Hometown (2 page)

They exited somewhere in Missouri, nearly skidding off the ramp. Three cars had gone off. Border looked for stranded travelers, but saw only empty vehicles and snow.

“Maybe the war began, they dropped the bombs, and we’re the last ones left on earth,” he joked. His father didn’t smile. “Maybe the radiation is seeping down with the snow and destroying all life.”

“Why are
we
alive?” his father grumbled.

“We’re in a Volvo.”

They found a town with a motel. “Free breakfast,” Border read on the motel sign. He hoped for donuts.

They were given the last room. Could they share a bed? the clerk asked. Border grinned, his father nodded, the clerk took the credit card.

Border returned to the car to get their bags. He couldn’t even see across the parking lot, and snow blanketed the car hood. He wrote a message with his finger.

Storm lashes Border.

Snowbound with Snowbirds
—

They had a vending machine supper and then went to bed. His father slept while Border flipped channels. After midnight some of the movies got raunchy and Border watched, wondering. His father woke up briefly and looked at the screen.

“Turn it off,” he commanded before falling back asleep.

Border obeyed; he’d seen enough.

When he woke, he dressed with stealth and went to find the free breakfast. The lobby was crowded with old people.

One man waved an arm. “This way, son,” he called. “The food is over here.”

Trapped now. All eyes on him. Border fixed a smile on his face and wove through the crowd until he reached the small kitchen at the end of the lobby.

Donuts and bagels, juice and coffee. Border took some of everything and found a chair next to the gas fireplace. When he had a mouthful of bagel, his face was shadowed. He looked up and saw the friendly man who’d hailed him.

Border rose, balancing things, and offered the man his chair.

“Goodness no, son. I suppose this table can hold me. Sit back down and eat. John Farmer.”

Border tongued some cream cheese from behind a molar and let it slide down his throat before speaking. “Border Baker.”

“Great galumphing boy, aren’t you?”

This, Border decided, was one of those inane adult comments that required no response. He looked at his sneakers, size thirteen. He sipped juice.

John Farmer tried again. “Some storm, hey?”

Border sipped coffee.

“What I most want to know, son, is about your barber. Did he die on the job, or what?”

John Farmer got whacked on the shoulders.

A petite woman, with gray hair neatly knotted on the top of her head, winked at Border. “That’s what you do if he gets out of line.” She sat on the table next to Border’s inquisitor. “I’m Lil Devereaux.”

“Don’t be fooled, we’re married. Six weeks now. She just wouldn’t change her name.”

His mate stole his coffee cup. “And neither would you, Farmer.” They bantered on, touching each other gently.

“She’s an artist,” John Farmer said proudly. “A print-maker.”

“My mother’s an artist,” Border said.

“He speaks!” said John Farmer, earning another whack. Lil leaned forward. “What does she work in?”

They waited while he sipped more juice. “Performance.”

John emitted a gleeful noise. “Is she one of those women who goes naked on stage?”

Whack.

The husband turned to the wife. “If I kept doing that to you, there’d be cops and judges and restraining orders.”

“Then behave, Farmer, and I’ll stop it.”

“Nudity isn’t a big part of her work,” said Border, “but she’s done it.”

“Have you seen her do it, your own mother?”

“Twice.”

John Farmer frowned. “That can’t be healthy.”

Border brushed crumbs off his chest. “I’d be happy if you’d write her and tell her that, Mr. Farmer.”

“Just John, please. No one’s ever called me Mister. Colonel, maybe. U.S. Army, retired.”

“Is she a solo artist?” Lil asked.

Border nodded.

“What’s her name?”

“Diana Morrison. She toured with her last show. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”

Lil shook her head.

“During the day she’s a chemist.”

“Goodness,” said John Farmer. “What an interesting combination. Is she here? Where is she? I’d like to meet her.”

“No, she’s…” Whoa. In jail. “She’s in Santa Fe. My father and I are moving to Minnesota.”

The background noise was silenced when the front door opened and cold air and snow rolled in. The snow settled, revealing a motel employee carrying boxes of donuts. Two bags of oranges swung from his wrists.

“All the highways are closed, but Hinkley’s market was open and I cleaned it out!”

Cheers rose to such a level that Border doubted anyone could still be sleeping in the motel. He excused himself, rose, and filled his coffee cup, then circulated around the room offering refills. When he returned the empty pot to the warmer, he found John Farmer brewing more.

“See that man, the one with the thin mustache?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Call me John, or I’ll get my wife to wallop you. That man’s a barber, Border. He could finish the job.”

Border ran one hand along the shaved side of his head, while his other tucked shoulder length locks behind an ear.

“You’re moving to a new place, son. Might not be wise to make yourself an easy target. You can grow it back any way you want, after they get to know you.”

Border considered the wisdom of this while looking at the television. Most everyone was watching. Someone had found a remote and switched from Desert Shield news to Regis and Kathie Lee. Regis was terrorizing a guest chef. All the women giggled, and the men seemed to be drifting toward naps. Border felt John Farmer’s eyes on him.

“Morning, Border.” His father’s voice.

Border turned around and nodded, then resumed staring at the TV.

“Well, I’ll be whipped,” John Farmer said. “This is your father, I’ll bet.” He looked back and forth between father and son, measured the silence, and chuckled. “Good enough. We’ve got a long, snowy day ahead. Soon I’ll know the story.”

The Story
—

If I felt like it, Colonel John Farmer, I guess I could tell quite a tale.

Family stories go back too far to see, so I’d have to say ours began when he ran.

My father was only nineteen when he ran from the United States to Canada. It was 1970 and he had received his draft induction notice. Vietnam waited. But my dad looked into his soul, or into his gut, and decided he couldn’t do it. He stole money from his parents, stole his mother’s car, and left the country.

