The Great Forgetting (3 page)

“Wonder what?”

“Well, if anything we remember is real. We. Us. Our parents. Their parents. I mean, if memory can be screwed up just by asking questions a certain way, how can we be sure anything we remember is true?”

“You lost me.”

Tony looked off, over Jack's shoulder. “Sometimes I get the feeling none of this is right.”

“None of what is right?”

He leaned in closer to Jack and whispered, “Haven't you ever noticed how old Berlin Reservoir seems to be?”

“What?”

“Berlin Reservoir. All those stone walls. It looks ancient. But it was supposedly built in the fifties. Doesn't everything seem so much older than it's supposed to be?”

“I don't know.”

Tony shrugged. “It's always creeped me out, that reservoir. Whatever. The thing is, memory is about trust. We have to trust that what we remember is fact. And we have to trust what other people remember for things we never saw. Like when Berlin Reservoir was built. It's creepy when you think about it.”

It
was
creepy when you thought about it, Jack realized. That night he thought about it a lot. It was a disturbing and thrilling realization, that our grasp of the truth is dependent on the honesty of older generations, on the companies who write history books. To Jack, it felt like the first Big Idea, the first adult thought he'd ever had. He felt a gratitude for Tony. For sharing such a grown-up thought and thinking he was worthy of such sharing.

From that night on they spoke of Big Ideas before every scout meeting. They exchanged numbers—back then all of Franklin Mills had the same prefix, so you had to remember only four—and talked about their Big Ideas on the phone. It was a different friendship. This wasn't kid stuff. This wasn't about getting together and playing baseball. This was important. And Tony had found him worthy. And for that, yes, he loved him right away.

6
    The juke was playing “Gimme Three Steps” when Jack walked into the Driftwood, Skynyrd thrumming from tinny speakers that made the band sound older than they were. The cagey air smelled of stale popcorn and yeast, the beginnings of a party that promised to go nowhere. At the back, a lanky guy in a frayed Indians cap leaned over the pool table. A younger man stood by him, arm propped on a cue. Next to the bar was a row of lacquered booths nudged out of alignment. A middle-aged couple sat on the same side of a table, nursing bottles of Red Stripe. A gargantuan fellow in bib overalls perched on a stool at the bar, watching a flatscreen. Jack took a seat at the other end and set his wallet on the counter. A young woman slid out of the kitchen and ambled over. She had dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Under her left eye was a wide scar and she did nothing to hide it.

“Hiya,” she said.

“Dortmunder?” he asked.

“Tall?”

He nodded and handed her his credit card. He felt a little shiver in his chest, his body anticipating the hoppy beer. It had been a long drought. Hard to drink when you have 180 students to keep tabs on. Had been for him, anyway. Some teachers all they could do was drink to get through a day.

The young woman returned with his beer. Jack sipped it and watched the television across from him, which showed images of the smoking crater outside St. Louis.

“Where the fuck are you, Leroy? I'm at the rookery, numbnuts. I'm not going to fight these whelps alone!”

The loud voice startled Jack. For a second he thought the large man at the bar was speaking to him. But the man was staring at the other TV. It showed a computer-generated hillside and a character in Viking armor waiting outside tall wooden doors set into a mountainside. The man playing the video game looked strikingly similar to his on-screen avatar, down to the curly red beard that reached to his chest. He wore a Bluetooth and held a gray controller in his hand.

When another character (this one a spindly wizard) appeared on-screen, the man sighed with relief. “I see you. I don't care what you had in the microwave. You gotta tell me when you walk away.” Suddenly the Viking character rushed inside the cave, where he and Leroy were quickly consumed by a swarm of flying baby dragons. “Fuckers!” the man shouted at the screen. He pulled out his Bluetooth and tossed it onto the bar. “Maiden!” he called. “More mead!”

The lady with the scar returned and poured the man a Miller Lite. “Nils. Don't shout. Okay?”

“Sorry.”

“And I'm not your fuckin' maid.”

“Maiden.”

“Whatever.”

Now that he got a good look, Jack recognized this man.
“It's Nils like thrills,”
he used to say when they were kids. “Hey, Nils,” he said.

