The Qualities of Wood Read online

  Mrs Brodie regained her footing, and the sheriff let go.

  ‘Like I mentioned,’ he told her, ‘Mrs Gardiner and her husband are staying in Betty Gardiner’s place for a while.’

  Mrs Brodie smoothed her green sweater. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ Tears flooded her eyes. Her eyelashes left brushstrokes of mascara on her skin.

  Mr Stokes pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and stepped across the short distance to hand it to her.

  The policemen took Mrs Brodie to the edge of the trees. In their tan uniforms, they blended immediately into the background; only Mrs Brodie’s vibrant sweater, an unnatural green, was visible as they weaved in and out of the tree trunks.

  Soon, Vivian and Mr Stokes could see nothing. ‘How far back did they find her?’ She asked him.

  ‘Not too far. About half-way between the end of my property and where you were a minute ago.’

  ‘I don’t know where the property lines are,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you though?’ Mr Stokes’s eyes seemed to taunt her, like the evening they met.

  She felt defensive. ‘No, I really don’t. How far would you say it is?’

  He opened his mouth then closed it. She realized she may have misjudged him. He had no reason to accuse her of anything.

  Mr Stokes rubbed his chin. His rust-colored shirt was tucked into a loose-fitting pair of jeans. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbow and the top button was undone. Perspiration dotted his brow and moistened the chest hairs that poked through the shirt. He appeared to be about forty-five, older than she had originally thought. He had a well-used, tanned face with deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and creases in his forehead. The day was hot, but Vivian couldn’t imagine that he ever wore shorts or short-sleeved shirts. He was just one of those types of men, old-fashioned and modest.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry if I barked at you. I was flustered when I saw you in the woods.’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t walk around back there by yourself.’

  ‘I don’t see any reason why not,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘Not just ’cause of the Brodie girl. It’s easy to get lost when you’re not used to the area. All those trees start to look the same. Maybe it’s not someplace you’d get lost for days, but you sure could spend most of an afternoon wandering around in there. We’re the biggest animals around here, but there are raccoons and good-sized squirrels that might scare you.’

  ‘I’ve seen squirrels before,’ Vivian said. ‘They don’t scare me.’

  Mr Stokes grinned, revealing hidden laugh lines and straight, clean teeth. ‘No, I don’t suppose they do. I didn’t mean to tell you your business. That other fella at your place didn’t like me telling him what to do either.’

  ‘What other fellow?’

  ‘A few weeks ago. Tall, strapping guy?’

  ‘Oh, Lonnie.’

  ‘I saw him back there a couple of times, walking around. One night there was smoke coming up through the trees, so I came over to make sure everything was all right. He was cooking a pie or something, down in the ground.’

  ‘Apple cobbler,’ she said.

  ‘A real outdoorsman,’ Mr Stokes said, and Vivian couldn’t tell how he meant it.

  Lonnie had a rough, natural quality; at least to her, he seemed more at home outside. His career choice in construction attested to this, as did his hobbies: hunting, fishing, camping. How the two brothers grew up so differently was difficult to say. Vivian wasn’t much for nature, either. After eloping to Reno, Lonnie and his wife pitched a tent in the mountains for a week, which wasn’t her idea of a honeymoon at all. Grandma Gardiner’s house, surrounded by trees, tall grass and birdsong, was as close to nature as she ever wanted to get.

  ‘Nice fella,’ Mr Stokes added. The sun highlighted the white amidst his dark hair.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘When?’

  ‘You said that he didn’t like it when you told him what to do.’

  ‘Oh.’ He chuckled. ‘I did my Smokey the Bear impression, about starting fires in the woods.’

  Vivian laughed.

  ‘Mrs Gardiner,’ he said, meeting her eyes. ‘Do you suppose you could do me a favour?’

  Vivian felt a churning in her stomach, a slight warning. ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘Just call me Abe, that’s all. Everyone in this town calls me Mr and it makes me feel awful old.’ He looked down, kicked at the dirt almost shyly. ‘I think it’s because my father insisted on it for himself. But I’m not my father.’

