Volt: Stories

by Alan Heathcock

  The lights in the main room were still on, Wesley’s letters strewn across the kitchen table. Vernon picked one of the children’s drawings off the floor, the hooded swordsman beneath the rainbow. He ran his fingers along the arc of the rainbow, then set the drawing on the table and crossed to the cupboards.

  He filled a glass with water. The kitchen window looked out over the lot behind the complex, an auto yard bathed in a greenish light. The wind bowed the power wires. Light posts rocked. Vernon dug aspirin from his pocket, swallowed them with the water. He retrieved his suit jacket from the front door, rolled up his tie, and stuck it in his pocket. He switched off the lights as he walked back down the hall to lean in the bedroom door.

  Vernon had come here to open Wesley’s letters, hoping Martha would forgive him and come back home and be his wife again. But she’d been right: even opening the letters had not been for her. Watching Martha sleep, her lips parted as if singing, and still in her clothes, in her nest of covers, Vernon felt more love for her than he’d ever felt for anything. So much of a life they’d shared, so many laughs, so many touches. But there were things people should never share, and he and Martha had those things between them, too.

  He slunk back into the kitchen, studied the letters on the table. He thought of leaving Martha a note. But even if not spoken, everything had finally been said. He folded up Wesley’s drawing of the egg-soldier flailing above the skillet, tucked it into his pocket.

  The little fountain gurgled by the picture window. Outside, the sycamore limbs tossed and whirled. Vernon crossed the dark room, put on his hat and overcoat. When he opened the door, light slashed in from the hall, and he quickly stepped out to shut the door behind him.

  The roads were slick and the one-hour drive from the city took two. At the Krafton exit, daylight flashed off the corrugated walls of the old McCallister mill. Vernon surveyed the sparkling land, playing in his mind the knobs beyond the mill, naming who lived on what road, knowing them by their fields, by their barns and kitchens and drawing rooms, knowing kids from parents, aunts from cousins, naming them each by their pains and praises. There wasn’t a shadow in this town over which, at some point, he hadn’t prayed.

  Cattle huddled steaming by Trace Mattison’s fence. Fields of winter wheat flanked the road, humped white land receding into a spread of homes, the Ollies and Nordquists, the Klangmans and two families of Borgs, smoke from their chimneys staining the blue.

  Vernon slowed as he drove the long hill down into the strip of brownstones, cars parked in the ice-tracked shade between Freely’s Diner and Freely’s General. John Erickson’s rusted Bronco. Gage Trudeau’s pickup with the jib crane in the bed. Stu Bacon’s old Charger with the dent in the door.

  He trolled by the SuperAmerica, a plow filling at the pumps, Mavis Strandhort in his orange cap, a cigarette in the gap of his beard, raising a hand to him. Vernon waved back. On the right, he passed the Old Fox Tavern, its lot empty but for a black Ford up on a jack and missing a tire. Then Vernon clipped over the freight tracks, the road ahead clear and straight.

  He sped faster, the power wires blurring against the peerless sky. Soon came the crooked elm alone on the ridge, then the windbreak of pine, the headstones glistening in the graveyard.

  Someone had plowed the drive. Vernon eased down to park at the parsonage. He stared at the big house, a light left on in the kitchen, thought of his bed inside. But the day was bright and he regarded the sunlight on the sanctuary’s stained glass. He trudged across the yard to the chapel, unlocked the door, clomped up the stairs.

  He loved the smell of this place, the scent of pine cleaner and old books. So much he’d miss. In the foyer hung a bulletin board covered in paper snowflakes, notices of choir programs, folks selling tack and cordwood and bluetick pups. Vernon took Wesley’s drawing from his pocket, cleared a place center-square of the board, and pinned it up. Then he removed his wet shoes and pushed through the heavy doors and into the sanctuary.

  Sunlight blazed through the stained glass, a mottle of colors cast over the pews. Shards of blues and purples. A glowing white dove carrying an olive branch. Greens and reds of Eden, the trees and fruit bright as jewels. A white lamb in a dark field, shepherds peering up at angels in bands of gold.

  To the right were stairs. In socked feet, Vernon climbed into the balcony, a sloping box of four pews. He sat at the top and gazed out over the room. Next Saturday night all of these pews would be packed and they’d speak of him as if he were already gone and then there’d be a vote though none was needed.

