Eric slowed his car, stopped on the inadequate shoulder, pulled a little further ahead. He said, “There’s the veterinary clinic.”
“But it’s just not true, outlandishly not true. So I’m like, Well, let’s think about how to communicate about this as adults and role models. And one of the moms gets up and says if I don’t get control of my classroom.”
There was nothing across from the vet’s. Eric said, “Where did you say your house was?”
She pointed vaguely to the dense forest. “I’m down there.”
“Down where?”
“Oh, it’s nice. Don’t worry. It’s down on the river.”
And there was, if you looked, a bit of a path. She climbed out of the car. Eric helped her recover her groceries, and between them, Eric felt, was this overwhelming feeling of loss (or maybe it was just Eric, his lonely mood), anyway the feeling that she wasn’t ever going to get to tell him the rest of her story, that he wasn’t ever going to get to hear it, get to the bottom of it, clear the discrepancies, something he was very, very good at and enjoyed, the best part of his work. He couldn’t help it, said, “So you’re not there anymore. At Captain Arnold Elementary.”
Her head jerked faintly at his remembering the name. “Not there, no. Last April I just got in my car and left. Left them in the lurch, as they say.”
“So you quit?”
“Well, not really.”
A cold wind was picking up, flecks of wet snow.
“Well then, you were fired. You were unfairly fired.” Eric in the back of his lawyerly mind was already winning a breach-of-contract suit, with damages.
“I was fired for quitting, I guess.”
Then again, it might all be rubbish. He said, “Well, maybe sometime I’ll hear the whole story.” The river was pretty far down, by Eric’s estimation. Maybe half a mile or more, and steep terrain. Or maybe the young woman just didn’t want him to know where she actually lived, laudable caution.
She said, “ ‘It sifts from leaden sleeves, it powders all the wood.’ ”
“Okay,” Eric said.
She said, “We had to memorize a poem. In English class. That one was short, at least.”
Eric let his face brighten: “Oh, I get it. The snow. Nice.”
“ ‘Sieves,’ I mean. ‘It sifts from leaden sieves.’ ”
And here it came: one flake, two, a third one over here, and then suddenly the millions, dropping fast and hard, the wind suddenly whipping.
He said, “We’re supposed to get a lot, I guess. Storm of the century, that’s what I heard. Of course that’s what they always say.”
“And then there’s something about ruffling the wrists of fence posts.”
Eric’s car was mostly parked on the road, and the two of them just stood behind it, as if that were where people always chatted. He said, “High winds later and over two feet of snow, three feet or even more in some areas.”
“Some areas. That’s us, isn’t it? We’re always ‘some areas.’ It snowed I think twenty-five feet up there last winter, in Presque Isle. The roads were like driving down canyons.”
“I like your poem,” Eric said. “And just the idea of fence posts with wrists, nice.”
“I didn’t write it.” She let a long moment pass, finally began to gather her bags, picking them up by their many handles one by one till she and her coat were weighted down like a circus tent against the wind. “Well, thanks,” she said.
“My pleasure,” Eric said slowly. Again, that charitable rumbling up from his toes, a kind of twitching in his hands, his jaw, the words coming to his lips: “I could help you down.”
“No,” she said.
The snow was falling in earnest now, large, wet flakes. There had better damn well be a house down there. “Please,” Eric said.
“No,” she said again and put the enormous hood back over her head. She hefted those bags—easily fifty pounds dangling off her bare hands—and hunched off down the path a step at a time, definite hitch in her gait, painful to see. Eric watched her a moment, watched a little more, then climbed in his car, honked a couple of times to say good luck. She turned slightly, shrugged heavily by way of a wave, the weight of all that crap she’d bought. No ghost had ever been so tied to the earth as she.
Eric tore his eyes from her plight, drove off.
The snow had already begun to accumulate on the road—a kind of slush that would turn to ice when evening came, temperatures to plummet midway through the afternoon as the storm “re-intensified,” or so the serious taller guy on the Weather Channel had warned, possibly several days of snow, likely record-breaking, if the various systems lined up.
