“No,” William T. said. “It won’t.”
He opened his eyes and looked at Burl, whose eyes were tired, rimmed with red. The letter was in Burl’s Band-Aided right hand.
“Burl.”
“Yes, William T.?”
“You believe that William J. loved his life, don’t you?”
Burl looked away.
“Because he did. He did. Didn’t he?”
Burl was wearing his postal carrier’s coat. Thick. Blue. Clean and starched-looking, the way Burl’s clothes always looked. His mail pouch was gone, though.
“That train was moving so fast,” William T. whispered. “There was so much noise.”
He ground his head into the wall.
“Do you think about him much, Burl?”
Burl turned his head away.
“I was trying to get to him,” William T. said. “But I was too far away.”
The Christmas-tree lights blinked, flashing orange and green and blue on Burl’s weary face.
“Turn off these goddamned lights,” William T. said to the postal clerk. “Now.”
A scurry, a tug: lights out. Burl knelt, that same tired look on his face. How his knees must be hurting him. Christmas was the hardest time of year for postal carriers. All those packages.
“Do you remember the night I went looking for William J.?” William T. said. “He was up at your place. You were singing.”
“I remember.”
“He loved to hear you sing.”
Burl half-straightened into a crouch. He smiled his Burl smile. William T. had to turn away from the sight.
“I loved to hear you sing, too, Burl.”
Burl smoothed the letter over his leg. His Band-Aids looked fresh and new. They were wrapped precisely around each finger, the tension just enough to maintain position but not cut off circulation. Even the one wrapped vertically over the end of his index finger, a problematic position as William T. recalled from the days of William J.’s cuts and scrapes, was smooth and unwrinkled. That was because Burl had thought to wrap an extra Band-Aid horizontally around the tip of his finger, holding the vertical one in place.
“In fact I was listening from my bedroom window today, hoping that you’d be singing when you dropped off the mail.”
Burl pressed the letter over his thigh, folding one corner down and then smoothing it back up again.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” William T. said.
“No one said you have.”
“But there’s a warrant for my arrest.”
William T. mashed his head into the wall again, that hard surface that neither asked unanswerable questions nor offered advice.
“It must have been the day it happened,” he said. “Someone stole my wallet that day, remember?”
That day. William T. had sensed something in back of him as they stood outside the hospital after, not knowing what to do. He and Eliza and Burl had stood on the sidewalk, unable to function. Stunned. The briefest of touches at his pocket, and William T. had noticed that his wallet was gone, but that day he could not have cared less.
“Did you cancel your driver’s license, William T.?” Burl said.
“No.”
“It’s the first thing you should do when your wallet’s stolen.”
“Is it? Is that something that everyone knows?” William T. said.
Burl lowered himself with difficulty to the floor. His knees must be hurting him badly today.
“I mean, is canceling your driver’s license when your wallet’s stolen another of those things that everyone in the world except me was born knowing you should do?” William T. said.
William T. looked down at the letter in Burl’s hand. His heart in its wayward way kept returning to earlier that day, when Burl had driven up and rolled down the window, when William T. had watched him, hoping to hear his perfect Welsh tenor suspended in the cold still air. There is a balm in Gilead.
ON HIS WAY TO CRYSTAL’S FOR BREAKFAST the next morning, William T. passed the Town of Sterns snowplow parked at the gravel pit next to the sander. Its massive yellow bulk looked forlorn, put out to pasture. In a snowless land there was no point to a snowplow. Think of how much the Town of Sterns would save on the plowing budget this year.
On impulse William T. turned the truck around and drew up flush with the big machine.
He clambered up into the cab of the plow, trying not to use his bad arm. During the night he had rolled onto it in sleep and the pain had jolted him awake and then kept him awake with its burning. At 3:47 A.M. by the bedside clock he had thought, At some point in time this arm will require a doctor, and with that realization he had fallen back asleep until 5:08.
The time was nigh, he thought now, seating himself on the frigid seat of the snowplow.
William T. had never driven a machine so high, although one winter a few years ago Harold Jewell had taken him along on an early-morning route. They had drunk coffee out of Harold’s thermos and shouted above the roar of the huge engine. Genghis had curled up on William T.’s lap, wrapped head to toe in his blue blanket, only his green cat eyes visible. Snow had blown straight at them, pinpricks of white aiming themselves at the windshield and shoved aside by the heavy black blades of the wipers. At one point William T. had turned around to see a line of headlights following them on the cleared path, pearls strung on a black rope. William T. had pointed them out to Harold, who had smiled and nodded. William T. had felt powerful. Nothing could vanquish the enormous plow, grinding its way through the darkness. He and Genghis, kings of the snowy north!
Now William T. climbed down and got back into his truck.
Onward.
After the intersection of Crill Road and 274, William T. looked in the rearview mirror and set his cap straight. Dairylea in orange script, perfectly legible. The sky was dull and featureless. William T. pictured a sunset instead of the omnipresent gray, pictured the horizon before him streaked with orange and pink. Say goodnight to the sun. Something he had said to his son when William J. was a child.
