“What is it from?”
“From? From a bird. I picked it up because I didn’t recognize it, and around here I know the birds. After the hurricane, we lost a lot, then this spring we got some others that hadn’t come around before. Big bird, obviously. I’ve got a book at home. I’m gonna check it.”
“Do you hunt?” Francis asked. He was giving in to his nervousness, making idle conversation.
“Sure,” Jim said slowly. “Hunt, fish. Only go after deer with bow and arrow, though. You wouldn’t be one of those people who get upset because a guy wants to eat, would ya?”
“No, no. I was just curious. Because of your interest in birds. Whether you also hunted, I mean.”
“Know what else he does?” Don interrupted. “Famous for his carving.”
“Oh?” was all Francis could think to say.
“Decoys,” Jim said quietly, almost shyly.
“People collect ’em,” Don said. “Real artistry involved. He apprenticed himself to his grandfather. His grandfather’s things are in that museum in Hartford, Connecticut. You must have been there.”
“The Wadsworth Atheneum,” Francis said. “It’s not that close to where I live.”
“Well, when you go there, you look for Roy Jay Bluefield’s decoys. They’re beautiful things, and my friend here is the bearer of the flame.”
“I’d like to see your work,” Francis said.
“You would?” Jim said. “I live in a workshop that would about fit in the living room of this house. Wife put me out three years ago. You would be interested in seeing decoys?” he said again, as if he didn’t quite believe it.
Francis nodded.
“Tell you what,” Jim said. “You go upstairs, like you were doin’, and in an hour we’ll be outta here. We can swing by my place on our way to Connecticut, if you were serious.”
“Oh, I was very serious. Most serious,” Francis added. That was right: he had been going up the stairs, and suddenly time had gone into a warp, and now it was much later. At this moment, if the plane had landed on time, Lucy might be telling Sheldon the news. That was how your life could change: someone would tell you something.
The moving men resumed giving each other orders, furniture was lifted and shifted into other positions, then something was selected and carried down the steps to the driveway, where the big truck sat. Francis thought again about calling his wife, but realized that she would still be driving home and wouldn’t answer the cell phone. She would probably stop for groceries, which she bought most days, though they both had light appetites. Their son was taller and heavier and ate more than they did, though he was big-boned, rather than heavy. Six feet; a nice-looking boy, with thick wavy hair and those square glasses that all the young people wore unapologetically now. The novel he’d worked on in college had become a novella, then had been abandoned entirely, except for sections he obsessed over and had used to apply to various M.F.A. programs, not one of which admitted him. Good or bad, Francis had no idea; Sheldon would show his writing to no one. An entire year had passed after he finished college, during which he’d lived in their attic and—a bit histrionically, Francis thought—started and abandoned a second novel. Then he had moved out and worked for a year or so with a college friend, doing ordering for the friend’s father’s company, even taking a trip to London. Then—how exactly had it happened?—he had let his lease expire and had moved back into the house, forgoing the attic for his old bedroom, which he repainted charcoal gray. On the weekends Lucy often joined him there.
What did they plan to do? Have the baby and live in the house?
Francis had climbed to the second floor, where his wife had packed his aunt’s clothes into boxes to be donated to charity. There was toile de Jouy wallpaper in his aunt’s bedroom. Near the end, his aunt, on high doses of painkiller, had thought she was stretched on a divan surrounded by a party of French aristocrats, the women dressed in feathery bonnets and carrying parasols, the men on horseback, all awaiting her cue to open celebratory bottles of champagne. Aristocrats, in a nine-by-twelve bedroom on the second floor of a house in rural Maine. Who knew what she’d made of them all being pastel blue? Perhaps that they were cold.
His aunt had died of pancreatic cancer less than two months after she was given the diagnosis. When she called them with the bad news, he and Bern had driven out to the house and cried and cried, unable to think of anything optimistic to say. His aunt had pressed jewelry on his wife, though Bern was a no-nonsense sort of woman who usually wore nothing but her wedding ring and a Timex. His aunt had told them her sensible plan for what she called “home help.” She had asked him, as a complete non sequitur, to change the light bulbs in the hallway, but instead of doing this immediately they had talked more—Bern, in her strong way, had been very upset. And then he had left that night, forgetting to do the one little thing his aunt had asked of him. He had not remembered until almost the day she died.
There was a faint odor of ammonia in every room, and he thought that might be what he’d been squinting against. Bern had opened all the blinds; it made the house look more spacious, the real-estate agent had told her. So where had his aunt’s spirit gone, he wondered; had it lingered for a moment in the pastel confusion, then permeated the window—nicely beveled old glass—to alight briefly in the now smashed tree? If so, she’d had a safe landing, leaving well before the moving van pulled in.
Francis never knew what was the proper amount to tip moving men. It had probably become more than he could imagine, if the average tip in a nice restaurant was at least twenty percent, no matter how indifferent the service. He wondered if his seeing the decoys meant that he must buy one; if so, what would they cost, and shouldn’t he tip the men before he got to Jim’s workroom, because otherwise the price of purchase might be confused with the tip. Or, if he tipped generously in advance (whatever generously meant), might the decoy have a more reasonable price?
He backed the Lexus out to follow the moving truck down the drive. Jim drove faster than Francis expected, but he kept up, patting his pocket to make sure that his cell phone was there. They drove for a while, then turned down a rutted road where someone had put a red-and-black cone to indicate a deep pothole. The houses here were smaller than the ones on the main road. With all that he had to do, what was he doing going into the woods with two men to see decoys? It was the sort of thing that could turn out badly, though his instincts told him it would not. Still, he could imagine being in court, asking the defendant with a hint of skepticism in his voice, “You followed these two strangers to one of their houses?”
When the road forked, the truck slowed and Jim put down his window, pointing to the right with his thumb. Francis hesitated. The truck continued to the left, bumping onto a field. He thought he understood and took the right fork, stopping in front of a little clapboard house that stood alone, with no trees in front and only a half-dead
