THE POLICY Read online

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  ONE 1

  2

  3

  TWO

  THREE 1

  2

  3

  4

  FOUR 1

  2

  3

  FIVE

  SIX 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  SEVEN

  EIGHT 1

  2

  3

  NINE 1

  2

  3

  4

  TEN 1

  2

  3

  ELEVEN 1

  2

  3

  TWELVE 1

  2

  3

  THIRTEEN 1

  2

  3

  4

  FOURTEEN 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  FIFTEEN 1

  2

  3

  SIXTEEN 1

  2

  3

  SEVENTEEN 1

  2

  3

  EIGHTEEN 1

  2

  3

  NINETEEN 1

  2

  3

  TWENTY 1

  2

  3

  TWENTY-ONE 1

  2

  3

  4

  THE POLICY

  Bentley Little

  For Larry and Janice Weldon

  my uncle and my aunt

  ONE

  1

  He took off a day earlier than he’d planned, leaving in the middle of the night, halfway through Conan O’Brien, and two hours later Hunt Jackson found himself speeding past Palm Springs with the windows open, heading east. With the divorce finalized, there was nothing holding him back, nothing preventing him from doing whatever he wanted, going wherever he felt like going. He was no longer confined by the daily routines of married life, by the patterns and ruts into which he’d fallen, and he was filled with a delicious sense of freedom as he sped down the windswept highway. It was a moonless night, and the stars were out in force, great swaths of the Milky Way visible even through the darkened windshield of the Saab.

  The Saab.

  When had he turned into the kind of person who drives a Saab? He didn’t know, but it was so far in the past that the question felt forced, something he thought he should ask rather than a query to which he genuinely desired an answer. Through the windshield, briefly, he saw a shooting star, far above and to the right. Though they’d been fixtures of the Tucson night sky when he was growing up, he realized that he hadn’t seen a single meteor since moving to Southern California. He’d heard mentions of meteor showers on the news, comical weathermen occasionally announcing the phenomena and explaining why—because of air pollution or light pollution or the marine layer—the showers would not be visible in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas. He hadn’t cared, hadn’t even given it a thought, but now, out here on the open road, he realized that he missed seeing shooting stars, missed seeing the sky.

  A semi flew past on the left, blasting its horn at him for some imagined slight. Feeling reckless, feeling brave, he flipped on his brights and leaned on his own horn, but the speeding truck was already far ahead and his attempted defiance fell flat, his high beams shining impotently on quickly retreating tires, his honk small and ignored.

  He hit Blythe by three, and was past Phoenix and heading south toward Tucson well before the sun started lightening the sky above Casa Grande to the east. He stopped for breakfast at a trucker’s coffee shop by the side of the highway, ordering an artery-clogging, meat-heavy meal that Eileen never would have let him eat, before continuing on.

  Although the split was mutual—both of them had desperately wanted out of the screaming hell their relationship had become—he’d found himself thinking a lot about Eileen lately, his life with her and his life without her, and he’d tried to imagine the future, but he could not. He had decided that he didn’t want to live in Southern California anymore, and it had been an easy decision to make. There was nothing tying him there. He’d been laid off at Boeing last month during the most recent round of cutbacks and hadn’t yet caught on anywhere else. Eileen had gotten the house in the settlement, so he was temporarily living in an apartment complex on the border of Seal Beach and Westminster. He was freer now than he had ever been before and perhaps might ever be again.

  But where did he want to live? San Francisco was a possibility. Hell, he could go anywhere he wanted. His options were open. He could move to New Orleans or New York, Miami or Seattle, Chicago or Honolulu.

  But that wasn’t what he wanted, was it? No. He wanted to go back to Tucson. It was where he’d been born, where he’d grown up and gone to school, where he’d met Eileen. Part of it was comfort, retreat—and there was an element of failure associated with that, the sense that he was crawling home with his tail between his legs. At the same time, he would be starting anew, jettisoning the generic middle-class existence he had created for himself and beginning again, perhaps taking his life in the direction it should have been going all along.

  And now here he was, at a truck stop in the desert, loading up on fat and calories, staring out at a hand-painted sign that said GET U.S. OUT OF THE U.N. But he felt good, he felt happy, and twenty minutes later, he was on the road again, heading south, past the lonely ruggedness of Picacho Peak, toward home.

  Tucson had changed a lot in the decade he’d been gone, and he drove around the periphery of the city, trying to get his bearings, before diving into it. From the elevated freeway, he saw that gated communities and generic shopping centers now stretched around the side of the Catalinas well past Ina Road to the north; new homes were creeping up the Tucson Mountains toward Gate’s Pass to the west; an entirely new city seemed to have sprung up south of the I-10 curve on the way to the mission; and the Rincon district of Saguaro National Park was no longer outside of town but on the eastern edge of it. He turned back when he reached the Colossal Cave exit, then got off on Speedway and headed toward the university. Downtown, stores and restaurants had changed, entire buildings had been torn down and replaced, and a distinctly generic appearance seemed to have been grafted onto the formerly unique character of the city, part of the Californianization of America that guaranteed a Burger King at every other stoplight and a Mediterranean appearance to every new office building.

