Margaret from Maine (9781101602690) Read online

  A PLUME BOOK

  MARGARET FROM MAINE

  Dr. Ted Taigen

  JOSEPH MONNINGER lives with his wife in a converted barn near the Baker River in New Hampshire.

  Margaret from Maine

  A Novel

  Joseph Monninger

  A PLUME BOOK

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Joseph Monninger, 2012

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-1-101-60269-0

  CIP data available

  Printed in the United States of America

  Set in Horley Old Style MT Std • Designed by Eve L. Kirch

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Lilacs

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rhododendrons

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Daisies

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Asters

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Acknowledgments

  This novel is dedicated in loving memory of my mother, Mary Deborah Brennan Monninger.

  When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d

  And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

  I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

  —Walt Whitman

  Lilacs

  Chapter One

  The last sound Maine Guardsman Sgt. Thomas Kennedy heard was the whine of a mosquito. At least he thought it was the last sound, although what he thought and what actually occurred had little to do with each other. He raised his right hand to brush it away, conscious of the heat under his helmet, the dry, sweltering sweat that soaked his uniform. And now a mosquito.

  As his hand lifted, he saw a glint—just a fracture of light—and he glanced down at Private First Class Edmond Johnson, who happened to be changing the back rear tire of the team’s Humvee. In that instant, many things did not make sense.

  What were they doing here, in Afghanistan, to begin with? How had he come all this way—from Bangor, Maine—to be standing beside a beached Humvee, beside a private named Johnson who had arrived at this point in time from Solon, Maine? And where, after all, had the flash of light come from? They were in a dry, featureless plain, and the mountains, arguably the most rugged mountains in the world, were too far away to provide a sniper with sufficient height. So how could there be a flash of light, gunfire, when all the world lay flat and even and empty?

  That’s when it occurred to Sgt. Thomas Kennedy that a mosquito is not always a mosquito.

  Because he felt his hand shatter, the bones flying apart under his skin, his cheek exploding so that he tasted teeth and blood in the same instant. Oh, he thought. Just that. What they had feared, what they had all feared, had finally arrived. They were pinned down and a mosquito is not a mosquito and he turned and spread his arms—ridiculously like a crossing guard—and tried to protect Private Johnson.

  The second bullet went through his shoulder and he only felt it spin him. It didn’t hurt. It felt like a bird. Someone yelled at him to get down, but Johnson still kneeled behind him, completely exposed, and Sgt. Kennedy spread his arms to expand his protection, and he knew that was a bad idea. He hardly even knew Johnson. The kid had arrived a month and a half ago from Basic, and he was supposed to be an excellent mechanic, a diesel engine mechanic for Freightliner, but taking a bullet for him was another matter. But Sgt. Kennedy was fourth-generation Maine, and it was part of his Yankee nature to use things up, so it made no sense to him to let two people get shot when one was already plugged. It would be like punching a hole in a second bucket when the first was already punched, and so when the third bullet hit him, in the right knee, he figured he was done for anyway.

  He kept standing, shielding Johnson.

  Strangely, Sgt. Kennedy knew, absolutely knew, that what he was doing would be called brave. And that was simply curious. Because it didn’t feel brave. It all felt stupid, and he thought of Margaret, the new baby, the dairy cows plodding quietly into their milking stations, and he wondered why the sniper couldn’t see how the entire thing was absurd. Why were they shooting at each other? He had no idea what an Afghan wanted in this world, but he figured that most humans wanted to live a peaceful life, and so as he held out his arms to protect Johnson behind him, he could not imagine that the sniper would not cease. Couldn’t the sniper put the situation together? They were just grunts, just stupid soldiers doing what they were told, and if the milk prices hadn’t fallen through the floor, Sgt. Kennedy would still be on the sweet dairy farm in Maine, watching his herd. But the farm had debt, and the military promised to help,
and now here he was with a man shooting at him.

  Sgt. Kennedy held up his hand to tell the shooter to stop, but instead he felt the fourth bullet go into his shin.

  And then it became a perverse game.

  See if you can knock me down.

