FURNACE

by Muriel Gray

  “You are not goin’ to believe this. This guy tuned his chainsaw. Tuned it, y’hear? Like it was a hot rod? Fuckin’ far out.”

  Josh smiled and ran the razor under the hot water tap. He felt good and bad at the same time. Bad, because his head was thumping and his body felt like it had been poisoned. Good, because talking to Eddie about everything crazy that had happened had made him feel sane again.

  The stuff last night. There was an explanation for it, all right. And if he’d been sober he’d have known what that explanation was. Maybe it was the very fact he’d been totally rat-assed that had saved him. Maybe he just dreamt it all in his alcoholic stupor. In a minute he’d tell Eddie what went down and they’d laugh, but right now he had to try and look human again. The steam from the shower was misting the mirror and he wiped an arc clean with the heel of his palm. Peering at the fuzzy reflection, he continued to shave.

  “Aw, Spiller. Get this. The lulu’s got a fuckin’ name for his saw.”

  Josh shouted back, regretting it instantly as the volume made by his own voice hurt both his throat and head. “We got names for our trucks. What’s the difference?”

  “What’s the difference? We live in our trucks, man. This is a fuckin’ saw we’re talking about. You got a name for your tyre pressure gauge?”

  Josh grinned through the shaving foam. He slid the razor from under his ear towards the corner of that grin, and as he did so a line of red blossomed in its wake.

  “Shit.”

  Before the curse had left his lips, the bathroom began to stir. It stirred violently and precisely at the moment the first dark bead of blood oozed from Josh’s wound, and it was that stirring, not the careless laceration, that made Josh stand rigidly still and hold his breath.

  The movement of air is rarely visible. Sometimes it’s witnessed through shafts of sunlight in the smoke of woodland fires or betrays its frantic contortions amongst the snowflakes of a blizzard. But the most common observation of something invisible becoming visible, even the minor disturbance of a person having passed through that air and left their trail, is in the steam of a bathroom. And the steam from the shower that had been shifting lazily behind Josh in the mirror was now thrashing wildly.

  He dropped the razor into the sink and spun around. The clouds of water particles were spiralling and boiling in front of him, driven by some imperceptible tempest that Josh widened his eyes to find and failed.

  “EDDIE!”

  Josh screamed like a child, pressing back into the edge of the sink as though escape were possible through the Formica. The speed with which Eddie got to the bathroom meant there had been no mistaking the hysterical pitch of Josh’s cry.

  He ran through the door, bringing his own air currents, which stirred the steam into mini twisters, then settled back into the peaceful mist it had been only moments ago.

  “What the fuck?”

  Eddie quickly scanned the tiny room for the source of the panic, and, seeing none, faced Josh. His face was bleeding from the razor cut, but it was Josh’s eyes that gave Eddie cause for concern. They were wide with fear and searching the empty room wildly for something that quite obviously was not there. Eddie put his hands on Josh’s shoulders, attempting to recapture his attention by blocking his friend’s view of the empty bathroom with his own face.

  “Come on, man. You’re scarin’ me.”

  Josh refocused on the face only inches from his, closed his eyes in despair and groaned.

  Eddie stepped back and lifted his arms out in a gesture of exasperation. “You want to tell me?”

  Josh opened his eyes again and looked at Eddie in defeat.

  Eddie gestured again like some Jewish matriarch. “The toilet paper weren’t folded at the corners. That it?”

  The absence of embarrassment or even bewilderment in Josh’s voice when he replied unnerved Eddie more than the cry he had responded to from the bedroom. His voice was a croak, full of a mystifying air of doomed resignation.

  “Thought I saw somethin’.”

  “Saw what?”

  “I don’t know. Somethin’.”

  Eddie let his arms drop and propped his hands on his ample hips. He looked at Josh for an uncomfortable length of time as though waiting for him to laugh, and when it was plain that wasn’t going to happen, he left the bathroom shaking his head. The steam swirled in his wake and settled again. Josh stood motionless for a moment, then raised a hand to his cut face. He looked at the blood on his fingers, and then across the empty, steam-filled room to the shower spraying the wall.

