fell open and his brow knitted. “Why didn’t anybody tell me!”
“She wouldn’t let us.” Berk leaned in conspiratorially. “She’s glad you got out. Lilly wants out herself, but her husband wouldn’t leave. And now she’s stuck with me.”
His father told him other things, details that don’t make it through the filter of three thousand miles: Lilly’s older boy was dyslexic but great at math. Olmstead’s mother, who had previously refused to take so much as vitamin C, was now on a blood thinner and blood pressure medication. Devon’s root canal had gone awry, and so half his face tingled all the time.
His father finished the apricots. “Seems like I’m the healthy one, don’t it?” The man’s laughter filled any uncomfortable gaps conversation may have left. Olmstead laughed, too. It felt good. Freeing.
Suddenly Lilly was putting rolls and lunch meat—olive loaf, Lebanon bologna, and chipped-chopped ham—on the table, while Devon bitched that there wasn’t any beer. Noon already? It seemed to Olmstead that he and his father had just gotten started.
His father eased into the neighboring chair. “We’ll talk more later, don’t worry.”
Devon rinsed Berk’s mug out, put ice in it, and was filling it with tap water when a car pulled up outside, catching his attention. “Uhp. Better set another place, Lilly.” He grinned over his shoulder at Berk. “Must be noon at the O.K. Corral.”
He stood in the foyer with his hand on the doorknob, but waited until the visitor knocked.
“Well look what the cat drug in! How are ya, Officer Mohr?”
“Hiya, Mr. Burlington. I’m sorry to bother yuns at lunchtime—”
“Don’t be stupid, boy, you know you’re welcome any time.” Devon led the uniformed man through the foyer and to the table. “Besides, who makes better coffee than Lilly, huh?”
Olmstead just stared. Dillon Mohr stood—lanky and blonde and pumpkin-headed—like a snapshot from Olmstead’s memory. Except for the uniform, which he wore well and with straight-shouldered pride, Dillon could have been visiting from his mom’s trailer with a pack of bubble gum and a pocketful of frogs.
He pulled his curvy-brimmed hat off, nodded to Lilly, and shook Berk’s hand, all the while apologetically explaining his presence in the same mile-a-minute chatter he’d displayed as a child. “You probably know this already, but it was one of your neighbors that called, so the department figured they better send somebody around to tell you: there’s a fire down in the old Howser mine. Looks like it was set right on your property. So of course we need to know if you’ve seen any . . . ” He stopped and stared right back at Olmstead. “Holy shit!”
And, just like when they were kids, Lilly shooed them to the back porch, where they sat on the broad wooden steps eating chipped-chopped ham sandwiches and apples. But instead of finishing off the meal with an Astro Pop, Lilly made them coffees with honey and whipped cream. And though this reminded Olmstead of past arguments whether peanut butter was better with bananas or fluffer-nutter, the two men now spoke carefully, trying to catch up.
“I got married the summer we graduated,” Dillon reminded Olmstead. “You don’t remember?”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“I guess you were already in California. ‘Course I guess I didn’t know that when we were making out the invites . . . ” He shrugged. “I dunno why the hell you didn’t get an invitation.”
“I think we weren’t talking.”
“Aw. Aw, yeah, huh? What happened?”
“We opened an empty safe.”
Dillon nodded once. “That’s right.” He gazed toward the maples, where they’d worked over that dumped safe for ten days. “Nothing inside,” he said, pensive. A lull. Then: “Your sister’s being promoted to shift supervisor. Did she tell you?”
“Yeah, I heard. Something about landfill mining?”
“It’s new. They rework ‘em and and get the good stuff out, then I guess they can use the leftover space. Doubles the life of the fill, apparently. They put her in charge of all that.”
“Did she go back to school?” Just how much did Olmstead not know?
“Naw, I guess there’s some training program or certification? Something.” Dillon fished a circular container from his back pocket, pulled a small white pouch from it. “It’s great ‘cause it will double the crew, too, at least on first shift.” He tucked the pouch between his cheek and gum, dropping his voice. “Maybe she can even get your scruffy old uncle a job. He’s more of a problem since he quit drinking than he was when we were kids!”
Olmstead recalled his uncle’s angry quest for beer at lunch. “You sure he quit?”
“Yeah, this week. I can tell from his temper. He’s way less ornery when he falls off the wagon. Probably ‘cause when he’s sober he only hangs with Snail an’ nem. Remember Snail?”
“Moose’s cousin?”
“Yup.”
Olmstead put up a hand. “Say no more. Surprised they haven’t all shot each other.”
Dillon laughed in agreement. “So, how long you back for?”
Olmstead shrugged. “As long as it takes.”
“You in charge of your pop’s estate?”
“Cleaning all this up, you mean?”
Dillon squinted, puzzled, then guffawed. “Cleaning it up?”
Olmstead nodded, gazing out at the mountains of metal. “That’s my reaction, too.”
“No, you don’t get it. Your Uncle an’ nem bought a shredder, and hitched up with, I dunno, some company that’s separating the stuff. The government paid for the shredder, I guess so’s they’d agree to recycle the mercury? But that”—he waved a finger at the yard of junk—“that’s worth, I don’t even know. More than I’ll make in my lifetime, anyway.”
Olmsted started to laugh but stopped himself. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah! I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.”
Olmstead considered his uncle. “I can.” The thought irritated him, so he changed the subject. “You still living in the park?”
Dillon sort of scoffed. “Nope. My wife is, though, and my two little girls.”
“She got the property, huh?”
“I gave it to her.” Dillon shrugged. “I don’t hate her or nothing. We actually have a lot of fun together still. Ballgames an’ nat? We’re friends.”
Dillon was ingenuous enough for this to be a truth. “So where are you living?” Olmstead asked.
“Just moved into town. Above a pizza shop.”
Olmstead looked away. He sat next to his once-best friend thinking about how he was going to kick the shit out of his brother when he saw him, and then a stray thought spilled clear from his head out of his mouth: “Did my Pop set that fire?”
Dillon smiled but his brow creased. “Are you for real asking me this?”
Olmstead shook his head, fearing he’d just ratted out his old man.
Dillon laughed, punching Olmstead in the arm. “The whole town knows your father set them fires. Hell, three counties over they knew, before the fires even started!” He shrugged. “What are we going to do, prosecute a dying man? He won’t live through the trial. Why wreck his last days?” He shrugged again. “Not to be mean. Sorry.”
Olmstead waved the comment away.
Silence settled between them, but this time warm and comfortable,