Light of Day

by Jamie M. Saul

  “You’re going to make me your summer project no matter what I say, so we might as well start tomorrow.”

  Marty put his hands behind his head. “Fair enough,” he said, in a tone of calm resolve.

  It wasn’t a very big place, eight tables, a lunch counter with a dozen metal stools, the kind you see in a lot of diners, low backs and vinyl cushions. But it was pure country. The early afternoon breeze wove lazily off the river through the deep shade of the tall oak trees, wrapped itself around the sweet smell of pork cooking out back in the smoker, climbed through the eyebrow windows and swirled in the vortex of the ceiling fans.

  There were four men seated at the counter eating their lunch, talking and joking in that way people who know each other well talk and joke. They turned around to say hello to Marty and one of the men said it was good to see him again.

  Walter was short and lean and looked about sixty. He walked with a hitch, and started talking to Marty as soon as he saw him, hurrying up to him to shake his hand, shake Jack’s hand and say any friend of Marty’s was always welcome, asking how Marty was doing these days while at the same time pulling two chairs away from one of the tables—old Formica trimmed with stainless steel and matching chairs, only none of the chairs matched—and saying, “Sit down, sit down.” He did nothing to hide his affection for Marty, the way he fussed over him and gripped his arm while he asked, “Where you been keeping yourself, young man?” in a sweet, paternal tone.

  Marty said he’d been working. “Doing this and that.”

  One of the men at the counter said, “Just don’t do too much of this and stay completely away from that.” Which got a laugh from everyone, including Marty.

  “That’s Red,” Marty told Jack, pointing to the man who got the laugh. “He’s a college professor, like you. Teaches structural engineering over at Rose-Hulman.”

  “And the rest of us are just riffraff,” the man next to Red answered.

  “That’s ‘Big Man,’” Marty said. “And the man next to him is Doc and that’s Elvin in the middle. This is my friend Jack.”

  They said their hellos while Walter smiled and said, “Now that we got that over with, I’ll have something good for you both before too long,” and walked to the grill on the other side of the counter.

  There was an upright piano catty-cornered in the back of the room. The jukebox played Etta James singing: “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places…” The men at the counter were now listening to Walter as he kept on talking to Marty: he hoped Marty was managing to keep cool on these hot days, and was he planning on getting some fishing in, “the perch are biting real good.”

  Red asked Walter, “How would you know?” and made a joke about Walter’s fishing skills, or lack thereof, which got the others laughing. Then Walter got off a good one about Red and they all laughed at that, too. Doc made another joke at Red’s expense. Elvin and Walter showed their appreciation by clapping their hands together, just before “Big Man” got off a joke about Walter, which Red appreciated. Walter threatened to take his meat cleaver “to the lot of you.” Talking and cooking.

  It was something Jack might have enjoyed, had he been capable of enjoying things these days.

  Marty said, “I’m really sorry.” He spoke softly. “I didn’t think they’d get into it like this.”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

  A few minutes later, Walter came back with two bottles of cold beer, a dozen napkins and two plates of pork with that sweet smoky smell, dripping with sauce and overflowing the buns.

  Marty started eating right away. Jack picked up his sandwich and put it down without taking a bite. He pushed the meat around the plate, put down his fork and took a swallow of beer. Marty looked over at him, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  Hank Ballard now played on the jukebox and Red and the others were joined by a handful of their friends, heavy-chested men with the dust of construction on their overalls and in their hair, a few wearing company uniforms, some in shorts and T-shirts. They carried trumpet cases, saxophone cases, a double bass, everyone talking and laughing. They put down their instruments, told Walter to hurry up with the food and filled the rest of the stools at the counter.

  Not long after, several more cars scattered gravel in the parking lot and a small group of middle-aged women, finished with their day’s work, came in, singing out greetings, telling Walter to hurry up with the food “or we’ll come back there and cook it ourselves,” all said with good-natured amusement.

  More cars arrived and the tables started filling up, beers were dug out of the ice chest, the laughter got louder, the talk faster. Walter stayed at his grill, slathering sauce on the barbecue, filling the rolls, spooning out the coleslaw, while some of the men brought out more tables from the back and filled in the few blank spaces at the corners, leaving only a six-foot perimeter around the piano. The jukebox now played Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown.

  Marty told Jack, “The place gets kind of loud when the afternoon shift gets off. Walter brings the liquor out and everyone gets loose. The guys start playing. It’ll go on all night.” He put his money on the table and stood up.

  When they were in the car and driving down the road, Marty said, “It was getting kind of tough for you in there.”

  “I suppose.”

  “As long as you’re aware of what you’re up against, you’re in control. Remember that.”

  “You’re a smart man, Marty.”

  “I can’t say I agree with you.”

  “I’m not looking for a consensus.”

  Marty grinned. “Fair enough.”

