The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  WHAT I SAY TO THE WIFE: See, there are your chocolates. We didn’t need to spend money on more.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I need a mammogram. I need a Pap smear. I need these things I haven’t had in years. I’ll go to the clinic with you the day of your appointment.

  WHAT I DO: Work on a chicken coop with the kids. I have not bought the cedar the Zodiac Killer recommended I buy because the cedar was too expensive. I have bought pine, but I realize, as I’m trying to fit the boards together to see how the end product will look, that the pine is very heavy and I wanted this chicken coop to be the kind of chicken coop two people could pick up and carry to a new spot in the field every day so that the chicken poop wouldn’t destroy the same section of grass every day, but darn if the Zodiac Killer wasn’t right about the cedar. The pine weighs a ton.

  WHAT GISELA WANTS TO KNOW: Is there anyone who will go to Tübingen with her? (Gisela is no longer after me about my levels.)

  CALL: The man who had a horse I had to put down and who speaks German has another horse that is a little lame. The man tells me that his uncle, who is not right and who lives in the apartment above their barn, has seen the spacecraft, too, and that he did not believe him. Now, he says, he has a new perspective on his uncle, and he doesn’t want to have to think about it but maybe, just maybe, more of what he has said over the years is possibly true. The man still has three horses, and they stand in the field, their manes whipping in the wind, in a wind the man tells me is the fiercest in these parts and he swears there are no other fields, no other hillsides that could quite compare. Maybe it’s true, I think, I am so cold up here. I zip my coat up as far as it can go, so that if I bend my head down, the zipper digs into my chin. “Furchtbare Kälte,” I say to the man who speaks German. Ah, yes, very good. I understand you. You just said it’s very cold out. Your German is coming along well, he said. You will know when you are really good at speaking a language when you start dreaming in the language. Have you dreamt in German? he asked. No, I answered.

  RESULT: I X-rayed the foot. I could not see any damage, just a slight swelling. It could be the shoes, I said. The man who spoke German nodded. I will have the farrier come pull them, he said. What kinds of things? I asked the man who spoke German. What do you mean? he asked. What are the things that your uncle has said over the years that maybe you believe now? I asked. Oh, well, he believes there are people in the woods watching us. After the man who spoke German said it, I thought of the shape I saw form out of the leaves by the bonfire I built behind my house. The uncle was right, I thought. I wanted to meet him. You can’t, he doesn’t like people. He won’t talk to anyone, except me and my wife and our children. He talks to the children quite often, more than he talks to us. He has pointed out the people in the woods to the children. They see them, too. But of course, I thought the children were just playing along with their uncle’s game.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: Maybe this uncle knows who shot my son, and now I think how it’s two people who know the man. One is a spaceman, and the other is a man who only talks to children and won’t talk to me.

  WHAT I THINK I HAVE TO DO IN ORDER FOR THE SPACECRAFT TO COME BACK SO IT CAN TELL ME WHO SHOT MY SON BECAUSE THE LAST TIME IT HAD COME I HAD DONE THIS: Test my levels.

  WHAT MY DOCTOR IS: So happy to see me when I get to his office, he gives me a handshake/hug and I’m pressed up against his breast cancer pin that digs into my own breast. Right, he says, he smiles so broadly. His favorite patient is back. Let’s have a look at that prostate, shall we? He likes to talk about other things while he’s palpating me. He likes to talk about sports and he is amazed I’m not well informed about scores and that I don’t have television reception to watch sports. I don’t know why, but I think about the zebra we have in our town when he’s examining me. Yes, we really do have a zebra. It’s someone’s exotic pet they stable like a horse. The zebra has its own barn. The zebra has its own paddock. The zebra is alone on its hill, its black and white stripes not blending in at all with the tall-reaching pines on the fringe of the forest beside the rails of the paddock. Whenever we drive on the road by the barn with the zebra, my children open the windows and stick their heads out of the truck and yell “Free the zebra!!” because no one likes to see something that should be in Africa here instead. I always laugh when my kids yell out when we drive by the zebra, and so I laugh while the doctor’s palpating me. My laugh isn’t loud, it’s more of an exhalation of breath with a little of the sound of my voice trailing with it. The doctor asks, Does that hurt? and I can hear he’s a little anxious when he asks, because he asks so quickly, and he bends his head close to mine, so that when I answer, he won’t miss what I’m saying. No, not at all, I say.

