THE DRIVE UP TO DAMARISCOTTA TOOK ABOUT an hour. The car didn’t blow me away. I pushed 90 for a few minutes and left it at that. I found a radio station playing nothing but Steely Dan hits and cranked it until everything outside the car was dancing to “Peg.” The birches sagged under the weight of the water and the pines were sopping and dark. Now and then the trees broke and I found myself coasting through salt marsh. The mounds of sedge and scrub brush were already changing color. This was Maine the way I liked it. The season was turning, the lobsters were settling into their new shells, the summer folks were taking their boats out of the water and clearing the fuck out. It was the time of year when locals sort of look up at each other and go: Well, then. Here we are. I tried to hold Nat in my mind. It was something I’d been doing a lot since I heard the news. On Facebook, people in the family wrote long posts that made it seem like Nat had become a coin they’d always carry in their pocket. I hit like on a few, to participate, but they all made me sort of itch. I spent a lot of time after that trying to figure out when I last spoke to Nat. I decided it must have been Christmas— about nine months before he died. Towards the end, Dicko politely indicated in his newsletters that Nat was losing his marbles (the word confusion showed up a lot), but I guess all that started some time in the spring. When I spoke to Nat on the phone he still sounded pretty sharp. Well hello CHIP! he said in his famous lawyerly voice, when I told him who it was. He always uttered my name with great relish. He liked his words. He’d fallen and cracked a couple vertebrae the month before, and was spending Christmas day in a wheelchair at Dicko’s house. Doug and David were there, too. They had to get me up the front steps, see, Nat said. I’m in a wheelchair. Everyone came onto the stoop to watch the boys convey me into living room! Dick and Doug and David hoisted me up, and from my privileged vantage I could see down to the hedgerow and beyond. It was quiet. The whole yard has been covered in ice. There’s been a great storm, you know. Ice everywhere. Power lines coming down. Trees bent clear to the ground. But I’ll tell you, it was a royal procession! And now I have before me my Christmas victuals, and I regard my surroundings and see my family by my side, and I am happy. This is what I pictured as the pines whipped past and Donald Fagen crooned at me through the stereo: the family gathering in a circle around Nat’s chair, bending, lifting, each doing his share until together they had brought Nat up higher than even their heads, ferrying him endlessly up the icy steps into the warm, dark house. Well CHIP-O! Nat had said when I guess he wanted to sort of nudge me off the line so he could get back to his meal. My thanks for a most stimulating conversation! Sui generis, I might say! It was dark when I pulled up to the inn. After checking in I figured I’d get something to eat. When I went out into the lot and saw the Solara’s headlights and grill looking at me like a big dumb face, I decided to walk into town. Main St. was wet and mostly empty of people. A woman stood backlit by the door of an ice cream parlor. Some guy loped by with his dog. The neon in the window of Waltz Family Pharmacy cast a red glow over the street. Nat would have called me a flâneur, seeing me walk down the street of my old hometown like that. I had my heart set on this one restaurant Dicko had taken me to last time where’d accidentally gotten drunk— Paco’s Tacos—but I couldn’t find it. I went to the pub instead. I had a light meal, and entertained myself by trying to flirt with the waitress a little bit. She didn’t get it, or was used to that kind of thing from older guys. My table was by the window. At one point I thought I saw Dicko’s wife walk past on the sidewalk, but I wasn’t going to tap on the glass or anything. Despite the time difference I was feeling pretty tired, so I got to bed early. I wanted to be in good shape for the service the next day.
DYLAN WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE WEATHER. IT was bright and clear when I woke up—a real autumn morning. I showered and shaved and took my flannel blazer from my suitcase, brushed it off. I had nicer stuff back home in Portland, but none of it was dark enough. The blazer had gotten a few creases during the trip. I stood in front of the mirror for a good 10 minutes trying to pat them out. The room didn’t have an iron. In the end I managed to make myself presentable. I figured no one would be looking closely anyway. I hadn’t been to this church since I was about 10—none of us in the family were ever that religious. It was a ways east of Damariscotta, close to the shore and sort of off by itself. I must have underestimated how long it would take me to get there, because by the time I pulled up to the church the parking lot was full. But I didn’t know that at first: I turned into the small lot to find that all the spots had been taken up. I had to pull an expert maneuver to get out. Here comes Chip, I said to myself. Chip the Drip in his Toyota Solara! I could sort of laugh about it. There were people lined up on the stairs to the church, but most of them were too old to notice the ridiculous thing happening right in front of them. I parked on the other side of the street and walked over. I didn’t know anyone in front of me in line, so I just sort of stood there smiling. It was slow going. All the old folks around me were craning their necks, trying to figure out the hold up. I could hear bleats of organ music coming out from the nave. I brought up the recap of the Sox game on my phone. I hadn’t watched the night before. When I got inside, everyone was there—Dicko, Doug and David, their wives and children. The kids were handing out programs, and the three guys were hugging people, shaking hands. Dicko had a bunch of Nat’s old bowties slung over one arm, and he was handing them out to anybody who wanted one. Hey, Dicko! I practically shouted when I got within a few feet of him. Whoa, Chip! he said. He actually looked scared, almost. His wife brought her hand to his back. We had no idea you were coming! she said. Well here I am, I said. Could I get one of those ties? I made a weird gesture around my neck, I don’t know. Dicko shook my hand instead. You came all the way from Portland? he asked. Yeah, I said. Flew in yesterday. Give him a tie, his wife said, and Dicko handed me a tie. I draped it around my shoulders—I wasn’t going to try to figure out a bow tie. By now Doug and David had come over. They took turns shaking my hand, patting me on the shoulder. I think you win the award for distance travelled, said Dicko’s wife. I told them it was no problem. That’s what you do, I said. You drop what you’re doing, you pay your respects. I mean, look around you! The whole team came out! Dicko was nodding and looking over my shoulder. I took that as my cue to go inside. I asked one of the kids for a program. You’re Isaac, right? I said as he handed it to me. Nope, Abe, he said. I’m one of David’s. Good guess, though. It’s nice to meet you.