A draft dodger.

He made his way to Toronto where he found plenty of other dodgers and deserters.

Still want to smile at him? Clap your hand on his back?

He found my mother there, too. She’s from the U.S., but she had drifted into Canada, following a guy she thought she loved.

They met at a party back in 1973. One night in an apartment where dodgers were welcome to crash, someone spun out on bad acid. The trip got violent. Tables turned and glasses broke. People screamed and fled. My mother was unable to get out of the low sofa where she was nursing her baby, my half sister, Dana. She looked up into the mad face of the deranged deserter. She looked up at a knife.

It was my father who talked him down. In smooth, low tones, he brought the drug-bombed brain back to earth. He took the knife, handed it over to be put away, then took the man outside for a long walk and talk.

My mother remembered. And a month later when my father came looking for work at the bookstore she managed, she hired him, certain that he was a useful, reliable man.

They married twelve months later, after I was born.

Then, a succession of shared apartments with other dodgers and their women and kids. Jobs that never paid much. Toronto, my parents decided, was getting too hard on Americans. Too mean. They moved to Winnipeg and breathed easier on the plains.

Jimmy Carter became president down in the States and the first thing he did was pardon the draft dodgers. You can come home, he said.

My father couldn’t. His father had closed the door, hard and fast. My grandmother tried once, secretly, to whisper through to her son and grandson, to the girls she would’ve happily claimed as daughter and granddaughter. But the old man, a twice-wounded World War II veteran, proud, heaved his weight against that door. It stayed closed.

They lived in Minnesota. Detroit was almost a thousand miles away, and we went there. Dad went to school, became a nurse. My mother worked in bookstores, wrote and read her poems in coffeehouses. She took her turn at school, studied chemistry. She’s never considered herself a scientist, though, always a poet. Over the years her poems became longer, monologues. Her monologues became flamboyant, performance.

Soon, Detroit was too crowded for them. We moved to Montana, where it was easier to breathe in the mountains.

Then, Colorado. Then, New Mexico. Now, Minnesota.

He hasn’t been back in twenty years. Not even for his mother’s funeral four years ago, or for his father’s last summer. His old man died without a will so everything went to my dad and his brother. Maybe it was my grandfather’s way of saying, Come back.

Or, maybe, bad financial planning.

Either way, my dad now owns a fully furnished house in Red Cedar, Minnesota. And after years of dragging me around—two countries, six states, seven cities, and how many schools?—he’s been inspired to hold me prisoner and force-feed a hometown.

Haircut
—

By noon most everyone had migrated to the indoor pool. The water and lounge chairs were filled with bodies. Toneless wrinkled flesh, no shame.

Border sat on a stool in the middle of the lobby while the man with the thin mustache worked on his hair.

CNN droned on: “Border tension remains high…
”
Snip. Snip. Snip.

“Buzz the rest, please,” Border said to his personal barber. “Make it just like his,” and he pointed to Colonel John Farmer, retired.

Border’s father watched with a few others as his son’s hair fell onto the floor. He tugged on his gray ponytail. Mystified.

The Story, II
—

My name, that’s a story right there. And it’s one I’ve heard often enough.

No one knew what my father was going to do when he ran, back in ’70. He was alone and scared. He was breaking the law, breaking hearts.

“But the minute I crossed the border,” he always says when he tells the story, “I was safe and happy and certain I’d done the right thing. Just how I felt when I first held you.”

Sweet, Dad. Sweet.

Might have been worse, though. He could have named me for the border crossing, for the first solid ground of Canada. Might have called me, oh…Pigeon River.

Mozart and Midnight Oil
—

The barber refused money. “Happy to do it,” he said. “I wasn’t going anywhere.” He flipped a hand at the lobby window. Snow fell relentlessly.

Still, it wasn’t blowing so much, and a large group decided to walk three blocks to a restaurant. Everyone was tired of donuts. Border’s father went along and brought back three grilled cheese sandwiches for his son.

Border took the sandwiches to their room. While he ate he decided to call his mother. Time to check in, but where would she be? At work or in jail?

“She’s home sick,” said her lab assistant.

“Not in jail?”

“I guess she never made it to the protest. She woke up that morning with a raging fever and a terrible sore throat.”

“There’s a virus stronger than her convictions?”

“Don’t say that to her,” the assistant cautioned.

He decided against calling her at home. She’d be bummed about missing the protest and, besides, she got really grumpy when sick.

Border watched television, then fell asleep. He woke up hungry and left the room to find food. Bagels and juice would do.

Late afternoon—no one in the pool, but the lobby was crowded. Right away Border could tell that people were tired of each other.

News from the Gulf didn’t help. People argued—men with men, women with women, Border noticed, wondering about that. Colonel John Farmer was especially angry.

“No guns for oil,” he said.

Border grinned. He’d heard that often enough. “Don’t you think we should start a war with Saddam?”

Lil smiled.

John scowled. “I’m a soldier, Border, and a soldier obeys his commander. If our country goes to war, I will support it. And you have to admit, Saddam is one crazy tyrant. If we don’t stop him…” He shook his head. “It was so clear, so
clear,
back in forty-one.”

When the arguing threatened to get personal, Border slipped away to his room and returned with his recorder. He started playing softly in the corner by the coffee pot. At first only Lil listened, but as soon as John Farmer heard the music he bellowed a command for silence, and Border had everyone’s attention. He played beautifully, he always did. Practically a prodigy, he thought as his fingers tapped along the sleek wooden stem.

The crowd favorite was “Red Sails in the Sunset”—his Midnight Oil medley, not the old ballad, though he played that too. Then he played his own Mozart arrangements, wishing all the while he dared put out his hat for contributions. A crowd like this would be good for forty, fifty bucks. Better than a crowd of tourists in Old Town.