Eric decided to go the long way, enjoy the snowfall, so no U-turn but straight ahead on 138, driving slowly, the sweeping curve down the hill and over the new bridge. Beneath which the Woodchurch River was flowing deep and swift after an autumn of rains, iced now only at the banks and fringes, boulders like mounds of glass. Long glimpse, then up and up to Houk’s Corners, the gas station there, also the defunct video club where he and Alison used to rent art movies. He felt his own temperature had plummeted, something unnamed re-intensifying inside him, that charity again, or maybe plain kindness, the stuff he was really made of and had lately kept too close. That young woman, practically dragging her bags of groceries.
He turned around in the Mobil station at the Corners and headed back, parked at the veterinarian’s, which was the only building in sight, Dr. Mia Arnold, from Switzerland. He’d won a case against her just the spring before, some ultra-fancy show dog she’d euthanized in a mix-up. The snow was thick, wet, very heavy. But life continued as usual—a bearded man chunking down Dr. Arnold’s wheelchair ramp with an enormous black dog in tow, a put-together college girl climbing the stairs the other way with a kitten cupped in her hands, the dogs back in the boarding kennels oddly silent. It was still only early afternoon, plenty of time, but the sky was dark and getting darker, a notch colder, too, the wind picking up, snow in Eric’s face as he crossed the street to the young woman’s path.
Three
HE SNIFFED THAT smell of wood smoke and dirty clothes and mildew as he caught up to her a short way into the forest—it was that old pile of a coat she was wearing, not entirely unpleasant, but close. The enormous hood had fallen off her head, and her hair was really very badly matted and frizzed and chopped, little bright beads of water where snowflakes had landed. Around them the trees were scruffy, too, bare and overcrowded in what had been pastureland, the snow blowing through upraised branches, a few last, clinging leaves rattling. Seeing Eric, she unraveled herself from the bag handles and rubbed the twisted imprints in her fingers and hands.
Eric said nothing, but welling with anger—she’d no idea of the danger she was in—gave her one of his dress gloves, nice brown leather lined with warm fuzz. She took it quickly and thrust her hand into it, pride knocked back by the cold. He hefted all seven of her bags by the handles in the one gloved hand and she didn’t protest that, either, though Eric got the idea she’d rather. Fifty or sixty pounds, easily, now that he felt it.
“I just thought,” he said. He just thought some people needed to be protected from themselves.
“Storm of the century,” she said. “As if they fucking know.”
“Maybe just the last hundred years,” Eric said.
And that was an end to talk. Down and down and to the river, at least a half mile, thirty minutes at her pace, then down a very steep approach to the flats along the river, then upstream another hundred yards in the protection of a row of riverside hemlocks that grew under a rocky slope, all but a cliff. The hemlocks blocked the snow and kept the path clear, a soft, six-century duff of fine needles and tiny cones and brittle twiglets fragrant and giving underfoot. The cabin was a surprise, a sudden apparition, brown as the trunks of the hemlocks. Except for the steep plane of its roof under the new snow, it might have been invisible, a rustic old place perched on stout cement piers atop a high rock outcropping above
the coursing Woodchurch. Beyond the hemlocks were two of the biggest white pines Eric had ever seen, one then the next, partners over the river, trunks that four people couldn’t hug: no logger had ever devastated this awkward spot.
So, she really did have a place to go. The young woman climbed three prodigious stone steps and pushed open the cabin’s heavy front door, no locks to fuss with. Eric climbed after her and followed her inside, nice and warm. She hobbled straight to the antique cookstove, a Glenwood (so it said), a fancy thing all decked out with chrome scrollwork and numerous warming shelves and doors and vents and handles, lovely. She built up the fire with sticks of dead pine and a couple of moldering logs, all she had for firewood. Beside the stove, a vintage copper slipper tub with two washcloths hanging stiff—how would you go about using that?
No invitation, he hefted his load of bags to the top of a stout-legged butcher’s block in the kitchen corner, slowly disassociated himself from the twisted handles. The gray of the afternoon permeated the place. The walls were beaverboard, and small sprays of snow had formed on the floor where there were cracks—not a shred of insulation, was Eric’s guess, the whole thing open to the wind underneath, no kind of winter abode, the sprays soon to be drifts, interior.
