Joe Burke's Last Stand Part 17

Mo tried her new espresso machine. She was having dinner guests the following evening. Joe visited the bathroom and noticed that she had left open the door to her bedroom. The bed was freshly made with lilac purple sheets. A huge white flower by Georgia O'Keeffe waited on the wall.

He thought it would be nice to listen to music, but he didn't say anything. He was tuning into Mo's way of inhabiting her s.p.a.ce, her large eyes, quiet, cat-like. He talked about Kate and Max and then fell silent.

"So how's your love life?" she asked suddenly. Her eyebrows were raised. She bent forward, making herself smaller.

"Nothing to write home about--if I had a home."

"You're a good looking man, Joe Burke. Just the right amount of gray in your mustache. Aristocrat. Rebel. How did your nose get that crook in it, by the way. I've been meaning to ask."

"Oh, that," Joe said, "the rebounding wars--in high school." She had surprised him. He thought she was moving away from him, and now he sensed the outlines of an offer, the second one in two months. He and Mo could be lovers; he would ride shotgun, do things her way, and she would do her best for him in time left over from her busy life. The lilac sheets beckoned, but as suddenly as it had come, the offer, if it had been one, was gone, swept off the table with the crumbs she brushed with one hand into the other.

She stood and said, "The ladies better watch it. O.K., I still have work to do today. I've got some orders I'm trying to get out by the weekend." Again he was surprised, but he went on as though nothing had happened. She drove him home, his tool case on his lap.

"I'll call you when I get back from the wedding," he said with his hand on her car door.

"Have fun," she said and pulled away with a thoughtful frown. Joe walked up the stairs to his apartment. What did she want? What did he want? He didn't know, he had to admit. Probably that was why the offer vanished. He'd paid attention to the plumbing and flunked pa.s.sion.

Joe slung the aluminum case across the room onto the mattress. The tools, in their foam cushion, didn't even rattle. "I kept my G.o.dd.a.m.ned Thing in my G.o.dd.a.m.ned Pants, Batman!" Batman maintained a dignified silence.

The next day Joe went to a bookstore and wrote down the addresses of several graduate schools that offered non-resident programs. At home, he hunted around on the Internet and found a writers group that discussed the pros and cons of different programs. Montpelier, also in Vermont, was well regarded.

He polished up his non-story, wrote a long letter explaining why an ex-computer programmer wanted to write fiction, signed a check, threw in some poems for good measure, and officially applied to Montpelier.

He walked to the Moana and watched the sunset. It had been a year since he arrived in Hawaii. Had he really left Maine? Or was this just an extended visit that was coming to an end? Joe liked Maine. Portland was a comfortable little city . . . the Standard Bakery, fresh ale at Gritty's, lattes at a dozen different coffee shops. He remembered the small Hispanic/Indian man who pushed a shopping cart down the street in all seasons, accepting Joe's returnable bottles with a grateful smile, always saluting as though Joe were a superior.

Should he go back to Maine? Or to Woodstock? He had many old friends in Woodstock. Daisy. Morgan had pa.s.sed along her best wishes. Joe looked down the beach at the lights circling the base of Diamond Head. Did he want to go back east? It felt better to sit under the banyan tree and watch it get dark. It seemed a more forward direction, whatever happened. He decided to say goodbye to Maine and to Woodstock, but he couldn't. No wonder we say, "See you," he thought. Anything but goodbye. "Aloha" is a much better word--h.e.l.lo and goodbye, gladness and grief, love, all of it.

11

The lobby of the Edgewater Hotel was busy. "My home away from home,"

Joe said, checking in.

"We try," the desk clerk said, returning Joe's credit card.

Joe walked to the Elliot Bay Book Company and asked a woman at the cash register if he could buy a gift certificate. "For a wedding present,"

he added.

"We can do that. How much for?"

"A thousand dollars." This would leave him seriously low, but to h.e.l.l with it.

She struggled with the computer. "I lied. We can't do that; the computer won't take it."

"Two for five hundred each?"

"That'll work," she said.

"O.K., one for Kate Burke and one for Jackson, umm, Arendal. Jackson Arendal." He would explain that he wasn't trying to tell them how to split it.

He walked back to the hotel and began writing a story in the bar where he had watched Fanatuua earn his money. Across the room, a st.u.r.dy woman seated in a wheelchair studied him through thick gla.s.ses. Two hours flew by like minutes; she was gone when he got up from the table.

In the morning, he put on jeans and his best aloha shirt, walked to the pier next to the hotel, and boarded the Victoria Clipper. The San Juan Islands are a three hour trip from Seattle, north out of Puget Sound, across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, and nearly to Vancouver Island in Canada. The catamaran hummed along while pa.s.sengers sunned themselves, took pictures, and moved about the cabins. The captain announced the islands as Washington's "banana belt," free of the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains.

Friday Harbor is sheltered by low pine covered ridges. Joe walked up Spring Street and checked in at the Friday Harbor Inn where Kate had made reservations. The house she had rented was in Eagle Cove, a few miles from town. He went down toward the ferry to look for a cab and was hailed from across the street. It was Max.

"Yo, Max!" They decided to have an ale in a brew pub on the corner.

They sat by a window looking out on the sidewalk.

"Here's to Kate," Joe said, raising his gla.s.s.

"Kate." Max was cheerful.

"Is your mom here?"

"She's supposed to show up later," Max said.

"Good deal," Joe said, "haven't seen her for a couple of years." He wasn't that anxious to see Ingrid, but in Max's presence he lapsed into old habits. The years might have been weeks, and he might have been just away on a business trip.

"Wait til you see what I bought," Max said. He handed Joe a photograph of a farm at the base of a mountain. "It's near Londonderry, in Vermont. Eight acres at the far corner of this farm." He pointed with his finger. "Just at the end of this highest field, a piece that runs up the hill. One of my friends from school owns the farm. My father came up from Boston and liked it; he gave me the down payment. I made a tent platform and moved out there last month."

"It's going to get cold," Joe said.

"I'll move into an apartment or a room for the winter. There's a town road that ends at the farm. I have a right of way from there."

"Can you get in with the truck?"

"Yep. It will take a while to get anything built, but it's a start. And then--look at this." He handed Joe another picture. At the top of a clearing, a long log projected out from under a ledge. It was supported by two shorter logs lashed together in an X. Standing upright on the end of the log was a prehistoric figure with straight arms and large rocks for hands. The hands extended out and below its feet. "Stone Man," Max said proudly.

"It looks like a balancing toy," Joe said. "A balancing giant."

"Yep. He's come down out of the mountains to see what man has done."

Joe looked closely. Stone Man was made of small diameter logs and had a strong narrow head.

"How did you fasten the head? Is that a rock?"

"It's a piece of slate. I split the end of the log, stuck his head part way down the split, and lashed it--like a tomahawk."

"Something else, Max! Giacometti goes to Indonesia."

"And Vermont," Max said. "He sways in the wind. The idea came to me when I first saw the clearing. I knew I had to do it."

"Must have been fun getting it up."

"I built the perch first, got it solid, and then I made a temporary walkway out of two by sixes, H shaped. We pulled Stone Man out to the end with a come-along, a couple of inches at a time. It was awesome.