“William?”
The voice came down to him from the air on high. William T. sat up and turned around, squinting up at the tall man standing behind him.
“T.” William T. said. “William T.”
The fluorescent lights buzzed. In his former life it had been William T.’s opinion that fluorescence should be outlawed, and back then he had often and loudly proclaimed that belief. Fluorescence instantly made his vision blurry and his eyes hurt and gave him a headache. It was not a normal sort of light. It was not a light that occurred in nature.
William J. had liked it; the buzzing reminded him of cicadas, his favorite bug.
“Goddamn fluorescence.”
“Excuse me?”
Ray had started ten years after William T. but had somehow known what to do, known how to change himself, how to learn the things that William T. didn’t want to learn: how to use the computer, how to knot and wear a tie every day, how to sit inside under fluorescent lights without ever losing the clarity of his vision.
“William T., can you come into my office for a minute?”
William T. spread his hand over the unfilled-in schedules in front of him.
“I’ve got a lot of scheduling to do.”
“This is important.”
He got up and followed Ray’s back down the hallway to Ray’s office in one of the four corners of the one-story, rectangular building. Ray had windows on two sides of his office, and a large black desk with a pen holder and a small plaque: Raymond Barrett Ray didn’t go behind his desk but stood in front of it and half-sat on the edge of its polished surface. Good. Over the years since Ray had had that desk, and this office, William T. had grown weary of the sight of him leaning back in his tilting office chair, arms crossed behind his head, nodding judiciously. It was like a caricature of the head of a company. Like a cartoon. In times past it had made William T. the center of attention when, at a party, he had imitated Ray.
Ray crossed his arms and studied William T.
“William T. We’re going to have to let you go.”
The words fell like small dull thuds into the air between them, a miniature maul trying to drive a wedge into a log. William T.’s ears couldn’t take in what Ray was saying, and he squinted in an effort to make them understandable. Ray’s words were a clappered bell trying to ring, trying and trying.
“We’re very sorry,” Ray said.
He looked at William T. with a calm and patient look. He uncrossed his arms and massaged one hand with the other, then recrossed them. His tie was pushed tightly against his soft throat. Ray had put on some weight. William T. felt his throat closing up. Thirty years. His father had been a founding member. His father’s shadow had moved back and forth in the barn while William T. watched from the kitchen, the scent of baking potatoes and the sound of his mother’s humming filling the air.
“Ray—”
“There’s not a lot to say. We know you’ve been under stress. Your son …”
“Leave my son out of it.”
“All right. But there’ve been many other issues in the past few months, William.”
“William T.”
“There was the outage fiasco, for example, the fact that you left a hundred haulers stranded with nowhere to go and not even a phone call from you. Haulers dumping by the side of the highway, for God’s sake. There’s the fact that you don’t see fit to show your face in the office but once in a blue moon. Disparities in weights, butterfat, that one old fool who’s ruined two loads with his mastitis.”
“Ray. I can’t be responsible for every weight that’s off one percent. It could’ve been that they got lazy at the plant and reset the composite sampler.”
“And the mastitis? The blood in the milk?”
“Christ almighty, whose fault is it that some farmer’s colorblind and can’t see his milk’s pink?”
Ray uncrossed his arms and recrossed them.
“And there’s the fact of William Junior’s employment. I said I wouldn’t bring it up—”
“William J. J. J. J. Not Junior.”
“J. then. Against all good reason you continued his employment when it was clear that he was unable to perform the duties—”
“He had a hearing loss. Cogan’s syndrome. A hearing loss doesn’t affect your driving. You get a notation on your license is all.”
“He was clearly unable to perform his—”
“Jesus Christ, Ray, can you talk like an ordinary human being!”
“You hired your own blood and against all better judgment you couldn’t let him go. We’re not going to bring up the truck he totaled; that’s been gone over a thousand times.”
“It was—”
Ray shook his head. “No. We’ve made our decision and it’s effective immediately.”
Words, swirling around William T.’s head, above and below. Your own blood. Couldn’t let him go. A thousand times. His son’s voice came to William T., high-pitched in the way it had been ever since the diagnosis, straining through the telephone lines. They said it wasn’t hereditary, but how did they know? They did not know. They had no answers. William T. pictured his son, his vocal cords vibrating, forming words, sending them into a mute receiver.
The night William J. had called from outside Perryville had been a dark night, flail of rain and sleet and cold. William J. had called from a pay phone off the highway. William T. closed his eyes against the image of his son locking himself in a phone booth, shivering in his blue parka, dropping in the quarters.
The image would not go away and William T. opened his eyes to Ray, staring at him.
Clouds hung heavy beyond Ray’s many windows, obscuring whatever sun might be up there. On William T.’s one airplane ride, where he had sat strapped next to the window, the plane had shuddered through clouds so thick they looked solid. William T. had closed his eyes and gripped the seatback in front of him, trying to force his body to feel the speed of his travel.
No use. William T. knew with certainty that flight must be entirely different for true winged creatures.
