by Jeffrey Lent
For a time, several years after Joey and Claire died, he would bring home a woman or girl after a night of careful lighthearted venturing in the small backroom and basement clubs of the north country. That stopped a couple of years ago one summer morning when he rose late and lay in bed listening to voices, laughter, coming from the kitchen and went down finally to find his son in shorts and an undershirt and the girl wrapped up in one of Jamie’s old shirts sitting across the table from each other, drinking coffee. The room dropped to silence when he came in, as if he’d stepped somewhere he shouldn’t have. And in the moment it took to recover himself and walk to the stove for coffee he realized the girl was closer in age to his son than to himself and that she was the last he’d bring home. And could admit then that there was no joy in it anyway, felt relief as if letting some part of his life go. He recognized himself, in that moment of decision, to be a creature hunkered. One that had always been such. Some comfort in that recognition.
Foster had spent the afternoon after school with Andy Flood, hooking a ride with the old cedar-ribbed canoe out to Twin Mountain where they put in and floated down the river, hoping to jump-shoot early spring ducks. Lovey curled up against the ribs, pressed against Foster’s knees for support as they worked their way downstream, keeping to one bank as much as possible, letting the current carry them, using the paddles only for direction and to prod off boulders, the canoe bumping softly, scraping its way along. The spring flood was behind them; in another month the river would be too low for the canoe. It was a fine afternoon, sifting spraying rain in their faces, the underbrush along the banks red with spring growth, buds swollen on overhanging branches. When the sun broke through it was the color of honey. They put up a small raft of mallards, too far off for any shooting. Then a single male wood duck, a knave of color but they just sat watching it, Foster holding a streamside branch with one hand to keep them in place. Not many wood ducks. They didn’t even have to talk about it. He liked Andy for that. They weren’t out for ducks anyway; it was the float they wanted.
At the deep riverbend below the house they took the canoe out and carried it up to the barn, each with one hand up to steady a thwart, the other hand carrying their shotguns. The dog, gone from sight, home. She would only tolerate a boat if Foster was in it.
They set the canoe upside down on a pair of sawhorses in the barn, the smell of wet wool from their jackets and caps fresh in the must of the barn. Out the open barn doors the Chrysler gleamed with beading rain. Andy Flood scuffed a boot-toe in the old hay. “Thought your old man was off to a funeral.”
Foster nodded. “Some old rascal I never knew. I guess they got him in the ground all right.”
“I’ll get to home then.”
“You shouldn’t take it personal. It’s nothing you did.”
“Well he sure don’t like Floods.”
“He doesn’t like much of anybody I think.”
“I’ll get on.”
“All right.” They walked out the barn doors together. Foster could see Lovey hunched against the door at the top of the steps. Andy turned up the track toward the road, looked back, “That wood duck.”
“Yuht.”
Inside his father was over the stove in his shirtsleeves, his tie tucked into his shirt, a floursack apron tied around his waist like a waiter. The windows steamed over. Something boiling. Food smells. Foster hung his jacket and cap on pegs to dry, took a small wooden box from a cupboard and sat at the table and broke down his shotgun. His father looked over at him.
“You’re wet through.”
“I’ll dry. What’s for supper?”
“What’s for supper? I don’t know. What’d you bring?”
Foster grinned. “Nothin.”
“Nothing?”
“Saw a wood duck.”
“Woody’s good eating.”
Foster had a small rag smeared with oil, running it over the parts of the gun. “Was too far off.”
“I stopped to Bethlehem and got some chops. That sound all right?”
“I could eat a chop.”
“Two?”
“Maybe so.”
“Irish potatoes. Tomatoes stewed out of a tin.”
“You’re getting me hungry.”
“You were hungry before, just hadn’t stopped to think of it.”
“Could be.” Then paused and asked, “So how was the thing?”
“The service?”
“Yuht.”
“Not much. At least not much to me. But I’m glad I went.”
“Howcome?”
“Oh, Estus was one of the old ones. I’d like to think he’d of known I was there. I’d like to think, the time comes, some few might crawl out of the woods for me.”
“You feeling old, Pop?”
“Not old so much, just. Nothing.”
“Not so young?”
“I been that a long time. No. It’s nothing.”
Then both quiet. Foster finished with the shotgun, wiped it down with a clean rag and put it back together. Stood and put away the box and set the shotgun up in a corner. Then said, “You want me to scrub the potatoes?”
“They’re already cooking. You can smell them.”
“I wasn’t sure. Just want to help is all.”
“You can’t help. I already got it. But you’re honest at least. I raised an honest boy.”
“I’ve not lied to you.”
“Not yet.”
“Pop?”
“What’s that?”
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Just stop. I can’t stand when you get like this.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing.”
“No nothing. Like what?”
“Just antsy and all. Nerved up. Ready to pounce on something.”
“I’m making supper is all. It’s my turn, isn’t it? It’s my turn.”
