Nickel Mountain

by John Gardner

  It might have been a boy, Henry thought. A boy like George, maybe born unlucky, who’d grow up to be orphaned and go off to the army and half-kill himself for a Japanese girl sixteen years old and a prostitute, or that was what Lou Millet said, and would come back home after that and crawl back to farming, a worn-out farm with worn-out equipment that would eat him alive, limb by limb, and maybe after that his heart if there was anything left of it. They’d have named him James.

  Henry said, “If Callie was to die—” It came to him that he didn’t believe any more that she would die. He’d stopped thinking it the minute he’d seen George and Doc Cathey. He felt better, then worse. He should never have left. They might call for him any time.

  George said, “The hell with you. You’re gonna have a little boy with a big wide slit of a mouth like Callie’s and a three-foot span across the shoulders and he’ll love up the country cunts till a guy like Freund looks like a eunuch.”

  Henry breathed in shallowly and held it, and after a second he saw that George was shocked too, afraid even to explain what he meant, if he could, because Henry might have missed it. Henry tried to think what to say. He watched the brown snow on the street flash by under the floorboards.

  George stopped the truck at Leroy’s place, and they got out and went down the ice-coated steps and in. The air was too warm, greasy. The place was crowded, a few women but mostly the old men who came in every morning from houses and attics and furnished rooms to get breakfast. At both ends of Leroy’s place there were mirrors; they made the room go on forever. Henry thought again of how many people there were in the world—fifteen, twenty here, ten thousand in town, another six thousand in Athensville, still more in Albany, Utica—it was hard to believe: “All these people sitting here without a worry,” he said, “and my poor Callie—”

  George slid into the booth, looking down, then grinned and said, “It’s a funny damn thing … human beings, horses, cats. …”

  Henry nodded, uncertain what he meant. He remembered the blood on the sheet.

  George watched him, then held a cigarette toward him. He said, as if thinking of something else, “They look like they’ve had a hell of a time of it, don’t they.”

  Henry looked, frowning. There was an old man with whiskers and a wrinkled neck, a large blue lump on his temple. At the table beside him there was a younger man reading a paper, leaning close to it.

  Henry said, “I guess you don’t remember my father.”

  “Vaguely,” George said. “I was just a kid then.”

  Henry leaned forward and folded his hands and looked at the boy with the newspaper. “He could talk to birds, all kinds of them. They’d walk on his shoulders like he was a stump. Fattest man you ever saw in your life. Three hundred and seventy pounds. It finally killed him.”

  George waited.

  “He was an elephant. He walked with a cane two-inches thick. I remember he use to read poetry nights. It would make him cry.”

  “They say he was a fine man,” George said.

  Henry nodded, then shook his head slowly. “He was an elephant. Christ, you should’ve seen the coffin. Biggest damn coffin you ever saw, big as the world. With him in it it must’ve weighed six hundred pounds.”

  George was watching the old man with the lump on his temple. Behind the old man there was a woman with penciled eyebrows and a powdered face and lumpy hands. A boy was with her, thirteen maybe, weak-jawed and weak-eyed and grinning. He looked like his mother, trapped already in what his mother was. Maybe it was like that with everybody, Henry thought. The spindly, crochety night nurse who liked to deliver babies herself, dead or alive, she was somebody’s daughter. And Costard, narrow-shouldered, toeing out, pot-bellied under the vest, he had children, he said. Henry shook his head. “It’s funny,” he said. “Jesus.”

  George drew in on his cigarette, then let smoke come out with his words. “It’s funny as hell. You know what every one of these people’s got? A mirror. Put a man on a desert island and the first thing he’ll set out to find is a clear pool where he can see how he looks.”

  It sounded bitter, and Henry laughed uncomfortably. Then he covered his face with his hand.

