And the Dark Sacred Night (12 page)

Kit still carries Jasper’s name, whatever that’s worth. But the boy’s mother did a job on Jasper. “A snow job and an ax job, neatly rolled into one,” declared Rayburn, Jasper’s best friend. Poor Kit was caught in the middle, and with the intuition of a Sensitive Guy (this was how Jasper thought of young Kit, not a scrap of disrespect intended), he clearly understood the damage his mother had wrought. Jasper remembers hearing about Daphne’s pregnancy with his replacement, barely a blink after hearing about the marriage. Had to get the withering news from poor Kit, who was visiting Jasper for a week at the start of his first college summer, en route from Wisconsin to a job at a museum in Boston. Christ: the look on that boy’s face as he explained
how he’d argued with himself for the whole drive east whether Jasper needed to know. Of course he needed to know, Jasper told him; even thanked the boy. They left it there, end of pathetic story. (Or the end of it as shared by them.)

Through the rest of his time at college, Kit came back to visit Jasper for a week or so each summer, till he went off to graduate school in California. Then he wrote a postcard every so often, cards with pictures of Indian masks, beaded relics, totem poles, these things he claimed to be “studying.” One day, Jasper opened a thick blue envelope, his name in a handwriting delicate and foreign, and pulled out a wedding invitation. Along with the card linking the name of the lucky, hopeful young woman with his, Kit had enclosed a note. He couldn’t wait to introduce Jasper to Sandra, but Oregon was clearly a long, expensive haul from Vermont, so Kit would understand perfectly if Jasper chose to decline. And it would be a
small
wedding, the boy just happened to mention.…

Small. Code for awkward up the wazoo and beyond. How infuriating to find that Daphne could wound him all over again, even from a distance of years and miles, from across the border between their sister states. (In some ways, she’d never fully traversed that border, had she?)

So Jasper met Sandra a year later, when she and Kit were driving to Maine for a summer vacation. A pillar of a woman, handsome as a Greek statue, meet-your-eyes-every-minute direct in her manner. The sort who might wrestle your arm to the table, then help you kindly into the sling.

He answered Kit’s e-mail right away, not wanting to dither or brood.
Sure thing. Come anytime. Do expect to work however. I’ll take you up on that offer
.

The computer made its pneumatic Ricochet Rabbit noise:
SENT!

He called the best man from the rich boy’s wedding party, left a message with the numbers for two other dogsledding outfits, promised the refund on the deposit. He put off the call to Jim. He’d have to say he was sorry to withdraw the few hours of work that gig had meant (never mind the kind of tip those trust-fund boys were taught to leave): no chump change to Jim, a guy with three little kids and no prospects of a regular job. Last week he confided to Jasper that he was thinking of enlisting. God help these young people over at that
jackassed conundrum of a war. Though maybe his son Kyle should have joined up years ago; maybe he’d have been shaken straight, scared clean once and for all. Or maybe not, maybe the reverse. You read about all the suicides of the boys returning home. Such a befuddling mess. On the way to the clinic with Pluto, Jasper had passed two young bucks in desert camo smoking outside a narrow saloon, the kind without windows, wedged between two sad-sack storefronts that might or might not have tenants. They looked unsteady, rootless, antsy for a brawl. Well, who was Jasper to judge from a glance—judge at all? Kyle was twice the age of those fellows, wasn’t he? And maybe their futures were brighter than his.

So now Jasper stands between the rupture to his house and the toppled tree, contemplating both. Here’s a mess that can be handled, has a tidy end in sight. For starters, hire Jim to cut up the tree. Jasper knows enough not to handle a chain saw at his age. Okay then, two problems solved as one. The call to Jim will be a good-news-with-the-bad.

But the repair of the house. Well, he thinks, let’s hope that boy Kit (though he isn’t in earshot of boyhood anymore, is he?) means what he says about pitching in. Despite all his soft bookish years in the Jersey suburbs, maybe he still knows how to handle a hammer and saw. As a teenager, he wasn’t half bad.

Jasper looks at the sky, blue as blue can ever be. “You up yonder there. How about a fourth surprise? Snow the first week of November, that too much to ask? Just gimme ten inches.”

Quoth the actress to the bishop
, Rayburn would have quipped.

Christ does he ever miss Rayburn.

As Kit stands in the kitchen gushing on about how good it feels to be there, how Jasper hasn’t changed a bit, how he’s glad to see the dogs are still in the picture—and wow, so many!—Jasper tries to unite the jittery middle-aged man before him with his memories of the boy, even the younger man. Last time they faced each other, Kit was new to fatherhood, taking a detour en route to Christmas with his mother.

