by Louise Hawes
It’s funny, the people who reach out when you need it. By the time I got hold of Fry, both he and H were on the beach, waiting for me. But it was H who gave up a day in the sun and rushed to Whale Point General as soon as he heard what had happened. Fry, who hated hospitals, texted me that he was glad we had everything covered and he was sorry “the old guy took such a bad fall.”
So it was just the three of us, Shepherd, me, and H, reading magazines and talking nervously in the ER waiting room. Rufus had been right, it was a break, not a sprain; he came home with a cast and crutches. Which meant H was a big help, because it turned out two shoulders were better to lean on than one. I just stood back and let my father and H ease my poet in and out, up and down. Doors and chairs, cars and elevators—all of them took careful planning and gentle support. Clearly, Rufus wouldn’t be able to cook or clean for himself once he got home.
So guess who used his restaurant experience to fix our poet’s meals from then on? And guess who Shepherd nominated to be his sous-chef? “Hell,” he told me, as soon as he and H had settled Rufus on the couch, “we’re used to working in the kitchen together, right?”
I didn’t know if my father remembered our togetherness the same way I did. But I was not real eager to relive it. Still, we were both free during the day, and I had to admit that Shepherd deserved a second chance. And Rufus? He deserved all the help we could give him.
“I’ll plan and you prep,” Shepherd offered before lunch. “We’ll do fine.”
And we did. We resurrected one of Manny’s best sandwiches, his avocado and hummus with chutney. We didn’t use focaccia, but the toasted rye worked just fine. Rufus ate more than any of us, and H, who must have used up all his adjectives in his homework, was reduced to repeating, “Hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm,” every other bite. He even tried to win Carmen over by sharing a crust with her. She backed away hissing, though, and Shepherd took it personally. “I went too heavy on the horseradish,” he told us. “I don’t know why I always do that.”
H hung around because, skinny as he was, he was a lot more help than I could be when it came to lifting and toting. Not to mention that once he got his foot in his literary idol’s door, there was no getting him out. And actually? It didn’t hurt to have one more vote against my poet when he started talking nonsense. “I think we should go ahead with class,” Rufus told us after lunch. H and Shepherd had settled him in a chair by the window, and he seemed easy there, almost comfortable. “Long as I don’t put weight on my feet or get the cast wet.”
H looked as though Rufus had suggested a quick trip to the moon. “I’d say, with all due respect, sir, that would be a mistake. You broke a bone this morning.” He turned to Shepherd and me for support. “Why would you want to get in a car again this afternoon?”
“The doc said stay off it for a week, didn’t he?” Shepherd was studying Rufus, like he was trying to figure out where he got his stamina, his fight. “Your body’s had a shock; no point in giving it another one.”
“Sarah?” Rufus checked in with me, as if I were his last hope.
But I had to disappoint him. I remembered him splayed across the kitchen floor, his white face, his shivering. “I can’t see how a car ride makes any sense,” I told him. “Not for you, not for anyone with a broken a leg.”
Carmen obviously agreed. She crouched like a tiger, then hurled herself up from the floor onto his knees, where she proceeded to yowl . . . and yowl. The noise she made was halfway between a whine and a shriek, and no one in the room knew how to stop it. Except Rufus, who stroked her head, patted and soothed, until she metamorphosed from tiger to house cat, and curled into a docile, marmalade ball.
I couldn’t help feeling angry at that spoiled feline who had, after all, caused Rufus’s accident in the first place. But my poet didn’t care. Over and over, regular as waves, his big hand slipped behind her ears, then down her neck and spine. Over and over, until her raspy engine started up and she fell asleep in his lap.
Second Chance
Before you grow away from
me and find us lost in time,
I should tell you who it is
that’s working by my side.
There’s no oracle here,
no practice made perfection,
or wisdom born of age,
you glow without direction.
But what a light you cast,
as mine fades out of sight!
What grace falls on tired fields
as day sinks down to night!
Why shouldn’t this old dog
learn tricks from someone new?
