by Tim O'Brien
He had lunch in the drugstore, then went back to finish his work. Billowing from nowhere, dust filled the air in the old office and he began sweeping the place down, taking great care to sweep in the corners and under the desk.
Then he took out the razor blade.
It was cool and slim.
He went to the window. Outside, the streets were dizzy white. To his left he could see as far as the railroad tracks. To his right, the drugstore and a corner of the bank.
He held up the blade and began scratching his name from the glass. It took him most of the afternoon: first erasing his name, then the title, then everything.
He swept the paint chips out into the street. He washed the glass clean and pulled the blinds.
He was sleeping when Harvey came in. His feet had fallen from the desk.
He heard the door open, and the light fanned through his dream, and he heard the boots, the rush of hot air.
“Addie’s gone,” Harvey whispered. “She’s flown off.”
“Sit down.”
“Addie’s gone.”
Harvey sat in a hard-backed chair. His bad eye was red. The blinds were drawn and the office was dark. It still smelled of dust. Harvey sat still a long while. Then he put his elbows on his knees, leaned forward, cupped his face in his hands. Outside a tractor went by.
“Addie’s gone.”
“We were worried about you, Harv.”
“She’s flown off. She’s gone to Minneapolis. I asked her to get married again and then she went to Minneapolis. She’s just gone.”
“It’s a bad show.”
“She was making the plans for two weeks. I found out she got bus tickets two whole weeks ago. She didn’t say anything to anybody.”
“Where were you?”
“So I found out. So I got on the next bus and went down to find her … makes me sick.”
“You look rough, Harv. How about us going home now?”
“I tell you it makes me sick! She’s got this apartment down there. The city, I can’t believe it. I had to sleep on the floor. Can you believe that? Makes me sick.”
“Let’s go home.”
“Let’s get a drink someplace.”
“You want to?”
“Sure.”
“I swear to God, it all makes me sick. Almost killed me. You couldn’t believe it. How nice she was. Lets me stay there and listens and smiles and says I can come and visit whenever I want, and says no, she can’t marry me, and I say why the hell not, and she just smiles and says no, and it goes on and on I don’t know how long, forever I guess. The goddamn city. It’s not even the city. A goddamn suburb. Can you believe that? Richfield, a goddamn suburb. That’s where Addie’s living if you can believe that. Took me a whole day to find her. Scalped. I feel rotten, Paul. You ever feel this rotten?”
“I guess not.”
“I feel rotten.”
“You look it. You need sleep and supper.”
“Goddamn city. Goddamn bus. So I knock on her door, and she comes to the door and, you can’t believe it, she knows it’s me, I don’t know how, and she’s smiling in that same bloody way, and she’s even got a roommate. It’s all been planned for … And I was talking about Nassau and Italy, and she’s cheering me on, and all the while … I feel rotten.”
“I know it.”
“It’s all falling apart.”
“I know it.”
“I could feel it coming. It’s all falling apart, you know that?
“She says I can visit whenever I want.”
“That’s a good sign.”
Grace drove into town for Jud Harmor’s funeral. Perry slept late, had a long breakfast alone, then went outside to rake dead grass. It was not such a bad day. He carted the grass into the woods using Harvey’s wheelbarrow. It was the first day of summer. He worked steadily until noon, then Harvey came out and they worked together. Perry told him about Jud Harmor and Harvey nodded and kept working.
After a time, Harvey dropped his rake and walked without a word into the bomb shelter. Perry carted grass into the woods, dumped it, then went to the shelter. Harvey was sitting in the old rocker. The place smelled wet. “Have a seat,” Harvey said. He motioned to a bank of cardboard boxes.
“How you feeling?”
“Rotten. Addie’s a witch.”
“That’s no way.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking.” Harvey made a vague twisting motion with his head, encompassing everything. “I think we ought to sell the place.”
“Maybe so.”
“Do you think so?”
“Maybe,” Perry said carefully. “It’s something to think about.”
“We should. I’m decided on it. I decided last night. I’m ready to go, I’ve had enough of the place, the whole thing. We can sell it and move away, maybe to Florida or something. What do you think?”
“You were talking yesterday about …”
“Forget that. This is today. Today I’ve decided we should sell the whole joint and all of us go to Florida. I don’t care where.” Harvey had a hammer. Still rocking, he hammered lightly at the concrete wall, shooting sparks and tiny cement flakes. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s something to think about, Harv.”
“Not for long. I’m tired of thinking. Everything’s falling apart. Let’s just do it.”
Indifferently, as if he were waving a fan, Harvey hammered at the concrete wall, striking it each time he rocked forward. “Do you remember when I built this shelter?”
“Sure.”
“Well, now I want to sell it. Everything.”
“That’s one way,” Perry said.
“You bet it is. What are you going to do? Your job, I mean.”
“I don’t know.”
“There you are then. You see? We sell the place, then you have to do something.”
“You have a way of tackling things, don’t you?”
“You bet I do.” His hammering chimed in the autumn-like dark, a gentle persistent chiming, and a pile of loose concrete formed on the floor.
“All right then,” Perry said, getting up. “Let’s both of us think about it. I’m not saying yes or no.”
