The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  WHAT I SAID: What’s his name?

  WHAT MARIE SAID: Jim Bushway. He’s from up north. He doesn’t have any friends here, I don’t think. When he’s not working for me, he’s hunting, but he doesn’t keep the meat. He’ll shoot rock tiger and just leave ’em dead where he shot ’em.

  WHAT I SAID: Rock tiger?

  WHAT SHE SAID: You know, chipmunks. They always run across the rock walls here. He shoots ’em and leaves ’em there on the rock wall and says the coyotes will come get them. I know he’s right, but still, she said.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: It was a good thing I didn’t take Mia and Sarah with me. I don’t want the veal. I don’t want to eat something killed before it has had a chance to mature. I will take the slaughtered sheep.

  WHAT WE SEE IN THE SKY AS WE STAND OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE LOOKING AT STARS: The bright lights again, the object moving in the sky.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Funny, I didn’t get a transmission.

  WHAT THE CHILDREN SAY: Come inside, quick. We’re scared!

  WHAT THE WIFE AND I DO: Watch the object moving low in the sky.

  WHAT THE CHILDREN DO: Rap on the windows, and beckon us to come inside. I look at Jen and she looks at me. Is there a moment we think that if it landed we could go up inside it? Make our children come with us, guiding them on board, then take off into the night sky? We would look out small windows, try to see down below, the frosted land, the still north, the cloven tracks of deer dark like leaves that floated down side by side on the snowy land. The bright lights sail away, and I hold out my hand for Jen to take. I call her name. She comes and we walk into the house, stepping on the wooden porch, opening the doors and going inside. But I don’t stay inside with her. I go back out, telling Jen I will take the dogs for a walk. I run down to the field. Maybe the pilot can tell me what he saw the day my son was shot. Maybe there are pictures he takes, a camera made of indestructible metal soldered to the spacecraft’s sleek underbelly. The spacecraft is low now, but not low enough for me to see a window, to see the face of the pilot. I flail my arms. Bruce and Nelly think this is a game. They jump on top of me. They try to catch my large gloved hands in their mouths. Get down! I say. I hear their nails ripping down the shell of my coat. Then I yell up to the spacecraft, “Tell me!” I say, but there is no possible way for the spacecraft to hear me, the dogs are barking loudly now. This is such a fun game. Their curved long-haired tails having brushed on the ground are frosted with snow now and sparkle the same way the stars up above are sparkling.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Gypsy soup.

  WHAT MIA SAID: I do not like Gispy soup.

  WHAT I TELL THE WIFE ABOUT: Jim Bushway, the rock tiger killer.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Rock tiger?

  WHAT I SAY: Maybe Jim Bushway is our man. Marie doesn’t like him.

  WHAT THE NIGHT SAID: You cannot even see out of your windows for all the fly shit that’s stuck to the glass. How do you expect to tell if what you are seeing is really stars?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: I can’t stand these flies falling on my head at night and getting caught in my hair and buzzing all around. I will sleep with the mosquito netting over me, even though it is the middle of winter, so that the flies don’t land on me. Jen let the netting settle over her and she was hazy behind it, reading a book.

  WHAT THE KIDS SAID THE NEXT EVENING: Pop, where is my mouth guard? Sarah and Mia had a basketball game. We drove to the game taking the back roads that looked so different in the dark than in the daytime. The kids sat in the back and when they spoke to us it was hard to understand them, because they were wearing their mouth guards and chewing on them the whole way there.

  WHAT STRUCK ME ABOUT THE BASKETBALL GAME: They played really good music at halftime. And who would have thought that in a small gym of a small school in a small town the music would be so good?

  WHAT WE SAW WHEN WE DROVE HOME UP OUR DRIVEWAY: The spacecraft again.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Stop the car. She got out. She watched it for a while. Maybe it would tell her, I thought. Maybe a loud voice would cut through the night saying the hunter’s name. Could it be Venus? Sarah asked. I shook my head. It was moving closer to us. Get back in the car, Mommy! Sarah yelled. It’s just a spaceship, Mia said. It was a cold night. My wife dug her fists into her coat pockets, then she opened up the door and got back in for the rest of the drive down our driveway to the front of our house. The spacecraft was still flying in the sky.