  She smiled, relieved. ‘Only if you’ll call me Vivian.’

  Mrs Brodie returned, the sheriff leading her by the elbow. Her face was pale, but she held herself erect and walked with recovered confidence, a comfortable awareness of her body that Vivian envied.

  Mr Stokes said goodbyes and headed home beyond the tree line. Vivian walked Mrs Brodie and the police to the driveway.

  ‘Damn car is covered with dust from that road work,’ the sheriff said. ‘But it’s about time we got some civilization around here. You’d think we’re in the backwoods, the way the county doles out money.’

  Mrs Brodie reached out and clasped Vivian’s hand. ‘Thanks for letting us on your land.’

  ‘It’s not my…’ Vivian started, but stopped. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, and that seemed wrong too.

  ‘We’ll meet again, when this is, well, at a better time,’ Mrs Brodie said. Daintily, she reached for Sheriff Townsend’s arm.

  The police car drove slowly over the packed dirt of the road and headed toward town. Vivian picked up the mail from the porch and looked through it. An assortment of advertisements, an electricity bill, a letter from Nowell’s agent. The road crew’s machinery was abandoned on the embankment. The dirt road was even and smooth, ready for asphalt in the morning.

  Nowell was standing in the kitchen when she got to the door. ‘Where were you?’ he called through the screen. ‘Did you see the sheriff?’

  ‘Yeah. And the deputy, and that girl’s mother.’

  ‘What happened?’ He pushed the door open.

  She walked under his outstretched arm into the kitchen. ‘Nothing, really. Mrs Brodie almost passed out when she saw me coming out of the woods.’

  ‘The woods? What were you doing back there?’

  ‘I went for a walk.’

  ‘I don’t know if you should be back there, Viv.’

  ‘Why not?’ She spun around. ‘Doesn’t anyone read the newspaper around here? What happened to that girl was an accident.’

  ‘You don’t know your way around.’

  ‘It’s not the forest,’ she said, ‘and I’m not a child.’

  ‘Alright, alright.’ Nowell put his hands up in surrender. ‘What happened with the sheriff?’

  ‘Mrs Brodie wanted to see the spot where they found her. I talked to Mr Stokes while they went back.’

  ‘Mr Stokes?’

  ‘You remember, our neighbor?’

  Nowell nodded. ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The sheriff.’

  ‘About what?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, whether they’d be coming back. I thought that was important to you, his future contacts.’

  ‘I think it’s over now,’ she said.

  Nowell took a drink from a bottle of juice and it dribbled down the side of his mouth. He cursed and swiped his hand across his face, then pushed past her into his study. Sometimes, he just seemed to shut down, to leave the conversation without any notice. His moods fluctuated without warning. An artistic temperament, she told herself.

  She thought about what Mr Stokes said about Lonnie, about him being an outdoorsman. Nowell and Lonnie were almost the same height and both had the wide brown eyes of their mother. Certain parts of their faces were similar: the curve of the jawbone, the high square forehead, and they had the same shade of dark brown hair. With beards, they looked less alike. Nowell’s had a
reddish hue while Lonnie’s matched his hair exactly, dark and thick. And Lonnie was heavier than Nowell, more muscular from physical work and fleshier because of his appetites.

  Vivian often felt sorry for Lonnie. He couldn’t seem to get anything right in his life and he continually spurned the efforts of the one person who had always tried to protect him, Nowell. Lonnie called his brother ‘Number One,’ because Nowell was born first, but also to imply that he was favored in the family. Sometimes Nowell wouldn’t hear from Lonnie for months at a time. He faded in and out of their lives.