“That’s your style, isn’t it?”
“Right,” Perry said. “Going to help me rake?”
“In a few minutes. You go ahead.”
That evening Perry talked it over with Grace. She pretended to toss the idea around, weighing it with a frown as she dried her hair, asking drawn-out questions. But she wanted to sell. He waited until she went to bed. Then he went upstairs. Harvey was lying on his bed, awake and dressed.
“Okay,” Perry said. “We’ll sell.”
“You sure?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll talk to Bishop Markham in the morning.”
“What does lovely Grace say?”
“She’s for it.”
“What will you do afterward?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess there’s not another way,” Harvey said.
It was mosquito season. They were everywhere. Swarming in the kitchen at night. Around the yard light. Downtown. At the ball park. Electrocuting themselves in static buzzes against the special pest-rid machine installed at the Dairy Queen. Masses of mosquitoes. Blood-crazy and rattling against the bedroom screens as he tried to sleep and breeding in the heat of Pliney’s Pond. Perry smelled the pond. He dreamed of it, dreamed that he was at last going in, lolling in the algal ripeness, joining the heated thick waters in a final search for the start of things, dreaming as the mosquitoes called for his blood against the screen windows, the aroma of Pliney’s Pond drifting into the bedroom and bludgeoning him into long, dreaming, sweating sleeps.
There was nothing to do.
He wanted to talk to Jud Harmor, but Jud Harmor was dead.
“Selling!” Bishop said with delight. “Well, I guess I can sell the old place for you as well as anybody. I guess I can! You came to the right man, Paul.”
“I know it.
”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Selling out.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Bishop said cheerfully. “Nobody’s going to blame you.”
“That’s what you’re here for.”
“Right. Broker for the emigrants.”
“I know it.”
“I’ll get you a good price, don’t worry about that. We’ll do it right.”
“I’ll bet you will.”
There was nothing to do.
On the first day of July, he cashed his final Treasury pay check. As a ritual, he went to the office and swept it down, locked the door and posted the key to St. Paul. Then he ambled down to the barber shop. It was air-conditioned. The clippers hummed sweetly, the scissors clicked along his neck cool and precise. After the haircut, he asked the barber to shave him. It was an afterthought. He took a last look at the beard, remembering with dispassion the forest and the snow and the days of being lost, then he closed his eyes and smelled the lime-scented shaving cream and heard the razor scratch along his neck, his chin, his cheeks, clean and fast. The barber’s name was Andrew but everyone called him Silent Andy. He talced Perry’s face, swept the linen away, whisked the stray hairs and returned his instruments to an ultraviolet sterilizer.
Swiveling him to face the mirror, the barber surveyed his work like a farmer admiring fresh-plowed land.
“Looking forward to this a long time,” the barber said.
“Good job.”
“You want a shampoo? Might as well do her right.”
“Sure. Why not?”
Sitting back, Perry opened a newspaper and found Bishop Markham’s ad for the house. “Vintage dwelling,” the copy read, “ten rooms, fireplace, twenty choice acres, pond and bomb shelter. A real buy. Peace and quiet.” The photographer had captured the house at its best angle, looking in from Route 18, and the place seemed much bigger and older and more tenacious than reality.
The barber massaged his hair, then pulled his head back over the sink for rinsing, then briskly toweled him dry.
“So I see you’re selling,” the barber said.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? What’s the ad for then?”
“Yes,” Perry said. “We’re selling.”
“Too slow for you around here?”
“Too fast,” Perry said.
“It’s a shame.”
“I know,” Perry said. “It’s a real shame.”
The days were all slow. Perry tried not to think about it. In mid-July Harvey left for a visit to Minneapolis and when he returned he was in a bad mood. He did not talk about Addie, and Perry did not ask. There was nothing unspoken. The trip simply hadn’t happened.
Sleepwalking season. Impartial events dragged him from hour to hour, and there was nothing to do but wait.
To differentiate the days he sometimes took short walks in the forest, trying to see it objectively now that he was leaving. But he stayed away from the pond. Sometimes Grace would come along. They would hold hands and stay on the well-worn paths.
Once they found a rotting tree stump. It was coated with ivory fungus that overlapped in lobes like leather armor, and inside the stump were the hallways of a dark forest castle, maggots and other insects that scurried through the decaying wreckage. He reached into the interior of the stump to touch the stuff. It was warm and lush.
Once they found a fallen tree. They scraped away matted leaves and saw spider webs with beads of captured dew.
They saw oak leaves with both sharp and rounded lobes, each representing a different species.
With the mechanisms of departure in motion, he began feeling older. There was nothing so terrible about the place.
With a fingernail, Grace broke open a sassafras leaf and held it to him to smell. “Root beer?” she said. “No,” he said, “lime. More like lime.” And she frowned and held it to her nose and smiled and shrugged.
She showed him the underbelly of the forest, the quiet and safe spots. Much of the forest, she noted, was neither pine nor birch, but rather soft tangles of weed and fern and moss and simple things. She showed him a delicate fern which she called maidenhair, plucking it from the soil.
Perry followed her through the waiting days.
