The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  WHAT GISELA SAYS WHILE I AM DRIVING HOME FROM A CALL: Where is an apothecary? I’d like to purchase some aspirin.

  WHAT I PASS ON THE ROAD: A diner, a bowling alley, a car dealer, a tax-preparation office. Gisela doesn’t need these things. What Gisela needs is an apothecary. I must find one for Gisela. Gisela feels krank. Gisela would like to remove her Kopf from her shoulders and take a break from it. It is causing her so much pain.

  WHAT I NEED TO DO: Order more vaccine. You would think West Nile virus runs rampant through these parts the way I need to vaccinate for it, and maybe it does. Little Egypt, the town, is only a few hours south of here.

  WHAT GISELA SAYS: I also need to find the butcher’s. Do you know where one is?

  CALL: An old horse that needs to be put down.

  ACTION: Had owner walk horse over alongside the wide deep grave dug with a tractor. While the horse walked alongside his grave, one of his feet slipped. He almost fell in. I gave the shot. He did not go down. I had to give more. Finally he went down. He fell on his knees, his head in between them. His eyes not so glassy, his eyes looking like he still could see.

  WHAT THE OWNER SAID: How do you get him in the hole?

  RESULT: Watch, I told the owner. I tipped the horse. He flipped. He fell into the hole sitting up. His head facing forward, his head propped up by the wall of dirt.

  WHAT THE OWNER SAID: Is it all right to bury him that way? Shouldn’t he be down flat? Isn’t his head, even after it’s covered with dirt, too close to the surface?

  WHAT I DID: I shook my head. There was nothing going to dig up that horse’s grave. That horse, with his wise look, would frighten any other animal away.

  THOUGHTS ON RIDE HOME: It might happen again. A fascist leader might rise to power here. It might even be a woman. How ironic. Everyone happy to see a woman finally in power, only it comes at a time when the country is broke and the woman is a fascist, her ideals appealing to an economically battered public. Who can say it won’t happen? Who will save our country? Who will fight for the good? Who will fight Hitlerina?

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Pulled pork on a bun.

  WHAT I HEARD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT: A whinny. A horse lost down our road. At first it sounded like an owl or a coyote, or even, Jen said, the sound of Sam crying.

  WHAT I TOLD HER: All the way from the hospital we would not be able to hear our son cry.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Maybe the horse is injured. Maybe it’s his levels. At least he knows when to see the doctor. Have you made your appointment yet?

  WHAT I SAID: That’s not the whinny of an injured horse. He’s just calling to see if anyone’s around. He will find his way home at daybreak. A smart horse doesn’t travel at night when he might trip and break his leg when he can’t see.

  WHAT I DID: I turned on the light in our bedroom for the horse.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: You’re leaving a light on for a horse?

  WHAT I SAID: He’s just like us. He gets scared in the dark.

  WHAT THE WIFE DID: She nodded. All right, leave the light on for him, she said. I hope they leave a light on for Sam in the middle of the night. I don’t want him waking up in the dark, she said.

  WHAT I SAID: Don’t worry about the light in the hospital. That place is lit up like an airport. The lights stay on all night.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Yes, only too bad he’s not going anywhere, too bad he’s not getting on a plane. Too bad we are not going to some faraway place with a beach and a bar.

  WHAT THE WIFE DID: Fell back to sleep. The flies buzzed. We have flies that winter over in our house. They swarm into the corners of the windows. They fly around the bulb in the lamp that is on. They are noisy. Some die every day, falling from the corners of the rafters and the windows and onto our bed. We shake out the top cover at night before we go to sleep so that they land on the floor instead. Sometimes, while we are sleeping, we are awakened by a dead one falling on our face. I fell back to sleep, too, by the sound, the buzzing lullaby.

  HOW SAM WAS LYING DOWN: On his side. The day nurse moved him.

  WHAT THE WIFE WANTED TO KNOW: Why she turned him so that he faced the door, and why didn’t she turn him so that he faced the window. “At least the trees beyond the parking lot are something to look at,” she said.

  WHAT THE STATE TROOPER SAID: We’ve asked around, but if you didn’t see the man who shot your son, then we have no lead. Unless your son had enemies, it was obviously an accident. He’s okay, isn’t he? The gunshot was just to the shoulder, right?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: In a coma is not okay.