  Vernon suddenly felt buoyant, filled with the air of relief, the peace one feels when after much struggle and deliberation a course has, at long last, been set. The room was warm. Vernon slid gingerly down to lie in the pew, snugged his coat to his chin, and turned his hat over his eyes.

  Vernon was awakened by the organ. He sat up, squinting, waiting for his eyes to take focus. Down beside the dais, Dillard Hurstenberg sat at the organ in the same green jacket, same skinny tie he wore at yesterday’s service. Beneath the bass pedal’s hum flourished a series of trilling notes. The music crackled, blossoming in gentle bursts. An eruption of song, whole chords rising octaves, higher, louder, Dillard’s body hunched but his arms alive.

  Vernon had never heard this song. The music brimmed inside him. He found himself standing. He took the balcony stairs down into the main room. The music swelled, the sound vibrating through the floor. Vernon walked the side aisle, Dillard too possessed by his playing to notice.

  Vernon stood behind the boy. His mother had died a year ago. An overdose. Then, one morning, Dillard was there in the pews, staring up at the cross hung above the choir loft. Others didn’t care for him, said they didn’t like his playing. Vernon allowed they could argue he was wild, say he’d dropped out of school, already been twice in prison, still drank and partied and chased after girls. But no honest man could argue the boy couldn’t play; Lord, he made that organ wail, his eyes shut, fingers clawing over the keys.

  All at once the bombast broke to silence, a complete and breathless hush. Dillard’s hands dropped into his lap. His head swung low, his back shuddering. Vernon realized he was crying. He stepped forward and set a hand upon Dillard’s shoulder.

  The boy flinched, startled, whirled about on the bench. “Pastor,” he huffed, and his shoulders fell slack. Dillard wiped his cheeks. “Thought I was alone.”

  “No,” Vernon said.

  His red eyes batted like those of a man slapped awake. “It’s all right. I mean, I’m all right.”

  “You sure?”

  Dillard sniffled, shrugged.

  Vernon sat on the organ bench beside him, could feel the boy’s shoulder against his own.

  “Pastor?” Dillard said.

  “Yeah?”

  Dillard glanced back over his shoulder, across the sanctuary, out over all of the empty pews. He hadn’t shaved and a bruise on his cheek showed through his whiskers. “I just feel so bad everywhere else,” he said. “But here I’m good. Here I’m all right.”

  Vernon slid his arm around Dillard’s shoulders. He gave the boy’s shoulder a squeeze, leaned into him. “What was that you were playing just now?”

  “That?” Dillard said. “Oh, just letting off some steam.”

  “You wrote it?”

  “Wrote?” he said. “Just played it, you know.”

  “It was beautiful,” Vernon said. “It was about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Dillard smirked. “You’re crazy.”

  “Can you play it again?”

  “You want to hear it again?”

  “I want you to play it for everyone next Sunday. We’ll have a crowd for it. I promise it’ll be a crowd out the door.”

  “You are crazy.”

  Vernon nodded. “Maybe.”

  The daylight was warm on his back, and Vernon didn’t want to let loose of the boy’s shoulders, and Dillard didn’t move.

  “Pastor?”

  “Yeah?”<
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  Dillard’s head was bowed, his face twisted in thought. For a time the boy was silent, and then he began to cry again. “It’s ’cause of me, ain’t it?” he muttered.

  Vernon knew what he meant. “No.”

  “You leaving, though, ain’t you?”

  Vernon stared up at a window lit in amber, Jesus serving the fish and loaves on a Galilean hillside. “Every day’s a new batch of crosses,” he finally said. “All of us taking our turn.” Vernon watched Dillard until the boy gave him his eyes. “Christ didn’t just die for our sins, son,” Vernon said. “Christ taught us how to be crucified. How to go off into the tomb. But then, after a while, that rock rolls away and the sun shines in and you get to go live some more.”

  Dillard touched his own lips. He wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve. “Pastor?” he said, quiet.

  “Yeah?”

  “It don’t have a name.”

  “A name?”

  “The song.”

  “Oh.”

  “For the bulletin, I mean. How can I put it in the bulletin if it don’t have a name?”

