The Signal Flame Read online

  They walked with their arms on each other’s shoulders and hobbled like that in the direction of the back porch and passed Bo coming toward them with his rifle. Ruth pulled on Hannah and they spun around and stopped to watch as he took off his shirt and threw it over the stone edge of the fireplace, then knelt on the ground and used that edge as a barrel rest. Ruth followed his line of sight and saw the hawk roosting, the young hen unmoving in its claws, and she wondered why the hunter had not flown away. Flown somewhere it might eat its prey in peace. Unless it was not done with what it had come for. She heard the sound of the rifle safety snap and looked back at where Bo knelt, watched him pull the trigger, the report of the twenty-two no more than a thin whiplike crack, and when she turned to the trees where the hawk had landed and perched, it was no longer there.

  part 3

  AS WE WAIT

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  HE WOKE ON A SUNDAY morning to gray light and the sound of wind as it buffeted the house from the east, crawled out of the sleeping bag he had been using on the floor of the living room, and went into the kitchen to wash and then stoke a fire in the woodstove. He put a small pot of oatmeal on the gas range and walked outside to the barn, brought two loads of wood into the kitchen, and stacked another two loads on the porch by the door. Then he made coffee and waited for his breakfast to cook.

  After he had eaten, he went into the living room and raised a fire in the fireplace, sat down in a chair that was the sole piece of furniture in the room, and opened Sometimes a Great Notion. Ruth had given the book to him as a moving-over-the-mountain gift (she called it), but he went through more coffee than pages and put down the book and picked up an atlas he had found in his grandfather’s study and brought over when he had moved his things on Saturday morning.

  It was about four hundred and fifty miles to Abas, West Virginia, he figured. A little over eight hours. If Jeff called him back today and told him the saw was still there, he would leave early in the morning and be back by midnight.

  The week before, he had sat in the trailer office at the mill and clicked a pen against a legal pad and jotted down the numbers he had come up with on the adding machine. One quarter over, another about to begin. Endless Roughing could increase its output by a third into ’73 if the orders he had projected held, and there was no reason to believe they would not. But that meant more men and a bigger mill if the hours returned to what they had been since June, and he had neither more men nor a bigger mill. Dardan was still rebuilding, but it was tapering fast in anticipation of winter, the bulk of the big projects already close to done. And he could see that the extra hours he was asking his men to work was taking their toll. How long before some of those men said, All right, we did our share. How long before all of them began to grumble and complain on break, take shortcuts, or call in, regardless of what Bo gave them or told them they had coming. There was a limit. It had been a good run.

  So he told Jeff Lamoreaux to put up a notice in the break room for a meeting on the last Friday of September, and the men knocked off at three-thirty and gathered in the tally shed. Bo got up on a stack of wooden soda crates and told them how the mill had done that summer. How they had put out more lumber in those three months since the flood than they had in almost the entirety of the year before. He thanked them for their work and told them that their hours would go back to seven-thirty to four-fifteen, with a forty-five-minute lunch break at noon and coffee breaks at ten and two, effective Monday, along with a bonus of anywhere from ten to one hundred dollars in their first paycheck in October, depending on a man’s seniority. Then he stepped down, and Jeff got up and told them there was beer in the back of the boss’s truck and they should help themselves. Some of the younger boys hollered, and everyone made for the door until the shed was empty except for Bo and Jeff. Bo went over to the desk and opened the tally book as though he might find something in there that he did not already know, flipped a few pages, and closed it.

  What’s on your mind, boss? Jeff asked.

  Earlier in the day, Dave Cummings had come into the office and informed Bo that one of the older ripsaws had broken down for good. Bo told Jeff this and asked him what a new one cost.

  More than we should pay, Jeff said, and pulled a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket and tucked it behind his ear. Turns out, though, that I got a call last week from a guy I know in West Virginia who went to an auction at a mill that had gone out of business. Told me he saw a Diehl in good shape go to some guy who buys and sells those things.

  Where is he? Bo asked.

