These days, Corinne almost envied them.

Then there was Mikey-Junior. Of course, you didn't dare call hitn that now. Marine Private First Cla.s.s Mike Mulvaney Jr.-no mystery, at least, where he was. When people inquired, in the days when people inquired, his parents would say with pride, if uneasiness, considering the situation in Iran, that their eldest son was a Marine with a special training in electronics; they had snapshots to show of hini in his dress uniform, remarkable photographs of a handsome clean-shaven young man with a somber smile, an air of conspicuous certainty and pride. Or was it the uniform, dazzling in its beauty? When Mike had first visited home, after his eleven-week boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, he'd had a difficult time adjusting to what he called the civilian world; he'd seemed uncomfortable with his own parents, pained at his father's drinking and smoking and even his posture, and eager to return to the Marines. Corinne had been so hurt! So shocked! And she'd let Mike Jr. know.

"How can you look at your own parents like you don't know us?" Corinne had demanded, and Mike Jr. had shifted his muscular shoulders in embarra.s.sment, and looked her in the eye in a way new to him, a way she guessed he'd been trained to do, at the boot camp, as if he was about ready to salute, and said, "Mom, I guess I don't, in some weird way. It's like things are in code and the key's been lost."

Now Corinne looked at her son as if he were the stranger.

This past year, thank G.o.d, Mike was coming around. Worried about the farm and what Corinne had pa.s.sed on to him of his dad's business problems (she'd spared him any news of the drinking, the second arrest, the trouble with that vindictive Judge Kirkland), Mike had begun to call home more often, and even to send postcards. He'd never been one to write letters, but postcards were just right, and they were from such exotic places as Gibraltar, Cairo, Saudi Arabia. Signed with just a carefully scripted Mike, usually. Though once, on the reverse of a card depicting a brilliantly blue Mediterranean Sea, he'd signed Thinking of you & love, Mike.

Michael, who'd long behaved as if he hadn't been missing his eldest son, was much moved by these cards. Especially Thinking of you & love, Mike. So Mike Jr. was growing up, maturing!-it was a miracle, how the Marines had made a man (yes that sounded G.o.dd.a.m.ned corny, but it seemed to he SO) out of a hotheaded, immature kid who hadn't been able to get along with anyone except his drinking buddies. If to be a man is to be in control of oneself; and taking pride in the flict.

He, Michael Mulvaney Sr., the boy's own father, hadn't had the luck, good or bad, of serving in the U.S. armed forces. He might've been drafted into the Korean War-"conflict" was what they called it, in those days-except he'd married young, started having kids young. No telling what Michael Mulvaney might have learned.

What doesn't break you can teach you-right?

In the midst of so much worry about losing the farm, losing the business, Michael asked Corinne to locate the oldest snapshot alb.u.mn, dating back to-well, the beginning. They'd sit in the family room, each sipping beer, Michael grinning and laughing and shaking his head, tears in his eyes, lingering over the earliest pictures of High Point Farm, their young-mnarrieds pictures, Mikey-Junior at the age of a week in his beaming mom's aims, Mikey-Junior as a husky toddler gaping into the camera, Mikey_Junior at the age of four atop his first pony-what was that pony's name? Michael said, sighing, clamping a warm heavy hand on Corinne's knee, that long-married gesture meaning We're in this together, "Corinne, d'you think he'll ever come back? Try to work with me in the business? I wouldn't be so hard on him, now. I pushed too much, I guess. G.o.d, we could really be a team, Mike and me. If he'd give his old man a second chance."

Corinne laid her hand over Michael's. She said, smiling, "Well. Maybe. We can pray."

Thinking of such things like they'd happened years ago already and not just a few weeks back. For once life begins to accelerate it goes faster and faster. Probably, Patrick could explain that in scientific terms. Some equation of x, y, z.

