I went back to Sebago feeling exultant, but as I drove back to Durham on the morning of November fifteenth (the fields white with a frost so thick that the orange-clad hunters, who were already out in force, left tracks), my mood had changed. He will have called the State Police or the local constable, I thought. And while they’re questioning me in the nearest police station, trying to find out what kind of loony I am, Cullum will be off hunting in the Bowie Hill woods.
But there was no police car in the driveway, just Andy Cullum’s Ford woody. I took my new cribbage board and went to the door. He opened it and said, “Ready for your lesson, Mr. Amberson?”
I smiled. “Yes, sir, I am.”
He took me out to the back porch; I don’t think the missus wanted me in the house with her and the baby. The rules were simple. Pegs were points, and a game was two laps around the board. I learned about the right jack, double runs, being stuck in the mudhole, and what Andy called “mystic nineteen”-the so-called impossible hand. Then we played. I kept track of the score to begin with, but quit once Cullum pulled four hundred points ahead. Every now and then some hunter would bang off a distant round, and Cullum would look toward the woods beyond his small backyard.
“Next Saturday,” I said on one of these occasions. “You’ll be out there next Saturday, for sure.”
“It’ll probably rain,” he said, then laughed. “I should complain, huh? I’m having fun and making money. And you’re getting better, George.”
Marnie gave us lunch at noon-big tuna sandwiches and bowls of homemade tomato soup. We ate in the kitchen, and when we were done, she suggested we bring our game inside. She had decided I wasn’t dangerous, after all. That made me happy. They were nice people, the Cullums. A nice couple with a nice baby. I thought of them sometimes when I heard Lee and Marina Oswald screaming at each other in their low-end apartments… or saw them, on at least one occasion, carry their animus out onto the street. The past harmonizes; it also tries to balance, and mostly succeeds. The Cullums were at one end of the seesaw; the Oswalds were at the other.
And Jake Epping, also known as George Amberson? He was the tipping point.
Toward the end of our marathon session, I won my first game. Three games later, at just a few minutes past four, I actually skunked him, and laughed with delight. Baby Jenna laughed right along with me, then leaned forward from her highchair and gave my hair a companionable tug.
“That’s it!” I cried, laughing. The three Cullums were laughing right along with me. “That’s the one I stop on!” I took out my wallet and laid three fifties down on the red-and-white checked oilcloth covering the kitchen table. “And worth every cent!”
Andy pushed it back to my side. “Put it in your billfold where it belongs, George. I had too much fun to take your money.”
I nodded as if I agreed, then pushed the bills to Marnie, who snatched them up. “Thank you, Mr. Amberson.” She looked reproachfully at her husband, then back at me. “We can really use this.”
“Good.” I got up and stretched, hearing my spine crackle. Somewhere-five miles from here, maybe seven-Carolyn Poulin and her father were getting back into a pickemup with POULIN CONSTRUCTION AND CARPENTRY painted on the door. Maybe they’d gotten a deer, maybe not. Either way, I was sure they’d had a nice afternoon in the woods, talking about whatever fathers and daughters talk about, and good for them.
“Stay for supper, George,” Marnie said. “I’ve got beans and hot-dogs.”
So I stayed, and afterward we watched the news on the Cullums’ little table-model TV. There had been a hunting accident in New Hampshire, but none in Maine. I allowed myself to be talked into a second dish of Marnie’s apple cobbler, although I was full to bursting, then stood and thanked them very much for their hospitality.
Andy Cullum put out his hand. “Next time we play for free, all right?”
“You bet.” There was going to be no next time, and I think he knew that.
His wife did, too, it turned out. She caught up to me just before I got into my car. She had swaddled a blanket around the baby and put a little hat on her head, but Marnie had no coat on herself. I could see her breath, and she was shivering.
“Mrs. Cullum, you should go in before you catch your death of c-”
“What did you save him from?”
“I beg pardon?”
“I know that’s why you came. I prayed on it while you and Andy were out there on the porch. God sent me an answer, but not the whole answer. What did you save him from?”
I put my hands on her shivering shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Marnie… if God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you.”
Abruptly she put her arms around me and hugged me. Surprised, I hugged her back. Baby Jenna, caught in between, goggled up at us.
“Whatever it was, thank you,” Marnie whispered in my ear. Her warm breath gave me goosebumps.
“Go inside, hon. Before you freeze.”
