Disconnected

Prologue

On a cold, bright Saturday morning in December of 1943, Frank Rasling and his best friend, Peleg Scott, weave a helix with their bicycles as they ride down Torrey Hill. Halfway down Frank accelerates, closes his eyes, and removes his red-knuckled fingers from the handlebars. As Frank plummets down the steep hill, the roar of the wind in his ears crowds out what Peleg is yelling to him about the squadron of Avengers flying up Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay toward the naval air station at Quonset Point. Frank opens his eyes and aims his front tire at the launching point—a dolphin-backed swell in the road’s surface; however, at the last moment, the seventeen-year-old brakes hard and, rather than flight, feels the wool of his watch cap raise the hairs at the back of his neck. Peleg flies by him, his high voice yelling out for war, and hits the bump straight on. The bike arcs toward the sun, falters, then, tips back toward earth like the diving planes overhead. Frank’s stomach knots in anticipation of Peleg’s crash, but his friend lands perfectly and continues speeding down the hill. When Frank catches up with him at the bridge, Peleg has already unloaded the panniers of their gear.

The boys tramp through the rimed weeds alongside the Narrow River. Their first and second traps are empty, but the third holds a large female muskrat, whose thick tawny fur glows in the slant of the early morning sun. The next nine traps are empty, but, in a stroke of luck that neither boy can fathom, each of the next two traps holds a mink. They are still pounding each other’s shoulders and laughing from capturing their first mink ever, whose pelt is worth sixty muskrats, when they come upon the second. Shoulders touching, mouths agape, exhaling winter’s smoke, brought to reverent silence by Fortune’s mystery, they stare at the lustrous body corkscrewed around its pinioned leg.

Peleg asks, Do you want me to do it?

With the muskrats that they have been trapping since the previous winter, the boys have flayed the skins close to where they catch them and leave the carcasses for whatever is hungry enough to eat the strong smelling flesh.

Is a mink any different?

Peleg shrugs, I don’t know, but we sure don’t want to mess it up. Would your dad do it?

Frank shakes his head, Not likely. What about Mr. Stedman?

The boys re-set their traps, skin the muskrat, and cradling the minks as though they are pets, walk out to the road. As they push their bikes up the long steep hill that they had flown down, they spend their unexpected fortune a dozen ways—more traps, a new skiff, a twenty-two, ration cards for gasoline or tires for their friend Mercer Kenyon’s runabout—another victim of the war. Peleg stops to stare as four diving Corsairs practice landings on an imaginary aircraft carrier.

Maybe we should just save it until we get back.

Jenks Stedman is in his barn using a rasp to re-cut a tooth on a gear from his tedder. He whistles in appreciation as the boys show him their catch.

Won’t ask you where you got those beauties. Hasn’t been much mink around here for a long time. Find more over to Asa Pond or California Frank’s. Whataya been doin’ right?

Not much.

For your age, that’s about right.

The old farmer leads the boys behind the barn to a sagging plank table silvered with age.

No different from what you’ve been doin'. Just a slip’ll cost you more. Here, you each do one and I’ll watch.

As the surgery progresses, the air fills with the buzz and drone, roar and whine of dozens of airplanes practicing maneuvers or returning from missions. Each time a plane draws near, the boys look up, and if it isn’t one of the common types—Avenger, Hellcat or Corsair—they take a second to try to identify it.

Finally Jenks asks, What’s the magic? I can see it with a ship. Water and war go together. But not those things.

The pelts are freed and scraped, the carcasses tossed into the pigpen and the boys have made their thanks when Jenks asks Frank, How’s your mother? Get home much?

Every other weekend.

The old Yankee takes his time before asking, And your dad?

Busy.

Imagine so.

