Nickel Mountain

by John Gardner

  “What in hell do they want to be pestering him for, in his condition?” Henry said. Putting the question in words made him feel an indignation he hadn’t felt until this moment.

  “Because they think somebody set the fire on purpose,” Doc said, “and most likely they’re right.”

  “But what would Simon know about it?” Callie said. She asked it a little too calmly, with too much detachment. Henry didn’t notice it, but Doc Cathey did.

  “He’d know if he set it himself,” Doc said, and he laughed, as sharp as acid.

  “That’s crazy,” Henry said. His hands started shaking. He said, “His wife died in that fire. It’s right in the paper.”

  “You don’t know these people,” Doc Cathey said. “I do. You watch.”

  Henry leaned over the table toward him, and his face went dark red. “You’re a vicious old fool,” he said. “I could—” But he couldn’t think what it was he could do, or rather he knew all too well what he could do—he could knock Doc Cathey through a wall—and his realization of how angry he was checked him.

  Doc Cathey clamped his mouth shut and got hold of himself. “We’ll see,” he said. “Don’t you go havin’ a heart attack over him.”

  It was then that Callie Soames stood up, and both of them looked at her. “I don’t want him in my house,” she said. “I want him out, tonight.”

  Henry went as red as before. He fumbled for the pills in the bottle in his shirt pocket, and he took one out and went over to the sink for water. He stood motionless for a long time after he’d drunk, leaning on the sink, and his wife and old Doc Cathey were as quiet as rocks. Henry said, “He’s staying.”

  She said very quietly, “Then I’m leaving.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  Her look clouded a little, and she didn’t move.

  3

  Henry Soames was up at dawn. It was like Easter morning: The sun hit the late May dew like music, and the trees across the road were all silver and gold, still and breathless. He stood at the open kitchen window breathing in the cool, clean air, and all his body seemed more awake than it had ever felt before. He could hear farmers’ milkers running, infinitely far away in the valley, and he heard a truck start up, the milk truck, probably, down around Lou or Jim Millet’s. The thought of Simon came into his mind and partly saddened him, partly made him nervous. Callie hadn’t said another word last night, and, even though he knew he was right, Henry had felt and still felt guilty. He thought of putting breakfast on, but there was no way of knowing when the others would wake up, so he let it go. He put on his wool-lined frock, frowning, and went out in back to look at the garden. He saw at once that more of the lettuce shoots had been nibbled off even with the ground. Then he saw there were three young rabbits on the grass to the left of the garden, lying with their legs out behind them like dogs. “Shoo!” he said, waving but keeping his voice down, letting the house behind him sleep on. The rabbits jumped up and bounded off like deer. Henry stood still again, slipping his hands into the pockets in the sides of his frock. It was colder than he’d thought. The ground was soft under his feet and clung to his shoes. He ought to shoot those rabbits probably; but he probably wouldn’t do it, because of Jimmy. There was a good deal a man with a family couldn’t do—Jimmy, Callie, Callie’s folks. It was lucky it was more or less worth it.

  It was a good little garden. He’d put in most of the vegetables only this past two weeks, three-foot rows of amazingly delicate-looking radishes and beets and garden lettuce and onions. To the right of those, toward the mountainside and the trees, was the rectangular patch where he planned to put in tomatoes and pumpkins and corn. Beyond the rows and curving out to the left a little lay the square he’d put in, mostly last year, mainly flowers, the crocuses and the tulips around the birdbath already in bloom—yellow, red, blue. He had three rose bushes and, around the border, honeysuckle, already in leaf, and to the right, where the mountain began to climb, a lilac bush. They would sit there on the white-painted bench, evenings last summer, he and sometimes Callie too, when Callie’s mother ran the diner for them, and they’d watch little Jimmy crawl around in the dirt, drooling and laughing and talking to himself. It was heaven out there on a cool summer evening. Sometimes they wouldn’t go in till long after dark.

  He straightened up and, after a moment, went over to the slat and iron bench to sit down. In two minutes he was asleep, sitting with his head tipped down and his hands over his belly like a bear in clothes.

