Earth Colors Page 14

  So everything was settled, and very early on Sunday morning we rode to the airport with Fritz. The plane was hangared not far from where Faye used to keep her twin, so it was a bittersweet moment for her. It was a sweet-looking craft, all smooth with modern lines that spoke of computer-assisted design. As Fritz took Faye with him on his walk-around, I loaded the gear and the baby, taking the backseat next to Sloane so that Faye could sit up front with someone I trusted she would soon find much more fascinating than Mr. Self-Obsessed Gray Eyes Who Cons Geologists Into Thinking He Knows Nothing About Pigments. Fritz and Faye climbed aboard, did the run-up, talked to the tower, taxied, lined up, and we took to the air.

  It was a cool, crisp morning, and the air was like silk. The ragged summits of the Rocky Mountains caught the sun with the sensual pride of a maiden showing off her charms, and I watched them roll past with pleasure, thinking that for the first time in a long time, I was doing something right.

  After a while, Faye switched seats with me so she could nurse the baby, and I put on the headphones and talked to Fritz. It was the kind of chat one gets into on long trips, and the headphones we wore added their odd form of intimacy. I got to asking about his child and his ex-wife. “Didn’t she like being a military wife?” I inquired. “I know it can be stressful.”

  “Like it?” He shook his head. “Being a military wife is what she wanted. Our marriage started to crumble when I left the military.”

  “I don’t understand. Usually it’s the other way around.”

  “She’s the daughter of a high-ranking officer,” he explained. “That’s why she’s been in Germany. Her dad’s over there.”

  “So she wanted you to make a career out of it, too.”

  “Yup-per …”

  This got my attention, because I was still trying to figure out how I felt about Jack’s return to active duty, not to mention why he was still a reservist after all these years. “But you trained in jets. That’s a big commitment. Didn’t you plan to stay in?”

  “Yes, that was the plan, as far as I’d thought it through.”

  “Then why’d you change your mind?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, I was flying in Desert Storm, the first Gulf War.”

  “And?”

  He didn’t answer.

  After half a minute, I said, “I’m sorry, this time I really am prying.”

  “No, it’s okay,” he said, though the look on his face suggested otherwise. “I need to talk about it. It’s just hard. The thing was, I did all that training to fly those jets, but it was because I wanted to fly. I never thought my skills would be needed, not really. I was pretty naïve, or selfish, or …”

  “So you didn’t want to fight. Or drop bombs. Or whatever it was.”

  He shook his head. “Oh, I thought I was good for it. You tell yourself that you’ll be able to do what’s asked of you if the time ever comes.”

  I noted that he had reflexively switched from “I” to the more impersonal “you,” an Americanism that pops up when a speaker wishes to distance himself from something that makes him nervous. “What happened? Did you refuse to fly?”

  “No.” He left that word hanging by itself for a while, and then added, “I flew out and dropped my bombs just as I had trained to do, and the automatic cameras took their pictures. Then, that evening, as my superiors were going over the tapes, I … realized … I mean, for the first time really understood, could really feel,”—he thumped his heart—“that it wasn’t all just a video game.”

  I glanced sideways at him. His grip on the control wheel had tightened to the point where his knuckles had blanched. “I admire that, Fritz. It must be a great temptation to rationalize it and feel nothing.”

  “Oh, I felt something all right.”

  I let him decide how much more he wanted to say.

  He took a deep breath, then said, “I went out the next day and did it again. And the next day and the next. I was lucky: Most of the time I was bombing places where there were no people. And then the war was over.

  “I don’t like war, Em. I don’t approve of it. I don’t see it as a solution. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I know there are times when it’s important to fight—but on reflection, I did not think this was one of them. But as soon as I started thinking that, I knew I wasn’t a soldier anymore.”

  “Perhaps that’s when you began being a warrior,” I said.

