Burl had told William T. to wear earplugs, that he would ruin his hearing cutting his own wood. Burl had told William T. he should never cut wood alone, up there in the Adirondacks like that. The chain saw. One misstep.
But William T. had been earplugless and alone with his chain saw all those years despite the danger. He conjured it now, the September Adirondack woods alive with color, leaves fluttering down about his shoulders, drifting onto the round cut chunks of wood in the bed of the truck. Thunk and thunk and thunk. He should have worn earplugs all these years, but he never had. He had never had the sharp hearing of his son and Burl in the first place.
Wet wood hissed and spat.
William T.’s hearing was nothing special, the workaday hearing of an ordinary man.
The answering machine sat next to him on the little single-drawer table that held the charts and maps and route schedules for all the Dairylea haulers. The answering machine sat quietly, the miniature screen flashing _____,_____,_____, which meant that there were more messages than it could display. There was a limit to the number of messages that the answering machine could contemplate answering. The answering machine was weary, too.
William T. pressed the blue button.
His own voice, the way it used to sound, boomed up into the silent air of the kitchen.
Greetings! You have reached the home of Genghis Khan, king of cats! Leave your number!
Click. A lone oak leaf hung on to the scrawny branch of a chunk of wood next to the woodstove, waiting its turn. All fall it had refused to detach itself, refused to fall when it was time, and now here it was. William T. pressed the blue button again.
Greetings! You have reached the home of Genghis Khan, king of cats! Leave your number!
“William T.?”_____
“William T.? It’s Burl. Are you there?”_____
“William T.? I’m calling to wish you a happy fiftieth.”
Go to hell, Burl, William T. thought. If this were William T.’s life, his real life, the life he used to live, Eliza would have baked a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. William J. and Sophie would have come by bearing the tiniest possible gift in the largest possible box wrapped in Happy Hanukkah paper. That was what they always did, William J. and Sophie. Burl would have driven down after dinner and had a slice of cake with them all. Eliza would have made sure he had a candle on his piece because he and William T. had been born in the same month in the same year and there was no one in Burl’s house to bake him a cake but Burl himself. Everyone would have sat around the table talking while William T. put Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash and Lucinda Williams on the stereo with impunity, no one protesting or laughing at his musical taste—too sad! too slow! too country!—the way they usually did, because it was his birthday; his birthday, his one day of the year.
William T. hit the stop button. _____, _____, ______.
He sat in the kitchen chair and listened to the hissing of the wet wood until it, too, had burned itself up, and what passed for dawn in this cloud world was upon him. Then he pulled off his bloodstained blue flannel shirt and put on a clean green one, not stopping to ease it over his throbbing arm, and headed out into the still air to his truck.
WILLIAM T. HAD TO GO SOMEWHERE, BUT where was there to go?
He could not bear the thought of getting in the truck and driving around North Sterns, across Route 12, past the old Welsh cemetery where William J. was buried next to his grandparents. Then down and over the hills that led back to his white frame house on Jones Hill, with the broken-down barn put to shame by the sturdy one. The flock would be muttering behind the latched door. The one unwooded field, unplowed and unsown this past summer, would be ugly in the cold early-morning air, straggly remnants of clover and weeds like silent accusations: What kind of man are you?
Nor could he bear the thought of the gorge. Once upon a time he had loved the Remsen Gorge. Once upon a time he had taught his son to skip rocks in its dark waters. Clear dark water running like a song over flat rocks, pine-covered bluffs looming up on either side. At each turn another North Sterns house tucked away like a secret. He had kept the boy out of school eight mornings in a row, teaching him to find the flat, smooth rocks that were the best skippers.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones, is there an explanation for William J.’s continual tardiness?
The two of them had taken off their socks and shoes and rolled up their pants and waded out into the freezing waters of the gorge, picking up flat oval rocks and arcing them over the dark water. William J. had been full of chatter, those mornings.
“Dad. True or false: Whippoorwills can call over two hundred times in a row.”
“False.”
“True! One last night called two hundred twenty-eight times in a row! I counted.”
“I didn’t hear a damn thing.”
“Well, I did,” William J. had said. “And my hearing’s better than yours.”
The Sterns Elementary office lady had been a woman whose eyes were as green and unblinking as Genghis’s.
William J. overslept this morning, which is something he badly needed to do, so I let him.
William J. was in dire straits last night with a cough and I kept him home this morning for observation.
William J.’s cat, Genghis Khan, threw up his breakfast and William J. was very concerned about him.
William J. missed the bus this morning. Can you blame him? 6:45 A.M., that bus comes.
Sorry. William T. Jones.
That was long ago, back when William T. had a wife, back when he had a son, back when he was the king of the world and Genghis the king of cats. Now he leaned his head back against the seat, frigid air pulling itself through the truck. In one window and out the other, sweeping its way across his still form.
Where to?
Work?
What the hell. Dairylea was no worse than anywhere else. ’Tis enough, ’twill suffice. A line from his high school English class, something that had been stuck in his mind for thirty-two years now.