  He didn’t wake up when Jimmy called to be gotten out of bed. Callie went to him, throwing on her bathrobe first, remembering from the first instant she opened her eyes that something unpleasant was in the house, and she seated Jimmy backwards on the toilet (it would take him forever to be sure he was through) and went down to put on breakfast. The bacon hadn’t been sizzling two minutes before sounds began to come from the room off the kitchen. She stood still, glaring at the top of the stove, listening; then she went to look out where she knew her husband would be sitting asleep and called, “Henry, come in here.” He looked up with that stupid, lambish look he always had when he wasn’t quite awake, and with all the venom she could muster she said, “Come see to your friend.”

  She slammed the door and went back to her bacon. Jimmy came into the room, naked as a needle, and she pointed at him and sent him back for his clothes.

  “No clothes,” he said.

  She said, “Jimmy Soames, you get your clothes or I’ll give you a whipping you’ll never forget.” The two-year-old turned vaguely toward the stairs, not obeying, merely baffled, working up tears, and she said, “Stop it!” She laid out paper towels to dry the bacon on, and she heard him going up, very slowly, crying. She knew he wouldn’t get them, of course. He’d forget what he was after in about three seconds, or he’d come across a doll or a fire truck, or—most likely—he’d go to bed and sob. She’d have to go get him and make up to him, and she’d have to hunt up the clothes herself and dress him. She wished to hell Henry would get in here, and at that moment Henry came in. She said fiercely, “I’m sorry to be so crabby. I don’t feel good.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Let me help you.” He took the spatula.

  “Henry, you smell,” she said. “When did you last take a bath?”

  Just then from the bedroom off the kitchen there came a crash, and both of them jumped. Henry stood staring at the floor, pulling at his mouth. Callie took a deep breath. “Your mother’s old water pitcher,” she said. He nodded. Callie said wearily. “Well, see if he wants to eat.”

  Jimmy, for one, had no intention of eating. He sat in his high chair stirring the yolk of his egg with his spoon and watching Simon Bale. Henry sat solemn and uncomfortable, erect, so expressionless in his steel-rimmed glasses you might have thought him lost in troubled thought; but he couldn’t help seeing how Simon ate, and couldn’t help knowing why Callie suddenly put down her fork and got up to fuss needlessly with the coffee. Simon sat bent almost double, unshaven, his mouth almost level with the plate, scooping his egg in with his fork turned over, trapping it when he needed to against the side of his cracked finger. Sometimes, as if he knew there was something wrong but had no idea what, he would roll his eyes up toward Henry or Jimmy and would smile as if in panic, but he said not a word, and for minutes at a time he would seem to forget they were there. Henry hovered between pity and revulsion. Tears would come suddenly to Simon Bale’s eyes, and he would draw out his stiffly wrinkled, unbelievably filthy handkerchief and blow his nose with a sound so like that of a man unashamedly breaking wind that, each time he did it, Callie would turn, behind him, and stare. When she slid his coffee across to him, keeping back from him as from anthrax, Callie said, “Would you want some more eggs?”

  None of them was prepared for what it set off. He looked up with grotesque anguish and said, “Forgive—” and then, abruptly, began to cry. Callie’s eyebrows lifted, and she stood balanced a minute, then came around the corner of the table to his side and stretched
out her hand as if to touch him, but on second thought drew it back. “Here now,” she said, almost gently.

  Jimmy said, “Man is crying.”

  “Hush,” Henry said.

  “My wife,” Simon Bale sobbed, “God grant—”

  She put her hand on his back and said, “Shh, shh!” as she would to a child, but her touch opened all the rivers of Simon’s heart, and he began to whoop. Quite suddenly Jimmy began to cry too, as if his heart would break; and as if hardly knowing he was doing it, Simon reached over blindly and patted at the high chair tray, mumbling “Bless … no importance … ,” getting his fingertips in egg yolk, and at that Henry too began to cry.

  “It’s all right,” Callie said as if indignantly, tears running down her cheeks, the look of surprise still there on her face, “we’ll take care of you, Simon, it’s all right; now stop.”