  Sgt. Kennedy was a big man. He had played center for Millinocket High School, All-County selection, and he had hands as strong as any man he had ever met. His strength was always a fact. He knew it existed inside him, in a deep, quiet place, and he had scuff-ups with stronger-looking kids, more-muscled men, but Sgt. Kennedy had always come out on top. Maine strength, they called it Downeast. It came, he felt, from growing up on a farm, handling cattle, pushing and shoving the goofy bastards every single day of his life. He had lifted more calves than he could count, had engaged in wrestling matches with Holsteins, their warm flanks pressing him into the stall walls until he had pushed back, used his bulk and strength and shoved. Moooooooo over, was the joke they used on the farm.

  And so that. That was his strength.

  The last bullet, the one that did him, as they say, shattered his spine at the spot where neck and backbone joined. He fell like a Slinky. So much for seeing if they could knock him down. He went slack, his body piling up on top of itself, and vaguely he heard more bullets ricocheting off the Humvee. So it turned out that the mosquito was not the last sound after all, but he didn’t make a conscious correction. In the last nervous jolt he would ever know on this earth, he remembered a fall day right before he enlisted. It had been a perfect autumn day, no insects, and the farm ran all the way to the pine forest. And he had seen Margaret walking toward him, her hair blowing in the wind, and the backs of the cattle catching the sunlight. It was a happy memory. The white farmhouse shone in the sunlight, the red barn beside it, and Margaret raised her hand to wave. And then, like a movie ending abruptly, the image fizzled and his spine snapped in two, and Sgt. Kennedy of Bangor, Maine, fell into the puddle of himself and became a brown box of meat stored forever, an electric hum not dead but no longer viably alive.

  Chapter Two

  Light came over the house from the east. A phoebe, nesting this year in the crook of the cowshed door, sat on the top line of a barbed wire fence and dotted its tail up and down, up and down, as if jacking the sunlight over the horizon. Light continued to spread and search, touching the muddy cow yard, the curled green hose near the water tank, climbing, at last, the 173-year-old white oak that guarded the house and shaded the front parlor. The phoebe began to call, pheeebeee, pheeebeee, pheeebeee, and an easterly breeze, passing from the Maine coast a hundred miles away, carried a single gull overhead toward the Androscoggin watershed.

  In that moment, Margaret Kennedy’s eyes rejoined the world. She was thirty-one that morning and she slept on the same side of the bed she had always occupied: the left. Her husband’s side remained empty, tucked and smoothed, the pillows undented for six long years.

  She did not have to consult a clock to know the time. She read the oak’s shade and from the color of the light and the fritter of the leaves, she judged it to be shy of five o’clock. She closed her eyes a moment more and heard the phoebe calling. She wondered, absently, if it was the same phoebe year after year, or whether the barn proved such an attractive nesting opportunity that any phoebe would count herself lucky to grab it. She preferred to think of the phoebe as an old friend, a true harbinger of spring, a bird that fed her babies—once, Margaret had seen this—the translucent wings of a dragonfly. For an instant as she watched—how many years ago was it?—she could almost believe the babies ate light, because the wings sparked and glittered as they slid down the chicks’ gullets.

  Margaret stretched. She felt old this morning, and weary, but such thinking did not help. She pushed her legs over the side of the bed, stepped into her slippers, and went to use the toilet in the master bath. When she finished, she washed her hands and face, then gazed for a second at her features, wondering if she had ever been pretty. People said she had been. She always felt she had been pretty enough for Maine, for rural life, but that if she had moved away her looks would have suffered by comparison with other women. Thomas had marveled at her looks, but he was no judge, honestly, and she stared a moment longer, noting that her hair—red as flame, her mother said years ago—had dulled to the color of certain apples after frost. Burgundy now, she thought, like a good leather chair in a British drama.

  Before she dressed, she heard the milk pump switch on and its insistent sound sped her along. She pulled on jeans and a heavy sweatshirt that read Maine Black Bears across the chest, then fished a pair of leather work gloves out of the belly of the sweatshirt. She clumped down the center stairs and kept going right out of the kitchen and onto the farmer’s porch, pushing the screen door back, then stopped and slid her feet out of her slippers and into shin-high muck boots. A glance informed her that Thomas’s father, Benjamin, had already made it outside. The sound of the milking machine told her that anyway, but she liked confirmation in the world and appreciated being able to avoid surprises.