  The paved road turned to dirt and stone, the stones jumped and popped against the bottom of Marty’s car. A few miles further, it went back to pavement. And they were getting closer to home.

  It was quiet in the car now. Jack assumed Marty had had enough talk and was glad for the silence. The silence held awhile longer the way it does when your entire person gets inverted into itself. It can be a very comfortable place if you’re with someone else who’s got his own thoughts, which is what Jack was thinking, and that someone else happens to be a stranger, or more a stranger than not, since the only thing you two have in common is knowing each other’s sorrow—if not for the summer migrations of his friends, a coincidence of season and profession, Jack wouldn’t have been with Marty tonight—and Jack knew that if he thought too long, if he started poking around in the dark, he’d hit upon the question that, when asked, would make Marty a stranger no longer, that the answer would speak of deeper sorrow and do nothing to alleviate it, not even when told to a stranger, who wouldn’t be a stranger after what was revealed. This was very dangerous territory to step into, asking personal questions. Marty must have known it. He stayed inside his silence, one place strangers are forbidden, riding further and further away from the cool of the country roads.

  They drove through the hazy air, heavy with fumes, where the interstate cuts through the south side of town; and east, past the old houses with the tired roofs, where they kept the windows open and babies cried, where husbands and wives yelled at each other after another tough day and didn’t care who heard them. Further east, Jack was still thinking about the question he wanted to ask Marty, about knowing more than a stranger should know. He was thinking: Did he stop loving his wife? But that wasn’t the question.

  He thought: Did she stop loving him? But that wasn’t the question, either. That wouldn’t have sent Marty into a panic.

  They drove north now, where the houses are set back from the sidewalk and the lawns are mowed every week by the gardening service and when you walk down the street on summer nights like this you hear the comfortable hum of air conditioners and know that inside the house the rooms are cool, the television isn’t too loud and the conversation is always civil.

  Then they were on the other side of town, where there weren’t quite so many houses and the lawns were replaced by corn
fields and wheat fields and fields lush with alfalfa and soy. The sidewalks were narrow and melted into the road the way they do ten minutes from town. Marty pulled up in front of Jack’s house.

  You can’t expect to spend most of the day with someone, drive into the deep country for barbecue, sit with your thoughts inside a car for an hour and a half and not say a few words before leaving, even if you have to be careful of what you say and what you ask. But Marty didn’t say a few words. Maybe he knew what Jack wanted to ask. Maybe he just wanted to go home and put himself and his good deed to bed, which might have explained why he sat silently with his arms crossed over his chest and stared out the windshield. But Jack couldn’t walk away. He couldn’t go inside, not before saying, “Do you want to sit on the porch awhile and have something to drink?” You can’t expect to spend an entire day with someone and not offer him a cold drink.

  Marty said he’d like that very much.

  Only after Jack made sure there were no messages on the machine, made sure nothing had gone wrong while he was away, could he attempt to play host, although all he had to offer was a pitcher of ice water and a plate of cookies that Mandy Ainsley had brought over back in June and which he had sealed and stored in the pantry.

  Marty was sitting on the porch swing, his head tilted back. He said one of the things he missed since he moved out of his house on Maple Street was sitting on the porch on warm summer nights. “It’s funny the things you can miss.” He gave the swing a soft push. The chain creaked and groaned gently.

  Jack sat on one of the chairs and propped his feet on the railing. He asked, “Did your wife get the house?” But that wasn’t the question.

  “I sold it. It reminded me of too many things.”

  “Where do you live now?” That was not the question, either.

  “I bought a place over on Franklin. It’s all right. But no porch.”

  It might have been a look of anticipation that Jack saw on Marty’s face, a look of expectation, as though he knew what was coming. Or it might have been Jack wanting to see that look where none existed. Whichever it was, he paused long enough to lift the glass to his mouth and take a long swallow, then he asked, “What happened that made her want to divorce you?” That was the question.

  “I left her no choice,” was all Marty said, and turned his head to look down the road, at the deep rows of corn, the relentless engines of procreation. When he turned back, his face, Jack realized, did not look like the face of a cop, not a city cop, not a small-town cop. Not just tonight, not only now in the yellow glow of the porch light. It was there the first time Marty showed up, that remarkable expression. It was always there, behind all other expressions he wore, and it was also the face of a policeman with closed nerves and sealed emotions, and at the same time it was, simply, Marty’s face, the way he looked, like the intonations of a voice, an accent, not the look of optimism necessarily, but of confidence: “Things may not be wonderful right now, but I got through my tough time, you’ll get through yours.” That was even more remarkable.

  “What about you?” Marty said. “When I asked if there was a woman in your life, you said it wasn’t relevant to Danny’s suicide, but since we’re asking questions.”

  “There was one, but I thought it would be too confusing for Danny. He had enough conflict.” That was only part of the reason. But Jack didn’t tell Marty about Maggie, who played in the softball games and liked to dance close and slow, and who, if Jack had given the chance—

  “Just one in ten years?” Marty asked.