  The room was full of sunlight and the smell of coffee like heaven’s love, and Simon blew his nose. Henry pulled off his glasses and thought of asking for the handkerchief but changed his mind and got up for a Kleenex and used it and offered the unused part to Callie, who reached out, then hesitated, and decided to get one of her own.

  “Simon,” Callie said, “you must see Henry’s garden!”

  “Me too!” Jimmy said. He prepared his face for outrage in case they shouldn’t let him.

  They laughed, even Simon (but horribly, Callie thought—forgiving him, though with some reservations, even as she thought it), and Henry got up and said, “Jimmy, you show Simon our rabbit tracks.”

  Henry got Jimmy down out of his chair, and Callie helped Simon up and led him, as though he were an old, old man, toward the door. “Thank you,” Simon said. “Forgive—” He blew his nose, then straightened a little, flashing his idiotic smile, and looked out at the green morning. He nodded. “Praise,” he said. The cracks in the back of his neck were grimy, and his hair needed cutting.

  “You want to take Simon’s hand, Jimmy?” Callie said.

  Jimmy thought about it, looking at the man, and Simon leered at the little boy and held out his hand, a limp, raised claw, and waited as if in terror. Abruptly, Jimmy reached up for the hand. Henry laughed, and Callie, after a moment’s hesitation, laughed too.

  4

  Callie’s mother came down that afternoon to help out at the diner. She was a heavyish, determined little woman with iron-gray hair, a pretty face, dimpled elbows; “artistic,” she liked to say: She played the piano and organ at the church. She enjoyed working at the diner, which she tended to think of as Callie’s, not Henry’s. Certainly the place was greatly changed since Henry Soames had married Callie: new paint, clean linoleum, bright artificial flowers on the tables. Callie too had an artistic streak; no doubt she was a throwback to Uncle Al—Callie’s mother’s Uncle Al who’d done oil paintings of imaginary country scenes … among others, the picture in Callie’s dining room, called “Summer Evening.” Eleanor Wells had never thought highly of waitresses, but it was different now, in her own daughter’s place, her own grandchild running about, solemn-faced, his right arm sawing across the front of him as he ran. It was a family diner, as she liked to say, a place people brought their whole families to, and one of these days, who knew?, they might expand it and make it a truly first-class restaurant, like the Chicken Pot, down in Slater. She’d gone so far as to mention it once or twice to Callie, and though Callie hadn’t said one word back, she’d listened, and she would think about it, you could see. After that Ellie Wells had taken to wearing her black hostess’s dress when she came to help out at the Stop-Off, with a little white apron she’d bought especially, and all she did she did with elegance. Her Frank would say (with a half-dozen curse-words she wouldn’t repeat), “No wonder men hate their mother-in-laws,” but he didn’t know a thing about it. Frank couldn’t understand Henry Soames like she could. Henry appreciated her help, and he respected her, he truly did. He would listen to anything she had to say with all the patience in the world (he was a good man, he truly was), and almost always, when he’d thought about it, he would come around to her way of thinking (something her Frank never did). That, as a matter of fact, was why she’d come here today.

  She said nothing, however. She could tell from the minute she came in that there was something in the air, the way they pussyfooted, her daughter and Henry, but for the life of her she couldn’t make out if they were mad at each other or what. Jimmy was out in the garden with that man, and it was all Ellie Wells could do to shut her teeth and ignore it. She peeked out at them from time to time, when Henry and Callie were out of the room, and as far as she could see it was still all right. Just the same, it made her heart beat fast that he was there. Callie was just too innocent. “Just like a baby,” she thought. (It was just like that time at church camp, when she’d let that town man, a perfect stranger, comb out her hair, down by the lake. Or like the time she’d left her purse with that lady at the bus depot.) But Ellie polished the napkin holders and pursed her lips and waited.

  The man just sat on the bench like a tramp. He had stubble on his chin and filthy-dirty clothes and a queer way of sitting with his knees and toes together and his heels thrown out to the sides. He had his hands on his knees and his calf-eyes riveted to the ground. Jimmy would talk to him sometimes, and the man would tip his head and smile and maybe pat him on the back and say a few words (she’d have given a half-dollar to hear what they were saying), and then he’d fall back into his staring fit, and, to Ellie Wells’ enormous relief, Jimmy would wander away.

