Erik: What’s to become of him? My worry grew by the tiniest of increments. It started innocently enough. I got my mail at a box at the local post office, because I’d rented it before I started working for Brassard. Erik preferred not to get his own box; any mail he did get—bills from hardware suppliers, for example—arrived to him care of me. Neither of us got much mail. Why pay rent on two boxes?
Same with banking. When he first came, he asked me if he could deposit the cashier’s check from Aunt Theresa’s estate into my bank account. It made sense—he had just arrived, wanted money fast to pay Brassard in advance and assure him he wasn’t a flake like his sister. But he never got around to opening his own account. After a while, it didn’t seem particularly necessary, because I ended up being the owner of Brass Valley Hops, Incorporated, and am the one who pays the bills.
It’s true. Erik didn’t register himself on the articles of incorporation. He decided that I should be president and CEO, and Earnest and Will and Brassard should be board members. He said he wanted to honor me, and anyway he figured I was more responsible than he was. He had the brewers make their checks out to me or the corporation, not to him personally.
He is a persuasive talker, an escape artist of sorts. We were all so hard-pressed for time, had such work-fogged brains, it all seemed somehow reasonable. And Earnest and I: We had entered a whirlpool of convergence that, whether we knew it or not, made all else seem a little vague. I agreed to everything Erik suggested.
His van: He never got Vermont tags, because apparently, it was still registered in the name of a friend out in California, who every two years sent him the new paperwork and plate stickers. It had taken me two years to switch over my Massachusetts plates, so at first I understood his lack of hurry. But eventually, I did mention it to him—sooner or later, some state trooper would notice that he’d seen that same van for too long, that it should get Vermont plates. He’d pull Erik over, kindly remind him to register in Vermont, and ticket him. Erik shrugged it off. But whenever I rode shotgun with him, I noticed his impeccable driving, something I wouldn’t have expected from my renegade brother. If the sign said thirty-five, he drove thirty-four miles per hour.
On the farm, he used Brassard’s landline, as we all did; in town, he used only disposable cell phones. He said he just didn’t want to bother with account statements and all the rest of it, or pay for an expensive phone he’d just lose or break in the hop yard. It was easier just to buy a new one every few weeks and always know where you stood with your remaining minutes. It was a choice that seemed consistent with his lifelong persona of the footloose desperado, contemptuous of anything as bourgeois as monthly bills, so I never gave it a thought until later.
There were a dozen other little clues that, one by one, slid past me at first but after four years could no longer be ignored.
I invited him up to my campsite; we cooked dinner together, and then I confronted him: “You are trying to be invisible. You’re working hard to leave no tracks.” Before he could deny it, I ticked off all the indications on my fingers.
“Why? Is it those guys with grudges from California? Do you think they’ll really work that hard to find you?”
He got a little cocky. “I doubt those shitbags have the attention span to stick with it. Anyway, given their … habits, they’ve no doubt picked up other more pressing grudges to settle in the last few years. Keep em busy!” He chuckled at that.
“Then what?”
He stood up off his log and came over to me, knelt, and put his hands on my knees. “You really want to know? You sure?”
“Yes.”
“I was released from Elk Ridge on parole. I skipped parole to come here, Annie. I am a fugitive. Interstate flight—there’s no doubt a federal warrant on me.”
I didn’t believe him at first. Then I told him he was an idiot and he should never have done this and should think about maybe growing up some year. I stamped and picked up sticks and threw them at him. We got into a childish sibling shouting match for which there could be only one outcome. It was too late, he’d made the choice, the chips had fallen, I could be as mad at him as I liked and it wouldn’t change the facts. It pissed me off and broke my heart and scared me. Here everything was rolling along so well, the hops in high demand among some very successful brewers who were paying top dollar. The farm had been in a reasonably stable economic state and a very agreeable emotional state.
Erik, who had turned it around, might also be its undoing: Is that ironic, or is it inevitable?
So there’s that sword hanging over Erik, and the suspense sometimes becomes difficult for all of us. Except for Brassard—he knows nothing about it. He’s seventy-two now and has earned some respite from such things.
But what happens if the sheriff pulls Erik over to let him know his turn signal isn’t working, and does the obligatory record check? It can keep me awake at night—at four a.m., it’s almost unbearable.
The best solution I could come up with was that Erik could petition the governor of Oregon for clemency, on
