Joe Burkes Last Stand | Page 2

raised her eyebrows,
acknowledging the human condition, and he walked back to the motel.
At the edge of town, trees were dark behind a body of water that was
platinum and still. Fish broke the surface with soft slaps in the centers
of expanding circles. Ansel Adams might have caught the many shades
of silver just before the lights went out.
The next afternoon Joe was across the Hudson, driving through the
mountains on roads that were more crowded than he remembered.
There were many new houses and the trees were larger. He stopped on
the hill by his grandparents' old house in Woodstock. Captain Ben had
retired during the depression to that rocky hillside and made a homely
paradise of gardens and fruit trees. A slow silent job. Emily was beside
him, canning, cooking, and mothering. They said you couldn't grow
pears around there. We ate a lot of pears, Joe thought. And plums,
apples, rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus . . . The house smelled of
geraniums from the solar greenhouse that his grandfather built onto the
dining room long before anyone ever heard of a solar greenhouse.
Captain Ben was a son of an old Virginia family who in better days had
owned Monticello. _Lee's Lieutenants_ lined a living room shelf.
Noblesse oblige came with mother's milk. You are born privileged; you
have an obligation. He had a company garden when he was serving in
the Philippines--men who got out of line did time weeding and
afterwards ate fresh vegetables. Once a year he would go to town and
whip the touring chess master who was playing 20 people at once.
"Pawn to King's four," he taught Joe, "control the center." Joe opened
with pawn to Queen's knight four, bringing a smile. "Learn the hard
way, huh?"
He died when Joe was in seventh grade, and Joe spent his high school
years with his grandmother, well cared for, but living more or less
alone. She remarried about the time Joe graduated. The new husband
moved _Lee's Lieutenants_ to the attic and Joe moved out. The house
that Joe remembered had disappeared inside a gaudy renovation, but
the mountains hadn't changed. What is it about land, Joe wondered. It
gets inside you, deep as your loves, maybe deeper.

He ate dinner in town. He saw Aaron Shultis across the street, but
Aaron didn't recognize him after twenty-five years. Joe drove back into
the hills and parked by a narrow lane across from the one room
schoolhouse where he had gone to fifth grade. He fell asleep in a cradle
of memories: fucking Sally in this very spot . . . apple fights, BB gun
fights, the sound of the schoolhouse bell calling them out of the woods
after a long recess.
A steady rain was bringing down the leaves when Joe woke up. He
drove over to Morgan's house and pounded on the door. When Morgan
opened, Joe could smell breakfast cooking.
"Joe, well, well. What brings you out in the rain?"
"Hey, Morgan, bacon! They say you're cooking bacon."
"They're right. Come on in."
"Remember that time you were hitching to Florida and you met those
guys heading for Georgia because they'd heard that a Salvation Army
cook was serving meat?"
"Some trip that was." Morgan was grayer but still powerful. "So, what
are you doing?"
"Starting over. I've been saving since Ingrid and I split up. I put a bed
in the back of the truck, got rid of a bunch of stuff, and here I am."
"When did you leave? You want some eggs?"
"Three days ago. That's affirmative on the eggs," Joe said. "I've had it
with computer programming. Jamming all that stuff in your head
messes you up. You wake up at two in the morning and start working."
"Good money," Morgan said.
"For good reason."
"Did you sell everything?"

"Just about. Kept my tools, a couple of boxes of books, some clothes.
Kept the cat, Jeremy, but he jumped ship on Deer Isle at my father's.
Oh yeah, my notebooks, a footlocker full--I was wondering if you'd
stash them for me. I'd hate to lose them; they go all the way back."
"Sure. Maybe you'll write a book one of these days."
"I don't know; all I ever do is look at things and try to describe them.
Should have been a painter like my father. No talent, though. Anyway,
after I took off, I went up to see him and Ann on Deer Isle. He gave me
a painting for Kate."
"How is he?"
"Going with his boots on. Just before I left, he gave me a drink from his
stash of Laphroiag in the barn. We had a country music toast. 'Younger
women, faster horses, older whiskey, and more money,' he said. I asked