  The crummy music of a soap opera from next door told him that Eddie had gotten bored with chainsaw champions and switched channels. Josh mouthed the word again to himself and absently rubbed his blood into his palm.

  “Somethin’.”

  20

  It had only three shoots, but it was healthy enough. It would do. Sim looked down at his hand clutching the tiny plastic pot of chervil and got ready to knock. She was home, that much was for sure. But whether she would answer or not was another matter.

  He curled his gnarled finger and rapped it lightly against Elizabeth’s door. Three gentle taps. After a few silent moments he rapped again, louder, and deep in the house he heard the noise of her approach.

  Sim supposed she might be haggard, weary from lack of sleep and grey from unhappiness. But Elizabeth was creamy and glowing from a bath when she pulled open the door and smiled at him.

  “Hey, Sim.”

  She towelled her hair with one hand as she beamed at him.

  Sim melted under her smile, and although he’d planned a concerned, fatherly expression when she greeted him, it gave way to the coy, delighted grin of a schoolboy. “Hi. I just call to bring you this. Taken from the mother plant, but you feed it good, it grow as big as you like.”

  Elizabeth tossed the towel over one shoulder and held her hand out for the pot. “God, Sim, you’re so sweet, but you’re out of your mind if you think I’ll do any better with this one.”

  “This one not die. You see.”

  She pushed the door open wide and turned to go back inside. “Come on in and show me where to put the damn thing. You said it was positioning that massacred the basil.”

  Sim grinned even wider and followed her in, shutting the door behind him gently.

  She shouted from the kitchen before he even got there, “I don’t even know what this is. What the hell is it?”

  He waited until he was in the room and then waved a hand towards the window. “Chervil. Good for meat and fish. You put it right there. Beside that thing.”

  She turned and made a mock scowl. “It’s an indoor hydrangea. Don’t get fresh about my plants.”

  “You no eat it, it stinks.”

  Elizabeth took a sniff at the chervil and gave him a look. He laughed, a dry, wheezing old sound that seldom left his body. She laughed too and Sim could tell by her visible enjoyment of the sound that right now it was almost as rare in her life as his.

  “You want some herbal tea?”

  “Thank you. Yes.”

  Elizabeth pointed at a chair and got busy. Sim sat down slowly, knowing the next bit would be harder. There was silence for a long time and then he spoke first.

  “Josh away right now?”

  She had her back to him, filling the kettle at the sink. “Yup.”

  “Where he at this time?”

  “Dunno, exactly. South, I guess.”

  He nodded, though he knew she wasn’t looking.

  “Shop going good?”

  She plugged in the kettle and turned with a smile a child could tell was phoney. “Yeah. Pretty good, you know? Taking the morning off to catch up with a pile of paperwork and let Nesta deal with the ugly hordes.”

  Sim nodded again and looked at her kindly but directly. Elizabeth looked back into his narrow gimlet eyes and wondered if he could read the truth.

  The truth.

  She wasn’t in the shop because she couldn’t face it. She’d been sick most of
the morning. She kept crying. She had no idea what was going on with Josh or what she was going to do about it.

  Yes. He could read the truth. She could see it in his eyes as surely as he could read hers. Elizabeth knew Sim must have heard her wailing, and since he watched their movements like a concierge he’d have to have been blind, deaf and dumb to have missed both Josh’s and Elizabeth’s exits after their argument. Sure he knew. That’s why he was here. And it was the relief of that knowledge that made the tears well up and spill over her cheeks, even as she continued to wear her smile.

  “Sit down, Elizabeth. Tea can wait.”

  She did as she was told and sat facing him, letting the tears fall unhindered.

  “He phone?”

  She shook her head, and then changed her mind, altering the nod into a clumsy rotation of the head, which she accompanied by holding up a finger.

