There was still nothing much to do but think. He found he had a good supply of things to think about. What went on outside the house in this town he scarcely knew, and it didn’t concern him, so he thought mostly about the past and about what was there right now, like Rae.
Whoever the handsome sullen kid was who’d been there with her, he’d evidently walked out, but she didn’t seem like her heart was broken. She wasn’t much more than twenty and had the stunning health and grace and glow of her age, but she didn’t have the self-consciousness girls had, that always tied him up in knots. She wasn’t hard, but in a way she was sophisticated. Maybe more than he was. He felt that sometimes, although he must be ten years older than she was. Or it was that she was a woman. Like Cleo, she knew what had to be done and went on and did it. A lot of what she had to do for him was embarrassing to him, shameful. It would have been unbearable if she’d felt the same way about it. She didn’t. She took necessity for granted. She was grown up.
Cleo. A steady kindness. A buoyancy. A spring rising.
Thinking of her brought them all together into his mind, his sister and father and mother. Their good nature, their good cheer. It was like a firelit room. His memory of it was a window that showed it to him warm and bright. But there was no door, no way back in. They were alive there. He was the ghost, whimpering outside in the dark.
He hadn’t left that room by choice, but men did. Probably he would have. A man went off alone to prove he wasn’t soft. Didn’t let himself depend on anybody. Didn’t let down with anybody, didn’t trust them, because that gave them the advantage over him. Cowper had lived in a man’s world since before he was one himself. It was all the world that was left to him. The job cut out for him was a man’s job: to fight the battle of life, to compete, succeed, win. Mr. Bendischer had talked about that with him, and had given him the weapons and the armor he needed for the battlefield. And so far he’d done all right.
But what a barren life it was. Always farther from the firelit room.
He liked his work. He was satisfied by knowing what he was doing and doing it well. But to most of the people who ran things, the men who kept the battle of life going, that wasn’t enough, wasn’t what it was all about.
Men dug tunnels after gold, he thought, but they didn’t build them right. If they’d take pity on each other and themselves, they’d build right. At least shore up their ratholes with timber you could count on.
His thoughts went winding around that way, following each other’s tails, and the afternoon would pass while he let them lead his mind back to paths it used to walk long ago and places it hadn’t been before. He must have been needing some time to think, to take stock, because coming out of one of those long reveries he felt peaceful again, and it didn’t seem so bad to be stuck helpless and useless in a bed in a hot little room in a half-dead little town in Amador County, California.
Then in the night he woke facedown with dirt in his mouth and eyes, blind, paralyzed, trying to get his breath with no breath, and the beat pounding in his ears. Buried above ground.
He struggled awake, struggled to calm himself. Holding his mind away from the beat of the terrible words, he sat up and watched daylight slowly transform the sky.
He knew he’d be afraid to go to sleep that night. He thought about it all morning. When he slept there was no way to keep it from happening. He’d learned something about keeping off the horrors, but he had to be awake to do it.
Reciting poetry he’d learned by heart in school and singing songs in his head, it didn’t matter what, “Red River Valley” or “Praise God, from Whom,” could keep him from slipping into the awful rhythm. If he could get “The boy stood on the burning deck” going, even that could keep Abiram away. He wished they’d made him memorize more in school. He lay hunting for bits of poetry and tunes that had been stuck deep in his mind like little gold veins in granite since before he could remember. “The cow’s in the meadow, the sheep’s in the corn . . .”
He’d ask Angus to find him something to read. He’d manage holding a book and turning the pages somehow. What the hell, he was an engineer, couldn’t he figure out something that would hold a book where he needed it?
“Are there any books in the house, Rae?”
“Just yours,” she said. “You want some more to drink?”