  He glanced my way, surprised. Then he smiled and shook his head. “I wish I could see it in those terms. Anyway, things were plenty clear to my wife. She’d signed up for a life as an officer’s wife, someone her dad could approve of, and here I was taking the exit into civilian life. Our marriage was doomed from there.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. Not anymore. It was hard to stay mad when I realized that I was the one who changed the agreement. I just hope she doesn’t find some poor sucker who wants her and my son to live on the other side of the globe.”

  “Got ya.”

  I let the subject drop. The plane cruised at two-hundred-twenty knots and we had about seventeen-hundred nautical miles to go, so with one refueling in Greenfield, Iowa (“It’s the cheapest avgas,” Fritz told me, to which I replied, “A man after my own heart”), and two hours’ time change, we were on the ground in Baltimore by the middle of the afternoon. Faye and Fritz seemed to have a nice chat as we tore along over the Great Plains into increasingly humid air, and she again took the controls while the baby slept peacefully in my arms. I watched as the ground turned from brown to green beneath us and lost the wrinkly hide of the Pennsylvanian Appalachians under a cloud cover. I knew we were approaching Baltimore only as I heard Fritz ask flight control for vectors so he could make his approach through the soup.

  Once on the ground, we loaded into three different rental cars that were waiting for us at the general aviation terminal, confirmed plans to meet on Friday morning for the flight home, and prepared to scurry off in our various directions.

  Fritz gave the baby a kiss and was the first to leave, citing a dinner meeting with one of his money people. For my part, scurrying off first involved helping Faye cinch the baby’s car seat into the center of the backseat of a midsized Chevy. Then I sat with the baby awhile while Faye heaved her various diaper bags and cold packs carrying juices and applesauce into the trunk.

  “Hey, little one,” I said, giving Sloane a finger on which to teethe. “Auntie Emmy’s gonna go do some work, but I’ll see you in five days. Four and a half, really. I’ll miss you more than you can imagine.” I bent forward and kissed her on the crown of her head.

  Faye climbed into the driver’s seat and indicated she was ready to go.

  “Do you want to give me a number where you’re staying?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know exactly where you guys’ll be … if you need me or anything.”

  Faye gave me an impatient sigh. “I have your cell number, and you have mine,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll be at the General Sutter Inn in Lititz.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “I thought you were going to Washington.”

  “I am, but my appointment’s not until Tuesday. I thought I’d use Monday to get a look at some of Tert’s family’s paintings.”

  Faye gave me a strange look. “Does Tert know about your plans?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure until recently what my timing was.”

  Faye stared at me.

  Okay, I thought, she doesn’t believe me. But it was sort of true. I got out of the car and watched them drive away. Then I climbed into my own rental car, which was shaped like a Kaiser roll and about the size of a tennis shoe, scanned the overly simplified map that had been given to me by the rental car agent, fired the ignition, and headed out into the murky air of the East.

  I had not been on the East Coast since my last two horrible years of high school, when my mother had insisted that I go east and “get an education.” I had gotten one all r
ight, but not the one she had expected. What I had learned was that I hated everything east of the Mississippi. Everything was the wrong colors, for one—green and brown instead of tan and yellow and red—and entirely too damp, not to mention overpopulated. There seemed to be about one hundred cars per square inch, and the roads were twisty even where there were no mountains to wind through. And all of this had somehow gotten much, much worse in the decades since I had gleefully escaped back to my beloved, dry, empty West.

  I jogged around Baltimore on the beltway, then headed northwest on Interstate 83. I rolled past turnoffs for suburbs for quite some miles before the countryside opened up into dense woodlands. At about the state line into Pennsylvania, it opened further into broad, sloping farmlands bordered by the brown fringes of trees not yet in bud. At York, I turned east onto Highway 30.

  It grew dark as I crossed the wide expanse of the Susquehanna River and entered Lancaster County. The highway unwound past brightly lit car dealerships and other eyesores. I wondered where the legendary Amish farmlands were. Just outside of Lancaster, I turned left on Route 501, the Lititz Pike, a narrow, two-lane road that rolled north through small towns and glimpses of cropland. I had chosen Lititz for two reasons: First, it was not far from Lancaster, and therefore presumably close to the Krehbeil family farm; and second, it offered a reasonably cheap place to stay.

