The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  WHAT I DO: I walk behind her. I look at the town map hanging above her desk. I look at all the houses that border my property. I see a house in the northeast corner I didn’t know was there before. Whose house is that? I ask.

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: Anne Thompson’s. She’s the daughter of Sleeping Mary.

  WHAT I SAY: Sleeping Mary?

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: Yes, she would go into a trance and tell the future. If someone wanted a session with her, they would go down to the library on Friday afternoons.

  WHAT I SAY: Does she hunt?

  WHAT JEAN DOES: Pulls out a book of every licensed hunter in our town. She copies the page for me. No, these are the people who hunt in this town, but anyone could have been walking on your property that day who had a hunting license. That’s all you need is a license, and some people don’t even bother to get one.

  WHAT I SAY BEFORE I LEAVE: What about Howie? Did he bite the neck of a sheepdog?

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: Howie’s a kitten. That sheepdog got his head cut up trying to limbo a barbed-wire fence on John Bennett’s property.

  WHAT THE HOUSE SAYS AT NIGHT: “David,” it wakes me up, calling my name with a huge creak of its timbers. I look over at Jen, who is sleeping. It was not she who called out my name in her sleep. It must have been the house. What? I say in a whisper, but the house doesn’t answer.

  WHAT GISELA SAID WHILE I WAS DRIVING: David, check your levels. When I listened to the CD again, she was talking about taking a visit to Tubingen. She was talking about buying more coffee because she had run out. She was talking about where to buy sweet bread. Now she was telling me to check my levels. Repeat after me, she said: Check your levels.

  WHAT I THOUGHT ABOUT DOING: Checking my levels because both the house and Gisela had told me to.

  WHAT I THOUGHT WAS FUNNY: That my wife and a doctor had told me to go check my levels, but I didn’t want to do it, and now that a house and a German language CD are telling me to do it, I am considering it, especially if it means I might see the spacecraft again.

  WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM RABBITS: That wherever you are, you must look for a place where you can run to and hide.

  WHAT I TELL THE WIFE: Have you thought anymore about where we can live when we can no longer afford the taxes here?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I’m not leaving this place. I already told you that.

  WHAT THE FLIES SAY AT NIGHT: David, David, David.

  NUMBER OF RESIDENTS IN OUR TOWN: 600.

  NUMBER OF PEOPLE WITH HUNTING LICENSES: 100.

  NUMBER OF FLIES IN OUR HOUSE: Probably 6,000.

  NUMBER OF FIELDS ON OUR PROPERTY: 5. The front field, the field to the pond, the middle field, the fern field, the back field. The pond is frozen now, but it is spring-fed and still the water bubbles up from it. We have told the children to stay off it, but Nelly, the Newfoundland, sometimes walks across it and we hold our breaths, scared she will break through the ice and drown. We had a beaver in our pond, and he chewed down seven of our trees that surrounded the pond. In the warmer months, the trees that the beaver felled are visible as they lay submerged at the bottom of the pond. I have put on my wet suit from my days of riding ocean waves and waded into the pond and tried to pull out the trees that I could—the small, thinner ones, but the larger trees I have had to leave where they are, with brown algae growing on their bark.

  NUMBER OF TIMES I’VE LOOKED AT THE LIST OF ONE HUNDRED NAMES OF LICENSED HUNTERS: 60.

  NUMBER OF TIMES MY WIFE HAS TOLD ME TO PUT IT AWAY: 10.

  NUMBER OF MARKS WHO HAVE LICENSES: 3.

  NUMBER OF JASONS: 3.

  NUMBER OF CALEBS: 1.

  NAME THAT ISN’T ON THE LICENSE LIST: Greg Springer.

  WHAT NELLY TELLS BRUCE, WHO IS TRYING TO MOUNT HER: Not yet, you brute!

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: If we really want puppies we have to hire someone who helps breed dogs and this someone has to masturbate the dog.

  WHAT I SAY: I am not spending money on hiring someone to come masturbate my dog. I know how to masturbate, for Chrissakes. I’ll do it for him.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Oh, that is soo disgusting.

  WHAT BRUCE LIKES: Me masturbating him wearing rubber surgical gloves and holding a Ziploc freezer bag nearby to catch what I can whenever it comes spurting out, reminding me of my own days when I donated sperm.

  WHAT DOESN’T GET HARD: Bruce.

  WHAT STARTS TO REALLY HURT: My arm.

  WHAT MY WIFE AND I DECIDE IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN: Nelly getting pregnant.