  “Matter, boy?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  He’d forgotten completely. He’d been sitting here for ten minutes, and he’d never thought about her once, not even to wonder if she’d meant it when she’d shouted, “I love somebody else.” It had seemed a long way between where he’d stood and the bed where Callie lay. He’d stood there helpless, his head pulled in, old, as if past all human use. Maybe she had meant it, too. Because there was, even now, Willard Freund. You never had a chance. Maybe you’d find something you thought a lot of, but it didn’t matter, all you could ever count on for sure was someday your heart would quit. His hands clenched.

  George said, watching him, maybe reading his thoughts, “You look tired as hell.”

  He relaxed. The waitress came. She had a long, pocked face, and she had on pink lipstick. She smiled at George, a come-on, and when she left, Henry said, not looking up, “She likes you. You ought to marry her.”

  George grinned. “Once burned, twice shy.”

  “You ought to marry somebody,” Henry said. “I mean it. Callie says so too.”

  He wasn’t prepared for what it set off. George sat still and didn’t speak, then abruptly crushed out his cigarette and stood up. “We better get back.” He grinned then, but on the way to the hospital he didn’t talk.

  The woman at the desk said, “Mr. Soames, you can go down to Maternity now. Dr. Costard’s been looking all over for you.”

  Henry wet his lips, then went to the double door. When he glanced back, George winked. He was sitting down now, over in the shadowed corner of the room, by the magazine table. His eyes, looking into the light, were shiny like the eyes of the owl. His face was the color of ashes.

  At the Maternity desk Henry almost asked if either of them had lived, but he stopped himself, simply stood leaning forward, one hand clinging to the other, waiting.

  “You may see your wife,” the nurse said. And so he knew that it was the baby that had died if one of them had, not Callie; but he held himself back. She hadn’t said that. And then they were leading him into a room and somehow he knew at once—though she lay still, as if unconscious—that she was alive. The guard rails were up on the bed. When you were dead you didn’t need any guarding. He touched her hand. The nurse said, “It wasn’t Caesarean. They cut from below and used Kjelland forceps.”

  “Did the baby live?” he asked.

  The nurse smiled, cat-like. “They’re cleaning up now.”

  He started to ask it again, but she left him.

  Callie opened her eyes a little, looking at him. He leaned toward her. “Doctor,” she said, her voice light, drugged, “isn’t Henry here yet?”

  He stood perfectly still, puzzled, his back going cold.

  Her fingers moved as if to grasp his hand, but she was too weak. She said, “You been good to us, Henry and me. Everybody’s been. I want you to tell Henry. …” She smiled, far away, as though she really had died, withdrawn to where none of them could reach her, and she whispered, “Doctor, my husband is a good kind man. Tell him I said so. Tell him I said it in my sleep.” She smiled again, mysterious, suddenly foxy, and her eyes closed. Henry blinked.

  And then it was Doc Cathey beside him, leading him through blinding sunlight past wilting, burnt-up plants to the wall of windows that looked in at the cribs.

  “Doc,” Henry whimpered, shaking now, off his bearings; his right hand pulled at his left.

  “Don’t blubber,” Doc snapped. “You’d think it was the first brat born on earth. Cain maybe. You make me sick.”

  The nurse said, “It’s a boy, Mr. Soames. A big, big boy. Nine pounds, one ounce.” It lay with its hands folded up like a monk’s, its mouth angular, like Callie’s. There were forceps scars across the cheeks and one ear was black and cauliflowered. The head was browless and m
isshapen. The mouth quivered, crying.

  “Well?” Doc Cathey barked. He cupped his hand under Henry’s elbow.

  Henry leaned his forehead against the glass, his chest flaming. He could hear the baby’s voice through the glass. Then he couldn’t see anymore, he was crying now, and things were in motion all around him, reeling. “He’s beautiful,” he said. Tears ran down and he could taste them. “He’s beautiful. Holy Jesus.”

