The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

  Fool flowers. She’s always wished people would just spend their money on preserving wildlife, wildlands, other people, rather than buying flowers flown to America from Africa or South America. All that jet fuel, water, heat, labor—for what? So they can clutter funeral parlors and hospital rooms, so they can droop and wilt, finally leaving a halo of petals to sweep up and convey into the garbage?

  “No, no—please stay,” she says, wiping her cheeks with a bedsheet. “I’m happy to see you.” And she is happy to see Jonathan. Considers that this is what Trevor might have looked like, as an old man.

  He sets the vase down on a narrow windowsill finally, and draws a chair closer to her bed.

  “How you feelin’, kiddo?” he asks, busying himself by pouring coffee from the thermos into a paper cup and handing it to her. “I know I’m a rich old asshole, but . . . I insist on good coffee. So, there’s that. I’m sure that hospital coffee is garbage.” He pats her arm.

  His eyes are wet, too, she sees, as they flutter over her. “Oh, darling,” he says.

  When she was just a girl, a teenager, how desperately she had sought this man’s approval. Always handsome, always debonair, always armed with a barbed joke, so worldly, utterly confident. And he’d always been such a terrible prick to her, calling her by the wrong name or teasing her about her love of horses or softball. But now, all that he seems to have left in the world is a big pile of money and a thick head of silver-white hair, a lonely cabin in northern Wisconsin, and a cupboard full of bourbon.

  “I’m not as bad as I probably look,” she says. “They’re letting me out of here tomorrow, I guess.”

  “I heard about what happened, Rachel. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says quietly. “I don’t even remember anything.” She is thankful for this, at least.

  “They got him, though, I guess. Got ’em in jail in Rice Lake. They’re saying this isn’t the first time, either. I heard it was sleeping pills, all ground-up like. But he’s used other stuff on other women . . .”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Jon, okay? I just—don’t want to talk about that man.”

  He nods. “No, I suppose not.”

  They drink their coffee. Far off: the sound of a helicopter’s rotors, and then fading.

  Jonathan turns his head to the TV. “Goddamn phonies. I’ve always been suspicious of morning people.”

  She reaches for the remote and switches the TV off.

  “Where’s Thomas?” she asks.

  “He’s with your parents. Poor guy’s pretty shook up. Handled himself like a hero, though.”

  Just like his father.

  “How’s Nelson?” she asks.

  Jonathan shakes his head. “Not too good. Took a pretty good hit to the head. And he’s got some real bad burns, I guess. Have you seen him yet?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Me either. He’s in the ICU, I guess. After I leave you, that’s where I’m headed.”

  A quiet settles between them. She looks past him, out the window. Decides that she’ll wait for him to break the silence.

  “Rachel,” he says finally, “I want to apologize to you. You’ve been a fantastic mother to Thomas, all these years, and, well, you’ve had to do it by yourself.” He shakes his head. “Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve done it. You . . . you amaze me, frankly.” He lays a hand on the rail of her bed, near her arm. “You’re a wonderful woman, just a wonderful person. Trevor was so in love with you. He always was. Maybe that’s the best compliment of all. I don’t know. Funny, really. I loved him more than anything else, in all my years, and he loved you more than anything. So . . . I’m sorry. I’m just so goddamned sorry about everything.”

  In the hallway: the laughter of nurses, the squeak of rubber shoes against wet linoleum, the plaintive wheel of a mop bucket.

  He reaches for her hand and now, looks her directly in the eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Jonathan . . .”

  “Rachel, I just want you to know that if you and Thomas need anything, anything at all . . .”

  She pats his hand patiently, with a kind of grace that suddenly makes her feel very old, indeed. She realizes he has come to the hospital not entirely for her exactly, but also for himself. To absolve himself, somehow, of all his years of shitty behavior. He isn’t a bad man. She is reminded, all of a sudden, of that line Carly Simon sings, “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.”

  “Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate that. We’ll get by. We will. Go, be with Nelson. I think I’d like to close my eyes.”

  “All right, sweetheart,” he says, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “You get some rest now.”

