Godspeed

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Godspeed Page 18

by Nickolas Butler


  “How old are you?” she asked Abby.

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Are you married?”

  Abby crossed her arms. “No. Like that matters.”

  “Kids? A partner? Family?”

  Abby shook her head. “Just the birds.”

  “Birds? Plural?”

  “I have six. I only brought the one here.”

  “Oh.”

  Gretchen began violently coughing, tiny polka dots of blood coloring her palm and fingers. Abby stood from her chair hesitantly, uncertain what to do—go to Gretchen and help her, or stay where she was, out of respect for the older woman’s privacy, for the strength she had remaining. She decided to pretend to stare out the window.

  “Get me a Kleenex, would you?” Gretchen asked. “And a cup of water, please?”

  Abby did as she was told, and then they were quiet for several minutes.

  “What if I hired you?” Gretchen asked.

  “For what?”

  “To help me.”

  “I thought you didn’t need help.”

  Gretchen stared at her.

  Abby sat down again, her chin resting in her hands, her fingers obscuring her lips. “Lady, I’m not a nurse.”

  Gretchen looked out the window. It was two days before Thanksgiving. True Triangle had about a month in which to finish her house.

  “I could hire you to teach me falconry.” Gretchen sighed. “And you could stay on at my home, while I tie up some loose ends. Then, if I’m feeling weak or need something . . . you could act as my assistant. Not like skilled nursing, necessarily . . . just the occasional small task.”

  Abby was quiet. A monetary offer was imminent, and already she’d seen the depth of this woman’s pocketbook: the two-thousand-dollar envelope, the lunch, her clothing, her law firm . . . She waited.

  “I don’t know . . . ,” she demurred. “Why me, huh? I mean, why not a real nurse? Or even a doctor? Obviously you’ve got the dough.”

  Gretchen sat up in her bed, presenting her strongest self, as if she were about to commence a legal argument.

  “Because you remind me of me,” Gretchen said, “and because I don’t want someone around who’s going to try to simply keep me alive. I want someone who will listen to me and do what I ask.”

  Gretchen continued staring at the young woman.

  “Please,” she said calmly, without a hint of desperation. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars for one year. And a ten-thousand-dollar sign-on bonus. I’ll write the check this instant. Is my purse here?”

  “Yeah,” Abby said. “I grabbed it before the ambulance came.”

  Abby sat very still. Her “home,” forty minutes south of Eugene, was a ramshackle house she rented for nine hundred dollars a month. She held over seventy thousand dollars in student loans, and she’d rattled down into the city in a 1991 Chevy Suburban with almost three hundred thousand miles on the odometer, four bald tires, and a windshield so fractured it was like looking out through a spider’s web. Her diet consisted largely of ramen noodles she fancied up with peanut butter, green onions, eggs, and the bottle of Sriracha she’d stolen from a Thai restaurant. Her checking account balance at that very moment stood at just under forty dollars.

  “Are you fucking with me?” she said at last.

  Gretchen coughed into her fist and said, “Where’s my purse? And my phone?”

  Abby stood and collected Gretchen’s purse from the closet, brought it to her. She watched Gretchen write the check and hand it to her, and then the money was in her hand, just like that, like it was the easiest thing in the world. She backpedaled away from the bed and sat down heavily in a chair beneath the hanging TV set to mute. Holding that check in both hands, she wanted to weep with joy. She looked up at Gretchen.

  “How can you not have anyone?” she asked.

  Gretchen shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.

  Though, in fact, she did; she did know. Knew she’d spent years and years of her life in that skyscraper she could now see from this very hospital window, the sun setting behind its tower, to leave it in dark silhouette. The years she’d spent behind that desk, working and working, billing and billing, pushing hard for partner and eventually earning that, and in a time when she was one of just a handful of female attorneys in that whole building. It was something. She often felt that at the very least, it was an example, a path forward for some other woman to follow; she had blazed the trail, and now it was for others to follow her. And yet—the years and years of her life she’d spent accumulating hundreds of thousands, then millions, and finally tens of millions of dollars, investing and reinvesting, left her really no time of her own even to spend it, except on those houses, on the architecture she researched in the minutes and hours while she lay in bed before sleep found her.

