by John Straley
Now she heaved herself up and said, “Well, Doc, you boiled me up another couple of eggs. I’ll see ya.” And she put on her rain slicker, picked up the two bent ski poles she used as walking sticks, and lumbered out the door onto the slushy boardwalk.
“I’ll see ya, Gloria,” Miles called, but she was already poking her shoulder back into the clinic.
“Hey, I heard that cop is coming to town to arrest your brother,” she said.
“I hadn’t heard that. I don’t think that’s true. Clive’s broken no law I know of,” assured Miles.
“Oh yeah. Okay.” Gloria smiled weakly. “We’ve been talking about it, Doc. That cop can shove it up his ass as far as we’re concerned. We’re no snitches.”
“That’s good to know, Gloria.” Miles unenthusiastically patted her shoulder, and she was gone.
By four thirty, it seemed dark as midnight. The rain had let up, but the air that rode in through the door with Billy seemed as wet as seawater.
He walked straight into Miles’s chest. “Whoa! I’m sorry there, Miles.” He peered up at Miles’s nose.
“You okay, Billy? Something you need?”
“Naw, not really. I just came by, you know, just came by to talk.” He looked around the room as if expecting someone else to be there; followed Miles as he walked back to get the fat folder of notes on Gloria; stood in the doorway and watched him write in the file.
“What you need, Billy?”
“I don’t know really, Miles. I just kind of wanted to talk to you about something …” Billy eyes roamed around the room, not stopping to rest anywhere.
“I’ve got some time,” said Miles. “Is this about Trooper Brown’s visit tomorrow?”
“Huh? Oh, no, that’s under control. I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Good, because I think Ed is going to come by in about half an hour to shoot me, but I’ve got some time before that.”
Billy laughed nervously. “Well, you know, Miles. I was kind of wanting to talk to you about Bonnie.” He scratched the knuckles of his right hand and made a strange kind of grimace.
“Just spit it out, Billy.”
“I’m just kind of screwed up is all, Miles. You know she saved my life and you know we were really close on board the ship, but now I don’t know. She’s nice and everything, but I don’t know. It’s different here. It’s not like it was on the ship.”
“Why are you telling me this, Billy?”
“I don’t know, man. I know she likes you. I thought maybe you had some advice for me. Or maybe …”
“You want me to talk with her?” Miles tried to dampen the incredulity in his voice.
“Yeah … that would be great. Maybe you could talk to her like my doctor. You could tell her I’ve been unbalanced all my life. I’ve got some personality disorder or something. It’s kind of true, you know, it wouldn’t be like … lying or anything.”
Miles stared at him. “So you are telling me you’d rather have me tell her you are crazy than talk to her yourself about your own completely understandable feelings?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so.” Billy looked like he, too, couldn’t believe how dense he was. “Yeah, I do … I mean, it’s not all that strange. She saved my life. How can I just dump her right here in this little dinky town with nowhere for her to go?”
“Shit, Billy, there is always somewhere to go.”
Miles had been prepared to fend off an accusation, so this strange request came as kind of a letdown. He had been prepared to justify his own feelings for Bonnie, so this suggestion that she was helpless and not worth fighting for was making him grumpy.
“And you want to dump her because of what?” He frowned at Billy. “Because she saved your life? Because there are so many other gorgeous women for you to choose from around here? I don’t get it.”
“Listen, Miles, what if … say … Ed McMahon came to your door and gave you a million bucks? You’d be happy, right?”
“Ed McMahon? You mean the guy from Johnny Carson?”
“Yeah, him. So say he shows up at your house and tells you you won a million dollars. You’d be so happy you might even invite him in and have a drink. You’d feed him a meal and maybe go out and get drunk with him. But hell, you wouldn’t want him to be your best friend, would you? I mean it would be hard. You’d be hanging out with your friends and you would be like, ‘Oh yeah, this is Ed, he’s my new friend because he gave me a million bucks,’ and they’d all look at you and all they’d think about was how this guy had saved your ass and then pretty soon that would be the only thing you could think about and pretty soon you wouldn’t know what the fuck to say to Ed McMahon and you’d kick his sorry drunken-sidekick ass out on the street. You know what I’m saying?”
“The scary thing is,” nodded Miles, “I think I do.”
“So you’ll talk to her for me?”
“Sure. Sure, Billy,” he agreed and smiled weakly. “I won’t even bill you.”
Billy said something else, but Miles didn’t hear him. He listened to Billy’s footsteps fade out past the door and disappear, looked at his notes and didn’t read them; he wanted to go home.
He wanted to avoid Ed. Something about the combination of Gloria and Billy had put him in a bad mood. He looked at his watch; he could close up shop and be gone before Ed could show up if he hurried.
He had unplugged the coffee pot and turned out his office light when Liz came in with her cat.
“Miles, I don’t mean to trouble you, but can you help me? I don’t know who else to ask.” Her voice was shaking, her face was pale.
“Come on in, Liz.” He hid his irritation. “What’s wrong?”
She held out Louise, a delicate tabby with a white chest, two white paws, and a three-inch cut on top of her head. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but the cut gaped through the grey fur. The cat was calmer than Liz.
