The Slab

by Michael R Collings

  At ground level the stems were too thick for the loppers. Instead, he had to get on his hands and knees and, using a small arced pruning saw, sever each one individually a foot or so from the hard-pan soil.

  His back ached. His hands ached. His arms were covered with tiny scratches from sharp twigs, with a fine film of sweat mixed with loose dirt, flecks of sawdust, and a light, pale dust that must have rubbed off the undersides of the leaves. He was hungry. But he couldn’t stop to eat. He had to get rid of these bushes.

  They had nearly killed his son.

  Abruptly, behind him, he heard small voices whispering, branches rustling. He glanced over his shoulder.

  Catherine, Will, Burt, and Suze were bagging the greenery and dragging the packed black garbage bags along the side of the garage. Catherine cut the thicker stems into foot-long lengths with anvil shears, her hands encased in thick leather gloves, and then the kids picked up the short pieces and stuffed them into the bags.

  For an instant, Willard felt an overwhelming urge to tell them to get the hell away from here, to leave the damned things alone, that he would take care of them because that was his job and they had nearly killed his son! He had even worked his way off his throbbing knees, using the loppers for support, and was half turned to face them when something in his brain went snaaaap! and, suddenly reeling for an instant with the same sense of disorientation that had struck him earlier, he shook his head and started to speak.

  Catherine and the kids were standing in front of him, stock still. She still held the shears in one hand, an uncut branch in the other. Will had frozen in the act of lifting a filled bag. Burt and Suze dropped the bits of leafy detritus they had collected.

  “Where’s Sams?”

  “Taking a nap.” Catherine sounded cautious, unsure of whether to say anything more.

  “Oh. Okay.” Willard shuffled for a moment. Then: “Thanks, guys. For helping out, I mean. I guess I was a bit…uh…a bit short with you this morning, Will. And you, too, Catherine.”

  Catherine nodded. The kids remained like stones.

  He was going to say something else, realized that he didn’t quite know what, then knelt again and began sawing raggedly at the next stump. But he threw a quick glance over his shoulder and said “Thanks. Again.”

  With everyone helping-even Sams a short while later, after he emerged from the house, wiping sleep from his eyes and dragging his blanket across the filthy concrete until Catherine yelped in horror at the sight and set the grimy thing carefully on a folded garbage bag-with everyone working at cutting, trimming, bagging, and stacking, they finished by late afternoon.

  As a thank you, Willard took the whole crew to the nearest McDonalds and let the kids have anything they wanted for dinner.

  “Just this once,” he said in answer to Catherine’s reproachful glance. “I was a beast to everyone this morning, and they really did a great job when I finally came to my senses. They deserve it.”

  And they all enjoyed it.

  By the time they returned home, however, Willard realized that he was in some discomfort. His hands and fingers seemed stiff, swollen, and the skin on his arms tingled painfully. Even though he had showered and changed before the family had gone out to eat, Catherine ordered him into the shower again.

  “That looks like a rash coming,” she said, pointing to a line of redness along the inside of his arm, a roughened patch of skin extending from elbow to wrist. “I’ll bet there were some oils or something in those leaves, and you might be allergic. That might be why your fingers are swollen, too.”

  She handed him a small pill and a cup of cool water. “Antihistamine. Just in case.”

  He stood for a long while under the hot spray, soaping his arms and shoulders, washing his hands thoroughly, rinsing off, then soaping again. As he did, he felt knots in his muscles loosen, but even more importantly his mind-still vivid and fretful-eased as well. When he eventually emerged, he felt slightly weak, as wrinkled as a raisin, and finally, thoroughly clean. The redness along his arms was still there, but fainter. His fingers were swollen and stiff but he could almost make a fist when he tried.

  He put on his heavy terry-cloth robe and wandered out into the family room.

  It was empty.

  “Catherine?”

  “Back here.” Her voice came from the bedrooms.