His hair is still Daphne’s, still blond and curly though thinner, fogged with gray. He wears brittle wire-frame specs that do little
to hide the fatigue laying claim to his eyes. But he’s still fairly slim, maybe still in shape despite the scholar’s life. (Probably frequents some gym in a strip mall.) Jasper notes the barely scuffed work boots, the good intentions (and lack of use) they show.

“Hungry?”

“Sure.” Kit offers eagerly, “I’m up for cooking.”

“No need. Chicken’s in the oven.”

“Chicken’s great.”

“Chicken and potatoes. Nothing out of the ordinary here. You remember.”

“I always liked your meals.”

“Short on green, that’s why.” Jasper puts away the few dishes in the rack by the sink. He doesn’t bother with the dishwasher anymore, except when Rory comes with his kids in tow. In other words, once in a polka-dot moon.

“Take either bedroom. Big one’s warmer, but maybe you want your old lair up top. Sheets in the bathroom closet.”

“I know where everything is.” Kit laughs. “Well, I used to.”

“Unpack, have a shower. Water still takes its own blessed time getting hot. Dinner in half an hour, that good?”

“That’s perfect.” Kit lingers, his eyes moist behind the glint of his lenses, his hands seemingly trapped in the pockets of his jeans (urban issue, same as the boots). They hadn’t hugged when Kit arrived; is he waiting for a gesture like that?

Jasper moves toward his former stepson and puts a hand on one of his shoulders. “Christopher, I’m glad to see you. Glad to have you here. I am. And I’ll make good use of you, too. No idle warning.”

“Bring it on.” Kit looks grateful, anxious to please.

They smile stiffly at each other for a moment, then Kit pulls a phone from his pocket. “Just let everybody know I arrived.”

Jasper points at the phone on the wall. “Best resort to prehistoric connections. Reception here’s spotty at best. Outdoors if you’re lucky. Give ’em my number as the way to reach you.”

“Later’s fine.” Kit pulls his suitcase toward the stairs. Hard to tell, though it’s fairly small, how long a “visit” the boy has in mind. Does it matter? Jasper may take pride in self-sufficiency, but he likes company, too. This arrangement will be better, far less difficult, than Kyle’s random drop-ins. As if to grasp for an antidote, he glances at
the latest picture of Rory’s little clan, magnetized to the door of the fridge. Rory’s golden wife, two golden girls, a boy like the proverbial cherry on the sundae, spoiled sweet by all concerned.

At least one child turned out happy, one out of two.

And Kit, does he count as maybe half a child to Jasper? And is he happy—maybe half happy? Jasper has a hunch he’ll be finding out the answer to that one.

The upstairs shower goes on, the pipes thudding briefly in protest. Everything in the house is deferring to gravity in brand-new, unsettling ways. Awakened at dawn that morning, his room glowing a lurid blue as sunlight hit the tarp, Jasper noticed that one of the beams above him was starting to bow, ever so slightly. Too much heavy snow on the roof this winter and it will crack. But then again, too much snow—business thrives on that. Rory tells Jasper he’s too old to keep up a house like this. Had the balls to suggest that Jasper move into one of those condos near the slopes, the units that look like ice-cube trays.

When Kit comes down, yet again he stands uncertainly beside the table, now set for two.

“See I forgot something,” says Jasper. “You’re hoping for a beer or an honest-to-God drink. I been warned off that habit by my doctors. And then I’m afraid there’s Kyle. Here’s a story you don’t know, and I wish I didn’t have to tell you. I’ll give it to you in a thimble—or should I say a shot glass. Kyle’s had what they call substance issues. Shows up here, time to time, no warning, so I don’t run the risk of temptation any longer. He’s been on the wagon a good few months—last report, at least—and once again I got my fingers crossed. But pick up a case or a bottle tomorrow, go right ahead. Don’t mean to be inhospitable. ’Specially if I’m putting you to work.”

“No!” says Kit. “I’m fine with coffee. Water. I mean, I’m sorry about Kyle. I had no idea. The last I knew, he was going back to finish college.”

Jasper laughs. “That was a good dog or three ago. And he did, you know? He did finish. Even had a good job for a stretch. Real estate. Which is a no-brainer business in these parts. Or was until recently.”

Kit looks miserable, poster child for foot-in-mouth.

