Call If You Need Me

by Raymond Carver

  It smells of Iris; a warm, moist odor, slightly sticky; New Spring talc and King’s Idyll cologne. Her towel lies across the back of the toilet. In the sink she has spilled talcum. It is wet now and pasty and makes a thick yellow ring around the white sides. He rubs it out and washes it into the drain.

  He is shaving. By turning his head, he can see into the living room. Iris in profile sitting on the stool in front of the old dresser. He lays down the razor and washes his face, then picks up the razor again. At this moment he hears the first few drops of rain spatter against the roof …

  After a while he turns out the light over the dresser and sits down again in the big leather chair, listening to the rain. The rain comes in short, fluttery swishes against his window. The soft fluttering of a white bird.

  His sister has caught it. She keeps it in a box, dropping in flowers for it through the top, sometimes shaking the box so they can hear it fluttering its wings against the sides until one morning she shows him, holding out the box, there is no fluttering inside. Only a lumpy, scraping sound the bird makes as she tilts the box from one side to the other. When she gives it to him to get rid of he throws box and all into the river, not wanting to open it for it has started to smell funny. The cardboard box is eighteen inches long and six inches wide and four inches deep, and he is sure it is a Snowflake cracker box because this is what she used for the first few birds.

  He runs along the squashy bank following. It is a funeral boat and the muddy river is the Nile and it will soon run into the ocean but before that the boat will burn up and the white bird will fly out and into his father’s fields someplace where he will hunt out the bird in some thick growth of green meadow grass, eggs and all. He runs along the bank, the brush whipping his pants, and once a limb hits him on the ear, and it still hasn’t burned. He pulls loose some rocks from the bank and begins throwing them at the boat. And then the rain begins; huge, gusty, spattering drops that belt the water, sweeping across the river from one shore to the other.

  Farrell had been in bed for a number of hours now, how long he could not be sure. Every so often he raised up on one shoulder, careful not to disturb his wife, and peered across to her nightstand trying for a look at the clock. Its side was turned a little too much in his direction and raising as he does on one shoulder, being as careful as possible, he could see only that the yellow hands say 3:15 or 2:45. Outside the rain came against his window. He turned on his back, his legs spread wide under the sheet barely touching his wife’s left foot, listening to the clock on the nightstand. He pulled down into the quilts again and then because it was too hot and his hands were sweating, he threw back the close covers, twisting his fingers into the sheet, crushing it between his fingers and knotting it against his palms until they felt dry.

  Outside the rain came in clouds, lifting up in swells against the faint yellow outside light like myriads of tiny yellow insects coming furiously against his window, spitting and rippling. He turned over and slowly began working himself closer to Lorraine until her smooth back touched his chest. For a moment he held her gently, carefully, his hand lying in the hollow of her stomach, his fingers slipped under the elastic band of her underpants, the fingertips barely touching the stiff, brush-like hair below. An odd sensation then, like slipping into a warm bath and feeling himself a child again, the memories flooding back. He moved his hand and pulled away, then eased out of bed and walked to the streaming window.

  It was a huge, foreign dream night outside. The street lamp a gaunt, scarred obelisk running up into the rain with a faint yellow light holding to its point. At its base the street was black, shiny. Darkness swirled and pulled at the edges of the light. He could not see the other apartments and for a moment it was as if they’d been destroyed, like the houses in the picture he’d been looking at a few hours ago. The rain appeared and disappeared against the window like a dark veil opened and closed. Down below it flooded at the curbs. Leaning closer until he could feel the cold drafts of air on his forehead from the bottom of the window, he watched his breath make a fog. He had read someplace and it seemed he could remember looking at some picture once, perhaps National Geographic, where groups of brown-skinned people stood around their huts watching the frosted sun come up. The caption said they believed the soul was visible in the breath, that they were spitting and blowing into the palms of their hands, offering their souls to God. His breath disappeared while he watched, until only a tiny circle, a dot remained, then nothing. He turned away from the window for his things.

