River Under the Road by Scott Spencer

Author:Scott Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Rabbit and the Jewel

JUNE 2, 1983

* * *

COME ONE COME ALL

Muriel’s Birthday!

When: June 2, 1 P.M.–??

Where: Hat’s Place at Orkney

Rain or Shine

Bring a dish, a bottle, a six-pack, and a smile.

* * *

JUST TWO DAYS AGO IT WAS CHILLY AND DRIZZLING, AND there wasn’t enough sun to burn off the morning mist. It had curled like smoke across the fields and turned into an impenetrable fog once evening came. But now Muriel was having a bit of birthday luck because it was a beautiful afternoon. The sky was dark blue, Smurf blue. The lilac bushes were mad with purple blooms, pumping out their sweet aroma. The fruit trees flowered pink and white, growing just beyond the swath of property that had been deeded over to Hat. Without Hat the trees would probably be dead. He pruned and sprayed them, wrapped the bottoms of their trunks in burlap against the winter’s ravaging rodents, and harvested them from August to September, from peaches to pears.

About forty people were on hand to celebrate Muriel’s birthday, and you never knew how many more might be on the way. Nearly everyone brought a dish, or a twelve-pack, or wine, or pot. Bob Brody had chips and salsa he brought home from visiting his sister in Texas, the salsa so hot you had to be brave even to taste it. Jennings, Larry Sassone, and a couple of other friends had dug a pit where the main course was going to be fire-roasted. They had woven together sixty or so steel rods, with long handles made of rebar on all corners—a double-sided, homemade grill. Marinated chicken parts were placed on the grill and coated with barbecue sauce that one of the guys swabbed on with a string mop as they sizzled over the fire.

Jennings and Muriel were still living with Hat. Muriel baked pies and sold them to the diner, and Jennings had drifted into doing Hat’s work for him. Both of them were off the books; as far as the IRS was concerned, they didn’t exist. Jennings could not help but note that most of his guests were doing better than he was, making more money, putting together respectable lives—though he would not have traded places with one of them. One day he would dig up that ring, take it up to Montreal, or down to the city, and with the money start his own business—probably asbestos removal, although he could install it, too, it was still the best insulation out there.

The guests. Some of them worked in the Leyden school system, as bus drivers, lunchroom help, custodians. A few worked at Research Tech, breeding mice and rats for science experiments. Jill Hoover worked in the shoe department at the JCPenney across the river, which was odd since her left leg had been amputated below the knee when she was nine years old. Rory LeBraca carved headstones. Carol and Lois Weber, redheaded twins, worked at the anemone farm, keeping the greenhouses tidy, preparing the blooms for shipment to florists all over the world.

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