She'd discover herself sitting on the steps of a bas.e.m.e.nt stairs she didn't recognize. Not High Point Farm-this was different. No light on, and no purpose in her being there. She might have a cold coffee mug in her hands, or a screwdriver or sponge mop or Windex meaning she'd been going somewhere. But now just sitting here in the shadows, a sh.e.l.l-shocked woman of fifty, vague and smiling into the darkness below where ominous shapes of crates, barrels, upended tables and chairs slyly beckoned. Had she wandered into a mausoleum? Was this the Land of the Dead? "Mother, you aren't here, too, are you?" This was meant to be jokey, bravado. If Corinne Mulvaney could make only one person, herself, laugh- why, that meant everything was under control. Or, stranger yet, she'd find herself shivering outside in some backyard she didn't know. In a chill mist or even light-falling snow. Was it getting to be spring, or just starting winter? A raw suburbanlooking place, nearly without trees, oh how could people stand to live without trees?-you're so exposed to the sky. There was a country highway out front, diesel trucks thundering by. There was a neighboring house, split-level ranch with carport and glary-white aluminum siding, just the other side of the scrawny hedge. Foxy and Little Boots, hackles raised, barking their fool heads off at two psycho German shepherds beyond the hedge. Corinne was trying without success to get the d.a.m.ned tractor started, wanting to plow up some soil for a vegetable garden, flower beds. It was April, unless it was still March, but she was eager to begin. That yearning to feel the crumbly earth, dirt between her fingers. The h.e.l.l with the tractor, probably it was out of gas. Michael wasn't tending to such things these days. She could use a shovel, a spade, a hoe. Oh, anything! Just to get the hard soil broken and tilled. You can set Out lettuce just after St. Patrick's Day, in theory at least.

I'd come home from school and find Mom in such places. Crazy places like the backyard where, in a lightly falling snow, or a cold drizzle, there she was trying to spade the hard-packed earth. Mom in a soiled parka, slacks. I'd park my bike in the carport (it was a mile-and-a-half ride from school, even in the rough March wind those rides were usually my happiest times of day) and trot Out back not so much hearing Mom talking to herself as seeing her, moving lips, short steamy puffs of breath. There came Judd's cheerful voice caffing out, "Hey, Mom! What's up?" Mom would turn startled to stare at me as if for a moment she didn't recognize me, either. "Oh, Judd. Are you home from school, so soon? What on earth time is it?"-searching for her watch that wasn't on her wrist.

Take care of Mom. Be sure Mom doesn't crack up.

There was this voice instructing me, Judd Mulvaney's cheerful loud voice in my ears. I was open-eyed, I could see the way Dad was sliding, the way our lives were skidding. Like a runaway senu on a steep hill where the warning sign is TRUCKERS USE LOWER GEAR but it's too late for any warning. And the brakes are worn-out and not going to hold.

So I'd put away Mom's gardening tools in the shed, and get her to come back inside the house. If she'd been sitting in a trance on the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs I'd tease her saying let's put some light on the subject!- switching on the light. And get her back upstairs, into the kitchen.

Now we could play TV Mom and teenaged son just home from school. He'd even bicycled home from school, he's such a good, clean-living simple country kid.

"Well, now!" Mom would say, rubbing her chapped hands, a pale neon-blue light coming up in her eyes-, "-you must be famished, I bet. How about a snack-" opening the refrigerator door for me to rummage inside, maybe sonic milk, maybe orange juice, wedge of gelatinous chei-ry pie, "-but don't ruin your appet.i.te for supper, please-"

Under Mom's watchful smiling eyes I'd squeeze into the breakfast "nook" with its Formica-top worn colorless from the elbows of the previous tenants of the house. I'd devour my delicious afterschool snack for it's true I was famished.

The split-level ranch with the glary-white aluminum siding was not home and would never be home. I seemed to know that, as the rattled dogs and cats knew it, restlessly prowling and sniffing as if seeking their lost niches, trying to settle down for a nap but never quite comfortable. Little Boots was so nervous he'd gotten into the habit of snapping at me if I wriggled the loose skin at the nape of his neck as I'd always done. Foxy barked, barked, barked at invisible and inaudible dangers as fiercely as he barked at the thunderous diesels on the highway. We didn't have a canary now, poor Feathers had lived to a ripe old age of seven and then expired. Mom wanted to buy another canary or possibly even a parrot (someone to talk to, she said jokingly) but not right now-"We'd better wait till we get settled."

One sad day Mannalade disappeared. Mom called desperately for him, I bicycled for miles calling for him, "Marmalade! Oh kittykitty-kitty-kitty--KIT-TY!" but the wily old orange fellow was gone.

Another sad day, Dad backed the Lincoln over something bunchy and soft, as he called it, in the driveway-poor little Sin. Only six months old, and she'd just had her operation at the vet's. Morn wept for Sin harder than she'd wept for Mannalade who'd been with us so many years but, since he'd run away, might be considered a deserter.