  She nods, pulls the sheets up to her chin, and closes her eyes, listening for the sounds of his retreat. Wishes she could reach out and hold Trevor’s hand.

  NELSON IS IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS by the time Jonathan enters the ICU. The nurses are hesitant to even let him enter the room; their first reaction is to shoo him away, but he is still an imposing man. He holds his ground, explains that Nelson was his childhood friend.

  Childhood friend—is that even so? What were they to one another? Connected by such tenuous bonds: summer days, college letters, and those occasional drinks or dinners that some people might coldly deem networking. Still, in some way, he loves this man. Loves him for his improbable life, his semirigid moral code, and the fierce old compass that has always dwelt in his chest, pointing always the right way—true north.

  Jonathan pulls up a chair beside Nelson’s bed. The room is quiet, save for the steady hissing and humming of the medical equipment, its multitoned beeps and dings. He can’t believe how old Nelson looks, his cheeks salted with stubble and his mustache drooping sadly, his head and face badly swollen, like an aged fighter after a twelve-round loss. Jonathan awkwardly reaches for his hand, so cool to the touch, almost cold.

  “Hang in there, old buddy,” he says. “Okay? You gotta hang in there.”

  The two men stay that way for about an hour, before Nelson’s girlfriend, Lorraine, enters the room, quickly collapsing into Jonathan’s arms. He holds her while she weeps. It has been such a long, long time since anyone has wept on his shoulder.

  IT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT when Nelson’s tremulous voice suddenly rises through the silence, waking Jonathan, who now moves closer to his old friend. Nelson holds a hand up, as if signaling him.

  “What is it, Nelson? I’m right here, buddy, it’s me, Jon. I’m here, buddy.” He seizes Nelson’s hand only to find a grip as strong as his own—a force, an energy in Nelson’s hand. This is a man not yet ready to depart.

  “Goddamn right,” Jonathan says. “Hang in there, buddy. You took a pretty good lick, but I’d bet a million bucks you seen worse.”

  “You’re always betting,” Nelson coughs. And then, “I don’t want to go.”

  Jonathan shakes his head, “You’re not going anywhere, buddy. You’re fine. Lorraine’s here, too. Just went out to grab a cup of tea. She was telling me about Costa Rica. You’ll be there soon enough. On some beach. Drinking a cold beer.”

  “I was dreaming,” Nelson whispers.

  “Oh yeah? What about, buddy?”

  His voice is so weak. “Wilbur’s deer . . . and my mother.”

  “What was that, Nelson?”

  “I dreamt about my mother. Dreamt that she was in the kitchen, humming one of her favorite songs . . .” His voice trails off. “And I could smell her cigarette, plain as day . . .”

  Jonathan watches as his friend closes his eyes. He looks to the monitors but the machines hold steady. He stands, moves to the curtains, calls out, “Could we get some help in here?” Sits back down beside Nelson.

  “Your mother? What else, buddy? Some deer, you said? I’m right here.”

  “I was just a little boy, and we were sitting together. I was in her lap and sh
e was . . . rubbing my head . . . humming to me . . .”

  “All right, buddy,” Jonathan coaxes, “she was humming to you. What song was it? Can you remember what song?”

  “Then there were deer . . . Wilbur’s white deer . . . And I was with them . . . Out in the forest . . .”

  Jonathan waits for Nelson to say more, but he just breathes in and out a moment, each intake of oxygen, each exhalation, too, uneven now, ragged.

  “Deer? Buddy? Nelson. Nelson! Hold on there, buddy, I’m gonna go to get us some help.”

  “I was lying down, in the snow, and they were all around me . . . the sound of their hooves . . .”

  Again, Jonathan waits for his friend to continue. He squeezes Nelson’s hand, but already, the force in that other grip seems to be waning.

  “Nelson? Nelson!”

  He stands from his chair and reaches for his friend’s shoulders. Nelson opens his eyes, narrowly.

  “One thing, you got to do for me . . .” Nelson reaches for his chest, below his hospital gown, pulls a necklace free from the patch of white chest hair, removes the chain from his neck. “Give this to Lorraine for me. My good-luck charm.”

