The Wingthorn Rose. Melvyn Chase

around for weeks ‘til I find the right one. But if it’s something important, I usually make up my mind just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “My first wife—we were having breakfast and she said something that really pissed me off. So I told her I wanted a divorce.” He snapped his fingers again. “Just like that.”

      Joey stretched and yawned. His face was pale and deeply lined, a wintry counterpoint to a Spring day.

      He laughed. “My second wife did the same thing to me.”

      Lucas nodded.

      “You ever been married?” Joey asked.

      Lucas shook his head.

      “You ever been close?”

      “No.”

      “Well, twice is enough for me. Shit, that’s enough for anybody.”

      Lucas waited.

      “I don’t like women,” Joey said. “I love to fuck them, but I don’t like anything else about them. I never did. It’s like they’re all working from the same plan but they never tell us what it is. Know what I mean?”

      Lucas just smiled.

      “Like my mother. No matter how I screwed up, my mother always thought I was hot shit. My father died when I was a kid. I hardly remember him. And Mom just let me do whatever the hell I wanted to do. She never complained. Never got mad at me. She didn’t want me to join the Navy, but she never told me that. She told Fay, but she never told me.”

      Lucas nodded.

      “Fay’s another fucking mystery. She went away to college and I figured she’d stay away. Like I did. She got an education. She had no ties here. She and Mom weren’t exactly buddies. But she came back. I don’t know why. She’s been here all these fucking years. Took care of Mom.”

      “Did you ever ask her why?”

      “We don’t talk much. She wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

      “Did she ever ask you why you came back?”

      “Yeah. I told her: it’s home.”

      Joey poured them both another cup of coffee. He picked up the library book and looked at the cover, upside down, and returned it to the table.

      “I don’t read much. A mystery or a spy story once in a while.”

      “I like true stories.”

      “Y’know, you can’t believe everything you read.”

      “You’re right, Joey. That’s the fun of it. When you read what’s supposed to be history, some of it’s true and some of it isn’t.” He tapped the book on the table. “Eisenhower thought he knew how to win the war. And so did Montgomery. If you read Eisenhower’s book, Montgomery was wrong. If you read Montgomery’s book, Ike was wrong. And there are all kinds of opinions in between.”

      “So how do you know who was right?”

      “You dig. You peel away the lies. You keep digging. If you’re patient enough, you can usually find the truth.”

      “Too much work,” Joey said.

      “Maybe.”

      “Too deep for me.”

      Lucas downed the last mouthful of his coffee. “It’s just a game.”

      “Just a game,” Joey repeated.

      Later that afternoon, Lucas walked to the waterfall by himself.

      Insect voices hummed in the air. A Babel of mismatched, dissonant birdsongs joined them.

      Squirrels rushed through the branches overhead, leaping from tree to tree. Lucas could hear the hollow hoof-falls of deer, hiding in shadows.

      The sounds heightened the stillness.

      He watched the waterfall leap into the air and crash into the stream below, an endless watery suicide.

      His gray eyes mirrored the sun-and-shade patterns of the forest around him. He felt completely alone. Completely at ease.

      This would be a place to die. To disappear.

      He turned and walked off the pathway, deeper into the woods. He changed direction constantly, finding open spaces between the tree-trunks, the bushes, the undergrowth. He stopped abruptly, listening. He had heard a faint new sound, the sound of bells.

      He stood still, waiting for that sound again.

      Only the insect voices, the dissonant birdsongs, but not the bells. After a few minutes, he began to walk again, and then he heard the bells again.

      He looked up. There, like ripe silver fruit, hanging from a branch of a nearby tree, twenty feet from the ground, was a cluster of wind chimes. A squirrel running up the bole of the tree and back down again must have shaken the branch, sounding the chimes.

      Wind chimes in the middle of a forest.

      Who climbed that tree?

      Who left behind that quiet music?

      Does it mark a place to remember? A secret place?

      He looked around on the ground and found a small stone. He aimed it carefully, threw it and hit them—too hard. The slim tubes crashed together, jangling harshly.

      Lucas nodded and smiled, as if a question had just been answered.

      On Thursday morning, Lucas went back to the waterfall. This time with Fay.

      She was quiet as they approached the preserve.

      There was a trace of coolness in the air as they entered the grassless, leaf-shaded areas in the woods that the sun couldn’t touch.

      “There’s a side road—a loop that goes into the forest and then comes back again onto the main pathway—near the Cascades. Are you in the mood for a longer walk?” she asked.

      “Sure.”

      They surprised a trio of deer grazing in a small clearing. Three tapered heads swiveled toward them, three pairs of cautious, dark brown eyes watched for a moment. Then, in graceful arcs, the three leaped away from the clearing, tawny streaks disappearing into the shadows.

      After a long pause, Fay said, “You asked me about where you might look for a job. I’ve heard that someone’s leaving the nursery—the one we pass on the way here. It’s the kind of thing you said you wouldn’t mind doing: fetch and carry, that kind of thing.”

      “Sounds good.”

      “It won’t be available for a week or so. But Henry Smythe said you should come in and talk to him.”

      “Henry Smythe? Red-headed guy?”

      “Yes.”

      “I met him at Sarge’s Diner, the day I came to town.”

      “He’s not exactly a charmer.”

      “He sounded like a preacher.”

      “He almost became one. He holds Bible study classes—unofficial ones—at his house.”

      “How does your minister feel about that?”

      “I don’t have a minister. But I know that Reverend Stokes doesn’t like the competition.”

      “I’m not a churchgoer, either.”

      She didn’t respond to his confession.

      “Henry doesn’t pay much attention to the nursery. Six or seven years ago, he hired a manager: a black man named Leo Sage. From Chicago. Smart guy. Leo runs the whole operation.”

      “I haven’t seen any blacks in town.”

      “Leo’s the only one. There’s a black neighborhood in Fulton, but Leo doesn’t hang out