“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“Go on,” Bill said, “tell everybody what you told me. I’m sure they’ll think it’s just as hilarious as I do.”
“Shut up. Shut up, you prick.”
“Oh, I’m the prick. Listen to you.”
“Christ almighty,” Carl groaned. “Like I need this on my vacation.”
“Hear that?” Bill said to Pete. “Hear how stupid you sound?”
“I love her.”
Bill spat onto the sand and gave a hard laugh. “Sure you love her. You love her. Christ. You think I don’t know about it? I told her to do it, you little douche bag.”
“You’re fucking lying.”
“Is that right? Ask her yourself. Go fuck him, I said. You’ll get a real kick out of that itty-bitty dick of his. Make him fall in love with you while you’re at it.”
Pete looked like he was about to explode. “Shut up shut up shut up.”
“Oh, we had a good laugh about that one. You love her. My prick was in her the whole time, buddy boy. What do you say to that?”
Pete flew at him then, right on cue; with an animal growl he hurled himself forward, arms wide, nothing in him able to organize his attack into anything solid and real. I reached for his sleeve but missed, and in another instant he had his arms around Bill, the two of them grappling like prize-fighters in a corner. Only there was no corner: the momentum was Pete’s. As Bill absorbed the impact, his legs twisted under him and he went down hard, into the rocky river, all of Pete on top of him.
“Get this fucker off me!”
It took all three of us to unhook Pete and haul him to his feet, his face streaked with helpless tears and his arms uselessly flailing. Then he somehow got away from us and threw himself on Bill again. It was me who got to him this time, yanking him by the collar and hurling him away.
“You, onshore, now!”
His breath jammed in his throat. “He—”
“Now, goddamnit!”
Bill had risen to a sitting position in the water. While Mike and Carl took Pete onshore, I knelt beside him. A bit of blood was in his hair; a small cut, an inch or two, split the skin above his right ear.
“This doesn’t look too bad. How do you feel?”
He shook his head, still trying to find his breath. “Little bastard got the jump on me.”
“Wasn’t like you didn’t egg him on.”
He fingered the cut and examined the blood on his fingers. “Christ. Look at this. My fucking head is killing me.”
“It could be a concussion. We should get you to a doctor.”
Bill let his hands fall into the water, cupping his palms and letting the water drain through. “It was all bullshit, you know. About . . . well, all of it.”
“I had a feeling,” I said. “Looks like he bought it, though.”
“I kinda knew, but also kinda didn’t.” He looked past me then, toward shore, where Pete was still being minded by the other two men. “You smug fuck! You miserable piece of shit! When I get through with you, you’ll never work another day in your life!” He returned his eyes to me and lowered his voice again. “That ought to hold him. That’s the trick, to make the other guy think you know more than you do. Which in my case is usually zilch.”
“I doubt that.”
“You’d be surprised.” He frowned dispiritedly. “Truth is, he’s a better lawyer than I am. Probably a better lay too.”
I thought of Pete, lying at the bottom of the Hah-vahd pool; his grass hut and his girlfriend and his fucking short stories. There was no side to take here, nobody even to like when it came right down to it, and mostly I felt sorry for everyone.
“I’m sure he thinks he is.”
“Christ. He loves her.” He shook his head again, looking at nothing. “Help me up?”
I eased him to his feet. He seemed a bit unsteady, favoring one leg, and I kept a hand on his elbow as we stepped from the streambed onto the riverbank. And something else: his right eye was blinking.
“You’re a good guy, Joe. For putting up with this.”
“All in a day’s work.”
“I know you don’t mean that, but thanks.” We had exited the river a short shouting distance from where Pete and the other two still stood. Bill lifted his voice to them. “Hear that? I’m making your apologies to our host, you rude asshole!”
“Let it go,” Carl snapped. “For god’s sake, Bill, just shut up.”
“Oh, the hell with it,” Bill said to me.
I released his elbow and looked him over. Blink, blink, blink. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Nothing an aspirin and a leak won’t cure.” He gave me a hollow smile, like somebody pretending to like an awful present; where this all was headed I hadn’t a guess. “You like lawyer jokes, Joe?”
I shrugged, playing along. “Sure, why not.”
“Here’s my favorite. Why’s divorce so expensive? Give up?”
I told him I did.
“Because it’s worth it!” He laughed and shook his head. “That fucking kills me. Wait here a sec, willya?”
He headed up the path, under the shadow of the dam. I checked my watch; it was a little after six. Suddenly, the only thing I wanted was just to be home, Harry or no. I would have called Lucy to tell her so, if I hadn’t left the radio in the truck, two miles away.
“What’s he doing?”
Carl had come up beside me, holding a hand over his brow. I craned my neck upward to follow his gaze. For a moment I didn’t see a thing, just the dam wall, rising imperiously against the sky. Then I found him: Bill, crossing the narrow catwalk, eighty feet above us. He removed his vest and dropped it on the ground beside him, then drew down his suspenders.
Carl said, “I think he’s . . . taking a piss.”