  “Once. To the shop.”

  “He say where he at?”

  She shrugged, shoulders starting to heave a little now with the pressure of containing her sobs, then let her head fall forward and rest in her hands. “I don’t know, Sim. I don’t know. I’ve been acting crazy. I wouldn’t even speak to him, and he sounded so…”

  She shooed away the rest of a sentence with a limp hand. Sim wanted to reach out to her, but it wasn’t part of his character to touch. He stayed still in his seat and nodded again at the top of her head as she sobbed.

  “He come home soon. I know it.”

  Elizabeth drew in her breath and sat up, wiping her face with both hands. “Yeah. I know. Sorry.”

  “You want I make the tea?”

  “Okay.”

  Sim knew where everything was and performed his task slowly, moving objects around with an old person’s geisha-like delicacy. He was spooning neat piles of camomile tea into a cheerful blue teapot when the phone rang. Elizabeth sat up at the sound like a deer in long grass, and then as quickly looked to Sim. On the first trilling of the phone he had tipped the tea from his spoon onto the counter, where it fanned out in a complicated mess.

  Elizabeth ignored Sim’s uncharacteristic accident and stood up cautiously but hopefully. “That might be him,” she said in a small voice.

  Sim’s hands were shaking. He stared at her as though she were about to attack him and then started to shake his head violently.

  “Not Josh. It not Josh. No. No. It not him.”

  Elizabeth gawked at him, and then glanced towards the hall, where the phone was still sounding its innocent chirping. Sim had dropped the spoon and stood waving his hands at her like a madman. She wanted to go across and pacify him, but the desperation to answer the phone was stronger. She made a calming movement with her own outstretched hands and backed towards the phone. “It’s okay, Sim. It’s okay. Calm down. You might be right. Maybe it isn’t him. Just stay cool and sit down for a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Their roles had changed so swiftly, she now the comforter, he now the distraught hysteric, that Elizabeth could make no sense of it.

  But all that mattered right now was who was calling.

  Elizabeth’s hand hovered over the phone for a moment, as though she were feeling heat from it, then she picked it up and held it to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  A storm of static raged at the other end of the line. There were distant sounds and cries, all masked by an infernal crackling white noise, the chaos of a weak radio transmission.

  “Hello? Josh. Is that you?”

  Elizabeth strained to make out the background noise babbling beneath the electric fog. Was it voices? It almost sounded like animals. She looked up at the door to the kitchen, where Sim stood, his fists clenched and his mouth slightly open. She spoke to him kindly, trying to affect a casual smile.

  “I think it’s a mobile. I can’t hear.”

  Sim started to shake his head again and lifted his thin arms in a manic gesture towards the phone. “No. Not Josh. You hang up. Not Josh.”

  Elizabeth kept her eyes on Sim, but she spoke once more into the phone, this time as if to a stupid child. “Hello? Josh? If that’s you I can’t hear you. It’s a terrible line. If you can hear me, hang up and try again. Okay? Hear me? I’m going to hang up, and you try again.” She replaced the receiver on its cradle and moved towards Sim. “It’s okay, Sim. It was just a bad line. A mobile or something.”

  Sim was still shaking his head. She put a hand out and touched his arm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The phone was wrong. That’s what. The moment it rang Sim knew it wasn’t Josh. Oh, Josh was there somewhere, all right. He could sense it the way he always could. But it wasn’t really Josh on the other end. There was something else trying to speak. Something he didn’t want to think about, because to think about it, to give any room in his heart or mind to the feeling when it came slithering through the phone line into this house, would be the way to madness. He said nothing, but looked into Elizabeth’s eyes with an expression of feral panic, as she guided him gently back into the kitchen and sat him at the table.

  Sim could tell by the way Elizabeth was moving, the way she was glancing at him as she prepared the forgotten tea, that she thought he was a mad old man. Maybe she was thinking he wouldn’t be living with them much longer if he was going to go crazy. Maybe.

