A Peculiar Grace

by Jeffrey Lent

  “Well, Em. I trust myself. And a couple of good friends. Not much beyond that.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, you asked. I still trust you. I mean the spirit, the essence of the woman I once knew. I’m trying real hard not to fool myself but Emily, I have to tell you, tucked in around the edges, is the same woman I placed my trust in a long time ago.”

  A drawn out silence and he guessed again he’d blown it but also again felt he had no choice but to tell her how he saw things. It was so quiet he could hear the soft rain. He waited and was about to give up and admit it, apologize because he had to and let it go. Or let it go and see what happened. He’d learned something over the summer although at the moment wasn’t sure what it was.

  Then Emily said, “What about Jessica?”

  “What do you mean? Do I trust her? Do I trust what I know about her?”

  “Do you trust what you feel about her?”

  He paused and said, “I trust what I feel about you. But I know how I feel about her.”

  She said, “I hope you do. I hope so, Hewitt.”

  Then there was only the rain.

  Ten

  Asplendid late summer or early autumn morning with Hewitt deep in the defile of Crawford Notch heading east, the roadside thick with purple asters and here and there on the lower reaches of the gorge slashes of red among the trees below the cliff faces stretching above, the single hawk too high to be identified drifting effortless the thermals of what would be a pleasantly warm, near hot isinglass day. Walter’s jeep with its hardshell top and sturdy road-eating tires, nothing beyond what it was intended to be, a small hardy engine, not a workhorse but more akin to a donkey; plain, functional, able to grind on long after fancier beasts had fallen in the harness. And to the point of the day—a vehicle designed to blend into its surroundings. As Walter pointed out when Hewitt called at break of day, requesting nothing but merely laying out the situation.

  He got caught behind a log truck and so eased back and tooled along, relaxed and enjoying the ride, contemplative but not over-thinking anything. Nothing at all. A part of this peaceful vitality was the day before he’d installed the completed hitching posts, after calling two days before that and telling Anne what needed to be done to prepare. So his twin monuments, his stones encased in their elegant refined cages were now in place and looking exactly as he envisioned, wonderfully unique but immensely practical. Placed either side of her main stable entrance, anchored deeply so the hardest frost would never budge them, surrounded by mums, the oiled rubbed ironwork complementing the white walls of her barn and the black-painted cast bars within the open stall windows. Once they were in, Hewitt was patiently agreeable as one of the long-legged Thoroughbred studs was led out and tied for a bit to see how a horse would react and he behaved as all expected and hoped—he nickered for his mares and stablemates, peered around at the clustered humans and then began to crop the lawn bordering the beds and took a trial nip at the mums. After he was led back inside Hewitt and Anne conferred briefly and he undercharged her, making a joke about selling rocks and adding they came with a lifetime guarantee. He asked if he could have a couple of minutes alone before one of the guys gave him a lift home and Anne glanced at him and nodded, disappearing into the cool depths of the barn.

  The only thing he’d done to the stones was use an old buffing head to gently polish their surfaces, so the black spots and veins and the golden flecks of pyrite sharpened in appearance, not enough so even a thoughtful observer would discern his effort but the effect was what he wanted—the stones would appear always as he’d found them, glowing wetly in the lustrous subdued light of a rainy day. He’d squatted about five feet back midway between the posts and studied them. Sometime during the finishing work it came to him that the stones were for more than Emily and himself and their unborn children but comprised a vast circle of his past, back into his father’s life, his father’s lost wife and child and then as something breaking open in him; to all of the gone, the long lost, however close or remote within the broad net of his life.