At home, washing the stink of musk from his hands with lye soap, Frank looks up at the clock and realizes that he will have to hurry if he is going to be on time for work. Although Willi Hess, the owner of the market where Frank works, might not begrudge him a few minutes, his dad will. Charley Rasling, who works as a butcher at Hess’ market, had made it very clear when Frank first talked to him about trapping with Peleg that his job at Hess’ market was to come first

As Frank furiously pedals the three miles to Wakefield, his thoughts shift from the joy of trapping the two mink, to worry about being late, to Jenks Stedman’s last questions. Mr. Stedman had been a good friend with Frank’s grandfather, and like an uncle to Frank’s father. He had supplied pigs to the Hess market for years and had encouraged Hess to hire Charley Rasling as an apprentice meat cutter when Willi’s brother and partner, Dieter, had returned to Germany during the lean years of the Depression. Not long after America entered the war, however, Jenks Stedman stopped selling his pigs to Willi Hess and stopped talking to Frank’s dad.

Charley Rasling barely looks at his son when Frank bursts through the back door of the market. Instead, he points, Clean the grinder.

As Frank washes fat from the augur and brushes blanched fibers from the disks, he listens to two customers out front discussing the seventy-two Japanese planes shot down in the Marshall Islands three days before. He considers whether once again to ask his father about giving him permission to enlist along with Peleg. After cleaning the grinder, Frank mops out the walk-in. Entering the front of the store to sweep up what can’t be salvaged from a bag of flour that a customer has dropped, Frank sneaks a look at his father’s face to see if there might be any trace of the smile that occasionally used to be there.

Frank is still down on one knee sweeping a small mound of flour into a dustpan and wondering whether the spill is really an accident or another small message to Willi Hess, when Allegra Lyle, smelling of cold air and vanilla, walks through the door.

Boy on bended knee.

As he stands up, Frank fights the urge to brush his pants and pat his hair in place.

Can I help you find anything?

Could you get me a bag of pea beans and some sugar?

When Frank hesitates, Allegra laughs, Don’t worry, I have a ration card for the sugar.

The sleigh bell laugh of this dark-haired girl, who only moved to Wakefield in late summer, yet by Halloween has acquired the nickname Legs as well as the febrile attention of Frank and a dozen of his classmates, roils Frank’s stomach and shortens his breath.

Even though the pea beans are within Legs’ reach, Frank collects them himself as he is afraid his voice may crack if he tries to direct her to them. He collects the sugar from behind the counter where Willi has recently moved it to make it less tempting to his clientele.

Frank grins nervously and fidgets with the spit of dark curly hair that tends to fall onto his forehead as Legs Lyle wanders the store. When she finally saunters over to the counter, Legs nods and laughs again when Franks asks, Can I get you anything else?

Bring me Sparta.

Frank guesses that his head, which feels red hot, is bobbing for far too long. Finally, he turns away from Legs, tears off a piece of butcher’s paper, grabs a grease pen and makes a vaguely accurate sketch of the eastern Mediterranean. He puts a small cross on the coast of Turkey, a second on the west shore of Greece and connects the two with a series of dots. He turns back and presents the map to Legs.

I hope this helps.

I hope so, too.

Legs’ eyebrows furrow as she studies Frank’s drawing.

Why does Edgars have us read that old stuff?

Frank twists his rail thin six-foot body away from Legs as if he fears a blow before saying, The Iliad is a classic.

Give me ‘Gone with the Wind.’

Legs extends her hand toward Frank, May I?

Frank hands her the grease pen. After moving away and putting the map on top of a display of soaps, Legs huddles over it and begins to draw. Frank’s throat burns as he looks at the contours of Legs’ woolen pants. After a minute, she stands up, rolls the map into a tube and hands it to Frank. Raising an eyebrow she says, Promise you won’t look ‘til later.

Again, Frank’s head bobs.

In the bathroom with its flaking green paint and smell of bleach, Frank unrolls the map. Legs Lyle has interrupted the dots between Sparta and Troy with a drawing of a small box of a building with a half-dozen musical notes and a question mark floating above its roof.

Frank waits until late afternoon, when things are slow, before asking his father if he can stay in town after the market closes.

To do what?

I don’t know, Dad.

If you don’t know, why stay?

Maybe a movie.

What’s playing?

I’m not sure.

The Outlaw?

Frank’s shoulders rise in resignation.

I don’t want you seeing that.

Dad, we caught two mink.

Frank watches his father’s face try to catch up with his words.

That’s good.