  “Sit closer,” Gretchen urged.

  Abby dragged a chair closer to her new employer.

  “There is something else I need to tell you,” Gretchen said. “I’m building a house. Outside of Jackson, Wyoming. You and I will be traveling there on Christmas Eve. You need not worry about your ticket. I’ll handle all of that. But it is important for you to know that for the next month, we’ll be here, in California, putting my affairs in order. And then from Christmas on . . . we’ll be up in the mountains. Is that agreeable to you?”

  Abby had not even considered Christmas. And why would she have? She had no money to buy any presents, owned not a single Christmas tree ornament, and had no real interest in returning to her parents’ home back in Grosse Pointe only to be judged and condescended to by both her father and mother, two exceedingly successful corporate executives who described her vocation as a falconer by simply telling their friends, “She’s still somewhat in search of herself.”

  “Can we bring my birds?” Abby asked.

  “Oh, I’m counting on it,” Gretchen said.

  Gretchen extended her hand to Abby, who took it, and then they shook, both of their grips very strong indeed.

  24

  Teddy woke well before dawn, padded softly down into the basement, and jumped rope for a half hour. Later, after a quick shower, he kissed Britney and each of his girls on the forehead before shutting the front door behind him.

  For the past two days he’d worked dawn to dusk on the old lady’s garage, assembling a crew of relatives, acquaintances, and friends from his congregation. No one expected or desired a thing from him; it was enough that Britney arrived at the little house at noon with slow cookers full of hot food and coolers full of soda. The fellowship on the worksite was beautiful, everyone slipping into a role, with more hands than were even needed, so that all the framing and roofing—two onerous jobs indeed—took hours instead of days.

  For her part, Penny Abrams invited Britney into the house at the end of both days, and they sat at the old woman’s kitchen table, looking through her shoe boxes full of photographs. The children knew more than a few kids in the neighborhood and were content to run from yard to yard, playing tag or watching videos on one another’s phones. The town was relatively quiet, and the street had a decidedly blue-collar feeling, especially this time of year. Tourists, for the most part, did not spend their Thanksgivings in the mountains, preferring to stay back home in November before the big snow arrived, at which point they’d descend en masse for Christmas and New Year’s, skiing the area mountains and traipsing through town with their rarely worn Stetsons, sheepskin jackets, and cowboy boots. But for the moment, the town belonged to the townies, and that felt just about right.

  At four in the afternoon on the last day of the Triangle’s self-imposed three-day break, Teddy finished Penny Abrams’s garage, and after sending his crew home with a series of hearty hugs, jovial backslaps, and Tupperware containers full of leftovers, he tasked his four daughters with surveying the site for any errant nails, scrap lumber, or other detritu
s. Finally, Teddy went inside the little house, where he found Britney and Penny at the sink washing dishes, the smell of pumpkin pies baking in the oven.

  “May I get you a cup of coffee?” Penny asked.

  Outside, the temperature hovered just above freezing, and it was true that Teddy’s fingers were numb and chapped with cold. A mug of coffee inside the cove of his hand sounded incredibly soothing, the steam of it rising up into his raw face, the hot, black liquid warming him from the inside out.

  “That sounds great, actually,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Britney turned from the sink, raising her eyebrows. “Since when do you drink coffee?” she asked, smiling.

  “My husband used to drink about two pots a day,” Penny said breezily, setting a cup in front of Teddy and lightly touching his shoulder. “That was our ritual. I’d get the coffee on while he dressed, and then we’d sit here, talk about what the day held. I’d hand him his lunch and his Thermos, and then I’d even have a little time to read one of my novels before I got the kids ready for school.”

  “Right here, huh?” Teddy asked.

