by Ron Irwin
The man, who might have been a shade older than me, heavyset and used to serious farm work, wearing a khaki outfit and sandals, slapped me on the back. Hard. “There’s a good bloke. How about you call it a night, mate?”
“Fuck you.”
The guy left the bar and I ordered another scotch and the bartender, amazingly, poured me a fresh drink and I sat there, fuming, stewing, sipping from the glass, then adding water to it between sips so I could get it down faster. I was poisoning myself. I glared at the bartender, who had probably seen every kind of sordid behavior on this green earth. “What are you looking at?”
I doubt he even understood me, but he had no problem understanding the tone of my voice. He walked over to the register and picked up the phone calmly. Soon after, two security guards slipped into the bar and stood on either side of me.
One of them asked, “Maybe you have had enough, sir?” As if he was providing me a service. “Maybe now we can bring you to your room?”
I looked at one, then the other. I didn’t move. Finally, as if on cue, the two of them each took an arm and eased me off the stool. Once I stood up, my vision tunneled. Both men were smiling at each other I thought. “You go to your room now?” the one on the right, who had been doing all the talking, asked.
I smiled back at both of them, and then I could have sworn I heard a voice, heard it in a hissed whisper, the way I’d hear it when we rowed. “Do it. Do it now,” and I swung at the smaller one, the silent young guard who was probably getting his first crash course in dealing with drunken guests. The guard could not have been more than eighteen, his uniform was really only a red blazer that hung off the peaks of his shoulders and draped over his knuckles. He was looking at me gravely and seriously when I connected and sent him sprawling into one of the tables.
The two of them dragged me out of the bar and beat me up in the fire stairwell. They did it the way cops do, so they wouldn’t leave a mark, the young, skinny one with the bad fitting blazer linking his arms in mine, the other working me over with his fists to the belly, the sternum, the ribs. They searched me and found my key, which had my room number on it—there were no keycards in that part of Africa—and dragged me up the stairs. By then I was no longer resisting, being covered in puke and blood as I was and unable to even see my feet, much less stand on them. They opened the door to my room, tossed me in, and slammed it shut, leaving me in the humid dark. I lay there for quite awhile, retching and bleeding.
* * *
I had been running religiously at dawn and putting in time at Channing’s little debacle of a guesthouse/office in the late afternoons on average three times a week. I had sanded the outside and inside of the place and painted the woodwork, such as it was. One evening I just stayed out there past dinner until Channing came out and kicked me off his property. I had worked off my twenty hours in less than two weeks but I kept coming back whenever I couldn’t bear the thought of the boathouse or Connor or the rest of them. Whenever I felt homesick. The tools in the toolbox, the paint lined up on newspaper, the piles of fresh wood and the soaking brushes waiting for me; these were things I knew. I stored the tools and the brushes exactly the way I would on a project at home, covered the wood with a tarp and generally brought the whole site up to speed. Any good builder who went out to inspect my work would know a pro had been operating there.
Channing hardly ever put in an appearance. Half the time his wreck of a station wagon, its browning ferry passes to Martha’s Vineyard peeling from the windows, wasn’t in the driveway. When he was home, he ignored me, although one time I looked up from varnishing his window frames and saw his shadow on that sunken porch. I didn’t wave and he didn’t either. By the time we were approaching Thanksgiving break, I’d put in over fifty additional hours of work there. Although we never talked, he did leave evidence that he was inspecting what was going on: tracks in the mud from his boots, one time an empty glass. Whenever I needed more sandpaper, paint, thinners, wood or wedges, smaller screwdrivers, even wiring, I dropped him a note in his mailbox and the stuff would be there in a neatly folded brown bag the next time I showed up.
I arrived one afternoon to find that a branch from the lone tree in his yard had blown right through a windowpane. The wind whistled through the displaced frame—glass and dirt were scattered across the floor and the wall itself was torn. I stood there in the freezing cold, swearing. He had left me a brush and paint and a blank order form for a new sash window and more Rhino Board. He’d also left a note on the worktable in his arrogant, fountain pen scrawl that I’d recognize anywhere:
… I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.
