The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  WHAT I SAID: What other guys, Arlo? I thought he was trying to tell me the name of the man who shot my son. I listened carefully, as if I were hunting, feeling my ears even slightly move, slightly lift up, opening further the diameter of my dark canal to hear his words.

  WHAT ARLO SAID: Justin Ays.

  WHAT I SAID: Justin Ays?, thinking it was the name of a man.

  WHAT ARLO SAID: No, just guys, I said. Any guys. Clean your ears out, Doc, he said.

  THOUGHTS WHILE DRIVING OUT OF ARLO’S PAST HIS FIELDS: There are no happier cows I know of.

  WHAT I HOPED TO SEE WHEN I DROVE UP THE DRIVEWAY: Another car, the one that belonged to the hunter who had shot my son, the man coming out to tell me he was sorry. Where was that man?

  WHAT I SAW INSTEAD: The lights on in the house. Jen at the stove.

  WHAT WAS NOT IN THE PHONE BOOK: Anyone by the name of Justin Ays.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID: We saw Arlo’s name up at Phil’s. We didn’t want to tell you he was one of the eighty-two who had shot a buck in our town. Don’t worry, Poppy, you will get a buck someday. Go on, Poppy, practice your bow in the house. It is almost bow season again. We will go upstairs and out of your way.

  WHAT I DID: I shot the bow in the house at a target I set up fifty feet away because bow season was coming again and I wanted to be ready. One arrow hit the twelve-inch hemlock post. I could unscrew the arrow shaft but I could not remove the tip. It remains embedded in the post.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Well, the deer aren’t going to be nervous with you in the woods, but the trees might be quaking.

  WHAT THE HOUSE SAID: Don’t worry about the tip. I will close up around it and swallow it in oh, about one hundred years.

  WHAT I REENACTED FOR SAM AT THE HOSPITAL: The arrow’s flight into the post. Thwack, I said, jabbing my finger into the pastel yellow hospital room wall, beside the metal door, showing him how it was at our house, an arrow tip embedded in the hemlock and my wife now leery of my peephole, my arm pull, my overall aim. Sam, I could have sworn, moved his foot. I wanted to open the metal door, call down the hall for the night nurse. I have seen his foot move, I wanted to yell, but I didn’t, because maybe it was a trick of the eye. Instead I knelt down beside the bed and pulled back his covers and stared at his foot.

  His foot was huge for a twelve-year-old boy. There was dirt in his toenails that was dirt from our house from where he had always walked barefoot even on days of winter’s most frigid cold, and I looked at the dirt and thought how because of it he belonged now at home, and not here, surrounded by the yellow pastel walls. The dirt under his huge big toenail was dirt from our house, where he rightfully belonged. His foot, for a moment, looked like it was moving, but it was not, I realized. It was just me leaning on his bed and the beating of my own heart and the workings of my own lungs that was making the mattress move up and down, ever so slightly, making him move in turn. I breathed harder then, I willed my heart a faster beat, there was the possibility I could jump-start his foot into motion. My wife walked in the room and I jumped instead. I covered my son’s foot up again, I did not want her to see the dirt beneath his big toenail, if she had seen it she would have gone after it with a clipper, with a file’s curved point, somehow ashamed of dirt on her own son, and I wanted to keep that dirt there. As long as it remained, it somehow meant there was a possibility of my son coming home.

  She did not talk. She sat on the end of the bed drinking tea, the bag’s small postage stamp-sized tag and its thread-like string twirling in some slight breeze by the Styrofoam cup’s side. She held the cup with one hand and rested her other hand on his ankle, her hand some kind of cuff, some kind of shackle to keep him prone, laid out flat, on his hospital bed so he would never rise. Look at this, I said, to get her away from him. I wanted her to see the first heavy snow in our region, the flakes fat, falling heavily, on the ledge of the window that could not be opened.