The Viking looked over. “Jack Felter! What in the actual fuck?” Nils—full name Nils May—smiled. Nils's old man owned an excavating business that operated out of a tin garage off the highway. Drinking wells, mostly. The large man slid off his seat and skipped down to Jack, wrapping him in a bear hug. He smelled of brisket. “I haven't seen you since the reunion, man! Northfield Park. We bet on some ponies. You got the trifecta, son of a bitch. How the fuck are you?”

“Good,” he said, climbing out of the squeeze. “Back for a bit. Helping with my dad.”

“I heard. Alzheimer's?”

“Something like that.”

“My mother had MS. That's some tough shit, man.” Nils sat next to Jack. “I come down here on Wednesday nights to play
Warcraft
. Tell my wife I'm playing poker. She hates,
hates WOW
. Calls it
War
crack. Shelly lets me hook it up here if I order a few drinks. Gotta spend at least ten dollars, though. Yeah. Working down at Georgio's. The pizza place? Delivering. Good money.” Nils nodded and sipped his beer, waiting for Jack to say something.

“I always, I don't know why, but I always wanted to open a pizza shop,” Jack said. He thought he could get real good at making pizza, make it so each pie came out same as all the others—same sauce, same texture, same meat-to-cheese ratio. No surprises.

“Maybe that's why you're here,” said Nils.

Jack laughed. It was the first time he'd smiled since coming home. Nils was a good guy.

“Hey,” Nils started, “you heard about Tony Sanders, right?”

And the smile was gone. “Yeah,” he said.

“What happened there do you think?”

Jack didn't say anything. He looked to the moose head on the wall between the TVs, antlers dressed in purple Mardi Gras beads. There were no moose around here. Not anymore.

“Just…” Nils waved his hands in the air like a magician. “Poof! Ta-da! Gone. Vanished without a trace.”

“They were about to arrest him for kiting checks out at that hospital,” said Jack. “He didn't want to go to prison. Probably in a cabin in Kentucky somewhere waiting for the end of the world.”

“I don't know, man. I heard he had some problems right before it happened. Shelly said he come in here once wearing a helmet made out of a spaghetti colander.”

This was new information to Jack, who had followed the story about the missing doctor on the
Akron Beacon Journal
's website with a detached curiosity. “Hadn't heard that.”

“He was acting weird,” said Nils.

“I knew him better than just about anybody. He
was
weird. But never suicidal.” That was a lie. But Nils didn't need to know otherwise.

They sat in silence, finishing their beers and pretending to watch the news. Then Nils put a dollar under his empty glass, stood, and began to gather his gadgets, which he put in a manpurse slung low over one shoulder.

“Whatever happened, it's shitty. I guess I shouldn't be blabbing about it. It's just so … bizarre. I know you two were close back in the day. Used to watch you two pal around at camp. Didn't mean nothing.”

“No worries, Nils. Long time ago.”

The redheaded giant slapped him on the shoulder a couple of times and then walked away, back to a wife who did not understand his longing for alien worlds.

Jack ordered another tall one and watched the crater burn. A crew of firemen were spraying the edge with jets of water, as if that could solve anything.

“Hello, Jack.” A familiar voice, that husky, low rattle he used to love. “A little birdie told me you were back in town.”

7
    Samantha took the stool Nils had warmed and regarded Jack with a hesitant smile.

Her hair was not quite red and not quite brown. Copper, she called it, though that wasn't quite right. Cinnamon? Rust? It was uniquely Sam, like so many things. It was cut differently. Bangs. And straight. Not layered, like before. It made her look older. Time had marched on in his absence—a rude sonofabitch. He remembered her with chubby childish cheeks that made her eyes small. Those cheeks were gone now, and her eyes were wider. She wore a thin plaid shirt opened to the third houndstooth button, her neck and nose awash in a galaxy of spring freckles. He used to count them as he lay beside her, naked, while she dozed away an afternoon. Once, he had gotten as far as 141.

“You look
old
,” she said, that half smile twisting up.

“Yeah,” he said, touching the silver hairs at his temples. “It's the kids.”

