by Tim Poland
Sandy moved cautiously up two steps toward Keefe. “I can’t. It’s not that simple, James.”
“I’m not worth it. You deserve better.”
Sandy took another step and set her tea mug aside. She settled on the top step but remained to the side, a few feet away from Keefe. His eyes swung fearfully in Sandy’s direction, clearly seeking out the bruise on her face. “It’s not too bad. I’ll live,” she said.
Keefe’s eyes quickly fell back to his hands. “Unforgivable,” he said. “I’m not to be forgiven.”
“I don’t want to forgive you, James. I want to help you. No, it won’t be easy, but I’m here. Like it or not, this is my life. This is the life I deserve. The life I want. Right here. With you.”
“It asks far too much of you.”
Sandy slid a few inches closer to him. “Look, I’m no prize either. I’m an unemployed criminal, maybe on my way to jail. But let me, James, and we’ll find a way through this.”
Stink groaned loudly and stood up, shook himself, and walked inside to his spot on the sofa.
“Clearly he’s had his fill of us,” Keefe said.
Sandy slid the rest of the way to Keefe’s side. Slowly, very softly, she laid her arm over Keefe’s shoulders. “I love you.” She said it. Deliberately. Out loud, without a doubt.
A hint of a shudder went through Keefe’s shoulders. He raised his head but his eyes looked straight ahead, away from Sandy’s face.
“And I you . . . Sandy.” His shoulders seemed to loosen with the words. “Though our timing couldn’t be much worse.”
“It’s the life we have to live, as it is. We’ll live it the best we can. Together. Right here.”
We live up there.
Sandy pressed gently into Keefe’s side and laid her head against his shoulder.
“I’ll call Margie,” Sandy said. “She’ll know someone, a neurologist who’s good. If I know Margie, she’ll be able to pull a string or two and get us in to see someone sooner.”
“Margie?” Keefe said. “Who’s Margie?”
Sandy pulled back and looked at Keefe’s face, where a grin teased up the corners of his mouth. “You’re right,” Sandy said. “You’re not worth it.” She leaned in, pressed her lips to Keefe’s temple, and held them there for a very long time.
15
FROM THE PATH, SANDY SLID DOWN THE BANK ON HER BUTT and then crawled on her belly through a thick stand of rhododendron to get to the pool. Once through the rhododendron, she continued to crawl. Here, if she rose even into a low crouch, the fish would spot her instantly and be gone just as fast. The pool was a long crescent channel bent around a low spine of rock, fed by a thick chute of water that poured into the head of the pool. Sandy crawled to the stone ridge bordering the pool and rested her back against it. The front half of the pool surged through a deeper, V-shaped trough of stone. At the bend of the crescent there would be a tangle of branches and leaves caught there, giving the fish ample cover. The tangle would likely be a bit more than usual following the recent rains and high water. Or less if the waters had been strong enough to wash out what had been lodged at the bend in the first place. The tail of the pool widened, and the current flattened out into a calmer flow. In this pool, the fish would not be particularly large—if she took one of eight or ten inches in size, she would be more than pleased. But here she would catch nothing casually. These fish, like the others in the headwaters, were purely wild, but these brook trout also had the advantage of open terrain around the pool, offering a predator no cover as it stalked its prey. They would be caught only with stealth and precision. Here, the way something was done, the means of it, was everything, far outweighing the ends. She would get one cast and one cast only.
The yellow stoneflies were long gone for the season. From her fly box she selected instead one tiny black-ant pattern with a tuft of yellow wound into the thorax and began to tie it onto the end of her line.
Margie had come through, even better than Sandy might have expected. “But are you all right, honey?” Margie had asked after Sandy explained the incident to her. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? Because if he did, I don’t care what—”
“I’m fine, Margie,” Sandy had said, inadvertently raising her fingertip to the bruise on her cheek.
“Good. You better be. Oh, bless his heart.” Sandy could hear a long exhale on the other end of the phone. Margie was likely in the hospital parking lot, in her car, having a cigarette break. “I’ll get right on it, sweetie,” Margie continued. “Looks as though your suspicions last spring may have been right, after all, eh?”
