Trailerpark

by Russell Banks

  Taking care with his trembling mouth to use the plastic straw correctly, he studied the woman’s large face for a few seconds, then seemed confused and withdrew his gaze, leaving her alone again.

  Gently, she stroked his narrow forehead and pushed his lank, white hair back. His eyes, watery and pale blue, closed, and then he was asleep.

  The next afternoon, a Sunday, Doctor Wickshaw arrived bearing a portable television set for Carol and immense good cheer. It was a bright, warm day, and the son and daughter-in-law were home, downstairs in the living room reading the Sunday papers and watching a football game on the large color TV. They had come upstairs that morning around nine, had taken a minute to study the old man in Carol’s silent presence, and had asked her if she wanted to go to church. She said no, thanks, and with clear relief, they returned to their quarters.

  Doctor Wickshaw, too, made a brief show of examining the patient, albeit with more precision than the old man’s survivors had. He listened to his heart, took his blood pressure, studied Carol’s notes on the man’s temperature, medication, bodily functions, and so on. Then, clamping shut his black leather bag, he placed it at the foot of the bed, sighed and observed that it wouldn’t hurt the old man if she took off for a few hours. “They’ll be here all afternoon,” he said, indicating with a nod toward the door the couple downstairs. “You must want a break.” He was wearing a brown corduroy shooting jacket with tan leather patches at the elbows and over his right shoulder, green twill trousers and a tattersall shirt. His short, white hair and beard bristled like antennae, and he rubbed his hands together happily.

  Carol thanked him for the use of the television set and said no, she’d be just as happy to stay here at the house. She might take a walk later. “You’ve already been plenty kind to me.”

  “No, no, you’re coming with me,” he said. “You need a break at least once a week or you’ll get wacky out here with no one but ol’ Harold for company.” He grinned, showing her his excellent teeth. “C’mon, now, go in there and change into some civilian clothes,” he said, pointing with his bearded chin toward her white uniform, “and I’ll wait for you outside. It’s a gorgeous day!” he exclaimed, darting a look out the window.

  “All right.”

  “That’s a good girl.” He left, and she turned, glancing as she departed from the room at the body of the old man in the bed. He was awake, blinking his watery eyes and looking at the space in the room she had just filled. He had a puzzled expression on his gray face, as if he were wondering where she had gone.

  She turned away from him, and when she went into her own bedroom, she closed the door.

  Doctor Wickshaw, or “Sam,” as he insisted on being called, talked steadily throughout the tour. He drove his huge, maroon Buick rapidly, nervously, waving his arms and pointing right and left at hills, trees and water as they passed Skitter Lake glistening in the sunlight and choppy in the breeze. They stopped for a minute at the Granite State Trailerpark so he could show her the remains of the old Indian fishing weirs, cruised through the center of town, with Sam enumerating, as they passed them, the several churches, the fire station, the police station, the town hall, the Hawthorne House, where, he told her, they often had first-class country and western bands playing, then stopped for a few moments at the park to watch a gang of teen-agers drink beer at a picnic table. On High Street, when they passed a large, white, Victorian house with a sign outside that said, SAMUEL F. WICKSHAW, M.D., the doctor slowed his car almost to a stop. Half the yard had been paved for cars, and the barn attached to the house in back had been converted into an office.

  “I could run a clinic from that building,” Sam said in a tone that was almost wistful.

  “Why don’t you?” Carol asked. It wasn’t difficult to admire the meticulous, white buildings, the white picket fence that ran along the front, the carefully tended flower gardens covered with wood chips and awaiting the arrival of winter. Evergreen shrubs along the front of the house had been covered with burlap, and she could see on the side porch several neatly stacked cords of fireplace wood.

  “Can’t get the help.”

  “Really?”

  “Would you believe that the woman who’s been my nurse and receptionist for over a year now was trained as a dietician? Bless her, but she’s fifty-nine and can’t do much more than open a can of Band-Aids for me.” He sighed and drove thoughtfully on.