  The old neighborhood was still there but shabbier than he remembered it, everything more run-down than he recalled. Their old house looked like hell. Whoever lived there now had poured concrete over the lawn in order to make room for a trio of 1960s muscle cars in various stages of renovation, and the side patio his dad had built, where his mom had had her hanging plants and potted flowers, was gone, torn out. His parents would be shocked if they could see the place now, and he was tempted to call them up and describe it to them, make them feel even more guilty for moving and selling, but he recognized the pettiness of the impulse and knew he would not act on it. They were happier back in Minnesota, and if he’d really cared so much about the old house, why hadn’t he bought it from them when he had the chance?

  He didn’t care about it. He just wished his parents were here because he wanted a home to which he could return.

  But they’d returned to their home, in Minnesota.

  Everyone went back home eventually.

  He spent the night at a Super 8 Motel, next door to a couple who fought loud and long about an outboard motor purchase before commencing an equally loud bout of lovemaking. In the morning, he bought a newspaper from the rack in front of the lobby and sat in the Waffle House next door, reading the classified ad
s over breakfast, looking for a house or apartment to rent.

  Now that he was here, the romantic notion of pulling up stakes and resettling no longer seemed quite so romantic. He was suddenly aware of the practical minutiae that such a move required. He would have to put in a change-of-address form with the post office, make sure that none of his bills or important mail got lost in the transition, get a new phone number and inform all of his friends and family, cancel his Los Angeles Times subscription… the list went on and on.

  Not to mention the fact that he would have to physically transport his furniture and belongings over here, probably via U-Haul.

  Maybe it wasn’t worth the effort.

  No.

  He needed to do this.

  One plus was that rent was much cheaper in Arizona than it was in California. For the price of his little one-bedroom apartment over there, he could rent not merely a duplex but a full-fledged house—even if it wasn’t in the city’s best neighborhood. And that’s exactly what he found after a short morning’s search: a three-bedroom adobe on a sparsely populated street in the southeast part of town. The house was sandwiched between a run-down ranch-style home and what was little more than a plywood shack attached to a recently built and fairly nice two-car garage. The only other building on that side of the block was a Circle K on the corner. On the opposite side of the street was a cotton field—one of those corporate farms with no on-site house, barns, or storage shed.

  He discovered the place by accident. He was traveling from one listing to another and stopped off at the Circle K for a cup of coffee, and when he glanced down the side street, he saw the posted for rent sign. As shabby and out of the way as it was, something about the area appealed to him. It might not be the chic section of the city, but it was rural and real and reminded him of the way Tucson used to be when he was growing up. From the small desert-y yard he could see the Rincons to the east, the Catalinas to the north, and all around a gigantic expanse of sky. What more could he ask for? And when he read the stats of the house and the unbelievably reasonable price of the rent, he broke out his cell phone, called the number at the bottom of the sign, and waited in the driveway for the owner to arrive.

  Forty-five minutes later, after a quick tour of the home and a security deposit withdrawn from an ATM at the Circle K, the place was his, contingent upon a credit check that he knew he would pass with flying colors.

  It was more than he needed, really, but he liked the idea of being in a real house again. It gave him a solid, settled feeling, and even though he was only renting, he experienced a welcome sense of permanence that had not been his since before the separation. He drove back to the motel, spirits high. He’d have to return to California to pack up his stuff. He could find someone to help him load up a U-Haul with no problem—there were a couple of neighbors in his apartment complex with whom he was casually acquainted—but unloading here in Tucson would be difficult. He thought about the plywood shack and the shabby ranch house that bookended his new digs. He could probably ask someone there to help him, but he didn’t want his first contact with his neighbors to be an imposition.

  So he called up some of his old buddies—or rather, their parents. He could not seem to find any of his friends in the phone book, but their families were still listed and still at the same addresses, and he asked fathers and mothers for current phone numbers. It brought home to him how far out of his life he’d let them slip. It seemed to him that Jordan and his wife had sent Christmas cards within the past few years, letting him know that they’d moved, but he hadn’t really cared and hadn’t made an effort to keep track or keep in touch. He’d been living almost entirely in the present, letting his past erase itself, and he’d seldom even thought about his friends from childhood and early adulthood.

  Now, it seemed, most of them were gone. Mike was a firefighter in New York, both Jordan and Eck had moved to Phoenix, and even Victor’s own parents didn’t know what had become of him. Joel was still around, though, and for that Hunt was grateful. Joel McCain had been Hunt’s best friend in elementary school and junior high, and though they’d drifted apart in high school and after, there was still that connection, and Hunt called him up instantly, thankful for someone familiar in what was a suddenly strange and unfamiliar city.

