7. Arriving In Delaney

7. Arriving In Delaney 

Spook listened as Gerstein talked on and on about himself. He listened as Gerstein detailed his move from New York to Michigan and the radical shift from apprenticehood to that of independent contractor. Spook wasn't won-over by Gerstein's transformation. He'd listened to far more interesting and dramatic life-swings from the other inmates at the Pelican Ranch that surpassed Jeff Gerstein's rise to financial security by miles and ages of rediscovery. Men who lost their souls while competing for money. Men who stepped into the darkness completely with only themselves and their intentions. And Spook endured Gerstein's blabbering with visceral frustration and a half-stoic sense of purpose. When Jeff removed a package of cigarette's from the Forde's center-consul for himself and offered one to Spook, Spook took it with hungry appreciation. "I saw you with that lighter. How on Earth did you get your hands on that?" "I found it. Some guy at the train-station threw it away. He lit his cigarette. Jeff hadn't asked him three questions about himself for the first forty minutes of the hour-long drive, but he asked him one now. "So, what's it like tasting freedom again?" "I don't know," said Spook. He dragged thoughtfully on the cigarette. "I still have to wear this stupid ankle-monitor as long as you say so. So I don't know that I'm exactly free yet." "Yeah," said Jeff, mirroring Spook's way of smoking and responding. "I can see how that might be an issue. There's a place in town where we can get it removed in a couple days. We have to make an appointment. It shouldn't be too painful: I'm friendly with the sheriff." 

Spook looked out the passenger-window with a mixture of wistfulness and anxiety. While the scenery of Pelican Ranch wasn't utterly devoid of natural charm, these backroads of Michigan and the country they seemed to promise inhabited a place in his homunculus being that he could not recall from any other time in his life. And Gerstein made practiced small talk as they drove through- and into America, through- and into America, some well-lit valley between the two great oceans and the sky that reached like an omnipresent sentinel over all of it, haunted and unspecific. 

Spook's mind suffered Gerstein's strategic dullness but his heart beat black & red with fever and casual dementia as the smoke and the day worked themselves into his lungs and even as he pushed the cigarette into the Forde's ashtray and they drove on into Delaney, Michigan and then onto the road where Jeff Gerstein lived and Spook studied the few houses that contained Gerstein's neighbors and the whole place felt like a world caught between a happy, pleasant sitcom from the 1950s and an old-school horror film where open fields hum with mystery and sepia-toned menace. 

Jeff slowed the vehicle and turned the steering-wheel with obvious, deliberate effort to the left and the tires took purchase of the raggedly uneven dirt hill that ascended those ten or so feet onto the property and the rising, late-morning sun shot like an alien beacon into Spook McEntyre's eyes and face as the Camel ambled down the rustic path towards Gerstein's cottage abode that sat in those acres of land more like a lean-to on a hiking path than a proper and domesticated and settled home. 

Spook was entranced. He loved it. He counted his blessings once more at being released from imprisonment and into the non-concrete world and his joyful gratitude was the stuff of a rewarding and happy childhood which of course he had never had. Gerstein stepped from the vehicle and he took focus of Spook in his state of honest wonder. His suicidal ruminations of the week before were still fathomable: the stove could still be a monastery of absolute death when he glanced at in certain moods and moments. He had a kind of self-important pity for his life. He was a victim of being adopted. He was a victim of being a younger sibling and a second child. He was a victim of not being raised as a doctor or a lawyer in spite of being the child of Jewish parents. He was a victim of almost everything that anchored him in his life and he truly believed that he was brave in the face of adversity for withstanding those perceived indifferences and cruelties. 

He offered Spook another cigarette, which Spook took, and then lit one for himself. 

They walked into a small field that sat adjacent to the main property and was demarcated from the woods and the cottage by a small footpath that Jeff mowed about every two or four weeks. Spook commented on the place's beauty and how lucky he felt and Jeff confessed that his feelings were very much the same. Jeff resisted from setting a hand on McEntyre's shoulder but there was something vaguely lecherous in the way he looked at the 19-year-old, something that McEntyre didn't fail to notice. It had reminded him of the way the old perverts at the Pelican Ranch looked at him in the dining-hall and in the shower on a few occasions as though Spook were meat and little else. Spook, in an attempt to dispel this tension, said, "I guess I'm supposed to be working with you to pay for this place." "That's what your program says..." With deep worry to last a lifetime, Spook said, "Do you really think I raped that woman?" "You weren't in jail for two and a half years for cleaning your teeth." "Who would...? How the...? You honestly think I raped her? I mean... I mean, look at me: Do I look like I could rape anybody?" "That's not really the point, is it, Spook? Her wounds and the doctors say it was rape, it was rape." Gerstein's ambivalence froze Spook. His stomach went very cold and then he was very angry. The stream from his cigarette cascaded up into the air like a dumb and isolated nothingness. He wanted to defend himself. He didn't know how to defend himself. The memory of his innocence was the same memory that tortured him like a hot knife in the ribs. Gerstein didn't miss a fraction of it. He was charged with something strange and ignoble. A dog named Bear ran from Gerstein's cottage and property and ran to Gerstein and Spook where they stood in the field and it hurried with excitement towards whatever it saw in Spook McEntyre and he was stunned from his reverie and his frustration with Gerstein and he fell onto his seat to wrestle and pet and kiss the dog.... 

Gerstein filled with exotic pride. 

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