  WHAT NELLY IS: Still in heat, but now she wanders. Bruce is not man-dog enough for her. She wants to find someone who can do the deed. Bruce, though, follows her when she wanders. They head down the driveway, Bruce trying to mount her the entire time she is trotting away over the frozen road.

  WHAT THE NEIGHBORS DO: Call us to tell us our huge black New foundland dogs are on their back porch and that the male is trying to mate with the female.

  WHAT I DO AFTER I PICK UP THE DOGS: Drive to Greg Springer’s with the dogs in the back of the truck and Bruce still trying to mate Nelly. I yell for him to get off her, because every time I look in the rearview all I see is a pumping mass of black fur and my truck’s rocking side to side.

  WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I OPEN THE DOOR OF MY TRUCK TO KNOCK ON GREG SPRINGER’S DOOR: Nelly runs out and Bruce runs after her up the road and I have to get back in the truck and chase them until they listen and get back into the truck. I am far from Greg Springer’s now, and almost home, and so I go home, doubtful that Greg Springer with the nonhunter’s license is going to talk to me about hunting, is going to talk to me about anything at all.

  CALL: No call.

  WHAT THE HOUSE SAYS: You could stain my windows now. You could fix your wife’s desk.

  WHAT I DO: I make meringues. I can bring Sam the meringues. You use four egg whites, a cup of sugar, and cocoa if desired. I desire the cocoa.

  WHAT THE MERINGUES ARE LIKE: Chocolate-flavored air. I need them to live. I can already feel my levels going down. The meringues will wake up Sam.

  WHAT SARAH CALLS THEM: Remingues.

  WHAT I DO WITH THE MERINGUES: Drive with them on my lap on a plate covered with plastic wrap to the hospital and put them by Sam’s head, next to the chicken heart. I tell the night nurse to give Ulysses a rest and try one of them, that they’re light as clouds and so she tries one, the crumbs falling down her white front and onto Ulysses.

  WHO EATS ALL THE MERINGUES: The night nurse and I. Between bites she tells me I’m right, they are like clouds.

  WHAT SARAH IS READING NOW THAT SHE’S FINISHED WITH JANE EYRE: Heidi.

  WHAT THE CROWS SAY IN THE BACK FIELD WHEN I TAKE THE DOGS FOR A WALK: Call, Call, Call.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Moose steaks a hunter gave me because I let him hunt on my land.

  WHAT THE WIFE ATE FOR DINNER: Not moose steaks.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Oh, no, I’m not getting that disease, that crazy brain disease. Why do you think that hunter gave you the moose? It was infected, she said.

  WHAT SARAH SAID: Here’s a joke. Two cows were talking. One said, “What do you think about this mad cow disease?”

  WHAT THE OTHER COW SAID: “Why should I care? I’m a helicopter.”

  CALL: No call, just the one who doesn’t answer back when I say hello. If it’s a scammer, hang up, Jen says, who’s sick of it not being the hospital. I shake my head, to tell her it’s not a scammer. I make up answers to questions of a survey never being asked of me. Yes, I own my own house, I say. No. Yes. No. Yes, we have pets, I say. Two dogs, I say. A rabbit, fish, I say. Oh, it’s one of those surveys, just hang up on them, Jen says, but I don’t. I want the caller to have enough time to change his mind; maybe he’ll talk to me after all. Then I’m quiet, listening for the sound of his seashell breathing again.

  WHAT SARAH GETS FROM HER TEACHER: Six baby chicks. The day we get them we put them in a box with a heat lamp shining down on them. We put them in a room separated by a gate so the dogs will not get to t
hem.

  WHAT WE HEAR AT NIGHT: Gentle peeping.

  WHAT WE SEE IN THE MORNING: No chicks, not even a sign of feathers, and the gate we put up to separate the dogs from the chicks is knocked down. Bruce and Nelly lower their eyes. Have they eaten them whole? Even the claws? Jen says.

  WHAT I FIND IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM: One claw, but that is it.

  WHAT SARAH DOES: Cry.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: What did we expect from the dogs? We put these yummy morsels in a big tray for them and even heated them to the perfect temperature with a heat lamp. It was just a nice Newfoundland hot lunch we prepared for them.

  WHAT SARAH DOES: Continue to cry.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: It’s just as well. There was no place to put those chicks. Your father had not built a chicken coop even. The next time we get chicks, we will be ready for them. We will have their coop built.

  WHAT I LEARN AND WHAT I TELL SAM IN THE HOSPITAL: You can make a chicken coop out of bales of hay. You can make one called an “eggloo.”

  WHAT THE NIGHT NURSE SAYS: I had a pet chicken I used to swing in a swing when I was a girl.

