The Bad Angel Brothers, page 9
The rhythm of my year was now driving and digging in the desert, studying the features of rock formations to understand what was inside them, and selling what I collected. I sometimes visited the Zorrillas in Phoenix, and they said they were glad to see me. But I gathered from their evasions and silences that their business was covert, and had I not saved the life of Don Carlos that day in the ravine, and delivered him home, they would not have felt obliged to entertain me. I never referred to the story of Don Carlos being robbed and abandoned by his brother, Ramón, though I often wanted to mention Frank and to tell them I was happier with them than with my own family. I loved being away, especially on holidays like Christmas and Easter. Once you’ve been away, you stop liking the person you are at home.
I called Mother when I could, and she reported that Frank still inhabited his old bedroom. She sometimes passed the phone to him, but my talks with him were brief. Someone who owes you money is always an anxious conversationalist; there is that weight of an unspoken matter between you, and an unbudgeable obstruction of resentment.
With lots of time in the desert for reflection, and the clarity that solitude offered, it occurred to me that the vacation in Acapulco was not a gift to me. Frank had been dumped by Whitney but he’d already been given the ticket to the company junket—the big-time law firm he’d hooked up with had footed the bill at the resort. I’d gone as his spouse on a nonrefundable airfare ticket. It hadn’t cost him anything, but—given the impression he’d been generous—I’d loaned him the money he’d asked for. Nuanced scheming, very Frank.
His fortunes then improved. In a succession of phone calls I heard about his new courtship, an amazing romance when I put all the whispers, the confidences, and the boasts together. Frank had been on a sabbatical in Maine to ease his pain at having failed in his marriage and was looking for comfort in the landscape of spruce forests on the rocky coastline.
He’d remembered a rock hunting trip I’d taken as a geology student, one I’d told him about, my camping on the shore of a bay on one of those elongated coastal peninsulas, and my kayaking to nearby islands where there were the remains of old quarries from which great blocks of granite had been carved. I’d extolled the beauties of Eagle Island in Wheeler Bay, its smooth-sided quarry, its abandoned cabin in a bower of spruce trees.
Impressed by my long-ago praise, he’d gone to that bay for solace and rented a cottage on a hill at the head of the bay, a place I’d mentioned. It was easy for me to fit Frank to the cottage on the drumlin above the glacial grooving formed by the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the bedrock of granite that I’d mapped, the twists and folded layering of the metamorphism of the schist, the sediments and bedding of sea stacks, the angular fragments of volcanic tuff, and the glories of igneous granite varieties, especially those in the jumble of inclusions in the shatter zone of coastal hills, the fractures, the feldspar.
“Big bunch of rocks,” Frank had reported. “Filling station up the road sells lobster rolls.”
Shatter zone was the expression that came to my mind, because it seemed that Frank, who was a social animal, hating solitude, was having a miserable time in Maine and had no ambition to visit my old haunt on Eagle Island.
But stopping for gas one day at the Huddy station, and buying himself a lobster roll, he saw a pretty woman behind the counter. He had not seen her before. He struck up a conversation, saying, “What a lovely part of the world.”
The woman looked at him with widened eyes and bared her teeth and said, “I’d kill to get out of here.”
The desperation in her voice thrilled Frank. Here was an attractive woman who was in trouble. Frank saw an opportunity. And her sudden utterance was like a declaration of loss, of distraction and futility, and—Frank being who he was—her weakness made him feel strong. He’d been gloomy for the whole week at the cottage on the shatter zone, and now he brightened.
Relieved to see that shop was empty, no other cars at the gas pumps, he leaned and fixed his good eye on her and said, “How can I help?”
The woman began to speak; she stammered but failed to say a whole word, and then she put her hands to her face and sobbed into her fingers.
Frank was wearing a tweed coat, a folded handkerchief in his breast pocket. He plucked it out, flapped it open, and without a word, handed it to the woman. She thanked him in a whisper, her eyes reddened, her lips trembling.
I could add plausible dialogue to these factual details that I’d learned at the time, more colorful details that I was told later, and all of them had the ring of truth, because I knew Frank so well. He was stimulated by being in the presence of a helpless woman; he was needed, and even in her misery she was attractive, perhaps her pallor and her wounded eyes giving her a greater allure.
“It would take too long to explain.” Blowing her nose seemed to restore her, as though she was expelling her gloom into the hankie.
“I have plenty of time,” Frank said. “When do you get off work?”
“Five,” she said. “Shift change.”
“Coffee?” Frank said. “Or something stronger.”
“Coffee’s good,” she said. In a beseeching tone of apology, she added, “Are you sure? Because I have a real sad story.”
“I want to hear it.”
Frank returned to the gas station at five and parked a little to the side, signaling to the woman when she left the shop. She smiled when she saw him—the first time he’d seen her smile, shy and grateful. And she smiled again but nervously, as she slipped into his car.
“I don’t even know your name. I’m Frank.”
“I’m Frolic,” she said and blinked at him. “My parents were hippies; they came up here to escape New York City. People always laugh when I tell them my name.”
With solemnity, as if bestowing an award, Frank said, “Frolic is a very beautiful name.”
