CHAPTER 5

WILTON, WHILE NEVER beautiful, could be at least photogenic after a snowfall. The three gray brick smokestacks of the metal-refinishing plant with the snow-covered mountains as a backdrop made a decent photograph for a freshman arts major trying to capture man’s inhumanity to nature. Over time, this had become Wilton ’s purpose. Flocks of Penn State students would come down every spring to catch a black-and-white image of a strip-mined valley or a withered ex-coal miner dying of black lung disease on his disintegrating porch. From the gutted earth of the quarries just outside the town to the abandoned coal mines, some of which were permanently on fire, Wilton was a picturesque icon of poverty and environmental rape.

The citizens of Wilton had done their best to act their part as poor environmental rapists. For decades, they had lived large off the environment, until, in the late seventies, Mother Nature had run out of resources for them to plunder and given the town a big middle finger. The mines closed; the quarries filled with rainwater; and only the metal plant remained. Within a decade the town had shrunk by half and most of the downtown buildings were empty shells, giving politicians who wanted a job a chance to make some bullshit pledges about “revitalization” of Wilton ’s center. Of course, these promises never amounted to anything, because nobody wanted to pour money into a half-dead coal town whose glory days were long gone and whose tax base was primarily welfare recipients, but the citizens fell for it time after time. Denial of their own hopelessness was the only bond that the community had left.

Doug remembered the excitement that had gripped the town when the Accu-mart had opened. Here it was, at last, the Great Revitalization! Other businesses were sure to follow-Best Buy, Circuit City. Soon there would be a tech-retail corridor right outside the town, drawing people from as far away as Lake Erie, the papers guessed. In fact, the only other business that had followed the Accu-mart had been a Kentucky Fried Chicken, which had been knocked down after three months of existence by a tractor trailer loaded with scrap metal sliding off an icy road. The KFC Corporation had decided not to rebuild; the Great Revitalization had officially stalled.

“I think the best thing to do is leave,” Doug said, looking out at the smokestacks from Avery Hill, where Linda had driven after she had picked him up. The vantage point was an odd choice, because Avery Hill had a reputation as a lovers’ lane, but when she had produced sandwiches and sodas and mentioned that she came out here all the time, Doug had relaxed.

Linda was eating a chicken salad sandwich on rye bread and staring through the windshield at the smokestacks and the lightly falling snow. She wordlessly offered Doug the other half of her sandwich.

“I don’t like rye. But thanks.” Doug sighed. “It’s not like this everywhere.”

“Where would you go?”

“ Aspen.”

“ Aspen? You mean Colorado? What would you do there?”

“Cook. They have lots of restaurants there. Or be an environmentalist.”

“An environmentalist? I thought you wanted to be a chopper pilot.”

Doug was annoyed that Linda had brought the chopper pilot idea up, because it made him seem flighty. He did want to be a chopper pilot, dammit, but how could you get people to understand that you could be more than one thing? You could be an environmentalist and a chopper pilot and a cook if you had enough money and time for training, and he was already a cook, so that was one out of three.

“The thing is,” Doug said, “that there are so many possibilities. Like, I could be a chopper pilot in Aspen, or a cook in Aspen, or a cook here, or an environmentalist in, like, Peru, or a heart surgeon. Or anything. It’s like, there are so many possibilities. If you pick one, it means you can never pick one again. You only get one shot and what if you fuck up? What if you pick heart surgeon and after three years you’re like, ‘Man, I hate hearts. I’m so sick of looking at fucking hearts,’ you know?”

“You think you could be a heart surgeon?”

“Shit, I don’t know.” He pulled a knob on the passenger seat and leaned back to see the black cloth of the SUV’s ceiling. “Why? You don’t think I’m smart enough to be a heart surgeon?”

“No, that’s not it,” Linda said so forcefully and sympathetically that Doug really believed her and really believed that she did think he was smart enough to be a heart surgeon, even though he himself knew he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be a heart surgeon anyway. But it was nice to hear her say it and he had the thought that no one else he knew would have said that to him. Mitch would have laughed at him and told him to get a job unloading trucks at the farmers’ market. Kevin would have asked him if he wanted to steal another television.

“No, it’s just that I didn’t think you ever wanted to do anything like that.” She smiled. “Don’t be so sensitive.”

Doug was warmed by the smile, which was something he didn’t see on her face very often, and was going to tell her she had a nice smile but then he thought it might sound like a come-on. By the time he had processed this thought, he realized they had been making eye contact for several seconds. The type of eye contact that happened just before a first kiss. But that wasn’t going to happen, because she was his friend’s wife and he wasn’t the type of guy who-

Linda leaned over and kissed him. He didn’t mind the chicken salad breath.

KEVIN WAS WALKING Butch Rogers at the Wilton Dog Park, a remnant of the days when Wilton had civic pride. Two decades ago, the citizens had pitched in to fund a fenced, four-acre park on the outskirts of town, which over time had become a fenced, dog shit-covered wasteland with a lone tree still standing in it. Whatever type of tree it was, Kevin thought, it must be a type that thrived on dog pee.

Butch Rogers was a spiky-haired terrier of some sort, easily terrified and desperate to please, and Kevin liked taking him to the dog park because the presence of other, bigger dogs made Butch piss himself with fear. Ostensibly, Kevin could claim to the owners that he was “conditioning” Butch, “socializing” him, or some other sort of dog psychology crap that his rich clients loved. But the truth was that Kevin found it entertaining to make the dog freak out with terror. He couldn’t help wanting to punish the dog for being a pussy. If Butch would just stand up for himself once, Kevin had decided, the nightmarish trips to the park would come to an end. He just had to stand his ground one time in the face of an Australian shepherd or a mixed breed as scrawny as he was and it would be over; Kevin would resume walking him in the peaceful neighborhood around his home. But no. Butch saw a small child playing with a Super Ball about fifty yards away and he ran and hid behind Kevin’s legs, trembling.

“Butch, you’re a pussy,” he told the dog as he leaned down to attach the leash, ready to go home. Behind him, he heard the clink of the metal gate, indicating someone new was coming into the dog park and had most likely overheard the comment. He straightened up, looked around, and saw a man he remembered from prison standing right behind him with a Doberman pinscher.

Kevin was never sure what to say to people he recognized from prison. Usually there was a mutual decision to ignore each other and go on your way. What were you going to talk about? The toilet paper shortage of July 2005 or the time one of the inmates had found an actual turd in the meatloaf in the mess hall, resulting in the dismissal of the entire kitchen staff? This time, however, the man was filling Kevin’s whole field of vision, and they were looking right at each other, so it was too late.