The young woman shuffled around in her huge coat putting things right. So there was a basic competence. She filled a large pot with greenish water from an old joint-compound bucket, lit a kerosene lamp with a long match from a lobster-shaped holder bolted to the wall, placed it smoking on the table, bent efficiently to adjust the wick.
“Okay,” she said in the sudden warm light.
“Nice,” Eric said. Probably too helpfully he unpacked the plastic bags item by item, again depressed by her shopping.
Clearly annoyed by him, she reached to put things away in the rough-hewn cabinets nailed high on the kitchen wall, lined up her ramen perfectly, her mac and cheese, the big cans of beans. At last she shed the huge coat, hung it on a nail near the stove, plain that it had hung there for many years.
“I’m Eric,” he said, noting once again the cut on her ear.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said and limped to gaze out the big window over the river, the only window in the place, blue light: the snowfall was nearly horizontal in the wind. “You’d better get moving.”
He shouldn’t have stared. “I’d like to help,” he said. “Before I go.” He felt strongly that she was his responsibility now, a kind of pro-bono client he’d taken on. He had nothing pressing to attend to otherwise, God knew, small-town lawyer with no cases, typical for November, or maybe a little less than typical: it had been a bad year all around. Also, Alison had missed their last several dinner dates. But he didn’t like to think of that. Always hopeful, as Alison might say.
“No, really,” the young woman said.
Eric noticed a ladder led to a loft above. She must sleep up there—no bed downstairs, only a couple of mission-oak chairs and small matching couch, cracked leather cushions, nice old furniture in the coldest corner of the place. He heard the wind picking up, checked his phone surreptitiously. No signal, nothing. The time was still only one o’clock, but sunset would come at 3:45, and in this weather dusk would drop fast.
He said, “What’s going on with that limp?”
“Ankle,” she said. “Pretty bad.”
“We’d better take a look.”
She sighed but shuffled to the couch, fell onto it, tugged her shoe off. It was a teacher’s shoe, all right, kind of a felt clog with a negative heel, soaked through. Good wool socks, though, thick and green and fairly new. Whose charity accounted for socks like that? Gingerly she peeled her foot bare. The ankle was definitely swollen, a yellowy-green bruise down to the toes, but none of the deep-blue hematomic color you’d expect with a break. “You’ll want to keep using it,” Eric said, old athlete. He took the foot in his two hands gently, palpated it gently, cool skin, toenails untended. Back before he’d flunked organic chemistry in college, he’d thought he’d be a doctor. “Light use,” he said, “to keep it from stiffening up. And pack a little snow on it for ten or fifteen minutes every so often. You can do that right now, if it suits you. Maybe by the fire so you don’t get chilled?”
“Okay, Doctor,” she said, abruptly pulling her foot out of his hands. “Don’t you think you’d better get going? Like, right now?”
“You’ll need firewood,” he said. “It’s going to be a long three or four days with this snow.”
She looked at his loafers, his dress slacks, his natty sports jacket. She wanted the wood, anybody could see that. She said, “There’re some boots and stuff in the shed.” She pointed to a narrow door in the corner, upstream. He’d assumed it was a bathroom, but of course there was no bathroom. Behind the door he found a rough shed, wind and snowflakes inside. Also vintage water skis and slickers and broken fishing rods and lengths of hose and every sort of summer thing imaginable, a little six-horse Johnson boat motor on a wooden trestle, rakes and shovels and scraps of lumber and a workbench, plenty of tools hanging and fallen, a thermometer nailed to the wall (fourteen degrees), girlie calendar set forever to August 1965. The pin-up was a chubby young woman with red cheeks and an inadequate sweater buttoned strategically, no pants to speak of, but legs folded demure. Funny to think that in real life she was probably about his mom’s age, photographed in a less sexualized era. He wondered where the young woman was now, those plump shoulders, the cute chin tucked in, the finger to her lips, how many kids, how many divorces, what illnesses, alive or dead? He flipped through the calendar, couldn’t stop himself. August was the woman for him, all right, or would be when she grew up, though of course by now she had grown up and then down again, potent gaze. He could see why someone had saved her, and why she’d been banished to the shed.