  He fumbled in the closet for his insulated boots, his hands tracing the sleeves of each coat until he found the rubber slick waterproof. He went to the drawer for socks and long underwear, then picked up his shirt and pants and carried the armload through the hallway into the kitchen before turning on the light. He dressed and pulled on his boots before starting the coffee. He would have liked to turn on the porch light for Frank but somehow it didn’t seem good with Iris out there in bed. While the coffee perked he made sandwiches and when it had finished he filled a thermos, took a cup down from the cupboard, filled it, and sat down near the window where he could watch the street. He smoked and drank the coffee and listened to the clock on the stove squeaking. The coffee slopped over the cup and the brown drops ran slowly down the side onto the table. He rubbed his fingers through the wet circle across the rough tabletop.

  He is sitting at the desk in his sister’s room. He sits in the straight-backed chair on a thick dictionary, his feet curled up beneath the seat of the chair, the heels of his shoes hooked on the rung. When he leans too heavily on the table one of the legs picks up from the floor and so he has had to put a magazine under the leg. He is drawing a picture of the valley he lives in. At first he meant to trace a picture from one of his sister’s schoolbooks, but after using three sheets of paper and having it still not turn out right, he has decided to draw his valley and his house. Occasionally he stops drawing and rubs his fingers across the grainy surface of the table.

  Outside, the April air is still damp and cool, the coolness that comes after the rain in the afternoon. The ground and the trees and the mountains are green and steam is everywhere, coming off the troughs in the corral, from the pond his father made, and out of the meadow in slow, pencil-like columns, rising off the river and going up over the mountains like smoke. He can hear his father shouting to one of the men and he hears the man swear and shout back. He puts his drawing pencil down and slips off the chair. Down below in front of the smokehouse he sees his father working with the pulley. At his feet there is a coil of brown rope and his father is hitting and pulling on the pulley bar trying to swing it out and away from the barn. On his head he wears a brown wool army cap and the collar of his scarred leather jacket is turned up exposing the dirty white lining. With a final blow at the pulley he turns around facing the men. Two of them, big, red-faced Canadians with greasy flannel hats, dragging the sheep toward his father. Their fists are balled deep into the wool and one of them has his arms wrapped around the front legs of the sheep. They go toward the barn, half dragging, half walking the sheep on its hind legs like some wild dance. His father calls out again and they pin the sheep against the barn wall, one of the men straddling the sheep, forcing its head back and up toward his window. Its nostrils are dark slits with little streams of mucus running down into its mouth. The ancient, glazed eyes stare up at him for a moment before it tries to bleat, but the sound comes out a sharp squeaking noise as his father cuts it off with a quick, sweeping thrust of the knife. The blood gushes out over the man’s hands before he can move. In a few moments they have the animal up on the pulley. He can hear the dull crank-crank-crank of the pulley as his father winds it even higher. The men are sweating now but they keep their jackets fastened up tight.

  Starting right below the gaping throat his father opens up the brisket and belly while the men take the smaller knives and begin cutting the pelt away from the legs. The gray guts slide out of the steaming belly and tumble onto the ground in a
thick coil. His father grunts and scoops them into a box, saying something about bear. The red-faced men laugh. He hears the chain in the bathroom rattle and then the water gurgling into the toilet. A moment later he turns toward the door as footsteps approach. His sister comes into the room, her body faintly steaming. For an instant she is frozen there in the doorway with the towel around her hair, one hand holding the ends together and the other on the doorknob. Her breasts are round and smooth-looking, the nipples like the stems of the warm porcelain fruit on the living room table. She drops the towel and it slides down, pulling at her neck, touching across her breasts and then heaping up at her foot. She smiles, slowly puts the hand to her mouth and pulls the door shut. He turns back to the window, his toes curling up in his shoes.