  CALL: Another horse to put down.

  ACTION: Put the horse down. The owner could talk German. The owner listened to me say a few German words. The owner corrected my accent while the horse fell to his knees.

  RESULT: I worked on pronouncing Strasse, fleissig, and Goebbels. Goebbels is really difficult to say. We easily tipped the horse into the hole. He went in facedown, his knees bent as if he were in the middle of trying to dig with his hooves an even deeper hole in the ground.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: How do you say “Fuck the fucker who shot my son” in German? The only curse word I know in German is Scheisse. I need to learn more German curse words. I need to learn “fuck.” Then I can say “Fuck the fucker,” instead of just knowing how to say Scheisse.

  WHAT I DID WHEN I GOT HOME: Went to my tree stand. I checked the straps to make sure they were secure. I attached my bow to a long string and I set the bow on the ground and then I climbed up the deer stand with the end of the rope attached to my harness. When I was in my stand I pulled up my bow. I loaded my arrow. Then I stood. My ears turned on. The first thing I heard was my stomach gurgling. The second thing I heard was the wind blowing through what few leaves were left in the tops of the trees. I heard small birds, nuthatches, flitting under the fallen leaves, covered in light snow. I heard cars, far off, driving on the road. But I couldn’t tell if they were coming or going. I heard a dog barking that did not sound like any dog I knew. Then it was quiet. Now was the time for a deer to walk past me. No deer did.

  THOUGHTS WHILE DEER HUNTING: You may have to be really smart to kill a deer. Where are my antlers to clatter and call the deer in? Where is my doe urine? My grunt call made of plastic in the shape of a tube? My scent-lock coat? My milk jug to piss in so my own urine smell won’t be carried in the wind? My camo made of millions of tiny computer dots?

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Did you shoot any deer?

  WHAT I SAID: Deer is not for dinner.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Good, I could really go for some stir-fry anyway.

  WHAT I TOLD THE WIFE THAT NIGHT IN BED BECAUSE SHE WAS CRYING: I love you.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID, STOPPING HER CRYING: What’s the matter? What hurts? We laughed. Hers is not a tinkly one, nor is it heavy or gravelly or deep. It is more like a grunt, first an inhalation, then an exhalation along with the sound of her voice, not high or low. What would the deer think of it? Could her laugh call them in? Could we both fit standing on the tree stand? Maybe if we were entwined. Her laugh my call that bags a prize buck?

  WHAT THE WIFE DOES: Moves Sam herself so that he is facing the window, but she needs help. It is not easy. There are tubes to contend with. There is the slit in the back of his hospital gown now open, now exposing him to whoever walks in the door. We do it together, moving him, and he feels so much lighter than the last time I carried him, which was after he was shot and I held him in a fireman’s carry down the hill. Sarah and Mia, seeing him exposed, dismantle their fort themselves and give back his blankets. Sarah tucks the blanket around his feet and underneath his body so that now he looks like a pale blue cocoon.

  CALL: A horse with a lameness.

  ACTION: Drove to farm. The poorest farm I have seen so far. Looked at horse. Spoke to owner. There was nowhere to sit outside. There were no lawn chairs, no typical rock walls. The owner’s boy sat on the rusted seat of a tractor that did not look like it could move but grew up
from the ground where it was, pushing itself through the dirt, and had come to rest. Tall grass grew up high alongside its tires, past the height of the wheel wells. The woman owner sat, too, she sat in the driver’s seat of a compact car. She sat sideways in the seat with her legs and knees facing me and the door open. One of the tires of the car was a spare, not meant to be driven on for long, but of course it had been, and it looked bald. These were the only places to sit. Maybe there were places to sit inside the house, but I could not see through the windows. The panes of the windows were missing and in their places were sheets of milky colored plastic stapled to the frames.

