Return to Oakpin(17)

            “Thanks, Craig. We’ll take it even though you don’t know any better,” Frank said. “Find your drums, big guy.”

            Craig smiled as he stood. He could feel the beer. He hadn’t been in a bar after work for twenty years. What am I, he thought, single?

            • • •

            When Jimmy Brand returned home to Oakpine, Wyoming, from New York City, he was met at the little airport not by his mother or father but by Chuck Andreson, in the old Suburban he drove as a utility taxi. Jimmy had four small trunks, everything he owned in the world. It had been thirty years, and he looked at the new terminal building and smiled. He was pretty cooked from the flights, and he sat in the wheelchair at the curb while Chuck pulled the big van around.

            “You’re Louise and Edgar’s youngest boy,” Chuck said.

            “I’m the only,” Jimmy said with no irony. “And no boy.”

            “I knew Matt,” Chuck said. “At the high school. I was a year ahead.”

            “You go to Vietnam?” Jimmy asked the bearded man.

            “No,” Chuck said. “I got the diabetes.” He closed the back of the vehicle and came around to where Jimmy sat. Jimmy was looking across the road, across the mowed field to the village of Oakpine, where it sat at the foot of the massive rolling forest of Oakpine Mountain. He knew it so well and had seen it in his mind a thousand times, and now his imagination fought with the vista before him and he had to keep blinking. The view encompassed forty miles. Above the village the ridges were still bright green but run with the red and brown of the canyons. The town kept slipping from Jimmy’s vision as if it could be misplaced, and refocusing his eyes took as much energy as a deep breath. Could you mislay a town, let it get away?

            “You pretty sick?” Chuck asked.

            “I am,” Jimmy said. “I’m sick. This is it for me. I’m home.” His smile was weak. “Don’t worry. Just help me with the chair. I can get in the car.”

            Exiting the airport, they passed a small herd of antelope grazing between the near runways. “You come from New York?”

            “I lived in New York all these years.”

            “That’s some from Oakpine.”

            “It can be. New York’s a lot of places, really.”

            “Right, and Oakpine’s just the one. You like it, New York?”

            They entered town and inched along the street toward the high school. It would be okay not to talk; each answer felt like a chapter. Cars were double-parked and parked one wheel on the sidewalk and on the lawns here and there, angled into the narrow road as if abandoned in a hurry under the sullen skies. There was a raft of smoke still hovering over the large parking lot, which Jimmy could see was full of RVs and lawn chairs. Chuck wended to the far end of the field, and a place opened so they could see the game and all the people in colored coats in the stands. Two teams struggled in the gray afternoon, and the crowds seemed a waving blanket to Jimmy.

            “I had a life there,” Jimmy said. He pointed to the game. “Is it Friday? Who are we playing?” The we came from some forgotten place, and he smiled to hear it.

            “Sheridan’s down. My boy’s out there. I’m going to swing back by after we get you home.” Chuck craned his neck to see the scoreboard. “It’s tied.”

            “Hey, let’s just stop now. Park right over there and get out to the game. I’ll sit here and take it in.” Chuck looked over at him, so he added, “Seriously. There’s no hurry about getting me out to Berry Street. I’ve been gone a long time.”