Another shopper reached past him for a bag. It was embarrassing having this conversation next to a bagel bin. Nat prepared to bolt, but Viv continued.
“Gordon keeps walking himself up to the precipice, up to where you’re waiting on the other side, but he can’t bring himself to make the leap. It’s the same reason we never had children, Nat. He could never make the leap. And I blame the war.”
A few days later Gordon followed up with the last of his late-night calls, a self-pitying diatribe against the history department and “all our enemies,” whoever they were. But, as if finally heeding Viv’s advice, he ended on a note of conciliation, promising great things yet to come if only Nat would bear with him a while longer.
“Legacy,” was the word Gordon kept slurring as in “a legacy from me to you that will make things right.” It was striking enough that Nat perked up his ears during the next several days for any departmental gossip, or any other hint that the old fellow had come up with something new-or old, as the case might be.
His hopes faded as the days passed. Then the newspaper story came out, shooting down Viv’s theory that Gordon was traumatized by the war. The man had never even been under fire. Maybe he was just an ornery old bastard. Sometimes it was that simple, a possibility that seemed likelier still now that Gordon had been caught with a batch of stolen files. If this was the “legacy” he’d mumbled about, Nat would know soon enough.
“So what, exactly, are these files they want me to look at?” he asked Neil once they were under way. “Viv didn’t seem to know much, other than it was a lot of old boxes.”
The agent glanced over. The green glow of the dashboard display seemed to transform him into a shadowy young troll, hoarding treasure beneath the bridge.
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Oh, c’mon. I’ll see them in a few hours anyway.”
“Special Agent Clark Holland will debrief you. He’s my supervisor.”
Nat sighed. Then he sagged against the door to watch the street-lamps pass on the road leading out of town. He was on the verge of nodding off when Neil asked a question.
“How old are you, sir?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“My brother’s thirty-nine. Dangerous age.”
“Possibly.”
“What’s the ‘E’ stand for?”
Although everyone called him Nat, the name in the phone book and on his office door was Dr. E. Nathaniel Turnbull.
“ ‘Emerson.’ As in Ralph Waldo. He was a New England Unitarian, same as my mom.”
True, but misleading. The full story was that his mother took a fancy to the name after reading it on the console of the delivery room television. She must have thought it sounded stout and reliable. Or maybe she confused its cachet with that of Zenith, whose slogan at the time was, “The quality goes in before the name goes on”-a reassuring thought when you’re about to give birth.
Not that his gene pool offered an excess of quality. His father was a high school mathematics teacher and baseball coach, raised in northern Virginia by Southern Baptists-not the foot-washing variety, thank goodness. His mother also taught school-home economics, as it was known then-before she quit to begin producing a quartet of children in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Nat had a younger brother and two older sisters. As children they argued over Monopoly deeds, the last slice of pie, and a wide variety of territorial rights involving couch space, the backseats of cars, and the television remote. To prove this was not mere childishness, they later argued over their parents’ eulogies and worldly possessions. In some strange migratory quirk, all three of his siblings ended up in Orange County, California, where each ran an electronics store. All three lived within minutes of the freeway, and for all Nat knew all their stores offered both Emersons and Zeniths. They were enthusiastic Republicans, and he almost never spoke with them.
“You like it at Wightman?” Neil asked.
“What’s not to like? Small and undistinguished. Bland campus in a bland town in the blandest part of Pennsylvania.”
“The basketball team’s pretty good.”
“When you can get tickets. Trouble is, town and gown value hoops more than scholarship, but I guess you can’t have everything when you’re only charging $42,000 a year.”
“Wow. That much?”
“And going up five percent in the fall.”
“They treat you okay?”
“Not bad. Once you’re tenured, they pretty much leave you alone.”
“Well, you certainly
Nat smiled. He wasn’t sure if it was a compliment, but he supposed it was true, at least for his generation of academics. No pipe and no tweed. His wardrobe was that of the perennially rumpled class-frayed chinos, wrinkled oxfords, low-cut hiking shoes, and whatever shapeless jacket was at hand. He drove a twelve-year-old Jetta with rust spots on the doors. The wall-to-wall bookshelves in his small frame house were overflowing with the latest books and journals from his field of study, although most items in his refrigerator would soon qualify for historic preservation.
There was a rugged aspect to his features-coarse sandy hair, strong jawline-and he got outdoors just enough to put some color in his cheeks. But the most intriguing thing about his looks was a slight squint, which betrayed not only inquisitiveness but an air of intensity. Some women took it as a challenge-“This one’s difficult, but possibly worth it”-and concluded he must be searching for something, possibly them, only to discover far too late that what he was really after was an old piece of paper from 1938.
Males, on the other hand, often interpreted his expression to mean that he must be up to something. Maybe that was why Neil Ford was still playing things close to the vest.
Soon they hopped onto the interstate, and Nat fell asleep to the whine of tires and the prop wash of passing rigs. He didn’t awaken until they exited for an all-night truck stop. You could tell from the loneliness of the road that it was quite late.
“What time is it?” he croaked.
“Four. I need coffee.”
“Want me to drive?”
“Can’t. It’s against-”
“I understand.”
The coffee smelled like hot Styrofoam, but it did the trick for both of them.
“So you know his wife well?” Neil asked.
“Viv? Pretty well. She’s always been kind to me.”
“Special Agent Holland said they’d been drinking. A lot.”
“The drinking isn’t Viv’s fault. She has to, to keep up with Gordon.”
That’s how it had been for years. Viv either played along or spent the balance of the evening watching her husband fade from view on the wrong side of a glass. On weekdays he left her behind, but on Saturdays and Sundays she gamely kept pace. Nat had never been comfortable watching it happen, and on previous visits to Blue Kettle Lake he finished his two beers and retired early rather than witness their mutual disintegration.
“Well, from what I heard about the arrest she was pretty pissed off.”
“Wouldn’t you be? She says the files were planted.”
“Wouldn’t know about that.”
“How’d you guys end up on the case?”
“Local police. They’d gotten a tip.”
“Anonymous?”
“Like I said. A tip. They went to the house, saw the boxes through the window, found a key beneath the mat, and walked right in.”
“No warrant? Sounds iffy.”
“Not when there’s probable cause. And not when the cop’s best buddy is the local judge. Weird legal system they’ve got out in the sticks of New York. Town judges with all the power in the world. I doubt this one’s even got a