  Vernon thought for a moment. “It’s your song, son,” he said. “It’s not for me to name.”

  VOLT

  The calf’s black tongue hung from its muzzle, its white hide shining in the pale sunrise. Helen Farraley crouched high on the hillside, batted flies from its vacant opal eye. She’d gotten the call deep in the night, the old man’s wife jabbering in ragged English. Something about something in the field. Something about killing. Helen had imagined the worst, was disgusted to find she’d been awakened over a dead calf.

  “Some animal get it?” she asked Moss Strussveld. The old farmer wore a straw hat, his collar buttoned at his throat. “Some dogs maybe?”

  Moss raised a shaking finger to tap his dentures. “No bite.” His voice was thin and steeped in the motherland. “Animal will bite.”

  Helen lay a palm to the calf’s throat, its meat still warm. The old man was right. No marks. “How about disease? Some illness?”

  His eyes snapped to her. “My cows are well.”

  “Ain’t it possible? The water what it was?”

  “My cows are well,” he said, again.

  A lone cow lingered, skittishly regarding her, the rest of the herd down below the flood line, where the grassy hillside became mangy ocher dirt. Helen eyed the cow, peered out over the valley. In the far distance, the brownstones of town were scratches in the shadowed land, the sun not yet risen above the hills to wake the lows. Three months since the flood and the world still reeked of silt.

  Helen stood, hooked her thumbs on her gun belt. “Listen,” she said. “Got to call the vet. Not the police. Understand?”

  The old man wagged his finger. “No vet,” he replied. “Marta say listen, Moss. I hear. Three nights I hear. Some messing been in my cows.”

  Helen found herself unable to look at him. She eyed his place on the ridge, his perfect red barn and little stone house. “This ain’t my job,” she said. “I deal in people. People, not animals.”

  The old man said nothing more. He clasped his hands behind his back and hobbled uphill toward his tractor. Helen watched him struggle to climb into the seat and thought to offer a hand. But she’d worked the flood, had learned there was a limit to the help some would suffer from others.

  The wind buffeted the cruiser and Helen woke with a gasp, as if sleep had dragged her under water. The tension wires thrummed overhead. The wipers rattled against the windshield. She batted her eyes, and came to focus on the quarry pond far below, the dark water riffling. Out the side window, the high grass lashed the feet of the electrical tower, its girders swaying, ever so slightly, against the weltering sky.

  Thunder clapped and shook the earth and then the car was engulfed, rain thrashing the windows. By the dashboard clock, she’d slept two hours. Two hours in a blink. Two hours like nothing. Since the flood, Helen was always tired, as if the weeks of fighting water had spent years of energy.

  Watching the rain assault the windows, she recalled standing beside Walt Freely in his store, the first of the flood sluicing down Elm Avenue, brown water purling over the tiled floor, over the tops of their shoes, rain pouring then no different from today.

  “You fetch the animals,” Freely said, his old eyes somber. “I’ll set to building the ark.”

  The storm passed quickly. The high sun pierced the wake of sheer clouds. Helen’s cell phone rang. She checked the number, saw it was Walt Freely, the town’s mayor and her boss. She let it go to voice mail, then, after a minute, listened to his message. Freely sounded perturbed, asking where she was, saying the power had been knocked out in town.

  Helen couldn’t see a way around it and drove off the quarry road and down into the flats, the asphalt tricked and buckled, ditch banks crumbled, houses crooked on their foundations with grime-splattered clapboards painted with slogans to warn off looters. The pavement steamed. Branches strewn everywhere. A power pole leaned out over Elm Avenue, held up only by its wires.

  Helen turned onto the strip. Folks congregated on the road between the three-story brownstones that housed the diner and grocery, both shops dark, the grocery store’s front window gone, glass glittering on the walkway. Walt Freely, a gaunt old man in a nylon jacket that read Freely’s across the breast, stood at her window before she could open the cruiser’s door.

  “Where you been?” he snapped.

  Helen squinted up through the window. He’d been this way since the flood. Helen just took it all.

  Freely motioned at the little crowd. “These folks pay your salary.” His eyes strayed to the glass on the sidewalk, and for a moment Helen thought he might cry. Then he thumped the cruiser’s roof. “Do your job,” he barked, and stalked off toward his store.