She knew he taught history to high schoolers the same way she knew he was here. “Jean called me.”

“I figured.”

Shelly marched out to ask if Sam wanted a beer. “No thanks. I just stopped in for a second.”

“I don't know what to say,” said Jack when they were alone again.

“I know.”

“I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“I'm sorry Tony ran away, left you behind to deal with all his shit.”

She looked at him closely. “Oh,” she said. “You really think he ran away.”

“Why … what do you think?”

“Tony killed himself, Jack. I watched him go crazy. It was quick. At the beginning of June, he was fine. By the first of July, he was out of his mind. I think he drowned himself in Claytor Lake. Filled his pockets with rocks and walked into the water like Virginia Woolf.”

“What?”

“He was fighting depression, maybe schizophrenia. If you really think about it, all the symptoms were there, all the way back to when we were kids. Remember that night out at the lake?”

Jack flinched.

“Of course you do. The day before he disappeared, he went back there. I know he was there because he tracked sand all through the kitchen when he came home.”

Jack looked around, but the couple in the booth behind them were oblivious to their conversation. “Didn't you tell anybody?”

“Not then,” she said. “Life insurance won't pay out on suicide. I thought if he stayed missing long enough, I could just declare him dead. But then the cops found out about the money he was stealing from the hospital and it looked like he was running. I tried to get a judge to issue a death certificate just last month, but the prosecutor filed a motion to block it, because of their open investigation. It's fucked. I know I sound like a heartless bitch for just caring about the money…”

“Sam…,” he started.

“But he shut me out completely in the end. It was hell. And, well, fuck him for doing it, you know? Leaving me like that. So selfish.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Your visit couldn't have come at a better time, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I need some help. Do you feel like helping me, Jack?”

He didn't, actually. But Virginia, for all her faults, had raised him better. “What do you need?”

Sam was instantly relieved. She looked younger again. More like the girl he'd left behind.

“I need you to find Tony's bones and pull them up out of that lake.”

8
    Someone was tickling his feet.

In the darkness Jack forgot where he was, that he'd come home to Franklin Mills and was sleeping in the bedroom where he'd slept as a child. He was quite startled for a second, sure some pervert burglar was caressing his toes. He shot up against the frame.

Paige jumped and scream-giggled with delight. Her shadow was framed by soft light from the hall. Her hair was done up in pigtails that stood out from her head at ten and two. “Mommy told me to wake you up, Uncle Jack! Up, up! It's a great day for up!” She bounded down the hall, and a moment later he heard her galloping down the stairs.

He remembered, now, leaving a note for Jean to wake him. Sam had asked Jack to meet her at her shop. He had agreed, though he told himself he had no real intention of helping her pull the remains of her dead husband out of Claytor Lake—he didn't even know if such a thing was possible. It was too deep. Too dangerous. And it couldn't be drained because the miners had blown a hole into the aquifer back in '52.

Jack showered and dressed in jeans and a Miami U sweatshirt. He came down, sat next to his niece at the kitchen table, and devoured a bowl of Honeycombs. The house reeked of high-octane coffee. Jack hated the smell—it reminded him of Sister Mary Agnus's dragon breath. But if coffee and cigarettes were what it took to keep his sister clean, he'd keep his mouth shut. The Captain reclined in his bed in the living room, watching
Fox & Friends
.

Jack often wondered how two die-hard conservatives had produced such liberal children. His father had never cared for his chosen profession (“Public schools are how the socialists indoctrinate the masses”), but the Captain forgot his son was a teacher as soon as the dementia set in. Jack wondered if there wasn't some subconscious part of his father directing the destruction of his memories, an algorithm to his forgetting. A happy foreman of the mind. Nonunion, of course.

“The bus!” screamed Paige, jumping up so fast she knocked a bit of milk out of Jack's bowl. She grabbed her backpack off a hook by the shoe rack, gave her mother a wave, and was halfway down the drive before the door settled behind her. Jack watched the yellow bus come to a stop. It said
John F. Kennedy Local Schools
on the side. Jean could not afford to send Paige to St. Joe's.