  Farrell sat at the table sipping his coffee, smoking again on an empty stomach. Once he heard a car in the street and got up quickly out of the chair, walking to the porch window to see. It started up the street in second then slowed in front of his house, taking the corner carefully, water churning half up to its hubs, but it went on. He sat down at the table again and listened to the electric clock on the stove squeaking. His fingers tightened around the cup. Then he saw the lights. They came bobbing down the street out of the darkness; two close-set signal lanterns on a narrow prow, the heavy white rain falling across the lights, pelting the street ahead. It splashed down the street, slowed, then eased in under his window.

  He picked up his things and went out on the porch. Iris was there, stretched out under the twisted pile of heavy quilts. Even as he hunted for a reason for the action, as if he were detached somehow, crouched on the other side of her bed watching himself go through this, at the same time knowing it was over, he moved toward her bed. Irresistibly he bent down over her figure, as if he hung suspended, all senses released except that of smell, he breathed deeply for the fleeting scent of her body, bending until his face was against her covers he experienced the scent again, for just an instant, and then it was gone. He backed away, remembered his gun, then pulled the door shut behind him. The rain whipped into his face. He felt almost giddy clutching his gun and holding onto the banister, steadying himself. For a minute, looking down over the porch to the black, ripply sidewalk, it was as though he were standing alone on a bridge someplace, and again the feeling came, as it had last night, that this had already happened, knowing then that it would happen again, just as he somehow knew now. “Christ!” The rain cut at his face, ran down his nose and onto his lips. Frank tapped the horn twice and Farrell went carefully down the wet, slippery stairs to the car.

  “Regular downpour, by God!” Frank said. A big man, with a thick quilted jacket zipped up to his chin and a brown duck-bill cap that made him look like a grim umpire. He helped move things around in the backseat so Farrell could put his things in.

  Water ran up against the gutters, backed up at the drains on the corners and now and then they could see where it had flooded over the curbs and into a yard. They followed the street to its end and then turned right onto another street that would take them to the highway.

  “This is going to slow us down some, but, Jesus, think what it’s going to do to them geese!”

  Once again Farrell let go and saw them, pulling them back from that one moment when even the fog had frozen to the rocks and so dark it could as well have been midnight as late afternoon when they started. They come over the bluff, flying low and savage and silent, coming out of the fog suddenly, spectrally, in a swishing of wings over his head and he is jumping up trying to single out the closest, at the same moment pushing forward his safety, but it is jammed and his stiff, gloved finger stays hooked into the guard, pulling against the locked trigger. They all come over him, flying out of the fog across the bluff and over his head. Great strings of them calling down to him. This was the way it happened three years ago.

  He watched the wet fields fall under their lights and then sweep beside and then behind the car. The windshield wipers squeaked back and forth.

  Iris pulls her hair down over the one shoulder with her left hand while the other wields the brush. Rhythmically the brush makes its sweeping movement through the length of the hair with a faint squeaking noise. The brush rises quickly again to the side of the head and repeats the movement and the sound. She has just told him she is pregnant.

  Lorraine has gone to a shower. He has still to call Frank and confirm the hunting trip. The glossy picture of the magazine he holds in his lap is open to the scene of a disaster. One of the men in the picture, evidently the leader, is pointing over the disaster scene to a body of water.

  “What are you going to do?” He turns and goes on through to the bathroom. Her towel hangs over the back of the toilet and the bathroom smells of New Spring talc and King’s Idyll cologne. There is a yellow pasty ring of talcum powder in the sink that he must rub out with water before he shaves. He can look through to the living room where she sits combing her hair. When he has washed his face and dried, just after he has picked up the razor again, the first raindrops strike the roof.

  He looked at the clock on the dashboard but it had stopped.

  “What time is it?”

  “Don’t pay any attention to that clock there,” Frank said, lifting his thumb off the wheel to indicate the big glowing yellow clock protruding from the dash. “It’s stopped. It’s 6:30. Did your wife say you had to be home at a certain time?” He smiled.

  Farrell shook his head but Frank would not be able to see this. “No. Just wondered what time it was.” He lit a cigarette and slumped back in his seat, watching the rain sweep into the car lights and splash against the window.