  WHAT SARAH ASKED: Who do we tell? Do we tell the police? My wife and I shook our heads. No, I said, remembering how helpful the police were in finding the hunter who shot Sam. It’s probably just one of the drones the air force practices flying at night. Don’t tell anyone, I said. I wanted the spacecraft for ourselves. I felt good about telling the kids that no one else needed to know about it. I also liked the idea of having our own spacecraft because it seemed like a rite of passage, a natural course of events for an adult—first you get married, then you have the house and then the kids and the dogs and the rabbit and now the spacecraft.

  CALL: Arlo has a cow with diarrhea.

  ACTION: Drove to Arlo’s in the snow that was slippery. Stopped first to get the mail at the post office. A man came up to me. Is that your truck? he asked. I smiled, and told him it was. You could be arrested for that, he said. I was still smiling. I could not imagine what I could be arrested for. It’s illegal to drive with snow on your roof. What if that snow blew back onto the windshield of another car? What if it slid off onto your windshield and you crashed into someone? the man said. The man was not smiling back when I smiled. I nodded. All right, I said. Are you high? the man said. High? I said. No, I’m not high, I said, still smiling because I did not want to have words with the man. I got back into my truck and drove off without removing the snow from the roof of my truck. When I turned into Arlo’s driveway, I sped up and then stopped short, to see if the snow would come cascading down the roof and onto the windshield. The snow did not slide off. It stayed on the roof of my truck.

  RESULT: At Arlo’s I took a blood on the cow. What do you think it is? Arlo asked. I looked at the cow. Her heart rate was down. She had a slight fever. It may not be good, I said to Arlo. Arlo shook his head. You should have decked that guy who told you about the snow on your roof.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: Will the snow fall off now? Will the snow fall off now? Will the snow fall off now?

  WHAT I TOLD ARLO WHEN THE BLOOD RESULT CAME BACK POSITIVE: Arlo, you’ve got to put her down or else she’ll give it to the rest of the herd. Arlo did not want to do it. He liked his Chianina cow. He toyed with the idea of keeping her separate from the herd, but it might be impossible to do. She might still infect the others and he could not afford that. As it was, he would not be able to slaughter her and sell the meat. The meat would be considered tainted and unfit for humans. He sent the white cow off to be slaughtered. Days later he got a call from a man who sells cows. Arlo, have I got a cow for you. It’s the kind you like. It’s a Chianina, the man said. Arlo made the man describe the cow and then he had the man read the number on the tag in the cow’s ear. It was the same number as the number of the cow he had sent off to slaughter. A mistake had been made along the way. Instead of it being slaughtered, it was auctioned off. There would be the risk of it infecting other cows now, and the risk of it infecting humans if the humans ate the beef. I could punch you, Arlo said he said to the man who wanted to sell him back his own cow. The guy sounds like bad news, I said. He’s a crook, Arlo said. Who knows what else he’s done in his lifetime. I’ll call the CDC for you. I’ll report him, I told Arlo. You don’t have to do that, Arlo said. That’s not your job. You’re not a cop, he said. No, please tell me his name, I said. Maybe I’m all wrong about this, Arlo said, maybe what he did is not so wrong. Come on, tell me his name, I said. Arlo looked at me, You’re pretty itchy, Doc, to put a man behind bars.

  WHAT I SAID: You’re right. I am. I’m angry for you.

  WHAT ARLO SAID: You’re just angry, period.


  WHAT I SAID: Sure I am.

  WHAT ARLO SAID: I can’t say I blame you. His name’s Passen, and put him the hell behind bars.

  WHAT I LEARN ABOUT PASSEN: He’s been arrested before for the same thing. He hunts. He hunts grouse. I go with the CDC to his farm. We have a permit to search. There are stuffed grouse perched on his mantel. There are shotguns in a glass case and a drawer beneath the case with boxes of bird shot shells. There are freezer bags in the freezer in the barn labeled “grouse meat.” I think this man could be the man who shot Sam. The CDC finds papers in Passen’s house, papers he signed that show he knew that the cows he bought were diseased. The CDC can arrest him again.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Thank God, now can you stop searching for this man? He’ll be arrested. Your son’s alive.

  CALL: An owner says her horse is lame.