  Back at the house, he pulled into the circular drive and parked. Carol reached for the door, but Sam turned toward her, and slinging his right arm over the seat back, he grabbed on to her shoulder with his hand. “Wait,” he said, suddenly serious.

  His hand against her dark blue wool sweater was pink and blotched with liver spots, and his nails were white and carefully trimmed. She looked at the hand with curiosity, as if a leaf had unexpectedly fallen from a tree and landed there.

  “I like you, Carol.” He cleared his throat. “You’re a fine nurse, and I like you as a person.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Sam.”

  “Yes. Sam.” With her right hand, she pulled the latch, and the heavy door of the Buick swung open.

  “Well,” he said, smiling broadly again and releasing her shoulder. “I just wanted you to know you’re among friends up here in God’s country.”

  “Yes. That’s … that’s nice of you.” She stepped free of the car and closed the door solidly, walked around in front of the car and gave a little wave good-bye.

  He rolled down his window and called to her. “Carol. We’ll talk some more. Eh?”

  “All right,” she said, her voice rising. “And thank you.”

  He waved, closed his window, and drove swiftly off. For a moment she stood by the front door of the house watching him. A crow called harshly from the open field behind the house, and she could hear the afternoon breeze push through a stand of tall pines by the road. Then she opened the door and went quickly upstairs to her room.

  Hurriedly, she shed her wool skirt, sweater and blouse and went to the closet and brought out her uniform, when, as if remembering something, she turned, padded barefoot across to the door that led to the bathroom and the room beyond, and opened it. She stood there in the doorway, holding her white uniform over one forearm, and looked at the man in the bed. His chest rose and fell slowly. His eyes were closed, and his mouth lay dry and open, his face slack as if being drawn by a great weight into the pillow. His gray hands twitched erratically above the sheet, his palms facing the ceiling, and he seemed to be pushing at a great, smothering blanket in his dreams.

  November arrived, and with it the deer-hunting season, and all day long Carol heard gunfire coming from the woods behind the house. She could look out the window of her room and see miles of forest, leafless oak and maple trees, and along the ridges in the distance, blue spruce and balsam. Now and then she saw a red-suited figure with a rifle emerge from the woods and cross the brown field toward her and disappear at the side of the house. It had once been a farmhouse, with barns and outbuildings, but no longer. Modern plumbing and heating systems, picture windows, a pine-paneled recreation room and a large, renovated kitchen with a breakfast nook and gleaming new appliances had eliminated from the interior of the house all traces of the families that had owned the house before Harold Dame. It sat on a rise of land two miles west of town. Looking east, you could see the spires of the churches and here and there among the trees shining bits of the mill pond and, a ways farther, the lake. Spotted in the distance on the hills and ridges were houses and barns, old farms, most of them no longer farms but the renovated residences of people who made their livings in town from selling insurance, real estate, automobiles, snowmobiles and housetrailers to their neighbors and each other.

  Though the weeks passed, Carol’s relations with her employers remained the same—precisely distant, perfunctory, and utterly routine. They entered the kitchen in the morning immediately after she had left it and a half-hour later departed for their office in town, returning
in the evening to prepare their dinner, which they ate in the recreation room in front of the television set. On some nights they went out for several hours, but most nights they remained at home retiring to their bedroom downstairs early. She became deeply familiar with the noises of their routines, as if the couple were performing them in front of her. When she heard a toilet flush, she knew which of the two had flushed it; when she heard the shower, she knew who was bathing; when late at night she heard the refrigerator door open and after a few seconds close, she knew who had wanted a midnight snack. Once a day now, usually at dinnertime, they entered the old man’s room and asked about his condition. She answered their simple questions briefly and in general terms, which she knew was how they wanted her to answer them, and then, satisfied, they disappeared again. The son, Ed Dame, was in his mid-thirties, thick-bodied and short, several inches shorter, in fact, than Carol, with thinning, reddish hair that he combed carefully sideways to cover his receding hairline. His nose was hooked and short, like his father’s, but his face was fleshy, freckled, and anxious. The daughter-in-law, Sue, also short and anxious-looking, was muscular and tight-bodied. Her dark hair she curled nightly in blue plastic rollers, Carol knew, for one night she had accidentally come upon her in the kitchen. Carol had come downstairs hungry, around one in the morning after the late movie, had walked into the darkened room and discovered Sue already at the refrigerator, bent over and poking through its bright, crowded interior. She was wearing a pale blue dressing gown, large puffy slippers, and several dozen blue plastic hair curlers.