  “Morning,” she called as she entered the milking parlor.

  Benjamin didn’t hear her. He was doing something to Sally Mae, one of the thirty-three cows that stood with their heads in stocks while the milking machine sucked them dry. Margaret yelled a little louder, “Morning.” She didn’t call so much to say good morning as to let Benjamin know she had arrived. It was loud in the milking parlor and it was common practice to make sure you didn’t startle a person by suddenly appearing. Margaret saw Benjamin raise a hand without turning, indicating hello, he had seen her, all was well, and she nodded and went to the milk sink and began cleaning. She stood a moment and let the water run to hot, then she began passing teat tubes and sponges under the stream. She did not think as she performed the work, but her hands moved like elves, like small skilled creatures that could carry out a function without guidance. When she finished, she set everything to dry in an old dish drainer, then she made a circuit of the northern wall, checking the cattle. She stopped next to Tinkerbell, her favorite, a sturdy old gal with remarkable consistency as a milk producer, and patted her flank. She bent down and breathed the cow smell, which she loved, and it came to her quickly: skin and sun, clover and hay, mud and rain. She wondered if she was crazy to like the cows so much, to like farming. A battalion of flies flickered near the windows, tapping against the glass and turning to embers in the flashing light. Now and then she saw them land on a cow, and the cow, with her gifted tail, swatted and swayed, or lifted a foot to throw shadow at them, the pendulous milking apparatus dangling like a bell’s tongue beneath the cow’s wide stomach. She tapped Tinkerbell’s flank again and continued on her rounds.

  “Morning,” Benjamin said when she had bent down to remove the suck cups from the first three cows. “Gordon awake yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ll get him up when we finish here.”

  “That boy likes his sleep.”

  “I know,” Margaret said, feeling short with her father-in-law. “But we’re going to run over to the hospital. Remember, he doesn’t have school today. They have an in-service day.”

  They had gone over this the night before. In that specific way—his slowness to store information, or recall it—he reminded her of Thomas. She had kept her head down when he spoke to her, but now she lifted it. He smiled. She smiled back.

  “He’s a slow boy in the morning,” he said.

  “It’s still early. There’s plenty of time to get ready. You sure you won’t come along?”

  Benjamin shook his head. He preferred to visit alone, she knew, though she couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe he liked a private moment with his son. Thomas was the proverbial stone in the pond, and the ripples went out in unexpected ways, caught people by surprise. She nodded and let it go.

  “You make up your mind about Washington?” he asked. “That Mr. King called and left a message last nigh
t. He seems like a nice man.”

  She had been asked to attend a bill signing sponsoring improved veteran care for coma patients. Thomas’s status as a Medal of Honor winner was attractive to the legislators and she felt it was something she could do for him. Requests occasionally arrived, sometimes surprising ones and not always with good intent, but this invitation had come directly from President Obama’s staff. A weekend in Washington, D.C., a signing ceremony, a few photographs. She had put off making a decision, but it was coming right up. She needed to give the organizers an answer.

  “I’m leaning toward going,” she continued. “If you think you and Gordon can hold down the fort.”

  “Of course we can. No worries there.”

  “We could all go, you know? They’d be happy to have Thomas’s dad. The invitation is for our family.”

  Benjamin shook his head. He had the dairy to watch, she knew, but it was not every day you were invited to meet the president of the United States. He claimed he had been to Washington once, when his son was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and that was enough. This trip, to stand behind the president when he signed into law a bill sponsoring increased funding for veterans in a vegetative state, seemed too political and too far from life on the Maine farm. At least that’s what he said. Margaret suspected that Benjamin found the social demands—the chitchat, the stuffy meals, even the mandatory coat and tie—difficult to endure. He preferred the cows’ company, and in that she did not blame him. She liked the cows better than she liked most people.

  “You’re better at that sort of thing,” he said finally.

  “I’m not much good at it, but it seems to be for a good cause.”