  At the end of the visit, the doctor scratches his head. I’m miffed, he says. I’ve found nothing unusual once again, but your levels, still considered high, are slightly lower. He looks sad, and I want to tell him something funny to cheer him up. I wonder if the zebra story would do it. Is the zebra story a rib-tickler to others? I wonder. I don’t tell the doctor a story before I leave. Instead I tell the doctor how much I appreciate him taking the time to see me. I shake his hand, and he holds on to it for a while and I think he wants to take a look at my hand, too. Maybe he wants to palpate it as well. He wants to find a lump on me somewhere, on my palms, on the bit of skin between my thumb and forefinger that looks like a bat’s wing. I promise him I’ll come back in six months, for more tests and more exams. You never know, I say. My levels might mean something after all. He looks happier after I say it. Yes, I look forward to seeing you then, he says.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS AFTER HER VISIT WITH HER DOCTOR THE SAME DAY: Hallelujah. There was nothing out of the ordinary about my exams, either. My breasts are perfect, but you already knew that, she says, laughing. We drive home on the winding road from the hospital back to our town. It is coming on maple syrup season. The days are warmer, but the nights still cold. On their land, most people have tapped the maples and the metal buckets that hang from taps hammered into the trunks look strange, as if the ceiling of the sky were leaking and the buckets were set out to collect the rainwater.

  CALL: A one-and-a-half-year-old shire has a respiratory infection.

  ACTION: I drive to the farm, taking my wife along with me while the kids are at school, and even Sam’s back in classes. We drive on the dirt roads thinking how our dirt roads are prettier. Our dirt roads are more like lanes than roads, the narrowness of them making our roads seem quaint. We drive talking about our children. When we are alone we like to tell each other how wonderful our children are, but it is something we do not tell others. We tell each other with abandon, things we have lately seen in our children that prove how smart and wonderful and cute they are. We puff each other up with the glory of our children, we talk about how beautifully Sam is recovering, his speech not half as slurred, as if this were a sign of some sort of intelligence, but the minute we pull in to the farm, our conversation changes and we both know that it will be a while again before we are alone, without being interrupted, for a long period of time where we can brag so shamelessly to one another. It is a relief to do all the bragging, it’s cathartic, as if we need every once in a while to do this bragging, or so that we remind each other of how right it was for us to have married each other.

  When we get to the barn the shire is already standing there, with the crossties snapped to her halter. Shires are gentle, big, glossy, black-coated draft horses with massive hooves covered in white feathering. The owner isn’t there, but the farmhand named Anna is. Anna is tall and blond and speaks quietly. She says she gave the shire a little bute, but not much. The shire’s eyes look a little cloudy. I listen to the shire’s lungs. They are clear, but she has a little temp.

  RESULT: I give her gentamicin and penicillin and take some blood samples, just to see what virus she might really have. I have been to the barn before. I have treated other horses here. I ask Anna about the last horse I treated, and if she and the owner had decided to ki
ll it because of its crippling hoof condition. Anna says, in her quiet voice, that she wishes I wouldn’t put it that way, that I hadn’t said “killed,” because it was a big decision for her and the owner to have the horse finally put down, but in looking back, Anna says, it was the right thing to do. Anna says that everyone called the owner names for putting his own horse down. They called him a murderer, Anna says. But he’s not. You can only let the animal go so far on a hoof like that. No extra time in the stall or soaking in Epsom salts or different shoes is going to change it. It all depends on how you look at it, and it’s not until something like that happens that you realize how many people look at things differently than you do. It’s as if they’ll only be happy if the owner comes out and admits he did something horrible, and then in the meantime they shake their heads. They say what a shame. The poor horse, they say, but what about the poor owner? That’s what I think Anna says, and then Anna leans over the shire and hugs the shire’s neck and the ponytail of Anna’s long summer blond hair lies flat against the black coat of the beautiful shire. Then Anna stands up straight. You shouldn’t care who shot your son, she says, surprising me, I didn’t know Anna knew. I can feel my wife getting angry beside me.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Of course we should care.