  The General Sutter Inn proved to be an old brick hotel right smack at the center of town. And when I say old, I mean older than most any structure built by white folks anywhere in the West. The whole of Lititz fairly dripped with early-American cachet. I pulled my little car over at the curb, got out, and took my first lungful of Pennsylvanian air. It smelled of chocolate.

  I let myself into the lobby of the hotel. “Are we near the town of Hershey?” I inquired of the innkeeper. “I smell … ah …”

  She shook her head as she ran an impression of my credit card. “No, we got our own factory here in Lititz. Wilber Buds. Lots of chocolate factories in this county,” she informed me. “You’re in room three-ten, up two flights and around to the right.” She pointed to the ceiling and made a corkscrew gesture.

  I thanked her, hefted my duffel bag, and headed up the stairs. At the second landing, the decor turned from early American antique to garage-sale miscellaneous, and I began to inhale the bouquet of ancient carpeting. I unlocked the door to room 310, dropped my duffel onto the floor, and sat down on the bed. Loneliness descended upon me like cold mist.

  I rousted myself out for dinner at the café on the street level of the hotel, where I chomped down a hamburger and fries, but the meal hit my stomach like a rock and pulled me down. Everything seemed to be descending, most of all me.

  Back up in the room, I plugged the cell phone into the charging jack, shucked off my clothes, shrugged my way into a giant T-shirt that I wore as a nightgown, and slipped between the sheets. I lay staring into the darkness for about half an hour, listening to the odd car passing in the street below. Just as I was thinking of turning on the light and getting out my notes on pigments, the phone rang.

  It was Faye. She whispered, “Em, listen, you can’t go to the Krehbeil farm tomorrow, okay?”

  Okay? Then what am I doing here, collecting hotel ghosts? I sat up and turned on the light. I said, “Oh, so you’re visiting a relative, are you? Put Tert on the phone!”

  There was a muffled pause as Faye spoke to someone, her hand over the receiver. Then Tert’s voice came on the line. “Good evening, Em.”

  “Hi, Tert. Surprise, I’m in Lititz. I have a date to speak with a colleague at the Pennsylvania State Geologic Survey tomorrow to get data for my thesis project. And yes, I’d like to go to your mother’s to see the other paintings. Do you have a problem with that?” Even as I said it, I knew it sounded hopelessly combative.

  “In fact I do.” He kept his voice level, but crisply patrician and authoritative. “Your master’s thesis may be a matter of public record, but your errand for me is not.”

  “I thought your family knew all about this,” I said, Hector’s drunken voice echoing in my memory. I tried to keep my voice steady, but anger seeped into it. I had delayed telling him of my plans because I did not trust him, but I was not comforted to discover just how correct my assessment had been.

  “I do not wish my family to be consulted in this matter,” he said firmly.

  “But you said I could see the paintings,” I insisted.

  Silence.

  I calmed my voice as best I could and said, “They needn’t know that I have any connection with the painting in question. Faye can phone ahead of me, and present me as a friend of hers who is doing a paper for an art history course.”

  Cell phones can be damned hard instruments of communication. A lot of subtlety is lost, and sometimes it sounds like the connection is lost when it is not. I had been listening to blankness for several seconds when Faye’s voice came back on the line. She was seething mad. “How dare you pull this stunt?”

  “This stunt? You knew where I was going. And that’s why Tert knows. You told him.”

  I heard Faye tell Tert, “Give me a minute,” and then heard a door close. When Faye spoke to me next, she was so angry that she was stuttering. “I try to help you out by getting you a job, and what do you do? You fuck up my social life!”

  Help me out? Out what? Out the door? I loaded my heaviest round and fired. “Faye, what are you doing with a man who lies?”

  “What am I doing? Trying to have a life, Em. Because I haven’t had one lately, no thanks to your wonderful boyfriend.”

  “You blame Jack for Tom’s death?”

