They’re all out of the room in a virtual stampede before the last word is out of my mouth. That is, everybody except for Simon. He makes no move to get up.
“Anything wrong, Simon?” I ask, getting to my feet.
He glances up at me and blushes for some reason. “No, I’m just tired.” He makes up a few questions about the assignment, obviously not interested in my answers, then finally seems to realize I’m waiting to go. He stands up fast, awkwardly scooping up his textbook in front of his groin, but not before I see what he’s trying to hide: the poor little bastard has an erection, straining away cheerfully at the fabric of his shorts. His face is strawberry red.
I pretend not to notice and he says good-bye and charges out of the room ahead of me.
What caused that, I wonder? Peter Russo’s hairless nipple? A random breeze? Maybe Simon isn’t as innocent as I thought.
Jesus. I wouldn’t be fifteen again for anything in the world.
Cheri Tipton was a friend of my mother’s, a fact she reminds me of every time I see her—which fortunately is only once every six months or so. She’s waiting for me on my front steps when I get home from teaching, and she’s dressed in Birkenstock sandals and a loose yellow sari type of thing.
Cheri’s fat. She’s about five foot two, and she weighs over two hundred pounds. The sari hides a lot of her bulk, but her bloated ankles and shins are visible under its hem, and her feet look like they’re being choked by her sandal straps. Her short hair is dyed raven black and she’s got a mole on her forehead the exact same color. Maybe she dyes the mole, too.
She kisses me on the cheek with wet lips. “Hi, Nathan. I’m a little early.”
I tell her not to worry about it and open the door. She waddles in ahead of me without waiting for an invitation, and steps through the kitchen into the living room, looking around with unconcealed curiosity.
“It’s exactly like I remember it.” For some reason there’s a tinge of sadness in her voice.
“You’ve been in here before? When was that?”
She laughs, and the big silver crucifix earrings she’s wearing jiggle against her cheeks. “Years ago. But I used to come here all the time before you were born.”
I seriously doubt it. She may have been friends with Mom, but Dad didn’t like having company in the house and I’m sure he wouldn’t have put up with a frequent guest. I tell her to have a seat and I go upstairs to change clothes. When I come back down she’s standing by the sliding doors, staring out at the cornfield.
She hands me a folder. “Take a look at that, would you? I’ve highlighted the part that piqued my curiosity.”
Inside the folder is a copy of a letter dated March 4, 1708. It’s two pages long and signed by someone named Henry Bradstreet. The letter is addressed to his brother, John, in London, England, and is mostly about day-to-day life in rural America, painting a somewhat rosy picture of “the colonies,” with the apparent intention of convincing John to relocate across the ocean. I scan through it, skipping over chunks of flowery writing about God’s providence and mercy. The highlighted section reads:
“…I heard today of a story that might perhaps interest you, knowing as I do your fondness for tales concerning the Red Man. Minister David Shepard told me in passing of a cache of antique farming implements, of Indian origin, that two of his slaves unearthed recently as they were clearing a patch of ground behind the main house. Minister Shepard is quite intrigued, because he believes these tools to have belonged to a nomadic tribe of savages no longer extant….
When I look up she’s staring at me with an expectant look on her face. I return the letter to the folder and hand it back to her. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”
She frowns. “The Shepard farm was right here, Nathan. I tracked down the old surveyor’s records and figured out where the boundaries were, and your cornfield overlaps the property almost exactly.”
“So? What makes you think there’s anything else to find out there? Did this Bradstreet leave any other letters behind?”
She has nervous hands. Right now she’s worrying at the cuticles of her fingernails with her thumbs. “Not that I can locate. But this actually isn’t the first time I’ve heard reports about the tribe he’s speaking of. I’ve come across several articles in scholarly journals that speculate about a previously undiscovered native people who used to live in this part of Connecticut.”
She needs to get out more often. “Look, Cheri. You said yourself there’s probably nothing to find.” I wave at the cornfield. “Dale Cromwell’s been plowing around out there for years and never turned up a thing except rocks and weeds and an occasional dead crow.”
She smoothes her dress. Her eyes are brown and bloodshot. “I know. But maybe there’s something farther down. Maybe something’s been overlooked.”
I scratch at a spider bite on my knee. “Why are you so curious about this? I thought the Historical Society was mainly interested in restoring old houses.”
She sniffs. “You obviously haven’t been to visit our museum in a while. We now have a rather extensive collection of Native American artifacts.”
The “museum” she’s talking about is a one-room building that used to be a welding shop. The last time I made the mistake of checking it out, there were only three tables in the room, covered with trinkets from the big days of commercial whaling and a few gaudy brochures advertising tours of historic homes. I remember nothing about it really, aside from being distinctly unimpressed.
“I see. But even so…”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Nathan, what’s the harm of letting me poke around out there for a bit?” She actually has the balls to sound irritated. “Don’t you find this the least bit intriguing?”
I shrug. “Not really.” I open the sliding doors for her and step outside onto the back porch. “But I guess it won’t hurt if you want to look around.”
If she thinks I’m going to let her dig up my cornfield on the strength of a two-hundred-year-old letter and a story about a hole full of rusty old tools she’s out of her mind.
She starts to walk toward the cornfield but after a few steps she glances back at me. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got company arriving in a few hours and I need to get the house ready.”
She looks put out but manages a polite smile. “Oh? Anybody I know?”
God, I hate nosy people. I smile back sweetly. “Watch out for the ticks. They’re bad this year.”
Tommy said he’d get here “some time after noon,” so I decide not to waste the next few hours cleaning the cottage when I could be on the beach getting the last bit of private time I’m going to have for quite a while. I yell out the back door to Cheri telling her I’m taking off and she can call me later if she finds anything. She’s bending down by the stone wall on the east side of the cornfield, poking around in the dirt with a stick. She waves at me and yells thanks then goes back to digging up worms for her young or whatever it is she’s doing.
When I’m retired like she is, I swear to God you won’t find me scratching in the mud with a stick, looking for potsherds and tepee poles and who knows what else. I plan to spend my days on the beach, sleeping on the sand and listening to the waves roll in.
I park the car in the farthest lot from the entrance and cut through the dunes, and when I emerge by the water it only takes a few minutes to get to an isolated spot. I strip off my shirt and sandals and plunge into the ocean immediately, floating on my back and closing my eyes and letting the tide carry me wherever it wants.
I read a poem once that compared waves hitting the shore to the pulse in a human wrist. I can’t remember the