Was It Beautiful?

by Alison McGhee

  There’s a reason for everything, Burl had said. I’ve believed that all my life.

  William T. imagined Burl behind the wheel of his station wagon. U.S. Mail. His Band-Aided hands at ten and two, his foot now on the gas, now easing up, now on the brake. William T. remembered him as a child, crying silently behind an upraised wooden desk as his urine-soaked pants dried. Good-bye to that boy.

  Had William T. been a good man?

  Had he lived a good life?

  He had tried to do right by his flock. But had their lives merely been sunless and without air?

  William T. removed both gloves. He cupped his hands around his mouth and blew into his hands. His fingers were numb and white. The crown of a scrawny white pine hung below the fire tower. It could not have chosen a worse place to grow, straggling up from between the crushing weight of two enormous boulders near the summit of Star Hill. But it hadn’t chosen, had it? It had once been a seed, dropped by the wind or flung by a storm into this terrible place.

  A few poplar and aspen and balsam clung to the ground below. Broken pines leaned all their weight onto the trees unlucky enough to be growing next to them. Dead and rotting trunks here and there, some blocking the path. A profusion of decay everywhere he looked. No rhyme. No reason. A forest was chaos.

  Through the thick leather of his gloves the cold was cold enough that it felt like flame.

  His boy retreated down the track.

  Was it possible ever truly to know someone else’s heart, no matter how much you might love him?

  There had come a day when William T. and his son had been sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, the kitchen table that William T. had lugged home from a garage sale in Remsen many years before. It had cost five dollars, sold to him by a woman with wild hair and a beseeching look in her eyes that he had never forgotten.

  “Dad?” William J. had said. “I’m thinking of ending it.”

  What did he mean?

  William T. had tilted his head inquiringly. The boy had leaned across the table, his voice slightly louder than it should have been, the way it had been for a while.

  “I’m thinking of ending it.”

  William T. had felt his head going up and down in a slow motion, obedient bones in his neck responding.

  There was a look in William J.’s eyes.

  He was twenty-seven years old.

  William T. felt his head continuing its up-and-down motion. Soothing. Maybe he would never stop nodding. From now on would he just keep on nodding? He had the urge to reach out and grab his son’s hands, reach right across the five-dollar garage-sale table that he had sat at with William J. all William J.’s life, and hold his son’s hands and not let go. Not let go.

  His son had gazed at him, that same look in his eyes.

  William J.’s bones and muscles and blood were young, were strong, were sitting across the table from him. William J. was twenty-seven, and William T. himself was nearly fifty, and William J. was his son, and he was William J.’s father, and William J. was sitting across the kitchen table on an ordinary sunlit morning in the kitchen, the ordinary kitchen with its table, its window with the sun streaming through and lighting up the blue glass bottles that William T. had dug out of the swamp and washed for Eliza and lined up in a row so that the sun would make them sparkle and shine, the cupboard where the old yellow mug that was William J.’s favorite still sat front and center should he come by and wish to use it, an ordinary morning when the flock had been fed and were as happy as they ever were down in their broken-down barn, a morning when the sun had risen over the red spruce the way it had for ten thousand mornings before, an ordinary morning when William J. would have spread strawberry jam thickly on an English muffin at Crystal’s Diner, a morning when the fragile ice of a mud puddle would have given way without a sound under William T.’s boots, reminding him of when he was young, a boy, a morning like so many other mornings, except that his son had just told him something.

  William T. swung a leg over the restraining bars that surrounded the platform. In front of him the Sterns Valley spread out, silent but for the treetops, creaking back and forth like old women in rocking chairs.

  William T. pictured all the ways to do it, all the ways that those who had gone before had chosen. Guns and knives and poison and rope and cars sealed into garages and plastic bags and pills upon pills.

  Falling.

  He pictured all the days ahead of him, all the mornings when he would wake in his bed from sleep into wakefulness, from forgetting into remembering. Would it sweep through him every day for the rest of his life, this sensation of his child slipping through his fingers like water? William J. came to him now in ways he would not have anticipated. He called to his father in the cry of a whippoorwill from the grass of an unknown clearing. He came haunting out of the broken-down barn at dusk, black velvet set loose in the flutter of a bat’s wing.

  At the moment he died, had William J. known peace?

  Had William J. pictured Sophie, her long hair and her white sneakers?

  His mother, sitting late at night at the kitchen table, marking essays with her purple pen?

  Or had he, at the very last moment, when it was too late not to die, been filled with regret? Had he wanted, after all, to keep on living?

  William J., were you happy?

  “William T.”

  William T. looked up. Burl stood on the platform, his face not like the face William T. was used to seeing.

  “Burl?” William T. said. “Jesus, Burl. Did you climb all the way up here?”

  Burl nodded. William T. studied him, his oldest friend, his fear-of-heights friend, the man he had never known to climb any ladder other than the bottom rung of a stepladder in order to reach a can of gas in his garage. Burl’s face was white. His hands shook.

  “It’s all right, Burl.”

  Burl shook his head.

  “It is, Burl. It’s all right.”

  “It is not all right,” Burl said. “Come on back now.”

