Nickel Mountain

by John Gardner

  The tamaracks up on the mountains were bare, like dead pines. This year—every year—the bareness looked final. He let his hand fall to the seat between them, and after a minute, as if she’d thought it over first, Callie touched his fingers. Her hand was warm. The warmth surprised him, seemed out of place, mysterious.

  The road curved sharply and they reached the bridge into town.

  2

  The waiting room at the hospital was small and cluttered—coffee cups, floor ash trays, magazines. It was like the lobby of a cheap hotel. The wall paint was dark with age, and up on the wall over the magazine table a stuffed owl stood staring on a hickory limb.

  The woman at the desk said, “I’m sorry, but, just as I’ve told you, we have to collect when the patient enters.” She looked them over.

  Henry pulled at the fingers of one hand. He leaned forward and said, “I’ll have to go home for the damn money then. But you’ve got to let my wife in right now. She’s in labor.”

  “Don’t cuss, Henry,” Callie said. She smiled at the woman.

  The woman at the desk said, “It’s a hospital rule. I’m sorry.” She was big-jawed and had colorless, close-set eyes.

  “Write them a check, Henry,” Callie said.

  Henry wet his lips. He looked at the woman and hunted through his pockets for the checkbook he never carried with him, then took the blank check the woman slid across the desktop and filled it out. She held it up to look at it. She was suspicious, but she said: “Through the double doors and turn right and straight down the hall to the end. Mr. Soames, you wait here if you like.”

  Callie smiled at her again, politely, looking through her.

  For fifteen minutes Henry sat with his hands clasped together, leaning forward under the stuffed owl, and every now and then he turned his head to look for the doctor, but he didn’t come. A young nurse came up, with her square head slung forward and down like a bull’s but her mouth was gentle, and led him to the labor room and opened the door for him. Henry went in. It was a drab green room with two beds, one of them empty, and shelves along one side of the room, with bedpans, washpans, colored bottles, towels, sealed gray bags. At the far end of the room there was a window, and he could look out and see dirty snow and a street and old houses and a dark, thick pine.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Has the doctor come?”

  “Not yet.” He pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “He’ll come.” Henry slid his hand under hers and she patted it and looked out the window.

  He held her fingers, feeling the warmth, and after an hour he got up and got the dominoes out of her suitcase and dumped them on the bedside table. Henry still held her hand as they played. Every five or six minutes she looked away and shut her eyes, and Henry stared at the dominoes, feeling out as if with his hands their gray, cracked surfaces and yellowing dots. They’d belonged to his mother and father. A car started up on the street right outside the window and then another one farther down, and a boy carrying a box moved past on the sidewalk, running four steps, sliding, running four steps, sliding; then two men passed in long coats. Directly across the street an old woman backed out of her front door dragging a faded Christmas tree with bits of tinsel still clinging to the branches. The doctor didn’t come. A nurse came and took Callie’s pulse and put her hand on Callie’s stomach, then left. The pains were sharper now but not closer together. Henry stacked the dominoes neatly and put them away in their battered white tiebox and fastened the rubber band. Sweat prickled under his arms.

  “You all right?” he said.

  She nodded.

  At eleven o’clock the doctor came in and examined her.

  When he came out to the hallway where Henry stood waiting he didn’t say how she was. He put his hand on Henry’s arm, smiling, looking at Henry’s forehead, and said, still holding onto the arm: “You had your breakfast yet?”

  Henry nodded without thinking. “How long will it be?”

  The man tipped his head down, the smile still there, and he looked as if he were thinking it over. But he was studying the pattern in the floor, moving his gaze tile by tile down the hall. “No telling,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day for it.” He waved toward the windows at the end of the hall. Sunlight streamed through the diamond-shaped panes and gleamed on the brown and white tiles and on the leaves of wilting plants in the planter by the desk.

  Henry kept from moving, because of the hand on his arm. He said, “Will it be today, then, you think?”