She refilled his glass from the pitcher on the bureau and set it on the crate they’d rigged up as a table, which he could reach with his left hand. The bed was close to the wall so that now he could sit up he could see more than sky out the window. His view was an old plum tree in the side yard and a triangle of Sierra foothill forested with white oak, scrub oak, madrone, and a couple of Jeffrey pines. To get to the crate-table Rae had to go between the bedside and the wall. The windowsill stuck out so she had to squeeze past it a little, turning sideways, away from him. Watching her hips and buttocks negotiate that passage in and then back out was an unfailing pleasure.
“I guess you gave that Bible back.”
“Did you want to hear some more?”
“I liked hearing you read it.”
“I like reading. I read a lot to my aunt when she was sick. I can borrow it back from Mr. Robineau.”
“Maybe something that isn’t the Bible,” he said.
“There’s some books in your other room.”
He thought about it. “Materials stress resistance calculation tables are on the dry side.”
She said, not turned toward him as she said it, “There’s some other books in your trunk.”
His trunk, what he’d put in it packing it in San Francisco. Another world. “What are they?” he asked more of himself than her.
“A poetry book and a book by Charles Dickens.”
“Ace in the hole!” He was delighted. “Fetch ’em in here, Rae!” Of course he’d brought the Dickens—he’d bought it in the city to bring here, thinking there might be some long evenings. And he’d traveled with Cowper’s Poems so long he’d forgotten about it.
Rae turned around. He saw with surprise that she had gone red, which with her was no modest-maidenly-pink business. She turned burning red, fire red, face, ears, throat, whatever could be seen of her. Then, more slowly, she turned white and stayed that way for some time. He’d seen her go through this once before, but not so extremely as now. It was distressing, and he felt sorry for her and sorry about causing the distress. But he had no idea what he’d said to cause it. Had he told her to fetch the books like an order?
“Mr. Cowper, I had to unlock your trunk and look in it. A while ago. I had to.”
“That’s all right with me, Rae.” His first thought was that there was nothing of any value in the trunk, then he remembered he’d stuck some bills and coins in under the other stuff. Trying to ease her disproportionate embarrassment, he said, “If you ever get short of cash money, there’s some in the bottom, did you find that?”
She burst into tears. The tears ran down her pale face. The sobbing shook her hard. She cried like a child, openly. It had come on her so suddenly she couldn’t hide it and didn’t try. She just stood there weeping. He tried to reach out to her but of course couldn’t get anywhere near her. All he could say was her name, don’t cry, it’s all right.
She got the sobbing under control and with one of his handkerchiefs from the top bureau drawer wiped her eyes and nose. Doing that allowed her to turn away from him for a while. When she turned back she was still pale, and she’d missed some of the snot on her left cheek. He had never felt pity so sharp, so urgent, pity like a knife stab. It made him reach out to her again, sitting up and turning as much in the bed as he was able to. She saw his gesture, but did not put out her hand to his, though she came a little closer to the bed and tried to smile.
“I was afraid Pete might have taken your money. It’s all right, it’s there. He didn’t. I hid the key. I wasn’t sure if Pete might come back.” She frowned and her mouth drew back in a grimace repressing another rush of tears.
“Well you di
d just right,” he said, talking to her as if she were a child, letting his useless right arm drop back to his side, feeling his own tears ache in his throat and behind his eyes. “You did just right, Rae. Thanks.”
Something relaxed between them then. An inner movement, very deep down, definitive, almost imperceptible.
She poured a little water from the white tin pitcher into the washbasin on the bureau and splashed her face and used his handkerchief with better success. She took the basin out to the front door to toss the water onto the scraggly rosebush by the steps. She came back into the room and said resolutely, “See, when he left, he took my money. So I was afraid maybe he’d—I’m sorry, Mr. Cowper.”
Nothing came to him to say to her but, “That’s all right.” Then, “Look, Rae. We could drop the Mr., maybe. My name’s William.”
She stood looking at him. Head cocked, but serious. Judging. “I guess I can do that,” she said. She did not smile. “Thank you.”