  Startled, Sue jumped back, and the refrigerator door closed, leaving the room in darkness. For several seconds the two women stood silently in total darkness. Then Sue opened the refrigerator door again, casting a wide beam of light over the floor, and said in an even voice, “I’ll be out in a moment.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carol said, and quickly went back upstairs.

  The old man’s condition had not changed for the first few weeks, but around midmonth, as the weather grew colder and day after day was overcast, windy, with scattered flecks of snow spitting from the low sky, he seemed to weaken somewhat. He woke from his sleep less frequently, and when he woke he simply gazed at the ceiling for a few moments and then drifted away again. There was an IV set up for him, now, with plastic tubes leading away from his body as well. Carol performed her duties carefully, mechanically, gracefully, as if the only sentient being in the room were she, but every now and then she would catch herself standing at the foot of the old man’s bed staring at his withered, expressionless face. It was practically the face of a mummy now, a face long vacated, and yet she stared at it as if waiting for a response to her presence. But none came.

  Sam Wickshaw telephoned daily, at first strictly on the pretext of checking on the condition of his patient, his old friend and hunting companion, Harold Dame, but then, after a few weeks, it seemed he called to report on his own day’s activities. He described the patients he had seen that day, whether at his office in town or at the hospital in Concord, where he made early morning rounds; he referred to several real estate deals he was involved with, described his difficulties winterizing his summer cottage at Lake Winnepesaukee (mentioning his friend, and hers, Doctor Furman Bisher from Brookline, Massachusetts), and told her with great pleasure that he had bought a snowmobile, despite his wife’s objections; and in late November, four days before Thanksgiving, he described to her in great detail how, that very morning, he had shot and killed an eight-point, one-hundred-fifty-pound deer. “It was up behind Shackford Corners, a few miles from where you are,” he told her. “I was up on a ledge, a whole lot of larch trees around me, and all of a sudden, there he was, big as life, down below me tiptoeing through a grove of young ash trees. I gut-shot him, and he took off. Actually, even though I was above him a ways, I had a lousy shot,” he explained. “Anyhow, luckily he cut around to my right, and when I came off the ledge, there he was again, so I got a second shot at him, and that time, he went down for good!”

  They talked. She explained how she herself didn’t like hunting or guns, but she didn’t judge those who did, and he said he sure was glad of that. Sometimes he asked her questions about herself, her family, her ex-husband, her ambitions, and she answered his questions. Not in detail, however, but briefly and, as much as possible, in general terms, which she knew was how he wanted her to answer them.

  Once a week, he drove out to the house and examined the patient. The examination usually took less than five minutes, but his visits took most of the afternoon, for the two of them talked, Sam doing most of the talking. Sometimes they walked down the road a ways or drove to a particularly scenic spot that Sam wanted to reveal to her. And inevitably, when they returned in his car to the house, Sam turned somber and tried for a moment to tell Carol how much and in what ways he liked her. Each time, Carol was able to ease out of the conversation without doing more than frustrating the man, so that, with a wave and a cheery remark, he could pretend to himself that he had never said anything that could be misconstrued as inappropriate.

  There was a Sunday, however, when it did not go so smoothly. Carol had slipped out of the car, crossed in front of it and waved good-bye, and this time he had stepped out also.

  “Wait a moment,” he said seriously.

  She stopped and stood before him, the same height as he but a larger person with a larger face, so that next to her he seemed suddenly fragile.

  “Carol, I want to suggest something to you.”