  She stood from the bed, letting go her grasp on him, and joined me at the window. I looked in the reflection. Maybe my son, thinking we weren’t looking, would turn his head, would smile, would raise his hands in the air and look at them. He had done this as an infant, turning his hands in the air while he lay in his crib, mesmerized by the motions he made, the thumbs that could rotate, the wrists that could turn, they were his first toys. My wife’s breath steamed the window glass. My son did not wake. “Snow now makes it seem like he’s been here so long. He came here in late fall, and now it’s winter weather already,” she said, and then turned back to our son.

  The door handle turned and a tall man came in. I’m sorry, wrong room, he said shaking his head and leaving, letting the door shut.

  MY FIRST THOUGHT: Could he be the hunter who shot my son, who has come to my son’s bedside to tell us he’s sorry it has taken him so long to come?

  WHAT THE WIFE DOES: Puts her tea on the tray table, gets under the covers, and lies next to our son.

  WHAT I SAY: What are you doing?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: He’s my son. I nod my head. I wanted to do it earlier, too. I wanted to crawl in beside my son and hold him. The wife closes her eyes.

  CALL: A standardbred that has a cut on his neck. Owner says it definitely needs stitches.

  ACTION: Drove to the man’s house. His name was Brody. His property bordered mine.

  RESULT: Brody was wrong. Standardbred did not need stitches. The cut was only a scratch. Brody invited me into the house while he found his checkbook to write me a check for coming to his house to do nothing to his standardbred but shine a flashlight on its neck while standing in the freezing-cold barn. Brody had books on his shelves that looked like they had never been opened. Brody’s house was so clean. Brody had pictures of his grown children on the shelves. His wife, he said, had died. Brody said, Stay for dinner. No thank you, I said. I’m sure my wife is waiting at home, keeping a meal warm for me. But then I thought maybe this is the man who shot Sam. He has called me here for no reason because it’s a ruse and he wants to confess. I touch a wooden duck decoy he has on his mantel.

  WHAT I SAY: You hunt? Brody laughs. He says his wife bought him the decoy in a gift shop when they visited Cape Cod. The decoy was signed by the artist, and Brody flipped the body of the duck, showing me the letters painted on the wood. I am afraid of guns. I have heard too many stories, he says.

  WHAT I THINK: Brody is pulling my chain. Brody really did shoot Sam and now he thinks he can toy with me.

  WHAT I SAY: Oh, come on, surely living here where we live you have an understanding of guns. You must hear them go off all the time the way your woods back up onto mine. There is game all around us, I say. Brody shakes his head. No, I just don’t hunt, he says.

  WHAT I DO: I start to leave, but really I want to stand in Brody’s mudroom. I look at the hooks on the wall and see if there are any camo-patterned coats or hunting pants. I see old dark-colored cardigans with holes in the weave and looping bits of yarn. You’re hell on sweaters, I say. Is that from walking in the woods, all the branches? I say. Brody laughs and points down to a skinny cat sidling between his legs. No, it’s from her darn claws, he says. I think about the word darn. I think how either he said it and knew he said it in place of damn because he wanted me to think he wasn’t the one who shot my son, or he said it because he really is the type of man who could never shoot a gun.

  WHAT GISELA SAID IN GERMAN THAT SHE NEEDS FOR HER DORMITORY ROOM ON THE DRIVE HOME: Gisela needs a new desk. Gisela needs a new lamp. Gisela needs a new bed. Gisela needs new curtains. Gisela, maybe, is shy, and cannot have all the boys on campus peering up at her through her dormitory window while her Kopf is hurting her so, because, as of yet, she still feels krank and has not found the apothecary to buy her aspirin.

  WHAT THE WIFE KEPT WARM FOR ME ON THE STOVE: Chicken stew made with dried apricots, cinnamon, and honey.

  WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE: I’m okay without the apricots.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: The apricots are good. The apricots are part of the dish. Eat the apr
icots. Your levels are begging for fruit.

  THINGS MY WIFE THINKS MY LEVELS CAN DO SO FAR: Talk, appreciate food, beg.

  WHAT I DON’T CARE ABOUT: My levels. I just want Sam to wake up.

  WHAT I DID: Forked up the apricots and laid them on the rim of my plate.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID: Did you sew up the horse?