  RESULT: After I felt the horse’s leg, I told the owner about the heat. I told her she would do well to stand the horse’s leg in a bucket of ice water. The woman shook her head. “No ice,” she said. “Isn’t that right?” she said to her son. Her son shook his head, one hand on the steering wheel of the tractor, his sweater sleeves pulled up to his elbows, his arms streaked with dirt, as if he were the one who had driven the tractor up from the center of the earth, as if he did it every day and in a minute he would tunnel back down in his tractor and he would come back holding up a bag of ice, the outside of the bag covered in dirt, but nonetheless ice, because he seemed like the Artful Dodger out of Oliver Twist. He could obtain anything his heart desired, and it didn’t matter what methods he used to get it. He was easily bought and easily sold. His wide nose was slightly bent to one side, as if the weight of the dirt he had pushed up through had made it bend that way and it could never be bent back. I looked at him and wondered why it was not this son who was in a coma. This son was not lucky enough to have a nose that was straight and thin like my son’s and that I thought made my son look smart, even when my son was being stupid, leaving front doors open in the freezing cold, staring at numbers on homework pages for so long it was as if he expected them to rearrange themselves and form the answer when he could not. It was possible that they knew, this son and this mother, the man who shot my son, because it’s such a small town, but if I asked them if they knew they would not answer me. Maybe if I paid the son, he would tell me, I thought, but then I just said to the mother, Any hose would do to spray on his leg, to keep the heat down, a constant stream of cold water.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: With all the leaves off the trees I’m noticing more houses. When did all these houses appear?

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME: Poppy, you look tired.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Chicken artichoke casserole.

  WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE IN BED: Am I getting grayer? The children told me I have more gray here. (I touched the side of my head to show her where the children had pointed.)

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: No, you don’t have more gray than usual. It’s just that the children are taller. They can see the gray they have never been able to see before.

  WHAT THE NIGHT SAID: Coyotes rule.

  WHAT I THOUGHT THE COYOTES WERE HOWLING AT: The spacecraft. I saw it again, this time hovering over our pond, its reflection shining on the dark water rippling in the wind. Was the pilot able to land it on water the way the geese at Arthur’s could land themselves? Would the spacecraft submerge and rest on the bottom, the salamanders scooting over to make room for its alien hull?

  WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE: When you drove my truck to visit Sam, you drove too fast. You stop short and all my drugs get tossed around in the back.

  WHAT SHE SAID: I don’t drive too fast. I’ve never had a speeding ticket in my life. You, on the other hand, have had speeding tickets. Wasn’t it just the other day you were doing 39 in a 25?

  WHAT I SAID: Yes, but I did not get a ticket for it. The cop pulled me over and saw I was an animal doctor. He asked if I was going on an emergency call. I told him yes, and he let me go.

  WHAT SHE SAID: You lied to him.

  WHAT I SAID: I forgot to tell you. This morning, after I drove the kids to school, I saw the same cop in my rearview. His lights were flashing. Scheiße, I thought. I pulled over. The cop got out of his cruiser and said, Do you know what I’m pulling you over for? My expired inspection sticker? I said. No, he said, get that taken care of anytime. I just want to know if that horse you were going to see the other night is all right, he said.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Our town cop’s a comedian.

  WHAT I ALMOST RAN OVER THE OTHER NIGHT ON THE ROAD: A deer, a doe. She changed her mind halfway across and turned back into the field she had come from.

  WHAT THE WIFE WANTS: I don’t know. Haven’t I given her all she should ask for?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: You’re a prick.

  WHAT I FEEL LIKE: Not a prick.

  WHAT I TURN THE RADIO UP FOR: Celebration time, come on.

  WHAT SHE TURNS IT DOWN FOR: Celebration time, come on.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA FIGHT OVER WHEN WE DRIVE TO VISIT SAM: Sitting shotgun, sharing gum, who punched whom too hard after a punch buggy sighting.

  WHAT I TELL THE WIFE WHILE WE’RE IN THE HOSPITAL LOOKING AT SAM IN THE HARSH WHITE LIGHT: We could sell our place. We could live in Ecuador. We could surf every day. We could eat fresh fish.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: This is your levels talking. But I like the idea, change is good.

  WHAT I SAY: I don’t really want to live in Ecuador. I just want to live in a smaller house way up in the woods.

  WHAT I THINK: My levels don’t talk. They just go up and down. Why is my wife personifying my levels?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I like the part about surfing. When was the last time we dug our toes in sand? Are there sharks? Is there crime? Will our children be stolen? she said and then she went to Sam and brought the blanket up to his chin even though the hospital was roasting.