Two days later, Keefe had an appointment with a physician at the community hospital in Sherwood. Three days after that, he was examined by a neurologist in Roanoke. And a week after that, they met with the neurologist again to review his diagnosis. Keefe occasionally grumbled about the battery of tests and examinations but generally submitted to Sandy and the physicians, still horrified and chastened by his outburst. The neurologist’s staff had initially been hesitant to allow Sandy access since she wasn’t his daughter, their first assumption, or his wife, their second assumption, but when Keefe grew visibly agitated at the prospect, they relented. Finally, the neurologist urged that, if they weren’t married and Sandy was to be his primary caregiver, Keefe should at least accord Sandy power of attorney. Really, he had said, it would make things go more smoothly in the future.
For the most part, symptoms and diagnoses had been delivered to Sandy, as a nurse, as information, already established and inscribed on a chart, accompanied by a set of specific guidelines and procedures. Simple enough. She was, after all, only an LPN. A world of pain, illness, injury, and aging had been distilled into a prescribed regimen. It was clinical. Now it was personal.
Mild cognitive impairment. Sandy had yet to determine if the word mild before the words cognitive impairment gave her a sense of relief—it certainly could have been much worse—or if the vagueness of the condition made her even more uneasy. When asked about the possibility of a series of small strokes, neither Sandy nor Keefe could answer one way or the other. Asked about any sort of brain injury, Sandy and Keefe looked at each other, then confirmed there had been a slight concussion about five years earlier. Neither of them offered any details of how years earlier Sandy had found Keefe collapsed in the stream where he’d fallen and struck his head on a rock, the result of a freak misstep while crossing through a strong current. Sandy, his caregiver then, said nothing to anyone of how that incident had initially given her the access to the bungalow she had so desired. Primary caregiver. We live up there.
Sandy conjured an image of the book-jammed living area of the bungalow, of the ever-present volume of Whitman on the coffee table, when informed that this condition was often not as detrimental to people with higher levels of educational and intellectual development. She wondered about objective memory impairment and the botched yellow stoneflies on Keefe’s tying bench. Largely intact general cognitive function—Sandy sighed quietly. Unusually stressful situations could trigger another episode of rage or disorientation—Sandy slid her hand gently down Keefe’s arm and closed her hand around his.
THROUGH her shirt and vest, Sandy could feel the chill of cooler autumn nights pressed into her back from the rock she leaned against. With the ant pattern securely tied in place, she fed out just enough line to make the cast over the stone outcropping and down to the surface of the head of the pool. She lifted her rod straight out from her body, remaining concealed, and flicked her wrist once, sending her fly in a wavering arc, backwards over her head onto the film of the current. The fish struck in an instant, and Sandy rose to her full height, looming freely over the pool now as she guided the brook trout into the shallows. It fought ferociously, but Sandy brought it to hand quickly and removed the hook. A fish flawlessly adapted to its surroundings, the brook trout was nearly invisible in the water. Here, carefully cupped in her hand, with its green speckled back and ivory-tipped orange fins, the fish offered a perfect com
plement to the colors of the autumn foliage, the leaves still hanging from the trees and those fallen and floating down the current of the stream. Sandy released the fish and reeled in her remaining line. There would be no more fish from this pool today.
Keefe was fishing somewhere nearby. She crawled back through the rhododendron, climbed up to the path, and headed downstream to find him. In the weeks since his outburst, Sandy had rarely been away from Keefe. She had, in effect, fully moved into the bungalow, a full-time resident. One morning she’d made a run into Sherwood to go to the bank and buy groceries, after which she swung by the house on Willard Road to collect a few of her things, including Edith’s ashes, which still sat tucked behind the seat in the cab of her truck. With the exception of those few hours, however, she hadn’t been away from the headwaters.