  “It’ll come,” the doctor said. “Don’t worry yourself. It’s all right, I’ve been through it too.” He winked slowly, the way a woman would, and gripped Henry’s arm more tightly, then left, walking with his toes pointing outward, his head tilted to one side and back. Henry went in again. He stood heavily, balanced on his heels, his fingertips in his tight hip pockets, watching a pain take her. Then he sat down by the bed. “Poor Callie,” he said. She frowned and met his eyes as though he were a stranger, then turned her face away.

  He looked for a long time at the side of her face, the line of her jaw, and he felt somehow uneasy, guilty, the way he felt on the long afternoons when he sat in the diner watching cars and trucks and buses pass on the highway, glittering in the sunlight, not stopping. He would feel uneasy, for some reason guilty, as though it were his fault they didn’t pull in, but then evening would come, suppertime, and somebody would come—truckers, or somebody like George Loomis, who would talk about things he’d seen in the Service—he had spells when he came sometimes four, five times a week, maybe because he lived all alone in that big old house—or Lou Millet would come, with gossip—or sometimes Willard Freund. But not Willard any more. Henry locked his fingers together and looked at the floor. Callie pretended to sleep.

  At seven that night Doc Cathey came in with coffee and sandwiches. “Henry, you look worse’n her,” he said. He opened his eyes wider, as if it helped him focus, and the loose red netting on the whites made Henry look down. “I bet you ain’t eaten a bite all day long.”

  “I’m all right,” Henry said.

  Doc Cathey ignored him, holding Callie’s wrist, ignoring her, too, taking her pulse and watching the door as if he were afraid they’d run him out if they caught him. Callie compressed her lips and Doc Cathey glanced at her, then slid his hand under the bedclothes and onto her stomach. “She ain’t moved it down much,” he said to the room in general. “Looks like what they call primary inertia, maybe stiff cervix.” He looked at Henry. “You told Costard she’s a bleeder?”

  Henry nodded. “He said he’d give her some kind of vitamin.”

  Doc Cathey scowled and looked at the door again. “He will if he remembers. They don’t know one damn patient from another. Eat your sandwiches, Henry.” He looked back at Callie and grunted. “You lie here and keep at it a while, girl. See Henry gets some sleep.”

  He went to the door and stood there, hunchbacked, looking at the doorknob. “She’s Rh negative too, ain’t she? What’s—” he paused “—the daddy?”

  Callie said, “Henry’s negative.”

  Nobody spoke for a minute. Henry sucked in his loose upper lip and felt the quick light ticking of his heart. The old man didn’t move. Henry said, “That’s right.”

  Callie leaned up on one elbow and said, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter on the first one. The doctor said so.”

  Doc Cathey peeked at her over the rims of his glasses, then at Henry. “May be,” he said. “That may be. They know everything, these fancy city doctors.” He shook his head. “You’ve thought up every complication I know of, you two.”

  Callie asked, “How much longer you think it will be?”

  “Lord knows. If your insides are froze up like I think, it’ll take a good long while yet, maybe two days.”

  Callie lay back again. She closed her eyes, and Henry leaned toward her, groping with one hand for the foot of the bed, watching her face. Her mouth was clos
ed and her nostrils were narrow, as if she’d stopped breathing. After a minute she said, almost in a whisper: “It’s the waiting that’s so awful.” She opened her eyes and looked at Henry, then closed them again and moved her head from side to side on the pillow. Her lips tightened, then relaxed. Henry touched her foot.

  Out in the hall Henry asked, “Will it pain her much?”

  “Maybe a little,” the old man said. “Maybe a good deal.” He fiddled with his hearing aid and watched Henry out of the corner of his eye, with a smile like a grimace. “She’ll get tired, and her insides’ll likely rip all to hell.” Then he said, “Worried about her, ain’t you?” He went on smiling and watching him. Henry closed his right hand and the nails bit into the palm.

  “ ’Course I am. Anybody’d worry,” he said. “She’s my wife.”