  WHAT I SAID: No, the horse did not need sewing. The horse did not need a vet. There was nothing I could do. Now go back to bed.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID: Come kiss us good night.

  WHAT I DID: I kissed them good night. I pulled the covers up to their necks.

  WHAT MIA SAID: Poppy, you have so many drugs in your truck. Couldn’t you just give Sam some to make him better?

  WHAT I SAID: No, there’s nothing I have for him in the back of my truck.

  WHAT I DID: I covered the rabbit’s cage with a cloth, so she could sleep without the light of the full moon glaring onto her through the metal bars. Then I stood and looked out the window, searching the sky.

  WHAT SARAH SAID IN THE MORNING: A deer has walked on our porch. It was true. There were hoofprints in the snow covering the boards that the wind had blown up under the roof. Why had the deer come to our front door? the children wanted to know. I did not know. Maybe the deer had seen the hunter who shot my son. Maybe he wanted to come and tell me who the man was. The deer was a messenger. He is a messenger, I said to my wife and children. Jen laughed, Yes, come to tell us to brush the snow off our porch before someone gets hurt, and then she fetched the broom and began to sweep.

  CALL: No call. I went out to my deer stand with my bow and arrow. How can you still hunt? Jen said before I left. I shook my head. I might find the hunter who did this to our son, I said. Then what? she said. She lifted her hands, her palms facing up to the ceiling where some cluster flies clung to the beams. It was like she was beckoning them, asking them to jump into a fireman’s net from a burning building. You don’t get it, do you? I said. You don’t just go into the woods and hunt and hit someone instead of an animal and think you can get away with that. You don’t let a man do that, I said, and I left. I stood the entire time in my tree stand because I knew that a buck would be hard to shoot from a sitting position. Standing, I was ready.

  WHAT I SAW: A buck, far away, so far that if I shot him with my arrow, the arrow would never reach him. It would hit the ground first, tunneling through the snow and then down under the flattened leaves of dirt.

  WHAT JANE EYRE HAS RECENTLY DONE: She has saved Rochester from a fire in his bedroom. She has doused him with water. What, has there been a flood? he asked.

  WHAT THE WEATHER BECAME: Freezing rain that made me not want to go out and deer hunt.

  WHO CAME TO VISIT: My brother and his family. He believes that there is a good Lord, that he made us all.

  WHAT I BELIEVE IN: Evolution, that a thing even as complex as the eye, for example, can have developed, must have certainly developed.

  WHAT HIS WIFE BELIEVES IN: The good Lord.

  WHAT SHE TELLS US TO BELIEVE IN WHILE VISITING SAM WITH US IN THE HOSPITAL ROOM: The good Lord.

  WHAT JEN SAYS REALLY LOUDLY: Good Lord! Jesus Christ! and I laugh, because she’s making them sound like curse words, but my brother and his wife, they look down at the tops of their shoes.

  CALL: A woman with Icelandic ponies needs a prepurchase.

  ACTION: Drove to farm through roads along the stream where the water was mostly frozen, making the water flowing beneath the ice appear light green.

  RESULT: Examined horse. Decided I was glad I didn’t bring my daughters with me, as the Icelandic pony was so cute, they surely would have wanted one. The owner said she would never own a different kind of pony because the Icelandic ponies had such good temperaments that they were more like golden retrievers than ponies. The dog she owned, however, who trotted at her side, was an Australian shepherd.

  WHAT I ASKED THE WOMAN: Do you know a man named Brody?

  WHAT THE WOMAN SAID: Brody?

  WHAT I SAID: He lives near me. His woods border mine.

  WHAT THE WOMAN SAID: He has a horse?

  WHAT I SAID: Yes! He has a horse! That’s the man.

  WHAT SHE SAID: No, I don’t think I know him.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: With all this snow, how will the deer find food? Can the spacecraft fly in all this snow? Can the cold air wake up my son? If only I could open up the windows in his hospital room.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Pop, Mom said the transmission was coming in loud and clear. It would be meat loaf for dinner.

  WHAT THE HOUSE SAID AT NIGHT: The banging you hear is not dead bodies falling to the ground from a great height, but rather the snow sliding off the panels between the standing seams of the copper roof and onto the ground.