The woman lifted her hands and looked as though she was going to cry again.
“Where shall we go?” Frank said. “Somewhere quiet.”
“I don’t want anyone to see me,” Frolic said.
They bought coffee at a café in Rockland, and took it to a bench near the harbor, where they sat facing the sea, sipping it from their paper cups. To inspire trust, Frank would have gazed at her with his practiced squint of concern.
“This is nice,” Frank said, thinking, I must not rush her.
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
This stirred him; he liked the thought of a great tangle that would take his mind off his own emptiness and make him feel useful.
“It’s like this,” she said, twisting her fingers on her lap as she explained. She’d married young to a local man who worked in a factory that made preformed tub and shower units. It was hard work, the pay was poor, but they’d managed. The product was well known.
“Filberts,” Frolic said. “Big company. Fiberglass.”
The word fiberglass was spoken by the woman with a slight lisp, her lazy tongue lolling at her lips—the word, the lisp, thrilled Frank and he too eagerly locked his fingers.
Frolic’s husband, Warner, became asthmatic, his condition worsening, and finally he had such trouble breathing he had to resign and apply for workers’ compensation. He was given severance, a lump sum for which he’d signed a paper. He wasted away, struggling to breathe, even on oxygen, and after less than a year he died.
“Was there an autopsy?”
Frolic shook her head.
“Pleural abnormalities—very common among workers who use fiberglass. There are studies. Very similar to asbestosis—a lung killer.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“I’m an attorney,” Frank said. “And I can tell you that you have a case.”
The woman moved closer to him on the bench, she rested her head against his shoulder, she was sobbing again, between deep breaths, seeming to purr, a vibration that Frank could feel in his flesh, trembling through his body, like a motor that energized him.
“I want to help,” he said.
“But why?” She raised her head, incomprehension and anguish on her face. Tormented, Frolic was tragic and pale and lovely.
Frank became purposeful, taking charge, holding her hand, squeezing it as he questioned her further, details of her husband’s illness and their finances. The following day he visited her at home after work and put her medical bills in order. He studied the document her husband had signed, a liability waiver, clearing Filberts in advance of any responsibility. Frank explained to Frolic that the waiver was full of loopholes; Warner had not been advised of the risks of fiberglass and that he might end up fatally ill.
That was the beginning of Frank’s five-hour drives to Maine, to create a case, to initiate a lawsuit, and to meet with Filberts’s lawyers, who were at first dismissive. But after Frank laid out his case, showing that the waiver was unenforceable, they became attentive.
They knew that a court case and jury trial would attract attention, and probably a class-action lawsuit—obviously other Filberts workers had been affected—and heavy damages would follow. Frank offered them a proposal, naming a large sum. He never disclosed precise numbers to the public and he swore that this amount would remain confidential, so as not to attract other litigants.
Filberts settled. And as Frank had promised that he was taking the case pro bono, the whole chunk of money—millions—went to Frolic, who quit her job at the Huddy gas station. And then Frank began actively wooing her—though, really, he’d been wooing her from the moment she’d lisped the word fiberglass.
Frank was never happier than when he went to someone’s rescue and came away with a big payday. They had a short courtship and were married in her hometown in Maine. Mother attended. The Filberts settlement remained a secret. Frolic’s family organized the reception. She was a country girl, she was surrounded by brothers and sisters—seven or eight of them, an Irish family, her father a weaver, her mother a pastry chef at a local restaurant.
The way Mother described the occasion made Frank seem inconspicuous there, but I suspected that though this might have been true, he enjoyed a sort of celebrity, as the man who’d dried Frolic’s tears and made her smile. What pleased him, I guessed, was that Frolic’s family felt indebted to him for spiriting this simple widow away to a better life. But no one knew, except the bride and groom, that Frolic had become a multimillionaire.
Mother had used these words about Frolic—simple, humble, hardworking, decent. But who is simple? Everyone has depths and unanticipated moods and passions, as Frank was to discover in his life with Frolic.
“Sorry you couldn’t make it to the wedding,” Frank said to me. He was annoyed, and he went on at length about the beauty of the Maine coast, forgetting that it was I who had suggested he soothe his heart there.
I could have managed to go to the wedding, but I was still buoyant in my mystical mood of nonattachment, and I feared that the flight and the wedding celebration, and seeing Frank, would disturb my serenity. I sent flowers and a polished topaz, set in silver.
People go to weddings to size each other up, and if you’re in your twenties and unmarried they make remarks—You’re next or Your turn now. I wasn’t ready for that. I knew I’d changed, that I was happier and healthier where I was, and that I didn’t want to return to my earlier roles, as a son and a brother, or to be asked questions I couldn’t answer.
My slight regret was that in staying away I would be missing Frank’s long stories, the ones he saved for big events, with lots of listeners—his own wedding would have been a great occasion for dazzling his guests with his monologues. Or else boring them. His stories were always helpful to me in assessing his mood, yet I wasn’t very curious about him now. I was busy living my life, and moving on.
