28.

Empire, California. Another town. When Walker arrives in a new place, he knows without ever having been there how it will be laid out. Historically, certain areas, often the north or the west sides, were typically the wealthiest, and if any remnants of architectural grandeur remain, this is where they will be. Whether there are actual train tracks or not, there is always the other side of something—a river, a gully, a dump—some division that allows a town to organize itself along class lines so that people know where they belong. Things are less insidious now than they were fifty or a hundred years ago, but the psychic territories remain.

Although there is sometimes a modestly refurbished old hotel in towns such as this one—a Mission Inn or a Pacific Arms—Walker always chooses whatever version of a Motel 6 lies off the highway. He likes the practical sterility of these places, the way the rooms seem to float in and out of time, bare stages on which scenes appear and then evaporate daily. It is June now, and the heat of the Central Valley has settled in for the duration of the summer. His room is dark. He forgoes the overhead fluorescents and turns on the bedside lamp. Somehow, the stucco-ceilinged room looks more correct in a tawdry weak light, as if shadows and obscurity are the natural characteristics that allow for what takes place in motel rooms. He phones the rest home, learns that visiting hours begin at four o’clock.

He reminds himself that a newspaper article and a name on a payroll do not add up to much and certainly not a fanciful notion that he has allowed to blossom into a full-fledged idea just shy of fact: that somehow Mary Coin’s connection to his family is intimate, that an article secreted between the pages of a poetry book signifies a buried emotion and that Walker’s father’s ambivalence about his position at the head of the Dodge clan, and his final wish to be burned, all add up to the answer to a question that was never allowed to be asked. Isaac’s computer searches turned up the names of Mary Coin’s children, all but one of whom are dead.

The nursing home is a beige, single-story building that, to judge from the small figure-eight planter that still bears the iron structure of a nonexistent diving board, must have once been a motel. Despite the season, the lobby is heated; the smells of industrial cleaners and food hang in the viscid air.

“I don’t have you down for a visit,” the woman behind the front desk says. She wears a scrub top printed with teddy bears. Her fingernails are long and elaborately lacquered with flowers. The manicure alone suggests the nature of the place. There is no medical heavy lifting here. This is where people wait for the end.

“I was put through to Mr. Coin a couple of times, but he hung up.”

She laughs. “James is not a big talker.”

“I’d really like to have a chance to meet him.”

She looks skeptical. “We don’t like to upset our clients.”

“I think Mr. Coin’s family and mine might be connected in some way.”

“He’s got Medi-Cal,” she says suspiciously.

“It’s not like that. I’m not after money.”

She looks down at her desk and shuffles some papers, signaling that she is done with the conversation.

“When is the last time he had a visitor?” Walker says.

She makes a show of looking through the appointment book, then gives up the charade. “You’re the first.”

James Coin is wheeled into the common room by a tattooed orderly whose shaved head shines. He bends over the chair and speaks softly to James, then hands him a small object that looks like a garage door opener. “You press this if you need me, Mr. James. I’ll come for you fast.”

James is thin. More than thin. His clothes hang limply as if there is no actual body beneath them. The angular contours of his knee bones press against the material of his slacks. His skin is waxy and liver-spotted, his fingers curl against his palms. Surprisingly, he has a full head of hair, the leached color blond goes to with age. He does not look at Walker but instead stares at the blank wall opposite, and Walker cannot be sure the old man is aware of him.

He is not certain how to begin. In his work his conversation is strictly with the dead. Someone turns up the television and then quickly adjusts the volume. Walker reacts to the sound, but the old man does not. Maybe he is deaf, Walker thinks, but then remembers that the orderly spoke to him.

“My name is Walker Dodge,” he begins, speaking too loudly. He looks for a sign of recognition, sees none. Of course, James would have been a little boy when his mother worked the oranges and he would no more recognize the name than those of the many other farms where she must have found employment during that time. Walker realizes, too, that if the name does register with the old man, it would certainly not elicit the heart-quickening reaction that Walker felt sitting in that chilled basement among his family records. Rather, the connection between James’s family and his own would stir troubling memories. James moves his mouth as if he is about to say something but he is just worrying his gums. Walker reaches into his briefcase and takes out the photograph he’s printed off the Internet. He touches James’s shoulder lightly. James looks at him, and then his gaze falls on the picture. This is the first indication of interest he has shown, but Walker cannot tell what the man feels. When James looks away, Walker senses he has done something terribly aggressive, as if the photograph were one of maimed bodies rather than this man’s mother and his siblings. He turns the picture over and lets it rest on his lap. He explains his story, tells James about the article in the poetry book, about the coincidence of finding Mary Coin’s name in the work rolls, about the tiny suspicion that he knows is absurd but that he cannot banish: that Mary Coin was important to his grandfather in some particular way. The man’s silence makes Walker feel as if he is on a disastrous first date and he says more than he intends. He talks about his difficult experience with his father, about George’s death. Occasionally he stops talking, waiting to see if James will give him some sign that any of this information registers. James says nothing. Still, there is something about the man’s silence that feels attentive, as if the quiet is a manner of being and not the result of a deteriorating mind. And for reasons Walker cannot explain, he feels drawn to James, who looks to be only a few years older than Walker’s father was. The two men grew up experiencing the same history but from opposite sides of fate.

Walker glances around the room. A few plastic tables and chairs. Generic floral paintings hanging on the walls. A box of toys for visiting grandchildren. When George became ill, Walker’s sisters wanted to move him to an assisted-living facility. They chose one and sent Walker the brochure. The home was a mock-Georgian manor sitting on acres of land. Welcoming outdoor furniture and games were set up on the evenly cut grass as if the residents were in the habit of taking afternoon strolls and challenging one another to games of lawn bowling. George took one look at the brochure and refused to waste the money.

“My father never knew his mother,” Walker says. He thinks of his children, of Alice. “It’s a terrible thing not to know your parent.”

The orderly appears. Walker realizes James has signaled that he wants to be taken back to his room or some other safe place where he will not be attacked by the past or by a deranged college professor who has invented a false history to fill some maw in his life.

“I’m sorry,” Walker says to the orderly. “Maybe I tired him out.”

The orderly puts a hand on the old man’s back. “We’ll take a rest now, Mr. James.” He unlocks the wheels of the chair, turns it around, and rolls James out of the room.

Walker drives back to his motel, feeling disconsolate. He was optimistic when he thought he might stay the night, that James Coin might have important things to share and that Walker would speak with him a second time, maybe even make arrangements for further visits. He gathers his bag and goes to the front desk to check out. Upset about the bungled meeting and the possible harm that he inflicted on a sick old man, he takes a sheet of university stationery out of his briefcase and writes James a thank-you and an apology. He has no way of knowing if tomorrow, when James receives this letter, he will remember who Walker is.