  “I’m just seeing what it feels like,” William T. said.

  Burl shook his head. Kept shaking. His mouth opened and William T. could tell the word he kept mouthing, over and over, without sound: No. No. No.

  “It feels peaceful, Burl,” William T. said. “The thought of it. Not having to go on any longer.”

  Burl kept shaking his head, his eyes streaming, his hands stretched out to William T. William T. felt an immense weariness.

  “You’d be fine, Burl,” he said.

  William T. took one arm off the bar.

  “I’m just seeing what it feels like,” he repeated.

  He waved his free arm around, encompassing the Sterns Valley spread out before him like a watercolor, and watched in amazement as Burl lunged for him, grabbed his arms, hauled him back over the restraining bars, with strength William T. never would have guessed he had.

  Burl stood over William T. on the platform. William T. had never seen that look on his face before. He looked up at Burl in wonder, standing with his Band-Aided fingers twisting upon themselves, that look on his face.

  “I would not be fine,” Burl said. His cheeks were wet. “Don’t you ever say that again.”

  The weight of all things came pressing down upon William T., the weight of all the things done in his life that could not be undone. The dream of falling fell away from William T., and with it his dream of peace. He felt it going and pressed his face against the bars, ground his eyes into the cold metal. He would not be allowed to leave, no matter how much he might want to. The world was hauling him back to itself, hand over hand.

  “Burl,” he said. “Didn’t he think he was worth anything?”

  WILLIAM J. HAD WALKED BACKWARD, BACKward and backward he walked in his blue parka, holding the big box in front of him. William T. had put the tape in and turned the volume as high as it would go. He had bought the tape player in Riverside Mall the week after William J. called from the middle of the storm, a few days after Willi
am T. had ignored the phone that would not stop ringing and gotten into his truck in the night and driven up north of Perryville, after he had found the bulk hauler with William J. huddled inside it, after Ray had told him he had to let the boy go.

  What sort to buy? The tiny ones with their slender headphones did not look trustworthy. It seemed to stand to reason that the bigger the box, the bigger the sound. Next to the tiny ones were some giant headphones. They looked heavy and substantial and solidly made, as if they meant business. William T. took a pair down and examined them.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  A teenage kid stood next to him.

  “I’m looking for something that’s going to play music.”

  “If you’re looking for something that’s going to play music, then those aren’t what you want. Those are earplugs.”

  “Earplugs! Jesus Christ!”

  “Earplugs,” the boy echoed. “Jesus Christ.”

  The boy led him over to a wall of plastic-wrapped stereo accoutrements. They stood before it in silence.

  “What sort of a thing that plays music are you looking for?” the boy finally said.

  “Loud. The loudest one you got.”

  The boy looked at him. William T. studied the rows of boxes. Nothing looked remotely like his stereo. He was out of his element. He was at a loss.

  “What is it that you want to do, exactly?”

  “Here’s the situation. There’s a young deaf man who didn’t used to be deaf. I want to play music for him as loudly as possible in the hopes that he will be able to hear it.”

  Now the boy was all business. “Okay. Tapes or CDs?”

  “Tape. A single tape.”

  “Do you want a Walkman or a boom box?”

  “Whichever is louder.”

  “This is what you want then. It’s the loudest boom box on the market.”

  The boy had plucked a large box off a stack on the wall and handed it to William T.

  “Good luck. I hope he’ll be able to hear it.”

  “I hope so, too,” William T. had said.

  William T. had stood and watched, waving his arms in the air as if conducting.

  “Can you hear it?” he had shouted to his son. “It’s Burl!”

  He had cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, even though William J. couldn’t have heard him. His hearing had slipped away decibel by decibel, that beautiful word with bells chiming inside.

  “Do you like it?”

  William J. had smiled and walked, one foot behind the other, feeling his way along the track backward without ever looking to see what lay behind him.

  “It’s his audition tape for the New York City Men’s Chorus!”

  William T. lifted his arms to the sun and watched his fingers straining toward the sky. When William J. was a child, Eliza had read him a story about a piper who led children into a magical mountain where music played all the time. A little lame boy had been left behind.

  “Is it beautiful, William J.?”

  Eliza was back home, planting and mulching her vegetables. How she loved her vegetables. To her they were more beautiful than flowers. She loved the hearts of her purple cabbage, the way the redness of tomatoes drooped heavy and full from the vine, the way the chives were the first green thing she saw in the spring. Eliza, can you see your boy? Can you see how happy he looks, walking backward on the tracks, holding the music box in both hands and smiling?

  After a while William T. had stood still on the tracks and watched. The edges of the sun, flaring against azure, hurt. Too bright to look at. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Burl’s Welsh tenor, notes falling in the air all about him, singing about a balm in Gilead that could heal the wounded soul.

  Something intruded.

  Burl’s song was not the only sound.

  William T. opened his eyes.

  Something was happening. Something was wrong.

  Around him the maples, their leaves beginning to unfurl, stood as they had always stood. Remsen with its BJ’s Foods, its Didymus Thomas Library, its blacksmith, the only one within thirty miles, was a mile or so behind them. The creek water rushed by in its busy way, murmuring of the need for haste. William J. was before his father in his old blue parka, walking backward on a bright, cold spring day. William T. waved his arms and shouted at his boy.

