Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

Keith stood. "Let's sit on the porch. The maid will clear."

They sat on the porch and watched the sun go down. No one spoke for a long time, then Gail said, "What an amazing thing, Keith."

"What?"

"Love. I mean, through college, and turmoil, and war, and decades, and distance, and everything that life throws at you. If I were sentimental, I'd cry."

On Thursday morning, Keith woke up not feeling particularly well and didn't know why. By stages, he remembered the Porters being over for dinner, then recalled breaking out the hard liquor and realized why he had a headache and recalled what they had been celebrating.

He got out of bed and opened the window, feeling the cool air rush in. It looked like another sunny day, a good day for the corn, but they could use one more good rain before the harvest.

He walked down the hall in his underwear toward the bathroom and bumped into Jeffrey, also in his underwear. Jeffrey said, "I'm not well."

"You slept here?"

"No, I came back in my underwear to get the Tupperware containers."

"Where's Gail?"

"She went to get us breakfast. You want to use the bathroom?"

"No, go ahead." Keith got his robe and went down the stairs into the kitchen. He washed his face in the sink, found aspirin in the cupboard and took two, then put on a pot of coffee.

A car pulled around to the back door, and Gail came in, carrying a grocery bag. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay." He sat at the kitchen table, and Gail unpacked a bottle of orange juice and three corn muffins.

She said, "A police car followed me from here all the way to town."

Keith nodded. He said, "Now they know there's a connection between us. You're on the list."

"Hey, I was on the list before you got here." She sat down and poured a glass of juice for each of them.

Keith sipped his juice. He asked, "Did they pull you over?"

"No, I pulled them over. I got out of my car, identified myself as a councilwoman, and told them to fuck off or I'd have their badges."

"You've become very establishment, Gail. You're supposed to scream about your civil rights."

"They wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about. The only thing that scares them is the thought of losing their guns and their badges."

"Yeah, these cops turned bad. They have a bad boss."

She stayed quiet a minute, then asked him, "Were you serious about killing Baxter?"

"No."

She looked at him awhile, then said, "I was scared out there on the highway."

"I know. I'd like to take care of the problem before I leave, but I promised I wouldn't."

"I understand. Can I ask you... have you ever done that? I mean, I guess in Vietnam..."

Keith didn't reply, but he thought about her question. Yes, he'd killed in Vietnam, but that was in combat. In his early years in intelligence work, he'd literally had a license to kill, but before they'd given him his gun and silencer, they'd given him the rules: There were only two absolute times for killing — in combat and in self-defense. But everyone in America had the same right. His license, however, extended into murkier areas, such as a preemptive kill, if you felt threatened. And it got even murkier than that, like the right to kill in order to remove a great evil, whatever that was. Keith thought that Cliff Baxter was a great evil, for instance, but Mr. Baxter's parents and children might not agree. It was sort of a case-by-case thing, and Keith never had to make the decision by himself, and neither did he have to be the gunman if he had a problem with the committee decision. Here in Spencerville, however, far removed from any restraints or advice, he was on his own.

She said, "Have you thought about the fact that you'll never be really safe as long as he's around?"

"I don't think Cliff Baxter's balls travel well. We'll stay away from his turf."

"Did you ever think he might take out his rage on... well, let's say Annie's family?"

"What are you suggesting, Gail? I thought you were a pacifist."

"Jeffrey is a pacifist. If someone threatened my life, or the lives of my family or friends, I'd kill them."

"With what? A carrot?"

"Be serious. Listen, I feel threatened, and I obviously can't go to the police. I'll take that rifle."

"Okay. I'll get it." He stood, but Jeffrey came down the stairs.

Gail said to Keith, "We'll put it in my trunk later."

Jeffrey came into the kitchen. "Put what in the trunk?"

Gail replied, "The Tupperware."

"Right." He sat down, and they had breakfast.

Jeffrey said, "Hell of a party last night. Glad we could finally celebrate the Landry-Prentis engagement announcement."

Keith asked, "Did you ever wonder what our lives would have been like without the war and the turmoil?"

"Yeah, I thought about that. Dull, I think. Like now. I think we had a unique experience. Yeah, a lot of people got hurt and fucked-up, but most of us came through it okay. We're better people because of it." He added, "My students were totally boring, self-centered, selfish, irresolute, and without character. Christ, you'd think they were Republicans, but they thought they were rebels. Right. Rebels without a clue."

Gail said, "You got him started."

Keith said to Jeffrey, "You remember Billy Marlon?"

"Sure. Goofy kid. An obsessive pleaser, wanted to be everyone's best friend. In fact, I ran into him a few times. I wanted to be nice, for old time's sake, but he's a burnout."

"I ran into him at John's Place."

"Christ, Landry, I wouldn't take a piss in that place."

"I was feeling nostalgic one night."

"Go to the sock hop. Why'd you ask about him?"

"Well, sometimes when I see a guy like that, I say to myself, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' "

Gail commented, "If God's grace existed, there wouldn't be people like that for you to say, 'There but for the grace of God.' "

Jeffrey said, "You got her started. I understand what you're saying, Keith, but I think the Billy Marlons of the world would have gotten fucked-up in any decade. That's not us."

"I wonder."

"Yeah, we're fuckups, but we're functional." He thought a moment and said, "We pulled ourselves out of this place, Keith, you and I and a few others. We weren't born with money like the Baxters, or into a tradition of education like the Prentis family. Your old man was a farmer, mine was a railroad worker. The sixties didn't fuck us up, they broke us loose from convention and class structure." He added, "And we got laid a lot. You know, I once figured out that I probably got laid more than every male and female in my family put together, going back to maybe 1945. I think people got laid a lot during the Second World War, but not before or after."

Keith smiled. "Was that one of your prepared lectures?"

"It was, actually."

"Okay, we had some great times. But as you once said, we did some shitty things then. You sent me a shitty letter, for instance. It's okay. I got the same kind of letters from total strangers. But we all talked love, love, love, and we did a lot of hateful things. Me, too." He added, "When I got your letter, I wanted to literally kill you. I would have if you were there."

"What can I say? We were young. There were solar storms, and Jupiter and Mars were lined up or something, and the price of grass dropped, and we went totally fucking bonkers. If it hadn't happened, you and I would have been at John's Place last night, bitching about farm prices and railroad wages, and maybe Billy Marlon would have owned the place and been a city councilman if he hadn't gone to Vietnam. Christ, I don't know." He took a bite of muffin and said, "Some of who we are is in our genes, some of it is our culture, some of it is in our stars, and a lot of it is our personal history. You, me, Cliff Baxter, Annie Prentis, and Billy Marlon. We were born in the same hospital within a year of one another. I don't have any answers."