  WHAT ANNA DOES: She shakes her head. It’s a waste of energy. Care about your son instead, she says.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: Everything’s melting now. Patches of grass can be seen among the snow and the patches look geographical, like the shapes of the continents played out on people’s lawns.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS WHILE WE’RE DRIVING: Do you think Anna knows who shot Sam? Do you think it was her boyfriend or something? Do you think she’s trying to throw us off? Cover something up? What’s her boyfriend’s name, anyway? Does he hunt? Do you have that list still with the names of the hunters on it? she says. I bet he’s on it, she says. Imagine telling us not to care, she says. Who is she? she says. Turn around, she says. I want to talk to that girl again. I want to ask her some questions. Goddammit, turn around, she says.

  WHAT I DO: I keep driving home. I don’t turn around. I drive home up our driveway, and Mia comes running out to greet us. She runs to her mother and Jen picks her up and buries her nose in her neck and breathes deeply, and I know she will stop wanting to know now the name of Anna’s boyfriend. Mia has wiped the anger away so quickly it is amazing, and I take Mia from Jen, and I want to breathe Mia in, too.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Chicken burritos.

  WHAT MIA SAID SHE WOULD EAT: A chicken burrito without the chicken.

  WHAT SARAH NOTICES: That the burrito shells have shrunk in size, but we all agree it’s a good thing since there was too much burrito shell to our burritos before anyway, so even though we know we’re being cheated, we don’t feel so bad.

  WHAT THE NIGHT SAID: The streams are fuller now, the snow having melted. You will not be able to hear the owl hooting from the tree now, with the rushing sounds being so loud. You will not hear the occasional coyote yip. The snoring of Sam in the next room will blend in with the rushing sound. The snoring sound of your wife right next to you, though, can’t be masked.

  CALL: No call. I just drive to Dorothy’s house. Dorothy is the woman with the sheep whose name is Alice. Alice is the sheep who follows Dorothy around like a dog. Alice is the sheep Dorothy took to church one day. I stop on the way to Dorothy’s house. I need gas. With a fill-up I get a free peanut butter cup. Is this good or bad? There’s been a scare. Peanut butter from a plant somewhere has been linked to illness in a handful of children. I eat the peanut butter cup, my fingers tasting a little of the gas from the nozzle I just used at the pump.

  ACTION: I asked Dorothy if she had seen anything unusual. I asked Dorothy if she had seen the spacecraft in the sky. Dorothy called Alice over to her. Alice put her head in Dorothy’s lap, in the hammock created by her floral cotton skirt and her knees. Yes, Dorothy said, Alice has seen the spacecraft, too, but I haven’t, Dorothy said.

  RESULT: I thanked Dorothy and I left.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: I was still hungry. I wished I could fill up my gas again and partake in some more tainted peanut butter.

  CALL: No call. I drove to the farm where the minis, Molly, Netty, Sunny, and Storm, lived. The owner was not home. I petted the minis. I asked them if they’d seen the spacecraft. The minis whinnied. I took that for a mini yes, a mini sharing of our common experience.

  WHAT I PASS ON THE WAY HOME: The zebra. He is outside standing on the snow bathed in the yellow moonlight. I put the window down. Free the Zebra! I yell. I see the zebra turn and look at me. The brush at the bottom of his tail moves from side to side.

  MORE THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: Maybe rockets could be propelled by small, portable CERN accelerators, and man could travel from planet to planet without having to use fuel, relying on the power of magnets instead.

  WHAT I DO ON THE WAY HOME: I stop off in front of the school. The sign is out by the road, the sign that has the letters that the bad kids can move around and make any words they want to and that they did once turn into COME TO THE FALL BOOB FEST. I sit looking at the letters that are there. VENISON DINNER TONIGHT, the sign says. I think what I can do and then I do it. I get out and change the letters around and then remove a few. I make the sign say, VEIN DINNER TONIGHT. Then I think how I wish I had some B’s and O’s because I’d really rather spell something with boobs instead.