  When Nowell was born, his father Sherman went to a bar and drank until he passed out. The bar was full of people whose loved ones were in the hospital, and Sherman’s news was rare and joyous. They plied him with scotch-and-sodas until his forehead hit the oak table. Sherman’s father-in-law came and took him home, and his hangover lasted until two days later, when he drove his wife and the squalling baby home. Nowell’s mother said that despite how lousy he felt, Sherman passed around cigars and toasted with seltzer water. She could put a favorable light on anything related to her husband or sons. Nowell would always say that he couldn’t picture his dad getting drunk like that, and Beverly would explain that he was too polite to refuse the drinks everyone sent over. She liked telling the story of Nowell’s birth. She and Sherman were in their mid-thirties when they started a family. After Nowell, Lonnie followed, thirteen months later. The story of Lonnie’s birth was mostly a litany of complaints about how late he was in coming, and how much Beverly had been suffering through the surprise pregnancy with her swollen ankles, sore back, and a heavy toddler.

  Sherman spent the early years of their marriage building his appliance repair business. He started out with a truck and a tool set and finished with a partner, twelve employees and a fleet of six vans. Nowell said that his father didn’t care that neither of his sons wanted to be involved with the business. Vivian suspected that from Nowell, Sherman expected greater things, and he didn’t think Lonnie capable. Because Sherman died suddenly of a heart attack earlier in the same year that she met Nowell, Vivian never met him.

  Lonnie had a certain wariness, like something freed from a trap. But he could also be reckless, with no regard for authority. The first time Vivian met Lonnie, he was unemployed and living with his mother again after a few years out on his own. She didn’t know then that these ups and downs were the normal circumstance of his life. In the past six years since Vivian met Nowell, Lonnie had moved back home twice, changed jobs at least six or seven times, and more recently, married on impulse. The last time they saw him was at Beverly’s house, over a year ago.

  They were having a weekend visit. Lonnie arrived unexpectedly at six a.m. He threw open the door to the guest room and woke them up, threatening to cannonball onto the bed between them.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Nowell warned.

  ‘Alright, but get up already. Me and Ma have been awake for hours.’

  ‘When did you get here?’

  ‘Around three.’ Lonnie stood in the doorway, filling it almost, his face spread into a wide, expectant grin.

  Nowell rubbed his eyes. ‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’

  ‘Come on, you know it’s not my nature to be tired.’

  Nowell laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Hey, Number One, I think your wife is dead. Vivian? How can you sleep like that, so straight? You look like a corpse.’

  ‘Very easily when people aren’t yelling,’ she told him.

  ‘Right.’ He put his finger over his lips and backed up. Nowell threw his pillow, barely missing Lonnie as he closed the door.

  They played Hearts that day, the two brothers against Vivian and Beverly. Vivian and Nowell had a policy not to play cards as a team if they could help it. They each had different reasons: Nowell because he thought her playing inferior and Vivian because she didn’t want him bullying her. They both said it was to prevent arguments, which was, generally speaking, the truth. In the afternoon, the brothers went out for a while and Vivian and Beverly watched a movie on television then started making dinner.

  Lonnie and Nowell returned after six-thirty, high-spirited and smelling of liquor.

  ‘Hitting the bars so early?’ Beverly asked.

  Nowell smiled. ‘They’re open all day.’

  ‘Looks like you both could use some dinner.’ She pointed to the table and said, ‘Sit.’

  As they ate, Vivian and Beverly couldn’t help being influenced by their good humor. Nowell told a story about the skinny kid who broke Lonnie’s collarbone when he was twelve. The crux of the story was amazement that such a small boy could have done injury to the mighty Lonnie, who was stocky and tall even then. Nowell described the boy to them as mere skin and bones, a wiry nine-year-old who collided with Lonnie during a game of street baseball. ‘He rounded second and ran smack into him at shortstop.’ He turned to Lonnie. ‘He got a home run off your team, didn’t he?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘You know, you just don’t want to remember.’

  They laughed for some time at Lonnie’s unease, expecting a reciprocal story from him, an attempt to embarrass Nowell. But he just grinned. It wasn’t until Nowell fell asleep early and Beverly turned in as well that Lonnie’s mood began to darken. He said he was going to visit an old friend. Vivian suspected that he returned to the bar. When he got back, she was watching television in the darkened living room. Nowell and his mother had gone to bed.

