The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [70]
Bree turned to him, her long hair swinging over her shoulders, and shook her head. “No. I wasn’t there, but Mark was.” She smiled at the young man beside her and slipped her slender arm through his. “This is Mark Bell.”
“Mark fought in Vietnam,” Norah added. “He’s here protesting the war.”
“Ah,” David said. “An agitator.”
“A protester, I believe,” Norah corrected, waving across the lawn. “There’s Kay Marshall,” she said. “Will you excuse me?”
“A protester, then,” David repeated, watching Norah walk away, the breeze moving lightly against the sleeves of her silk suit.
“That’s right,” Mark said. He spoke with self-mocking intentness and a faint familiar accent that reminded David of his father’s voice, low and melodic. “The relentless pursuit of equity and justice.”
“You were on the news,” David said, remembering him all at once. “Last night. You were giving some kind of speech. So. You must be glad about the fire.”
Mark shrugged. “Not glad. Not sorry. It happened, that’s all. We go on.”
“Why are you being so hostile, David?” Bree asked, fixing her green eyes on him.
“I’m not being hostile,” David said, realizing even as he spoke that he was. Realizing, too, that he was beginning to flatten and extend his own vowels, called by the deep pull of language, patterns of speech as familiar and compelling as water. “I’m gathering information, that’s all. Where are you from?” he asked Mark.
“West Virginia. Over near Elkins. Why?”
“Just curious. I had family there once.”
“I didn’t know that about you, David,” Bree said. “I thought you were from Pittsburgh.”
“I had family near Elkins,” David repeated. “A long time ago.”
“Is that so?” Mark was watching him less warily now. “They work coal?”
“Sometimes, in the winter. They had a farm. A hard life, but not as hard as coal.”
“They keep their land?”
“Yes.” David thought of the house he had not seen for nearly fifteen years.
“Smart. My daddy, now, he sold the home place. When he died in the mines five years later, we had nowhere to go. Nowhere at all.” Mark smiled bitterly and thought for a moment. “You ever go back there?”
“Not in a long time. You?”
“No. After Vietnam I went to college. Morgantown, the GI bill. It got to be strange, going back. I belonged and I didn’t belong, if you know what I mean. When I left I didn’t think I was making a choice. But it turned out I was.”
David nodded. “I know,” he said. “I know what you mean.”
“Well,” Bree said, after a long moment of silence. “You’re both here now. I’m getting thirstier by the second,” she added. “Mark? David? Want a drink?”
“I’ll come with you.” Mark said, extending his hand to David. “Small world, isn’t it? It’s good to meet you.”
“David is a mystery to us all,” Bree said, pulling him away. “Just ask Norah.”
David watched them merge into the bright milling crowd. A simple encounter, yet he felt strangely agitated, exposed and vulnerable, his past rising up like the sea. Each morning he stood for a moment in his office doorway, surveying his clean simple world: the orderly array of instruments, the crisp white length of cloth on the examination table. By every external measure he was a success, yet he was never filled, as he hoped to be, with a sense of pride and reassurance. I suppose this is it, his father had said, slamming the truck door and standing on the curb by the bus stop on the day David left for Pittsburgh. I suppose this is the last we can expect to hear from you, moving up in the world and all. You won’t have time for the likes of us anymore. And David, standing on the curb with early leaves falling down around him, had felt a deep sense of desperation, because even then he sensed the truth of his father’s words: whatever his own intentions were, however much he