He began writing Look Down two Decembers ago, on a cold night between Christmas and New Year’s Day after he returned home from a memorial service for Jane. They’d been married twenty-six years. Bill was almost forty-eight, and he didn’t know how to grieve—only write. In the end, he discovered that for him they were the same. Jane had flown to Paris early in December to visit friends and was returning to New York on an Air France flight that was blown out of the sky over Newfoundland. Her only crime was buying an airplane ticket. He wrote and rewrote, and rewrote again, and dedicated the novel to her memory. Learning to grieve was a hard, word-by-word process. And then he had to learn how to stop. He had not really grieved when his mother and father died twelve years ago, within six months of each other. He had drifted apart from them; they were both in their late seventies, and their deaths were the natural consequence of a hard life. His younger brother, with whom he was never close, was killed in a prison fight seven years ago in Huntsville, Texas, where he was serving a life sentence for killing a deputy sheriff in a drunken brawl. Bill hadn’t seen Ron for twenty years and felt like he was attending the funeral of a stranger. Ron’s death left him with no family except some distant cousins in Kentucky he had only known as a child.
He was unable to be objective about whether Look Down was good or not. It would be out in the fall; Nancy told him it was headed for star treatment by The New York Times book review section and then to the best-seller list. She also said she was talking to some Hollywood people about a movie deal.
When Paul called, Bill was living in an empty space between Look Down and whatever was coming next. Since Points South, money hadn’t been a problem. Jane used to say it was that book that gave them their fuck-you fund: enough money so that they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to, ever again.
Her life insurance and the settlement with Air France had increased that fund considerably.
Bill’s reverie was broken by the telephone’s ring. He picked up the receiver, wondering who would be calling him at this hour. No one knew exactly where he was.
“Hello.”
“Good morning, Mr. Sanders. This is the front desk. It’s six a.m.”
“Oh, thanks. What time can I get breakfast?”
“Our coffee shop opens at six-thirty.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Have a nice day.”
Bill thought of several obscene responses as he hung up the phone. When did a law get passed in America that everyone has to say have a nice goddamn day? He liked living in countries where he couldn’t understand the language and didn’t have to be subjected to such inanities. But what the hell? I probably will have a nice day.
Sunday morning traffic was lighter then Saturday’s. In a couple of hours, near Cincinnati, Bill pulled off at a rest stop to study a map. He liked maps. He had declined to rent a GPS along with the car. One of the things he liked about the Midwest was that he was never confused about directions: most property lines and fences run north-south or east-west. He decided to leave the interstate system at the border between Ohio and Indiana and take the scenic route to Jefferson, a state road running along the Ohio River and through the little river towns of Rising Sun, Patriot, Florence, and past the Markland Dam to Vevay and then on to Jefferson. Paul didn’t expect him until that evening; he had time to spare.
Bill had telephoned Paul from New York Thursday night. Paul’s voice was subdued, thick from alcohol, but he was much less panicky than when he had first called on Tuesday. He gave Bill directions to his new house in the country about ten miles west of Jefferson. Bill tried to get Paul to talk about whatever was troubling him, but his friend again refused to discuss it.
“It’s too complicated. I can’t talk about it on the phone. I’ll tell you everything when you get here.”
Then, his voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“I don’t have many friends left. I’m afraid. You’re the only person who can help me. Don’t talk to anyone about this or try to find out anything until you’ve talked to me first. Please promise me this.”
Bill promised.
He started to ask about Sharon but decided not to. He had last seen them, briefly, ten years ago in New York when he was just starting to freelance. They were headed to Europe for a vacation to celebrate Sharon’s pregnancy, which came after years of trying and being told by doctors that she could never have children. Despite her age, almost forty, their daughter, Cindy, was born without a hitch. She favored Paul, lanky and blonde. Paul and Sharon were married while both were in college; Bill was Paul’s best man at the Methodist church wedding in Indianapolis, Sharon’s hometown. Bill would never forget the contrast Paul and Sharon projected when they were together: she, short and a bit chubby with dark bobbed hair; he, six feet tall, fair and slim.
Soon, Bill was following the Ohio River as it flowed southwest toward Jefferson. Spring was in full bloom; he turned off the car’s air conditioner and opened the windows once he left the noise of the interstate. He could occasionally catch a whiff of honeysuckle as the air, cooled by the river, blew in his face. He hadn’t been on this road for more than twenty-five years, but he remembered every twist and turn.
As he approached Florence, traffic picked up near the casino that had opened several years ago. To Bill, it looked garish and bizarrely out of place. He recalled reading a short item in the Times that plans for a similar casino in Jefferson had been voted down in a county election. But not in this county, where the economy was weaker, and every job and dollar counted.
As he drove past Markland Dam, he recalled the time he spent a week there as a young reporter for The Louisville Courier-Journal, filing daily stories about efforts to free a barge loaded with chlorine that had crashed into the locks. That had also been in the spring. The small farms downriver from the locks looked exactly as he remembered them.
As he approached Vevay, more memories began to surface. Locals called the town Vee-vee. It wasn’t until he was a freshman in college that Bill learned the correct pronunciation, and spelling, of Vevay’s Swiss namesake. He also remembered that when he and Paul were seniors at Jefferson High, they used to drive to Vevay and pay the town drunk to buy them beer at Vevay Liquors. Paul was always bolder and more adventurous than Bill in those days, but after they went to college they seemed to reverse roles. Paul returned to Jefferson as a guidance counselor; Bill took off, determined to see and do everything. He had been back to Jefferson only three times since graduating from Indiana University. Once to bury his mother and six months later to bury his father. Then seven years later to bury Ron. He had missed all his high school reunions, partly because he was halfway around the world or busy covering a story. But the main reason was that he never felt anything pulling him back to Jefferson—until now.
As Bill drove into Vevay’s east side and on toward the town square, he wondered how many people lived there. A couple of thousand, maybe. Up ahead was the Vevay Hotel, covered in vines and sporting a freshly painted white sign advertising Sunday lunch. Bill pulled into the gravel parking lot, hoping he wasn’t too late. A big clock in front of the hotel showed two o’clock.
The woman at the front desk told him there was plenty of time, that lunch was served on Sunday until three. She showed him into a bright dining room with a view of the river. The room was almost empty. Two couples were finishing their lunch at the far end. He took a seat near the window and studied the menu between glances at a coal-laden barge, low in the water, churning upstream.