And drought give way to rain,
as I cede my page to you.
All the poems I never wrote,
the things I’ve left undone,
will find a chance to shine
in your unrisen sun.
The Fourth Class
“But what if I didn’t have to get in the car?” Reaching over Carmen’s inert but sizable form, my poet picked up one of his crutches. “What if we held the class right here, and all I had to do was master these devilish contraptions?”
“You’re kidding, right?” I checked in with Shepherd. He was shaking his head.
“I could stay at home, teach, and convalesce all at the same time.” Again, Rufus looked to me for support. But it was H who caught the insanity.
“Why not?” he asked. “Why couldn’t I go over to the college right now and tell the prof we’re switching classrooms?” He looked around the living room. “I could even bring back some folding chairs from the auditorium.”
Rufus was beaming. He was also much too enthusiastic for Carmen. Woken from her nap, she jumped to the floor and prowled off purposefully, as if she had important cat matters to attend to.
“Now, if someone would just give me a hand here.” Rufus tried to stand, so Shepherd helped him to his feet and slipped a crutch under each shoulder.
“Nothing to it,” my poet told us, proceeding to swing that long body of his between the aluminum braces. He maneuvered his way around the room, back and forth, back and forth. He got pretty good pretty fast, and finally even Shepherd was satisfied. “You’re a natural, Rufus,” he told our poet. “That just leaves bed, bath, and breakfast.”
Rufus shifted onto one crutch, then let himself drop heavily back into the chair. “The doctor wanted to send someone over from the hospital,” he told us. “Someone to nursemaid the invalid.” He sighed, laid the crutches against the arm of his chair. “I told him I didn’t think that would be necessary. I don’t like being fussed over.” He reached for the drink I’d put on the table next to him, and must have reached too far. One of the crutches clattered to the floor.
“Not necessary, huh?” Shepherd stooped to pick up the crutch, handed it back. “What do you say I camp out here for a few days, just till you get the hang of things?” He gave Rufus a look that was halfway between a smile and a challenge. “I’m not the fussing type.”
And I wasn’t the fainting type, but I came close. Shepherd staying with Rufus? Shepherd cooking and cleaning up after someone else? Rufus letting him? Well, maybe not that last, since my poet was clearly uncomfortable accepting help. He didn’t argue with Shepherd, not exactly, but he wasn’t going to agree to a roommate sitting down. He rose up in that chair on one elbow, grimacing when his hips shifted. “As much as I appreciate the offer,” he told my father, “I’m not going to let you—”
Shepherd stepped forward now and slipped his own arm through my poet’s, then pointed to the narrow hall that led to the back of the house. “Let’s discuss this in your room, okay?” He didn’t need to say more, he just let the prospect of navigating bed, toilet, shower, speak for itself.
Rufus seemed to realize what he was up against. He fell silent, probably considering the long walk, the thumping and bumping, between here and there.
“Now, if Sarah and Hector will excuse us,” Shepherd announced, taking charge, “I’ll bet we can find something in your closet, so you can get
dressed for class.”
For a few seconds I was too surprised to move, to speak. I simply stood there and watched the two of them, the silver-haired poet, his face turned to look up at Shepherd, and my slender, darker father, leaning over him. Even as I headed into the kitchen with H, I couldn’t take my eyes off them, couldn’t stop marveling at how Rufus leaned into Shepherd, how he let him lift, cradle, adjust, until the two of them were vertical. Until their heads were so close that, against the light streaming from the window, they looked almost like one person.
* * * *
The text came in while Rufus and Shepherd were in the bedroom. So I had time to read Fry’s new poem alone. It was just four lines long, but when you put the first letter of each together, they spelled the word “LOVE.” They were printed in capitals so I couldn’t miss it, but it didn’t matter. Each line said love all by itself.
Like a scent in the wide air,
Of deeper deep I never knew,
Vines knocking on melancholy doors,
Even if I didn’t love you, I would love the blueness of your eyes.
