Biting laughter flapped out of one of the men. And Olmstead fell backward in time, to a Christmas where he’d needed stitches after being stabbed with scissors, to a summer he’d been pushed off the dock in Florida before he knew how to swim, and to when he’d been shoved out of a tree—and broken his ankle—in Spring of his freshman year. Each time he’d heard that same beating laughter; pitiless—but with a lining of scared apology. It was the sound his brother always made just after doing something wrong.
Olmstead retreated. He jogged through the biting brambles, emerged from the overgrown field, bleeding and confused. In a sudden burst of panic, he craved San Diego. He rested his head against the cold metal of the car. What the hell am I doing? And then his sister’s words came back to him: “Pop is dying.”
Dying. The significance of his trip sank in. It grabbed him by the belly, and he retched by the side of the road. Gagged up soda and airplane pretzels, then dry heaved—once, twice.
When he was through, he started shivering. Pennsylvania’s chill, like his journey’s unpleasant purpose, had caught up with him. For eleven years, San Diego’s ocean cleansed and freed him. In half an hour, the mountains of his home undid all that with their claustrophobic menace. “I’m from Central Pennsylvania,” he used to threaten people. “We eat what we run over.” Now he was from Southern California, and the old joke and its threat were on him.
He yearned for the sea and the sun and the vastness of that Western sky, bad-boy blue and endless against the water. Here a mantel of gray held back the sky and its sun. As Olmstead stared into its blankness, the first few flakes of cold wet snow hit his face. He crept back into the rental, rinsed his mouth with Listerine from his overnight bag, and turned the heat up full blast.
***
Up the hill, Olmstead’s brother’s Ford pickup dominated the driveway. Waynewright had parked backwards so the Jolly Roger on the front license plate grinned out. Last Olmstead knew, Waynewright worked as an insurance adjuster in Pittsburgh during the week and came home to his wife and three kids every Friday night. In Olmstead’s opinion, the truck proved his suspicion that you can lead a hick to the city, but you can’t make him think.
He edged the rental into the space available, rocking from dips in the uneven gravel. How come Pop had never paved the damn driveway? Every year he talked about it. Olmstead had recently offered to pay for it as a Father’s Day present. Somehow it hadn’t come together.
He took a deep breath and entered the house. The side door led to the kitchen and still needed to be kicked open from the bottom.
“Olmstead!” came his sister’s happy bark. And before his boots were even off, two boys in jeans and bright jackets danced around him, circling him. “Uncle Olmstead! Uncle Olmstead’s here!” A dizzying flurry of tow-headed Joey, the smaller boy, and his darker-haired, older brother, Luke.
“Can we stay home from school?”
“Nope.” His sister pressed lunch boxes—pirates and Star Wars—into their hands and kisses their foreheads.
A dual whine echoed.
“I think maybe your Uncle is staying for more than a few hours. He just might be here when you get home.”
Joey’s face lit up. “You are?”
“You will?” Luke, the older boy, looked skeptical.
“Unless they throw me out.”
“Alright!”
Lilly snapped her fingers, pointed at the door. “Don’t miss the bus. I’m not driving you.”
“Maybe Uncle Olmstead can drive us.”
“Go!”
The boys whirlwinded out.
Olmstead gave his sister a hug, pulled her to her tip-toes.
“It’s been way too long,” she sighed. She let him go and looked him over, nodded. “You look good.”
“You, too.”
“I look fat.” She pushed her penny-red elbow-length hair into a thick pony tail, wrapping the gum-band from the bread around it.
“Those uniforms probably make everybody look fat.”
“These are new. You should have seen the old ones. Pleated pants!”
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Nope. They called me off today. Found another body in the fill.”
Olmstead eyes widened. Lilly waved an arm. “What do they expect when they handle New Jersey’s garbage?” She snagged the collar of his shirt-jacket. “Gimme.”
Olmstead relinquished the jacket, wandered around the kitchen and into the living room. “Where is everybody?”
“Wayne took the day off to gallivant with Uncle Devon. The folks are at the doctor.”
“At this hour?”
Lilly turned on the faucet, called over the running water. “You know Mama. Their doc is a nut job anyhow! You can schedule a five thirty a.m. appointment with this guy!”
“Old folks’ doctor.”
“Bingo. Didja eat yet?” Her inquiry carried the unmistakable cadence of the region, with the question sounding after the second-last word: “Didja eat? Yet.” Olmstead knew he’d sound the same, without realizing it, in a matter of days. Hickish. Though, he admitted, from Lilly it sounded endearing.
He stooped to read the titles on a collection of animation DVDs. “Nope. They don’t feed you on red-eye flights.”
“Eggs? Pancakes?”
“What’d the boys have?”
“Some horrible sugary cereal that a better mom wouldn’t feed them.”
“Sounds great.”
The house showed its own signs of wear. But they were cheerful: the DVD rack replaced an old magazine stand, a child-sized desk sat where the coat rack had been. In the mudroom, tiny red and yellow boots stood in line with Pop’s black galoshes. Pop was Pap-Pap now. Olmstead knew this intellectually from letters and snapshots. Seeing all the bright children’s things in the drab house brought that fact to the inner circle of emotional truth. He smiled.
“Coffee?” called his sister.
“Please.” He made his way back to the kitchen. “You live here now.”
“Yup.”
“What happened to Dale?”
Lilly set a filled coffee cup next to the giant denim-blue bowl and box of Count Chocula. “Gone.”
“Like, left? You guys split up?”
She became interested in the acreage beyond the window. “We don’t know.”
Olmstead poured milk over his marshmallow cereal. “That’s a little . . . weird.”
Lilly joined him at the table, wrapped both hands around her own oversized blue mug. “Some weird stuff’s been going on lately. They wanna re-open the old Howser mine. The one Pop worked in?”
“Yeah?”
“You remember how crazy things got over at the foundry when we were kids? With the union, and the strike, and people’s cars vandalized and . . . stuff?”
“And their houses caught fire? Yeah, I remember.”
“Some people want this mine. Others don’t. Really don’t.” She frowned at Olmstead, her brown doe eyes questioning: did he honestly remember? “Some of the things people do to try and stop it being opened, you know? Are dangerous.”
Olmstead thought of his brother outside the mine mouth. “Like setting fires,” he said.
Lilly