A wild turkey strutted its way across the road by Tamar Winter’s. William T. rolled down his window and tooted. The turkey turned to watch him, gaping with its tiny turkey face as the truck slid around the curve of 274 just before Sterns. William T. rolled the window back up. Was it true that turkeys were as dumb as everyone said? They had never seemed that smart to William T., but on the other hand, they had never seemed particularly stupid either.
Hamlet of Sterns. Population 300.
How could any town stay at 300 for six years running? People were born. People died.
The faint red neon of Crystal’s Diner was lit, the letters scrolling along the top of the long picture window that faced onto 365. William T. slowed down on Sterns Street and tried to see who was at the counter. Burl’s station wagon was not in the lot, nor was it in front. William T. eased the truck alongside Jewell’s Grocery and went into the diner.
“William T.,” Crystal said.
She stood behind the counter, holding a glass measuring cup up to her eyes and squinting to see if the green liquid in it was level.
“You’re supposed to put that on a flat surface,” William T. said. “Didn’t they teach you that at diner school?”
“I must have missed that day,” Crystal said.
She poured some more green liquid into the measuring cup from a big tin can.
“What the hell is that? It’s an ungodly shade of green.”
“Olive oil. My great-grandmother was Greek,” Crystal said. “I’m one-sixteenth Greek.”
“Could that color be puce, do you think?”
Crystal regarded the measuring cup and its green contents. “I couldn’t say.”
“I should know puce,” William T. said. “But the fact is that I don’t.”
“Well then,” Crystal said. “Some things shall remain a mystery. Do you want some breakfast, William T.?”
“Eggs. Bacon.”
“Coffee?”
He shook
his head.
She put her measuring cup down and came down the counter to where he sat on one of the red stools, swinging back and forth like a child. William T. tried to say something to her. About what? The cleanliness of the front window, the fact that the sugar shakers were all neatly filled to their brims, the way he had looked forward to seeing her this morning, counted more than he wanted to on the sight of her familiar gentle face?
But his throat hurt and nothing came out. She sat on the stool next to him. He could feel her eyes on him, her quietness, but he busied himself organizing the jam packets next to his sugar shaker.
The bells above the door jingled and his throat eased up.
“You put those goddamned chimes up again?” he said. “Didn’t I throw them out?”
Footsteps behind him.
“Hey, Sophie,” Crystal said.
William T. closed his eyes. Sophie’s presence was next to him, the faint smell of her shampoo mingled with the aura of cold air carried in from the outside. She was carrying a manila envelope. Then the stool next to William T. creaked slightly, and she was sitting down. China clinked. The aroma of coffee mingled with the scent of the outdoors and the heavier smell of cooking oil from the fry basket. There was a touch on his sleeve, and he opened his eyes.
“William T.”
He regarded her, his daughter-in-law. Former daughter-in-law? Her face was as familiar to him as the face of his son.
“So,” William T. said. “College?”
She looked away and started fidgeting with the jam packets.
“Don’t mess around with those,” William T. said. “I just got them all in order.”
“You did a very nice job, too.”
“I try. I try, Sophie. Tell me about college.”
“I have to do something with my life, William T. I can’t go on like this, now that he’s gone.”
“Nursing?”
She shrugged. “I’ve thought about it.”
“Do they still wear those little white hats? I was trying to remember and I couldn’t. I just keep getting this picture of a little white hat with three points and maybe a stripe or two.”
Sophie smiled. “I don’t think so, William T. I don’t think nurses have to wear any kind of hat anymore.”
“How are you going to pay for it?”
Another shrug. “Loans. Work.”
“It’s a lot of money, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.”
“William J. didn’t want to go to college.”
“No,” Sophie agreed. “He didn’t.”
“You do, though.”
“I didn’t. But now I think I do.”
“So you’ve changed, is what you’re saying.”
She gazed at him, her fingers playing with the corners of an orange marmalade packet.
“Maybe,” she said.
William T.’s throat hurt again, and he changed the subject.
“Tell me something. Did Burl leave some wood on my porch?”
“He didn’t want your pipes to freeze.”
“Did he split that wood himself?”
“He tried,” Sophie said. “But he didn’t have much luck. I wanted to help but I’m no expert. Watching you is all I know about it from. He ended up buying a face cord from that guy up on Carmichael Hill.”
“He got cheated. That guy advertises seasoned wood but it’s wet as hell. All it did was hiss and smoke. Someone should take that guy to small-claims court.”
“Are you not hungry today? You haven’t touched your bacon.”
William T. looked down at the three strips of bacon curled like larvae on the side of his plate. Three strips of bacon was a rasher. Eliza had taught him that. She had delighted in unusual words. Did she still, living up there with the unreading sister in Speculator? It was a cold day, today, and Eliza must be freezing. Was there a chance that her sister would allow her an electric blanket if he, William T., offered to pay the electricity bill?
In winters past William T. had kept the woodstove stoked, and Eliza had sat in the chair next to it, and she had been warm and comfortable. William T.’s arm was on fire, and a night came to him suddenly, right there in the diner, a night when Eliza had been next to William T. in his truck atop Star Hill, half on his lap. Eighteen years old.