  Doc Cathey pushed one hand down into his coat pocket and closed the other over Henry’s arm. “ ’Course they would.” The queer smile was still there.

  When Henry went back, Callie lay facing away from the door. She didn’t say a word as he came in.

  3

  Callie slept and Henry stood at the window watching darkness settle in. Lights went on in the front room of the house across the street, and down at the end of the block the supermarket neon blazed pink and blue, Miller’s. It began to snow again as he watched—big, light flakes that dropped onto branches and hung there as more flakes fell, mounding up. A boy passed on the sidewalk, pushing a bicycle, and four women got off the bus at the corner and came up the street slowly, carrying packages. None of them looked toward the hospital as they passed. Down on the supermarket parking lot there were cars and farm trucks parked, some of them with their taillights on, glowing like a few last scattered coals in a furnace. People moved around on the lot and inside the supermarket, on the other side of the full-length windows, and on the sidewalks beyond the lot—children, grown-ups, old people—a hundred or more in all. He pursed his lips. It was queer, now that he thought of it, how many people there were in the world, moving around, hurrying—in Slater, in Athensville, Utica, Albany, down in New York City—millions of ’em moving around, bent forward a little against the snow. He sipped the coffee Doc Cathey had brought and then he stood looking again, holding the cup in his two hands, feeling its warmth under his curled fingers. Millions and millions of people, he thought. Billions. His mind couldn’t seem to get hold of it. Callie groaned and half-wakened, and he set down the cup and went to her and fitted his two hands around the small of her back and pressed in as Lou Millet had told him he’d done with his wife to ease the pain. She breathed deeply again; her breathing was the only sound in the room.

  He sat down by the bed and stared at the fuzzy shadows thrown by the nightlamp—a long shadow curving away and two thinner straight lines running into it, the head of the bed. When he shut his eyes he saw the highway in front of the Stop-Off, and trucks moving along it, dark, speeding up for the second of the two hills that rose one on each side of his place, and then the road leading down to Nickel Mountain where the bends got dangerous and where the upgrades got steeper, leading through bare-branched beeches and maples and into the firs and tamaracks and then into open space where if it wasn’t bad weather a man could see stars and, far below, the river. Callie groaned again and he pressed in on her back. It was hours since they’d checked her.

  The door opened behind him and light flattened across the bed. The nurse said, “Somebody to see you, Mr. Soames. Out in the waiting room.”

  He hesitated. When she didn’t come in he said, “It’s been hours since they checked my wife.”

  “I’ll tell them at the desk. I’m off duty now.” She turned away, and he eased himself up out of the chair and moved into the hall. Callie groaned behind him and he stopped. She was quiet again.

  In the dimly lighted corner of the waiting room George Loomis sat in his too-big sheepskin jacket, with an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, turning the pages of a magazine with his left hand, his head bent down to see. His right jacket sleeve hung empty. He was thirty—there was gray in his hair—but he looked like no more than a boy. He glanced up and grinned as Henry came near.

  “Any news?” George asked, getting to his feet.

  Henry shook his head. “She’s been in labor for sixteen hours. The labor room next door they’ve had three women in and out.”

  George went on grinning, watching him, and Henry wondered all at once if it was pride that had made him say sixteen hours right away. Maybe he was hoping Callie would be in labor for a week.

  George patted his jacket pockets, hunting. “It takes a while sometimes,” he said. “Cigarette?” He found the package, fumbled with it, tapped it against his leg to shake a cigarette out to where Henry could get hold of it, and held it up. Henry took it though he never smoked now, on account of his health, and put it between his lips. George held the matchbook and struck a match, all with his one hand—the wall beside him brightened for a moment—and lit Henry’s cigarette, then his own. They sat down. “You look tired,” George said.

  Henry waved it away. “You’re out pretty late, aren’t you?” There were dark green shadows under George’s eyes and his cheekbones jutted out. His mouth was pale, like the mouth of a dead man. He hadn’t gotten his strength back since the accident.