  WHAT I READ ON THE WAY HOME: The sign the local taxidermist leaves outside his house. SPECIAL: SKULL CLEANING HALF PRICE. I think how the sign is the same kind of sign that the school has, where I could change the letters around, but how could I come up with something better than SPECIAL: SKULL CLEANING HALF PRICE? And then I think how maybe one day a sign somewhere like that along the road will read LOW LEVELS GUARANTEED and I’ll be sure to drop in.

  WHAT I SAW WHEN I GOT HOME: The spacecraft again. Maybe my going back to the doctor worked. It was flying low over our house. I stopped and waved to it, and it seemed almost to wave back, I thought, because it seemed to flash back red and green lights, but then it zipped away. I went inside. I didn’t care any longer if it could tell me the name of the man who shot Sam. I was just glad to see it back in the sky. Later, in bed, I looked for it again. I couldn’t see it. It must be down in the town by now, floating over Phil’s store, floating over the school, floating over the local taxidermist’s house, the Zodiac Killer’s house.

  WHAT THE WIFE SHOWS ME WEEKS LATER: The brochure for the swimming team that the children have been on. Now there’s a master’s swim team for adults.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: The doctor says Sam needs the exercise. He should be on the team again, and your levels want you to join, too. I look at the brochure. I like how the sunlight comes in through the glass walls and lights up the pool water, making it look like water somewhere else, like water in Ecuador maybe, like water in Maui or Palau.

  UPDATE OF THINGS MY WIFE THINKS MY LEVELS CAN DO SO FAR: Beg, talk, appreciate food, join a swim team.

  WHAT I TELL MY WIFE: All right, I’ll join if you’ll join. I do anything now. I am so happy that the only thing I have to worry about now is my levels that it makes me appreciate having my levels. I am so happy to just look at Sam in our home again. I am happy to see him on the couch, his huge feet on the arm, dirtying the cloth. I am happy to hear him stomping upstairs across the floorboards and whipping towels at his sisters after he has showered. I am happy to hear him screaming for no reason, bounding down the stairs, reaching the bottom and wildly petting Nelly, shaking her head back and forth, and calling her a good girl. I think how it doesn’t matter who shot my son. My son is back. If the hunter were to knock on my door now, I don’t think I’d want to meet him. If the spacecraft were to suddenly blare out his name into the night sky, I wouldn’t want to know what it was. I wouldn’t want to be reminded of when Sam wasn’t.

  WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A FEW WEEKS: Most nights we crawl into bed, after having swum on our teams, smelling fai
ntly of chlorine with a good kind of tiredness spreading out from our bones. I have tried to think like a dolphin. After all, this is what I have learned is the best thing to do in order to improve my fly. Think like a dolphin. These are happy, fast thoughts. These are undulations celebrating flight underwater. My wife and I have lain in bed in the dark before sleep talking in whispers about stroke and turn. Our arms, glowing silver in moonlight, have moved through the room, bent as we are on perfecting entry and recovery. We demonstrate for one another our aquatic techniques. Backstroking we remind ourselves to roll, keep our heads back and straight, our kick from the hip. Freestyling, our fingertips skate across the surface of the water right before we plunge them in for the pull. Breaststroking, we are moving our hands out in front of us, held in the shape of us at our prayers, our heels nearly touching our rears for the kick. Butterflying, we are trying to move like a dolphin, but it is difficult to do in bed, the weight of us heavy on the sheet coarse with grit the dog brought in on her feathering when she slept on our bed while we were out for the day.

  And it is not just the night when we are in bed thinking about swimming, but it is at the breakfast table when we make Sarah or Mia or Sam (yes, Sam!) stand up from their French toast and we take them by their wrists and show them how in the recovery of the fly, their arms don’t go straight back underwater, but out toward their sides, pushing away the water for maximum speed. We take their small thumbs, and we tell them to keep those thumbs down when entering the water. They don’t listen. They grumble. They don’t want to be corrected. They say they’ll be late for school, and even your wife doesn’t care if they’ll be late for school, the whole family’s standing now, arms straight up in the air, practicing the dolphin rhythm, pushing their hips in and then out, moving the smell of the sweet maple syrup through the air, over toward where the dogs are, making them bark, making them want what we have on our plates.