  “Would you rather I blame you? God, Em, he led Tom right into that bullet!” Her voice cracked with pain and rage as she added, “You should know, Em! You were there!”

  The line went dead.

  I wanted to say, I led him there. I wanted to say, I’m so sorry. I led Tom to his death, not Jack. Me. My cleverness. My detection of the point of danger. If I had been slower or stupider, Jack might have died instead.

  But Jack was alive, and gone, and Faye was a widow. And Sloane had no father. I hated war with all my heart and yet if it would bring Tom back, I would rip my heart from my chest with my own hands and lead the charge into battle naked.

  My ears rang with shock. It had never occurred to me that Faye would feel robbed of those last moments of Tom’s life. His death was hideous and still robbed me of sleep; why would she want that trauma? But to her, the scenario was different: He had died far away from her, with his ruined head cradled in someone else’s arms.

  I set the phone down very carefully, then turned out the light. I lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I did not bother to close my eyes. I knew I would not sleep.

  16

  AT DAWN, I GOT UP AND SHOWERED AND DRESSED AND PACKED MY duffel, then checked out of the General Sutter Inn. I did not know if I’d be staying another night in Pennsylvania, and I wanted the option of leaving. I did not know if I was still working for Tert Krehbeil, and I was not sure I cared, but I had cashed his check for three thousand and would continue to work until I had spent every penny of it, or until he said to quit. Life was too short to be bullied by one’s employer.

  I headed out in search of a shop that would sell me half a dozen glazed doughnuts and a pint of strong coffee. I was in major need of comfort food, and something that would prop open my eyelids.

  I was bone-aching tired. And I was deeply, dangerously angry. In the small hours of the night, I had reasoned the whole mess through one more time, and decided that I had not killed Tom, and neither had Jack. I had not twisted his arm or manipulated him. Tom went into the fight that had hastened his death out of an urge I could neither understand nor remedy. Nevertheless, I had helped Faye through the final weeks of her pregnancy and had nursed her and her child for almost eight long months afterward. I had done it because I felt guilty, yes, but more than that, I had done it because I loved her, and because I had also come to love he
r child.

  I had never admitted it to myself, but I had feared that, given the chance to become a mother, I would fail to care enough. Now I knew that I could, and did. I had never known I could love anyone as I loved that infant.

  And Faye had no right to accuse me of sabotaging her social life. In fact, I’d been trying to improve it.

  It was bitter icing on my cake of rage that Tert Krehbeil had so breezily promised access to artwork and never meant a word of it. I wanted to see Tert turn on a spit.

  I found a strip mall south of town and got what I was looking for, then consulted the local telephone directory. I opened to the K’s, and found several Krehbeils. One of them was in Elm, a woman named Deirdre, a name that sounded familiar. Had Hector mentioned a Deirdre? I thought back again to my conversation with him, trying to remember. Yes, something about a dynasty. A second number was for Hector himself, no address given, but the exchange listings in the front of the book suggested the number was in Mount Joy. The third number was for William Krehbeil II, also at the Elm address. Krehbeil Secundus. That must be Tert’s deceased father, and Tert’s mother has kept the number under his name. So, that means two things: Deirdre’s living at the farm and Tert’s full given name is William. Then, did Hector mean Tert when he said, “Precious Willie”? I brought up a mental image of the check Tert had written to pay my retainer. Had his name been on that check? No, it bore the name of his business, Krehbeil Gallery, Philadelphia; and his signature was illegible.

  I looked at my map. Elm was north of Lititz. Even at this county’s rate of travel—snail’s pace—I could be there within twenty minutes. I looked at my watch. It was just after seven.

  I was in such a nasty mood that I was inclined to screw Tert’s project—something I seemed to have a knack for, according to Faye and her social life—and instead just find out what in hell’s name was going on with his family. This information I would serve up to Faye on a platter. I would point out that one of them was a coldhearted liar and another was a drunk, and Faye would apologize to me. Simultaneously I suspected that I was just an overgrown adolescent who should apologize to her.