  HE’D GOTTEN UP at his usual time and it was dark outside. The summer was indeed shrinking toward what Hewitt thought of as the long lovely dark time—not forgetting the pleasures of autumn and Indian summer or the usual brown drab of November but thinking ahead to those short days where the forge was a haven and the world periodically refreshed itself, the deep shoveled paths between house and forge and out to the mailbox, the dark oily glisten of the hemlocks and spruce in the low afternoon light, the mighty gliding strides on snowshoes up through the pasture and woods along the old road or as the snow deepened anywhere at all he wanted to go, the deadfalls and cumbersome boulders of summer as good as gone, coming again to stand on the hill above the place and spy out his neighbors’ lights up and down the valley, the small glow from the single streetlight in Lympus, and along the hills to the south and east a smear of light from Sharon. Or the nights few and rare when the streams of greenish or more rare red, yellow and green aurora borealis pulsed against the sky, never forecast, never expected but only immediately and wondrously there—the lights always a gift beyond the reach or expectation of humans. Although when they were out the telephone network buzzed, one of the few times he loved the phone, the excited voice on the other end and he’d do his part, make a call even as he was strapping on his snowshoes in the kitchen before clattering down the porch steps and off into the snow.

  Now as the coffee made he was still aglow from the hitching posts and headed toward the forge to sit and sip as the fire caught and burned toward the furnace of ancient gods, the smiters and alchemists of iron, bronze and brass. And go again through his stack of notes not only to see what caught his eye but with a strategic edge—midwinter he didn’t care to be caught with a project so large he might need the big doors which could be wedged by snowfall and the impacted slides off the roof until whatever thaw, January or March or even April would once again open those doors. So he was thinking all this when the phone rang and even as he’d thought he was getting used to these unusual calling times, knowing who it was.

  “Hey there.”

  There was a pause and then, tentative, “Hewitt?”

  “Jessica? Jeezum! Where are you? What’s going on?”

  She made him wait. Then said, “Portland.”

  “Oregon?” Praying she heard the tease.

  “You sound kind of out of it,” she said. “Have you had your coffee yet?”

  “I’ve got it right here.”

  “Portland Maine.”

  “What’s happening there?”

  “Oh. Not much. What’s up with you?”

  He sipped the coffee, scalding his tongue but trying to slow it down to whatever level she was calling from. He said, “Not so much either. Well. I finished those hitching posts and got em in the ground yesterday.”

  “How do they look?”

  “They look good.” All he needed to say. “Roger called. Wanted to know about you. I told him you were off on a toot. He said if you showed up he still had plenty of work.”

  She was quiet and he wondered if mentioning Roger was a mistake. Then realized she was sniffling, crying and trying to hide it. She said, “My car. It’s all smashed up.”

  “Jesus, are you hurt? Jessica?”

  He heard the snap of a lighter and pull of a cigarette and she told him the car had been parked but the brakes or whatever gave out and it rolled backward down the sidestreet hill she’d left it on and rear-ended fast and hard into a light pole, an old wooden one and the car was trashed and then she began to cry again, not trying to hide it this time.

  He said, “Oh, goddamn, honey. I’m sorry. But you’re okay, right? What about the cops?”

  “They were nice about it. I mean, I wandered back and found three cruisers parked around it and a tow truck already there and they established it was my car and all the papers were up to date. The light pole didn’t even budge. Although it was a job getting the Bug pulled off it. Aw, damn, He
witt. It’s gone. It’s really gone.”

  “Was that this morning?”

  “It was yesterday afternoon.”

  “Where are you now? Where’re you calling from?”

  “A hotel. Right up the top of the hill from where it happened. But I couldn’t sleep and figured you were up—”

  “Hey Jessica?”

  “Hey, Hewitt.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  She made him wait. Later he realized it wasn’t that. Finally in a small voice she said his name again.

  “I’m right here.”

  “Can I come back?”