He was. At the edge of the catwalk, Bill bunched his waders to his knees, unzipped his fly, and released a stream onto the curved wall below, making a little heart-shaped stain on the stone. Mike and Pete were with me now too, the four of us with our faces angled upward, like stargazers following a comet’s path. When Bill was done, he shook it off, redid his pants, tipped his face to the sky with what I took to be a look of satisfaction. Then he stepped backward and disappeared from view.
I turned to Pete. “I think that was for you, buddy boy.”
“No, wait a second,” Pete said. His eyes were still fixed on the dam. “The catwalk is only, what, five feet wide?”
“About that.”
“So we should be able to see him. Where the hell did he go?”
I looked again. Pete was right: Bill was nowhere to be seen. I counted off five seconds, then ten. Still nothing.
Jesus Christ, I thought. Jesus, Jesus Christ.
And then I was running up the dam.
* * *
ADRIFT
IN THE HEAVENS
* * *
TWENTY-TWO
Harry
M y nurse and her needles: all that day I waited for her. But it was noon, it was two, it was three o’clock, and still she did not come. I knew she wasn’t real, she was a trick the drugs had played; I knew this to be true, and still I longed for her, as one longs for sunshine after days and days of rain. Through the long hours Franny came and went, my dear friend Franny, and Hal, his strength almost pitiable, for it could accomplish nothing—everyone waiting, like me, for word to go.
Am I hungry? they inquire. Do I need help with the toilet? Is the blanket too warm, too tight? How’s the breathing, Harry, do you need the valve adjusted, the little valve right here?
I answer all their questions, complain plausibly of pain though I feel almost nothing, agree reasonably to this and that. The hours open and close. Then:
Harry?
Pure happiness fills me, traveling my body like a beam of light.
It’s you, I say. You’re here.
Seated, she leans forward at the waist; from a canvas bag at her feet she removes her yarn, her diamond-bright needles. She places the
yarn in her wide lap: pure white yarn wound in a dense orb, like the insides of a baseball. A quick motion of the hands and she begins her work, pulling and tatting like a pianist at the keys, bringing forth a bolt of tightly woven fabric, white as snow, whiter even than that—a whiteness of absolute perfection. The sight is so beautiful I want to weep.
It’s a scarf, she says.
A scarf. The word seems too meager for what she has made.
Did I say that? She laughs, a gentle sound. I don’t know what it is.
I cannot see her face. Perhaps this is the drugs, or the way the light falls in the room: late afternoon light, cool and still as liquid. Perhaps my eyes are closed.
I feel my chest rise. How is Sam?
Sam?
You said you saw him. My tongue is heavy in my mouth. I wonder if I am speaking at all, or am somehow communicating these thoughts by mind alone. Before. In the hospital.
He’s fine, Harry. Everyone’s fine. Just waiting to see what you want to do.
I miss him.
Sam.
He’s a good boy. I wish he would cry more. Shouldn’t a baby cry more?
A salty wetness on my lips. Still I cannot open my eyes. I feel as if I am half inside a dream, a pleasant dream in which I am shutting all the windows of a house as the rain pours down outside. But the rain is snow, the snow is cloth, a long bolt of perfect white cloth, rolling onto the floor. A shroud, I think. A shroud to wrap my little boy in, who never cried much.
Do you believe you’ll see him, Harry?
I am nodding, full of belief. How could I have ever doubted this? Yes, yes I do. Lucy?
A pause. Her hand has found my own, resting on the sheet.
I’m going to die, Lucy.
I know, Harry.
I’m sorry.
Why are you sorry?
Because . . . I left you.
It’s all right, Harry. You didn’t know.
But I think I did. Isn’t that strange? I think I did know.
It’s not so strange. I’m glad it happened, Harry.
I’m glad too. I try to think of what else to say, but there is only this, this gladness. Then:
Do you remember, Lucy, that night on the porch? That strange night, when Joe came to find you. There was a woman who wanted to dance with me.
A woman?
Just some woman. She was nobody, really. And then I woke up and Joe was there, and you stepped from the bushes and hugged him. He must have had the wrong cabin.
That was quite a night, Harry.
I’m sorry I stayed away after that. It was childish.
But you came back, didn’t you. You came back, and everything was all right. Nothing would be here if you hadn’t come back.
A moment passes in silence, vaporous time swirling around us.
I planned to kill myself here, Lucy.
A pause. When was that, Harry?
With Meredith’s pills. Did you find them? I left them where I thought you would.
I think I did, Harry. A bottle of pills?
I tried once before, you know. With the car. After so much time, how wonderful finally to say these things. It is as if I have been carrying a heavy suitcase for years and years, only to discover I can simply put it down. It was the night before I found you on the dock.
When was this, Harry? You tried to crash your car?
I want to laugh. Crash the Jag! A thought so absurd, so impossible, I see at once how small, how meager my efforts.
Harry? Are you all right?
I’m sorry. It’s just . . . so funny. It was very odd, what happened. Almost an accident. I left it running in the garage. I sat for the longest time. The strangest thing. Lucy?
Again that pause. Is it Lucy next to me? But of course it is; it is my Lucy, come at last.
Yes, Harry?