  WHO I CALLED IN THE MORNING: Brody. I wanted to know if his horse was all right. I wanted to know if I could hear in his voice that he was the man who shot my son. Brody, it’s me, I said, hoping to catch him off guard. Pardon? he said. The vet who came the other night, I said. Oh, yes, he said. The horse is much better, he said. Thanks for calling, he said, and he sounded like he had to run out the door.

  CALL: No call. I drove up the road. I knocked on the neighbor’s door. Nate, I said, you weren’t out hunting a few weeks ago, were you? Yes, I was, I sure was, Nate said. For grouse? I said. Oh, no, for buck. I don’t go out for grouse, he said. Then I told him what happened to my son even though in this small town he already knew. He shook his head while standing outside his door. I’m sorry to hear that, he said, as if he hadn’t heard at all. Any idea who it was? I asked Nate. Nate said he didn’t know anyone who went out for grouse anymore. He said maybe twenty years ago he could give me some names of men who hunted grouse around here, but not anymore. They were no longer around. Nate’s wife came to the door. Annabelle said what about the caretaker at the farm on Cemetery Road, didn’t he still go for grouse? she said to Nate. Nate shook his head. No, he don’t go out for it anymore, Nate said. We heard about your son, we’re sorry to hear it, Annabelle said. I nodded. I’d better get going, I said.

  CALL: A horse that has a cut on his neck.

  ACTION: Drove to farm.

  RESULT: The horse had suffered the cut hours ago. I blocked the horse. Then I sewed up the horse cold. I was cold. The horse was cold. The cut was cold, and strange to my fingers to feel bloody flesh that was not warm, that did not have mist coming off the incision when it came into contact with the cold winter air.

  WHERE I DROVE AFTER I SEWED UP THE HORSE: To the farm where the caretaker lived up on Cemetery Road. The view from the farm on the hill was beautiful and when I got out of my truck I stood looking at the mountains in front of me and wondering if that was a view I’d like to see every day or if living up on a hill like that would make me feel too unprotected, and like the wind could blow me down. The caretaker wore glasses that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, and wasn’t that a waste, I thought, a man living up here who did not even bother to clean his glasses so he could see the view. He was large and I thought how walking through the woods he must scare the grouse out far ahead of him because his heavy steps would surely alert the grouse a long way off. I introduced myself and he shook my hand and I asked him if he had been hunting recently and he said that in fact he had been and showed me on a picnic table behind the house some grouse he had shot earlier in the day and that he was now just cleaning out. I admired the birds and held one in my hand, letting the head drop back, and touching the soft feathers at its neck. Around here? I asked. The caretaker shook his head. No, down south, I hunt at my brother’s place. He has rock walls all over his property, the grouse like to roost behind them. I’m always lucky there, he said. I told him about my son. I asked him if he knew who that might have been that day, hunting on my property. The caretaker shook his head. You’re asking me something I don’t know the answer to, he said, and he took the bird from me and said he had better get started on them if he wanted to wra
p them in bacon and roast them for dinner.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME: Poppy, look what your hat has done to your hair.

  WHAT I DID: I looked in the mirror. It was true. The hat had done something to my hair. It was sticking straight up.

  WHAT SARAH SAID: It looks like an ax blade stuck in your skull.

  WHAT MIA DID: Played with my hair so that instead it looked like a palm tree swaying in an ocean breeze.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Lasagna for dinner. But I don’t like the cow we ordered this year. The ground meat is full of gristle and rubbery veins.

  WHAT I SAID: Tastes fine to me. And it did.

  WHAT THE NIGHT SAID: A cold front is coming through and the sky is so clear you can hear sounds from very far away. Hear the branches breaking on the hillside? Hear the grouse in the thicket? Hear the chipmunk running across the wood pile? Hear the blood in your own veins? Hear the height of your levels? You can hear them, can’t you?

  WHAT THE PHONE DID: It rang. It was the hospital nurse. I saw your son move his foot today, she said. This is a good sign, she said.