He helped her with the gardening and shopping. Near the end of the month they drove down to Two Harbors for the county fair, and he followed her through the pavilions of women’s work, quilts and mason jars filled with preserves and stewed tomatoes, needlepoint and aprons and apple pies. She went into a tent to have her fortune read and Perry waited outside.
“What did they say?”
“That’s for me to know.”
“Tell me.”
“Well,” she smiled, “they say I have a deep lifeline.”
“I thought it was supposed to be long.”
“For me it was deep,” she smiled.
He did not worry about finding new work. Content to potter about the house, he avoided Harvey and waited for word about the house, sleeping late and performing minor chores with the old detached and sleepy languor. There were frequent rains. The grass grew fast and the woods filled with steam, and there was no threat of fire.
He did not see much of Harvey. Sometimes it would go for days at a time, long days with Grace, quiet suppers, television and Scrabble, a movie. One morning he found his brother sleeping in the bomb shelter, wrapped in one of the wool blankets stored there. He touched him and Harvey sat up blinking.
“What time is it?”
“Daytime,” Perry said gently. “You were here all night. You’ll get sick keeping this up.”
“Couldn’t sleep inside.”
“Grace has breakfast ready. Come on.”
“We’re really leaving, aren’t we?”
“That’s what you wanted. I suppose …”
“All night I kept thinking … the blasted house.” Harvey lay back and stared with an empty eye. “I guess I was dreaming. You know? It was strange but I kept thinking that the house was getting blown to pieces. Falling apart like a bomb hit it, except it was the wind and not a bomb. You know?”
“I know. It’s tough.”
“I guess it’s best, though.”
“Sure.”
“But it’s tough. I kept thinking the house was blowing apart. Pow, down she went. This incredible wind and everything was falling apart.”
“I know, Harv.”
“So I came out here. Lord. I’ll be glad when it’s sold.”
“What you need is some breakfast.”
Harvey sighed. “You ever get the feeling you’re doing the same things over and over again? It’s like … I don’t know. The old man, all the outdoor crap. It’s really a lot of crap, isn’t it? But it’s not the old man anymore, it’s me. Now it’s in me and I can’t get it out. Doing crazy things. Over and over. Maybe selling the house will end it. I don’t know. Do you think so?”
“I think so, Harv.”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. I don’t mind.”
Harvey nodded. “That crazy dream about the house falling in. It was awful. Addie, the house. It’s too much. I guess getting lost out in the woods taught you a lesson.”
“I don’t know what,” Perry said.
“Leaving. Don’t you see? You don’t mind leaving now.”
“Maybe that’s it.”
“I have a tough hide. I haven’t learned any lessons.”
“You’re a good man, Harv.”
“It’s just hard to get it out of my system. All the crap. It really is a lot of crap, isn’t it? I ought to get a job and make some money. That’s what I should do.”
“Maybe so, Harv. What you need now is breakfast.”
“Or go to Mexico.”
“Come on, Harv.”
In the afternoon Bishop Markham brought out a young couple to see the house. Harvey watched them come up the lane. He hurried up to his room, and Perry and Grace were left to show them around.
“A grand house!” Bishop was saying. “It has all sorts of architecture and doesn’t show it. Looks thrown together, but in fact it’s a beauty. A real buy, I’d say.” He talked like his newspaper ads. He wore a bow tie and corduroy jacket.
The couple seemed nice and friendly and very rich. The fellow said his name was Maglione. He worked as a bonds broker in St. Paul but he was giving it up to paint pictures. Clean-cut and talkative and straight, he seemed to Perry more of a bonds broker than a painter. His wife was extraordinarily pretty, and Perry guessed she’d once worked as a stewardess or model or something similar to capitalize on her looks. With her chin forward and high, she also had a bit of the aristocrat in her, nodding at things that won her approval. She was nice, too.
Bishop guided them through the house as if he owned it.
In the back yard, he pointed out towards the woods. “Now, if you want to paint pictures, I guess you won’t find a much better place to do it. Real scenery. Genuine stuff, I might add. Just like the house.”
“Dick paints mostly abstracts,” the woman said.
Maglione blushed a little. “That abstract business is hard to swallow, I know. It doesn’t mean I don’t make use of nature. Actually, the idea is to expand on what you see in nature. Extend reality, if you see what I mean.”
“Well,” Bishop grinned, bringing him back to the house, “you aren’t about to find a better place to extend reality than right here. Right, Paul?”
“Right,” Perry said.
“Lovely,” Maglione said.
Grace nodded and kept smiling.
Maglione’s wife walked to the bomb shelter. Somewhat gingerly, she put a hand on the concrete as though testing whether it were real.
“It’s a bomb shelter,” Perry said.
“Yes?”
“In case of nuclear war.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Let’s not dwell on it,” Bishop said cheerfully.
“It’ll keep the fallout off of you,” Perry said solemnly. “My brother built it himself. He’ll vouch for the construction. Meets all the government standards.”
“Yes?” The woman stared at it.
“Never been used,” Perry said.
“I should hope not.”
“And it could come in handy. Forest fires and so on.”
“God.” The woman looked at him suspiciously. She said the word again as if she learned it in school. “God,” she said again.