Gettysburg Read online

  Robert arrived at five each day to check in on things. He asked about business and fretted when Reynolds showed him how little there had been. “What is wrong with these people? They’re Americans for Christ’s sake. And they’re tourists. And it’s hot outside. Why wouldn’t you stop for ice cream?” Around six the old man would calm down and sit behind a desk in the back corner, away from the service window where Reynolds waited for customers. Robert would go through the inventory ordering forms provided by Dairy Queen corporate and make sure they were supplied with soft-serve mixture and cups and straws and strawberry topping. He brought Whitman or Wordsworth or some other dusty book with him. They had a transistor radio, and as the sun went down they listened to the Phillies game. Like a valve loosening, Reynolds felt his dad drift away as the dinner hour passed, free verse and sonnets sweeping him away.

  Susan Stanhope would arrive at seven-thirty, with dinner in a Crock-Pot, or sandwiches, or salads or other foodstuffs in Tupperware containers. “Comin’ in with Fine Brazier Foods,” she said, to try to cheer his father up, and most days it worked. They were corny like that. On her birthday that summer, his dad wrote on her card, “To my once and forever Dairy Queen.” Post-cheeseburger, Reynolds wasn’t hungry. So his parents ate together at the little desk amid the invoices and bills, laughing about faculty gossip, while Reynolds manned the window by the windmill, on the lookout for an army that never came.

  From that summer on, Reynolds spent his free time reading books. He was interested in everything. He read nonfiction for fun, eating up biographies and business and sports books in one or two sittings. But his main passion was fiction—it went back to his days as a kid. He loved the Pennsylvania authors, especially John O’Hara and Updike. He read about the lives of all the writers, and worried that he liked their life stories as much, even more than, their fiction.

  Stella and Bella knew Reynolds’s true nature was artistic. Norman knew it too. But to everyone else he was a lawyer—Norman’s lawyer. And he was an excellent lawyer. Deep down, he had always felt that practicing law was a temporary thing, a stopover he was making to earn some money until he moved on to something else more to his liking. Lawyering was not in his heart. But this had a different effect than he thought it would. He found he was a very good negotiator and, because he was more aggressive than the opposing side, more willing to walk away. He was not attached, not worried all the time, not scared—after all, this was not what he wanted to do. In spite of all the screaming and bravado that went on between Hollywood lawyers, the real secret was indifference.

  Reynolds made a lot of money and changed jobs, and in that new job he made a crazy amount of money. The same happened to Stella—who went from assistant to producer and landed a giant production deal at Paramount, where she produced a spy picture with Brad Pitt that was now shooting the third sequel. Reynolds and Stella had become very rich from their combined success, and for twenty years now when he talked to the accountants to ask if he could afford one scheme or another, the answer was yes, and he thought of his father. It made him well up, and soon he was crying.

  Reynolds thought of his dad’s morning papers, which Reynolds picked up when Robert was done. When he was a boy, his father read the Gettysburg paper, the Pottstown Gazette, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. On Sundays his father would bring home the Philadelphia Inquirer with a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts. Reynolds read about Nixon and Watergate, about fights in the Philadelphia City Council, about Abscam. He knew everything about sports, from the NBA to Penn State football to the Gettysburg College varsity lacrosse standings. He read movie reviews and book reviews and comics. He could tell you the names of the little kids in Family Circus and the college kids in Doonesbury.

  There was nothing new in this morning’s papers, just gradations of newness, this not being one of the days when a few actual new things happen, a fresh story line that, depending on the force of the wave, spawned days, weeks, or months of further stories. He sat at the French farm table and picked at a bran muffin, the kind of sawdust food the girls ate for breakfast. He became wistful. I am, he thought, a sneered-at character from a book: a well-insured man standing by an SUV, dropping my kid off at a college on the hill. As you look at that long line of other people dropping their kids off, you don’t think that they have stories, are interesting, have had life happen to them. They are just blank, boring faces. But the truth is you are the same, just like anyone else in the line. What about that? Turn around, and you’re not that man who has done things. Turn around and look up, and you’re an insured man with secrets and regrets.

  Reynolds walked outside and surveyed the Astroturf putting green in his backyard, situated where the Santa Monica Mountains stop just short of the beach in southern Malibu. The putting green was the size of a volleyball court. Reynolds placed ten balls in a circle, ten yards in diameter around the pin.

  “Chambersburg,” Reynolds said. He brought the club head to a backswing and hit though the ball with a click. Without waiting for the result, he moved to the right and set up over the next, “Emmitsburg.” Click. Move, set up. “Baltimore Pike.” Click. “Taneytown.” He pronounced it the correct way: “Taw-ney Town.” Next came Biglerville, then York. He holed it at Hanover. Table Rock. Hagerstown. Click, click, click. A circle of routes leading to the goal. He looked at his phone.

  “Get up fat boy,” It was a text from Jim Mulligan, his neighbor.

  Reynolds thumbed a response. “I’m up. Where U?”

  “Coming over in five.”

