But I was getting worried for him. Around the first of January, he missed paying a bunch of bills and had to pay some late fees—not for want of liquid cash, just from forgetting to pay, or losing the envelopes. He left the dome light of his truck on one night, and it would have run the battery flat if I hadn’t come along to turn it off. Still, I didn’t become consciously aware of this overall drift until he came into the house and didn’t take off his boots, didn’t even stamp them clean, tracking slush through the kitchen and dining room.
Alzheimer’s? I wondered. Depression? Some other sickness?
It was the latter, I discovered. One comparatively warm day—a good old-fashioned January thaw, Brassard said—I opened the cowshed door to the near paddock so they could get some sun and fresh air; they’d drift out on their own. Then I went to the upstairs of the old barn and threw hay bales down through a trapdoor into a utility room that also opened onto the paddock, so I could give the animals something to chew on out there. When I figured I had tossed enough, I took the stairs down and around and was surprised to find Brassard standing precariously on a short stepladder in one of the workshop rooms. He looked over at me as if startled by my appearance.
“And here’s the girl, in person,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m letting them out for a few hours. Putting the hay out.”
He clambered awkwardly down and sat on a bale. “Suppose you’re wonderin what I’m doin up there. Gentleman of my years, and all.” He chuckled uneasily. I glanced at the ceiling and saw the branching copper gas pipes that radiated from the corner and across the ceiling.
I looked at him questioningly, clueless.
“I’ve been thinkin,” he said, “there’s another way for this to go.”
“For …?”
He made a big, floppy, encompassing gesture. “For all this. The whole damn business.”
“I’m not sure what you’re saying. Another way to go … you mean money? I thought Erik had helped out on that score, things were tracking better now.”
“Oh, definitely does help. It does help, sweetie. Just not enough. We’re still going down the drain, just slower. Damn milk price is stranglin us.”
“Would it change if the hops came out well, if next year we put in some acres on this side of the road? They wouldn’t be organic, but they’d still bring in some decent money. Erik says his strain is really good and once the brewers get—”
“Oh, it’s a grand scheme. Problem is, no vegetable thing is gonna do just what you want. Not ever, especially your first time through. Anything can go wrong. Everything can go wrong. Turns out the deer or groundhogs like em, forget about a crop. Couple molds, mildews, aphids, there’s a beetle cuts em down like a weed whacker. Looked it up on Google. It’d be easier if they weren’t organic, could spray em. What’s he gonna do, pick the bugs off one by one?”
“Knowing Erik, he will if he has to.”
He laughed grimly. “Talkin to your brother, he says hops’re hands-on, cuttin em back and weedin all spring, then pickin em pretty much by hand. Time intensive—he’ll have to take on help, and that’ll cut his net to hell. Sure, maybe next year we could take out some of my corn and put in more hops, but that still puts the first harvest two years out. Don’t know that we’ll hold out that long.”
Then, to my shock, he reached down and picked up a bottle of vodka from the floor behind him. He didn’t drink right away, just sloshed it around, pondering the liquid through the glass. It was two-thirds empty.
He glanced up at me sideways, a cunning look. “Now, don’t tell Will or Earn, right?”
“Jim—what are you doing?” I stuttered.
“Oh, don’t get on some high horse. What, we’re growin six acres of beer across the road and can’t take a drop over this side?” Now he took a big slug that he swished through his dentures before he swallowed. He exhaled the burn with satisfaction. “See, the secret with vodka is you can’t smell it on the breath,” he said, pleased with his ingenuity.
“That’s a really bad idea, Jim,” I said, gesturing at the bottle. I was stunned, unable to respond coherently. I thought back to the many times I’d noticed his fumbling or mumbling, and realized it must have been going on for weeks.
“Well, I guess I’ve always been good at bad ideas.” He took another mouthful, chewed it and swallowed, then waved one hand in a loose circle around his head, indicating his whole world, whole life. “Got a knack for it.”
My thoughts scattered like pigeons when a dog comes along the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do, where to start dealing with this. First thing would be to keep booze out of his hands. I might be able to snatch this bottle, but he could have hidden bottles in any of a hundred places on the farm, stashed in the house or barns or sheds or his truck.
Brassard’s face took on that clever, confiding expression again. “You haven’t been here long enough, but we used to have a problem with the propane feed. Out back the barn there? Got a sort of a main, comes out of the tank, then branches off to the space heaters in shed and parlor, water heaters, workrooms. Went through a time when we had a problem with leaks. Must be a hundred valves and fittins in here, took Earn a long time to find em and fix em all.”
The propane tank was shaped like a giant vitamin capsule: fat, white, blunt-round at both ends, mounted horizontally on two concrete brackets. I guessed it contained at least a thousand gallons, enough to burn down or blow to pieces the whole farm. I glanced up again at the ceiling above the stepladder, the snaking pipes.
“See, you can’t use accelerants, like gasoline or diesel, the fire inspectors know that one, figure that out in a heartbeat.”
The strange drift of this terrified me. “What is this bullshit, Jim?”