  7

  And so, it seemed to Henry, it was different now. Out of his hands. He looked around as he passed through the waiting room, but there was nobody there. Sick people, some plants, a doctor leaning over a chair and speaking in a whisper, George Loomis looking up, startled, from a magazine; that was all. He walked out to his square, black Ford and started it up. Doc Cathey came through the hospital door and started toward him, shouting. But Henry pulled out into the street as if he hadn’t seen him. He watched the sidewalk, and then he was outside town and he still hadn’t seen the slightest sign. At the Stop-Off there were trucks parked, four of them, long, dark, mounded in snow, and he opened up and invited the truckers in and perked coffee. The dog lay by the door and watched every move he made, wondering what he’d done with Callie. He told them about James, the baby—he used the word now—and gave out White Owl cigars, laughing, waving his hands, but all the time he spoke there was another excitement too, and he kept one eye on the door and the wide window that looked out over the highway toward the trees. There was nobody.

  There was still nobody when dusk came. The lights went on in Frank Wells’ barns, not in the house; they were still away. More customers came, and they kept him busy at the grill. The next thing he knew it was dark, and still no sign. At midnight he cleaned the grill and the chili pans and dishes and locked up and turned out the lights.

  He went into the living room—Prince coming sorrowfully at his heels—and sat down facing the window in the dark. The snow lay blue-white under the moon, and the walls of the room around him were blue-white silver glints, the man and woman, the bridge, the tree, the children. The woods were quiet. Up on Crow Mountain, in the fourteen-room brick house where George Loomis rattled around alone like a ghost, there were no lights on; nothing moved. There would be no light on down at Freund’s place either, beyond the woods; the family would be asleep; there were chores to do in the morning. Willard Freund would be awake though, sitting smiling to himself, or would be flitting around somewhere outside.

  Voices mumbled around him, unintelligible, and he leaned forward in his chair. He saw without surprise that there were birds flying above the woods, thousands of them, gliding silently like owls, but talking, mumbling words like human beings. They flew through steam from the trees, or fog, or smoke maybe. Sometimes he could see only the smoke and the birds, as though the woods had disappeared or slipped from his mind, and then he could see the woods again, gray, moving closer. A sound of wind or fire blurred the voices and stirred the smoke into slow torsion, obliterating the birds, the bridge and the willow tree, the pines. When he saw the man coming across the yard, Henry jumped up.

  The snow lay blue-white, crisp, and the trees were far away again, distinct in the sharp night air. The dog was watching him, ears raised.

  And at last it all came clear to him. There never would be anybody there. Willard Freund wouldn’t show himself again as long as he lived. Callie wouldn’t see him either, or if she did it wouldn’t matter, because it was too late now. It was as if it was him, Willard Freund, that was killed by it. You had to be there, and Willard Freund hadn’t been, and now there was no place left for him, no love, no hate—not in his father’s house, even. Willard would see. No place but the woods—bare trees and snow and the low-moving shadows of dogs gone wild and birds and, maybe, if stories were true, bobcats.

  He moved toward the window a little, not knowing he was doing it, and stood bent forward, looking out, not aware anymore of the room behind him. There was a game, a child’s game, where you stood the dominoes in a row and touched the end one and made them fall one after another, clattering. If one of the dominoes wasn’t in line it would still be standing there after the others had fallen down, would still be standing there erect, like a narrow, old-fashioned tombstone, all by itself on a windy hill, till doomsday.

  Henry stood at the window looking out for a long time; then, breathing shallowly to cut down the pain, he turned and moved into the bedroom.

  IV

  THE THINGS

  1

  Henry and Callie came out on the porch to watch him down the driveway. Callie was holding the baby, wrapped up in its yellow blanket, she herself in one of her own tricolor afghans, three shades of green, waving with her free hand, and Henry was close beside her, a little behind her, like a balding upright bear with one paw on her shoulder, waving too. The dog was at her other side. The porch light was on—cheap imitation of a carriage lamp—and beyond that there was the light in the living room windows, giving the figures on the porch a kind of aura, their faces not as light as their outlines. On the yard, in the dewy, new-mown grass to their left and in front of them, there were rectangular splays of light from the windows and the open door, and there was faint light on the sharp little crocuses below the window and still fainter light on the carious trunks and lower boughs of the tamaracks at the edge of the driveway, beyond the painted rocks. The tops of the trees were dark silhouettes, as black as the mountain or the gable of the house; on the other side of the silhouettes was the abyss of sky dotted with stars. It was all like a picture for a life insurance ad in the Saturday Evening Post. He could envy them.