  “You’re sitting in his very chair,” Penny said, returning to the sink. “That was his favorite coffee mug, actually, the one in your hands.”

  Teddy raised the mug to his lips, took a testing sip. It tasted atrocious, but he put on a brave face as he took another drink. He could like coffee, he decided; it was like jumping rope, really, or push-ups—a little punishment, yes, but also the reward of a jolt of energy. And while you were just sitting there, too. There was something very adult, very civilized, about this ritual, he decided, as he peered around the kitchen: the old wood floors, the wallpaper, the clock above the sink, the aged cabinets and antique-like pulls.

  “Say, Mrs. Abrams,” he ventured, “you have any cream and sugar?”

  She turned and faced him, a look of pleased surprise lighting her face; he realized he’d asked the question with a note of confidence in his voice.

  “Of course,” she said, fetching a white porcelain bowl and spoon for him, and then a little can of sweetened condensed milk from the refrigerator. “Would you like a few cookies, sweetheart? My husband always used to like some cookies with his coffee.”

  “I think I would, yes,” Teddy said, pouring about four tablespoons of sugar and a long syrupy flow of thickened milk into the mug until his coffee was a color closer to pale khaki.

  “Anyhow, we’re all finished, ma’am,” he said. “I apologize for taking as long as we did, but, well . . . I sure appreciate your patience.”

  Penny dried her hands on a dish towel. “Let me get my checkbook,” she said to Teddy. “I’m sure you and your family have your own matters to attend to.”

  “Ma’am, that’s not necessary,” Teddy said casually, sipping his coffee.

  Britney shut off the tap and shot him a look over her shoulder.

  “No, I’m serious,” he insisted. “We took too long on this project, and I apologize about that. Please, let me do this for you.”

  He’d planned this for days and thought about it from dozens of different perspectives. He knew Britney would not understand, that she’d be pissed, and that he might well take some heat for it. He also knew his partners wouldn’t agree with his decision, but that was a risk he was more than willing to take; he had done the work on his own time, using his own resources; it wouldn’t have cost True Triangle a dime.

  The thing was, they needed a break; they needed some good luck, and though Teddy didn’t know precisely what karma was, he understood the merit of doing the occasional good turn, and that was how he thought of this project. And maybe, just maybe, if he could shine a little light now, the good Lord would look favorably on them as they hustled to finish Gretchen’s house. He hoped that wasn’t too selfish, thinking that way, but he truly felt that in his own life he’d almost always thought of others first: Britney certainly, their girls, and, of course, his business partners.

  Penny Abrams stood in her kitchen, her mouth agape, her hands limply holding the dish towel. “I think it is necessary,” she said.

  He finished his coffee and stood, saying, “Please—it would be my pleasure, Mrs. Abrams. It truly would.”

  The coffee, the cool confidence, the words leaving his mouth, all of it seemed like new terrain to Teddy, like the actions of a man much more like Cole than himself. But he liked it. Liked this new Teddy. He felt light, free.

  “Come on, babe,” he said to Britney. “Let’s get on home.”

  Penny Abrams followed them out of the house and into the cold, where she stood before her newly built garage. The girls were just across the street and quickly piled into the minivan. Just before Teddy shut the driver-side door, he walked back to the old woman.

  “I do have one small favor to ask, though,” Teddy said. “If you’re ever thinking about selling this house, please give me a call, okay? I’ll make you a more-than-fair offer, and we can cut the Realtors right out of the whole deal.”

  She presented her hand to him, and they shook.

  “You can count on it,” she said.

  25

  They stood outside the house, a slow, steady snow sifting down on their shoulders. Cole had stopped them there, on the driveway. Behind them, the bridge spanned the river, awaiting final touches. And above them, the three stories of horizontal glass and steel loomed like a latter-day house of the holy.

  “We made that, fellas,” he said. “Yeah, we might have inherited a little head start, but then again, we got handed more than a few shitstorms, too. And look what we’ve done so far.”