  He sauntered down the hall, feeling pleasantly tired and relaxed. She met him outside the door to their bedroom and shunted him inside.

  “The kids are down.”

  “Asleep already?”

  “No, I told them they could play in the boys’ room for a while…quietly.” She reached behind her and carefully shut the door. “And they’ve been threatened with mayhem and dismemberment…all right, with spending tomorrow without any TV privileges,” she emended at the look of surprise on Willard’s face, “if they so much as step foot down the hall beyond Suze’s doorway tonight.”

  She smiled, and with a couple of deft movements, slipped Willard’s robe from his shoulders.

  “Now it’s your turn to be quiet.” She turned him toward the bed and gave him a little push, just enough that he toppled face forward onto the covers. “You deserve something special tonight, something to make your poor, tired muscles relax.”

  She settled herself beside him and began kneading his shoulders and back, the length of his arms, then moved on to the long muscles of his thighs and legs.

  From somewhere, he could smell a faint fragrance. Incense maybe. Or aromatic oils. Catherine liked both.

  He sighed. He waited a long while before speaking.

  “You know, Catherine, I…I think there might be something…wrong with me,” he finally said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  Her hands paused, then resumed their tender ministrations.

  “What do you mean, sweetie?”

  “All day, at least until you guys came out this afternoon, I felt…I don’t know, angry isn’t quite the right word. It went beyond anger. Red-hot fury, at least part of the time. Sometimes it felt as if I weren’t cutting wood, as if I were tearing at flesh, or at least as if I wanted to.”

  Again her hands paused. Longer this time.

  “Oh, Willard,” she whispered. “I knew you were…you weren’t really yourself this morning. You’re never that short with Will, especially when he wants to give you a hand with something. When he came inside, he was…well, frightened. He said you looked really…different. Scary.”

  “I felt scary. And scared. Like all I wanted to do was lash out and hurt and kill.” He shivered. Catherine began smoothing his skin again. Her hands were soft, and warm.

  “Thank God those damned…sorry, those bushes were there. I could almost feel the need to hurt drain out of me as I snapped those loppers back and forth. Snap. Snap.”

  Catherine leaned over and kissed him on the back of the neck. “Shhh. Are you all right now?”

  He rolled over to face her. And kissed her back.

  “Yes.”

  “I can see,” she whispered. And smiled.

  The rest of the night passed…well, not quite uneventfully, but Willard didn’t mind.

  That was one of the last truly comfortable nights they spent for a long while.

  The next day, the sky clouded over. The weatherman on the television predicted rain.

  A lot of rain.

  5

  Rain can be a rarity in Southern California. Particularly in the Los Angeles basin, where two, three, even four years of drought conditions are seldom enough to remind the floods of immigrants from less congenial states that the land their homes and condos and apartments and mobile homes rest on is essentially desert. In spite of seemingly endless vistas of meticulously landscaped emerald green lawns dotted by the false turquoise of ceramic pools, the basin is arid.

  Some rainfall during the deep months of what passes for winter in the season-less sameness of Southern California is normal. A day or two, perhaps-three at the most-of light sprinkling is consi
dered within the bounds of normal. More than that constitutes virtually apocalyptic flooding.

  It began raining somewhere after midnight the next Thursday. On Friday, fully recovered from the stiffness in his hands, with the rash completely gone, Willard drove to work as usual. The freeways were mushy and slick with built-up grease released just enough by the rain to make conditions unpredictable, hazardous. Because of the slow traffic, he arrived at work forty minutes later than usual. That set the tone for the rest of the day. He arrived home nearly two hours late.

  “Are you all right?” Catherine asked the moment he stomped through the front door, water dripping in sheets from his woefully inadequate excuse for raingear.

  “Sure,” he said as he shrugged out of the overcoat and shook it outside trying to remove as much moisture as possible before bringing the water-laden garment indoors.

  “Let me take that,” she said. She picked the coat up with two fingers and carried it to the first bathroom and hung it on a hanger over the shower curtain.