When Doc Mac came in, she was sitting close to the lamp so she could go on reading Little Dorrit aloud. William was sitting up in bed. The old cat was asleep on the bed by his legs. “Well this is a pleasant domestic scene,” Doc said with a grin, looking in from the dark of the hallway at them in the glow of yellowish light.
“Hey Angus,” William said, and she could hear how glad he was to see him. “It’s been a while.”
“Bunch of fools out there in the sticks. Everything wrong with ’em from scurvy to bunions to a ten-month pregnancy. They need looking after.”
“Did you get any dinner, Doc? We’ve got some pork and beans left I could quick heat up, and corn bread—”
“Thanks, Rae, they fed me at the Mannhofers’. Klara’s a good cook, I generally try to get there around a mealtime. How’s your sixth costa vera doing, William?”
“It’ll do. You missed a shindy, Saturday night.”
“Heard something about it. The Edersons again, right? I keep hoping someday some of that lot will manage to murder at least a few of each other.”
“Carl Ederson went to shoot his brother Peer but he hit his cousin’s horse. Or he was trying to shoot the horse and hit Peer. Which is it, Rae?”
He made her laugh. “Nobody really knows what happened,” she said. “Just that Erland’s horse got shot, and then Carl left town. And old Mr. Ederson says he’s going to shoot Carl soon as he sees him. And old Mrs. Ederson threw his gun into the creek.” They were all laughing. Coming past her to sit down in the straight chair, Doc touched her shoulder, a little light brush of the hand, the way he did sometimes. It was close in the small room. She and Doc were near the lamp, batting off or slapping at tiny mosquitoes. William was sitting up against the pillows, and his strong profile partly in the yellow light and part in deep shadow looked like an old photograph or a stone carving.
“I came in on a reading,” Doc said. “More of the Scriptures? You trying to figure out what Abiram actually did to bring God down on him and his wife and the babies?”
“No,” William said. “Don’t reckon I ever will. We’re reading the Gospel by Dickens.”
“Pickwick Papers? I saw a play made out of that in KC once.”
“This is Little Dorrit. More on the serious side.”
“Well give me a shot of it. I am tired, to tell you the truth. Sitting here getting read to by a beautiful woman sounds like just what the doctor ordered.” She tried to beg off, but he meant it. “Go on from where you were.” Rae picked up the book and found her place.
“He’s asleep.”
“I know. Just go on reading.”
“He’s going to fall off the chair.”
Doc started, half stood up, shook his head, sat down, and woke up. “Well, God damn, I went to sleep!” he said, and then, “Rae, I’m sorry. I am truly sorry.”
She thought he was apologizing for going to sleep. She had got so used to Roy and the men he knew and then Pete and the men he knew cursing all the time, language a lot worse than “damn,” which she hadn’t even noticed. When she understood, she was embarrassed and touched, and said at random, “You didn’t know what you were saying. I don’t mind. You must be worn out. I was getting tired reading, anyhow.”
“Foul-mouthed old cuss,” William said. “Can’t have you around the ladies. Go home and go to bed. We’re all pie-eyed. It must be past midnight.”
“It is,” Doc said, looking at his silver watch. “Thank you for the fine entertainment.” He yawned enormously. “Good night!”
He lurched out, waving the back of his hand at them vaguely.
“Never thought it had got so late,” William said.
“I love that man,” Rae said. “He’s just good.”
She felt dreamy, half there, half in the story she had been reading to them. She got Mr. Cowper—she still called him that in her head when “Mr. Cowper” made things easier than “William” did—seen to for the night, blew out the lamp, and bade him good night.
It seemed pitch dark for a moment, but the starlight and an old moon just clearing the mountains made a gray light in the house, enough for him to find his chamber pot if he had to, and for her to get to bed, still in the half dream of the story.
It tickled her that Doc had called her a beautiful woman. She knew that from him it meant nothing except his kindness. But for some reason she was glad he’d said it in front of William.