  By god, it was beautiful. From the outside, the structure looked complete. The driveway leading up to that tucked-in garage on the lower-left-hand corner of the house and alongside the entryway-mudroom, and to the right, a little workshop and storage. Up the central stairs to that wide first floor (or second floor; the men were always arguing how to count the garage level—was it a lower level or the first floor?) with its expansive living room, kitchen, fireplace, and dining room. Then up one more flight of stairs to the four bedrooms on the top floor, with commanding views of the river valley below, and all around them the teeth of the Tetons. An architectural gem, hidden here at the terminus of that godforsaken road. It was a house to die for.

  Bill and José were finishing their work, painting a kind of gentle varnish over the fieldstones so that the whole hearth would shine under the floodlights directed at the mantle itself, a thick slab of old oak that Bill had been saving for just this kind of house. Walking up the lower staircase onto the first floor, Cole, Bart, and Teddy simply gaped at the fireplace for a moment. They’d seen it slowly come together, of course, but viewing it anew after three days away, three days of critical last touches, this was different; finally complete, the hearth was nothing less than magnificent, and each of them imagined living in that house, spending a winter there, and rising from their morning bed to build or restoke the fire, and how it would be impossible to be lonely there with a fire in that hearth, with a fire to cut wood for, a fire that needed a dry cache of wood, a fire that would need feeding and care. Each of them had the sensation of wanting nothing more than to feed that fire for the rest of their days.

  “Well done,” Cole said to Bill, near breathless in his admiration. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It truly is the heart of the building.”

  Bill wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans, and in a rare moment of relaxation, he smiled shyly at Cole, Bart, and Teddy, shaking their hands, one by one.

  “I gotta hand it to you boys,” he said. “I didn’t know if you could do it. But it looks like you might actually pull it off. Like you might just land this plane.”

  They all glanced around that first floor; there was no shortage of tasks still to be done, and the month of December would be busy, but it no longer seemed insurmountable. The towering peak they’d visited back in August was now pe
rhaps within reach, just a few hundred feet above them, and all the time and effort that had brought them this far, even that now seemed like a memory from ages ago. An unspoken agreement had coalesced between the three friends with Bart back on the jobsite, even as Teddy tried his level best to monitor his friend’s erratic behavior. They simply could not do without Bart’s energy and brawn; he had thrown himself relentlessly at the house, like a berserker foot soldier gone battle-mad.

  “We got plenty left to do,” Cole confessed. “No doubt about it. Gotta install all the cabinetry, for one thing. And there’s more trim to cut. A few more rooms to floor. Painting, of course. Light fixtures to hang. I don’t know how we’re going to get the appliances up here, and apparently Gretchen is going to have new furniture delivered any day, but . . . we’re almost there.”

  “Well,” Bill said, “I suppose we’ll start cleaning up, then. Be out of your hair in the next coupla days, I reckon.”

  * * *

  —

  Cole, Bart, and Teddy huddled up around the kitchen’s grand marble island, the steam rising up outside its great, wide windows. Three of the upstairs bedrooms still needed flooring and trim, and it was decided that Cole and Teddy would team up and bang out those tasks. Bart volunteered to cut trim in the garage.

  After plodding down the stairs into the garage, Bart opened the garage doors and cranked some Led Zeppelin on the ancient paint-spattered boombox he’d owned long before the fancy new Sonos speakers. He stretched his back, tried to bend down to touch his toes, which he couldn’t quite do, and so pulled his stiff arms across his chest instead. Just shy of forty, his body already felt as rusted and cranky as if he were seventy. He could feel the absence of meth in his system, as if his veins themselves had hardened, the blood within darkly coagulated, his brain sluggish and short-circuited. Nothing that couldn’t be rectified with the right help, though. He walked down the driveway to the trailer, found his stash along with a new pipe, and then walked up the river and out of sight, where he could smoke in peace. It was only a matter of minutes before he returned to the site.

 

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