  WHAT THE HOUSE SAYS AT NIGHT: David, check your levels. I woke up and turned to my sleeping wife again. It was not she who had said it this time, either. It was still the house talking to me. I whispered back to it. Check my levels? Is that what you said? The house did not answer. I could hear the rabbit far away in the other room scratching at her newspaper. Maybe it was the rabbit who was talking to me.

  WHAT JANE EYRE DOESN’T DO: Marry the young, handsome missionary.

  WHAT SHE DOES DO: Marry Rochester, the invalid, blind old man.

  WHAT THE RABBIT IS: Maybe lonely because we have just one. I have heard budgerigars are good pets for rabbits. The budgerigar sits on the back of the rabbit and keeps it company, and the rabbit is not afraid of the budgerigar because the rabbit knows the budgerigar is too small to hurt the rabbit.

  WHAT THE LAST HUNDRED PAGES OF JANE EYRE IS: A lot of talk.

  WHAT I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO: Collect sperm from Bruce and inseminate Nelly.

  NUMBER OF DAYS UNTIL PUPPIES MAY BE BORN: 72.

  WHAT SARAH THINKS IS DISGUSTING: That I collected sperm from Bruce and inseminated Nelly.

  WHAT I TOLD SARAH: Every living thing you see was created by an act of sex.

  WHAT SARAH DOES: Covers her ears.

  CALL: No call. I will substitute-teach to put food on the table.

  WHAT A STUDENT SAYS: You cannot hand test grades back like that. You have to hand them back so that we can’t see each other’s grades. We are not supposed to know each other’s grades. That is not how it is done. You cannot do that.

  WHAT I SAY: It’s okay. I can do that.

  WHAT ANOTHER STUDENT SAYS: I have to see the counselor.

  WHAT I SAY: Not right now. We are in the middle of algebra right now. See this quadratic equation?

  WHAT THE STUDENT SAYS: No, you don’t understand, I really have to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor. I need to see the counselor.

  WHAT I SAY: No, you are going to be fine. Take a deep breath. Look at the numbers on the board.

  WHAT THE STUDENT SAYS: I can’t do this. I have to see the counselor. Can I please see the counselor?

  WHAT I SAY: Go, go and see the counselor.

  WHAT I DO AFTER CLASS: Stop and see the counselor to see if the student ever made it to see the counselor. The counselor wasn’t in. I noticed how the waiting room was huge. It had paintings on the walls and carpeting, and enough cushioned chairs for thirty kids. It was nicer than my doctor’s office. I remembered my own counselor’s office in school. It was next to the closet where the buckets and mops were kept. It was a tiny room, with no window. There was only one counselor at my school, but this school had four counselors, all with their own offices, and they all had their names on the doors. I felt like I was inside a hospital instead of a school. And maybe, I thought, this is what schools have become, hospitals, and the teachers are really just hospital staff, making sure the students with problems are taking their meds. And maybe, if I just see one of these counselors they can help me with my levels. Maybe that’s all I need is a little Ritalin, a little fix for my ADHD, my ADD, my IEP status. And maybe they’ve got something for Sam in one of their esk drawers, a smooth coated pink or robin’s egg blue pill that will make his eyes flash open and his foot start jumping.

  Still Winter

  WHAT I TELL SAM THAT I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT: Gravity. I’m not sure it’s a constant. I think it changes. I’m reading books about it, but I’m not any closer to knowing. I think it’s like light. You don’t see light bend. What you’re seeing is space bending around light. I’d like to see gravity. I’d like to try, I said, and then I looked out the hospital window at the moon rising yellow over the mountains.

  WHAT THE WIND SAYS AT NIGHT: If I wanted to I could rip your roof off. I could break every goddamned tree next to your house. I could send your truck up over and into the next town. Gravity? I laugh in the face of gravity, the wind says.

  WHAT I HEAR AT NIGHT: The rabbit. I am convinced she has escaped out of her cage. I turn the light on in the hall and check on her, but she is fine and still in her cage. When she sees me she sits up, thinking I’ll open the cage for her and maybe give her some food. She is so cute, I have to reach in and pet her, because after all, she is a rabbit and there is no comparing her soft fur to anything else. I tell her not to worry about the wind, the wind is out there and we’re in here and just listen, I tell her, to the flies gently buzzing. Go back to sleep, I say. All is safe here.

  WHAT SOME PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW: If I keep my bullwhip in my bedroom.

  CALL: No call. I have to go to a conference. The other vets and I sit at a table. We tell each other stories. One vet, he tells the story about the very first call he had.