  “Nelson? Oh no—you do it, buddy. No, you ain’t going anywhere. Nelson . . .” Jonathan holds the nickel in his hand again, after so many years. A buffalo nickel, of all things.

  But Nelson has closed his eyes, and a nurse strides into the room. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she orders. “Mr. Doughty needs to sleep.”

  HE IS LAID TO REST, a week later, at Whiteside Scout Reservation, on the same hillock as the flagpole that stood like a sundial, for so many days of his life. His headstone is a great granite boulder. The entire parade ground, acres and acres of open land, and all the abutting trails and roads are filled with hundreds and hundreds of grown men and not a few women, too. Children, spouses, relatives. Some of them in their uniforms. CEOs and garbagemen, mechanics and engineers, doctors and janitors, waiters and chefs. Professors, pastors, priests, and rabbis. A sitting governor, several mayors, and dozens of firefighters, policemen, and soldiers—active duty and retired. A retired astronaut, a major-league baseball player, and so many teachers. There are mothers and fathers, children of all ages, and old men in wheelchairs or leaning on walkers and crutches. They have come, literally, from around the world to mourn Nelson Doughty.

  The day is warm and blue-skied as Jonathan stands beside Thomas and Rachel. A trumpeter from the New York Philharmonic, a camper at Whiteside some twenty-five years earlier, has flown into Wisconsin for the occasion, and during his playing of taps, Jonathan weeps like a little boy.

  PART IV

  FALL, 2019

  THE DRAKENSBERG MOUNTAINS

  48

  FALL. A SATURDAY AFTERNOON. SCAFFOLDING SURROUNDS the old farmhouse. Rachel and Thomas standing atop it under the pouring sun, a radio somewhere broadcasting a Wisconsin versus Northwestern football game. Two dogs wrestle in what loosely qualifies as their front lawn.

  The first thing she did after being released from the hospital was drive down a long yellow gravel road not two miles from their house to a derelict shack of a house, its roof shingles all pancaked, gutters dangling like broken limbs, even sprouting small trees in places, paint scabbing off, and a ragged sun-bleached American flag hanging in one window as a tattered drape. She must have driven by the place thousands of times, even pointed it out to her friends and relatives, joking, “How much do you wanna bet they’re cooking meth there?” But she’d also noticed a sign sometimes advertising: GERMAN SHEPARDS 4 SALE.

  “You sure about this place?” Thomas asked, when she pulled the keys from the ignition and stood on the crabgrass and gravel driveway, spent shotgun shells and cigarette butts near her feet.

  “No,” she answered, “I’m not.”

  He disembarked slowly, keeping a constant hand somewhere on the car, even if only the roof, or a side window.

  “Hello?” she called out. “Anyone home?”

  She was almost relieved when, at first, silence was all that greeted them. But then, the muffled sound of a dog barking, and finally, a big man walked around the corner of the house dressed in a pair of dirty denim bibs, unlaced work boots, coughing into a red handkerchief. He regarded them without saying a word, lumbered steadily closer without any great urgency or curiosity. As he came closer, she saw that he was a giant, well over six foot three. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Thomas take a step back before holding his ground. The man stopped about eight feet away from her, though it seemed a distance his long arms could quickly enough erase. He stared at her dully.

  “You got any dogs for sale?” she asked in a firm voice.

  He nodded, scratched a place behind his ear, motioned with his index finger, and then moved toward a dilapidated barn some hundred paces or so beyond the house. A dozen Styrofoam deer were all scattered in his lawn, arrows protruding from their sides. Caught in the branches of a dead elm was a very, very old red kite, its streamers ragged with age. He pushed open a sliding wooden door and led them into the barn with its smells of straw and motor oil and something else she could not immediately identify, ages of pigeon shit perhaps—or was it human piss?

  In a stall fifteen feet inside the barn door lay a German shepherd bitch on a pile of dirty blankets, surrounded by a litter of six pups, all nuzzling, jockeying for position.

  Rachel knelt beside them, reaching to graze her knuckles against their silky little backs. She couldn’t help smiling. Such little things.

  “Which two would you take?” she asked the man, suddenly anxious she make the right decision.

