The Falls (55 page)

‘luxury hotel trade’ as it used to be called, for a long time. Now the business is mostly ‘tourist trade.’ Thank God, I got out from under the Rainbow Grand just in time, like the
Titanic
it would’ve been, mid-1960’s when all of the country was going to hell. (It’s still going to hell but at least they ran out of people to assassinate and drop napalm on.) Now Colborne, Inc., our family business, is diversified as all hell, like this great country of ours. We’ve got the Journeez End and the U-R-Here motels on Buffalo Avenue and Prospect. We’ve got three Tastee-Freezes and The Leaning Tower of Pizza. Bowling alleys we’ve got, Top Hat Disco & Shore Café at the Lake. In Alcott we’ve got a few concessions on the beach, plus Bingo Tent Bonanza. The Banana Royalle franchise we’re looking into. Miniature golf ! Kind of an asshole ‘sport’ I grant you, but tourists are crazy for it, Japs love it 384 W
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(you can figure why, eh?) so we’re building a few of those. Two Peking Villages in the area, and that Hollywood Haven Disco the cops busted, we’re possibly going to take over. The Niagara Wax Museum we bought last year, ‘heroes and victims of The Falls,’ we’re renovating, and the Cross-the-Gorge, where you ‘walk’ on a tightrope over a wild waterfall and light display, holding a pole, and there’s fans blowing wind trying to dislodge you, we’ve got terrific ideas for, this promises to be a real money-maker . . . Hey, sorry. You get the picture, I guess.

I was at Mario’s last night and thinking how your dad loved that place.

He had a weakness, like me, for Italian sausage risotto, and for Mario’s thin-crust pizza, and he’d be happy as hell to know that not much has changed there. Except for us being older and some of us dead, Mario’s hasn’t changed at all.”

“Your father made one mistake a litigator can’t make: he underestimated the moral rot of the adversary. He was of that caste and he hadn’t grasped how corrupt they were because he looked at them and saw men like himself. And that was true, to a degree. But they were—

they are—evil. They hired lawyers, doctors, ‘research scientists,’

health inspectors to do their evil for them. Telling a mother her child has ‘congenital leukemia’ not something caused by benzene, and that benzene bubbling up in her own back yard on the Love Canal. Telling men and women in their thirties they have ‘pathogenic livers’—

‘pathogenic kidneys’—they were born with, when it was what they’d been eating out of their own gardens, poisoned by the Love Canal.

Brain tumors almost certainly caused by tetrachloroethylene they attributed to ‘third-degree television tube radiation.’ Kids with asthma, weak lungs, bladder infections, these were ‘congenital defi-ciencies.’ (You look up
congenital
in the dictionary: ‘dating from birth.’) Women having miscarriages, babies born with had hearts, missing part of their colons, you ascribe to more ‘congenital deficien-cies.’ When the state finally ordered blood tests for the Love Canal residents, finally in 1971, in the Armory, people were asked to come at 8 a.m. and waited all day, and at 5 p.m. half were still waiting. There
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was a ‘needle shortage.’ ‘Nurse shortage.’ Three hundred blood samples were ‘contaminated.’ Lab results were ‘inconclusive’—

‘misfiled.’ Some of us have been criticized for suggesting these doctors are not much different from the Nazi doctors doing experi-ments on human beings, but I hold to that charge. The case the Coalition is presenting builds upon your father’s but of course it’s much larger in scope. You’ve been reading about us, I assume. We have five full-time lawyers including me. We have investigators, and a team of paralegals. We’re not funded like the adversaries, but we are funded. We have the new findings of the State Board of Health—finally!—and in our favor. There are one hundred twenty people represented in this class-action suit. The Love Canal Homeowners Association, they call themselves now. ‘Love Canal’—

it’s like waving a red flag. We’re demanding $200 million to settle, minimum. The judiciary is much more sympathetic with this kind of litigation in 1978. There’s pressure on Carter to declare Love Canal a ‘disaster area’—the federal government would then buy out homeowners, help pay compensation. This will happen, it’s only a matter of when. Dirk Burnaby is a hero to us, even with—well, his mistakes. When this is over, and we win, I want to organize a memorial for him, a man like that should not be forgotten . . . My theory is, your father began to fall apart when he realized how deep the rot was. I was just a kid at the time, growing up on the east side. My dad and uncles worked at the chemical factories, including Swann and Dow. ‘Better Living Through Chemistry.’ I’ve always seen the bastards for what they are, their PR tactics don’t fool me. They’d still be manufacturing the sticky-stuff, napalm, if anybody’d pay them to, and the ‘research scientists’ are right now working on biological warfare weapons within a few miles of this office. You teach that at La Salle, Chandler? Well, maybe you should, if your subject is science . . . Do I believe that Dirk Burnaby killed himself ? No. Died in an ‘accident’? No. The bastards killed him. You’ll never prove it, though.”