THE SERVICE WENT WELL, I THOUGHT. THE PAStor kept mentioning that he wished he’d known Nat better, but all things considered he did a good job. The kids mumbled through some of Nat’s favorite poems—that one by Bob Frost about the boy who climbs birch trees, a few by either Yeats or Keats. People really lost it at that. I could see Dicko’s wife shaking in the front pew all the way from my seat in the back. That kind of hit me—you’d think that a father-in-law could only mean so much. Then there was a sort of open mic for people who wanted to share memories of Nat. Doug said something about his dad’s generosity as a lawyer, how he was good to the poor and did a lot of pro bono work. David spoke to Nat’s love of the outdoors, and said he now realized that, whenever Nat had taken him out camping in the White Mountains or the Sierra Nevada, he’d been showing David the face of God. Dicko told the story about the maid’s husband getting buried in Nat’s brand new suit, and also the one about the best burgundy in the bouillabaisse. I’d heard them thousands of times, but they were really the best stories about Nat. I almost got up and said something about the time when my mom was going through one of her bad phases and I was staying at Nat’s house for little bit. Dicko and I played a lot of checkers in those days. Dicko always won. During a particularly bad game I got really riled up and ended up flipping the board in Dicko’s face. I couldn’t stop crying—I was just a kid. Dicko’s mom didn’t know what to do with me, so she pawned me off on Nat. Nat took me out fishing for mackerel in his tiny Boston Whaler to cool me down. We didn’t catch anything and it was windy and he ended up losing his hat in a gust. Gone to Davy Jones’ locker! I thought I remember him saying. I couldn’t get the details of the story straight in my head. I decided against telling it. After the service there was a reception in the church basement—one of those linoleum-floor, Styrofoam- ceiling type deals. There was a buffet with cookies and little lobster salad sandwiches. I’d gotten pretty hungry so I loaded up on food and went over to the corner, where there was a rack of alcohol awareness pamphlets and a computer playing a slideshow of pictures from Nat’s life. There he was as an officer in the army, a teenager playing basketball, there he was splayed out in the snow on the peak of the Matterhorn. I really wanted to know who put it together; I looked around the room for Dicko but didn’t see him anywhere. Abe or maybe Isaac came up beside me and stared blankly at the screen. Who’s that? he asked probably rhetorically, pointing to Iva Bones Stone, his great-great grandmother. I told him, and all of a sudden I was narrating the entire slide show. I’m pretty good with faces, and I get a kick out of genealogy. It’s like a puzzle to me. I know science says otherwise, but when I think of the human race I picture this huge tree that starts with one guy and then explodes infinitely outward. Sure, some of the branches are dead ends, but mostly they keep splitting and splitting until nobody knows who anybody is anymore. A picture came up of Nat as a kid with his arm slung around my dad’s shoulder. And that’s Nat with his younger brother Charles, I heard myself say. The image zoomed until it was basically just a mess of pixels. I told the kid I needed some coffee, which I did, and I walked off to the other end of the room. After a half hour or so I slipped out. Dicko and Doug and David seemed like they had their hands tied catching up with everyone, consoling a few people who were still crying. I’d send the guys an email or something later. When I was coming down the stairs I ran into Dicko’s wife coming up the stairs. What are you doing out here? I asked. You’re leaving? she asked. I told her yeah. She nodded and thanked me. How are things in Portland? she asked. Are you still with what’s-hername? Kids on the way? She smiled goofily. I just laughed. She seemed liked she knew what the answer would be from the start. She was just pushing my buttons. As I crossed the street she turned back and yelled, IS THAT YOU CAR? and I just waved.
I DROVE BACK TO THE AIRPORT THE NEXT DAY. I put the top down, just for the heck of it. On the highway the wind threw my hair around and I couldn’t hear myself think. I said FUCKER for fun. The word died in the air. With the road rushing to meet the Solara, I couldn’t stop replaying the one slide in my head: Dad’s face coming closer and closer, growing and blurring until his skin had turned to white noise and asphalt. When my mom had started going, I finally really asked her about my dad. It was the kind of thing where I knew she would quickly forget I had ever asked anything. She told me that, when my dad was alive, Nat never really knew what to do with him. People didn’t understand mental illness in those days. She told me Nat must have been relieved when my dad died, that everyone in that family was relieved. Visibly relieved, she said. Then asked me to get her the pan she liked to spit into. Not long after she died I got the job offer out on the West Coast, and I took it. I pulled into the Hertz, feeling like I never left. Lo and behold, my guy Dylan was loitering outside. He was smoking a cigarette. As I parked the car, I tried to cook up something funny I could say to him that would also encourage him to quit smoking. I put up the ragtop and stepped out of the car. No, Dylan said as I came toward him. No, sorry. I’m on break.