  He didn’t care. Right now, try as he might to leave it alone, he cared about what had been on the telephone. And the more he thought about it the more he knew.

  It was Hell calling.

  “Crock of fuckin’ shit.”

  Josh slammed the phone down and punched the wall. A few yards away in the foyer, Eddie watched from behind a carousel of postcards. Josh composed himself and then walked across to join him. Eddie’s moustache moved sufficiently to tell Josh there was a cheerful grin beneath it. It was a phoney grin, but it would match the phoney camaraderie in his voice.

  “Need a scenic panorama of the lovely Chickamauga lake in spring’s mantle? Fold-out wallet of ten views only five-fifty.”

  Josh put one hand on his hip and rubbed his face. Eddie stopped spinning the card stand.

  “Big guess. She didn’t pick up.”

  “She’s at the shop. I just wanted to leave a message on the answering machine at home.”

  “And it weren’t on.”

  “Naw. Damn phone’s bust. It answered, but it sounds like the line’s down.”

  “Well, call the phone company.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Or call the shop.”

  Josh looked at the ground. “Guess I couldn’t stand it if she didn’t take the call. That’s why I wanted to leave a message. You know. Least she’d have to listen.”

  Eddie nodded and looked at the cards again. “Send her a postcard. Dear Elizabeth. Killed a baby. Fucked a psycho. Met Eddie. Got ball-brained and fell over. Out room marked on picture with a cross.”

  Josh rubbed at his skull. “I’ll be home before it gets there. I’m gonna hit the road now, Eddie.”

  The two men looked at each other in silence for a moment, addressing the awkwardness that had grown since Josh had yelled in the bathroom, and increased when he told Eddie what had happened the night before. He wished he hadn’t. It had sounded dumb.

  Josh made the first attempt to break through. “Still think I’m crazy, huh?”

  “And ugly.”

  “I mean it.”

  Eddie sighed and pushed the cap back on his head.

  “Your head was soup, man, as my wallet can testify. Doubles of whiskey don’t come cheap in this shed.”

  “You’re not bein’ straight with me. You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “What can I say? I weren’t fuckin’ there.”

  “So it follows you reckon I’m on the ga-ga express.”

  Eddie looked into Josh’s eyes and spoke in a quiet voice, embarrassed as a loser trying to suppress a public row. “Spiller, man. Cut yourself some slack here. I ain’t never had the kind of two days you just had. Maybe if I had, I’
d be seein’ Martians givin’ Elvis a shoe shine.”

  Despite the fact that Eddie’s comparison answered Josh’s question in the affirmative, he found himself smiling and raising an eyebrow. Eddie caught the smile with relief, put out his hands and smiled back. “Not that seein’ the King would be loopy or nothin’.”

  Josh nodded, his anxiety giving way against his will to the comfort of familiar mirth. “No. ‘Cos he ain’t dead, is he?”

  “Nope. Gas-pump attendant in Wickenburg, Arizona, saw him only last week.”

  “I got to go, Eddie.”

  Eddie nodded once. “Yeah.”

  Josh started to walk towards the front doors, expecting him to follow. When he realized that he was alone he turned and stopped. Eddie indicated the phones.

  “Need to make some calls.”

  Josh walked back, and Eddie looked at the carpet. “Eddie?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean it. And thanks.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Josh grinned and left, and as he walked to the truck he felt his heart lift at the stupidity of the whole damned thing.

  Eddie was right. Stress and booze were bad bedfellows. He was heading home and things were going to be fine.

  His friend watched him go and thought differently. Things were far from fine, and his worry wasn’t just that someone he cared about had indeed boarded the ga-ga express. As far as Eddie could tell, Josh Spiller had bought himself a season ticket.

  21

  He smiled and turned the volume up.

  “Hey hey hey. Can I stop you there, Pete? Where are you calling from?”

  “Maryville.”

  “And you’re telling me there are no children whatsoever in your town doing drugs.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin’.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Pardon me?”