I found a pencil in the toolbox and added Tyvek and bevel siding to the order form. Under Channing’s poem I wrote, Am building a house, not a wall.
The next week the Tyvek, Rhino Board, and siding were there in a neat pile.
Also a note that read, simply, Fool.
17.
I awoke late one night to find Perry shaking me. My small room smelled like bandages, sweat and iodine and I listened to his whisperings in a half fog, as if he were part of a bad dream that refused to go away. Finally I pushed him aside and swung my feet to the cold floor, sat on the edge of the bed hugging myself. Perry smelled of beer and the cold outside. I looked at the glowing numerals on the clock. A little after three in the morning.
Perry walked to the window, peered around the curtain at the wasteland beyond. “Did you hear me, Carrey? Connor hijacked the rowing truck. He says you have to come. He’s waiting for you down by the football field. Get something else on, it’s freezing out there.”
I put my hands on my hips and stretched, tried to wake myself up. “Is he crazy?”
“Not as crazy as he thinks he is. Ruth and Wads are also there. He’s got beers, dude.”
I pulled on my T-shirt and sweatshirt and jeans. Perry watched me dumbly in the dark while I yanked a sweater over my head, slammed my already socked feet into my sneakers and found my jacket and hat. I walked out into the hallway. It seemed obscenely bright. The torn linoleum floor was streaked with Perry’s wet footprints. He was a sight to behold in a long, formal coat, snowmobile boots, and a neon green hat. His face had turned bright red in the steam heat of the dorm. When he shoved me through the main doors out into the cold, the night wind howled right through me.
It had snowed. A white revelation of it was like a blanket over the leaves sparkling in the starlight. It clung to the exterior walls of the dorm in flashes, to the wooden fences lining the walkways, had streaked the trees with white. The air seemed to contain the dormant energy of that early snowfall. We started walking fast, me with my arms flat against my sides, my fists balled in my pockets. The dusting of snow on the main drive seeped into the bottoms of my sneakers so that by the time we’d crossed over Route 7, my socks were damp and my feet freezing. Perry and I walked along in silence, until finally he said, “Channing was impressed by your bench pull testing. Connor couldn’t believe it. Dude, you almost kicked his ass. There he is over there. Check it out.”
I could just make Connor out in the long strip of snow before the field house. The football field. His back was to us, his form shimmering and fading as he threw something deliberately and quickly into the darkness. Ruth was standing near him, small and motionless in a cobalt blue ski jacket that hung off her narrow shoulders. Perry looked at Connor and said to me, “He has a good arm. He’s making thirty, forty yards even though he’s buzzed.”
We had walked up to the end zone near the road. Connor had a bag of footballs open beside him. He’d bend, fade two steps, and feign right, then throw directly for the goalposts. The footballs spiraled into the stars, then dropped like birds below the posts. He seemed to be talking to himself, or else counting. I could hear him grunting out there while he repeated the same movement
s, again and again. Perry clapped me on the shoulder. “Security will be by sooner or later. Just so you know. Convince him to get out of here fast, okay?”
“Me? Do you really think I can tell the guy to do anything?”
“You can try.”
Far off I heard the sound of a trailer rig laboring down the road that led away from us, a black ribbon through the white fields. We walked across the slick, whitened grass to Connor, whose breath was misting in the dark. I stood next to him and he didn’t pause, acted as if he hadn’t noticed me. I made eye contact with Ruth and half-waved a greeting. She pursed her lips in a kind of grimace by way of answer and hunched deeper into her jacket. Connor launched the next ball downfield. He breathed easy through the release, catching his breath as the ball soared into the black sky. “I found these inside the gym. The doors aren’t locked.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Am I throwing like I’m drunk?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perry, give the man a drink.”
“They catch me drinking they’ll send me home.”