In blue rain boots, a stiff yellow slicker, and a pair of pink fish-scaling gloves (very tough, not warm), Eric emerged from the shed carrying a bow saw and a dull hatchet he’d found, closed the door behind him.
His hostess very nearly smiled at the sight of him.
He said, “Pretty manly, I admit.”
The joke killed any amusement. “And then I need you out of here,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“But thanks, okay?”
“Tell me your name?”
“Danielle, for now.”
Four
OUTSIDE HE FOUND an open little woodshed, but Danielle-for-now had depleted the supply to a couple of uselessly huge logs, half rotted in any case. So Eric flapped in his rubber boots up and under the hemlocks, snapped off dead-dry branches and twigs, broke it all into kindling lengths over his knee, made several large bundles in short order, carried them hugged to his chest, tucked them one at a time inside the cabin door. Danielle was in the kitchen corner, paid him no attention, just put the last of her groceries away. She’d pulled off her bulky, practically knee-length sweater and he saw she was slender, not so blowsy as he’d thought, and except for maybe the hair and shiny, unwashed pants pretty much just a person you’d find anywhere in Woodchurch. Her shirt was big like everything else, an old flannel job misbuttoned. She was wet up to her knees. Make that soaked. Well, she didn’t need him telling her to change her clothes.
Back in the pelting wind, Eric struggled up the path he and Danielle had come in on. Their footprints were already obscured. He found a dead maple standing nice and dry, maybe ten inches at the base, sawed it down more easily than he’d imagined, satisfying crash. He sawed off the bigger branches, sawed the trunk into manageable lengths, more sweaty effort, maybe a half hour’s work in the dumping snow, more and more uncomfortable as his fish-scaling gloves got soaked, dragged the pieces down one then two then three at a time to the woodshed, climbed back up the hill and retrieved the branches, exhausting. He saw himself returning in a couple of days after the storm had blown through, saw himself checking in on her friendly, bringing fresh victuals, a packet of clean T-shirts, unless that was too personal, certainly a decent blanket.
Under the overhang of the woodshed’s roof at least he was out of the horizontal snow, which had started to mix with flecks of stinging ice. He got himself set up and cut about half the wood into twenty or so logs of various diameters, only a few so big around that they’d have to be split. In the woodshed he found a splitting maul, and he enjoyed the work so much he just kept splitting till even the smaller logs were done. This gave the impression of a lot more wood and he brought it into her house in several trips, no sign of the young woman. So he filled the woodbox by the stove, stacked the rest against the wall, enough for a couple of days at least. Which, of course, meant a couple of days at most. After which he could come back with a chain saw and maybe a friend and do the job right. Or, maybe more to the point, a couple of social workers and a cop, get her out of there. You couldn’t let people die just because they might get mad at you.
“Wow, sweet,” Danielle said from up in the loft, disembodied voice. “That was above and beyond.”
“My pleasure,” Eric said. “Like a day at the gym. And there’s more out there, too.”
“Have some water—it’s boiled. In the small pot. And then you’d better go.”
He drank directly from the pot, the water still warm, faint biotic taste of the river, deeply satisfying: of course he was thirsty. She’d pulled the two mission-oak chairs up close to the stove and her clothes were arranged on them drying, meager items, pants and shirt and huge sweater, underpants. He stood there and stripped the sopping fish-scaling gloves inside out off his puckered fingers, found himself studying the underpants, elastic emerging from the band, side seam ripped, a picture of desperation. He hung the gloves near them. He could come back in a few days with a chain saw, yes, and also some provisions, even a load of clothes and bedding from the thrift shop. Maybe Patty Cardinal from the church would help him, jolly old Patty the volunteer organist and inveterate do-gooder, woman’s touch, always wearing red.
The Remedy for Love Page 2