Keefe had, for the most part, been clearheaded during this time—largely intact general cognitive function. He’d struggled a few times to call up the word for some object, but Sandy had waited patiently, allowed him the time, and most often he was able to retrieve the lost word. Still, she had been hovering, regularly scrutinizing his face for any telltale signs of disorientation. Eventually, Keefe had protested, though his rebellion was a mild one. “Please, my dear.” Keefe lowered his book and rested it in his lap. “I give you my solemn promise. I’ll let you know if I’m having trouble.”
“That’s the problem, James,” Sandy had said. “You may not know you’re having trouble.”
Keefe had sighed and raised his eyes to the book-clogged wall above the fireplace. “Don’t you think it will be rather evident? Please, allow me the last few shreds of my dignity.”
Sandy had apologized, said she would try. And she had, though it hadn’t been easy. Today, fishing in different sections of the river, had been the longest he’d been outside her orbit, with the exception of the one trip to town for provisions. The pleasure of being back in the waters of the upper Ripshin, of the fierce tug of a brook trout on the end of her line, had seduced her, made it easier to let him be, and she’d welcomed the seduction. But now she was concerned again. In two days she was scheduled to meet with her attorney, to consult before her case came to trial next week. Previously, she’d given so little thought to her impending trial. Now it gnawed at her. Would she be sentenced to jail? If so, for how long? What might happen to Keefe while she was incarcerated? She wanted him in her sights right now.
Sandy dropped off the trail and climbed up onto a jumble of larger boulders along the stream, a perch from which she could get a longer view downstream in the direction of where she last saw Keefe fishing. She climbed to the top of the heap, stood up, and turned her eyes down the long, descending course of the stream, a string of gradient pools, stair-stepping down the slope. She spotted Keefe immediately, maybe fifty yards downstream. Her eyes locked onto a scene she’d witnessed before, more than once, and never counted as cause for concern. But now, alert as she was, on edge for any sign of possible disconnect in Keefe’s mind, a shudder of alarm pulsed through her body. Keefe inched slowly, carefully around the tail of a pool, hunched forward in a half-crouch, stalking a fish. He carried his rod in position, at the ready, his old fedora on his head. And, other than the hat, he was completely naked.
Sandy scrambled down from the boulders, leapt onto the path, and bolted downstream.
By the time she reached the pool where she’d seen him, she was frantic, winded, and Keefe had caught a hefty brook trout and was bringing the fish to hand. As he released the fish, Keefe saw Sandy on the bank, her chest heaving, gasping for air after her run down the path.
A wry grin crept onto Keefe’s face as he reeled in his line. “I assure you, my dear. I’m currently fully in control of my mental faculties. I’m well aware of who you are, who I am, and where we are, not to mention what a ridiculous sight I present to the natural world. A naked old man, waving a stick in the middle of a mountain trout stream. Surprised I haven’t scared all the fish away.”
“I don’t know about the fish, but you scared the shit out of me.” Sandy’s breathing began to calm to a more normal rate.
Keefe smiled. “I’m sorry, my dear. I thought maybe one last time.” He raised his eyes, scanning the headwaters surrounding him. “Before the weather turns too cold.”
“Seems a bit cold for it to me already,” Sandy said.
“Perhaps, but not too cold yet.” Keefe looked directly at Sandy. His eyes were clear and keen. “Join me.”
Sandy pursed her lips and tilted her head, attempting a look of stern reprimand.
“Please.” Keefe raised his arm and held out his hand to her.
Sandy chuckled softly and began to shed her clothing.
Her skin grew instantly taut and prickled as her bare feet entered the water. She inched deeper into the pool, nearly up to her knees in the chilly water when she reached Keefe’s side.
“What with these memory lapses and all,” Sandy said, “maybe you could forget your attraction to this particular activity?”
“It appears neither of us shall be so fortunate.” Keefe took her hand as she stepped to his side. “What do you have on?”
“Nothing, rather obviously,” Sandy said, feigning a more exaggerated shiver than she actually felt.
Keefe chuckled and nodded to her fly rod, held at her side. “On your line, my dear.”