“Carrey, you are such a ridiculous and absurd pussy. Do you want a drink or not?”
Perry held out a six-pack of cans covered in snow. I twisted one off and cracked it, the barley smell strong, the foam icy and familiar on my fingers. Perry tore one off as well. I sipped the beer and couldn’t taste it in the cold, just smelled that intense scent, felt it go right down my throat in a searing trickle. I sipped it again and coughed up some. Connor reached down into the snow and picked up his own can easily, tipped it into his mouth and wiped his lips with his free arm, shaking out his gloveless fingers. “Know what?”
“What?”
“It’s fucking freezing out here.” Connor launched another football downfield, which settled into the end zone without a sound. He snatched up another, threw it hard and it did not arc up into the sky, but bulleted across the white expanse and disappeared. He kicked the empty bag and burped. “That’s not bad throwing. Even Jumbo has to admit it. My family has a football game every summer on Cape Cod and I’m always quarterback. I’m undefeatable.”
I finished my beer. “Let’s go. Jumbo says security’s coming soon.”
“Security? You mean that rent-a-cop sleeping in the library? I’m always amazed by you Carrey. You’re so conscious about rules. Just like Ruthie here. I’m the one from the sheltered background, after all.” He reached into his jacket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, bent over, shook one out and, still bent over, lit it. The smoke was crisp and warm in the dark. I watched him inhale. Of course he was a natural at it. “All right,” he said. “I need some coffee.”
“There’s a gas station in town,” I offered. “They’ll sell us coffee.” I squinted down the drive toward the school. Connor was right; we were alone. For now.
Connor turned around, looked at Ruth. “Hear that, Ruth? Care for an espresso?”
Ruth looked at the three of us and shrugged. She was now smoking, too, and drinking a beer. I wondered if he had woken her or Perry up first. If I was an afterthought. Where was Wadsworth?
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here. You have to keep moving if you don’t want to get busted.”
“Do you want to drive the truck?” Ruth’s voice slurred slightly.
“Thought you’d never ask. Where are the keys?”
She dipped her tiny hands into her coat and came out with a jingling wad of keys she must have stolen from the boathouse. “Think fast, Carrey.” She tossed them over the snow, right at my head, and I caught them easily. “Carrey drives, Connor. You’re drunk.”
Connor laughed. “I’m drunk? You’ve been matching me beer for beer and you’re half my size.”
We walked through the snow under the clear sky to the road. You could see the stars stretched out forever up there, blue and cool and quiet. Connor inhaled, looked up as if counting them, as if surprised they were there. He blew smoke upward. The truck was a silent hump parked in the shoulder covered in a light frosting of ice.
I swung open the driver’s side and got in while Connor stood with his back to me pissing into the snow. Ruth got in behind me, and so did Perry. Wadsworth was snoring in the corner. Perry shoved him and he woke up. “Dude, stop it.”
“Carrey’s here, Wads,” Ruth said quietly.
Wadsworth squinted at me. “So he is. Greetings, Carrey.”
I nodded. So I was the last one to be called.
There was a thin ring of blue light over the mountains behind the school fields. Connor zipped up, swung open the passenger door and jumped in, clanged it shut. “Goddamn it, that felt good.”
I started the truck and it grunted to life. The dim lights over the dials came up. Connor was still smoking, leaning against the door. I drove slowly toward town, over the steel bridge, praying that it hadn’t iced over in the new snow. The truck had hard, awkward steering and the shocks were pretty jacked out—you felt every crack in that road. The river hadn’t frozen yet. It cut a deep, black groove through the fields and then through the pastures and the forests beyond. Connor took a last drag on his cigarette, then stiffly wound the window down a crack to flick out the glowing butt that was whisked away by the wind. We labored up the hill into town, and the streetlights made me squint. Only the main road was lit up. We passed by the closed package store and the tourist shops until we came to the gas station and I pulled in. Connor gently felt his pockets for more cigarettes, like a man checking for wounds.
