A Stranger in the Kingdom Read Online Free Page A

singer or stage performer.
    â€œThey took us to where they make the money,” the waitress was saying. “That’s what I remember best about good old Washington, D.C. That and getting hot and hungover.”
    â€œVal.”
    Bruce had materialized in the kitchen entranceway. He wiped his hands on his dirty apron and jerked his thumb backward. “Out here. You’re needed.”
    Val, who all of a sudden I liked better, rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and mogged back out to the kitchen. A minute later the black man stubbed out his cigarette butt, paid Bruce at the register, and left.
    My father waited until the man and his son had pulled out of the parking lot. Then he stood up and took two long strides to the cash register. As Bruce rang up our slip he tilted his head back toward the kitchen, where the waitress was slamming pans around in the sink.
    â€œTalk, talk, talk,” he said. “And she don’t much care who to, neither. She ought to learn when to keep her frigging mouth shut.”
    â€œYou ought to shave and wash your hands and put on a clean apron and a shirt,” my father said. “Expect a visit from the state health inspector.”
    And he walked out without his change, leaving his cup of java untouched on the counter behind him.
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    As you travel north in Vermont toward Kingdom County and the Canadian border, you will notice that even small streams are often designated as rivers on bridge signs and road maps. Half an hour later, when my father and I crossed the Gihon River, which you can easily throw a fly across at its widest point, he automatically assessed the water on his side as I did on mine—as we had done and would do hundreds of times crossing scores of different streams together.
    â€œJames,” he said, “I wouldn’t go brook trout fishing with that son-of-a-bitch back there if he and I were the last two men on the face of the earth.”
    Ever since I could remember, my father’s acid character test was whether he would or wouldn’t go brook trout fishing with a person. Not just fishing. Not even trout fishing.
Brook trout fishing.
    He applied this unique standard to neighbors, colleagues in the newspaper business, politicians, authors, and baseball players. Once in a blue moon someone actually measured up to it, though I’d noticed that most of the select few (F.D.R., Samuel Johnson, Ty Cobb) had been dead for years. And in point of fact, I’d rarely known Dad to fish with anyone but his own two sons and his one close friend, Judge Forrest Allen.
    â€œWell,” he said, “to hell with that ignorant bastard. If I were ten years younger I probably would have muckled onto him right there in his place of business and thrown him into the biggest snowbank south of Labrador. He can count himself lucky.”
    This was a common threat of my father when I was growing up. Once or twice a week he informed me with great earnestness that if he were ten years younger he would certainly “muckle onto” someone and throw him into the biggest snowbank south of Labrador. Quite often it was Joseph McCarthy, whom my father had a particular desire to muckle onto, though Sheriff Mason White and the nonprosecutor Zack Barrows were also high on the list of likely candidates. In fact, I have to confess that for a number of years I was somewhat unclear in my mind as to exactly what Dad meant by “muckling on.” Yet I had no doubt at all that muckling was a most dire form of corporal retribution, with very grave consequences indeed for the mucklee.
    â€œTo hell with him,” my father repeated. “As your grandfather used to say, James, coming home is always the best part of going away. Which, I am here to tell you, Thomas Clayton Wolfe’s overquoted dictum on the subject notwithstanding, you most certainly
can
do if that’s where your work happens to be.”
    As we came through the snowy woods on top of