  “William J.!”

  The boy nodded and smiled and lifted the boom box into the air.

  “William J.!”

  Something was wrong. Then the sound fell into place, took its position in the natural order of things, and William T. knew what it was. He started to run.

  “William J.!”

  He lifted his arms and made great shooing motions: Get off the track.

  The boy lifted the music box on high and smiled. Burl’s voice poured forth and fought the growing rumble behind it.

  “William J.!”

  The noise grew louder, a steady thunderous roar. William T. ran faster, one step for each two railroad ties. He stumbled and fell, got up with palms bleeding from the cinders, ran on. William J. had gotten far ahead of him, walking backward with nary a backward look. William T. screamed and lifted his arms: Come back! Come back!

  The boy walked on.

  William T. fell again and got up, ran on. Screamed again: Get off the tracks!

  The train came around the bend. There was a light on its cab and it looked like an eye burning bright and steady. Jesus God get off the track.

  The train horn blew long and loud, blew again and kept on blowing.

  “William J.!”

  The boy kept walking backward. William T. was sixty feet away when William J. stopped walking and turned around. Jesus God. The eye of light bore down upon him. The boy turned back to his father, smiling, and threw the music box into the air. William T. closed his eyes and leaped.

  WILLIAM T. FED THE FLOCK, THEN WASHED HIS hands and put on his Dairylea cap and his calfskin driving gloves.

  The truck windows on all sides were streaked with early-morning dampness, rivulets snaking their way down the dirty glass. He turned on the wipers and rubbed one leather driving glove over his side window. The tan calfskin turned grayish-brown immediately. God almighty.

  He flipped on the radio. Unlike the gas gauge, the speedometer, the odometer, the brakes, the transmission, the endless tires, William T.’s radio had never once gone out on him. Emmylou was singing, something about an orphan girl.

  William T. turned her up as high as she could go. He wanted Emmylou’s voice trembling through every bone and muscle of his body. Emmylou could sing as loudly as she wanted in William T. Jones’s truck.

  Eliza had hated her. Also Johnny Cash and Lucinda Williams. Before she left, William T. had argued with her every time she used his truck. He’d start it up again next day to find his stations retuned: National Public Radio, classical, A.M. news.

  “It’s my goddamned truck!” he said to her once.

  “It’s my ears!” she had said. “Johnny Cash. How can you listen to him? And that black suit of his. Guess what, Johnny, I have news for you. It’s a big world out there, with lots of colors in it.”

  Puce, for example.

  William T. pictured Eliza in the sister’s clearance-rack coat and shook his head. It would be cold in the sister’s house today. Eliza’s breath would puff out in small clouds, moisture made visible in the still air. The sister turned the thermostat down to fifty every night and inched it up to sixty-two during the day. Put on a sweater: her standard response. Didn’t she know Eliza was always cold? Didn’t she care that Eliza needed to be warm?

  Emmylou’s song ended.

  Sterns Village Speed Limit: 35.

  Village here, hamlet there. Make up your minds. To his left, Crystal’s pickup glowed its unearthly red in the diner’s parking lot. He squinted and through the window saw her shadowy form behind the grill.

  Then a hard right, an immediate left, and he was driving past the village green where the boys’ monu
ment stood, next to the weeping willow tree. William T. tipped his Dairylea cap to the boys: Owen Latham, Chase Hughes. If William J. had died in Vietnam he’d be up there, too, his name etched in the granite just like the others. His son had been born too late for that war, something that William T. had been grateful for. But there were no guarantees, were there?

  The curve past the Sterns Cooperative brought him into the open again, out of the village-hamlet and on to the intersection with Glass Factory Road. Glass Factory or Route 12, which would it be?

  Glass Factory.

  Glass Factory was a two-lane road of giant hills, a rib cage of earth jutting above the Mohawk Valley and the Utica flood-plain, five miles of up and downs. Niagara Mohawk headquarters were on his left, a massive facility all underground, making strange lumps and hillocks in the lay of the land. William T. frowned. He did not approve of underground headquarters, offices without windows, tunnels connecting one building to another. Human beings were not meant to spend their days in belowground fluorescence, was his opinion.

  Nor was the flock, but look at them. Huddled for all eternity behind the latched door of the broken-down barn. Shove them out in the open air and they didn’t know what to do with it: light, freedom.

  Once on top of the last hill, Sunset Drive to his left and Niagara Mohawk’s subterranean aberrance behind him, the Mohawk Valley spread out shimmering before him. William T. loved the sight. He never tired of it.

  You loved it, too, didn’t you, William J.? I wasn’t wrong about that, was I?

  He swooped onto Route 12 through the outskirts of Utica, bisecting the city itself. And then there he was. Mohawk College. Admissions. He parked in the far right-hand corner of the lot, Visitors Parking, as the woman had told him to, and pushed open the door with his calfskin-gloved hand.

  No wind chimes.

  Perhaps college admissions offices had no use for wind chimes. College was a different world, after all, a world William T. had no experience of. College was for people who wanted to do something with their lives.