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5

A s w e e t ly s c e n t e d l e t t e r came addressed to Chandler Burnaby at La Salle Junior High. Handwritten, purple ink on lavender stationery.

Dear Chandler Burnaby—

I owe my life to you. I want so badly to see you and thank you in person. I have come to your school and waited outside but went away again out of shyness. I hope you will not misunderstand! I want only to see your face, the goodness in your face. Not in photographs but in actual life. May I?

I am not engaged to marry anyone. I was recently, but am no longer.

Your friend forever,

Cynthia Carpenter

Chandler foresaw: a fumbling, emotional meeting. An impressionable young woman primed to fall in love with him. A very attractive young woman primed to worship him as a hero.

Unlike Melinda who knew his heart. Melinda who’d shut a door in his face.

Chandler put away the scented letter from Cynthia Carpenter, as a memento.

A memento of this strange season in his life in which he was both a savior and a fool, revered and held in contempt, adored and despised in about equal measure.

6

T h e r e c a m e a d ay in that season, an hour when Chandler’s loneliness became so acute, he yearned to speak with Royall. Suddenly, for Chandler, there was no one but Royall. His heart was full to bursting.

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But Royall didn’t want to see him, did he? Royall hated him.

And Royall, living downtown, had no telephone. Juliet advised, Just see him. Go there, knock on his door, he’ll let you in. You know Royall.

Chandler wasn’t so certain any longer, did he know Royall?

Juliet laughed. “Royall is asking new people he meets to call him

‘Roy.’ What if he asks us? I never could! He’ll always be Royall to me.”

Chandler did as Juliet suggested, showed up at Royall’s apartment on Fourth Street, knocked firmly at the door. When Royall opened it, the brothers stared at each other for a startled moment, without speaking. Then Royall said, trying to smile, “Well, hell. It’s you.”

Chandler said, “Royall, or is it ‘Roy’? May I come inside?” Royall’s face reddened. “Sure. C’mon in! I wasn’t exactly expecting anybody.”

Royall had been reading at the kitchen table, taking notes in a spiral notebook. His handwriting was childlike, large and careful. The book he was reading was a paperback edition of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet.

He pushed these aside and yanked out a chair for Chandler.

Royall, reading
Hamlet
! Chandler smiled.

It was a cubbyhole of a kitchen, not much larger than the table.

Several rinsed glasses, plates, and stainless steel cutlery lay neatly on a counter, readied for Royall’s next meal. There were cooking odors, a predominant smell of something soft, mealy, and susceptible to scorch—oatmeal? Through a partly opened cupboard door Chandler had a glimpse of canned soups, a bottle of tomato juice, a box of Quaker Oats. His heart went out to his younger brother as to a child bravely playing house, having run away from home. On his side, Royall saw with surprise that his schoolteacher brother was looking uncertain, brooding, red-eyed in a way he’d rarely seen him; Chandler’s jaws had been carelessly shaved, and his jacket was buttoned crookedly. He was breathing through his mouth, having hurried up two flights of stairs. Without a word Royall took two beers from a dwarf refrigerator beside a two-burner gas stove, and the brothers sat knee to knee at a battered Formica-topped table purchased, as Royall boasted, for five dollars at Goodwill.

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They would sit at this table, they would speak earnestly together for several hours. By which time night came on, and Royall’s six-pack of beer was depleted.

In a lowered, quavering voice Chandler told Royall all that he’d learned about their father. These past several weeks. Royall then told Chandler all that he’d learned about their father. These past several months.

Chandler said, “Jesus! Sometimes it seems to me he only just disappeared, the other day. It’s still so raw and—” (But what was the word Chandler sought? He shook his head, baffled.) Royall said, “No. It was long ago. Like Mom tried to make us believe, it seemed to have happened before I was born.”

