She looked up at Daniel sharply now and her eyes came into focus at last. “I turned around and it was all gone, every stick. I thought she was hiding it from me as a joke. And then she was on the stepstool reaching for the disposal switch. I didn’t put the two things together until it jammed.”
“Ah,” Daniel said. A little chuckle escaped him. “She put the celery in there?”
“Herb was so mad! I thought it would be easy to fix, but he said it wasn’t. He yelled at me. And then… he yelled at her. Told her to go outside and play with the dog. I told him he should be glad she didn’t stick her hand in there, that it was only celery. You see. It could have been much worse, I said. It could have been her little hand. But he just yelled and yelled, told her to get outside.” Ellie’s eyes glassed over again and she went on as though in a trance. “He opened another beer and went out to the living room. They were watching the game. The boys were watching the game and the girls were doing the cooking, but actually I was doing all the cooking. Jonah’s wife brought the pie, though. I was setting the table when I realized I didn’t have whipped cream. For the pie. Pumpkin. I never liked Pumpkin pie much. You?”
Daniel said he did.
“I don’t. That’s the problem with letting someone else bring dessert, I guess. Here she comes with this huge pumpkin pie…it looked store-bought but she baked it herself, she said she did, anyway…and all I was thinking was that it would be better with whipped cream. But she didn’t bring it, and I didn’t have any.”
She was sitting on the floor now, and Daniel sank to his knees next to her and listened, not wanting to hear it, but listening anyway because he thought she needed to say it.
“Herb… I asked him to go for the cream… he was still in such a bad mood. He slammed the side door on the way out, and then… he wasn’t looking. He just… he was in a hurry, and he just backed out… he said he wasn’t looking, he told us all, later… he just backed out…too fast. Too fast.”
A strange, sideways smile crossed her face. “When he told her to go outside and play, he said she had to get out of the kitchen because it was dangerous.”
She folded her hands in her lap and looked at them, then unfolded them again and looked some more. “When he came in, I thought he was back with the cream already. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t.”
“God, Ellie…” What else could he say but that? He tried to find things to say; it was like trying on hats that didn’t fit. In the end he just sat there watching her. What about the rest of the story? Was she going to tell him the rest? Should he ask her to? He wasn’t sure he could bear to listen if she did. He offered a prayer for her silence. Please: another day, oh please not now, and he felt like a selfish shit for it, because he knew it would be good for her to talk… but he really thought he might lose it, lose it entirely, if she kept going. If she started talking about the suicides.
He was spared. She looked up abruptly. “I don’t want to talk about this any more,” she said, getting to her feet and dusting herself off. “You said you found pliers?”
Daniel raised his eyebrows then let out a hot gust of breath. “Yeah,” he said, feeling in his pocket and drawing them out. “These should help.” He shoved at the cabinet to close the doors again and followed her back into the house. She offered him another glass of lemonade, and he accepted it, steadying himself against the doorframe, gathering his thoughts.
“Don’t forget, I need you to help me clear out that garage. Did you see any tools you could use, while you were looking around?”
“I’ll look more later. I was concentrating on the pliers,” he said, holding them up and clacking the jaws together; a tiny alligator. When he was a boy, he’d always pretended the needle nose pliers were alive. He wondered if these pliers were old enough that Jonah had played with them, or if Alicia had. Chomp… chomp… chomp. They should make pliers that look like alligators, put green handles on them, and an eye…
“What are you thinking about?”
“Just… crazy stuff.”
Ellie nodded. “Well, if you’re going crazy, you may as well get there. That’s what my grandmother used to say.”
He finished his lemonade and went back up on the roof.
Chapter 49
“We’re out of sugar packets. You got any hiding back there?”
Daniel frowned, looking around. “No… you mean that big box in the kitchen is empty?”
“Empty is the word for it. Been empty, too. I told him last week.” Margie pulled her pen out from behind her ear and inspected it briefly. “Did he order any?”