  DESPITE THE OFF-SEASON it was a slow push through North Conway and he idled along, his elbow out the window. It was almost lunchtime but he wasn’t hungry and even if he had been wouldn’t have stopped. There would be time enough for food in Portland. But years ago, the spring before he’d gone to work with Timothy and met Emily, he’d made a trip over here to spend a day with a smith, a long tall man with a beard halfway down his chest who had a small shop in town with the usual array of fireplace tools and kitchen utensils, latches and hooks and racks for pots or hanging outdoor clothing. The shop was all burlap and bright paint with Dylan on the stereo and the man whose name Hewitt could no longer recall had taken him out of town to his handbuilt cabin in the woods where his forge was and in a short afternoon taught Hewitt how to true-weld, using two pieces of flat stock straight from the forge. Over and over until he got it right. Two little boys ran naked through a vegetable garden with a high tight plank fence against deer and a woman worked out there without a blouse on, at one point bringing iced chamomile tea to the forge for them, her sloped breasts heavy, as lovely as anyone Hewitt had ever seen. The man told Hewitt they’d been at Woodstock and this at a time when no one would consider making that up. The man had dark brown eyes and the other thing learned that day came from those eyes—gently deep and patient but with an edge, a wariness to them. And Hewitt wondered what cost the man had paid for living a life according to a wheel of his own design. In some ways not so different than his own father, or Hewitt later realized, himself. They’d smoked some bad homegrown together and Hewitt had gone on his way, carrying the precious three pieces of welded stock with him. It was an afternoon forever etched and yet he’d never gone back, being too preoccupied with his own life for so many years that when it occurred to him to try and find the fellow again there seemed no point. It had been what it was—a moment. One brother to another.

  Stalled in traffic, hikers in shorts and fancy boots flocking across the street, Hewitt recalled Timothy’s initial riddle about the strongest part of a chain. Then the road opened up and the traffic thinned, somewhere he’d lost the log truck, and he passed a sign welcoming him to Maine.

  He’d forgotten the riddle until the spring after everything had fallen apart with Emily and he was finishing building his own forge and had gone to see Timothy’s uncle Albert in Bethel, to visit and gently learn if the offer of the tools was still in place. They’d sat most of an afternoon and drank a bottle of hard cider when Albert had leaned forward in his padded chair and asked Hewitt the very same question his nephew had and Hewitt paused—Timothy had never answered. Albert smiled and said, “Ya damned young fool, ya’d better learn it once and not forget. The strongest part of a chain is the weakest link. Now, hand me that cane and let’s hobble out and see if the rust’s ate all that stuff up or if there’s any good to it yet.”

  The landscape was changing again, leveling out, rolling, scrub pines and some nut trees, oaks and hickories back from the roadside, houses coming closer together, the shoulders now not only sandy white but glimmering with sunlight reflected from bits of crystal; quartz sand.

  He’d talked to Emily several days ago. Calling intentionally late in the evening and wanting to be the one to do it—to give her time after the episode with Elsa but not so much she’d feel awkward calling him. She’d clearly been happy to hear from him, only asking him to wait a moment and then coming back on and saying, “You can hang up now, Nora. Nora? Hang up. I mean it.” There came a mewl of a sigh and the faint click.

  “So everybody’s returned safe and sound?”

  “I’m not sure how sound but yes. To my surprise John tried to tiptoe in about two hours after I talked with you. He and I sat up talking much of the night. Far from any resolution but a step along the way. Nora still hasn’t talked to me about it, brushing me off with her stone face but I know she and Mom talked or maybe Nora just listened but they had a serious discussion. She’ll talk to me when she’s ready. I think she’s figured out it wasn’t my fault. I’m not so sure about John yet.”

  “Elsa?”

  “Oh, she’s still alive, as far as I know. Maybe it’ll change and I do hope it’ll be years and years but right now I don’t want to hear a word about her.”

  “What about you, Em?”

  “Well, I did sneak off to Rochester a few times to talk with a therapist. He asked the usual questions about our personal life and how we balanced the kids and work and all that stuff that I’d already done myself and I was as honest as I could be. I’m not a perfect person Hewitt but I was a pretty good partner. Anyway, the third time I was talking with him, he told me everybody’s got a stone jar deep inside them only they know the contents of. Some people just leave it be. Others have to peek now and then. Some get snared by it. I sat back and thought about it a bit and stood up and thanked him and told him I didn’t need another appointment and came on home. Because I’d realized my stone jar’s not very important to me but obviously Martin’s was to him; if you poke around down in there too much you find ways to justify it and the ways only have to make sense to you, not to anyone else.”

  “I like that idea.”

  “Well, yeah. I’m moving forward, which is stupid because of course I am—it’s either that or be crushed by it all and—”

  “That’s not the way you’ve ever been.”

  “Thanks. I try.”

  “You sound good, Emily.”