“That’s not your fault, Royall. You were only four.”

“Four is old enough to remember something. But I can’t. I keep trying, and I can’t.”

“Maybe that’s better—”

“Don’t say that! Shit.”

Royall ran his hands roughly through his hair. Chandler could see that he’d been thinking of this, tormenting himself with this. He spoke in a slow, pained manner more typical of Chandler than of Royall. “All this winter, I’ve been having weird dreams about him.

But I don’t even remember the dreams when I wake up. I can feel what they are, like my guts are sick, but with no memory.”

Chandler was thinking, yes. He’d been bombarded with dreams, too. And no memory, only sensation. Anger, and despair.

Royall said, “Dad shouldn’t have died. He didn’t deserve to die like that. Some people say, maybe he was killed.” Royall’s voice trembled.

Chandler got stiffly to his feet, feeling his heart kick.

He’d rehearsed what he would say, when it came to this. He had known it must come to this.

Royall glanced up at Chandler, narrowing his eyes as if he were peering into a bright light. He drained the last of his warm beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I’m trying to wake up, though.

From the dream. My whole life, a dream. Or whatever it was. This

‘Royall’ I used to be, that Mom loved. Lots of people loved. I didn’t
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think I was strong enough, but I am.” Royall left the kitchen, and returned with an object for Chandler to examine. “I wouldn’t ever use this,” he said. Chandler stared in disbelief. A gun? Royall had a gun? It was snub-barreled with a sullen bluish-oily gleam and a worn walnut handle, and was about nine inches in length. Royall was saying, “It belongs to my boss. I mean, he has more than one

‘firearm,’ he’s lent me this. I have a permit to carry it, don’t worry.

He took me to the precinct station in person. But, Chandler—I wouldn’t ever use it.”

Chandler felt faint. “Royall, my God! Is it loaded?”

“Sure. But the safety is always on. See?”

Royall clicked the mechanism off, on. Off, on. He too was needing a shave. Pale stubble glittered on his jaws like mica.

Chandler thought, chilled
My brother holding death in his hand
.

Royall was saying, “In this literature course I’m taking, the professor said that if a gun appears in a play, it has to be fired by somebody, sometime. You can’t set up a false expectation in the audience.

But, in life, I don’t believe that.”

“No. Not in life.”

“You can hold a gun in your hand, like it’s a practical thing—a hammer, a pliers. A tool of somebody’s trade. But you don’t have to fire it.”

Chandler pushed gently at Royall’s hand. “Royall, please put that thing away. Make sure the safety is on, and put it away.”

“It’s just to show you, Chandler. What I might do, if I was desperate. If learning certain things about our father made me desperate. If, you know—
you
thought that being desperate was how I should be feeling.” When Chandler said nothing, Royall said, “But I’m not desperate, am I? It’s just in theory.”

Still Chandler said nothing. He drew a deep breath.

Royall said, watching him closely, “I wouldn’t know which was the target, anyway. Who.”

“Who? Howell.”

“Who?”

Chandler smiled. “We sound like a duet of owls. Whooo. Howww.

I think I’m drunk.”

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Royall laughed. “On three cans of beer. Nobody gets drunk on three cans of beer.”

“On an empty stomach, it’s possible.”

“I explained why I have the gun, haven’t I? I need it for my job, for protection.”

“What job?”

“I’m working part-time for Empire Collection, Inc. A collection agency. I drive around a lot, I make unannounced house calls. Sometimes I repossess cars, motorcycles. TVs, washing machines, there’s a two-man team. My boss is some character, ex-Marine and ex-middle-weight boxer. Says he climbed into the ring with Joey Maxim. And he knew our dad from the ‘old days.’ Not well, at a distance. ‘A gentleman among swine.’ ”

Chandler was distracted by the gun in Royall’s hand. The more Chandler stared, the uglier it was becoming. Yet he smiled. “My kid brother. My kid brother with a gun.”

“It’s a thirty-eight Smith & Wesson revolver, six chambers. That isn’t kid stuff. My boss says, if you’re armed, you owe it to your health to be
armed
.” Royall was holding the gun in the palm of his hand, as if weighing it. “He’s had guys working for him beat up, stabbed, chased in the street and dragged from their cars, shot in the head, kneecaps, ass. But that won’t happen to me because I’m not looking for a fight. Anywhere.”