  They are driving down from Yakima to get Iris. It started to rain when they hit the Columbia River highway and by the time they got through Arlington, it was a torrent.

  It is like a long sloping tunnel, and they are speeding down the black road with the thick matted trees close overhead and the water cascading against the front of the car. Lorraine’s arm extends along the back of the seat, her hand resting lightly on his left shoulder. She is sitting so close that he can feel her left breast rise and fall with her breathing. She has just tried to dial something on the radio, but there is too much static.

  “She can fix up the porch for a place to sleep and keep her things,” Farrell says, not taking his eyes off the road. “It won’t be for long.”

  Lorraine turns toward him for a moment leaning forward a little in the seat, placing her free hand on his thigh. With her left hand she squeezes her fingers into his shoulder then leans her head against him. After a while she says: “You’re all mine, Lew. I hate to think of sharing you even for a little while with anybody. Even your own sister.”

  The rain lets up gradually and often there are no trees at all over their heads. Once Farrell sees the moon, a sharp, stark yellow crescent, shining through the mist of gray clouds. They leave the woods and the road curves and they follow it into a valley that opens onto the river below. It has stopped raining and the sky is a black rug with handfuls of glistening stars strewn about.

  “How long will she stay?” Lorraine asks.

  “A couple of months. Three at the most. The Seattle job will be open for her before Christmas.” The ride has made his stomach a little fluttery. He lights a cigarette. The gray smoke streams out of his nose and is immediately pulled out through the wing window.

  The cigarette began to bite the tip of his tongue and he cracked the window and dropped it out. Frank turned off the highway and onto a slick blacktop that would take them to the river. They were in the wheat country now, the great fields of harvested wheat rolling out toward the dimly outlined hills beyond and broken every so often by a muddy, churned-looking field glimmering with little pockets of water. Next year they would be in plant and in the summer the wheat would stand as high as a man’s waist, hissing and bending when the wind blew.

  “It’s a shame,” Frank said, “all this land without grain half the time with half the people in the world starving.” He
shook his head. “If the government would keep its fingers off the farm we’d be a damn sight better off.”

  The pavement ended in a jag of cracks and chuckholes and the car bounced onto the rubbery, black pitted road that stretched like a long black avenue toward the hills.

  “Have you ever seen them when they harvest, Lew?”

  “No.”

  The morning grayed. Farrell saw the stubble fields turned into a cheat-yellow as he watched. He looked out the window at the sky where gray clouds rolled and broke into massive, clumsy chunks. “The rain’s going to quit.”

  They came to the foot of the hills where the fields ended, then turned and drove along at the edge of the fields following the hills until they came to the head of the canyon. Far below at the very bottom of the stone-ribbed canyon lay the river, its far side covered by a bank of fog.

  “It’s stopped raining,” Farrell said.

  Frank backed the car into a small, rocky ravine and said it was a good enough place. Farrell took out his shotgun and leaned it against the rear fender before taking out his shell bag and extra coat. Then he lifted out the paper sack with the sandwiches and his hand closed tightly around the warm, hard thermos. They walked away from the car without talking and along the ridge before starting to drop down into one of the small valleys that opened into the canyon. The earth was studded here and there with sharp rocks or a black, dripping bush.

  The ground sogged under his feet, pulled at his boots with every step, and made a sucking noise when he released them. He carried the shell bag in his right hand, swinging it like a sling, letting it hang down by its strap from his hand. A wet breeze off the river blew against his face. The sides of the low bluffs overlooking the river down below were deeply grooved and cut back into the rock, leaving table-like projections jutting out, marking the high-water lines for thousands of years past. Piles of naked white logs and countless pieces of driftwood lay jammed onto the ledge like cairns of bones dragged up onto the cliffs by some giant bird. Farrell tried to remember where the geese came over, three years ago. He stopped on the side of a hill just where it sloped into the canyon and leaned his gun on a rock. He pulled bushes and gathered rocks from nearby and walked down toward the river after some of the driftwood to make a blind.