Summitt

Chapter One

A girl ran toward him across a rocky beach, crying out in pain, which was wrong, of course, because the day had been lovely except for the flames leaping for her through the slanting rain.

The stewardess moved the pillow behind his shoulder. “Would you fasten your seat belt, please, Mr. Selby? We’ll be landing in Memphis in just a few minutes.” She smiled at him. “I’m afraid you had the wrong girl or the wrong dream, Mr. Selby. I’m a Monica, not a Sarah.”

He had spoken her name aloud, Harry Selby realized. Shouted it, perhaps. That hadn’t happened so often lately, but he couldn’t be sure since he had slept alone since then.

There must have been something of the dream and Sarah in his eyes when he walked through Memphis’s main terminal to the Avis station, because a man he brushed by said, “Dammit, watch it,” but stopped and stood looking after Selby, hands tightening on the shoulders of his small son.

The night was cool for that time of year, but the soft, penetrating humidity gave an edge to it. Harry Selby pulled on a topcoat and glanced around the dark parking lot. Slinging his gear into a rented sedan, he drove through a section of the town with neon-streaked windows and found the motel his brother had suggested, the Delta Arms, which faced a shopping mall and guitar bars and used car lots with strings of colored lights.

He didn’t bother unpacking; he would be checking out the next morning to drive over to Jarrell’s place in Summitt City.

His room was reassuringly similar to the dozens he had known on road trips; beige carpets and couches covered with a hard, nubby material, closet coat hangers almost impossible to free from their slotted metal holders, a blue seascape, sanitized strips of paper crisscrossing the toilet seat, and signs with warnings to keep the door locked, signs indicating the location of complimentary coffee and ice cubes.

After making himself a drink he dialed his home in Pennsylvania. Waiting, Selby looked at the worn leather duffel bag on the floor, stenciled with the smudged names and emblems of pro teams, bulging now with his clothing and his father’s diaries and notebooks.

His son answered the phone. “Hey, have you met him yet, dad? What’s he like?”

“Hold it, Davey. I just got off the plane.”

“Well, he could have met you. I bet Shana he would.”

A click sounded from an extension phone. Harry Selby’s daughter said in her quick, light voice, “Who is it, Davey? Who’re you talking to?” Her tone was amiable, but imperious, a wise and confident fourteen speaking to a nine-year-old brother.

“It’s me, Shana,” Harry Selby said.

“Oh, hi, daddy. Goodness, it seems like you just left. How was your flight?”

“Fine, fine. I’m at the motel, the phone number’s on my desk there, Mrs. Cranston has it.”

“Yes, and we’ve got Uncle Jarrell’s number in Summitt. Have you talked to him yet?”

“No, I’m driving over tomorrow.”

“I just can’t wait to find out what he’s like.”

“Well, I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know. I just wanted to see how everything was going.”

The dream of Sarah had left him tense and worried about them. His daughter must have sensed his concern because she said, “Everything here is fine, daddy. You forget about us now and have a good time. I fed Blazer last night’s steak with a lot of stale bread and milk. He’s up in the meadow now, I can hear him barking. Mrs. Cranston is fixing dinner—”

“There’s a deer up there, daddy,” Davey said. “I’m sure of it. Somewhere in that thick patch of thornbushes.”

Shana said, “Oh, every time you see a shadow you think it’s some great, atavistic animal.”

“Well, Mr. Gideen told me there was a fawn at the pond last spring.”

“Daddy, Normie Bride called and he’s coming over after dinner. We’ll do homework and watch television maybe. Okay?”

“Sure, and take a walk down by the pond.”

“Davey, you are incredibly tiresome. So moody and accusatory. Don’t sulk, but you are. Daddy, give Uncle Jarrell a hug for us, okay? And tell him I’m a ski freak, or want to be anyway.”

When she hung up, Davey said, “I walked part of the fence line before it got dark and found some rails down. Near the logging road at the top of the meadow. I wired ’em up so they’ll hold till you get back.”

“We’ll camp out up there next week. Just you and me. Maybe we can spot that deer you saw...”

“You really think there’s one up there?”

“I’m sure of it.”

When he hung up, he looked out at cars angled into parking slots facing his room and beyond to the glitter of the shopping center and bars.

Talking to his son and daughter, he had visualized the farm he and Sarah had bought after they were married: the driveway flanked with poplars and locusts, the moonlit pond and fir trees, and the garden she had made of honeysuckle and dwarf lilac around the broken stone heap of the old silo.

His phone rang. It was Jarrell calling from Summitt City. Selby had talked to him only once before, when the diaries had arrived from the lawyer, but he recognized his brother’s voice immediately. Half brother, he amended, as he said, “Hello, Jarrell. I was just about to call you.”

“Well, fine, Harry. The motel’s okay and everything?”

“Yes, everything’s fine.”

“How was your flight?”

“Just fine. I left Philadelphia around four, and we had good weather all the way. Shana and Dave drove out to the airport with me.”

“I didn’t realize she was that old, Harry.”

“She’s not, she’s only fourteen. Our housekeeper came with us and drove them back home.”

“And your boy, David, how old is he?”

A piano sounded over his brother’s voice, and Selby heard a girl laughing.

“David’s nine,” he said. “They’re both anxious to meet you, Jarrell, and they want me to bring back some snapshots. Shana wants me to tell you she can’t wait to play snow queen on our mountains.”

“Well, the land my father left — sorry, our father — is just a couple of residential lots and it’s miles from any decent slopes.”

Selby said, “Shana wasn’t serious, Jarrell. Mr. Breck explained all that, about the lots, I mean. He suggested we sell them.”

“If that’s what you want, it’s fine with me.”

“Jarrell, the land doesn’t mean anything one way or the other. But I’d like to find out something about the old man.”