“Ant.”
“That ought to do just fine.” Keefe nodded toward a back eddy, swirling under a ledge of rock, to the right of the plume of water feeding into the head of the pool. “A good one holding just to the right side of the eddy.”
Keefe released her hand and eased himself a couple paces away to give her room to cast. As Sandy fed line from her rod and set herself in a casting stance, as best she could with bare feet, she heard Keefe’s voice slip into a hushed chant.
“I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.”
She’d heard him utter this incantation before, in this same circumstance. These were the only lines from Whitman she could recognize with certainty. And the only ones she understood perfectly, utterly.
She raised her rod, aimed one false cast toward the head of the pool, then shot her line to the target. The ant dropped gently to the surface and rode the riffled rim of the back eddy for only a moment before the fish rose to her fly.
16
JACKSON STAMPER GROANED AUDIBLY AS HE LEANED THE girth of his upper body forward and reached to massage his calf above the foot that still wore a walking boot and rested on another chair. Sandy noticed that the tattered dressing had been exchanged for a thick sock.
“As I was saying,” Stamper said, “just tell your version of events as clearly and concisely as possible. Don’t go into detail. Leave that to me. Just follow my lead, okay?”
Sandy nodded. She sat in a chair opposite the lawyer’s desk. Keefe sat close by on the sofa. The piles of papers and files cluttering the sofa the last time Sandy was here were gone.
“I’m not all that concerned,” Stamper continued. “I’ve still got a couple tricks up my sleeve. A bench trial is pretty simple business. The only witness the complaining witness has called is a Joyce Malden. What can you tell me about her?”
“Not much. She was there. One of the nurses I worked with at the nursing home.” Joyce Malden hadn’t crossed Sandy’s mind since she walked out of the nursing home for the last time.
“Any bad blood between you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Was she in the office with you when it happened?” Stamper leaned forward, resting his elbow on the desk.
“No. Out in the hall, I think.”
“Fine. I can handle that.” Stamper flipped through a couple of sheets of paper on the desk in front of him. “To tell the truth, since you have no record, when you apologize, show your remorse for the incident, I can’t imagine more than a few months’ probation at the worst.”
Sandy wasn’t sorry. She felt no remorse.
Would she, could she offer up in the courtroom a simulation of an emotion she didn’t feel? She more often had trouble showing emotions that were genuine. Could she fake it? She turned to Keefe, whose eyes met hers, his brow furrowed with concern. To fake remorse. She would have to find some way to do so. If she were put in jail, Keefe would be alone, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t risk that. Not now.
“One other thing regarding this,” Stamper said. He seemed to hesitate before speaking, his eyes running over Sandy in a way they hadn’t before. “I’d suggest you dress a bit more appropriately. A little more . . . feminine. Wear a dress. It’ll make a difference.”
Sandy couldn’t recall the last time she’d worn a dress. It had literally been years. She only owned two, and they both still hung in the bedroom closet of the house on Willard Road. Inadvertently, she gave herself the once over, assessing her attire—jeans and hiking boots, a lightweight green sweater, a fleece vest, a canvas purse fashioned from an old fishing vest. Other than the pastel scrubs she had worn to work at the nursing home, Sandy hadn’t dressed much differently than she was now for quite a long time. She looked at Keefe—heavy khaki trousers, a plaid flannel shirt, an old woolen sport jacket, his battered brown fedora lying on the sofa seat beside him. Their clothing seemed perfectly appropriate, for her, for them, for the season, for life in the headwaters. She’d have to stop by Willard Road and get a dress from the closet before next week.
“Now, on to our other business.” Stamper set one file aside and picked up another. “Mr. Keefe, the power of attorney document you called about, we’ve got that ready here.” Stamper turned his face to the door to the outer office and called out. “Sherri Lynn, a minute, please.”
Stamper’s assistant walked in from the outer office, smiled and nodded to Sandy and Keefe, and then turned to the attorney. “That Ridpath boy is waiting out there.”