  Outside a town called Abas, Jeff said. About a day’s drive. Daylight, that is.

  Bo stared down at the cover of the tally book and did not say anything.

  Heard of it? Jeff asked.

  Bo nodded. Call him back.

  The next day Bo moved all that he had except what was in the wood shop from the farm to the hill house. Hannah asked if she and Ruth could come up for lunch at noon on Sunday, and Bo told her he would like that.

  He sat in his living room that Sunday and watched the fire burn, glanced at his watch, and saw that it was nearly twelve already. He closed the cover of the atlas and left it on the chair, put on his coat, and went outside.

  It had been a warm month, that morning the first when there might have been a frost, but there was not. Bo walked to the edge of the grass to inspect the shoots of winter wheat coming up, and he saw Hannah and Ruth coming out of the woods from the meadow and down along the field. Their arms were looped one inside the other, Ruth holding a wicker basket in her free hand. He watched them for a while from the distance, as though they would keep on along the border with the woods and pass him by, as though there might be no house there on the hill at all. But then they angled through the rows of wheat in his direction and he walked out and greeted them by the barn, took the basket of food they carried, and led them inside.

  They hung their coats over the chairs at the kitchen table and put their boots in a tray by the stove. The room was light-filled and warm and smelled faintly of fresh paint and wood smoke. Bo offered them coffee, slid another log into the stove, and poured the soup they had brought into a saucepan he placed at the back of the gas range. Hannah sat and drank. Ruth stood, her hands wrapped around the coffee mug for the warmth. After a minute or two, Bo said, Let me show you what I’ve done with the place, and they both stood and followed him into the living room.

  From the day Bo had walked into the house in May, he understood how it had been built, whom it had been built for, and he wanted to keep that spirit of the place alive, even if not one of the Youngers who lived there back in the twenties was around to see it. The old wide-board pine floors were refinished and glowing a soft shade of gold beneath the grain. The walls were painted natural linen. The window frames and fireplace mantel he had varnished to match the floors, and the slate hearth was repointed and polished so that the thin rust-colored veins and slight green hue of the stone shone like the day they were put down.

  Bo, it’s beautiful, Hannah said. This is— She stopped and stood at a window and did not finish her sentence.

  Ruth asked him if he did all this work himself and he said no, he had hired out the carpentry, painting, and plumbing but had stripped and refinished the wood trim by himself in August.

  He took them upstairs and showed them all four bedrooms, painted but bare. He said he had not picked a bedroom for himself, but he liked the one that overlooked the fields and the woods beyond.

  Where do you sleep? Hannah asked.

  On the floor in the living room. It’s only been one night.

  Goodness, Bo, she said. We’ve got more beds over at the farm than you can shake a stick at. And a couch, too, for that living room of yours.

  I was thinking of making my own bed, he said. But a couch would be nice. Place to sit in front of the fire.

  When they came back down to the kitchen, Bo moved the soup off the stove, ladled it into bowls, and took bread from the warming
tray of the woodstove. Then they sat down. Hannah asked the Lord to bless the food before them and the house to which they had come, and they ate, speaking only of the weather.

  After the meal, Ruth asked Bo where he was planning on going. He looked at her as if he did not understand and said, I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here.

  She turned and glanced into the living room as if to make sure it was there. The atlas you were reading. Just brushing up on your geography?

  He drank off his coffee. Sam ever talk to you about a Captain Burne Grayson? he asked.

  He mentioned a Commander Grayson, she said. I didn’t know he had a first name. When I landed in Honolulu and we were riding around in the taxi and catching up, nervous, I guess, Sam said morale was high in their unit because of Grayson. He let them be marines. I asked if Grayson came on R and R with him, too, and he laughed and said no, and that was the last I heard of him. Except in that letter you showed me.

  Bo stood up and poured himself another cup of coffee. I was looking at how far it is to West Virginia. I’m driving there tomorrow if I hear back from Jeff before dinnertime.

  What’s down there? Hannah asked.

  A saw I might want to buy for the yard. It’s in storage outside of Abas, northern part of the state, off of 33.

