Revival

I only heard Dad allude to his second son’s sexual orientation once, during the late eighties. It must have made a big impression on me, because those were my blackout years, and I called home as seldom as possible. I wanted my dad to know I was still alive, but I was always afraid he might hear my oncoming death, which I had pretty much accepted, in my voice.

“I pray for Co

Con had avoided that and looked awesomely healthy now, but there was no disguising the fact that he was getting on, especially sitting next to his friend from the Botany Department. I had a flash memory of Con and Ro

Some of this must have shown on my face, because Con gri

“Long time,” I agreed, and thought again of a frog too dumb to realize the water in his stovetop pond was growing ever warmer.

Terry and A

“She’s beautiful. Can I hold her?”

Dawn smiled shyly at the stranger she’d last seen when she was still in braces. “You can try, but she usually bawls her head off when it’s someone she doesn’t know.”

I took the baby, ready to hand her back the second the yowls started. Only they didn’t. Cara Ly

And laughed again.

 • • •

The actual party the next day had much the same cast, only with more supporting characters. Some I recognized at once; others looked vaguely familiar, and I realized several were children of people who had worked for my father long ago and now worked for Terry, whose empire had grown: as well as the fuel oil business, he owned a New England–wide chain of convenience stores called Morton’s Fast-Shops. Bad handwriting had been no bar to success.

A catering crew from Castle Rock presided over four grills, dealing out hamburgers and hotdogs to go with a mind-boggling array of salads and desserts. Beer flowed from steel kegs and wine from wooden ones. As I chowed down on a bacon-loaded calorie-bomb in the backyard, one of Terry’s salesmen—drunk, cheerful, and voluble—told me Terry also owned Splash City in Fryeburg and Littleton Raceway in New Hampshire. “That track don’t make a cent of money,” the salesman said, “but you know Terry—he always loved the stocks and bombers.”

I remembered him working with my father on various incarnations of the Road Rocket in the garage, both of them dressed in greasy tee-shirts and saggy-butt coveralls, and suddenly realized that my hometown, country-mouse brother was well-to-do. Perhaps even rich.

Every time Dawn brought Cara Ly

“I’m flattered,” I said, and kissed the sleeping baby’s teething-flushed cheek.

There was a lot of talk about old days and old times, the kind of chatter that’s fabulously interesting to those who were there and stupendously boring to those who weren’t. I steered clear of the beer and wine, so when the party moved four miles down the road to the Eureka Grange, I was one of the designated drivers, trying to find my way through the gears of a monster King Cab pickup that belonged to the oil company. I hadn’t driven a standard in thirty years, and my inebriated passengers—there must have been a dozen, counting the seven or so in the truck bed—howled with laughter each time I popped the clutch and the truck lurched. It was a wonder none of them tumbled out the back.

The catering crew had arrived ahead of us, and there were already food tables set up along the sides of a dance floor that I remembered well. I stood there looking at that expanse of polished wood until Con squeezed my shoulder.

“Bring back memories, baby brother?”

I thought of walking onto the bandstand for the first time, scared to death and smelling the sweat that came roasting up from my armpits in waves. And later, Mom and Dad waltzing by as we played “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”

“More than you’ll ever know,” I said.

“I think I do,” he said, and hugged me. In my ear he whispered it again: “I think I do.”

 • • •

There were maybe seventy people at the home place for the noon meal; by seven o’clock, there were twice that many at Eureka Grange No. 7, and the place could have used some of Charlie Jacobs’s magic air-conditioning to augment the lackadaisical ceiling fans. I grabbed the sort of dessert that was still a Harlow specialty—lime Jell-O with bits of ca

Was it all right? I had asked. And she had replied, Do it again and I’ll tell you.

“Hey, freshie.” From right behind me, making me jump. “Want to play some music tonight?”

At first I didn’t recognize him. The lanky, long-haired teenager who had recruited me to play rhythm guitar in Chrome Roses was now bald on top, gray on the sides, and sporting a gut that hung over his tight-cinched trousers. I stared at him, my little paper bowl of Jell-O drooping in one hand.

“Norm? Norm Irving?”

He gri

“Free and clear, too, bank all paid off. I got two boys by my second wife, but between you and me, Deenie’s my darlin. Hattie’s got one by her second husband.” He leaned closer, smiling grimly. “In and out of jail. Kid’s not worth the powder to blow him to hell.”

“What about Ke

Ke

“No.” Although maybe I had, and just hadn’t recognized him. And maybe he hadn’t recognized me.

“As for Paul Bouchard . . .” Norm shook his head. “He was climbing in Acadia State Park and took a fall. Lived two days, then passed away. 1990, that was. Probably a mercy. Docs said he would have been paralyzed from the neck down, if he’d lived. What they call a quad.”

For a moment I imagined our old drummer pulling through. Lying in bed with a machine to help him breathe and watching Pastor Da