“In the living room,” I said.
We found Jim safely asleep in his recliner, snoring. His hands lay relaxed on his thighs like contented animals. Will stroked one of them gently, but Brassard didn’t stir.
“But what now?” I asked. Will just shrugged, at a loss.
Chapter 46
Will didn’t know anything about dealing with alcoholism, either, but his project management skills stood him in good stead. His first act was to get Brassard’s pickup truck out of his reach, keep him from going into town to replace the vodka I’d poured down the sink. I drove the truck to Lynn and Theo’s place, and Lynn gave me a lift back in her Jeep. By the time I got back, Will had done a quick search of the house and found another bottle, which also went down the drain.
Then he wrote a letter and emailed it to his lawyer, detailing Brassard’s threat and committing the lawyer, as an officer of the court, to tell the insurance company in the event of a suspicious fire at the farm. Finally, he called the state fire marshal’s Barn Fire Prevention Task Force and asked for an inspection of the farm’s gas systems.
Two days later, the inspector came, checked every inch of pipe and every fitting, valve, and regulator, and declared the gas system compliant. Will showed his father the certification and the letter he’d written to his attorney, driving home the message that Brassard’s plan—if indeed it had ever been more than a despairing drunken fantasy—had been preempted. The insurance company would never believe that a propane fire was an accident. There’d be no cash coming in from fraud and the destruction of three generations’ legacy.
I’d never seen Will angry, but I caught a glimpse of it when Brassard went looking for his truck keys and couldn’t find them. He was in a surly mood, feeling condescended to, hungover, thirsty for what he couldn’t have, and as he rumbled through the house opening drawers and cabinets he was frightening: well over six feet, easily 250 pounds, huge hands, face blunt and sour.
After half an hour of searching, he asked Will if he’d seen his truck keys.
Will handed him some keys.
Brassard looked at them and said, “What the hell?”
“Those are tractor keys,” Will said. I didn’t know there could be so much ice in Will, and as he spoke he looked and sounded much like his mother. “You are a farmer. You drive a goddamned tractor.”
Was there a code hidden in that exchange? If so, I think it had several dimensions. On one hand, it was Will’s channeling his mother’s voice and the deathly chill of her contempt for any weakness or abdication of duty. On the other hand, I have to believe it was also an appeal to Brassard’s pride, or a reminder of the pride he should feel. You are a farmer. Brassard blinked and started to reply, but his son’s words confused him, tripped up his anger and tumbled him into a mix of other emotions. He went away to his office and sat in front of his dark computer screen.
I admired Will for his skillful management of Brassard’s fire threat and for standing up to his father about the truck, which must have been agonizing for him.
Earnest returned the next day, exhausted from thirty hours without sleep, and a long drive. I was running the skid-steer down the alley, pushing a tide of slurry, when his bulky silhouette appeared in the brightness of the wide door at the other end. Seeing that familiar shape, my heart bounded. I backed up and met him in the middle of the shed.
Without saying hello, he asked, “Where’s Jim?”
I tossed my head in the direction of the far door, where the big green Deere appeared, a small mountain of bedding sawdust in its bucket. It dumped the load, backed up, turned, and rolled out of view again.
He nodded, a little relieved. Otherwise, his face was gray and haggard.
“You look like hell,” I told him affectionately.
“Thanks.”
I realized he was too exhausted from sleeplessness and anxiety to enjoy my attempt at humor. Having reassured himself that Jim was functional, probably unwilling to walk through a moat of manure to get to him, he started walking back toward the house. But I backed up the Bobcat to keep pace with him.
“Earnest!” I called. He stopped and looked over. “Do you have any idea how good it is to see one’s Earnest again? Any idea?” And tears flooded my eyes. I don’t know why I framed it that way; maybe my odd choice of grammar kept it safely impersonal. But I truly wasn’t sure—did he have any idea, did he know what a marvelous thing an Earnest was? I very much wanted him to know, and saying it relieved an unbearable pressure in me and that was what released the tears.
He smiled and put his hand to my wool-padded arm, softly. “I’m just tired,” he reassured me. Then he was walking away again, and after a moment I was going down the alley with the Bobcat for another long scrape.
Chapter 47
And so Brassard’s farm limped into the New Year. Earnest’s being there helped. He was ballast for the place, kept us right side up and sailing straight. Especially for Brassard. Sometimes I’d go into the house and I’d hear the two of them in another room, conversing quietly. I don’t know what they talked about, but I knew that Earnest wouldn’t presume to lecture, shame, or instruct his friend, whom he’d always respected as the elder man.
We were all on guard, watching Brassard, checking for signs, keeping track of his whereabouts. A couple of weeks later, when we finally allowed him access to his truck, one or another of us accompanied him on his trips to town, claiming errands of our own. The farm settled back into a simulacrum of its prior rhythm, but with an added edge