“Let me take a look,” said Miles.
Everyone knew that he wasn’t supposed to work on pets, but it was too expensive to fly to Sitka. Before he’d agreed to the “no complaints, no returns” policy, most sick animals had been slung into a sack and buried at sea; now they lived. And even though it was against his policy, Miles started allowing “follow-up” exams for which he generally got paid with food: fish, berries or venison. Since he had terrible luck with his hunter-gatherer skills, this was not a bad thing.
Liz held Louise while Miles gently stitched up the wound.
“Does this have anything to do with my brother’s dog?”
“No, I don’t think so. We’d be looking at something worse than this. No, I think she got tangled up with a tomcat down at the cold storage. I try to keep her in the house, but with Bob and Matt running in and out all day long, she slips out.”
Miles gently put one of her fingers on the thread to maintain the tension while he reached for scissors. She kept her gaze elsewhere, and they talked about new books in the library and the decline in the number of kids in school and whether the school would be able to stay open much longer.
“I hear we might be having a decline in the number of teachers, too.” Liz looked at him for the first time since he’d started patching up Louise.
“I heard Tina flew out this morning,” he countered. “You know anything about that, Liz?”
“No … nothing.” Her eyes swept through the office. “Just what I’ve heard …” Liz’s words drifted out on the still silence between them.
“And we all know how reliable boardwalk gossip is,” said Miles, sounding cheerful but carefully changing direction. He snipped the thread and said, “There! You can bring her back in a couple of days. Don’t tell my bosses back in Sitka, though.”
“I won’t, Miles.” She picked up the cat, held it in her arms and thanked him, but she looked sad, sheepish.
“Don’t worry about it, Liz.” Miles said it again. “Really, don’t worry about it,” and they understood each other.
Tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t know what
we’d do without you, Miles.”
He did not look directly at her. He was touched by her words particularly because he knew that she was sober. He tried to remember. Was she a drinker? He didn’t think so.
“Take good care of Louise, and I’ll see you both in a couple of days.” Tears ran down her cheeks.
MILES WAS GRATEFUL that Ed was late. He rushed around, turning off all the lights and grabbing his coat off the rack in his office. But Billy tapped him on the back as he was locking the door, and Miles jumped back as if he’d been shot with a dart.
“Christ, you scared me.” Miles put his hand over his chest, leaned against the door.
“Here she is, Miles.”
Bonnie stood there, perplexed, as if waking up from a vivid dream into unfamiliar surroundings.
“Here she is,” Billy said again. “I told her you wanted to talk with her.” He scratched the top of his head, shifted from one foot to the other. “Okay, I’ll see you back at the bar,” he said, and hunched his shoulders, rushed away through the rain that gleamed like pins under the few houselights along the boardwalk.
Bonnie had thought about Miles ever since they’d cleaned the tubs. She’d wondered what he was doing at odd times during the day. She’d tried to remember the smallest thing they had talked about, and this irritated her because she didn’t want to be in love, not with anyone. Miles was good looking; he appeared to know who he was and what he was doing with his life, and while he didn’t want to talk about his service in the war, he didn’t seemed damaged in any way. He just seemed sensitive, as if he recognized some great beauty in her that he was perfectly willing to let slip away, or perhaps possess forever. This made her want him all the more, and it was driving her crazy.
“Did you want to talk to me, Miles?” she asked.
“Well, not really. I don’t know how I got into this really, but Billy wanted me to talk to you.”
“About what?” She took a half step toward him, her forehead furrowed.
“Well,” he said, “it’s kind of hard to explain, but he wants to break up with you because you saved his life and you remind him of Ed McMahon.”
“Ed McMahon … you mean Johnny Carson’s announcer?”
“Yep.”
“And that’s why he wants to break up with me?”
“Yep.”
“Well …” She drew out the syllable and followed Miles’s gaze down the boardwalk. “I’m relieved. I thought he was going to make some kind of lame excuse about commitment or something.”
“Exactly.” Miles took her arm, and they walked toward Lester’s house. “I mean, reminding someone of Ed McMahon is pretty serious. It’s something that I think would be hard to overcome. No matter how much therapy you put yourself through. I’d say it’s one of those insurmountable differences.”
Bonnie stopped walking. “Do I remind you of Ed McMahon?”
“No. Not a bit.”
“Good.” And she leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips.
“For the love of God, Miles, what is it with you?” Ed stood ten feet behind them, yelling loud enough that gulls in the harbor lifted away from the water and started hee-hawing, laughing into the dark. “Weren’t you happy enough fucking my wife? Tina’s gone a day, and you’re on to your next woman!” Ed clenched his teeth.
Miles’s voice came louder than he’d intended: “I HAVE NEVER HAD SEX WITH YOUR WIFE!”
The gulls whirled in a chorus above the town. Miles looked up, and in the darkness they looked like bits of white paper caught in an updraft. Stragglers rose up in the lights of the fish plant and glowed like miniature space ships.