  She smiled and reached out with one hand and patted his shoulder. “I know you like me as a person, Sam. I like you, too. Let’s keep it that way,” she said.

  “No, no, no, that’s not what I meant. What I mean is, I … ah… I’d like for you to work for me. I’d like you to stay up here, after Harold … after Harold is gone, and work for me. I like you … oh, hell, I know how that sounds. But I want you to work for me.”

  Carol said nothing. She studied the man’s earnest, red face, as if searching for a lie.

  “Well, you think about it,” he blurted. “You think about it.” He got back into the car and closed the door. Then he cranked down the window. “You think about it,” he said. He started the motor, dropped the car into gear and drove swiftly away, exhaust fumes trailing behind.

  The night before Thanksgiving, Harold Dame the real estate man died. At ten-thirty, Carol walked from her room to the old man’s room, and as soon as she crossed the threshold, she knew he was dead. She had learned to hear his breathing without having to listen for it, so that when his breathing ceased, she knew. In the darkness, she reached forward and felt at his neck for his pulse, then turned and went back to her own room. She was in her nightgown, ready for sleep, with her bed already turned down. The portable television Sam had brought her was still on, and blue-gray figures flickered incoherently in front of her, as she sat down on the bed and picked up the telephone. She held the receiver in her lap for a moment and stared at the television screen. Finally, she dialed, and when Sam answered, she told him. “Harold died, Sam.”

  “Well. When, Carol?”

  “In the last half-hour. I just went in to check him.” Her voice was flat and without expression.

  “Well. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “What about Ed and Sue? Do they know?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll be right out there. I’ll handle everything, Carol, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said.

  “Listen, Carol, why don’t you come in here tonight, stay here with us. I’ll bring you back in with me. We have plenty of extra room,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to have Thanksgiving dinner with us tomorrow,” he said in a thin voice, as if talking to someone whose mind were already made up.

  “All right. Thank you, Sam.”

  “You will? Wonderful! I’ll be there in five minutes!”

  She said good-bye and hung up. Then she rose from the bed and switch
ed off the television, crossed the room and sat by the window, peering into the cold, familiar, New Hampshire darkness.

  Principles

  1

  EVERY MAN OUGHT TO HAVE A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. That’s what Claudel Bing believed, and you might think that was his philosophy of life, but it wasn’t. It was only a principle. It was like his father’s principles, which people used to joke about and say were his philosophy of life, but they weren’t. He used to tell his kids and Claudel’s mother and anyone else who got him to talk seriously about life, “There are three things a man should never do. Swear in front of women, throw stones, and spit.” But you won’t find philosophy there. You won’t find anything there that will get a man through a time of great suffering or moral confusion.

  But when you’re a kid you try to figure out your mother’s and your father’s philosophy, and you do it constantly, until either you’ve got it and can accept it for your own or cast it away, or else you never get it and you end up sharing it with your mother and father anyway without even knowing it—which to Claudel seemed a shame. Because a man ought to be able to choose his own philosophy of life. That was another one of his principles.

  Anyhow, for years he had struggled to figure out his father’s philosophy of life, but all he could come up with were principles. Like the rule against spitting. What Claudel was looking for was something like Chisholm’s Law, the one that says if things can get worse they will. Then, he figured, he could work out his own principles. A man can’t have principles, he reasoned, unless he’s got himself a philosophy of life.

  It wasn’t until he was nineteen and had finished basic training in the army and was shipping out for Vietnam—that was in 1965 or ’66, when things were just starting to heat up over there—that he finally figured out his father’s philosophy of life. It was his mother who gave him the information that tipped him off to it. He had taken a little kidding in basic training from the guys, especially the guys from the cities who had never heard of a man with the name of Claudel so they used to kid him about it, “Why not Claude?” and, “Claudelle, you sure that’s a man’s name?” He could never come back at them with a smart or truthful answer, so when he was home on furlough before shipping out, he asked his mother one day at breakfast how come she had named him Claudel.