I’m sorry, for Joe. It must have been hard for him, all these years. I wish I could have said that to him.
But now it’s she who’s laughing, a laugh that seems to come from everywhere and all around, and from the deepest caves of memory; my mother, still young, on a day we all went on a picnic and the dog got into the basket where she’d put the pie, a hound with a black nose whose name I no longer recall; Meredith, in the bar on the evening we met, laughing at something her friend had said to her, then lifting her eyes to find my own; a young girl tucking a strand of damp hair behind an ear as she tells me about the pancakes, and fresh raspberries from the farm up the road. All of these and more.
Oh, Harry, don’t you know? You helped him most of all.
How did I—?
She squeezes my hand, and at once I understand; the knowledge passes into me like a current, and the circle closes at last.
With me, Harry, she says, her voice a whisper, not even there, and I follow it into sleep. That was the present you gave us all. You brought him home with me.
The hour is late: I awaken in darkness, alone. A feeling of vivid consciousness courses through me. I can barely move—my body is the same, more wood than flesh—and yet my mind is suddenly, fiercely alive inside it. From the outer room, voices reach me like a drifting scent—Hal and Franny, talking together in low, worried tones of the hospital, the distance to doctors and machines to keep me alive—and beyond them, Lucy and Jordan, speaking to one another on the dock. Each word of their conversations is vivid to me, their voices all overlapping but somehow coherent, and as I listen my mind stretches outward to a far horizon of sound, so that not just these words but every noise for miles around is equal to every other: a girl in the kitchen humming as she scrubs a pot, the sighing expansion of the lake against the shoreline, each cylinder firing in a distant outboard and the swirling hum of its prop. Magnificent: my very atoms seem to trill with sound.
“Hal.”
A pause, then his boots on the planking and a blaze of afternoon sunlight through the open door: the day is not as far gone as I’d imagined.
“Look who’s up.” Hal eyes me appraisingly and takes a seat on the edge of the narrow bed. I lift myself on the pillow as he hands me a cup of water to drink.
“I was wondering when we’d hear from you. How are you feeling?”
The water is so tepid I can barely sense its presence in my mouth. A thin stream dribbles down my chin, which unnerves me; I don’t want Hal to know that I am leaving my body behind, that my strength is a force of will alone.
“Better, I think. Much better, actually.”
He draws a circle in front of his chest. “How’s the breathing?”
Obediently, I draw air into my lungs to show him. The urge to cough is intense, sharp as a lit match, yet somehow I manage to contain it.
“See that?” I clear my throat, my eyes filling. “Fit as a fiddle. Tell Jordan to get ready.”
His eyes darken skeptically. “Pop, Franny and I were just talking. After last night, we really think enough’s enough. What do you say let’s get you down to Farmington.”
“I know what you said. I heard every word.” I clear my thoughts to let the sounds come. “Listen, Hal. Can you hear that?”
He frowns in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pop.”
“Just listen.” I close my eyes as the sounds fill me up. A wash of undifferentiated noise, and then it comes again: not humming, but singing. Her voice rises and falls on the notes, over the rush of water running from the tap.
“A girl, singing in the kitchen. It’s something old, the song. Something she shouldn’t know but does.”
I open my eyes to see Hal staring at me, a new kind of alarm written on his face. I do not want to be difficult, and yet the point must be made. I am not dying in the hospital.
“‘St. Louis Blues’? No, ‘Sentimental Journey.’ ”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Pop. Let’s get you to the doctor, okay?”
“No.”
A moment passes under his gaze. I am weak, I am dying, there is nothing I can accomplish without his final permission. At the end it must al
ways come to this, this acceptance of one’s fate, obedient as a dog. I have loved you, Hal, I think. You are my one boy. Let me do this.
At last he rises. “Christ, Franny’s going to have my head for this. All right, Pop. This is your show now. I’ll go tell Jordan to get ready.”
And then the day really is late. The hour lurches forward, halts, proceeds again—though almost imperceptibly, as if I am a chip of straw drifting on a vast, celestial tide. My mind opens to a feeling of perfect stillness and, above me, a sky unlocking stars. This thing with sound has left me; only the slow swish of the oars reaches my ears, a music of its own to match the rhythmic breathing of my boatman as he pulls us out from shore. This boy I’ve chosen: he is strong, good-hearted, he feels the earth in his blood. His face is darkened in shadow, like a hood. He will not fail me.
There is no time, I think. And then: there is only time. Snow from the train window, and the last breaths, and sleep. The needles never unworking. All time is time passed, it is a history of good-byes.
It is all I have left to wish for, the one thing I have ever truly wanted: to slip into that current.
TWENTY-THREE
Joe
W e had been floating in the drain for two hours, Bill and I, when I thought it: today was the day I was going to die.
Bill had fallen backward off the dam; the drop was less than twenty feet on the upstream side, but the current took him fast: weighed down by his sodden waders, he was swept into the vortex that swirled around the open gate of the inlet. He would have gone straight through, but at the last second he managed to grab hold of the edge of the open gate and pull his body out of the worst of the current, pinning himself against the concrete wall of the tower.
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