William T. pictured his son as he had been before he lost his hearing, hurtling through the dark Adirondack roads in his Dairylea truck, its huge orange flower decal obscured in the black night air, singing his favorite songs out the window. Had anyone heard him back then? Had there been an unknown someone in a darkened house, lying awake and unable to sleep, who had listened to the far-off sound of an unknown trucker on the road, singing a nameless tune?
William T. got up and left.
BURL WENT TO BED AT ELEVEN AND GOT UP at seven. In days past, when William T. had been out driving a few minutes before eleven, he used to stop his truck a field down from Burl’s just to watch the lights extinguish themselves in Burl’s small house: first the kitchen, then the living room, then the bathroom, finally the bedroom.
Now William T. parked his truck by the side of the road and let the engine idle.
Dark. William T. could not make out Burl’s perfectly square yard. Nor his massive lilies, encroaching on the narrow flagstone path, planted by the wife who left him three months after their wedding. In the few weeks that she and Burl lived together, she had planted lilies on either side of the path that led to that door. Straggly and thin the first year, in the intervening thirty they had grown massive. Lilies vying for space, marching their way to Burl’s front door, now painted green to match their fronds.
William T. stared up at Burl’s house through the windshield and willed a light to come on. Might Burl have to go to the bathroom, or might he wake in the darkness with a powerful thirst, as William T. sometimes did? Might he wake hungry, even, and go to the kitchen and make himself a sandwich, chunky peanut butter and honey maybe, his personal favorite?
No. Burl would not go that far.
Burl would set his will against his hunger and wait until morning, until 7:00, breakfast time proper. Then he would rise and boil the water for his hot cereal. Burl disliked anything out of routine, had never liked surpr
ises, never liked being called upon to do something unexpected, something not counted on. Burl was a man of forethought. He hated stepping out of line for any reason.
Once, in first grade, Mrs. Mason had come out of the bathroom in the back of the room with a grim look on her face. Someone’s wet the floor in there, she had said, and not with water, and I intend to find out who. William T. had turned to Burl, ready to make a face, but Burl was staring at his desk, silent. One by one she had called each child into the bathroom. One by one each had emerged. When Burl’s turn came, Mrs. Mason had bustled back out and waved the rest of the children back to their seats. I don’t need to check the rest of you, she had said. Get back to your work. The rest of the day Burl had sat next to William T., pale and sweating, the faint smell of drying urine rising around him.
William T. rested his forehead on the cold vinyl of his steering wheel and willed Burl to appear. Willed a light to come on. Willed Burl’s bladder to fill and ache uncontrollably so that he would have no choice, he would have to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, and while he was in the bathroom he would peer out his window and see William T.’s truck idling by the side of the road, and he would come out to see what was going on.
William T. trained his eyes on the house. Appear, Burl. Burl, appear.
On a night twenty years earlier Eliza had been in Albany at the annual teachers’ conference. William J. had left on his bike hours before and had not returned. William T. had called around, the Buchholzes, Tamar Winter, Crystal down at the diner even. You seen William J.? He’s not home yet.
No. Haven’t seen him. I’ll keep my eye out but no.
William T. had called Burl. He counted: every five seconds, another ring. An endless ringing. This was in the days before answering machines.
William T. had got in the truck and headed north. He decided to let the truck chart its own course, follow its nose to where his boy would be. Night was coming on, and it was a clear sky, and if necessary he would search all night, driving on faith. William T. had not allowed himself to think of the wolves said to be roaming north of Westernville, or the drunken Miller boys weaving back and forth across 274, or a boy still new to a two-wheeler going too fast down Jones Hill and flipping backward into a ditch. Calling and calling and calling, no one to hear.
A half-mile south of Burl’s house the truck had sighed, a long, sad exhalation. William T. pressed his foot to the pedal but there was no response. In silence he had coasted to a stop by a grove of birches next to Nine Mile Creek. Jesus Christ. No point in looking at the gas gauge. Occasionally the needle sprang to attention and stayed at F for days. Most of the time it lay supine at E, once in a while jiggling as if in the last throes.
William T. filled it by instinct, stopping at the pump across from the Sterns Post Office when he had the feeling that the time was nigh.
William T. had gotten out of the truck and started walking toward Burl and Burl’s small white giant-lilied house. Burl would have a full tank in his official mail carrier’s car. He would also have a red plastic five-gallon container with a yellow spout sitting on a shelf in his well-ordered garage.
Night was coming on, the sky beginning to turn the plum before the dark blue before the black. William J. might be riding in the dark now, lost, unable to tell one dirt road from the next. He might be out in North Sterns, counting the calls of a night bird. William J. might have one foot on a pedal and one foot off, listening to a whippoorwill unable to stop, trapped in the harsh beauty of its own repeated lament.
William T. walked fast. Faster. He began to run, his knees immediately aching in the unfamiliar jounce. He had a hard time catching his breath. Eliza right now was in Albany, sitting around a table with other teachers she saw only once a year, showing them pictures of her son, her only child. William T. passed the birch grove, the curving white-papered trunks leaning into one another like old friends. An open stretch of meadow lay between him and Burl’s house, where the gas can waited.