  WHAT I DID WHEN I GOT HOME: I walked up the hill. I cleared the land. I threw small trees in a pile and started them to burn. Night fell. I heard a coyote close by, howling a small howl outside the circle of my fire. There was no wind, but somehow, opposite where the coyote was, the leaves kicked up. They turned in a circle, forming a cyclone that spun itself into the shape of a man, then as quickly as the leaves started up, they fell to the ground. A moment later I heard the coyote howling again, only this time he had moved, he was howling right behind where the leaves had spun themselves into the shape of a man.

  THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING THE LEAVES IN THE SHAPE OF A MAN: The man looks a little like me. The man looks like a younger version of myself. The man looks the way my son might look when he is older. Where had he come from? The sky? The spacecraft?

  CALL: No call. It was another hang-up call. I said, “Jawohl! Jawohl! Ich heisse David Appleton, und du?” but there was no one there. Who are you talking to? Is it about Sam? the wife said. “Der Kapitän, das Boot ist kaputt!” I said and then I said, “Alarm! Alarm! Dive, dive, dive!” and I dove under the telephone table and then Sarah and Mia started screaming it too and the wife put her hands over her ears and the dogs started barking and the wife yelled for me to shut up. It’s not funny, she yelled. None of this is, she said, and then she started to cry. Sarah and Mia went to her. They hugged her and I stayed where I was under the phone table, noticing how thick clouds of black fuzzy Newfoundland hair had shored up against the table’s spiraled legs.

  WHAT I CAN DO: I can swallow my tongue. I can swim fast and for a long distance. I can tie a cherry stem into a knot with just my tongue. I can take a nap and tell myself I only want to sleep for twenty minutes and then I wake up after twenty minutes, without the aid of an alarm clock. I cannot ride a horse. I tried riding a horse. I fell off the horse. I fell from an eighteen-hand Belgian draft horse after he decided he’d rather gallop than walk up our dirt road. I could not see clearly after I fell. For days I could not see whatever was to the side of me, as if I were a horse wearing blinders. It was ironic, falling off a horse and then walking around like a horse with blinders on. Jen said I was not missing much, but still, I would have liked to have known what was about to come up from behind.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Can we drive to see Sam again?


  WHAT I SAY: No, we have been there once already today. Nothing has changed in him. The only thing that might have changed is his sheets, maybe, and the angles of the shadows on the fucking tiles of the floor.

  WHAT MY WIFE CAN DO: Make me angrier than I have ever been.

  WHAT OUR NEWFOUNDLAND DOGS DO: Never make me angry. Sneeze when they’re on their backs. Drink out of the toilet. The other day Bruce drank out of the toilet and then stood by the woodstove and shook his massive head and sprayed water so far that it hit the woodstove with a fire in it and the spray of water popped and fizzed on the woodstove like a greasy spoon’s griddle.

  CALL: A woman needs her horses’ teeth floated.

  ACTION: Ate a big breakfast. Floating teeth is hard work. Drove to farm.

  RESULT: Filed down the hooks in the back of the horses’ mouths. Told the woman they were very polite horses, which they were, and let me float them without giving them any tranq.

  THOUGHTS WHILE DRIVING TO HOSPITAL: How do the animals survive in the winter? I mustn’t cut the milkweed I left to grow in the field for the monarch butterflies, because now I am sure the stand of milkweed I left is home to mice and voles. I could keep driving. Where would I go? I have already been west. I have walked the streets the nights filled with the smell of palm trees, dusty with car exhaust particles caught in the tapering fronds in the dry desert wind. The streets slick on nights of a fast rain that ended quick, the mornings a blooming rose color in the sunrise.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID AT HOME AFTER WE WALKED IN THE DOOR, AFTER WE HAD BEEN TO THE HOSPITAL AND HAD SEEN HOW SAM WAS IN EXACTLY THE SAME POSITION HE WAS IN THE DAY BEFORE, HOW NO NIGHT NURSE OR DAY NURSE HAD BOTHERED TO MOVE HIM: What about Ecuador? Tell me again about the surfing?

  WHAT I SAID: No, Ecuador is out of the question.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Bali, then?

  WHAT I SAID: No, not Bali, not Fiji, not Maui or Palau. Here, right here, where we live is where we’ll stay.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: This is not an island, we’re surrounded by trees, not water, and then she stood at the window looking out over the parking lot.