“Sit,” Jasper says. “I’ll wait on you tonight. Tomorrow, your turn. Freezer’s full of meat and make-believe ice cream. I am pathetically
dependent on soybeans masquerading as pleasures I once took for granted.”

Kit takes his place. “The chicken smells amazing.”

“I’d be a dunderhead not to have that one down cold. How many chickens’ve I roasted by now?”

Roast chicken, baked potatoes with pretend butter, forget gravy (for which Jasper has found no decent consolation). Quarter heads of iceberg lettuce. Fat-free dressing with Paul Newman’s mug on the label, its texture disturbingly akin to mucus.

“Tell me about Rory,” says Kit. “Where’s Rory these days?”

Jasper tells the easy story about his older son. The only hard part is that he chose to stay out west after meeting Kim at that sports-gear company in Boulder. In a previous era, he’d be the son to take over his father’s business. In the current era, he has the once-you’ve-skied-out-west-no-turning-back excuse not to do so. (Not like Kim has family there; she’s from Minnesota.) Easy to see, when Rory brings the family out, that Kim and the oldest girl are mildly bored with even the double-diamond runs on the mountains hereabouts. Rather than condescend to these lesser slopes, they take to cross-country, tolerating its tamer pleasures. “Sort of like,” he tells Kit, “if you can’t have the very best steak, you’ll take the meat loaf. When I’m feeling sorry for myself, I try to figure out what I might’ve done different. As if it’s personal, his making a life so far away.”

“I always thought you were a great dad,” says Kit.

“I was around the place some. That’s nine-tenths of it, I think. Being present when needed.” He sighs. “It’s how the planet spins these days. Families splinter apart and spread. Bounce around like beads of mercury. Probably good for the master gene pool, in the scheme of things. Hybrid vigor.”

Kit asks about the business. Jasper tells him about moving the shop from the village to the slope, his bargain with the particular devil who came north from Atlanta to buy up a mountain or two. “They’re always getting us back for that war. One day I expect to find a Confederate flag flying from the lodge.”

Kit nods and laughs. “Oh, I had a colleague like that from Charleston. He hummed while grading papers. ‘Swanee River,’ I am not kidding.”

Jasper finds himself gratified to describe to a sympathetic outsider the ups and downs of recent winters, the influx of yoga-minded folks who show up in slinky outfits to commune with the “spirit of place” or restore their chakras.

“First time I heard that word, I took it to be the national currency of Tibet,” says Jasper. “Frankly, I don’t lead too many hiking trips these days. Today’s small talk is a foreign language to me. Hired some Bennington grads who riff that woowoo jazz like Miles Davis. I still do the sledding runs, though. The day I stop working the dogs is a sorry day indeed.” He thinks briefly, mournfully, of Pluto. The other dogs clearly miss him. Against common sense, Jasper could swear they regard him with a suspicious, quizzical look every time he goes out to the kennel now.
Where’d you hide our leader?

Maybe he should breed Trixie the next time she comes in heat. If the litter’s a good size, he can make a couple thousand selling the extra pups as pets.

Between them, they finish off the chicken and the potatoes; normally, Jasper gets two meals from one. Kit offers to wash up. Jasper goes into the living room and turns on the TV. When Kit joins him, he’s looking at the forecast, searching the televised map for dandruff, a cloud of graphic snowflakes. Lucky stiffs, out there in northern Idaho.

“Where’s your weather radio?” asks Kit.

“Now that’s
Flintstones
technology. Please! These days I have a ‘snow alert’ on my computer. When there’s even a whiff of snow in the forecast, it makes a goofy twinkling sound, what the computer folks imagine a shattering icicle sounds like. Or a snow fairy spreading her pixie dust. Gives me a start every time. Like something delicate fell off a shelf.” He gestures around the room, at its few shelves of dusty objects: Rory’s and Kyle’s ski trophies, a Coleman lantern, a few paperback mysteries. “See anything delicate round here?”

“Other than me?” says Kit.

They laugh.

“We’ll just see about that, won’t we?” Jasper clicks through the channels. “I think that detective woman’s on now. The daughter of the actress beheaded by a truck. Jayne Mansfield. Why do I remember her name quicker than the names of my grandkids?”

“Memory’s mysterious that way, isn’t it?”

“More like fickle. Devious.” Jasper thinks of Rayburn, which hurts worse than thinking of Pluto. Sometimes he forgets that Rayburn isn’t dead, but pretty soon he may be worse than dead: alive but totally absent. Not yet, however, and Jasper is overdue to pay his friend a proper visit.