  That’s where Captain Kraynack said Grayson’s from, Hannah said.

  Yep, Bo said.

  Ruth leaned forward. I want to go with you.

  He looked surprised and scratched his beard. I don’t know, Ruth. I mean, I don’t know who or what’s down there.

  Why should that matter for me and not for you?

  He set his coffee cup down on the table, walked over to the pile of stove wood and picked up two logs, put them into the stove, and closed the lid. It doesn’t. But I’m leaving early. I need to get down and back before Tuesday morning. I can’t make it a road trip.

  Road trip? she said. What’s that supposed to mean?

  I mean it’s just work.

  Captain Grayson’s in the saw business now?

  I don’t even know if I’ll have time to look for Grayson. I’m going down there to buy a saw, not to listen to some vet’s war stories.

  Ruth shook her head, and Hannah said, It’d be nice to have the company, Bo.

  I don’t want any company, he said. He ran water in the sink and took dishes from the table, and Hannah and Ruth said nothing. Listen, he said, and turned to face them. I’m sorry. Let me check this out by myself first. If he’s for real, Ruth, this Grayson, I’ll drive back down there just for you, and we can hear what he has to tell us about Sam.

  She nodded but would not look at him as she rose and got her coat and said, I’ll be outside, Hannah. Take what time you need.

  He woke at four in the morning and left the stove damped and walked out into the darkness, where a waning moon was in the sky to the east above the field at the top of the hill like a broken and rounded-off dinner plate. The Big Dipper hung right overhead. He stood looking up at the stars and wondered if he ever would see his brother again, then got in his truck and drove down the mountain.

  The traffic lights in Dardan Center were flashing yellow, and a cop sat half asleep in his cruiser, parked nose-out by the back of the drugstore. Bo took a left at the creek and drove up the hill toward the farm and saw the light on in the kitchen. He got out and rapped on the back door, and Ruth stood and came to it. He did not wonder if she would be ready. She was dressed in her boots and a CPO jacket he remembered was Sam’s, and he knew that Hannah would have said to her last night, You’d better be waiting for him, because he’s going to be here. She had tied her hair back and tucked it underneath a green field cap that must have been Sam’s as well, although Bo had never seen it.

  You ready? he asked.

  She nodded.

  We’ll get breakfast on the way.

  They took 118 West, and as they approached the mill Bo slowed and rolled the pickup to a stop and sat staring in the half-light at the outlines of sheds and treetops that looked pale in the weak luminescence of the yard lights.

  What’s wrong? Ruth asked.

  Nothing, he said. It just seems strange to drive past it and not pull in. Habit, you know? I’ve been doing it since I was nineteen, and I’ve never wanted to do anything else.

  Hannah mentioned to me once that you had done a year at school, Ruth said. Place in the South.

  Semester only. I didn’t want to go back. Bo rolled the window down to listen to the engine idle. It sounds a little rough, he said, but it should get us there and back. He rolled the window up.

  Did you love her? Ruth asked.

  Love at eighteen, he said, and put the truck into gear but kept his foot on the clutch.

  I was younger than that, Ruth said.

  Bo turned to look at her. That’s why, he said.

  That’s why what?

  That’s why I didn’t go back.

  They were quiet for a long time, and Ruth said, That’s why I stayed.

  A truck shifting out of a lower gear crested the hill behind them, and Bo looked in the rearview mirror to judge its distance, then back at the road. He let his foot off the brake and eased the clutch and drove.

  From Ricketts Glen to the junction with Route 220 in Hughesville they passed farm tractors and delivery trucks and were overtaken by a ’66 Camaro SS with a V-8 that Bo could hear growl as it came up and moved into the oncoming lane, the driver tense at the wheel with a cigarette in his mouth. He never turned his head as he lurched past the pickup like a traffic cone in the middle of the road. Ruth said out of nowhere, Race car spelled backward is still race car. Did you know that?

  I do now, he said.