“But an accidental propane fire, insurance would bite on that. Happens all the time. We’ve never made a claim in forty years, not a nickel. How much they’ve made off us, we deserve something in return. Forty, fifty years—not a nickel!”
“Don’t say another word! I’m going to the house. You’re coming with me. We’re going to call Will.”
He just shrugged and remained on his bale, rocking his big torso from side to side. He didn’t resist much when I took the bottle out of his hand, but he didn’t get up, either, and he was too heavy for me to lift.
His thoughts turned inward. “Hasn’t this been just one hell of a year?” he asked himself as I left the room. “One hell of a year?”
I knew that Will was deep in his project with his production team, but I called him anyway and left a barely coherent message on his answering service. I called Erik’s cell with the same result. Then I called Earnest in Milwaukee. He picked up and listened as I spewed the tale.
“Okay. I’ll head back. Still, can’t get there right away. It’ll take me at least a day, probably two, to wrap things up here, I’ve got wiring hanging from the ceiling, gotta close it up. Then a full day of driving if I go straight through. Say, minimum of three days. You and Will are going to have to manage till then.”
“What should I do? What did Diz do?”
“You’re not Diz. You can’t be Diz. Don’t be Diz.”
“But what did she do?”
“Ann, I was blitzed myself. She beat the shit out of me, and it scared me to death. This little woman at me like a Tasmanian devil, I never want to see a sight like that again. And what could have happened if I had … reacted wrong. Thinking about it makes me want to puke my guts, literally. She laid down the law for Jim, too. Probably the same general plan. I don’t remember it all that clearly.” He got silent, then whispered to himself, “Fuckfuckfuck. Damn it, Jim.”
By the time we hung up, I had been gone from the barn for ten minutes and my fear mounted. What was Brassard doing in there? I ran back out and was relieved to find him sitting where I’d left him.
I had no script for this. At the legal aid office, we had often dealt wi
th alcohol-fueled domestic abuse or street crime or car accidents, but I always had a desk and a wall of paperwork to protect me from my clients. I never got close enough to their lives to get my hands dirty. I had no experience with the murky ambivalences and painful betrayals and family-shattering choices they faced. I could recommend interventions, rehabilitations, restraining orders, custody transfers, but I had never implemented them or enforced them, never saw how they played out, face-to-face, in real people’s lives.
At a loss, I knelt down in front of Brassard and put my hands on his knees and stared into his face as if, by force of will, I could wake him from this awful spell.
He looked at me with blurry affection. Then he said, pleased at the revelation, “I know what it is. My daughter. Jane. Sometimes you look a little like her, Annie. Same age, about. Hair, same. Pretty girl, Jane. That’s what it is.”
“Let’s go to the house.”
“Broke my heart she and Diz couldn’t get along. Couldn’t talk sense to either of em. Damn Diz anyhow.”
“Let’s go. Get up now.”
He shook his head, no, mimed a pugilistic pout of resistance. His affect had changed: A sly humor crept into his expressions and gestures.
“You’re not going near the gas, Jim. You’re not going out of this room except to the house.”
He tried to lean back against the workbench, but it was farther than he’d expected and his shoulders fell hard against it. He reclined there, legs spread wide, boots planted flat, apparently comfortable despite the awkwardness of his position. I hated seeing him like this, pathetic and visibly slackening.
“What did Diz do? When this happened before? Your drinking.”
“That business back when?” He yawned. “Yes, Diz. Didn’t want to cross that gal. No, you did not!” He chuckled at the very thought.
I realized that whatever Diz had done, I couldn’t do it. I could argue, I could threaten, but I’d never be able to strike at someone I loved. Of course I held a pocket of anger deep in me, that awful pit where every resentment and hurt lodges, but couldn’t imagine turning it against someone I cared for, even for the best of reasons. Diz could, had.
“Get up,” I said. “We’re going to the house.”
“I’m fine right here. You go on ahead.” Still being clever, a disobedient boy. The booze was hitting him hard now.
Without planning it, I stood and with all my strength lifted his big feet up off the floor. His weight shifted and his shoulders slid past the edge of the workbench so that he toppled back under it, clattering into the haphazard buckets, tools, and odd machine parts that had collected there. He lay there for a moment, confused, lower body still up on the bale, shoulders and head tangled in gear. Then he twisted and thrashed, clanking, trying to right himself. He couldn’t do it and after a moment lay back, flummoxed.
With a series of jerks, I got the hay bale out from beneath him so that his body slid to the floor. That allowed him to get his arms under him, and he half rolled and curled forward to get his head clear of the workbench top. I took one arm and heaved to help him up. He leaned unsteadily against the workbench as I swiped dirty hay off his clothes.
I gripped his hand and pulled him back to the house. He had passed the point of resistance. His affect of sly humor had vanished and left no emotion or attitude at all in its place. He was simply flat, void. I sat him on the mudroom bench, pulled off his boots, and wrestled him out of his wool jacket.
“Go to the bathroom,” I told him. I led him to the door and pushed him inside.
I heard him peeing, then the water running in the sink as he reflexively washed his hands.
