The Probable Future

On the town green there were several memorials, testaments to the men from Unity who had died in war. Matt always stopped by the stone erected in honor of the four boys lost in the Revolutionary War on his way home from the library. Michael Foster, Seth Wright, Miller Elliot, George Hapgood. Not one of them had been more than twenty. Each had worn a bounty coat, one of the more than ten thousand woven by New England women, each tagged with the maker’s name inside, the mark of hope for those boys who were brothers and husbands and sons. An angel had been carved into their memorial stone, tears pouring from her eyes. Matt might be the only man in town who knew that a local stone carver named Fred Bean, who had lost his own young son to diphtheria, had spent six months working on the black stone, a hard slab of granite brought down from the north country. There wasn’t a day that went by when Matt didn’t think about that angel’s tears. That was history, in his opinion: that sorrow was unalterable and ever present. That tears could be preserved in the hardest granite.

Sometimes, the ink from the journals of those who’d recorded their daily existence in Unity rubbed off on Matt’s fingers. Sitting there with these personal accounts written so long ago, he always felt as though he held a life in his hands. Perhaps this was the reason the thesis he was writing had grown to three hundred pages. The dissertation had come to focus on the Sparrow women, as if the thesis had a mind of its own and had chosen the topic despite what Matt might prefer. Whenever the Sparrows were mentioned in one of the old record books, the scent of lake water arose off the paper, green and sweet and unbelievably potent. Perhaps this was what had led Matt to them. Perhaps this was why he couldn’t seem to stay away from the facts of their lives. Deep down, Matt had an addictive personality. He had begun to understand that he was not as unlike Will as he would have liked to have thought. He was loyal and dependable, true, but there was something more that drove him, an intensity he liked to deny because it made him uncomfortable. Whatever he desired most inched under his skin and it stayed there, like a bothersome pebble he did his best to ignore.

People in town used to wonder when Matt was going to get married, but they’d given up on that notion. Now, they asked when he was going to finish his thesis and get his degree from the state college instead, just as unlikely a proposition it seemed. Some folks had gone so far as to have taken bets, with Never being the resounding favorite, not that anyone wished him ill. Matt’s neighbors liked and respected him as much as they distrusted his high-and-mighty brother. It was well known that Will Avery never did a favor for any man in town. He never made a move that benefited anyone other than himself. But blood is blood, and trouble is trouble, and early one Monday morning Matt drove into Boston to join Henry Elliot—whom he’d known all his life, but who was still charging him big-time for his legal fees—for a meeting with Will, whom Matt hadn’t seen since that New Year’s Eve so many years ago, when they’d tried to kill each other out on the street.

It was difficult to find parking in downtown Boston, especially with Matt’s huge old pickup truck, dented, rusted through with salt, too big a vehicle to parallel park on narrow streets that long ago had been cow paths. Still, he made it to the courthouse on time. He greeted Henry Elliot, whom he worked for occasionally, and whose own son, Jimmy, was known to be a hellion. It was only then, after he and Henry had discussed the fact that Jimmy had been picked up on possession of marijuana charges over Christmas vacation, then released pending community service, some of which was to be spent as Matt’s assistant during the big spring cleanup of the village green, that Matt realized the man standing next to Henry was his brother.

Last time they’d met, Matt’s fury had been unleashed by too many boilermakers mixed with champagne. He had walked into the kitchen at exactly the wrong time during a sloppy, crowded New Year’s Eve party. Because of this, he’d caught Will making out with one of his students, a beautiful young girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty. Will had her up against the wall, hand down her pants, right next to the high chair where Jenny gave their daughter her breakfast every morning. He didn’t seem to give a damn if people went in and out of the kitchen, looking for ice or another cold beer, as long as Jenny had no idea of what was going on. And she didn’t, not a clue. The topper was, he had grinned at Matt when he caught sight of him, always the show-off, the liar, the big brother with a huge appetite for whatever he could beg, borrow, or steal.

Now, Will didn’t even look like the same man. He seemed rung out, his complexion sallow, and he’d lost a good deal of weight. There was a tremor in his hands, the sign of a man who needs a drink badly and hasn’t had one in days. He’d aged, that was it, and he’d done so badly.