“Billy? Who knows. Ask him. He’s here, isn’t he? He should be.” Billy was supposed to be working on the schedule.
“He was in the office with Bud a while ago. I think he left, though.”
“Oh, for the –” He cut off abruptly and sighed. He’d forgotten. Billy had mentioned a meeting with contractors. “Is Bud still here?”
Margie nodded, replacing the pen behind her ear. “Think so, anyway.”
Daniel ducked out of the bar and went to the office. Bud wasn’t there.
Hector saw him looking and pointed at the back door. “Just two seconds ago,” he said.
Daniel sprinted to the door and looked out, saw Bud’s car door swinging shut, and rushed to catch him.
Bud stopped and rolled down his window and looked at Daniel with polite impatience. “Hey, Danny, what’s up, I have to go. I’m late.”
“Sorry, Bud. I just wanted to ask about the order… did –”
Bud put his car in gear and rolled slowly forward. “Billy’s taking care of that, Danny. You’ll have to ask him. Or the order might be on his desk. He’ll be back later. He’s meeting the contractors, you know.”
He knew. He’d heard about it several times, the remodeling Billy was having done. Have to attract the college kids, have to attract a younger crowd. Daniel walked to keep up with the moving car. “Bud… when are you coming back? I wanted to talk to you about the schedule.”
“Billy was working on it. Don’t worry, I told him to take it easy on you, how you don’t want to close, all that… Danny, I really need to go, sorry.” He rolled the window up in slow-motion as he spoke.
“It’s not… I don’t mind closing, Bud. In fact, I prefer closing, remember? I don’t mind opening, I don’t mind closing. I just don’t want to do both. And the schedule that just went up has me all over the place, again. Billy still isn’t scheduling any time behind the bar for himself, either, Bud, and I think—”
The car moved a little faster. “I know, he’s been working up to it, you’ll see. I’ll have a talk with him. Gotta go, Danny, sorry.” The window went up all the way and then Bud was gone.
Well, hell. Billy’s working up to it. Billy working up to something or Billy working on something was becoming some sort of mantra around the place. Nothing was ever done, but it was always being worked on. Daniel clenched his fists impotently and snarled, then walked back to the bar.
He went to the office and found the order. It looked like it had been faxed, but it was hard to say. There was no sugar listed on it, though. Shit. He ran his finger down the list. Another goofy order, brought to us by Bud Light. Olives. They did need olives. Coffee. Good. Plastic cups. That was ridiculous. There was an entire case of those in the stockroom and they never used them to begin with. Maybe he had something in mind. Olive Oil, well. Didn’t they still have…? Daniel tossed the order back on the desk and went to the stockroom.
The shelves were crammed with items, less orderly than they used to be. The bottom shelf had two huge burlap sacks of beans. Silly waste, but now they weren’t selling chili, they never used any beans. They should use them up in something instead of just having them sit like this. Taking up space. Daniel scrubbed his hands through his hair and looked around some more. On the back shelf there was a clipboard and a half-eaten sandwich. Daniel picked up the clipboard. Scratch paper, inventory notes. Billy had left it behind. Danie
l flipped through the notes. They made little sense. Billy had written the word cups in the margin of one page and outlined it twice. Daniel looked above him at the case of cups he knew was there.
So… Billy had come in here to take down notes for the order, but then left his notes here – along with his sandwich – instead of using them when he wrote the order. Well, even if he’d taken them with him, they’d have done him very little good, Daniel realized, looking through the stack again. These pages had doodles and illegible smeary writing and contained no real ordering information at all.
He may have had other notes, and this was just scratch paper. That had to be it, Daniel decided, turning another doodled page. Here he found some brochures and business cards. Musical groups…contractors… Green Pine Ranch…
Green Pine Ranch? Daniel pulled this one out and found two others behind it. He leafed through them briefly. Different names, but really all the same place. So. Was this elder care stuff something Bud was interested in? Daniel doubted that.