I won’t go to the movies.

Okay, be home by ten-thirty. Be careful on the road. Too many drunken soldiers.

The sun is down and a cold wind is blowing hard when Frank climbs onto his bike. Before riding two blocks along a moonlit Main Street, left barren of holiday lights by the war, he pulls his undershirt up over his small jutting chin and holds it between his teeth. When his ears begin to burn, he can’t decide whether to pedal faster or slower. Checking behind him to make sure his father’s car is not following, Frank veers onto Robinson Street to see if Paul Cummings is going to the dance.

Luckily, Paul is home. Even better, he is not planning to go to the dance. He invites Frank to stay and listen to the radio, but Paul’s mother is the high school geography teacher and it makes Frank nervous to be around her.

After getting what he has come for, a gray and black argyle Brooks Brothers sweater on loan to Paul from a cousin crawling across sandbars in the Pacific, Frank rides the two miles to Narragansett Beach. The sweater itself, as well as the notion that it comes from Brooks, keeps Frank warm as he pedals through the biting wind. Leaping off his bike, the high school junior vaults onto the sea wall and bellows Allegra’s name to the sea before jumping the eight feet to the hard-packed sand below. He races to the water’s edge, then, as his ragged breathing smoothes out, watches a parade of slow fat waves lumbering toward him. Below the sound of the water breaking against the shore, Frank thinks he can hear the throb of something else. His eyes slowly sweep the dark before him looking for something blacker, a narrow pole rising from the water, like Arthur’s sword.

When his shivering nears convulsions, Frank retreats to the protection of the sea wall. His thoughts drift back and forth from the U-boat, its periscope up, sweeping the bay hunting for its particular kind of game, and Legs Lyle dressing for the dance. He huddles against the wall, hiding from a hungry wind and dreams his dreams until his teeth chatter so badly that his head begins to jerk back and forth like an animal in a trap. He forces himself to breathe slowly. While hugging his own shoulders more firmly than he would dare hold Legs, Frank draws his lips inside his mouth and wets them with his tongue.

On the long ride back home along the dark pitted road, Frank tries to ignore the alcohol churning in his stomach, the bitter cold tearing at his face and the gash in his knee, which opens and closes, aches and subsides, with each rotation of the pedals. He purses his lips and kisses the wind. He imagines a mink and her mate, hungry, careless, racing along the water's edge. He works on his story.

Charley Rasling is leaning forward on a worn, maroon-colored couch and staring at the fire while rubbing his ankles and listening to the radio. Frank, half hiding behind the doorframe, says hello and starts to go into the bathroom to clean up his knee.

Get warm first.

Trying to conceal the tear in his pants, Frank hurries past his father and sits down on a stool right in front of the flames. The sudden change of temperature makes Frank's cheeks and hands burn.

What did you do?

Not much. Stopped to see Paul Cummings and then went to the beach.

Pretty crowded?

The heat from the fireplace and the pain from his torn skin make Frank thinks he is going to faint.

Cummings came to see me on Thursday. He wants a standing rib for Christmas.

Frank nods at the flames, which dance like windblown spartina. He knows that every week, since meat rationing started the previous spring, Willi Hess and his father have heard from dozens of customers, some old, some new, requesting, or lately, demanding, that they get first choice. Customers call the house at night and, more than a few times, have shown up at the front door to argue with Charley Rasling to give them a just reward for doing their part on the home front.

Gasoline is gasoline and sugar is sugar, but round isn't sirloin and a ham hock isn't a pork chop.

What are you going to do?

What I feel like doing is making all of the beef we get into hamburger and all the pork into sausage.

Frank twists his head toward his father and nods.

His father nods back before asking, What were you butchering?

Frank's right knee, encased in torn, bloody khaki tries to move out of sight.

Bike?

No.

Well?

Frank's brain begins telling the story that it has rehearsed about tripping over a piling at the beach, but his mouth interrupts, Peleg.

Charley Rasling snorts as he reaches a hand out for the newspaper at the end of the couch.

After tending to his knee, Frank puts beans and salt pork on the stove. As he waits for his dinner to warm, he continues reading in Book Fourteen of The Iliad—Now Lady Hera of the Golden chair had turned her eyes upon the war.