A familiar sound had come murmuring down to where he ran by the side of the road, notes falling and fading one into another. Burl was singing. One of his hymns.
William T. ran on.
The soft notes of Burl’s song floated down from his house in the darkness, over the meadowland, fluttered down like unseen petals about William T.’s aching body, which didn’t want to run but had to. His child was lost in the night. Seven years old.
“Burl!”
The song had broken before the high note was reached.
“Burl! I’ve lost William J.!”
“Dad?”
William T. had stopped running in order to listen harder, make sure he had caught the sound of his son’s voice. “William J.?”
“Dad, I’m here.”
A last bit of meadow separated William T. from Burl’s neatly mown yard. William T. stepped high over the topmost strand of barbed wire, wanting to get to the boy without going the long way around the corner. His pants tore, a jagged rip from crotch to knee.
“William J.!”
“I’m here.”
There he was, standing at the edge of Burl’s yard where the clean line of sheared grass demarcated the weeds and rocks of the meadow.
“I was listening to Burl sing.”
There, too, was Burl, standing in the shadows by the beginnings of his massive lily bed. William T. was more out of breath than he had been in years. It was full dark now, and Burl was a shadow himself, silent by the lilies that reached up to his chest.
“I’m sorry, William T.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I should have had William J. call you.”
“You sure as hell should’ve.”
The boy was silent, standing next to William T.
“I rode my bike over,” he said.
“I know you did. You should have called me. How was I supposed to know where you were?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. Now get your bike. We’re going home.”
The boy disappeared into the gloom. Burl stepped forward.
“What the hell, Burl!”
“I’m sorry, William T.”
William T. had looked at Burl, searching for his eyes, but they were invisible in the darkness. He thought of animals that hid in the ditches when cars passed, the yellow-green gleam of their eyes in the headlights the only clue that they were there, gone as soon as the truck had swished on by. William T. turned around and looked at the road he had come in on. His torn trouser leg flapped around his thigh. The truck was invisible, half a mile away. The memory of Burl’s hymn still hung in the night air, the sob, the break, the reaching for that soft, high note.
Jesus Christ.
If Burl had a boy he would even now be dishing him up some of his homemade vanilla ice cream in his small kitchen. He would read him a book before bed. He would take him to Remsen Congregational on Sundays, and he would buy him a solid used car when he turned sixteen, and he would make sure his gas tank was always full, and he would sit on his front step at twilight and sing songs to him in his beautiful voice, bells in the night sky.
“I ran out of gas,” William T. said.
“I’ve got some.”
“Listen, Burl—”
“No. It’s my fault. I should have had him call you, William T.”
Burl had turned and disappeared into the darkness. A few minutes later the windows of his garage glowed yellow, and he was illuminated, standing in front of the long shelf in the back. He had stood on tiptoe, his back to William T., his arms reaching up for the red plastic container with the yellow spout that stood next to another one exactly like it, just in case.
Now William T. kept his eyes trained on Burl’s house, willing a light to appear, willing Burl’s shadow to pass back and forth against the dimness of a single bedside lamp, willing him to look out the window and see the parking lights of William T.’s truck, to pull the curtain aside, to squint into the darkness and know that his friend was sitting there, wai
ting for him to come out, waiting for him to come down the driveway and get into the cab, sit with him until the sky lightened, not saying a word.
William T. rested his forehead on the steering wheel.
Appear. Appear. Appear.
YANK. TOSS.
Crystal’s could live without its wind chimes, too.
“Where on God’s green earth is it written that every diner door has to jingle?” William T. said to the diner at large.
Silence.
William T. took his customary seat at the counter and started organizing the jam packets in their black plastic foursquare holder. Strawberry with strawberry, grape with grape, orange marmalade with orange marmalade. The orange marmalades were vastly disproportionate to the other varieties. It seemed an irrefutable fact that orange marmalade was far less popular than its sister jams. William T. put one mixed fruit in a random location within each separate stack, for the surprise value.
The door opened with a scraping sound—jingle-free—and Burl walked in, his big blue mail pouch sagging over his shoulder. Jesus Christ. No rest for the weary. Burl squinted up at the top of the chimeless door frame and looked questioningly at Crystal, who shrugged.
“Were you sitting in your truck in front of my house last night, William T.?” Burl said.
“I might’ve been. What’s it to you?”
Burl eased the mail pouch off his shoulder and set it on the floor.
“You got a paper for me, Crystal?” William T. said.
“I think one of the Miller boys dragged it into the rest room a while ago.”
In the rest room William T. peeked into the wastebasket. Crystal was right; a Miller had left the diner’s only copy of the Observer-Dispatch rolled up and tossed in the wastebasket. Typical Miller. He sat down and read the funnies and his son’s horoscope. His son, a Cancer, had read his horoscope every day without fail.
A pal from your college days suddenly reappears on the scene to guide you.
Was It Beautiful? Page 5