“I made it last night.”
“That’s right. See?”
“I made it the night before too. But you weren’t here so that doesn’t count.”
“I wasn’t here? Where was I?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where was I? Jesus I don’t know.”
“It’s all right. What kind of chops?”
“Beef-rib. That all right?”
“That’s good.”
“Rare?”
“Real rare.”
“That’s right. You’re the wild man.”
“I just like it tender is all.”
A pause. Then, “How’s school?”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine.”
“What I’m asking is, how’re you doing. You keeping up?”
“Pop. I’m fine.”
“You’ve got to pay attention. Think ahead. It’s not enough to plan out what you want and try and make things fit that plan. You’ve got to figure out how to fit yourself to that plan. You understand?”
“Just stop. All right? Just leave it be.”
After a bit: “Pan’s hot. One chop or two?”
“How many’d you get?”
“Three.”
“One.”
“I’ll only eat one myself.”
“One.”
“All right. I’ll cook the three and we can fight over what’s left.”
They ate. Foster handing down strips of fat and lumps of potato under the table to the dog, who took the food off his fingers with a moist swipe of her tongue. They split the last chop. It was good beef, the layers of muscle run together with sweet braids of fat. The kitchen was warm with the range, the hot scent of foods, the bodies there. Quiet but for the chink of flatware against the china. Budroses around the plate rims, the color faded from wear. Jamie pushed back from the table and lighted a cigarette. Blew the smoke up toward the overhead three-globed lamp.
Foster said, “Talked with Doc Dodge the other night. The night you wasn’t home. He’s got a young stud dog. Lovey’ll come in heat sometime in Ma
y. I want to breed her to that dog of his.”
“What for?”
“Puppies.”
“I know puppies. Why do you want to have puppies?”
“She’s coming eight. I’d like to keep one from her. Other than that, just to have them. Keep one, sell the rest.”
“Going in to business.”
“Not really.”
“Keep one, huh? What happens, you can’t stand to get rid of any of them? Then what, we’re stuck with a raft of dogs?”
“Pop. Setters usually whelp eight or ten, sometimes twelve pups. I know what I’m getting into. All I want is the one.”
“Jesus Christ. Eight or ten dogs running around the house.”
“She’d have them in the summer. I’d want to whelp them inside, make a box for her, get a big carton and cut it down. But once they were a week or two old they could go out to the barn.”
“You’ve got it all thought out.”
“I wouldn’t talk to you about it I didn’t.”
“Ask.”
“Sir?”
“You’re not talking to me about it. You’re asking me about it.”
“All right.”
Jamie looked at him, crushed out his smoke in the ashtray. Made a small close-mouthed grin. “You turning into a hardcase? Giving lip to your old man?”
“No. Didn’t mean to. It’s just, it’d be a good breedback.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The stud dog, Trice, he’s out of Lovey’s dam by a dog called Copper, who is half brother to Lovey’s granddam. So it would be a good breedback. That’s what it’s called.”
“Sounds to me like one of those old swamprat families where everybody’s married to somebody they’re already related to.”
“It’s like that except it’s intentional. You’re breeding for traits and characteristics. You can’t do it all the time but you do it just the right time, the right dogs at the right distance or closeness to each other and you can do pretty good with it. Get some pretty good dogs. Doc Dodge thinks his Trice dog and Lovey’d be a good go for it. Me, I’d like to see what happens.”
His father sat, gazing off over the table one side of Foster. Foster waited, then stood and cleared the table, ran water into the sink and began to wash up. Behind him his father said, “You ever imagine what it’d be like, your mother and sister were still alive?”
Foster turned. His father hadn’t moved, wasn’t looking at him. His head tilted a little sideways as he studied a spot on the far wall. Foster said, “I think about it time to time. I can’t imagine them any older than I remember them.”
“You can’t?”
“No.”
A pause then. A crinkling sound in the stovepipe as the flue cooled. Foster rubbed his hands together.
After a time his father said, “You start chasing after girls, you remember you had a sister. One that might’ve grown up, had to contend with boys like you. You remember that. You understand me?”
Foster was silent.
A shorter pause this time. Then his father turned his head to look at him. “I asked you a question.”
“I heard you. I just don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say Yes, I understand.”
“I don’t really.”
“Shit.” His father stood. “Don’t mind me. I’ve got a foul mood on me tonight. I didn’t even see it coming and then there it was. Must’ve been that funeral. Never mind. I’ve got to go out. You want to ride along?”
“I’ve got homework.”
“Time was, you wouldn’t stay to the house on your own.”
Very quiet Foster said, “I don’t mind it so much anymore.”
Jamie tugged his tie out of his shirtfront and smoothed it down. Began rolling down his shirtsleeves. Foster stepped along the counter to the stack of schoolbooks. “Go on,” his father said. “Have your puppies.”