  “Is it bad?” she asked, her voice muffled by the door.

  “Worse,” Willard muttered as he toed off his shoes. His socks were wet, the cuffs on his pants-his best suit pants-were wet for a foot or more up his legs. His shoulders were damp. He felt sodden, drenched inside and out.

  Catherine reappeared from the bathroom carrying a vivid purple beach towel that had somehow slipped into the daily-use stack in the linen closet and was now unofficially “Daddy’s” towel.

  He scrubbed his face and hair with the coarse material.

  “Get out of these clothes,” Catherine said as she helped him out of his suit jacket. “You’re a mess.”

  “And this is just from running from the driveway to the front door,” he said, suppressing a shiver. “The garage door wouldn’t open again. I don’t know, maybe it’s the remote. I’ll have to get it checked. Soon.”

  “Honey, you’re freezing,” Catherine said as she felt his hand. “Hurry and change. I’ll make some tea. That’ll warm you up.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, already halfway down the hall toward the bedroom.

  The Levelor blinds were drawn, so the room was dark. Even with the furnace running, the room felt miserable, clammy and damp. He shivered again. He stripped his wet things off, dropping pants, shirt, socks, underwear in a heap on the floor.

  No use hanging up the suit, he thought. It’ll have to be dry cleaned after this, no matter what.

  He rummaged naked through his closet, finally pulling out his thick terry-cloth robe and slipping it on. The action stirred memories-wonderfully pleasant memories. He smiled. He shoved his feet into slippers and, for the first time all day, began to feel warm. He felt his muscles relaxing.

  He turned to leave the room, and as he did so, he noticed something.

  In the dim light, he almost didn’t see it. Perhaps if he had blinked at the wrong instant, he wouldn’t have seen it at all. But there it was. In the corner, just below the line where textured ceiling joined wall, there was a jagged hairline crack, no more than two or three inches long. His stomach wrenched.

  That’s all I need, he thought. After this rain, after nearly getting drowned because the garage door is defective, to look up and see this.

  He gritted his teeth.

  Hair still damp from the rain, still wearing nothing but his bathrobe, he began padding slowly through the house, beginning with the back bedrooms, progressing to the bathrooms, the hall, the entry, the family room, the living room, ending up in the kitchen.

  “Willard,” Catherine said, a note of scolding in her voice. “What are you doing barefoot? You’ll catch your death.” She held out a bright red mug, steam coiling from the surface of its contents. “Here, this will help.”

  He ignored the mug and instead continued his slow, almost stalking survey of the kitchen, each wall, the ceiling, the floor tiles under the back window, several still ragged and broken from the night he punched through them with the paring knife to reveal the roach-filled rift.

  “There’s more of them,” he said, almost absently.

  “More of what?”

  “Cracks.”

  Catherine glanced around. Now that he mentioned it, she could see tiny cracks in the angles where walls joined walls, where walls joined ceiling. She turned a slow circle. There was a thin shadow connecting one corner of the doorjamb to the ceiling. Another starting from the far corner of the window and spidering upward a foot or so.

  “I hadn’t really noticed them,” she murmured.

  “They’re in every room. Every one,” Willard said.

  “Mom. Dad,” came Burt’s voice from the living room, just a few tones away from whining. “Will’s cheating.”

  “What?” Catherine and Willard answered at the same time, turning to face their middle son.

  “He’s cheating!” This time the voice was sterner. Burt obviously felt more comfortable with his complaint now that he had his parents’ attention.

  “They’ve been playing Monopoly since they got home from school,” Catherine said. “They couldn’t go out, and they were getting antsy, so I let them take the board into the boys’ bedroom.

  Catherine’s father had introduced Will, Jr., and Burt to the wonders of high finance the previous Thanksgiving at her family’s home in Santa Barbara, while she and her mother were cleaning up after the traditional family feast and Willard and Catherine’s youngest brother sat transfixed by one football game or another.

