Richard Ford - Independence Day

But I’m not! I understand (I think) perfectly well what he’s getting at. If he’d answered in the usual way — that his Aunt Pansy lived in Brockton, or his brother Sherman in Trenton, or if he was positioning himself for a managerial charge inside corporate Mayflower, home offices, say, in Frederick, MD, or Ayer, Mass., and needed to move nearer — that would make sound sense. Though it would be a whole lot less interesting on the human side. But if I’m right, his question is of a much more omenish and divining nature, having to do with the character of eventuality (not rust-belt economics or the downturn in per-square-foot residential in the Hartford-Waterbury metroplex).

Instead, his is the sort of colloquy most of us engage in alone with only our silent selves, and that with the right answers can give rise to rich feelings of synchronicity of the kind I came back from France full of four years ago: when everything is glitteringly about you , and everything you do seems led by a warm, invisible astral beam issuing from a point too far away in space to posit but that’s leading you to the place — if you can just follow and stay lined up — you know you want to be. Christians have their grimmer version of this beam; Jainists do too. Probably so do ice dancers, bucking-bronco riders and grief counselors. Mr. Tanks is one of the multitude seeking, with hope, to emerge from a condition he’s grown weary of in pursuit of something better, and wants to know what he should do — a profound inquiry.

I’d of course love to help with this alignment of small stars, and without making him worry I’m a loony or a realty shark or a homosexual with polyracial endomorphic appetites. In the most magnanimous sense, such assistance is the heart of the realty profession.

I fold my arms and let myself sway sideways so my thigh pushes against the back bumper of my Crown Victoria. I wait a few seconds, then say, “I think I know exactly what you’re getting at.”

“What about?” Mr. Tanks says suspiciously.

“About wondering where you ought to go,” I say in as unaggressive, unsharky, unhomophilic a way as possible.

“Yeah, but that don’t really matter,” Mr. Tanks says, instantly shying off the subject now that he’s raised it. “But okay,” he says, still showing interest. “I’d like to set down someplace else, you know? Like a neighborhood.”

“Would you live there?” I say in a helpful, professional voice. “Or would it just be someplace for your furniture to live?”

“I’d live there,” Mr. Tanks says, and nods, looking up at the sky as though wishing to envision a future. “If I liked it, I wouldn’t necessarily even mind being in someplace I’ve lived before. You understand what I mean?”

“Pretty much,” I say, meaning “perfectly.”

“The East Coast just seems sorta homey to me.” Mr. Tanks suddenly looks around at his truck as if he’s heard a sound and expects to see someone scaling the side, ready to break in and steal his TV. Though there’s no one.

“Where’d you grow up?” I say.

He continues staring at his truck and away from me. “Michigan. Old man was a chiropractor in the U.P. Wasn’t too many Negroes doing that work.”

“I bet not. Do you like it up there?”

“Oh yeah. I love it.”

There’s no use blabbing that I’m an old Wolverine or that we probably have experiences in common. Divorce, for starters. My memories, in any case, would probably conflict with his.

“Then why don’t you go back and buy a house? Or build one? That seems like a no-brainer to me.”

Mr. Tanks turns and gives me a wary look, as if I might’ve been referring to his brain. “My ex-wife stays up there now. That don’t work.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Uh-uh. That’s why I ain’t been to the Hall of Fame.” His big eyebrows lower. (What business is it of mine if he has children?)

“Well. I’ll just say this.” I would still like to encourage Mr. Tanks with some useful facts offered as data for his search for what to do next. I in fact feel some anxiety that he doesn’t know how specifically I appreciate how he feels and that I’ve felt the same way myself. No disappointment is quite like the failure to share a crucial understanding. “I just want to say this,” I begin again, correcting myself. “I’m selling houses these days. And I live in a pretty nice town down there. And we’re about to see a rise in prices, and I believe interest rates’ll head up by the end of the year and maybe even before.”

“That’s too rich down there. I been down there. I moved some basketball player’s mother into some big house. Then moved her out again a year later.”

“You’re right, it’s not cheap. But let me just say that most experts believe a purchase price two and a half times your annual pre-tax income is a realistic debt load. And I’ve got houses right now, in the village of Haddam”—all shown to the Markhams, all promptly trashed—“at two-fifty, and I’ll have more as time goes on. And I feel like in the long run, whether it’s Dukakis or Bush or Jackson”—fat chance—“prices are going to stay up in New Jersey.”

“Uh-huh,” Mr. Tanks says, making me feel exactly like a realty shark (which is possibly what you are if you’re a realtor at all).

Only my view is, if I sell you a house in a town where life’s tolerable, then I’ve done you a big favor. And if I try and don’t succeed, then you’ve got a view you like better (assuming you can afford it). Plus, I don’t cotton to the idea of raising the drawbridge, which Mr. Tanks probably has experience with. I mean to guarantee the same rights and freedoms for all. And if that means merchandising New Jersey dirt like dog-nuts so we all get our one sweet piece, then so be it. We’ll all be dead in forty years anyway.

I won’t (or can’t), in other words, be easily shamed. And Mr. Tanks would make a good addition and be as welcome on Cleveland Street as his pocketbook could make him (he’d, of course, have to stash his truck someplace else). And I’m not doing anybody a favor if I don’t try to get him interested.

“So what’s the worst part about being a realtor?” He’s staring around somewhere else again — above the Sea Breeze roofline, where the humpy moon has floated higher and wears a fuzzy halo. Mr. Tanks is now signaling me that he’s not ready to buy a house in New Jersey, which is fine. He may conduct conversations like this with everyone — his “thing” being to ramble on dolefully about wishing he could be someplace better — and I’ve spoiled the fun by trying to figure out where and how. He may feel fine dedicating his life to moving other people hither and yon.

“My name’s Frank Bascombe, by the way.” A gesture of hello and good-bye, poking my hand toward Mr. Tanks’s strenuous green belly. He administers a halfhearted little jiggling of just my fingers. Mr. Tanks might look like a guard for old Vince back in the Bart Starr-Fuzzy Thurston gravy days, but he shakes hands like a debutante.

“Tanks,” is all he grunts.

“Well, really, I don’t know if it has a worst part,” I say, addressing the realtor question and feeling a sudden, brain-flattening fatigue and the painful need for sleep. I pause for a breath. “When I don’t like it so much, I try not to notice it and stay home reading a book. But I guess if it has to have a bad side, it’s having clients think I want to sell them a house they don’t like, or that I don’t care if they like it or not. Which is never true.” I pull my hand over my face and push my eyelids up to keep them open.

“You don’t like being misinterpreted, is that it?” Mr. Tanks looks amused. He makes an odd gurgly chuckle deep in his throat, which makes me self-conscious.