Fire and ice. Oil and water. The boy who had chosen the beach over Rufus. The person who’d written this love poem. How could you reconcile those two? How did they even coexist?
If I could have hugged my phone without starting up at least three apps I didn’t need, I might have. This poem wasn’t as long as the other Fry had sent, but it was just as beautiful. I knew I would copy it into my notebook. I knew I would treasure every line. And I knew that anyone who didn’t love being loved by the boy who’d written them would have to be crazy.
I wasn’t exactly proud of what I did next. But I couldn’t help it. I needed to make sure that the friend who’d let me down this morning was the same one who’d written me this afternoon. That the accomplice who’d helped H concoct the Worst Poem in History had actually felt this Best of All Poems into being. So yes, I put Fry to the test. Right there, waiting for H to get back with the chairs for class, I Googled those lines to make sure they didn’t belong to someone else. And guess what? They didn’t. Fry was innocent of stealing beauty, guilty of making it all on his own. The way he’d acted this morning left a lot to be desired, but what he’d written on that screen? Well, it was as righteous as a kiss and as splendid as a new start.
When Fry called a minute later, I was crying and smiling all at once. Vines knocking on melancholy doors.
“You got the poem?”
He must have known the answer to his own question. I mean, it was hard to miss that I’d turned into a speechless mess.
“I’m glad you think it’s okay.”
“Okay?” I asked. I wiped away a tear. “Okay?! That poem is so much more than okay. It’s nothing short of—”
“Shhhhh.” Fry was soothing me, as if I were a dog. A nice dog, but one that jumped on company. “Let’s keep this on the down low, Sar. I don’t like sharing the way I feel about you with . . .” He paused. “Who’s there, anyway. Where are you?”
Right on cue, H banged through the front door, four metal folding chairs in tow. Carmen tore off toward the back of the house, and H took a second look at my teary face. “You okay, Sarah?”
I looked up, sniffed. “Sure,” I said. “I just got some good news from a friend.” I stared at my cell. Even if I didn’t love you . . . “I have to go,” I told Fry. I explained about Rufus’s broken leg, about the way he insisted on teaching right where he was.
“Really?!” Fry sounded just the slightest bit impressed. “Oh, well. Guess I didn’t get the memo.” He chuckled. “But tell me how it goes, huh?”
“You’re not coming?” I asked. Not visiting the hospital was one thing, but missing class twice in a row was another.
“Hey, I’m finished jumping through hoops, Sar. I’m taking the summer off.”
“You can’t cut again. You’ll start a stampede and land us all back in court.”
“I feel a pretty bad headache coming on.” He didn’t sound sick, but he did sound borderline furious. “Maybe I’m allergic to twisted.”
“What do you mean?” This wasn’t poetry. And it didn’t sound much like love, either.
“I mean, everyone’s making jokes. I mean, it’s getting old, Sarah—you and the Reverend Baylor.”
The words stung, but I didn’t have time to process them. Rufus was sorting through papers on the couch, and Shepherd and H were setting up chairs all around me. Carmen’s barbed-wire howl had started up, and I knew we’d have to lock her in the bedroom before class.
“Fry,” I told the cell. “You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong, and I really have to go.” I pressed end, turned the sound off, and tucked the phone in my jeans pocket.
* * * *
It took longer than usual for the class to settle. Meeting in a normal beach house instead of that stuffy classroom kind of went to everyone’s head. Not to mention, someone came up with the idea that we should all sign my poet’s cast. You should have seen it after we finished—it looked like a bunch of crazed kindergartners had attacked it—there were crooked smiley faces, lopsided stick figures, and one scary cartoon ghost that someone insisted was their muse. There was red and purple and yellow and green, and by the time all the kids had signed, I don’t think there was a square quarter inch that wasn’t colored in.
In between those smiley faces, though, while everyone else was fussing over Rufus, I heard Fry’s voice again, his hurt. Everyone’s making jokes. Did some of the kids right there in that room think Rufus was a dirty old man? Was the boy who drew a dragon with a broken wing on the toe of the cast one of the kids who joked about us to Fry?