  Neither of the boys had quite grasped the subtleties of the game, but since Grandpa hadn’t been too strict about the rules, they had gradually evolved their own version, one that was a bit faster, a bit wilder, a bit more cut-throat than a strict interpretation of game protocols might normally have allowed.

  After several hours at the board, as they were putting the pieces away and carefully separating the play money into appropriate piles, Grandpa said, “Why don’t you guys take this on home with you. Grandma and I don’t play it anymore so you may as well.”

  Both boys went running into the kitchen. “Mom, can we, can we?”

  It took a minute or two for Catherine to figure out what they were yelling about, since their voices overlapped so much that she couldn’t quite understand the words, and her father just stood in the doorway, grinning, no help at all.

  But in a few moments, the Huntley children were the proud owners of one well-used Monopoly set. It was a special-occasions-only treat for them, since they routinely became so engrossed that their games threatened to go on for hours. Rainy days frequently counted as special occasions.

  “Okay, what’s going on?” Willard spoke from the open doorway, Catherine behind him and Burt scuttling beneath his arm and squatting in his usual position by the board.

  Will, Jr., sat there, looking owlishly up at his parents, his eyes wide with innocence but the trace of a grin-almost a gloat-hovering on his lips. Suze was across from Will, also her usual position, her face flushed and her eyes screwed up as if to keep from crying. Sams crouched along the side of the board between Suze and Will. He held a handful of play money in his chubby fists-he played Banker, holding out money when required so the others could take what they needed

  Three voices answered Willard’s question.

  “Nothing!” A sharp treble with a hint of a crack in it.

  “Will’s cheating!” Burt’s voice.

  “Will’s hiding money under the board! He knows he’s not s’posed to hide money under the board.” Suze was a stickler for rules, even if the kids had made them up themselves.

  Willard held out his hand.

  “All right! All right! Enough!”

  Silence fell.

  “You guys know what happens if you fight over a game.”

  “But, Dad…!” This time four voices tumbled over each other, Sams’ joining the rest.

  “No. You know what happens.”

  “Okay,” Will, Jr., said. Shoulders slumped, he started picking up bills that had been scattered
on the board and the surrounding carpet during the disagreement. Burt collected houses and hotels, dropping them into the proper slot in the box. Suze gathered up the tokens and put them away. Sams just sat there a few bills still grasped between his fingers. Will, Jr., had to pull them out of his hands before Sams finally gave up. Only then did he start to sniffle, prelude to a cry.

  “Bedtime,” Catherine said, stepping around Willard.

  “But…” Again, all four chimed in.

  “I know you haven’t had any time with Daddy, but he was late because of the rain. And there’s school tomorrow, so scoot, all of you.”

  None of them scooted, precisely. But under Catherine’s and Willard’s watchful eyes, they meandered through their evening rituals, finally settling themselves in their beds. Suze turned her light out without being asked.

  Willard reached around the door jamb to flick the switch in the boys’ room.

  “No!” Sams was sitting bolt upright in his box bed. He had his blanket pressed so tightly against his cheek that his knuckles glowed white in the overhead glare. “No! Light!”

  Willard glanced at Catherine. This was new. None of their children-Sams included-had ever indicated any untoward fear of the darkness. Even Sams had slept without a night light since he was two.

  Catherine knelt by his side.

  “Come on, Sams. You know everything is all right, even with the light out.”

  “No!”

  This time Catherine heard a touch of panic in his voice. She rubbed his back, trying to comfort him.

  “Oh, let it be,” Willard said from the hallway. “Just for tonight.”

  She shot him a sharp look. They had discussed this when Sams was first trying to sleep in a darkened room, and they had agreed that he was old enough. Anyway, his two brothers were in there with him, and he could crawl in with Burt if he woke in the middle of the night. And besides, they had a hard and fast rule-never disagree in front of the kids, especially when there was already a rule in place.

  “Willard?” There was an unspoken question in the way she said his name.