.

David felt a burst of rage lift his arm. He needed to move. He felt he would explode, and he reared back and hurled the stick out into the lake.

“That make you feel better?” Max said.

David turned to him. “Fuck—you,” he said.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Fuck—you,’ ” David said, and stepping closer to Max, his fists at his sides, said, “Fuck you—fuck you—fuck you— fuck you.

“You get it? FUCK—YOU!”

He knew he would hit Max if he stayed, Max standing there, for once struck dumb, and he charged up the path, going by Max, drove his shoulder into Max’s, Max’s shoulder substantial, but he went by anyway, and even as he was walking up and by the tent, Janie stirring inside, he felt this phantom weight in his shoulder, the mass of his father, and he was cheering for himself, was in a way ecstatic, and at the same time felt a kind of fuck-everything feeling, fuck school and his precious future, fuck the house, and fuck that asshole Jarvis, fuck them all and fuck everything, and as he was thinking it, he felt a kind of wild freedom—he could leave, leave it all, leave the house in Edina, and Morningside, could leave Rachel, and leave Simonson and the team, why bother with running, stupid sport, no one cared, leave his books, and everything in the house, but then he thought of Janie.

When he thought of Janie his eyes burned and his throat swelled up, and he was pushing the limbs of trees aside, but was still moving toward the end of the island.

But already his mood was changing, some phantasm, something inside, attacking him.

He would be close to no one, love no one, but already he knew he loved Janie.

Stupid kid. If Max hit Janie, he knew he’d cut him apart, there’d be no stopping him. He would hurt Max so bad—

And he heard Janie’s voice now, like some song, she’d gotten up, was talking to Max, and he moved farther down the island, away from them (from Max, whom he loved, too), he had to think, had to think, because he was kidding himself. And what was he going to tell Rachel?

Sure, have Max come back. Why not? He’d leave, that was the solution, live with . . . where would he live? And trying to think of some solution, and tearing at the brush, he went farther down shore, and into the dark, now blocks away, and over the ridge, and the blackness of the night sky was like a cauldron, and he punched at the dark, until he’d spent himself, and he sat, the stone ledge under him cold, and hard, and he forced himself to slow his breathing, to think, which he still couldn’t until, he didn’t know how much later, the dark underwent a subtle transformation, now pouring out emptiness, and loss, and the stars overhead shone like beacons from another world, peaceful, and cold, and dead.

Calmer now, he fought an impulse to return, to apologize, but thought, Why do that since Max felt nothing, though worried every moment about Janie, worried that Max might take it out on her, and he hated himself for not going back, for Janie, but he knew Max wouldn’t say so much as a cross word to her, because if there was need for something, or someone, for Max to pour out his darker self on, it would be David.

So he indulged himself, took his time here, alone in the dark, sitting on the cold stone, the stars overhead, and trying to get control of his feelings. He was caught somewhere between a rage to make it all right again, or at least what it had been, and a desire to just dive into the mess entirely, to just get to the end of it, and have it over. But he knew, too, that would never happen, because it was always there, this darkness, the trick was learning to carry it somehow, without letting it cripple you, like it had his uncle Bobby, and so many others, and thinking this, he drew his knees to his chest, and he told himself he would carry what was alive in him, no matter what, this wonder at the world, what he felt about it, but what he could not then name.

He’d carry it for Janie. He could do that, he thought. Just that.

Whether it killed him or not.