  When he came to the highway he stopped and waited, the only hand he had leaving the steering wheel to shift down to low, his foot on the brake, the truck nosing sharply downward. There were headlights coming from the south. He looked back and saw Henry and Callie going into the house, the dog standing up now, neither friendly nor unfriendly, merely official, the way shepherds were supposed to be, watching. The porch lights flicked on and off—Callie saying one more goodbye—then stayed off. Almost the same instant, the headlights on the highway veered toward him crazily, then teetered away again, the last possible second. The car’s inside lights were on, and he had a fleeting glimpse of drunken kids leering out at him as their car burned past. “Crazy sons of bitches!” he thought, his heart pounding, and he was still hearing, as though time had snagged, the sudden howl of the motor and the rushing wind and the scream of bad tappets. They shot away down the level space in front of Henry’s, then up the farther hill. In a matter of seconds they were over the hill and gone, and the night was empty. He pulled out onto the highway, his right leg shaky on the accelerator. And now—the whole beautiful night gone sour—he was thinking again of the murder.

  Henry had told him about it. He’d heard it on the radio. “It was up on Nickel Mountain, not ten miles from here,” he said. “Some old man. They said his name was—I forget. I guess when he come home they were already inside the house. They hit him on the head with some kind of a pipe. The way they had it on the radio, he was a mess.”

  Callie was sitting with the baby on her lap. The light from the lamp over her head gave her hair a sheen. The baby was asleep, its fingers curled around one of hers, but she was still singing to it.

  George had said, “They know yet who did it?” The picture in his mind was of his own house, as isolated as any to be found and one that would no doubt be attractive to vandals or thieves—a high, old brick house with balustered porches, round-arched windows, lightning rods, cupolas, and facing the road a Victorian tower like a square, old-fashioned silo. “They don’t know yet,” he said. “Could’ve been anybody. Those lonely old houses, it’s a wonder things like that don’t happen more often.”

  (“Sit,” Callie said. The dog lowered himself again slowly, like a gray-black lion at her feet, and laid his wide head on his front paws, ears raised, mournful eyes looking up at her. He sighed.)

  George Loomis turned the spoon over idly in his hand while the
y talked. It was silver plate, one of their wedding presents. He was sorry they hadn’t chosen something real—because they were his friends, and it disturbed him that friends of his should have junk in their house. She’d chosen it because it was “practical,” no doubt, forgetting that plate would scratch and wear away and that anyhow when you married a man who’d been a bachelor all those years you didn’t need to squeeze your pennies till Lincoln squeaked. But above all what was wrong was that it was light: In your hand it felt like nothing. With good things, you knew you had them when you had them. That was how it was with all their things—except the solid old sterling candlesticks (up on top of the player piano where they didn’t belong, no candles in them) and maybe the antimacassars from Callie’s Aunt Mae, and Callie’s afghans. But if it didn’t matter to you then it didn’t, that was it. Except that he knew it did matter to Henry. Why did he let her do it? He said abruptly, “Maybe it was thieves.”

  Henry shrugged. “They don’t know yet. Could be thieves. Then again could be kids, or some tramp.”

  “Jesus,” George said. He’d thought often of the possibility of thieves breaking in. He was not a worrier by nature, but it was a fact that he had a lot of good things in his house, some of them things that had been in the family for two hundred years—God only knew how much those might be worth—and some of them things he’d picked up himself from time to time, in junk shops up in Utica, at auctions here and there, in used book shops. Bill Kelsey had told him he should open a store.

  (“You got more old stuff than any twenty people,” he’d said.

  “There’s a lot of it, all right,” George had admitted, “and more in the other rooms; even some in the woodshed. I walled it up with insulation, so it’s dry.” He opened the door to what had been his mother’s bedroom and stepped back so Bill could look in.