9
Diversification
Feeling confident, I was strengthened by my successes as a prospector, and my horizons broadened. I had the money and the curiosity and the will to roam more widely. I didn’t have to explain myself: my work spoke for me. I was an ingot of gold. I was a pouch of gemstones. I was a thick bar of silver. Talk and speculation meant nothing—they were like Frank’s long stories, not interesting in themselves but suggesting a state of mind. In my chosen profession all that mattered were results, and mine were unmistakable, glittering for all to see.
Untethered to my family, and single, I could go anywhere I wished. Hardly conscious of it, or planning it, I’d prepared myself to be an explorer and traveler. I’d refined my skills as a prospector, and I’d discovered that I could be self-sufficient, able to camp in the wildest places. I’d learned how to repair my equipment and stay healthy, to prevail and flourish in the harshest conditions.
In the secretive world of prospecting I’d earned a whispered reputation as a gold finder. But finding gold was not what impressed the mining companies that later hired me as a consultant. It was my acceptance of risk, my dependability, my determination, my knowledge of geology, and my youth. It was also my hatred of promises, my belief in results. And it was something else, hard to define or teach: my instinct for finding what I was looking for, which amounted, in terms of rock hunting, almost to an exquisite sense of smell.
From Arizona and Nevada I traveled to Alaska, hired by a firm that bankrolled me to prospect for gold in the Yukon River Basin. The price of gold was at that time high enough for them to commission me to find whatever I could—modest amounts, as it turned out, but of great purity. My youth was an advantage. I was twenty-six and I didn’t know what I realized later, that competitive businesses are always on the lookout for young and ambitious workers, eager to learn, able to take orders, even-tempered and undemanding—no family, no mortgage, adaptable, portable, loyal, grateful, who will work for much less money than someone older, to build a résumé and make a reputation.
That was me. I was the young, hardworking risk-taker they wanted. What they did not understand was that I knew my worth; so I allowed them to give me orders, while suppressing my objections to their patronizing me, because I needed this experience. I was successful on the Yukon River, and instead of going back to Littleford for a summer holiday I took a vacation on the Seward Peninsula. There, I heard whispers of jade deposits locally, and after I fulfilled my Yukon River contract, I set out on my own in Seward to prospect for jade and jadeite.
It seems a paradox that I’d gone from the intense heat of the southwestern desert to thirty-below in Alaska. But it is not unusual. A healthy person can acclimatize to any severe conditions—heat or cold. It’s a matter of stamina and a mental challenge. Some of the men on Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole had come from working in the intense heat of India and Arabia and Burma. A person does not merely acquire the ability to endure a certain climate but rather attains a level of health that allows him, or her, to adapt to any extreme temperature. My years in Arizona and Nevada, active in that heat, prepared me for the cold in Alaska, where I had to leave my van idling all night in front of my hut so that I’d be able to drive it in the morning.
The challenge in the North was buying the instruments and equipment for this specialized prospecting. After forming my own small company, I looked for partnership with a big mining company in order to pay my bills and expand. Their confidence in me, and their investment in my modest operation, gave me the freedom to range more widely.
My partnering company had a number of mines in Australia. They offered to send me there to verify a number of gold deposits. I traveled under their auspices and reported on the gold reserves, but at the same time discovered new possibilities. At that time, the innovation of rechargeable batteries meant that rare earths were in greater demand: lithium, for one, dysprosium another for computer guts—an essential in hard drives. The name “rare earth” was misleading: they were not rare in the sense of being hard to find—there was plenty of the stuff in Australia, much more of them than other minerals. But they are called rare because they can’t be reproduced or duplicated. There was a finite amount. I made it my business to go out on my own and find these valuable deposits.
I liked Australia for its open spaces. Most of the people lived at the edges, on the coast. I favored the empty outback, the distant bush they called the woop-woop and the never-never. And something else that pleased me: Australian women were hardier than the men. Seeing that I was a Yank (and not a Pom), they teased me, and discovering that I could take the teasing—which seemed to me a form of flirting—I had many friends, and a few lovers. After my celibacy in Arizona, and a few casual encounters with women in Alaska (where the competition was fierce—too many men, not enough single women), my success in Australia heartened me.
I had never believed that I would find a woman to share the hardships of my life. My ideal was not a seductress in a boudoir but rather a woman who would be a teammate, who’d accompany me in the desert or the bush. I thought it was unlikely, but in Australia I met many women who were unfazed by the rigors of prospecting; they were themselves able geologists and knew their hot, red landscape.
They loved the outback, they liked driving long distances, they could drink me under the table, they were capable of overcoming hardship, but they were also women, with reserves of tenderness and understanding. I am generalizing, because I was lucky enough to meet three such Australian women in my three years there, shuttling from my rental in Perth to various sites in the vast state of Western Australia, looking for gold, and then opals, and finally rare earths.
These women were as strong as me, and more patient. My success in Australia was due to the fact that because I was often prospecting with someone else, we could cover twice as much ground. And with these capable and independent women, I learned in Australia that a love affair was not merely a stewing in sensuality as I had with Julie Muffat in Littleford. Physical attraction was important—essential—but so was a sense of humor; so was respect, and much more.