There was a small shop with florescent lights connected to the station. “Give me a few bucks for the coffee, Connor.”
He hoisted himself up in the seat, reached into his front pocket. “Get us something to eat, too, Carrey. I haven’t had anything since lunch. Here.” He shoved a bill in my hand.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s all I have.”
“A hundred-dollar bill to buy coffee and donuts? These people won’t cash this.”
Connor giggled. “I’ll give you my credit card if they don’t make change. They may surprise you, Carrey. This isn’t Kansas, you know.”
I glanced into the backseat. Wadsworth looked like he was on the nod again. “Ruth, ask Wads if he wants something.”
She nudged him. “Chris. Wake up.”
Wadsworth snorted, looked at her, grinned, threw an arm around her. And leaned back into the seat. She shook him off. “Rob’s getting coffee.”
“Good for him,” Wadsworth mumbled.
What about you, Ruth?
She nodded her head. “Just coffee.”
“Jumbo?”
“Candy bars, man. We’re also down to our last five beers. In case anyone wants to know.”
“Keep Wadsworth awake, Jumbo. I’m not helping you carry him into your dorm later.”
“He’s cool.”
“How much have you guys had?”
“Like, eight or nine beers. I dunno.”
“Thanks for inviting me.”
“We did, dude.”
I swung open the door. The hum of the gas station lights was almost unbearably loud. I walked round to the passenger window and tapped on it, and Connor cranked it down halfway. “Can we help you?”
“Pass out that thermos. There, on the floor next to you.”
He looked on the floor, pushed aside some newspapers and a clipboard, picked up the silver flask and poked it out through the window. “You’re going to want to clean that out.”
I walked into the store and nodded to the tired old woman behind the counter. She stared back at me as if I was the harbinger of bad news. I went into the small bathroom in back and poured out the stale coffee in the grimy sink. I rinsed out the thermos as best as I could and set it down by the faucet. There was an open can of scouring soap on the sink and the floor smelled old and muddy. I looked at myself in the mirror, winked, and the kid I saw winked back. I walked out into the light and over to the coffee station, poured half the coffee jug in and about ten creamers. I sugared th
e thermos and shut it, shook it. I looked up at the woman. “Do you have a microwave here?”
She shook her head. I found two sandwiches in the refrigerator, picked out a fistful of candy bars, grabbed some paper cups and brought it all over to the counter. The woman rang it up, checked the pumps. Up close I saw that she was not so much old as old-looking; not so much tired as plain weary. “You kids are out late for a weekday, aren’t you?”
“It’s like a field trip.”
“Like a field trip,” she repeated. “That’ll be twenty-one fifty.”
I put the hundred on the counter and she set it up on the register, counted out the change in two piles, then watched me while I scraped it into my hand and shoved it in my pocket. “It’s a late night for you, too, I guess.”
“Some people have to work in this world.”
“That’s true.”
“Yes. It is.”
I picked up everything off the counter, walked back out to the truck, opened up the door, and threw everything in. Connor was still leaning against the window. Perry looked stricken and Wads was snoring again. Ruth sat stone-faced staring at nothing. Connor was looking at her intently, and it was obvious from the atmosphere in the cab that they had been arguing while I was in the shop.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Ruth glanced at me. “Nothing. Just drive, Carrey.”
I started up the truck and drove out of town into the early morning dark. We stopped at a spot overlooking the river and the fields and the school. I piled the food on the dash and the coffee made a welt of steam on the inside of the windshield. The five of us sat there eating and drinking coffee until the sun began to glow behind the mountains, until we could see the shape of the river and the tiny ripples in the current. I slowly drank down my coffee and shook the cup out the window. Then Connor handed us each a beer and I drank the first dawn drink of my life.
“Have you shown Carrey the covered bridge yet?” Wadsworth asked.
Ruth looked at him impassively. “Let’s leave it alone this time. Come on. Don’t give Connor ideas.”