  Helen scanned the stolid faces. Ted Yoder and Leonard Bateman. Carol Murphy, who waited tables at the diner. A few guys from the Havesty Construction crew. None smiling, none giving her more than a glance.

  Helen stayed in the car, dialed information to put her through to the power company. She worked her way through recorded messages and garbled music, was eventually told by a smoky-voiced woman the problem was a substation, the power out for most of the county. She couldn’t estimate how long it’d take to get it all back up and running, couldn’t say how soon they’d repair the power poles, though they’d surely start in more populated areas.

  Helen called Mel Smith, a local handyman, and asked him to come right off to fix the storefront. She phoned the Pendelak twins, who were good ball players and popular in school, told them to come into town with a few classmates, saying the town was torn up again and everybody needed to pitch their part.

  Sweat trickled down Helen’s ribs, a line of damp marking the shelf of her stomach. She left the car and crossed the road and the walkway of broken glass to enter the grocery.

  The aisle closest to the window was littered with glass and wilted magazines blown from their racks. Passing the aisles, empty of people, sparsely stocked, Helen’s thoughts veered to the senior home where her mother lived, and she imagined her mother, who the day before had looked upon her like a stranger and refused to speak.

  Helen found Freely at the butcher counter. The old man peered into the case, at the neat piles of chops and steaks, mounds of sausages, catfish and perch laid on garnished beds of ice.

  “It’s to be dark awhile,” Helen told him.

  Freely didn’t turn. His head slowly shook, his eyes trained on the meat. “It’ll go bad,” he said. “It’ll all go bad, won’t it?”

  Helen held the door for a medic wheeling a woman out to an ambulance parked under the portico. In the senior home’s foyer, Helen passed a moonfaced man with long black braids inspecting an oxygen tank, a dozen or more tanks lined along the front window. In the back of the room, away from the window’s heat, elderly men and women sat waiting in a row of metal chairs, each gripping an orange or red popsicle in an age-spotted hand.

  The halls were dark and nearly
silent. Where doors were open, sunlight cut into the hall. Helen entered her mother’s room and found her mother sitting in a wheelchair. She was dressed in a pale-blue cardigan, her hands in her lap. Her face turned to Helen, but she said nothing. Helen searched her mother’s eyes, which were unfocused in a way that made Helen wonder if she’d gone blind.

  Helen wheeled her mother out. An exit in the back led onto a little patio overlooking a clover meadow. Higher aground, this area had been spared by the flood. Plastic pots marked the patio’s four corners, pansies wet and drooping, mud trails leaking from the bottoms.

  Helen held her mother’s hand and more than anything wanted her mother to turn and see her, for them to talk as they once had. It’d been a year since Helen moved her to this home. A year of deterioration, her limbs weakening, her mind slipping. Helen’s heart wrenched, overwhelmed by the guilt in hoping it’d all soon be over.

  The door opened and out stepped Sally Winkowski, who ran the home, a woman just a few years older than Helen, her hair dyed the color of beets. In her hands she held a limp box of popsicles.

  Sally pulled a popsicle from the box. “They’re gonna melt,” she said, offering it to Helen.

  Helen took it, thanked her. “How’s things?”

  Sally smiled. “We’re scrambling.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  Sally patted Helen’s shoulder. “We’re fine.” She pulled another popsicle from the box. “For Mama?”

  Helen took it from Sally. She tore the paper. The popsicle was bright red and she worked her mother’s fingers to hold the stick. Her mother’s eyes drew onto her fist. Helen considered what it would mean to forget a life, the slate cleaned of all notions of good and bad. To be innocent again. Her mother’s arm lifted and Helen watched her lick the popsicle, her eyes widening like a child’s, her tongue lapping the sugar put onto her lips.

  Sunlight bled through Helen’s eyelids. She’d parked in the electrical tower’s latticed shade, but now the sun had shifted. Helen lolled her head against the cruiser’s bright window, her eyes opened to power lines bowing tower to tower then vanishing over the rim of the hill only to reappear, far below, to span the quarry pond. Sunlight dully flashed on the pond’s storm-stirred water. Trucks parked down there, kids come to swim.