William T. put the truck in gear and drove, passed the Twin Churches on the left and Nine Mile Trailer Park on the right. A dot high in the sky caught William T.’s eye, and he pulled the truck off the side of the road. Turned it off. Got out and lay himself back on the hood, which was warm from the exertions of the engine. High in the sky the dot circled, around and around in a lazy spiral.
William T. waited for the eagle to descend, waited for him to tire of his endless wheeling flight. There was no wind down on the ground where William T. waited, but he supposed that it all might be different up where the eagle soared. The eagle looked as if he were expending no effort. He looked as if he had been set upon the surface of the air and was meant to be there, as if he were living the life he was born to live, incapable of wanting any other kind of life.
Was it possible that the eagle had memories? Did he think back to a day when he had been happy, happier than he was now, and did he feel in his eagle bones a desire to return to that day?
Forget it, William T. thought. He sent the thought telepathically to the eagle: Forget it. That day is gone.
William T. got back in his truck, kept on through Floyd and took a right at the stop sign, then skirted the edge of Rome. He fumbled in his pockets for thruway change so that when the time came he would be ready.
Burl, man of forethought, would have appreciated that.
Burl had a coin organizer affixed to his dashboard. Quarters and dimes and nickels arrayed in rows, heads out.
The thruway was narrow and straight, a ribbon of gray taking him past Vernon and Verona and Cazenovia and Chittenango, straight on toward Syracuse and straight on after that to Pennsylvania and Ohio and Kansas and Colorado and Nevada and California, a thousand places William T. had never been.
He nearly missed the exit for the office, then was braking for the steep curve at the bottom of the ramp.
“K’you!” the toll clerk boomed.
This toll clerk, with his long gray hair in a ponyt
ail, always boomed his thank-you. He snapped the ticket from William T.’s hand with a deft athletic twist of his wrist. That was his way. William J. and William T. had long admired this quirk. They had nicknamed him the Snapper. They had marveled together over the years how the Snapper had never been afflicted with carpal tunnel syndrome, that strange malady that so many people seemed to be afflicted with these days. You saw them everywhere, white splints holding their forearms rigid.
Not the Snapper. He was a man of strength, a man of perseverance.
Was it possible that the Snapper was also a man of no sleep? He was there, in the same tollbooth, day or night, whenever
William T. drove through. Once, years ago when William J. had been in the truck with him, William T. had given the Snapper eighty-five cents in pennies as a test of his character. The Snapper had not batted an eye. Counted out every last cent. “K’you!”
The Snapper is still here, William J. The Snapper is still going strong.
The office loomed, a long low building of brick and darkened glass. His cubicle waited for him, his chair and the computer with its monitor that had never been “booted up,” as he’d heard people say.
“I am a man of the north woods, and as such I shall remain computerless!” he had said to Ray and the rest of them the day it was installed. Ray had given him a look, but everyone else had laughed.
He parked in the lot, in the back row. That way he could postpone it a little more. Stretch his legs.
The receptionist looked up from the computer screen she was studying so intently. William T. had never seen a circular desk until he’d seen hers, a barge anchored in the middle of the lobby.
“How’s your circular desk?” he said.
She looked up.
“William T. Jones!” she said. “I was afraid you were never coming back. I mean, I know you’re a telecommuter but still.”
Telecommuter. William T. Jones, telecommuter.
“Can’t get rid of me that easily.”
William T. listened to his own voice, sounding the way it used to sound, back when he was king of the world. The receptionist smiled. Long ago she had taken a shine to him.
“Let me ask you something,” William T. said. “Do you get lonely? Sitting here at your circular desk in the middle of nowhere?”
“In the middle of nowhere? In the middle of the lobby, William T.,” the receptionist said. “People are in and out all day long.”
William T. realized that he could not remember her name.
“What’s your name?”
Her smile faded. “Tammy.”
“Tammy what?”
“Tammy Terwilliger,” she said. “You know that, William T. You always tease me about my name. ‘What were your parents thinking, naming you Tammy Terwilliger,’ you always say. You taught me the word alliteration. The T of Tammy and the T of Terwilliger, that’s alliteration.”
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. Jesus Christ. How could I forget a name like Tammy Terwilliger?”
She studied him, her fingers tapping idly at the polished surface of the circular desk.
“You’ve been through a lot, is how,” she said.
William T. stared at his leather driving gloves and willed the tears away. Tammy Terwilliger looked as if she might cry, too.
“William T., I’m so sorry about William J. They should’ve had a signal at that crossing.”
“It wasn’t a crossing.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, the train should have blown its horn then.” “It did.”
She was silent.
“He was deaf. He couldn’t hear it.”
She nodded, that’s right, William J. was deaf. But he didn’t used to be. He used to be a man of hearing, of music, of sound. When William J. had first started driving a truck for Dairylea, seven years ago, Tammy Terwilliger had gushed over him. He’s the image of you, William T., with that height and those hazel eyes, she had said. Except that he can sing. My Lord, that boy can sing.
“How’s your wife doing, William T.?”
“Eliza can’t get warm. She’s cold all the time.”
Tammy frowned and shook her head and stacked and restacked a pile of yellow sticky notepads. William T. leaned against her desk, looking at his soft calfskin gloves.