  “Actually there’s some big news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve got a buyer for the clinic. Well, two buyers. A husband and wife team about five years out of medical school who’ve been working in Buffalo and saw the place was on the market. I like them and they’re crazy about the idea. I guess a few years in Buffalo took most of the idealism out of them, trying to balance between patients who resent being patients and dealing with all the paperwork for the state and the government. Little old Bluffport looks pretty good to them. They’ve rented a house and we’re supposed to sign papers this week, although it’ll be a couple of months before we can close.”

  “What about you?”

  “Professionally? They were sweet about it. I think they really hoped I’d keep my office there for some continuity and to make their transition easier but that’s what the receptionists and the two nurses are for. I’ll keep my practice but find a new office. A clean slate. I think it’d be best for me and my patients as well. It’s tough to unburden yourself when you’re sitting there wondering if your therapist is listening to you or thinking about her husband who used to be down the hall. But what about you, Hewitt? What’re you up to?”

  “Not much. Well, I’m finishing up a pair of hitching posts. Real ones. I mean for real horses, not something to stick in a yard. And I had fun with the design. It was a bit of a challenge. Well, something more than that—there was a bunch of personal horseshit symbolism wrapped up in the whole thing. It felt good. They go in tomorrow and that’s the real test but at the moment I’m tickled with them.”

  “Horseshit symbolism for hitching posts. That’s kind of funny. Do I want to ask what that was?”

  He was thoughtful. “I don’t think I could tell you. It’s a little like those stone jars you were talking about. Not weird shit just a lot of things entangled and interwoven that even if I could lay em all out would sound silly but kept inside make all the sense in the world.”

&nb
sp; She was quiet a bit. Then said, “You sound good.”

  “Yup. Mostly.”

  She hesitated also and then said, “Despite being a damn fool, you’ve been a good friend, Hewitt. A good friend through all of this.”

  He said, “Well, thanks. I hoped to. I might’ve learned a couple things myself.”

  They were suddenly in a tight squeeze.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it Hewitt? You get older and time wails on by but it’s also lost the urgency it had when you were young. The path’s not endless anymore and maybe that’s it—if you’re going to step forward you want to make sure where you’re stepping. Cause there isn’t a second chance.”

  Then they were both quiet.

  She said, “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant, Em. I feel the same way.”

  “Good,” she said and then her voice pitched down a little. “Of course you do.” There came another pause. She said, “Hey, Hewitt?”

  “What’s that, Emily?” He was feeling gentle, tender, uplifted precisely.

  “You heard from that girl? The one who was staying with you?”

  “Jessica,” he said. “No.” And added, “Not yet.”

  MIDAFTERNOON HE was sweating lightly, merging with traffic and following signs, both agitated and amused that the small urbanity of Portland would so throw him off but in fact it’d been years since he’d driven in any traffic to speak of, even his lightning trip to Bluffport and back had all been on roads he knew well, mostly interstates and thus hard to screw up. And it was not warm but hot, the heavy ocean air smelling of possibilities and he realized he hadn’t seen the ocean in years either and doubted he would this time beyond a possible glimpse. Then he was off and moving uphill into the Old Port section of town, the streets here just streets and manageable, at least until he very nearly pulled into what he thought was a street but was cobbled and blocked off with metal posts—ordinary slightly ornamental cast objects he noted as he reversed in a three point turn, not letting the horns get to him, guessing, hoping if a cop was around they’d see his plates and realize the misunderstanding. Somehow this process calmed him and oriented him as well and he began to drive around the old downtown, swanked-up but nicely as far as those things went. He circled around and around, extending his range and going up and down hill streets before returning to the central plateau of downtown. Guessing there was a fair chance he’d passed up or down the fatal Volkswagen hill. He was looking for her hotel and when he finally saw it realized he’d passed it once already but drove by again. He’d expected a cheap rooming house sort of deal and only at the last second registered the name on the maroon canopy awning out above the sidewalk, the brass and plate revolving doors, the two cabs and a town car pulled along the curb and the liveried doorman. And drove by the hotel parking garage next to it, and went on to circle the block again and look for a place to park—he wasn’t about to pay five bucks an hour just to park Walter’s jeep.