  Reynolds set his circle of putts again and was beginning when a voice called to him. “To be a truly bad golfer you have to be a truly bad putter.” It was Mulligan, who appeared with two paper cups of coffee, the green of the label matching the green of the grass. Mulligan did not use cardboard hand protectors.

  “Shut up. I’m concentrating,” Reynolds said.

  Mulligan watched and then rendered a verdict. “It could be worse.”

  “I’m done. Let’s go in.”

  Mulligan wore professional-caliber sports gear: a San Diego Chargers rain-resistant poncho and mesh running shorts with a pair of those nylon leggings that look like tights that athletes and amateurs who think they are athletes wear to work out. He moved with the tanned energy of someone predetermined by good genes to be slim and in shape.

  “What happened to you?” Mulligan said, as he took the lid off.

  “What?”

  “You were supposed to meet me. To run.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. We said it Tuesday.”

  “Shit. Sorry.”

  “What’s with that beard?”

  “Trying something new. Sorry, I was up on Tuesday and everything,” Reynolds said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I knew you’d forget.” Mulligan looked around. “No girls?”

  “Stella went away for the night, and Bella is coming back from Mexico.” Reynolds headed to the kitchen. “What do you want to eat? We have these awful fucking muffins.”

  “Just some water.”

  Reynolds returned and handed him a glass. He gestured at Mulligan’s legs. “Really, man? With the yoga pants and everything?”

  “Shut up,” Mulligan said. He worked the remote until ESPN’s college football coverage came on. “I’m watching the Washington game later.” Mulligan oriented his outlook on sports, and to a certain extent on life, in relation to UCLA football. The world divided into camps. Either you were for UCLA or you weren’t. Mulligan was born in Connecticut and had been a monster linebacker and fullback at high school near Hartford. After college at UCLA, he blew through business school at Stanford before returning to LA, where he became an investment banker at the time when junk bonds and leveraged buyouts were making investment bankers lots of money and Beverly Hills was part show biz, part West Coast, and part Wall Street. Mulligan put together banking deals between banks, as far as Reynolds understood it.

  Reynolds loved Mulligan. When Reynolds and Stella and five-year-old Bella had moved to the neighborhood, they’d felt the usual isolation from their neighbors. Reynolds had struggled enough with the oppression of Hollywood types when they’d lived in Brentwood, and when they’d moved here, to Madera, the horsey and secluded estate-filled canyon tucked just east of Surfrider Beach, he’d realized they could be in for more of the same. There were five houses on their road; two were occupied by movie stars and two by directors of special-effects-driven event pictures. Mulligan and Lucy lived a half mile away with their twin girls, who were the same age as Bella. The girls became close and the parents followed course, and before long the two families were very close, enjoying a constant flow of communication and no-permission-necessary sleepovers.

  Reynolds and Mulligan became friends because of, rather than despite, the lack of business intersection. After years of obsessing about everything and everyone in Hollywood—the comings and goings of studio executives, the latest firings of talent agents by actors, how “unwatchable” or “unreleasable” a new movie was—Reynolds found talking to Mulligan as fun and relaxing as taking a Xanax. Mulligan and Lucy were removed from Hollywood, lived a different life, and had different politics and social circle. They belonged to the LA Country Club, which was so Waspy that no one from Hollywood was even allowed to apply. That said it all.

  Reynolds looked at Mulligan’s football outfit again. “Um … Jim … the UCLA-Washington game was in November. It’s January.”

  “So what,” Mulligan said, “it’s a recording but I watch it like it’s live. Come over and watch with me. Lucy and the girls are gone for the weekend.”

  “Nah, thanks. I got to go do something.”

  Mulligan studied him. “Like what? What do you have to do that’s more important than watching football with me?”

  Re
ynolds did not want to repeat the phony golf trip story to Mulligan. “Just a thing I got to go do.”

  “What, like a kid thing?”

  “Sort of. Well, not really.”

  Reynolds thought about how the two men existed within a zone of familiarity that in Los Angeles can be shared only by guys who have played—really played—contact sports at a major level. There was an exclusivity to the way they could deal with each other that in previous eras was shared by men who had been in the service and fought together. Though Mulligan had more of the kill-or-be-killed banker’s personality and Reynolds was more easygoing, they both knew the other could take a hit. And this knowledge manifested in respect, and that respect led to true friendship.

  “What are you up to?” Mulligan said, not satisfied with what he’d heard.

  After months of secrecy, Reynolds decided to open up. “Let me show you something,” he said. He grabbed his iPad, typed in a few words, and found a YouTube video. Holding it where Mulligan could see, he hit Play. The chords of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” started to play over a shot of an old American flag, the kind with many fewer stars, blowing in the wind. Then it cut to a title card: The Battle of Gettysburg, Enchino California.

  Mulligan didn’t say anything as he watched the six-minute video of guys with heavy beards dressed up as soldiers fighting back and forth. Interspersed were still shots of these impersonators around campfires, in bleached white tents, drinking from tin cups, and shooting rifles.

  When the video ended, Mulligan stared at Reynolds. “Jesus,” he said.

  Reynolds smiled back at him, a little too eager.