  “The only one that I was serious about.” Jack shifted uneasily in his chair. “Moving to Gilbert was not about me finding a wife, or a mother for my son. It wasn’t about me at all.” He stood up and walked away from Marty’s assumptions. He went inside the house and refilled the pitcher. He thought about what he might tell Marty, or if he should tell him anything at all. When he came back out to the porch, he said, “I was married to the woman I wanted to be married to. We had the life that we wanted to have with each other. And then we didn’t.” He was silent for a moment, listening to himself breathe, listening to himself think. “I’ve never stopped missing that life.” It wasn’t a confession, merely a statement of fact. “What happened wasn’t fair to Danny. What it did to him wasn’t fair. I spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it.”

  Then Jack told Marty about the deal he’d made. It disturbed him to talk about it, not because he was embarrassed or ashamed, not because it was a secret, not for the lack of catharsis that talking about it might bring—he didn’t expect a catharsis, he didn’t want one; there is nothing cleansing about stating the facts you’ve accepted about your life—and not because any trust had been betrayed, or assumed. It disturbed him to admit the hurt Anne’s abandonment left behind. It disturbed him to confess the irrevocable damage of Danny’s suicide. It disturbed him, he realized, to admit that another piece of his life, his time, had been chipped away forever and dropped into the irretrievable past.

  Jack didn’t say this, he didn’t say anything else because there was nothing more to say unless they wanted to talk about what the questions, what the answers, revealed when told to someone who was no longer a stranger. Unless they wanted to talk about what dangerous territory this was; so they sat in silence, unlike the silence in the car, which had been safe and private. There was nothing private about this silence, nothing safe. It never is after the questions, after the answers. After nightfall on the front porch when you’ve gone beyond the point of saying more than necessary.

  There was nothing Jack could do except feel the world, and the life that had once been attached to it, lurch farther away from him. He should have expected it. After all, you can’t spend an entire day with someone, drive into the deep country, sit with your thoughts inside a car for an hour and a half and not ask a few questions.

  XIV

  He sat under an oak tree by the creek with his notebook and a cooler with a couple of bottles of soda and two sandwiches. He was able to do that now, sit outside, write his lecture notes. He was able to run errands, to meet Marty for lunch in town, dinner, even if it was little more than a formality, really, Jack pushing salad around a bowl. He was able to go out and come back to the house that was still standing, to the benign answering machine. He was able to call his father without the cold sweat, without the dread.

  Jack had never thought he’d get this far, taking short drives through town, afternoon walks along the edge of the field, alone sometimes, sometimes with Marty, who managed to find the time whenever Jack called. They’d sit out back and have a beer or drink lemonade, and it always ended up with the two of them driving somewhere or sitting in the house, talking about Danny: “Let me show this one picture…” “Let me…” Jack wasn’t ashamed to tell Marty about sitting alone in Danny’s room, resting on Danny’s bed, putting his face in Danny’s pillow, closing his eyes and talking to Danny as though he were there. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he still worried about What next?—but not all the time. That he didn’t always listen for the ring of the telephone, or anticipate the next disaster, but it was still in his mind. He wasn’t ashamed to tell Marty about the old wooden box with the cutout animals and Anne’s orange button. “I can’t help wondering if there were more secrets.”

  Marty said, “I think it was Danny’s way of staying attached to Anne, to his time with her.”

  On this first day of August Jack was trying to think like a man with a future, however precarious that future was; built not on the solid bedrock of his own personality but balanced on Marty’s shoulders, a place Jack found very uncomfortable, a place Jack preferred not to be—he had never been carried by anyone—but he’d asked Marty to help bring him back to being Dr. Owens, nevertheless, to what was left of Dr. Owens, who was going through the motions of thinking and reacting from memory; as though he’d seen another man, the other man being himself, do these same things a long time ago, on a home video, in the dark of a movie theater.

  Tomorrow h
e would drive to the college and start screening films for the fall semester, he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to keep his job, but right now it was enough to sit out by the creek with his books and prepare for the new term while Mutt lay next to him on the green, ripe ground.

  From where he sat, Jack could see the field, where the crops had been harvested and come fall the earth would lie bare. The heat rippled in the sunlight. He could hear blue jays screaming in trees, the sudden scatter of wings, the plunk of a frog in the creek, and the creek rushing across the rocks and smooth stones.

  “It’s not so bad sitting out here today.” He still talked to himself, sometimes, and to Danny when he started thinking about the past.

  Later, when the sun was above the trees, he might walk over to where the water was deep and cool and wade in the creek. Right now, he would do some of the work Dr. Owens used to do.

  It was noon when Jack put down his papers and books and saw the small dark shape rising in the field like a tiny ship riding the crest toward shore. After a while, the shape became Mary-Sue Richards stepping through the fence and walking toward the house.