None of my business. Daniel threw the clipboard back where he’d found it, considered the sandwich, and decided he should throw it out. He was headed to the dish station with it when Hector found him.
“There you are. Customers at the bar, Danny-o.”
“Gimme a sec, be right there.” Daniel tossed the old, dead sandwich in the garbage and thrust the plate into Hector’s hands. “One for you.”
Back at the bar, he filled orders. Margie approached a few minutes later. “Sugar?” she said.
Daniel blew her a kiss.
“Funny stuff. Serious, we got like three sugar packets left in the entire place.”
Sugar packets. Less critical than some items, but still something they couldn’t really get away with not having. Daniel sighed. “Shit. Ok, tell Hector to come here.”
When Hector came out, Daniel opened the cash register and handed him a twenty. “Here. Take this and run to the Albertson’s up the street. Get a box of sugar packets.” Daniel made a shape with his hands, indicating the size box he had in mind. “Should be about a hundred in a little box, that’ll last for a while, until the next order at least.”
Hector nodded solemnly. “Sure, boss. A box of sugar packets…and a candy bar for Hector?”
“You don’t need a candy bar, rot your teeth.”
“Candy bar for Hector?” he repeated teasingly, waving the twenty in a flying-away motion. “C’mon. Gas money. Wear and tear on my car.”
“Fine, a candy bar. A small one.”
Hector stuffed the bill into his jeans. “Score!” he said. “Back in a flash.”
At least that was one problem solved.
Chapter 50
Daniel swung the garage door open. Ellie stood in the background, sipping iced tea. She had gathered another group of items to be taken for donations, but there was still a mountain of stuff in the garage. Daniel made trips, loading his car. Before too long, it was obvious he’d have to make more than one trip. At least two, and that was just for this stack. She still had the rest of the garage to go through. She had things inside, too. How could anyone have so much stuff?
“Here, please, take this.” Ellie was tugging at a half-buried box, her tea sloshing over the side of the glass and splashing at her feet. “You take this, for yourself. It’s a good saw, almost new.”
Daniel helped her free the thing. Almost new? It was very much new. Never opened, from the looks of it. A chainsaw. He looked a question at her, and she nodded. “It was supposed to be a Christmas present for Herb. Then…” She drank her tea and looked at the box, her lips drawing into a thin, tight line. She pointed to another box, across the garage, then let her arm drop heavily. “I never really did get into the holidays again. I still have the lights, see. Decorations. But... I didn’t see the point. There wasn’t any reason. And then …well.” She dropped her eyes and scraped her foot along the floor, kicking at a bit of old tape that was stuck there. “This place is a mess.”
He nodded at her, struggling to find words, but what was there to say? She bent and peeled the tape free and wadded it in her hand. “Anyway,” she said. “That saw was almost three hundred dollars. Herb always wanted that exact one. It’s a chainsaw, you see. He liked to cut logs for the fireplace. He’d get a permit, go up in the woods. Do you have a fireplace?”
Daniel nodded, then shook his head. He did not.
Ellie raised her eyebrows. “Why’d you nod first?”
“I used to have one. Sorry, I’m just tired, not making sense.”
Daniel was running on almost no sleep, again. He’d been up at midnight, as usual. He knew he had heard barking, but when he listened for it, there was none. He’d gotten up and gone to the window to look out, and there Gringo had been, staring at him. Sitting in the moonlight, staring and staring. Had he barked? Was it a dream? It didn’t matter. Real, not real, he was awake.
So he’d gone back to bed, lain there in the warm summer air, covers thrown off, hearing every tiny noise. Every crackle of the leaves under Gringo’s paws had been like a trumpet, keeping him awake for hours. And the tail. Swishing back and forth. Not a dog asleep, but a dog watching, watching. Like the night before. Like almost every night.
