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I'll Never Be Long Gone
A Novel
By Thomas Greene HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Thomas Greene
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060765801
Chapter One
They buried Charles Bender on a cool fall day when the sun moved in and out of high clouds. They buried him in the cemetery on a sloping hill above the town of Eden, Vermont, in a cemetery with gravestones that dated back to the mid-1800s, gravestones with names barely legible, babies next to mothers, mothers next to fathers. It was where all the oldest names of Eden were: Morse, Beckett, Singleton, Fiske, Walden.
The plot Charlotte picked was near the top of the hill, near where the forest started, and from it you could see, if your eyes were good, the restaurant he had named many years ago after his wife. You could see Charlotte's itself by tracing the Dog River where it ran through the trees, where it straightened out on the stretch by the Old County Road. You could make out the roof of the former schoolhouse and you could see the river running past it and you could see where it fitted into the world around it.
From the truck in front of the gates, Charlie saw that the funeral-home people had already arrived. He saw the black hearse parked up among the stones, near their father's final resting place. Charlie was behind the wheel of the truck, his mother in the seat next to him, Owen, his brother, leaning over the bench behind. They all wore dark sunglasses. Of the two boys, Charlie was more his father's son. He was almost six feet four, as tall as Charles had been, and at eighteen years old he still had a full head of brown hair, though you could see where it was starting to recede on his forehead and where it was thinning. He had his father's pale blue eyes, a robin's egg blue, and while you might not think him handsome, there was a strength about him, a presence, that echoed his father.
By contrast, his brother, Owen, the younger by a year, had the good fortune to physically resemble his mother. Charlotte was the kind of beauty seldom seen in Eden, a tall, willowy blonde who turned heads. Owen had her fair hair, and her sharp green eyes, and he was tall, too, though not as tall as his brother, closer to six feet two, and slender. He had his mother's features, her small nose, her high cheekbones, and you might have thought him a pretty boy if it were not for the saving grace of his jaw, which suggested his father, strong and angular, and had the effect of making his whole face masculine.
The boys were waiting for their mother. They knew they were on her schedule and they were grateful for it. They were grateful for her grief for in an odd way it dulled their own. It made it possible for them to focus on something beyond what haunted them after discovering their father in the woods.
Their mother said, "Let's go."
At the graveside, the funeral director, a kind man named Crane, asked them if they wanted to say anything and they did not and nodded no and he did not respond but looked at the two men on either side of the shiny oak coffin, and while they watched, Charles Bender was lowered into the loamy earth.
Charlotte looked away when the boys fulfilled tradition by scooping out handfuls of soil and throwing them onto the shiny wood of the coffin, the granules of dirt sliding off it and running down the sides. When the men began shoveling in the hole, the three of them turned and began to walk back down the drive, Charlie and Owen, standing on either side of their mother, locking arms, as if supporting her, which they were doing, but supporting themselves as well.
They drove in the pickup down the back roads of Eden to Charlotte's. It was cold enough outside to have the heat on in the truck and it was warm as they went. The late-afternoon sun hung low and fat above the mountains. There was a light breeze and the first fallen leaves blew in front of the tires on the hard dirt road. The dirt was darkened from the heavy rain of the previous week. They did not pass any cars and Charlie drove fast. Normally Charlotte would have said something about his driving but this time she gazed blank-faced out the window to her right at the passing woods. Charlie wished someone would say something, anything, and when he thought he should, his brother shattered the silence from the back by saying, "Who's going to be here?"
Charlie saw his mother shrug. She said, "Friends of your father's. He had a lot of friends. Not close friends, of course, but people who knew him."
"Acquaintances?" Owen said.
"Something like that," his mother said. "The waitresses, of course. Probably some of the farmers."
"What do we need to do?" said Charlie.
"I don't know," Charlotte said, and then paused for a moment before saying, "Be strong."
Charlie pulled into the parking lot. It was full of cars and pickup trucks like the one they drove. When they stepped out, they could hear the soft flow of the river behind Charlotte's and they could hear a car heading their way on the road, the distinctive muted sound of tires on the hard dirt.
Together, as they had done leaving the cemetery, they walked toward the former schoolhouse, the restaurant their father had built, and they walked arm in arm, Charlotte between her two tall sons. They still wore their sunglasses and when they reached the solid wooden door that led into the dining room they did not take them off, though they paused for a moment, as if collecting their shared breath, and then Charlie moved forward and and brought the latch of the handle down and pushed the door open. brought the latch of the handle down and pushed the door open.
Continues...
Excerpted from I'll Never Be Long Gone by Thomas Greene Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Greene.
Excerpted by permission.
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