Chapter One

Widower’s Pique

Before answering the phone, Mike Krants looks at his watch. 6:58.

Dad, did you eat the tabouli?

Mike thinks that it might be a bit early for a lie, but he is very sure that it is much too early for an argument.

With gusto.

Dad!

I managed.

It’s good for you. It could keep you from getting diverticulosis.

At my age, I’m grateful for any diversion.

Beth Michault, his forty-three year old daughter, ignores him. I’ve got a lecture at 8:30 and a hellacious day after that. They always schedule everything at the beginning of the semester. Although, if the lecture goes as well as I hope, my life will soon be simpler because half the kids will want to drop out. I thought some more about mom’s stuff. I think you should call Big Sisters. They take everything. In a couple of weeks, I’ll take a Saturday, hound Ken and we’ll box things up.

With a muffled groan, Mike half-turns on his bed so that he can see his wife’s jewelry box and tray of bottles, smells mostly, sitting atop the dresser.

Beth, I don’t think so.

Dad, it’s morbid.

Memorable. Those things help my memory.

Dad, not memory, memories. If I believed they helped your memory, I’d be all for keeping them.

Well, you could always have the large sisters take me, too.

Dad, I’m trying to be practical. You could be at Narragansett Manor or Cliff’s Edge with….

Beth, I think the tabouli’s doing its job.

Just think about it, Dad.

You’re breaking up, Beth.

I’m in a bad area.

Watch your back.

Reception, Dad.

It’s a great technology. I should get one.

Dad!

Really."

Love, Dad.

The phone cracks in the old man’s ear. Despite knowing that she’s no longer there he says, More love, Beth.

Mike stays in bed for a few minutes after Beth hangs up, but when his thoughts begin to turn hopeless, he makes himself get up. In a moment, he’s dividing his attention between inserting a thin, knobby, blue-mottled leg into one of the holes in a pair of slack-waisted underpants and looking at the mirror where an octogenarian ruddy-faced clown feints and dances with a piece of yellowing cloth. With his right leg slightly lifted, his left arm fully extended, his spine curved, his foot, a yearling bull, lurches toward the briefs, but the briefs themselves execute a veronica that leave the foot dangling. Krants laughs uproariously—and bitterly—at the show his limbs are putting on for his amusement, or, he thinks, his edification. As the laugh fades, he fights a defeatist urge to sit upon the edge of his bed to thread each foot before coaxing the fabric up past the map of lost years that mark his thighs. A feeble limb, a febrile brain. An impetuous bladder. A New England graveyard of worn and canted teeth. Knuckles as big as walnuts. Ears that seem to him to be twice the size of those he sported in his twenties—almost as if they have grown in anticipation of the growing deafness. Angry mustache bristling at life’s indignities. Pumpkin belly. Hesitant walk. Hercule Poirot gone south.

Krants laughs so hard that he farts a bubble from yesterday’s lunch that, caught in a Chinese puzzle of colon, has lightened his sleep through much of the night.

Once the old man is covered, buttoned and cinched, he makes his slow way down the hallway, skirts past the small room where his wife, Evie, had chosen to die four months before, grabs hold of the banister, tacky with sweat and decomposing varnish, and, disjointedly, descends the stairs. While his coffee brews and the frozen waffle toasts, Krants walks skittishly around the room listening to CNN through a pair of cordless headphones.

He had bought the earphones during Evie’s last months. His intention had been to keep a bit of the outside world coming into the hot silence, while saving Evie from petty distractions to the hard work that she was doing. At first, Mike had found some solace in the simple world the headphones brought. Later, he had grown uneasy as he found himself setting the volume to a level that equaled the volume of his mind so that an authoritative, modulated C-Span or CNN voice would counter his own snarled thoughts.

Even after Evie had made her way past the mundane, Mike had continued to wear the headphones. Each day, he tells himself he shouldn’t. Like a drunk, he wakes with good intentions—of keeping them off and allowing himself to be deafened by the silence around him. But, what he thinks he should do, and what he