Pompelli. How to seek after a name you would not utter since there was no way knowing what interest the one queried might own? Only by listening. Listening more intently than you already were. Which he believed was not possible. So, listening with a bent focus, something, keen, tuned to the sound of the name. And the danger in that: Watching thus for the one thing meant the possibility of missing something else. What was he missing?
Spring into summer. The hotel season opened and accounts still dribbled away. Nothing swift, nothing to be confronted, just men needing a little less. Naw, two cases’ll do me fine till Thursday. Truth is, make that Monday. How you doing Jamie. How you doing Pelham. How’s that boy? Growing up, idn’t he? Even the timbermen, some not even showing up, others cadging, buying a little bit. Those, Jamie thought, were just milking what was coming through their woods. And it was this vagueness that chased him around, nights. Then there was Carrick, backstocking barrels of ready whiskey in his hayloft, trying each time Jamie came by to take him up and fork away the hay to display it all, Amy Carrick watching him throughout, then rushing up before he drove away with a pan of bread or a sack of eggs or something out of the garden that she’d press upon him. As if she needed to take care of him. What frustrated him most was time to time in the hotels running up against men, strangers, men he knew at first glance were not guests but draped in good suits, who would scan him with their eyes and gaze past him as if he were not there. He’d sidle in closeby and hang back and try to listen to them. Talking about baseball, sometimes politics in a grandiose simple fashion, pussy in general, local pussy in detail, fragments of more personal speech that he could not follow, as if it were in code—which he knew when he heard. And as he heard this he saw himself again as the man on the outside. The one who doesn’t get it.
And nothing, not once, of Pompelli. As if he were chasing a blankness down a blank road that led to nothing. It occurred to him more than once: Was Patrick Jackson trying to set him up? Except there was no reason for Jackson to do this. Some nights that summer driving he would feel his hands slip upon the wheel, the sweat coming off him in the cool night. Too cool for sweat.
The middle of a night late in June, Foster woke to a wet bed, Lovey by his feet with two puppies out and a third on the way, the bitch curled to clean her firstborn with her tongue, the puppies palm-sized, blind, ears small and pressed tight to their heads. He took a case off a pillow and began to clean the puppies as they emerged, stroking the straining bitch, lifting the pups one by one to sex them and then nudging them together along the row of swollen nipples on her belly, the pups white mostly with faint traces of color, lemon or blue, dark noses, tails sleek thin stubs. Ten in all, one born dead. Nine puppies, three females and six males. The dead one was a female. He took up the dead puppy while the bitch was still in labor and wrapped it in a pillowcase and set it up high on a shelf in the closet. With all that was happening to her she would not miss it, he was sure. Foster felt he knew death well, felt it was a part of him, that he recognized something others his age did not yet know. But for all of this he’d not, until those early morning hours, been a part of the beginning of life. Had not seen it from this end. It was unbearably tender. So an answer formed to the question that he hadn’t even known was in him: What keeps it rolling around and around?
After dawn he went down the stairs and found his father up, drinking coffee. Foster took a cup and filled it. His father said, “I heard you scrambling around up there.”
“She had her puppies.”
“I thought the plan was for it to happen there.” His father indicated the cut-down carton lined with old shredded blanket to one side of the range.
“That was the plan.”
“What do you do now?”
“Carry that box upstairs and put em in it and bring em down and hope she takes that all right. I’m betting she’ll just come along and jump in. I’m betting she doesn’t care anymore where she is, as long as she’s got her pups.”
“How many’d you get?”
“Nine. Three bitches, the rest dogs.”
“It’
s a girl you want to keep isn’t it?”
“Yuht.”
“Cuts your choices, just the three.”
Foster finished his coffee. “It’s enough,” he said, and went to take up the box.
As the summer season went high business picked up, as it should have done, as it always had, yet Jamie could not rid himself of thinking that it was being allowed. As their orders increased men became easier with him, more comfortable, as if they were no longer disappointing him. And yet there it was, the peckerhead of doubt. As if some word had come down: Give Pelham some rope.
The Carricks too were easier. He told himself it was not just the increased volume, the diminishing hayloft backstock, but also the midsummer drift, the brief time when the seasons seemed suspended. Mostly, he knew, Amy Carrick was happier, less snappish. Her children were fat and she too seemed to gain solidity each time he saw her, not so much girth but more a radiant certainty that spread around her. Her youngest was almost two and she took clear delight in hiking him onto her hip and lifting her blouse to give him suck, her breast white as milk but laced with blue veins, the nipple an engorged blood-dark rosehip. Without it ever being said, smelled or witnessed, he understood that she consumed careful regular amounts of the whiskey. She would never, he guessed, be so drunk as to be found out. But there was that constant meticulous inhalation against the world’s edge. He’d seen this before and understood it himself. He also thought it a dangerous thing, more clearly in a woman than a man. Why that was so he could not say, but he knew it was true.