  Lonnie sat on the couch and kicked his shoes onto the floor. ‘What are you watching?’

  ‘Some old movie. How was your friend?’

  ‘Fine, everything’s fine.’ His eyes were watery in the greenish light of the television, his face blurred in the dimness.

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Nowell’s a good guy,’ Lonnie said.

  ‘What?’ She glanced at him, noticed his intent look.

  ‘He’s smart and talented, Dad always said.’

  ‘Hey, Lonnie, I was going to make some coffee. Do you want some?’ She got up from her armchair and started to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the couch.

  ‘You know that, don’t you Vivian? He’s got everything, always has.’ His face was close to hers, his breath heavy with liquor.

  ‘Lonnie, let go.’ She tried to pull her arm away and stand up, but he grabbed her around the waist with his other hand.

  ‘You know what he doesn’t have? Honesty. He’s dishonest to himself. He doesn’t see things that are right in front of his eyes. I’m not like that, and I don’t think you are either.’

  ‘Let me go,’ she said again, and her voice was menacing enough that he released her.

  ‘You’ve dealt with guys like me before, right Vivian? Look, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just trying to tell you, he needs help.’

  ‘Nowell needs help?’ She stepped away from him. It was such a waste, she thought, his continual running and running and never getting anywhere. Her legs shook but before she left the room, she managed to say in a steady voice: ‘Take another look, Lonnie.’

  In that way, maybe the brothers were alike. Mood shifts, inexplicable moments of barely constrained something. It was something she had to live with, but she didn’t have to acknowledge it. She picked up the letter from Nowell’s agent and stepped down into his study.

  11

  Nowell was quiet as he read the letter from his agent.

  ‘What does Dani have to say?’ Vivian asked.

  ‘Nothing much. She sent me a copy of the magazine ad.’ He dropped a paper onto the kitchen table.

  ‘For your book? Let me see.’ Vivian looked at the advertisement, which was less than two inches square and printed along the side of a page. The title, Random Victim, arched across the top in vivid, wavering letters, like a scream.

  Nowell hadn’t been allowed much input on the cover. Dani had chosen an impressionistic drawing of a dark, menacing figure with large, shadowed eyes. Swirling black clouds hovered
over his head. The image was made up of thousands of tiny dots, like the photo of her mother in the writing workshop brochure.

  Vivian sat on Nowell’s lap. ‘It’s a great ad,’ she said. ‘I’m glad she got them to put some more effort into marketing it.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’ll matter,’ Nowell said. ‘It’s been out for quite a while.’

  ‘Did you get any work done today?’ Vivian asked.

  ‘Some. The phone kept ringing while you were out. I have to tell you something and I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

  She leaned back to see him more clearly. ‘What?’

  ‘I have to drive over to my mom’s. I’m meeting with her lawyer the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know you have to go.’

  ‘I’ll leave tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I should be back the day after by seven or eight o’clock.’

  ‘At night?’

  He nodded. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go with me?’

  Vivian stood up. ‘No, I’ve got plenty to do around here. How about sandwiches for dinner tonight?’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  In the refrigerator she found a loaf of the deli bread and a package of sliced ham. They also had some leftover potato salad and peach pie for dessert.

  Nowell came into the kitchen. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind staying out here alone? I hadn’t thought about the fact that you won’t have a car. It’s a long drive, but I don’t think we should spend money on airfare.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I can call Katherine if I need anything.’

  ‘My mom’s not going to be around much while I’m there. She’s gotten herself involved with another function at the church, a summer barbecue or something. My dad used to say she lets people bully her into doing all the work. I think he was right. Don’t you remember that situation with that woman, what was her name?’

  ‘Nona.’

  ‘Yes, Nona. My mom met her at some card club and the next thing you know, she’s moving into Lonnie’s old room with her kid.’