After he had taken two loads to the donation-box he came back to pick up the chainsaw. Ellie pushed another small box toward him. “These, too. Please take these. They’re too nice to give to charity.”
Daniel peered into the box. More tools. Woodworking stuff, it looked like. “Ellie, I don’t… they’re very nice, I’m sure, but I don’t do craft stuff like this. I wouldn’t use them.”
Her face fell. “But…” she began, then trailed off momentarily. “Well. I guess put them over there with the rest and I’ll donate them… I wish I knew someone who would like them. They’re good tools, you see. Specialty stuff.”
“Maybe you could sell them. You could have a yard sale.” He looked around the garage. There were lots of items she could sell here, he was sure. “That wagon there, those bicycles. The tools. You could get a few bucks for this saw, I’m sure,” he said, pointing a toe at the saw where it sat at his feet.
“Maybe…” she said. “I’ve never had a yard sale, I don’t know. I’ll think about it. But you take that saw. I want you to have it. I couldn’t imagine just… selling it for… whatever. It means more than that.” She looked up at him sharply. “You see?”
He smiled and picked up the saw. “OK. You think about the rest. And I’ll come back next week to help haul more stuff out for you.” He looked around the garage. Hardly a dent made. Two trips and hardly a dent, still so much there. His eye fell on the box of Christmas lights and he turned away. She was doing the best she could. If she wanted to have a yard sale, he’d help. Maybe he could bring a few of his old things over and sell them too. A two-house yard sale.
With his mind on what he might find to sell in his own pile of garage-junk, he tugged the door down, listened for Ellie to click the latch inside, and turned toward his house. Greg was across the street, watching him. He waved, and Greg waved back.
“Got yourself a nice saw there,” Greg called, coming forward to look at it. “She having you clear out the garage? Saw you taking loads of things.”
“Well, she had some donations I took over to the church for her.” Daniel bobbed the saw up and down. “She said she didn’t want to donate this saw, though. She wanted to give it to someone she knew, I guess.” He looked at Greg, uncomfortable.
“Pretty near new, isn’t it?” Greg crouched stiffly, peering over his glasses at the saw. He whistled. “That’s a beauty.”
Daniel looked down at Greg’s bald spot. “Pretty near. It was supposed to be a gift for her husband. She never got to give it to him.”
Greg stood up straight and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Oh, I see. Yeah, that was a rough year for the old gal, I can’t begin to imagine. Well, it’s good she’s ready to start clearing it out I guess. Good of you to help her, too. I
guess there’s a lot of stuff in there? Looked that way from here.”
Daniel nodded. “She’s thinking about having a yard sale, to sell some of it.”
Greg blinked at him, then looked past him at Ellie’s house. “Yeah? Well, that would be something, I guess. I’d take a gander. I sure don’t need more stuff of my own, but it’s fine to look. Sometimes you find something, you know it?” He pushed his glasses back up his nose again. “I go once in a while. Last time I was at a garage sale, I found an old Army pin. Some of those are collectible, you know, old pins and such, so I keep an eye out.”
The saw grew heavier as he stood listening to Greg yatter on about collectible pins and the Army. Eventually he set it down on the side of the road and stretched his arms overhead. He heard – and felt – his neck crack. Gringo came up behind him and sniffed the saw briefly, then sauntered across to Ellie’s yard and lay down in the shade.
Daniel watched him jealously. Must be nice. Must be nice to just do whatever you want, and lie down wherever you want and sleep whenever you want. He couldn’t sleep, not now. He was on for closing tonight. In fact, he was—
“…in the Navy?” Greg asked. “I’m pretty sure he was.”
“Guess so, yeah,” Daniel said, not having any idea what the question was. He reached down and picked the saw back up. “I’ve got to get going, Greg. Work.”
“Oh. Alright, well… you let me know if you come across any.” Greg turned and made his way back up the walk to his porch, where he turned and waved at Daniel, who still stood on the side of the road with the saw, wondering. What had he just agreed to look for?
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