Philipp Meyer - American Rust

The porch was swept. There was no point in putting it off further. Lee went back into the house, through the kitchen, and into the dining room, where her father was still sitting.

“Dad?” she said.

“That's me.” He looked up reluctantly. He knew what was coming.

“What did the police chief talk to you about?”

“Isaac's friend Billy,” he said. “They locked him up for killing someone.”

He went back to his paper and she could tell he was uncomfortable. She wondered how much he knew. It seemed much warmer in the room all of a sudden.

“I don't think he did it.”

“I guess that's possible, but it's not worth speculating over. They'll get it figured out in court.”

“Maybe what I'm getting at is I'm pretty sure he didn't do it.”

“Maybe your view of him is skewed.”

It was quiet for a few seconds; she felt her face get hot. Her father wanted to drop the conversation and she did also but she forced herself to keep talking: “He told me that Isaac is the one who killed that guy.”

“Lee,” he said, without missing a beat, “Billy Poe nearly killed someone last year, beat the guy's head in with a baseball bat, and the only reason he didn't get locked up for that is that Bud Harris, the police officer who came by yesterday, is friends with Billy's mother. Friends, if you know what I mean. Which is something that now they're all going to have to deal with, now that he's done this other thing.”

“I know all that,” she said. But she hadn't known it — that was not exactly how she'd heard the story.

“I didn't mean to snap at you. What Bud Harris told me is that he thinks Isaac was there, but that it's better if Isaac stays out of it. He doesn't think Isaac should get involved unless it's absolutely necessary, which is fine with me.”

“If there's a trial, you can be sure Isaac will get involved.”

“I know that. I've been up all night thinking about who I know who's a lawyer around here.”

“It doesn't bother you that Isaac saw those things?”

“I feel guilty about it, if that's what you mean.”

“That wasn't what I was getting at.” She didn't know, though. Maybe it was. She went and stood next to him and he reached up to squeeze her hand.

“I already told Simon. He said we can use the family checkbook.”

“We'll be fine on our own,” he said. He squeezed her hand again. “That was smart, though. That was good thinking.”

She was struck by the absurdity of what was happening: you've both just admitted you've been hiding something from each other, that the police chief thinks Isaac witnessed a murder, that Poe thinks that Isaac was involved in the murder, but you're going to keep on acting like everything's normal.

“What else should we be doing?”

He shrugged. “It sounds like you already took care of it. In any case, I think it's pretty safe not to trust what Billy Poe tells you.” He looked up briefly from the newspaper. “Goes without saying that you're married now.”

She could feel her face flushing even more and she looked around the room, she knew if she said anything else she would start crying. Henry rattled the paper and cleared his throat and made a show of being interested in something.

“Your friend Hillary Clinton is making more speeches.”

She nodded. Let him change the subject. She looked out the window and then she felt him take her hand again.

“You're a good kid,” he said.

“I'm not sure.”

“I mean it. You're a good kid and I'm proud as hell of you.”

She nodded and cleared her throat again and smiled at him and he smiled back sympathetically.

“I think I need some air.”

“Alright.”

Outside, she sat against the brick wall that wrapped down around the lawn, field, whatever it was, down toward the ravine, out over the empty woods and hills, the long high ridge in the distance. The old man knew about her and Poe, it wasn't that surprising. He forgave her — she was surprised by that, of course she was. But maybe those were the things her mother had seen in him.

She wondered what he really thought about Simon, and her new life, and the fact that she never came home. He was not a simple man, he only acted that way when it was convenient. He wanted peace with her at all costs. Only he was wrong about Poe. She thought about that. She thought about Simon's accident, the feeling had begun to nag her — what if he hadn't been trapped in the car? What if he could have walked away, left that girl pinned there?

That was the thing about Simon and all the others, so pleasant on the surface, always knowing what to say, but underneath there was something else, they were not the kind to sacrifice themselves — they'd all been taught they had too much to lose. No more verdicts, she told herself. But there was John Bolton, caught in Manhattan with all that cocaine — charges dropped — and later you find out there was another man with Bolton when he was arrested, but everyone knows better than to ask what happened to him. Meanwhile Poe goes to jail for something he didn't do. For your brother.

She wondered where Isaac was now. California, Poe had said. It didn't make any sense. She could hire a private investigator or something to follow him, he would have left a trail, airline tickets, bus tickets, something — four thousand dollars is what her father said he'd taken — that would be more than enough to pay for his trip and leave plenty of seed money to settle down, Isaac was happy to live on macaroni and cheese. How had he reached this level of desperation? But she knew it was simple. Not hard to understand at all. You simply chose not to. Always knew his life wouldn't be easy, he didn't know how to relate to people. No ability to conduct small talk, thinks he should speak his mind honestly at all times, expects others should do the same. Nothing he ever said was tied up in what are they going to think of me? It made her both admire him more than anyone else she knew and feel enormously sad for him. To her, that seemed like the smallest part of human communication.

Maybe all people with minds like Isaac's were the same. She knew he would make a much larger contribution than she ever would — he cared only about things much bigger than his own life. Ideas, truths, the reasons things were. As if he himself, his own existence, was somehow incidental. At Yale, her friends had accepted him immediately — there Isaac was a personality type everyone was familiar with. But not here.

And now he'd killed that man. She squeezed her forehead. She knew he'd done it. He'd gone back in there to rescue his friend, he hadn't hesitated. There couldn't be anyone less suited for a task like that, but that had not stopped him, he'd done the only thing he could do, if those men had been strong enough to overpower Poe, the risk to Isaac would have been enormous, he would have been scared. And of course he'd gone back in there anyway. It was the right thing to do and he'd done it.

And you? She felt weak and she let herself ease farther into the tall grass, the sun and wind would cut through her, wear her to nothing, she would sink into the earth. I'm not supposed to feel guilty, she thought. I'm supposed to be proud of myself. But even thinking that brought on an incredible isolation, a suspicion she'd always had that she didn't belong anywhere, she was going to outlive everyone she knew. She was going to be alone, the same as her mother. Her mother who had tried to reinvent herself and it had killed her. Lee tried again to figure the probabilities that she herself was free from blame. There was Dad's accident and Mom dying and now this, there was no logic, there was only the most important piece of evidence: you're the only one still in one piece.

She would have to find him. She couldn't wait anymore. Hire the lawyer, a private investigator, this is not going to take care of itself. She stood up and brushed the grass off her, looking out over the trees and rolling fields, the ravine where she and Isaac had played, lain on their backs on the warm rocks and looked up at the narrow corridor of sky above them, Isaac watching for birds, he loved birds and hawks, he loved knowing the names of things, she was content just to watch, most memories she had of being happy in childhood involved only her and Isaac; the rest of the time she was just waiting to get older.