  Joel, oddly enough, was a teacher, a social science instructor at Mountain Valley Junior College. Oddly, because he had been at best an indifferent student—hostile was probably a more accurate description—and the last occupation Hunt expected to find him in was education. In junior high, Joel’s goal had been to be a trucker. There was nothing better, he’d said, than cruising around the country, listening to tunes and getting paid for it. Hunt assumed his friend had changed his mind by the time he graduated from high school, but they’d been running in separate crowds by then, and he sure wouldn’t have thought Joel would be interested in any occupation that required a college degree.

  Joel laughed when Hunt expressed surprise at his choice. “I got used to that school schedule. Couldn’t imagine a life where I didn’t have summers off. Besides, a summer working with my old man in the hot sun would make anyone a model college student. What about you, though? What do you do? And are you just visiting, or have you come back for good?”

  Hunt gave him the whole sob story—separation, divorce, layoff at Boeing, blah, blah, Mali—and then explained how he’d decided—on the spur of the moment, while looking out his apartment window—to move back to Tucson.

  “You get settled yet? Found a place to live?”

  “Well,” Hunt said, starting to feel a little embarrassed. “That’s actually why I called. I found a place today. I’m going back to California to pack up my clothes and books and records, and what little furniture’s left to me after the divorce. There’s not enough to justify hiring movers, so I thought I’d do it myself and—”

  “And you need someone to help.”

  “Yeah, I mean, there’s not much. A bed. A sofa bed. A big TV. A dining room table. I can probably unpack the rest myself. It’ll only take about a half hour or so—”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m there. I was going to suggest we get together anyway.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Say, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Why don’t you come over, then? My wife and daughter’ll be at a Brownie meeting. We’ll be able to talk about old times without censoring ourselves.”

  “You have a daughter, huh?”

  “Lilly. She’s eight.”

  “Jesus, I remember when we were eight,” Hunt said. And to him it did not seem that long ago. He could still recall vividly not only the things they did together but the way he felt—the all-or-nothing stakes that seemed to permeate every aspect of life, how neither of them ever gave a thought to a future that seemed open and endless.

  “Yeah. Time flies, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Hunt said. “It does.”

  Joel gave him his address and directions to the house, and Hunt found a hotel notepad and pen, writing it down. The two of them said good-bye.

  He had time to kill before seven, when he told Joel he’d come over, so he decided to drive around and hit some of his old haunts. He had the nagging urge to call Eileen and tell her he was moving, but he didn’t know why. They hadn’t gotten along at all the past year and a half, and the last thing she’d said to him, before the lawyers got involved and an institutionalized formality was imposed on their disintegrating relationship, was “Fuck you! I hope you die and rot in hell!” Still, it seemed strange that he didn’t need to check in with her anymore, had no obligation to inform her of his whereabouts, was free to do whatever he wanted and go wherever he pleased. He wondered if there was some sort of divorce etiquette which dictated that he should give her a courtesy call and let her know what he was doing, just in case something came up.

  But what could come up? They’d divided the assets, she wasn’t getting alimony, and acco
rding to the law their obligations to each other were over.

  He still wasn’t used to being alone.

  He spent the afternoon hitting used bookstores and record stores. A couple of his old favorites were gone, but there were still the two Bookman’s shops, and he picked up a few Chick Corea albums and a copy of The Killer Mountains, a book on the Lost Dutchman gold mine that he’d read as a teenager but subsequently lost. In addition to the books and records in the living room of his apartment, he had at least five or six large additional boxes in the unused garage of the complex, and he realized that he was going to need more bookshelves for the new house. He checked out a Goodwill, a Salvation Army, and a St. Vincent dePaul thrift store but had no luck, and after a return to the motel and a quick swim in the pool, he ordered pizza, ate it while watching the news, then headed out.

  Joel lived in a recently built subdivision only a few miles from Hunt’s new house. The homes were big but the yards were almost nonexistent, and though the residences were stand-alone structures, they had the look of town houses. He assumed from the uniform appearance of the trees and bushes, from the perfectly matched mailboxes and identical color schemes, that some sort of homeowners’ association held sway, and though these houses were obviously more expensive than his rental, he would not have lived here on a dare.

  The generic neighborhood and the white SUV in Joel’s driveway—indistinguishable from the vehicles parked in the driveways of adjacent homes—made Hunt wary at first, but Joel turned out to be the same wry, funny, cynical person he remembered, all grown up. The interior of the house belied the conventionality of the outside, as though the exterior were merely a deceptive cover; camouflage for the real home within. The furnishings were funky, eclectic. In the living room, what Joel described as a liquor cabinet he had “liberated” from the bar of an old ghost town past McGuane had been converted into a bookcase, and next to it a desert terrarium existed inside the oversized glass bulb of an antique gas pump. Across the room the skeleton of a saguaro cactus had been made into a standing lamp. In Joel’s study, a rawhide couch sat next to an end table made out of a black boulder and a piece of glass. One entire wall was taken up with a neon sign rescued from a demolished hamburger stand that read: BURGERS, FRIES, SHAKES.