"Sin never had a chance," Mom said, grieving so I thought she'd make herself sick. "Oh, why did we come here! This terrible, terrible place."

We buried little black Sin who'd never had a chance, just a limp soft-furred creature weighing less than four pounds, in the backyard near the single decent-sized tree, and that a weeping willow-the species of tree Dad hated, for the messes they make, and their propensity for cracking and shattering in the wind.

Home wasn't home and wasn't very real and that was fine with me. School was even less real. Like a TV programn I'd switch on, stare at for a few seconds then switch off. Bulls.h.i.t.

Back from Ma.r.s.ena High School I'd immediately shut Out all memory of the place. Because we'd moved in midterm, in March, I had less than four months before summer recess and already I'd begun looking for after-school and Sat.u.r.day work, freed at last from farm ch.o.r.es, and needing and wanting more to do; wanting to make some money of my own. Money of my own!-it was like a prayer. Maybe not being a farm kid any longer wasn't a hundred percent bad?

In the old days when I guess we had money, or anyway Mulvaney Roofing was prosperous, Dad loved to joke and tease about how much a farm like High Point cost, how much the "largely useless" animals cost, and his kids, and his wife's "notorious expenditures"-now he was facing bankruptcy he never spoke of money at all let alone joked about it. Don't worry, Dad. I'll go to work, too. I can help out. If we don't get along, I can move out, too!Just watch.

At seventeen, a transfer fromn Mt. Ephraini to Ma.r.s.ena, Judd Mulvaney was much observed, much discussed at Ma.r.s.ena High School. (You have to know what a backwater Ma.r.s.ena was, to understand that Mt. Ephraim High was considered "more sophisticated" by far. For one thing, it was roughly twice as large.) I possessed, in this new place, the arrogance of a certain kind of brainy male adolescent: not so smart as he thinks he is, but smart enough for the compet.i.tion. I did my homework with contemptuous ease, wrote my tests quickly and carelessly. Sometimes I got high grades, sometimes not. I rarely volunteered to speak in cla.s.s but if called upon I could provide correct and even impressive answers. Anyone who'd known Patrick would have seen that I'd taken on certain of his public ways-the haughty composure that disguised shyness, the frowning silence that intimidated others. I almost wished I wore gla.s.ses so that I could shove them against the bridge of my nose like Patrick.

Mind your own business, Judd. Make your own way. No one knows the Mulvaneys here,

I hardly remembered my teachers' names that first spring, let alone my cla.s.smates' names. It was a great feeling, actually-like that -last scene in Alice in Wonderland Morn used to read to me when I was little, before I went to sleep, when Alice suddenly tosses the kings, queens, would-be executioners who've been threatening her into the air and discovers that they're just playing cards. Who cares for you? You're nothing but apack of cards!

I'd always liked that as a little kid and as a seventeen-year-old transfer from one life to another, I was liking it more and more all the time.

Take care of Mom. Be sure Mom doesn't crack up.

As for Dad-stay out of his way.

I don't want to misrepresent my father. There were days when he didn't drink much, or in any case didn't show the effects of drinking. Which were for him an anesthetized glare, on the edge of belligerence but lacking the energy to cross over. He'd come home exhausted, too tired to eat, crack a can or two of ale and drain them in a few minutes, fall into bed-and be up again the next morning by 6 AM. He was a good man in his heart but stymied, frenzied, like a creature poked by spears, upright and flailing in a corner. If you got too close, to console, or hope to be consoled, you might be hurt.

At the time, I guess I hardened my heart against him. He's a drunk. He's a fool. He's stupid. He doesn't give a s.h.i.t about you or Mom. Dad would order me to do something and I'd shrug sullenly and take my time doing it and Dad would give me a shove on the shoulder-oh, just a shove!-to show who's boss!-and my heart would flood with rage, adrenaline rushed through my skinny kid's body hot to bursting. I thought of the shotgun, the rifles now packed away somewhere in the bas.e.m.e.nt amid the chaos of cartons, boxes, barrels yes but I know where: I can find them and it seemed to me the most natural thing, that a son might kill his father; to protect not just himself but his mother. He's waiting to explode. Look what he did to Marianne. Erased her like she never existed. What makes you think he won't do the same f.u.c.king thing to you.