  “It don’t matter,” he croaked, the first words he’d uttered, his voice oddly soft, almost childish. He tilted his head now and peered at the dogs. She wondered who, if anyone, this man had in his world to speak to. Felt she knew the answer already: these animals.

  “No, really—I want you to choose,” she persisted. “They’re your pups.”

  “That ain’t the way of it,” he protested, almost laughing now. “You’re the customer. You choose your own merchandise.” He scratched his great jaw.

  “I’ve never owned a dog before,” she said. “Thomas?” she called over her shoulder, but the boy was standing out beyond the barn, shaking his head in discomfort. “Come on! Will you please help me choose?”

  Thomas wasn’t budging, so she turned to the man again. “Won’t you please help me make a choice here?”

  “Well, am I you? Or am I me?”

  She looked at him. He wore a series of circular scars on his forehead, almost like the marks of several dozen inoculations, but, she suspected, very probably something much less benign. Behind her, she heard Thomas say, “Mom?” He’s just grown more and more protective of me, she thought. She stretched a soothing hand behind her, as if to pacify the space between them.

  “You’re me,” she said to the monolith. “You’re me. And you can’t sleep at night.”

  He smiled a yellow-toothed grin, and reached out, grabbed two pups: both black as coal with brown bellies. They nipped at his dirty fingers with teeth small as needles.

  “These two,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I always think them darker ones is meaner,” he said. “But what matters is what we do now.”

  “What do we do now?”

  He nodded his head repeatedly, like a tic, made a popping sound with his tongue, coughed.

  “You come back. Every day, for two months. Just before dark. It’s important,” he insisted. “Every day. ’Round sunset. You make yourself the sunset.”

  He handed her the two pups, cocked his head this way and that, rolled his eyes.

  “You’re their mama now,” he said. “You bring them food and cold water. And kindness.”

  She caressed their tiny heads.

  “And you?” she asked.

  He smiled gravely, reached for another one of the pups, and cradled it in his massive arms. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.” />
  NOW THE DOGS ROLL AROUND IN THE DUST, snap their jaws at grasshoppers, and chase mice. She scrapes the flaking paint, and Thomas comes behind her with his paintbrush. They move slowly, and their conversations are halting, rarely carefree. Words come most easily when he is brave enough to ask about his father. He has become more and more interested in Trevor and she suspects it stems from the night of her assault. Thomas was commended for his bravery by the local television channels and newspapers, and Boy’s Life magazine has even planned an article detailing his exploits, though she has no idea how they’ll manage the problematic subject of her rape. So she talks and talks about Trevor, her favorite subject, as the chips of paint fall from the sky down onto the tarpaulins below them.

  “Your father was such a twig when we first fell in love,” she says, not so much remembering that iteration of him anymore, preferring to recall the man he was later, thick of chest, coated in hair, standing beside her in the morning cool, in his red-and-black Woolrich jacket, his tired old Carhartt pants, his breath all coffee and mint chewing tobacco, whispering near her ear, waiting for her to pull the trigger.

  NELSON LEFT MUCH OF HIS ESTATE to a woman named Lorraine, living outside the town of Haugen. Another large portion went to the Boy Scouts of America. The rest was left to Rachel. A sizable check and several large boxes of baseball cards, baseball ephemera, most of it seemingly related to the Chicago Cubs. For weeks she pored through the cards. For his part, Thomas does not seem at all interested in Nelson’s collection—the cards, the game programs from Wrigley Field, the signed baseballs, glossy photographs, and letters. “It would all weigh me down,” he tells her. He wants to leave Wisconsin. Wants to travel the world. Is curious about his mom’s time in Africa.

  “If you went,” he argues, “why can’t I?”

  “You should,” she says. “It’s unlike any other place on the planet.” What she remembers most vividly are the night skies. A weekend trip when they left Botswana and traveled to South Africa, to the Drakensberg Mountains, carrying a bottle of wine out to a rope bridge that swung over a chasm with the soft evening breezes: stars falling and those early kisses stolen from new lips, her old life, her old self, an entire ocean away and here she was now, a stranger, and whatever she cared to be.