A summer night. A thousand stars.
Below them the Sterns Valley had spread itself, lights from scattered houses winking out one at a time. William T. had been drugged by Eliza’s presence, half of him filled with peace while the rest of him burned with the touch of her skin and the smell of her hair. The tips of his fingers had smoothed their way up and down her bare arms, along her shoulders, down her back. He had cupped her face in both hands and brushed his lips over her cheeks until her mouth sought his and everything was warm and wet and searching. His hands had pulled her shirt up, seeking the softness of her stomach and breasts. She was as lost in him as he was in her, he could tell, he knew.
He had been with Eliza only a month but already his life stretched before him, whole and complete because of her presence. There was nothing he would not do for her.
She kept her eyes open the whole time, searching his. She guided him into her, sighing as they moved together. Her skin was silk under his fingers. He had wrapped his arms around her, almost crushing her. Despite the heat of the summer night she had shivered in his embrace.
He had vowed silently then never to fail her, never to fail Eliza, never to fail the children they might have together, their children’s children.
Sophie sat on her stool next to him, her dirty white sneaker pushing off, pushing off, pushing off, keeping her in a slow revolve. She opened the clasp of the manila envelope and slid out a sheaf of papers.
“Take a look,” she said. “It’s the application.”
William T. looked at the first page. It was covered with black ink. Family information. Addresses of father and mother: Together at applicant’s address? Divorced? Other? Other, checked off with a thick black “X.” Next page: grades and transcript information, flimsy yellow carbon copies stapled in place.
The last page was the essays page. Please mite an essay (250-500 words) on a topic of your choice or on one of the options listed below. (1) Discuss the significance of education. Use examples from your own life such as travel, clubs and organizations, family, etc. (2) Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you. (3) If you had but one year to live, how would you spend that year? Are there aspects of your life you would change? (4) There are moments in our lives when a person, place, picture, or feeling leaves a lasting impression. Describe one of these moments, how it came to be and how it affected you.
“Jesus Christ,” William T. said. “You’ve never traveled, Sophie. How the hell could you possibly answer number one?”
“I don’t have to choose number one,” she said.
William T. clenched his throat hard and willed his eyes to stop tearing. He waited a few minutes, pretending to read through the essay questions.
“Here’s a situation for you, Sophie,” William T. said. “An elderly cat, not in the best of health, is out for a stroll one day and gets in the way of an eagle, swooping down out of the winter sky.”
He stopped.
“And?” Sophie prompted.
William T. frowned.
“William T.? Did something happen to Genghis?”
He couldn’t speak. She looked at him, her expression changing in a way that only he and a few others might be able to interpret. Jesus, William T. thought, don’t ask. Please Jesus don’t ask.
“William T., are you all right?”
“Jesus never answers my prayers,” he said.
“And what are your prayers?”
“My prayers are for me to know.”
“And me to find out?”
To his horror, William T. felt his eyes ache with sudden, unshed tears. He felt in his pocket for his money clip. “Christ, I left my money at home.”
“Christ doesn’t answer your prayers, is the rumor that’s going around,” Sophie said.
“That wasn’t a prayer. That was a statement.”
In front of him he could see the navy blue of the parka, the way it enfolded Sophie. William T. stared and stared at the stains until they blurred together and he had to look up and meet her eyes. The lump rose again in his throat. Sophie leaned across the counter and took his hands in hers.
“No one’s here. It’s okay.”
The muscles of his neck ached. Sophie tightened her grip on his hands.
“William T.,” she said. “I’m worried about you.”
He shook his head. He lifted his hands underneath hers and turned them palms up so that she had to let go. She shoved her hands into the parka’s deep pockets.
“William T.”
“Sophie.”
“Open your eyes, would you?”
He opened one eye. Her dirty white sneaker pushed back and forth against the wooden counter and she kept on with her slow revolve.
“What are you doing here at Crystal’s, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be working the breakfast shift at Queen of the Frosties?”
“I took the day off.”
Sophie picked up the full sugar shaker and shook it gently, so that the metal flap on top flipped open and shut and a few crystals spilled out. There was a look on her face.
“You’re not sleeping, are you?” William T. said.
After a minute she shook her head.
“Too much time with the carpenter down on Sterns Valley Road?” William T. said. “Is that the problem?”
The first time William T. had met Sophie she had been seventeen. Two dates and all William J. could talk about was Sophie. Sophie this, Sophie that. The first time she drove up to the house she parked behind the broken-down barn. William T. had watched from the house, admiring his son’s girlfriend, her wide stride and big grin.
“Come on in out of the cold, Sophie!” William T. had said, opening the door wide. It was a stifling summer day, heat rolling down from the heavens, it seemed, sucking all the coolness out of the earth. “Come on in and get warm by the wood-stove!”
She had stood at the bottom of the steps, her hands in the pockets of shorts that were so short it seemed impossible that they could harbor pockets. She had looked up at him and laughed. Not said a word, just stood there laughing up at him, purely and simply happy. William J. materialized by her side and slung his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned back into him as if she had been leaning into his arm every day of her seventeen years.
Was It Beautiful? Page 8