“My wife gave me these,” he said.
“They’re gorgeous. Classy.”
“Ex-wife, I mean. She gave a pair to William J., too, when he started driving.”
Tammy nodded. “He had a beautiful voice, you know,” she said. “That man could sing.”
“He could, couldn’t he?”
“I miss the sound of it on the phone when he used to call in. If I asked him to sing he would. He might have been the only hauler out there who would sing ‘Kumbaya’ over the phone to me. He used to say it was the most harmonizeable song in the world.”
Might have been. Used to.
“Did you know that he gave me a string of wind chimes for Christmas one year?” Tammy said. “He made them himself.”
She bent down to the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet as if to produce them, but William T. held up his hand—stop— and she sat back up. William T. looked at the computer in front of Tammy, her stack of files, her mug of coffee, the pink sweater draped on the back of her chair.
“What do you do all day?” he said.
She looked at him patiently.
“I mean, how do you get through the day?”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “Well, let me tell you, William T.,” she said. “I play a lot of solitaire.”
She beckoned him over to the desk and pointed to her computer screen. There was a report of some kind on it, a calibration chart like the kind that William T. used to fill out by hand late at night in the kitchen, Genghis on his lap, Eliza and William J. asleep upstairs.
“Now watch,” Tammy whispered. She clicked her mouse and the calibration chart rolled up and out of sight, to be replaced with a solitaire game already in progress. Tammy put her finger to her lips.
“See?” she said. “While the cat’s away, the mouse will play solitaire.”
She laughed. William T. looked at the screen, its bright cards in their unearthly colors radiating out at him.
“Is Genghis surviving without William J.?”
“Genghis is the king of cats, Tammy.”
“I ask because you always told me that he just loved William J.”
He had. As a kitten Genghis had spent whole afternoons hiding and pouncing on William J.’s bed. His son’s bed. His son’s room. His son’s bureau, which he and Eliza had refinished before William J. was born. William T. could still smell the fumes.
Had that caused it? Had an errant turpentine fume hitched itself to Eliza’s soft breath, wound its way down her throat and infiltrated every cell of her being, invaded his son’s unborn brain and caused something not to mesh, something not to weave together in the right pattern, a two-strand braid, too easily come undone, so that one day twenty-seven years later his child had woken up and not been able to hear? Cogan’s syndrome. Autoimmune ear disorder. Lack of inner-ear vestibular function.
Just after their son had lost his hearing, William T. had gotten in his truck and driven up to Sophie and William J.’s apartment to see if William J. wanted to get some breakfast, maybe go for a ride, look at chain saws with him. Sophie had been at work already, beginning her morning shift at Queen of the Frosties. William J. was sitting on the back step of the duplex. Since he had lost his hearing he couldn’t hear William T. drive up.
Once William J. would have come around the house at the first sound of William T.’s truck.
William T. had driven up the driveway and turned off the ignition, gotten out with his keys dangling in his hand, gone around the side of the house. He had watched William J. from the shadow of the overhanging lilac, sitting on the steps surrounded by hollow tubes of tempered steel, brass rods. His file. His electronic tuner. His son had
picked up a tube, a length of rod, and struck them with a fork. Looked at them. Inclined his head. Struck them again.
Then he had put them down and just sat there.
Tammy was gazing at him. He had never seen her lose her patience, even when Ray was storming the office making his impossible demands. Tammy put her hand on his.
“Take care now, William T.”
He walked behind her desk and through the doors and into the office area. It didn’t used to be this way. Back when William T. was a child, and his father worked the farm he’d grown up on, Dairylea had had no office building other than a couple of rooms they rented at the back of the Sterns Fire Department. His father had been one of the original founding members of the cooperative. A truck had come daily to pick up the silver milk cans. Nothing was automated the way it was now. The barn had been dark and quiet at dawn and dusk, his father visible from the house, moving back and forth, outlined momentarily in each dimly lighted barn window. When the chores were done he would come in the back way, into the mudroom, and wash his hands and head with Lava soap before coming into the kitchen.
William T. sat down at his desk. The hauler schedules were waiting to be filled in. How blank they were, how overwhelmingly blank. Columns and blanks all needing his pen moving over the surface of the paper, putting order to the chaos that was out there. Notes scribbled on scraps of paper littered the surface of his desk, each one ending with a phone number or an exclamation mark.
Where to begin?
One of the Pennsylvania plants was under construction; they couldn’t handle their usual amount. A full load in Vermont had turned up bloody. One farmer out of ten, ruining the entire load. Had he not noticed that he was pumping pink milk? Jesus Christ, was he color-blind? A lack of refrigeration storage in New Jersey meant a shortage in the Newark area, and who the hell had extra this time of year to haul it down? Children without their calcium, coffee without its cream. Butterless toast.
There had been a time before William J. died when everything would’ve been clear to William T. Solutions would have spread themselves out under his pencil. William J. would have called in to say hello. But now the words on the scraps of paper all around him started to blur before him, and he was suddenly weary beyond measure. William T. dropped his head to the desk, his forehead resting on the blank hauler schedules.
Was It Beautiful? Page 4