Right up to the last, I kept hoping he’d join us. Hoping I wouldn’t have to fabricate some illness, some heartrending emergency, that could plausibly keep him from class for the second time in a row. But he didn’t. And I couldn’t. I decided that my guy was a grown-up and that he was perfectly capable of making his own excuses. Love or no love, poetry or not, that wasn’t part of my job description.
When it was finally time to start and people had gotten out paper and pencils, I offered to take over the music. But Rufus insisted it was his leg, not his arm, that was broken. He brushed that mop of hair off his forehead, took a deep breath, and tried to swipe the player the way I’d shown him. That’s when I wished we’d gone full immersion. Because although I thought he’d watched me closely, it was clear that Rufus H. Baylor and the twenty-first century weren’t fully acquainted. If we were learning poetry, then he was learning touch screens.
I knew he hadn’t sabotaged our playlist, but the music that started up was hundreds of years too old and way too slow. He looked at me, helpless, as the swells of an organ billowed around us. Most of the kids in the room were polite . . . at first. But it was only a minute before they started rolling their eyes, shaking their heads.
As for Rufus, his eyes seemed to grow wider with each thunderous chord, and he tapped the player again and again. Which made things worse, since the classical music now alternated with an ancient playlist of mine, a BF selection that included some madrigals Wanda had insisted I’d love. Between the lutes and the organ, and the laughter breaking out everywhere, Rufus hardly knew where to start. Or end. He gave up, and finally asked for help. “Sarah,” he said. “I’m afraid I, er, that is . . . would you . . .”
I rushed to his side, checked the player, found he was playing by artist, not album, in random order, not sequentially, and finally started the song we’d agreed on. I’ve told you how Rufus’s smile lights you up, right? He looked at me now as if I’d saved the day, his life, and maybe the entire planet. I took that pride back to my seat with me. I ignored the smirks from Thatcher’s crowd and listened, instead, to the music. It was a relief when the laughter died down and high fives spread around the room.
But suddenly, after just a few more minutes, Rufus turned the player off. Now there were more surprised looks, more heads shaking.
I wondered if I’d picked the wrong piece, if our te
acher had decided his idea wouldn’t work, after all. But it wasn’t that. “I like watching people listen to music,” he explained to us. “I can usually tell who’s letting it in.”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but one thing was clear: He was looking over all our heads to the back of the room. “Some people snap their fingers,” he went on. “Some people sway, others sing along.” He smiled, and I turned around to see who’d gotten his attention. “Only one person in this room closed his eyes. Only one person fell in.”
Are you ready? That one person was Shepherd! I guess I half expected that my father would have gone out for a break. Or spent our class in Rufus’s bedroom. But there he was, lounging against the back wall. Flushed, even under his tan, but playing it cool. I thought of all the old tapes he kept in the glove compartment of the Mustang. Of how he always made everyone in the car be quiet when the radio played a song he loved. Of how once he’d even pulled over to the side of the road, closed his eyes and tapped his fingers all the way through.
“Can you tell us why you shut your eyes?” Rufus was still looking at Shepherd, and Shepherd was still looking embarrassed. After centuries, he shook his head.
“I guess to give the music room,” my father said, studying his hands as if they might help him answer. “Space of its own, you know?” He spoke slowly, reluctantly, as if every word were being dragged out of him. “A place it doesn’t have to share.”
Dialogue over. Rufus got the message. He went back to talking to the rest of us: “How you listen, what you feel, changes the music itself. Without you, it’s nothing. Nine-tenths you, one-tenth the notes, right?
“I’d like y’all to make sure to close your eyes this time, too. And let the music make pictures in your head. Not words, mind. Just pictures.”
He turned the player back on, and, mercifully, he got it right this time. The same music started up, and like a roomful of giant baby dolls, we all blinked our eyes shut and kept them that way. When he turned the music off (okay, when I heard him struggling with the player, and opened my eyes to help him out), Rufus looked at Dr. Fenshaw. “Get any pictures, Charles?”