As she undressed the story came back around her. It had been hard going at first when they were all in Marseille, which she had to remember to pronounce “Marsay,” and the prison there, and the quarantine. She could see the places, but what was going on didn’t begin to make much sense until the third chapter, called “Home,” when Arthur Clennam was with his mother in the old house. And then when the story got to Mr. Dorrit and Amy and her sister in the Marshalsea Prison. She had gone right on tonight to the chapter called “The Lock” because she didn’t want to stop, even though she knew it was late. Arthur Clennam followed Amy to the prison and met Amy’s father, and then she had to stop reading because Doc was tilting over in his chair like a tree about to fall. That room and her bedroom were all mixed up in her head with Mr. Dorrit, and his brother Frederick, and Amy bringing her dinner for her father to eat. Jail cells and old dark places with heavy doors locked on the fragile human souls inside them. And the sweet night air pouring down the mountains through the house. She began going to sleep before she’d gotten all the way into bed.
It was a Sunday morning. He knew because things had been very loud at the Nugget last night and didn’t quiet down till late, after the cricket trilling died away. Anyhow it felt like Sunday. And presently they began hymn-singing away down Main Street in Mr. Robineau’s church. He’d been such a short time in Goldorado before the tunnel fell in on him that he didn’t have much picture of the town. He remembered or imagined a little clapboard chapel with a kind of halfhearted try at a steeple. The congregation sounded pretty thin on the ground from the way they wailed out a hymn he didn’t know, or maybe he couldn’t tell what it was because half of them were out of tune and all of them singing it like a dirge. Why did people drag out hymns like that? A good hymn deserved a good tempo. They went caterwauling on and on, it always sounded like the last verse at last, but it never was. Sitting up straight, breathing easy, and feeling good in the bright morning light already warming the air, he sang to show how it should be done—not loud, but moving right along with the beat. He sang his own hymn.
God moves in a mysterious way.
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.
Rae was in the doorway, bright-eyed, half laughing. Cowper waved his left hand like a choirmaster and sang on.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sov’reign will.
He stopped and looked at her. “Cowper’s Hymn,” he said.
“Go on!”
> “That’s the part I like. It’s in the book, if you want to read it.” He reached for the smaller book that she had fetched from his trunk along with Little Dorrit. She had put them both on his crate-table, and the smaller one had stayed there. He held it out to her. She was shy about taking it from him, so he opened it to the title page. Before that was the flyleaf, with the inscription on it in spidery legal writing, To my dear young friend and namesake of the Poet, William Cowper, on the occasion of his matriculation. May you find Honor and Contentment in your chosen profession. September 1889. R. E. Bendischer. He knew it without reading it. He showed Rae the title page, and then turned to the hymn. It took a while, one-handed, but he knew the page. He knew all the pages.
“He called it ‘Light Shining out of Darkness,’ but mostly it gets called ‘Cowper’s Hymn.’”
She took the book from him at last.
“I never heard you sing,” she said.
“I didn’t feel much like it lately.”
“I guess not.” She was still shy, not looking at the book, or at him. He never could figure out her shynesses, her embarrassments. They were mysteries. The more he knew Rae, the more her mysteries. Endless. Unfathomable.
“I like that word,” she said. She was blushing some, but went ahead. She was looking down at the open book now. “It’s a grand word. Unfathomable.”
After a while Cowper said, “It is.”
MANUEL MUñOZ
Anyone Can Do It
from Zyzzyva
Her immediate concern was money. It was a Friday when the men didn’t come home from the fields and, true, sometimes the men wouldn’t return until late, the headlights of the neighborhood work truck turning the corner, the men drunk and laughing from the bed of the pickup. And, true, other women might have thought first about the green immigration vans prowling the fields and the orchards all around the valley, ready to take away the men they might not see again for days if good luck held, or even longer if they found no luck at all.
The Best American Short Stories 2019 Page 23