Anne Tyler - Searching for Caleb

"Well, Lem is not coming back," said Justine.

"I knew it."

"But you shouldn't sell the carnival."

"How can you keep saying such a stupid thing?"

"Don't argue with me, argue with the cards. Have you ever seen anything like it? I've turned up every jack in the deck, you'll have all the mechanics you want."

"Oh, of course," Alonzo said. "One after the other. The first one drinks, the second leaves with my ponies-"

"And look at the women! Look, Alonzo, you're not paying attention. See?

Here you are, the king of hearts. And here's the queen of hearts, the queen of clubs, the queen of diamonds . . ."

Alonzo sat forward, peering at the cards, resting his hand upon his knees.

"Here is the good luck card, the card of friendship, the celebration card

. . ."

"All right, all right!" Alonzo said.

She sat back and smiled at him.

"Oh, Justine," he told her sadly, "sometimes I think I would like to go live in a cabin in the woods, all alone. I'd take a lifetime supply of slivovitz, my accordion, plenty of food, perhaps some books. Do you know I've never read an entire book? Just the good parts. I think about hibernating like a bear, just eating and drinking and sleeping. No tax, insurance, electric bills, alimony, repairs or repainting or Rustoleum, no women to mess up my life, no one shooting bank guards, no children. Then here you come galloping along in your terrible hat and your two sharp hipbones like pebbles in your pockets and you tell me all these things I may expect, a life full of surprises. How can I refuse? I feel curious all over again, I like to know what will happen next."

And he shook his head, stroking downward on his mustache, but he did not look so tired as when he had arrived. All his tiredness seemed to have passed to Justine, who sat slumped in her chair with her hands limp on the cards.

Duncan and Justine were on the front steps, watching the fireflies spark all around them. "Today I sold an antique garden engine," Duncan said.

"What's a garden engine?"

"It's this big wheeled thing to spray water on your flowers. What a relief! I bought it with my own money in a moment of weakness. I kept it sitting in the back room; I had to open the double doors to get it in and then I was afraid it would go right through the floorboards. A man named Newton Norton bought it. He's just started reconstructing this old-time farmhouse out in the country."

"Well, that's nice," said Justine.

"He also bought some fuller's shears, and all my carpenter tools."

"That's nice."

He looked over at her.

"When I went into Meg's room," she said, "and found her note telling me she'd gone, I never read anything that hurt so. But then I looked up, and there I was reflected in the window that was just starting to go dark outside. There were these deep black shadows in my eyes and cheekbones. I thought, 'My, don't I look interesting? Like someone who has had something dramatic happen.' I thought that!"

She laid her face against Duncan's sleeve. Duncan put his arm around her and pulled her closer, but he didn't say anything.

II

JLJUC icy Peck had to ride in the suicide seat, beside her husband Two, who was driving. Laura May and Sarah got to sit in back. Lucy had to put up with the hot air rushing in Two's open window and Mantovani playing much too loudly on the radio. She had to say what roads to take when she couldn't even fold a map right, much less read it. "Now the next thing is you're going to turn left, about a quarter-inch after Seven Stone Road. Or, I don't know. What would a little bitty broken blue line seem to mean?" Her husband set his front teeth together very, very delicately, not a good sign at all. A bumble bee flew in past his nose, causing Lucy to cry out and fling her road map into the air. And meanwhile there sat Laura May and Sarah, protected by layered hats with brown veils, contemplating two separate views peacefully like children being taken for a drive.

It was the sixth of June and they were on their way to Caro Mill, Maryland, to celebrate their father's ninety-third birthday.

Unfortunately his birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, which meant that no one who worked could come along. And Bea was confined to her bed with lower back pain. It was up to them: Lucy and the maiden aunts, and Two, who was now retired. Between them they had loaded the car with presents and fruit, a Thermos of Sanka, Laura May's needlework, Sarah's knitting, insect repellent, sunscreen, Bufferin, Gelusil, a Triple-A tour guide, a can of Fix-a-Flat, a fire extinguisher, six emergency flares, and a white banner reading SEND HELP. They had had the Texaco man check the gas, oil, water, brake fluid, transmission fluid, tire pressure, and windshield cleaner. Then Two nosed the car out into traffic and they were on their way, with enough horns honking behind them to remind Lucy of an orchestra tuning up. Young people nowadays were so impatient. Luckily Two was not a man who could be fussed, and he went on driving at his same stately tempo. In his old age he had shrunk somewhat, and was made to seem even smaller by his habit of tipping his head back as he peered through the windshield. His eyes were narrow blue hyphens. His mouth was pulled downward by two ropes in his neck. When he decided to turn left from the right-hand lane he signaled imperiously out the window, still facing front, maintaining his cool Apache profile for Lucy to marvel at while behind them more horns honked. "Kindly check the odometer, Lucy," was all he said. "I would be interested in knowing our mileage on this trip."

"Yes, dear."

Once they hit the open road they were dazzled by too much

612 sunshine and too wide an expanse of fields. It was some time since they had been in the country. (One year ago today, to be exact.) Lucy longed for her wing chair in which she could sit encircled, almost, with the wings working like a mule's blinders to confine her gaze to the latest historical romance. The upholstery was embroidered in satin-stitch, which she loved to stroke absently as she read. Then in the back yard her Sea Foam roses were just opening; there were going to be more this year than ever before and she was missing one entire day's worth. And it was so much cooler and greener at home, so shadowy, so thickly treed that when you spoke outdoors your voice came echoing back, clear and close, as if reflected from a vaulted green ceiling not far above your head. Here the sun turned everything pale. Pinkish barns sped past and bleached gray roadbanks, and beige creeks spanned by wooden bridges like dried-up, whitening bones. Lucy turned and sought out her sisters-in-law-a double pair of webbed eyes reluctantly drawn to hers. "Really, traveling makes me sad," Lucy told them. But they didn't answer (Lucy always said such personal things), so she faced front again.

At Plankhurst there was a very confusing crossroads and she sent Two thirteen miles out of the way before the mistake was realized. "Oh, I'm just so-I just can't tell you how badly I feel about this," she said. Two grunted. In the back seat her sisters-in-law gave her disappointed looks that made her want to cry. "I just seem to do everything wrong," she said. Nobody denied it.

Two hours out of Baltimore they began to encounter signs for Caro Mill, although still it seemed they were in the depths of the country. The only buildings were farmhouses, widely scattered, and occasionally a little grocery store patched with soft drink ads. Then they swooped over a hill and there was the town all spread out before them, a clutter of untidy buildings. They had traveled this Main Street annually for years, although each time in a different location. They had passed this very Woolworth's, diner, pizza parlor, fabric store displaying dingy bolts of cloth turning gray along the creases. Still, Lucy sat up straighter and began perking the lace at the neck of her dress. Two pressed his thin white hair flat against his head, and in back there were rustles and whispers. "Oh, I do hope Father likes the-" "Remind me to ask Father if he wouldn't care to-" But Duncan was the one Lucy thought of, not her father-in-law at all. It was for Duncan she had bought this hat (only wouldn't he think the wooden cherries were-old-ladyish, maybe?) and put on these coins of rouge and her eighteen-hour girdle and the Sunday pearls. (Only come to think of it, hadn't he always laughed at the family's fondness for pearls?) She twisted her rings. "Perhaps he won't be home," she said.