  Toward mid-afternoon, when she and Callie were alone in the diner, she said, “Where does Henry know him from, Callie?” As if it had just now happened to come into her mind.

  “Know who, Mother?” Callie said. (Callie had always been like that, never letting on when things were bothering her. It had always made it hard, even when Callie was a little girl. It put you in the wrong when all you intended was truly her own good.)

  “Why, your company,” she said, not quite as lightly as she’d intended.

  (“Now damn you, Ellie, you leave them alone,” her Frank would say. “You keep away from there and mind your own business,” and he would bang his fist on his leg like a little boy having a tantrum. And, oh yes, that was fine to say, “mind your own business.” He’d minded his own business for fifty years, even when Callie was in trouble and no place to turn but Henry Soames. “They’re like children,” she’d said—that was this morning, before she’d come down. “They don’t know about people like that.” “Like what?” he’d said. Well she didn’t know, she would admit it, and maybe she was being a worry-wart, she’d admit that too, but what was she supposed to do, Henry Soames being the kind of man he was, and Callie even worse? It was so hard, trying to do the right thing. Why was that? Why couldn’t they be grateful?)

  “Oh, you mean Simon Bale,” Callie said. “Simon’s an old, old friend of ours. He stops in all the time.”

  Ellie Wells tipped her head and pretended to be satisfied. She rearranged the pies in the rack and dusted her hands and went over to see how the sugar dispensers were. She’d bet fifteen dollars that man had never been here in all his life. She made a clucking sound.

  “It’s a terrible time for him,” Callie said. There was a hint of reproach in her voice. “His house burned down, you know, and he lost his wife in the fire. It’s really just terrible.”

  “The poor thing,” Ellie said. There she was, put in the wrong as usual. She’d never said it wasn’t terrible.

  “Didn’t you know?” Callie said. She looked straight at her, as if daring her to lie.

  “Why, no,” Ellie said, “I hadn’t heard.” She did feel sorry for him, she truly did, but she didn’t have to like it that he was here. A man like that might do something crazy at a time like this. It was just one of those things. She said, “How long is he staying?”

  “Oh, just a day or so, I think,” Callie said. She bit her lip as if she’d like to be able to take back that “I think.”

  Ellie
met her daughter’s eyes just long enough to let her know she had her own opinions. Then she said, “Poor man.” Then: “And poor Henry. He’s so good to people.” She dropped it casually, as if it meant nothing whatever (what it did mean, as a matter of fact, was vague in her mind). She had all the sugar dispenser tops off now. She went back to the kitchen for the sugar jar, and again, in misery, she began to cluck.

  Doc Cathey came in a little after that and asked where Simon Bale was (straight to the point, as usual; no “How do you do” or “Nice weather we’re having”—nothing), and when she pointed to the bench in the garden Doc Cathey nodded, scowling, and went out to him. The next time she looked out the window Doc Cathey and Simon and Jimmy were all gone from sight. They’d gone on into the house, most likely. She wondered what Doc Cathey was doing here—up to no good, she was pretty sure—and it so puzzled her she forgot to smile at the customers for maybe five full minutes. She forgot, too, to listen to what the customers were saying among themselves, until finally it came to her that all they could seem to talk about, at least the people who lived around here, was the fire. Someone said, “They say he set it himself,” and she was so startled she nearly dropped her tray of salt shakers. It’s possible, she thought, and it was as if it had been in her mind all the while: It truly is possible. All at once she was so frightened that she had to sit down a minute till she’d caught her breath.

  5

  It was Doc Cathey who brought up the question of funeral arrangements. When he’d finished looking Simon over he sat with his hands on his knees, opposite his patient, looking at the floor between their two chairs as if crossly, his glasses far down his gray beak of a nose (Callie over by the window, with her hands folded; Henry standing against the refrigerator; little Jimmy playing, oblivious to it all, on the floor). Doc said: “You thought at all about the funeral, Simon?”