  ACTION: Drove to farm with Sarah. The horse had a swelling on its hind ankle, and the swelling had begun to progress to the hock. I began massaging the tissues above the hock, slowly working my way down the swelling. I asked Sarah to hold the flashlight and shine it on the leg. She shone it on the wall, she shone it on the beagle who had trotted in after us, she shone it on the corner post where a spider had begun to spin its web. Hey Charlotte Web, I said, keep the torch on the horse.

  RESULT: Worked the leg with my hands for forty-five minutes so that I moved some of the swelling down. Told the owner that if it wasn’t better in a day or so, we’d come back with antibiotics.

  WHAT I ASKED SARAH ON THE WAY HOME: What do you want to be when you grow up? You ought to start thinking about that now.

  WHAT SARAH SAID: Are there any jobs for people who want to get paid for sleeping, because Sam could get that job.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: There is always the Head Potty Cleaner job on the spaceship.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Steak sandwiches she said were really Martian gut sandwiches.

  WHAT I AM ORDERING: Fifty dollars’ worth of seeds. Among other things there will be fingerling potatoes growing in our garden this summer. I know what they will look like. They will look like fingers growing up from the ground, as if the dead were buried in our garden and they are trying to claw their way out.

  CALL: No call. I drove to Arlo’s farm. Arlo, I wanted to say, what about that spacecraft. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? I wanted to tell Arlo that it knew who shot my son. That I had dreams of the military footage locked at a base somewhere, the picture of my son’s attacker in the films. I wanted to tell him I was almost sure if those films were found, it would be Passen’s face in them. I wanted to tell Arlo I had solved the mystery.

  WHAT I ASKED ARLO INSTEAD: How are the Chianinas? How are my favorite cows?

  WHAT ARLO SAID: I’d like to preg-check a cow.

  WHAT I SAW DRIVING HOME AFTER PREG-CHECKING THE COW: A half-dozen does crossing the road. They ran, then stopped right in the middle of the road and I could have sworn they were all looking up, looking to where one night they had seen the spacecraft and looking to see if it would show up in the same part of the sky once again.

  THINGS I HAVE SAID TO THE WIFE OVER THE YEARS: You’re mentally incompetent. Maybe you have a mitochondrial disease. You’ve got a slow learning curve. Your hands are as cold as death. The operative word is Fuck off, but you already know that I said that once.

  THINGS SHE HAS SAID TO ME OVER THE YEARS: Fuck you, Fuck off, Go fuck yourself, You’re a Nazi, You’re a prick, You’re a shit, Eat shit.

  CALL: A voice on the phone that sounds like my own, only younger. Hello, is this the residence of Dr. David Appleton? the voice asks and I am elated. I have achieved space-time travel and here I am calling myself from the past. Are you the David Appleton who lived in Williamsburg, Ohio? Are you the David Appleton who went to ____ high school in ’75? my young voice asked. I wondered where I was that I was calling myself from. Was I at my childhood home? Was I in the kitchen with my mother? Was the smell of her vegetable soup cooking on the stove? The smell of her peanut butter cookies baking in the oven? Was my brother beside me, punching my arm? My father in his La-Z-Boy chair smoking his pipe?

  ACTION: I actually held the phone away from myself and looked at the mouthpiece thinking there would be some shred of me, some image of myself, coming out from the small holes in the plastic.

  WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: Eureka! Yes, by God you have achieved space-time travel. You did it! I did it! I wanted to shout and I wondered when in the future I would actually be achieving this amazing feat of being able to travel through time, because as of yet, I hadn’t a clue how to do it.

  WHAT I SAID INSTEAD: Why yes, you’ve reached Dr. Appleton’s residence.

  WHAT THE VOICE SAID: Thank you. Thank you very much, and then the caller hung up the phone.

  WHAT THE WIFE ASKED: Who was that?

  WHAT I ANSWERED: I really don’t know. Someone who wanted to know who I was, but they already knew who I was.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Did you tell them? Maybe you shouldn’t have told them anything. You don’t want everyone knowing who you are. Maybe it was that Passen, or one of his men, calling you from jail. Maybe he’s out for revenge. I wish you hadn’t called the CDC on him. I wish you had left well enough alone.

  WHAT I SAID: Yes, maybe it was just Passen or one of his men.

  WHAT WAS TALKED ABOUT AT TOWN MEETING DAY: The three streetlamps in town. Voters wanted to keep them on at night because they cut down on crime. Voters wanted to get rid of them because they cost the town money in electricity bills.