  WHAT I TELL SAM IN THE HOSPITAL: The vet’s story. How a horse grazed on a vast field. There were no trees on the field, no trees except one. The owner had recently trimmed the branches on the tree, and one of the branches was only partially cut so that its point was now sharp. The horse had run straight into the tree and straight into the branch, where it plunged through his forehead and then broke off. The horse then had a branch, larger around than the handle of a broom, stuck through his head. The vet was able to pull the branch out, and the wound healed. To this day he refers to it as the case of the unicorn.

  WHAT THE NIGHT NURSE SAYS: She has not seen Sam’s foot move lately at all. She has seen another boy down the hall come out of his coma, though, and I want to hear everything about it. I sit down in a chair. Tell it to me the way Leopold Bloom of Ulysses would, I say, and she does. She leaves out nothing. I know the blond-haired mother wore snow boots and the snow from the bottom of the boots melted on the hospital room floor and that was the first thing the boy saw, and then he looked into everyone’s eyes and the mother held his hand and cried, and the boy, even though weak, tried to move her aside, he wanted everyone to move aside, because he wanted to see more clearly a painting that was on the wall of the ocean, with a killer whale breaching and the sun setting behind him. The doctor then took the painting off the wall and held it up close to the boy so he could see it better, and so now the painting sits propped on the seat of a chair, right beside the boy’s bed, so he can see it more clearly.

  WHAT I SHOWED SAM: The flight of the spaceship, my hand flat, moving through the air of the room that smelled of rubbing alcohol and urine.

  WHO WALKED INTO THE HOSPITAL ROOM WHILE I WAS MOVING MY HAND LIKE THE SPACESHIP: The night nurse, holding Ulysses to her chest.

  WHAT THE NIGHT NURSE ADMITTED TO: Sometimes reading Ulysses out loud to Sam because it helped her to understand it better if she read it out loud.

  WHAT I ADMITTED TO: Making my hand into a spaceship.

  WHAT THE NIGHT NURSE SAID: I hope you don’t mind.

  WHAT I SAID: Can you read some now? And I sat on the edge of Sam’s bed, his huge feet with the dirty nails next to me, and
I put my arm over his two feet and I held them close to me while the night nurse read through her red-rimmed glasses.

  WHAT NELLY PROBABLY IS NOT: Pregnant. She is no bigger around the abdomen than she was four weeks ago.

  WHAT I ULTRASOUND: Nelly. She’s very calm and I lay her on her back and she stays there, with her long legs splayed out even while I apply the cold gel all over her abdomen.

  WHAT THE ULTRASOUND SAYS: Nothing. There are no pups in here. Here is a full bladder, maybe. Here is a blood vessel, maybe. But there are no pups.

  WHAT THE NIGHT SAYS: Here, here is your snow you have been waiting weeks for. I will cover the yellow stains from your dogs on the old snow in front of your house. I will cover the gray snow piles on the side of the roads. I will sit in the trees again, frosting the branches.

  WHAT THE CHILDREN DO AT THE TABLE: Compare an actual cheese cracker to the photo of the cheese cracker on the box to see if they are being cheated. The actual cheese cracker turns out to be larger than the photo on the box of the cheese cracker.

  CALL: One of Greg Springer’s horses is colicking.

  ACTION: Drove to Greg Springer’s farm thinking how maybe it was fate that made his horse colic, and now it would be easy for me to meet him and easy to see if he were really the man who shot my son. Maybe he had even wanted to meet me and confess, and his horse having a colic was just an excuse to call me and talk to me in person. It was late. I used my flashlight when I got out of the truck to see my way to the barn, but I didn’t really need it. The moon was so bright it glowed yellow, like a flame from an oil lamp. I could see Greg Springer’s house. I could see his basement light on, where I had heard he kept his cows nice and warm by the water heater. Greg Springer came out of the barn to meet me. The bottoms of the legs of his overalls were soiled with horse manure. He saw me looking at them and said, “I’ve been lying next to my horse and praying while she’s in pain.” I nodded my head. As I walked to the stall, Greg Springer walked ahead of me, waddling side to side because of his girth. A man that size walking in the woods would have made a huge crashing sound, I thought. I walked into the stall, and I looked at the straw beside the horse. The imprint didn’t clearly show where Greg Springer’s legs or arms had been, it just showed a hollowed-out place in the straw, a dip where something heavy had been. It could have been anything, it could have been the spacecraft that had been sitting here instead, I thought. I knelt down in the place. I could feel the warmth that was left there and then I started to work.