  When the sun was up, they found themselves among the steady traffic of loggers, fuel tankers, and eighteen-wheelers coming in from Interstate 80. They took 80 for a stretch of about twenty miles, through the Nittany Valley of the Alleghenies, where Bo’s grandfather had told him that a lion or two were said to be hiding. (Bo remembered then the week before the old man died, the two of them sitting at the kitchen table while Jozef talked of shepherding in the old country and the big cat he had shot in the early dawn. But the next day Jozef said to him, To bol vlk, the man speaking in Slovak as though he had spoken this language to his grandson his entire life. Bo asked what he was talking about, and Jozef said, In the Tatras. It was a wolf, not a mountain lion. But my own father dreamed for so long of living here, in America, that even what stalked us then was part of that dream.)

  They exited and stayed on 220 West for State College. At eight o’clock they pulled up to a diner that advertised twenty-five-cent coffee and free refills, and they ordered toast and bacon and eggs. Bo looked out the window and across the street, where a young woman stood in the parking lot of a building and handed out cattails to passersby, stems she took from a cardboard box brimming with them, on the side of which was a sign in blue and red Magic Marker that read, For they shall be called the children of God. He touched Ruth’s shoulder and pointed, and the two of them watched the young woman dance from person to person, offering each one her symbol of peace. She seemed grateful to anyone who held out a hand, and undaunted by anyone who did not.

  He had the old truck up to seventy on the highway outside of Bedford, Pennsylvania, hoping to make some time and listening to Ruth talk about three new hens she had introduced into the flock that weekend, when he saw the police lights behind him. He pulled over and gave the cop his license and registration and the officer took off his sunglasses and asked Bo where he was going in such a hurry.

  West Virginia, Bo said.

  That so?

  Bo nodded. But I didn’t think this thing could go that fast. I just had it rebuilt a few months ago.

  The cop pretended not to care. Business or pleasure? he asked, and glanced inside at Ruth, who sat and stared straight ahead.

  So Bo told him about the flood and the mill and the lead he had gotten on a good used saw and who knew what else, and that he was hoping to g
et down there by noon, though he had not planned on breaking any laws along the way. He said nothing about the marine captain named Burne Grayson, or his brother who was dead or alive in some jungle in Vietnam.

  That so, the policeman said again. He looked to be about Hannah’s age, though something in his frame and face made him look older than he ought to have been, and Bo wondered what sons, if any, he had at home.

  The cop walked to the back of the truck and looked in the bed, empty but for a metal toolbox and a length of rope, then came back over to the window, handed the license and registration to Bo, and said, Make sure you drive a little slower, then, Mr. Konar, or them boys in West Virginia’ll give you a ticket just for talking too much.

  At the Maryland state line they pulled up to a restaurant on the outskirts of Cumberland. Bo bought a map and went to a phone booth and called the farm and told Hannah they were making good time and expected to be home by midnight if things went as planned. There was a pause on the line, and she asked how Ruth was.

  You can ask her yourself, he said.

  No. You two just be careful. Call me when you’re headed back. I don’t care what time.

  It was eleven o’clock and warm in the sun when they stopped in Clarksburg for gas and to check the map for the last leg of the trip. Then they took Route 19 out of town to 33, the road winding along the edges of forests, mountainsides, the banks of creeks, and old rail lines like a live wire brought down in a storm. Ruth said she had never been this far south or west, and he asked if she saw a familiarity in the landscape of mountains and rivers that reminded him of home.

  Some, she said. These hillsides, though. They’re steeper here. Like everyone lives in a bit more shadow than light.

  He said, I thought that, too. Just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

  Jeff had given him a mile marker to look out for, and when he passed it an hour later, he slowed and peered into every cut in the trees on the side of the road that might look like a driveway, until he saw a post with two reflectors nailed to it and a patch of gravel grated from the berm into the woods. He took the turn and pulled in to what might be called a yard, were it not for the intrusion of machinery and parts of machinery that had not run or worked in any recent year and had been strewn about the grounds in a manner that told him they had been dumped and left to rust.