“What sort of things, Harry?”

“I don’t have a questionnaire, Jarrell. He walked out before I was born. At least, that’s one version of it. I’d like to know if there’s another. In his letter, Mr. Breck says it could have been trick-or-treaters, or maybe burglars or prowlers. He doesn’t seem to know. I’d like to talk to you about that, and what kind of a man he was, about his time in Korea—”

“Harry, I’d better turn this music down. I’ll call you back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll be right here.”

Selby began to realize that talking to Jarrell was like playing tennis against a wall — everything came back automatically, without excitement or variety or even a touch of spin.

What sort of things, Harry? Jesus! Selby wanted to know everything. What Jonas Selby liked for breakfast, how he voted, what made him laugh, what things he was afraid of, did he have a temper, what things riled him, did he drink, was he a cocks-man, what — in short — was the substance of the man Selby had speculated about so helplessly all these years...

The diaries and the notebooks hadn’t told him much. In spiral folders and stiff-backed journals, the entries ranged from the Korean war in the fifties to Jonas Selby’s death a year ago. Most of it was written in a cramped but legible hand, except for the years at the army hospital in Boulder, Colorado, where his father’s nurse and second wife, Rita Bender (now deceased) had typed entries for him.

Selby practically knew these diaries by heart now, all the scribbled pages tucked away in his leather duffel bag.

The foot-square carton had been delivered to the farm a month ago by Railway Express, accompanied by a registered letter from an attorney in Truckee, California.

“Your father’s estate (Breck wrote) consists of two residential lots, not too desirably situated, I’m afraid, and a crateload of personal effects, notebooks, diaries and the like.”

Breck then explained his delay in writing.

“I regret to tell you that your father’s body was found by neighbors approximately a year ago in the kitchen of his house. He had been shot twice at close range by a .38 revolver. The police have listed his death as homicide at the hands of a person or persons unknown.

“They theorized that Jonas Selby may have returned from work and surprised prowlers. Since no money or valuables were taken from his person or home, they don’t rule out the possibility that these prowlers could have been teenagers who panicked when they were caught.

“At the time of his death, neither I nor your half brother, Jarrell, had knowledge of your existence.

“The diaries and other papers were not discovered until six weeks ago. A new tenant found them packed in a crate in the garage. They were partially concealed by rows of firewood and were found when a quantity of wood was moved inside for the winter. Also in that crate was a deed of reconveyance for the lots I have mentioned, consigning the property to you and Jarrell Selby. Attached to this deed was a note in your father’s handwriting, requesting me to contact you through the offices of the National Football League in New York City.

“It was his wish that you should take possession of his diaries and other papers, and that the real estate be shared equally by you and your brother.”

Harry Selby had no need for alcohol, because he was fairly well adjusted to reality, and had never been forced to try to alter its shape and nature. But he hadn’t been able to get through his father’s diaries without the occasional stiff shot of whiskey, because in those years of rambling comment on the weather and the terrain and the enemy, in all those angry gripes about the army, and the stockade and the people who had used him so badly, in this welter of detail and nostalgia and how the fucking fish were biting, there was not one reference to Harry Selby, not even a mention of the son he had fathered and abandoned, the son he had known about for years but who obviously hadn’t been important enough to rate even a perfunctory acknowledgment in his scribbled records.

He needed a little whiskey to help him face the fact that his father had known about him for years and hadn’t bothered to do a thing about it. Not one goddamned word over all those years, when he’d needed it and wanted it, at schools where he’d stayed on campus during holidays; there’d never been a Christmas card or birthday greeting, not even a note when the team had made the magazine covers that year; nothing but a stretching emptiness in which Selby wondered endlessly about his father and tried to imagine what he had been like, and how long ago (and in what manner) he had died since that was the only reason he could think of to explain his silence.

Snapshots of his father had been tucked among the diaries and notebooks. In uniform or a GI bathrobe, he was tall with big shoulders, staring at the camera with worried, belligerent eyes. Others were taken around Tahoe, on a dock holding a fishing rod, and standing self-consciously with several men in front of a real estate office, taller than the others, but still regarding the world with those hostile, accusing eyes.

His phone rang again. “Harry, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. How’s your schedule now?”

“I thought I’d check out of here early tomorrow. Judging from the map, I’ll be at your place around ten. That suit you?”

“Ten, that’s fine. Ten o’clock. You’ve got a car, of course. You want to drive to 64 and head east. Turn off at Summitt City. A bus will bring you right in. No cars allowed in the city limits, you know. But, Harry, there’s a hitch. That’s why I called earlier.”

“What is it?”

“Well, something just came up. I figured you could stay here tomorrow night, you know.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, I’ve got a girl, Harry, and—” his brother laughed awkwardly, “she’s decided to stay for a while.”

“That sounds interesting.” Selby wondered if he were only imagining something evasive in his brother’s voice. “But why is that a problem? I’d say it sounds pretty good.”

“The thing is, Harry, I can’t put you up. It’s a small place, and there just isn’t room.”

“Then I’d better stay here.”

“Yes, you’d better, Harry. I think you’d better.”

“Fine, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Selby felt deflated when he hung up. His reaction made him wonder at the depths of his need for some conduit to the past. What had he expected? Walks along a river, drinks before a fire, leisurely reminiscences which might bring their separate selves into some kind of symmetry? No, but he had hoped at least to be able to add some of his brother’s memories to the vacuum in his life, and in that way to catch a glimpse of truth about the tall, narrow-eyed bastard who stared so sullenly at him from those snapshots taken around Tahoe and army hospitals.

Well, he thought, looking at his stained duffel bag, he might as well unpack. And let Shana know he wouldn’t be staying at Jarrell’s, but right here with the blue seascape and the free coffee and ice cubes.