  “Chores,” George said. He held the cigarette out sideways, as if to see if it was straight, and Henry knew well enough what he meant. Chores with one arm—three hours for a one-hour job—because neighbors could come, a hundred of them, to milk while you lay in the hospital, and fill your yard with stove wood, and grind your grist and chop your corn and water your chickens and plow for you, but after a while you had to come home, and they had to go cut wood for themselves and grind grist and plow and plant, and if you were young yet, like George Loomis, you still had years of wood yet to cut. Even with two arms it wasn’t easy.

  “How’s she doing?” George asked, turning away as he spoke, looking up at the owl on the wall.

  “Fine so far. Doc Cathey thinks it might be rough.”

  George nodded as if Doc had told him already. “Callie’s one hell of a gal.” He looked back at Henry. “What can I get you?”

  Right over their heads an old man shouted something, or groaned, and George’s eyebrows drew inward. Henry looked at the ash on his cigarette, moved it carefully toward the ash tray, and scraped off all but the red cone. He remembered then and said, “We don’t need a thing.”

  “I’ll bring you some breakfast,” George said. “Doc says you didn’t eat all day till he brought in some supper. He says to tell you be sure and get your rest.”

  Henry nodded. “I sure appreciate this.”

  “Forget it. I guess I’d better get a move on. It’s a long, long trail a-winding.” He grinned again, then stood up. “Say, I ran into—” He stopped, confused, then concentrated on his jacket zipper; but Henry understood.

  “Who?” he said, sitting balanced, squinting.

  George went on tugging at the zipper. He freed it finally, then looked up, pretending to smile. “He was bound to come back sooner or later. You know that.”

  Henry watched him. “How long’s he been in?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a day or two, maybe a week. I didn’t ask.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I ran into him and I said hello; that was it. He’s got a job over at Purina. That’s where I saw him.”

  “He means to stay, then?”

  “No way of knowing.” He came a step toward Henry. “I’d really better get going, though. …”

  Henry leaned forward, folding his hands, squinting more. He said—and in the half-dark room it did not seem a surprising thing to say—“I’m going to kill him.”

  George blanched. He said quietly, looking at him, “You’re out of your fucking head.”

  “I mean it.”

  Abruptly, George got out his pack of cigarettes, shook one into his hand and lit the new cigarette from the one he had going. “I nev
er heard such a thing,” he said. His hand trembled. “You sit there cool as a cucumber and—”

  “I’ll tell you why.”

  “I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear a thing about it. You’re crazy to even think it.”

  “I’ll tell you what he did.”

  George pivoted away, then back, determined. “Look, I’ve got to get started home. It’ll take me half-an-hour through this snow.” He came toward Henry again. “And listen, remember what I told you, get some rest.”

  Henry reached out to block his way and George paused, but then Henry let it go. “I’ll try,” he said.

  “Do it, now.”

  He nodded. He sat perfectly still, his fists closed tight, watching George move past him and toward the door. George waved, and after a moment Henry returned the wave. He thought, So he’s come back. It made him feel light, as though the ground had dropped away and he hung in empty space.

  He got up at last, slowly, looking at the doorway where a minute ago George Loomis had stood, where now there were only reflected lights and, beyond the reflections, snow. He turned it over in his mind: So Willard’s come back home.

  Callie was still asleep when he went in. He sat down beside her and put his left hand on her back and closed his eyes. With his right hand he pulled at his upper lip. For two hours she didn’t make a sound, and then it started again,

  worse. Her back was tender now and, gently, she pushed his hand away.

  4

  The night nurse was a spindly country woman, an old maid with a squeezed-shut face and brittle gray hair like steel wool. “This room’s a mess,” she said. “Clean up this room and in half-an-hour you got it looking like a hogpen.” She moved past the chair where Henry sat, sniffing at him as if he smelled, and straightened the unmessed second bed and the shelves on the wall. “Dominoes,” she said, disgusted, lifting the box from the bedside table with three fingers. “What’ll you people think of next.” And then she went out, not looking once at Callie.