  After a moment, Mulligan said, “Wait. You’re not …” Reynolds nodded, smiling. “Yup,” he said.

  Mulligan started to get up from his chair. “You’re going to do it? Like … be in it?”

  “It’ll be kind of fun. It’ll be funny.”

  “You’re signing up for it?”

  “I’ve signed up for it,” Reynolds said.

  “In Enchino?” Mulligan said.

  “This weekend. Starts today.”

  “You drive out there?”

  “Yup.

  Mulligan paused, ducked his head and rubbed his hair with both hands, and then stepped in close and looked at his friend. “Reynolds,” he said, “Let me be very straightforward with you.” His hands were now clasped in front of him as though in prayer. “No fucking way in hell, you fucking jackass.”

  “Oh, c’mon.”

  “Look, I know you’re from back around there somewhere …”

  “I’m from there, literally.” Reynolds said. “Gettysburg. You know. My name? Remember? John Reynolds.”

  “Who’s John Reynolds?” Mulligan said.

  “Me. My name, remember? It’s the guy I’m named after.”

  “Right, right. Sorry. The soldier?”

  “He was a general.”

  “Right. Was he, what, your ancestor?”

  “No, butthead, I’m just named after him—my dad just liked him. He was very cool.” Reynolds could see Mulligan was struggling. “He was shot at Gettysburg. I was thinking, you know, that I could, I don’t know, that I can honor him.”

  Mulligan did not seem to be getting any more sympathetic.

  “Look,” Reynolds said, “I know it’s, like, not exact. The event takes place out here, for one thing, in California and not in Pennsylvania.”

  “No, Reynolds, it’s not exact.”

  Reynolds looked away. “I don’t know. It’s where I’m from, you know?”

  “No man, I don’t know,” Mulligan said. He waited for Reynolds to bring his eyes back to him. “From there, whatever. Doesn’t matter. You have to understand something. We—you and me—we are normal people. We have normal families. We play golf, watch sports, lease foreign cars. This thing you’re talking about, this is weird. Not our kind of weird. Our kind of weird is being left-handed, or rooting for the Bengals, or some shit. This, this Civil War reenactment kind of thing is for serious nuts. Whatever is going on with you, you have to stifle these thoughts, and whatever you do, don’t vocalize anything. Tell me, fine. But don’t fucking repeat this. Have you told anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God. Because given your background, people will pigeonhole you with lightning speed as nothing more than one of these bearded kooks. They’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, Reynolds, he grew up with that kind of thing. He’s like an avid reenactor. I’ve heard he flies around the country doing it.’ Next thing you know, it’s all over. You have a lifetime tattoo on your neck just below your jaw that says ‘For the Union’ or something. Is that what you want for your family?”

  “You don’t want to go, then? I know it’s kind of last minute, but I thought maybe …”

  “No, I don’t want to go.” Mulligan stood up and made like an umpire calling safe. “No one is going to go. Not you, not me. Get it out of your head.”

  Reynolds broke into a smile, like he had been joking. “All right, relax.”

  Mulligan smiled back. “Say it, dickhead. Promise me.”

  “OK, whatever. I promise.”

  “All right. Let’s go out back and putt.”

  They walked through the kitchen, where Mulligan picked up one of the muffins and took a bite. “Jesus Christ,” he said, throwing it into the trash can. “Really, Reynolds. You’re a grown damn man. How are you going to get control of your life if you can’t get control of your own breakfast?”

  Once outside, Mulligan asked, “How’s business?”

  “You know,” said Reynolds. “There’s show, and there’s business.”

  Mulligan picked up Reynolds’s putter from the grass and took his stance over an eight-footer. “Hey, how’s that Gargantor? I kind of want to see it.”

  “I heard it’s unwatchable,” Reynolds said.

  Mulligan snorted. “Such a fucking snob.”

  “Hey, who’s your insurance guy?” Reynolds asked.

  Mulligan kept putting. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Life.”

  “Life insurance?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t have life insurance?”

  “Of course I have life insurance. But I read that you can do it like an investment.”

  Mulligan looked up. “Who’s selling you life insurance policies as an investment? Tell me you didn’t do that.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I just want to know who your guy is.”

  Mulligan handed him his putter. “OK, big boy. I got to go get ready for the game.”

  “It’s in two hours,” Reynolds said. “What do you do, get into a uniform? Put a helmet on when the game starts?”

  “Funny,” Mulligan said, not smiling. “I’ll send you my insurance guy’s name.”

  He jogged across the lawn, thumbs by his waist and up, just like a wide receiver, and was gone. Reynolds, alone now on the turf, in shorts and sandals, lined three golf balls up on the turf and tried to focus. Golf was just about being consistent. Stroke it the same each time. He had a perverse relationship with consistency. He wanted to wake up every day in a different place, but he hated flying. He wanted variety, yet as he aged he found himself preferring a morning routine: newspapers, coffee, information gathering. He had a dream job, but he wanted to quit. His phone buzzed.

  It was Mulligan. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah, why?” said Reynolds.

  “I don’t know, you’re fucking buying life insurance, talking about Civil War impersonations, acting crazy in general. What’s this all about?”