“It’s true, Ed,” said Miles. “I have never had sexual relations with that woman. I’m sorry, I mean Tina, you know. I have never had romantic relations with your wife. I have never kissed her or seen her naked.” His voice must have been louder than he thought, for he looked over Ed’s shoulder and saw the women’s movie club standing in front of the café. Clive and Nix stood beside them, and Nix was holding a magazine up to protect herself from the rain. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Miles.
“I didn’t catch the first part of that, Miles,” said Clive. “I got the part where you said you hadn’t fucked Ed’s wife, but what were you talking about before that?”
Rain made little splashes on either side of Ed’s shoes.
“I was telling Bonnie that she didn’t remind me anything of Ed McMahon.” Miles’s voice hung in the air like one of the gulls.
“Well, thank goodness for that,” said Colleen Sheehan. “I thought you were talking about running for president,” and everyone chuckled, then walked back into the café.
“Say goodbye to your brother, asshole,” Ed said to Miles over his shoulder and stormed down the boardwalk.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE COMMUNITY CENTER’S barrel stove burned a lot of firewood during the coldest part of winter. So every year a work party went across the inlet to fell some dead spruce trees. They bucked them up into logs small enough to roll out on the beach, floated them off at high tide, towed them back across to town and cut them into stove wood. The job took two days, and there were two crews: the logging crew and the splitting crew. This year, Billy wasn’t signed up for any job, but Ed was on the splitting crew.
Thinking to keep himself out of town for most of the day and his brother as far as possible from Mouse Miller’s Love Nest, Miles decided to join the logging crew and take Clive along. He had slept a little later than he’d planned; by the time he called his brother’s house and Nix answered the phone, she told him to meet Clive after church, which was both odd and irritating because the longer they stayed in town, the greater the opportunity for Trooper Brown to find them. Miles had an uneasy feeling that he’d been left out of the loop on something.
He was walking to the bar, striding through the slushy tracks left by the slick-soled, leather-heeled shoes of people going to church, when he heard the blare of a floatplane taking off. That meant the trooper had already landed, and Miles doubled his pace, hurrying to get to the church service in the bar with a ceiling full of marijuana bales.
BEFORE THE SECOND preacher had left town and Mouse Miller’s Love Nest had become a place of worship, the only church building had been shared by three congregations. Every Sunday the Catholics had mass, then the Lutherans celebrated communion, and finally a small group of Unitarians gathered to eat and tell stories from their membership. The Catholics were workmanlike in their devotions and were in and out pretty quickly; the Lutherans lingered only somewhat longer; the Unitarians, however, could soak up the rest of the day if the spirit moved them, so they were always scheduled last.
Miles didn’t belong to any of the congregations. He occasionally made it in time to hear part of a sermon, but mostly he enjoyed sitting outside on a bench under the eaves, leaning his head against the wall, listening to the singing, and drinking the coffee he’d brought along with him.
The church building was uphill from the fish plant on a little flat of muskeg surrounded by trees. It was high enough that you could see out almost to the mouth of the inlet, and fishermen often came up to check the weather out on the fishing grounds. To get the best view, they’d sometimes climb the stairs into the modest bell tower. On Sundays, they’d come tiptoeing along the back wall and clamber up the stairs while the ten or so people in the congregation kept going at their meditations, hammer, and tongs.
But this Sunday, the biggest congregation was meeting in a bar. From fifty feet away, Miles could recognize the voice booming through walls and windows, and he winced at what was awaiting him inside. He had never heard his brother, his convicted felon of a brother, deliver a sermon, and he couldn’t imagine what the text would be. In this area of his brother’s redemption, what little faith Miles ever had was squandered.
Dressed in his warmest coveralls, he stood outside the bar and listened to the sermon. The scent of the yellow cedar trees blended with the aroma rising from his cup of coffee and he s
hould have felt optimistic, but he was impatient, every moment thinking he could hear the trooper’s footsteps coming along the boardwalk.
The bar was surprisingly full. A board had been placed over the pool table and covered with a white cloth to serve as an altar, and on chairs lined up especially for the service sat the parishioners: Gloria in a flowered blouse with an oxygen tank beside her; Liz and her cat Louise a row behind; Bonnie in a broad-brimmed white hat over by the bar; Weasel and Billy in clean blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts; Jake in black jeans, a white shirt, and his sore arm still hanging to his side. On the far side of the pool table sat Rick and the rest of the band with their instruments. Clive stood in his dark suit and skinny black tie beside the makeshift altar.
Clive saw his brother enter the room, and he launched into the scripture reading for the day. Romans, chapter thirteen. His voice was a bit shaky but it built as he read and was without irony or sarcasm; it had the quaver of humility.
“Owe no one anything,” Clive began, “except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments—‘you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and all the other commandments—are summed up in this sentence: ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
“Besides this, you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
Out on the boardwalk, Miles felt a blue shadow fall across his face.
“I want to talk to you,” mouthed Ray Brown. Miles heard his brother’s voice hesitate, saw the parishioners turn to watch through the open door to the outside, but he followed the trooper down the boardwalk.
“I don’t know what you think you are doing here,” Brown sputtered, “but I’ve been talking to the school teacher, and he’s got an interesting story to tell.”