When he tottered out, I led him to his recliner and positioned him and let him fall into its embrace, a dead weight. I pulled the lever so that he was almost horizontal, deep between the chair’s overstuffed arms. He wasn’t asleep, just flaccid, a man made of melting plastic.
I checked the answering machine, but nobody had called while I was out retrieving Brassard. The problem was that I had cows to deal with. They would be milling into the paddock. I had to get some hay to them, and I needed to run water to the drinking troughs out there. And fifteen other chores to do before evening milking. The day’s cycle was relentless, and I couldn’t stay in the house to make sure Brassard didn’t get up and do something dangerous. I waited a few minutes hoping that Will or Erik would call, then gave up and went to rummage in the chest of drawers in the kitchen. I found some duct tape that I used to attach the chair’s lift lever to its frame. He wouldn’t be able to pull it back to sitting position and, I hoped, wouldn’t be able to stand up.
Will returned as Lynn and Robin and I were doing the afternoon milking. I heard his car rev in the farmyard and ran out to greet him. He threw open the door and our eyes met and we trotted up the stairs into the house.
“In the living room,” I said.
We found Jim safely asleep in his recliner, snoring. His hands lay relaxed on his thighs like contented animals. Will stroked one of them gently, but Brassard didn’t stir.
“But what now?” I asked. Will just shrugged, at a loss.
Chapter 46
Will didn’t know anything about dealing with alcoholism, either, but his project management skills stood him in good stead. His first act was to get Brassard’s pickup truck out of his reach, keep him from going into town to replace the vodka I’d poured down the sink. I drove the truck to Lynn and Theo’s place, and Lynn gave me a lift back in her Jeep. By the time I got back, Will had done a quick search of the house and found another bottle, which also went down the drain.
Then he wrote a letter and emailed it to his lawyer, detailing Brassard’s threat and committing the lawyer, as an officer of the court, to tell the insurance company in the event of a suspicious fire at the farm. Finally, he called the state fire marshal’s Barn Fire Prevention Task Force and asked for an inspection of the farm’s gas systems.
Two days later, the inspector came, checked every inch of pipe and every fitting, valve, and regulator, and declared the gas system compliant. Will showed his father the certification and the letter he’d written to his attorney, driving home the message that Brassard’s plan—if indeed it had ever been more than a despairing drunken fantasy—had been preempted. The insurance company would never believe that a propane fire was an accident. There’d be no cash coming in from fraud and the destruction of three generations’ legacy.
I’d never seen Will angry, but I caught a glimpse of it when Brassard went looking for his truck keys and couldn’t find them. He was in a surly mood, feeling condescended to, hungover, thirsty for what he couldn’t have, and as he rumbled through the house opening drawers and cabinets he was frightening: well over six feet, easily 250 pounds, huge hands, face blunt and sour.
After half an hour of searching, he asked Will if he’d seen his truck keys.
Will handed him some keys.
Brassard looked at them and said, “What the hell?”
“Those are tractor keys,” Will said. I didn’t know there could be so much ice in Will, and as he spoke he looked and sounded much like his mother. “You are a farmer. You drive a goddamned tractor.”
Was there a code hidden in that exchange? If so, I think it had several dimensions. On one hand, it was Will’s channeling his mother’s voice and the deathly chill of her contempt for any weakness or abdication of duty. On the other hand, I have to believe it was also an appeal to Brassard’s pride, or a reminder of the pride he should feel. You are a farmer. Brassard blinked and started to reply, but his son’s words confused him, tripped up his anger and tumbled him into a mix of other emotions. He went away to his office and sat in front of his dark computer screen.
I admired Will for his skillful management of Brassard’s fire threat and for standing up to his father about the truck, which must have been agonizing for him.
Earnest returned the next day, ex
hausted from thirty hours without sleep, and a long drive. I was running the skid-steer down the alley, pushing a tide of slurry, when his bulky silhouette appeared in the brightness of the wide door at the other end. Seeing that familiar shape, my heart bounded. I backed up and met him in the middle of the shed.
Without saying hello, he asked, “Where’s Jim?”
I tossed my head in the direction of the far door, where the big green Deere appeared, a small mountain of bedding sawdust in its bucket. It dumped the load, backed up, turned, and rolled out of view again.
He nodded, a little relieved. Otherwise, his face was gray and haggard.
“You look like hell,” I told him affectionately.
“Thanks.”
I realized he was too exhausted from sleeplessness and anxiety to enjoy my attempt at humor. Having reassured himself that Jim was functional, probably unwilling to walk through a moat of manure to get to him, he started walking back toward the house. But I backed up the Bobcat to keep pace with him.
“Earnest!” I called. He stopped and looked over. “Do you have any idea how good it is to see one’s Earnest again? Any idea?” And tears flooded my eyes. I don’t know why I framed it that way; maybe my odd choice of grammar kept it safely impersonal. But I truly wasn’t sure—did he have any idea, did he know what a marvelous thing an Earnest was? I very much wanted him to know, and saying it relieved an unbearable pressure in me and that was what released the tears.