  WHAT I WANTED TO KNOW: What was the lunch? What really is red flannel hash? Who sitting here has shot my son?

  WHAT WAS DISCUSSED: Wattages and the cost of replacing standard bulbs with LEDs.

  WHAT SOMEONE’S NAME WAS IN TOWN WHOM I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE: Boogie, and I wonder, of course, if Boogie who lives on the next hill over from us knew who shot my son and also if she had seen the spacecraft. I thought how if the spacecraft returned it might show up at town meeting, floating above us, hovering still over the school where we have the meeting, coming in low every once in a while, peering through the gym windows, blinking its lights, giving its own ayes and nays to the passages of bills and amendments, and taking on, too, the smell of the red flannel hash cooking in the kitchen that we all seem to carry on our clothes and that hours after, we can still smell even when we are in our own homes.

  CALL: A man and his wife have a borzoi who’s sick. I told them I don’t usually do small animals. Oh, no, they said. Jordan is quite tall. Please, would you come?

  ACTION: I drove to their home. Jordan was happy to see me. Are you sure he’s sick? I asked. The woman nodded her head. He wouldn’t get up this morning. He lay at the foot of the bed. That’s not like Jordan, she said. He seems all right now, I said. Jordan sniffed my pants, smelling the scent of my own dogs. I took his temperature. It was normal. I felt his abdomen. There was no unusual swelling. While I was there he walked over to his food bowl and ate what was put out for him in the morning.

  RESULT: I told the couple that I thought he’d be all right. Whatever he had, it seems to have passed, I said. I talked to the couple for a while. The woman said she did not ever leave the house, she was too afraid. The husband wore clothes that looked like rags, but the couple was rich. I could tell by their beautiful home. The man showed me his bookcase. It was filled with rare books. He showed me his photographs. He had an original photograph of Custer on the wall in his hallway. The man knew many things. I asked him about building a chicken coop and he told me to use cedar, as it would repel water and be lightweight. He wrote down the name of the store to buy the materials at, but his wife did not want me to keep the paper. I’ll write it for you, she said, and then she took the paper the husband had written on and stuffed it into the pocket of her cardigan.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: What really became of the Zodiac Killer? And what better place to move to except here, to a small town in the woods out here where no one might know who you are. Maybe you meet the
girl of your dreams and you tell her who you are and she forgives you and she spends the rest of her life protecting you, because you are forgetful. You leave bits of your writing around without remembering that it’s your handwriting that could condemn you, but your wife remembers.

  WHAT YOU TELL YOUR WIFE WHEN YOU GET HOME: I have met the Zodiac Killer.

  WHAT SHE SAYS: Eat some soup.

  WHAT THE KIDS SAY: Who is the Zodiac Killer?

  WHAT I SAY: I’m lucky to be here. What if they saw the look in my eye that meant I realized exactly who they were. I wouldn’t be here, I said. They would have bludgeoned me to death.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: What was wrong with the dog? The dog, I say, was fine. But I tell her it reminds me of what I just learned. Guess, I said, what is the closest relative of the whale?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: The dog? The horse? Humans?

  WHAT I SAID: No, no, no. You would not believe it but it’s true. Cows are the closest relative of whales. When I said it, it made sense. I could see cows floating peacefully in the ocean waves, their large eyes moving side to side, taking in their water world.

  WHAT SAM SAYS: Poppy, do you know what a female bear is called? It’s called a sh-sh-sh-she bear. Can you believe that?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Who left these dishes in the sink? Can’t anyone wipe the stove top? What kind of husband are you? I bet the Zodiac Killer at least leaves his shoes outside the living room. I bet the Zodiac Killer empties the dishwasher. I bet the Zodiac Killer buys his wife a flower on Valentine’s Day. Where’s my flower? My card? My anything? the wife says.

  WHAT I DO: I go upstairs. I think maybe Sam was shot by the Zodiac Killer. I think maybe, in a sick way, that’s kind of cool. I mean if you’re going to get shot, it might as well be the Zodiac Killer and not some slovenly hunter with bad aim and a high blood alcohol content.

  WHAT MIA DOES: Gives her mother some chocolates from a heart-shaped box her mother left at the foot of her bed on Valentine’s morning.