I missed Patrick! My brother I loved, my brother I'd been led to think was my friend. Needing to talk to him for his intelligence, his wisdom. What had he said of our parents-they were casualties? Dad was like some poor creature whose life is being sucked out of him by a predator? By nature's plan? Yet Patrick had seemed to blame Dad anyway. He'd never forgiven himn. When he called homne, which was rare, it was never at a time Dad was likely to be home, only Mom and me. And Patrick had said he believed in evil.

I needed to talk to Patrick about what was happening to us which I didn't always understand and could not control. Even in a kid's fantasy I could not control. The deals Dad was always negotiating that always fell through. The lengthy telephone calls, the abrupt departures in the car; another missed dinner, and no explanation; long hours of absence explained by mysterious words-laying the groundwork, connecting the dots. One day Dad's old foreman Alex Flood had been rehired to work for him, and was going to move his famnily to Ma.r.s.ena; a few days later, Alex Flood had changed his mind, or Dad had changed his mind, and Alex was "out of the picture-pemlanently." One day there was a roofing supplier in Rochester with whom Dad was going to do business, a few days later the supplier was "out of the picture- permanently." In Ma.r.s.ena and vicinity, Dad seemed to have made a wide range of acquaintances already, businessmen, tradesmen, but predominantly men who worked with their hands, the kind of men he'd strike up friendly conversations with in local taverns, with whom he felt comfortable and could "respect" just as they "respected" him. But at the same time he spoke vaguely of people in this new place not liking himn, not welcoming him-"They won't give me a chance. They don't really want me here. It's like somebody's been talking to them about me."

Carefully Morn said, "Michael, dear-who would be talking about you? Why?"

"You know who," Dad said. "And you know why."

These were the months, eventually years, my brother Patrick was out of contact with the family for long periods of time. I missed him so, tried to harden my heart against him, too, hut could not.

Just when I'd thought I had a brother at last and I was a brother at last, I'd lost Patrick! G.o.d d.a.m.n him.

Hurting Mom, too. Mom andJudd, two people who loved him.

I guess I was the only person on earth who might have under- stood why Patrick went away when he did. Sabotaging what looked to be a sumina c.u.m laude B.A. at Cornell. Disappointing his professors who'd had such hopes for him. But even I didn't really understand. He'd felt good about the execution of justice, that he hadn't killed Zachary Lundt after all, hadn't even hurt the b.a.s.t.a.r.d much. Said he felt free, would never need to punish any living creature again. And if Zachary had recognized Patrick, apparently he'd never told a soul.

Still, Patrick had disappeared. We'd receive postcards from him from time to time, forwarded from our old address. Postmarked Cali- fornia, Utah, Idaho. Thinking of you & hoping all is well there, Sony not to be in touch hut will be calling soon I promise. Mom's birthday if possible. Sincerely & love patrick. He was working with "learning-disabled children" in Oakland, California. Had a job in a fire watch station in Glacier Park, Montana. Traveling & learning more than I'd ever thought possible. Feel such SHAME at my old self Love to you all on my 22nd birthday -orry to be missing it-. Your son & brother patrick. He was in Boulder, Colorado taking courses at the university in geology and archeology, he'd apprenticed himself to a j.a.panese woman potter. But soon then working as a hospital orderly in Denver, then again, a month later, in Fargo, North Dakota. Promise will call soon. Am in good health & hope all is well with you. Making arrangements to return to Cornell & get the degree. Sony for being out of contact & promise will call soon. Love pj.

We waited to hear more about Patrick returning to Cornell, but-a long time pa.s.sed.

We waited for him to call. And waited.

That Easter Sunday last year I'd done exactly as Patrick instructed. After Mom and I camne home from church, after a harried lunch, I drove Out saying I was going to visit a friend, went to the old abandoned cemetely on the Sandhill Road and found the rifle where Patrick had promised. I was scared as h.e.l.l scurrying like a rabbit imagining pohce surveillance, somebody hiding amid the trees. But it was quiet, still, deserted like the countiy usually is, especially a lost old cemetery where the carved names of the dead have flattened out to almost nothing and weeds have grown taller than the tallest headstones. In nature, Patrick said, energy is never lost it's only reconverted, but a cemetery makes you wonder-so many people, so many lives, each one once thinking Here I am, look at me! I'm something! Yeah, right.

But there was Mike's 22 Winchester rifle neatly wrapped in the same canvas, shoved beneath some loose rock. Without letting the canvas fall back. I sniffed the gun barrel-it didn't seem to have been fired.

Not fired! Patrick hadn't fired the gun!

Not a murder weapon in my hands!