My brother winced, drew a hand across his face as if wiping away something blurring his vision, or rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “Jesus. Sorry! Rusty social skills.” He shook his head as if to wake himself up. “Also, I’m tired as shit. Three thousand miles, driving’s fried my brain.”
“No sweat,” Earnest told him, still watchful. “I know that one.”
I heard Cat exhale. She had held her breath for the past minute. The men looked frankly at each other, taking each other’s measure, but the swell of tension that had risen so quickly now started to slip on by. Strangely, I saw a common feature in their faces, not in bones or color but in the lines and lights of character. I felt as if each recognized it in the other.
“I’ve got a regular saga,” Erik said wearily. “But I figured I’d start with my sister before I lay it on anybody else.”
“I can understand that.” Earnest tossed a glance my way. He dipped his head minutely as if to reassure me, I’m okay with him, Pilgrim, and eased back. He drank off his near-boiling tea, oblivious to the burn. We listened to the fire crackle for a time. A few early-falling leaves fluttered down, like bats descending from darkness into our sphere of light.
“Anyway,” Earnest said, “this’s past my bedtime. I’m gonna turn in.” He stood, yawned, brushed off his pants. “Anyway, yeah, you guys have some catching up to do. So I bid you goodnight, adieu, and hasta la vista. Ann, got some entertainment scheduled for the morning, remember.” Then his bearlike form faded away from the campfire’s light and disappeared downhill.
Cat and I sat there, unsure where to take it.
“You know,” Erik said, gesturing after Earnest with his cup, “I like that guy. He’s got a keen eye, that’s for sure.”
“For what?” I asked.
He shrugged. “For losers.”
Erik wanted to sleep in the woods, said he could use it, and anyway three would have crowded the tent. He gathered his mummy bags and headed off into the shadows uphill. I heard him moving about at some distance, scuffing, probably seeking enough flat ground without rocks to make a nest for himself.
Cat and I washed the dishes in my aluminum sink, using warm water from the teakettle, then dowsed the fire and took to the tent. Exhaling steam, we settled into our bedding. Cat wore an Incan-knit hat pulled well down over her face, the earflaps’ braided strings tied beneath her chin. I blew out the last candles and shut off the Coleman lantern.
“That was … weird,” Cat whispered. “What the …?”
“Why’s he so closemouthed? What’s he told you?”
“Not a lot. Nothing, actually. We’ve spent almost no time together. When we did talk, we mainly talked about you.”
“Oh, yeah? What’d you tell him?”
“Huh! I was as cagey as he is. Figured you should tell him whatever it is you think he needs to know. I wasn’t going to tell him that you … ran into some hard weather and all that. Figured you should put your own spin on it.”
We were quiet for a while. A slight breeze had uncoiled from the sleeping woods, bringing down a loose scatter of leaves that landed invisibly on the tent fly with soft dry thuds and then slid rasping down the nylon.
“I guess he strikes me as someone who’s had some hard weather, too,” I said.
“For sure.”
“Back when I used to call him, out in California? He was hanging out with a druggie crowd. He sounded like a stoner. Wasn’t surprising. Remember, he got busted in high school?”
“I remember a very tense period at your house and a mandatory haircut for Erik.”
“It made me sad, because he’s too smart to waste himself that way. He never mentioned having a job. I kind of figured he’d gotten into the marijuana business. He sort of hinted at it sometimes. He was up in Northern California. That’s where a lot of it’s grown, isn’t it?”
“That was his ‘agricultural’ experience?”
“An inside joke, I guess. An insider’s joke.”
“Thus the defensive bristle.”
I didn’t know. I was getting drowsy, but Cat seemed to have a hard time getting comfortable, shifting and rearranging and rolling over and resettling her pillow.
Then her voice, tiny in the darkness: “His van? It’s really packed. I mean, I haven’t gone inside it, just stood in the door, but it’s packed to the ceiling. All these boxes, taped, sealed tight.” She paused and added reluctantly, “It … has a plant smell. Earthy, sort of sharp plant smell. Sorta like … pot.”
My heart plummeted. But I couldn’t bear to ask anything more. And I had to be up at four to milk the cows.
Chapter 36
But of course, I didn’t sleep after that. In my jagged imaginings, I could only assume that Erik had come across country with a van felony-full of dope that he planned to sell on the East Coast or, for all I knew, here in Vermont. And that the van was now sitting on Brassard’s property, and that Erik was extremely touchy about it all. I replayed our campfire conversation and saw hints of danger throughout. I needed to get away from the West Coast. What—needed a change of pace, a new “headspace”? Or that the law was after him? Or he’d gotten into trouble with some other California drug suppliers? Needed to escape child-support payments? The creaky hyper hamster wheel of my mind spun all night.
At some point, I heard an irritating noise that was, of course, my little alarm clock: four a.m. Whatever else, the cows had to get milked. Cat didn’t wake. I dressed and stumped downhill, exhausted, and crossed the road just as Will came out of the house to take his shift with me. The motion lights switched on in the farmyard. Erik’s van had no side windows, but I shaded my eyes to peek through the windshield, and back in the dim interior I could just make out what Cat had described:
