Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

Brrrp-brrrrp! Brrrp-brrrrp! Brrrp-brrrrp! Brrrp-brrrrp!

My Swiss telephone, stylish, metal, minuscule (a present from Clarissa on my return to the land of the living), sings its distressing Swiss wake-up song: “Bad news, bad news for you (and it ain’t in Switzerland, either).”

I clutch for the receiver, so flat and sleek I can’t find it. My room’s full of morning light and cottony, humid, warmer air. What hour is it? I knock over my pile of books, detonating a loud and heavy clatter.

“Bascombe,” I say, breathless, into the tiny voice slit. This is never how I answer the phone. But my heart’s pounding with expectancy and a hint of dread. It’s Thanksgiving morning. Do I know where my daughter is?

“Okay, it’s Mike.” This is not how he talks, either. My answer-voice has startled him. He says nothing, as if someone’s holding a loaded gun on him.

“What time is it?” I say. I’m confused from too deep sleep, where I believe I was having a pleasant dream about eating.

“Eight forty-five. Did you hear my message last night?”

“No.” Half true. I didn’t listen past the Buddhist flounces and flourishes.

“Okay—” He’s about to tell me it’s been one heckuva hard decision, but the world’s a changing place and, even for Buddhists, is entirely created by our aspirations and actions, and suffering doesn’t happen without a cause and effort is the precondition of positive actions — the very reason I didn’t listen last night. I’m in bed, fully clothed, with my shoes still on, the counterpane wrapped around me like a tortilla. “Could you drive over to 118 Timbuktu at eleven and meet me?”

“What the hell for?”

“I sold it.” Mike’s accentless voice is fruity with exuberance. “Cash deal.”

“One eighteen Timbuktu’s already sold.” I’m about to be aggravated. Acceptance is right away posing a challenge. I’m relieved, of course, it’s not Clarissa telling me she and lizard Thom are married, that I somehow missed all the big clues yesterday. “It’s up on trucks,” I say. “I’m moving it over to 629 Whitman.” Our Little Manila section, which has begun gentrifying at an encouraging rate. He knows all this.

“My people want the house right now, as is.” It’s as though the whole idea tickles him silly and has elevated his voice half an octave. “They want to take over the moving and put it on a lot on Terpsichore that I’m ready to sell them.”

“Why can’t this wait till Monday?” I’m about to doze off, though I have to piss (the third time since 2 a.m.). Outside my open window, up in the scrubbed azure firmament, white terns tilt and noiselessly wheel. The air around my covers feels soft and cushiony-springlike, though it’s late November. Laughter filters up from the beach — laughter that’s familiar.

“You hold the deed on that, Frank.” Mike uses my name only at moments of all else failing. Usually, he calls me nothing at all, as if my name was an impersonal pronoun. “They have to buy it direct from you. And they’re ready right now. I thought you might just drive over.”

He, of course, is right. I sold 118 Timbuktu in September to a couple from Lebanon (Morris County), the Stevicks, who planned to demolish it first thing next spring and bring in a new manufactured dwelling from Indiana that had a lifetime guarantee and all the best built-ins. I stepped back in and offered to take the house in lieu of commission, since it’s a perfectly good building. They agreed and I’ve been arranging to move it to a lot I own on Whitman, where it’ll fit in and bring a good price because the inventory’s low over there. At 1,300 sq. ft., it’ll be bigger than most of its Whitman Street neighbors and be exactly the kind of small American ranch any Filipino who used to be a judge in Luzon, but who over here finds himself running a lawn-care business, would see as a dream come true. Arriba House Recyclers (Bolivians) from Keansburg have been doing the work on a time-permits basis, and throwing me a break. I’m looking at a good profit slice by the time the whole deal’s over. Except, if I sell it off the truck like a consignment of hot Sonys, get a good price (less Mike’s 2 percent), dispense with the rigamarole of moving a house up Route 35, getting a foundation dug and poured and utilities run, paying for all the permits and line-clearance fees, I’d need to have my head examined not to do Mike’s deal on the spot. It’s true that as deeded owner, only I can convey it if we’re conveying this morning. (We call deals like this WACs, for “write a check.”) Only I’m not certain I have the heart for real estate on Thanksgiving morning, even if all I have to do is say yes, sign a bill of sale and shake a stranger’s hand. The Next Level and universal acceptance may be closing the shutters on the realtor in me.

I haven’t spoken for several moments, and may have gone to sleep on the phone. I hear laughing again, laughing that’s definitely known to me but unplaceable. Then a voice talking loudly, then more laughter.

“Can we do it?” Mike’s voice is forceful, anxious, fervent — odd for a Tibetan who’d rather cut a fart in public than seem agitated. Possibly I’ve discouraged him. What about Tommy Benivalle?

“Will I come where?”

“To Timbuktu.” A pause. “One eighteen. Eleven o’clock.”

“Oh,” I say, pushing my head — still sore from Bob Butts’ wrenching it — deep into the yielding pillow, letting air exit my lungs slowly, then breathing in body odor in my winding-sheet, loving being where I am, but where I cannot stay much longer. “Sure,” I say. “Sure, sure.”

“Terrific!” Mike says. “That’s terrific.” He says “terrific” in his old Calcutta telemarketer style, as when a housewife in Pennsauken tumbled to a set of plastic-wicker outdoor chairs and a secret bond was forged because she thought he was white: “Terrific. That’s terrific. I know you’re going to enjoy that, ma’am. Expect delivery in six to ten weeks.”

T he laughing voice, the laughing man I see when I stand to the window for the day’s first gaze at the beach, the sky, the waves is my son Paul, hard at work with a shovel, digging a hole the size of a small grave in the rain-caked sand between the beach and the ocean-facing foundation wall of my house, where some rhododendrons were planted by Sally but never thrived. The hole must be for his time capsule, which Clarissa told me about but which doesn’t seem present now. What would a time capsule look like? How deep would you need to bury one for it to “work”? What haywire impulse would make anyone think this is a proper idea for Thanksgiving? And why do I not know the answer to these questions?

Paul is not alone. He’s spiritedly shoveling while talking animatedly from three feet down in his hole to the tiny Sumitomo banker, Mr. Oshi, who’s surprisingly back from work and standing motionless beside Paul’s hole, dressed in a dark business suit as shovel-fulls of sand fly past onto a widening pile. Paul’s hair looks thinner than when I saw him last spring, and he’s heavier and is wearing what look like cargo shorts and a tee-shirt that shows his belly. He has the same goatee that connects to his mustache and surrounds his mouth like a golf hole. Though his haircut, I can see, is new — a style that I believe is called the “mullet,” and that many New Jersey young adults wear, and also professional hockey players, but that on Paul looks like a Prince Galahad. Mr. Oshi appears to be listening as Paul yaks away from his hole, haw-hawing and occasionally gesturing out toward the ocean with his shovel (from my utility room, no doubt), nodding theatrically, then going on digging. Mr. Oshi may also be trying to speak, but Paul has him trapped — which is his usual conversational strategy. Two dachshunds are rocketing around off the leash through the dune grass (where they’re forbidden) and out onto the beach, then back round the house and the hole and out of sight. These must be Mr. Oshi’s wiener dogs, since he’s holding in each hand what looks like a sandwich bag of dog crap that I’m sure he’d like to get rid of. Such is the private nature of neighborly life on Poincinet Road, that I’ve never seen these dogs before.