Otherwise, it appeared Billy Thunder would have to stop eating, drinking, smoking, driving, and maybe even fucking.
***
When Orville arrived at the moose mailbox, Harry’s truck was pulled into the driveway, Harry himself waiting next to the box. Orville found the packet with #77 on it and then whirred down his window. That’s when Harry nodded at the wood blocks piled in the back of his truck.
“Nothing like getting up your winter wood, is there?” Harry asked. Orville quickly lowered the moose’s rear end and deposited into its body that day’s mail. “They say maple is a good firewood because it’s dense and produces more coals.”
Orville had not even glanced up at Harry. Instead, he pulled the car out of park and eased it back onto the road. Meg had warned him that morning. “Don’t let Harry Plunkett get to you. If you went along with him as if it didn’t bother you, you’d be taking all the sport out of it.” Orville didn’t see it that way, not when he was the sport. And besides, Meg wasn’t the best judge in this situation. The Craft-Plunkett feud might have manifested itself in the form of a moose mailbox after Orville’s refusal to let Harry fish at Craft Pond. But Orville was certain that the impetus—impetus: that which incites; the stimulus—had to do with a woman named Meg Hart Craft, who had once been blond by nature and had legs that seemed to go on forever under her summer dresses. Meg, whose high cheekbones had disappeared beneath a face most people would call pleasantly plump, whose long legs were now useful to carry around that extra seventy pounds and whose blond hair came from a little bottle with the word Clairol on it. Meg, who had learned to stare at a computer for hours as she played Hangman and Solitaire and some dumb game where a penguin in a tuxedo jumps over blocks of ice, all while she answered the instant messages that came winging from her sister down in Augusta. It had all started with Meg, at a high school dance forty-four years earlier.
Orville hit the gas pedal and headed off to his next stop, where Dorrie Mullins was awaiting her catalogs du jour.
***
It was after supper and Orville Craft was dressed in his regular green work pants, not the fancier ones he wore while delivering mail. It wasn’t as if he donned a suit and tie when he went to work. But he felt he owed the government as well as his postal clients the courtesy of being a nattily dressed and presentable mail carrier. His shirts were well ironed and always a solid color, whether plain white or pale blue. No busy and distracting plaids for Orville, and certainly nothing with a silly slogan on it, such as the wordy shirts and caps Harry Plunkett often wore.
Meg, on the other hand, thought Orville worried too much about his appearance. She had fussed in the beginning since she was the one who had to starch and iron those shirts, as well as put that pleat down each leg of his solid gray or brown or black pants. “Your customers don’t even see your pants,” Meg had said. “And besides, who says the mailman has to be eye candy?”
On the other side of the marital coin, Orville himself had often wondered if Meg ever woke in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, if she ever lay there in bed beside her mailman husband and wished he was Harold Plunkett. Or, if she refused to go that far in her marriage bed, did she ever wonder what being married to Harry would be like? It was true that Harry was more of a character than a sensible man, like Orville Craft. The town saw in the former a seasoned storyteller, the kind the old-timers used to be, regaling folks with funny events that had happened generations ago, along with a bit of new polish. In Orville’s book this was called bullshitting. But Harry had his fans; there was no doubt about that. And he had maintained a good physique over the years, always cutting his own firewood, always doing his own shoveling, even his own grocery shopping since he’d been a widower for a lot of years. By contrast, Orville paid for his firewood since it was cheap in Mattagash. And he paid for Tommy Gifford to plow his driveway on snow days. Meg did the grocery shopping for the two of them. Considering all this, Orville had developed what is known as a spare tire around his waistline and a certain slackness to the muscles in his arms and legs. It wasn’t as if it took a weight lifter to hoist a letter from the car to a mailbox. And now he had only smaller packages to deliver, since UPS and FedEx were running the rubber off their tires daily, delivering to Mattagash all the junk that locals were ordering off the Internet. Orville didn’t think he’d live to see it happen that the United States Post Office would be overtaken and passed by both UPS and FedEx trucks on the same day. But it had happened to him several times in the past year.
“I’m gonna take a little drive up to the cabin,” he said to Meg. She was back on the computer in her sewing room, playing that same game where the penguin in a tuxedo jumps over blocks of ice to grab jewels. Her right hand on the mouse, Meg waved her left hand at Orville, as if to say she heard him.
Orville got on his four-wheeler and backed it out of its small shed. He was proud of his road up the mountain. And he was proud of the one-acre pond too, a small basin of blue water that surged up from an abundant underground spring. It was on Craft land, had always been on Craft land, and therefore everyone called it Craft Pond, even if the state and mapmakers didn’t know it existed. Five years earlier, Orville had cleaned up the shores of the pond, pulling out and disposing of all the dead and fallen trees, the jagged and rotting stumps. He had stocked the pond himself with a few dozen sleek and beautiful baby trout. Two years later, he could walk the circumference while listening to the slap of fish hitting the surface of the water as they ate their daily quota of insects. He could see the early morning flashes of silver cutting swift arcs beneath the water. He had played a cosmic part in birthing this pond. That meant it was his.
Orville had made a fire in his stove and had a pan of water boiling for tea when he slipped the brochure out from under the sticks of rock maple that filled his woodbox. He put his glasses on and read the title aloud, softly, in case the birds and rabbits might hear him and start snickering. Viagra. Is it for you? He had picked the brochure out of the wastebasket at the post office, the day he’d stopped by as a civilian to buy a stamped envelope. With no one looking, he’d slipped it into his pocket and drove it home. After he sat on the swing and read the first two pages, he’d gone in to Meg’s little sewing room and placed the brochure on the desk next to her computer mouse. Orville personally had not asked the question of Meg, since the brochure did it for him. Viagra. Is it for you? Meg didn’t take time to read even the first line on page one before she gave him an answer. “No, Orville,” she said. “It isn’t for me. It isn’t for me today and it won’t be a year from now. In five years, when I’m seventy years old, the answer will still be no. And guess what, Orville? It’s not for you either.” And then she swiveled back around in her chair and made the penguin jump for a sparkling green emerald.
So Orville had hidden the brochure at his getaway cabin, a place Meg hated to visit for ten minutes, much less long enough to snoop. Now and then, when the mood hit him, he got the brochure out and read again how Viagra relaxes the smooth muscle of the penis to allow increased blood flow and erection. And how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved Viagra for erectile dysfunction. There had been whispers about such things at Blanche’s Café, wives sharing secrets when they didn’t know their mailman was listening as he ate a piece of blueberry pie. There seemed to be a few men in town who might thank the Food and Drug Administration if their wives would allow them. Booster Mullins, married to the eternally bullying Dorrie, was one, although Orville didn’t know why anyone would want to have sex with Dorrie. There was Christopher Harris, who had moved up from Watertown when he married Gretchen Gifford. Phillip Craft was on the list. And Porter Hart, who was married to Meg’s niece, Lillian.
But Orville didn’t think he was dysfunctional at all. Was his four-wheeler dysfunctional if he didn’t put the key in it and turn it on? A motor needs ignition. How could he be dysfunctional if Meg hadn’t turned him on in over a decade? She didn’t even try. And si
nce Orville believed fully in his marriage vows, how could he know how well he might perform at the age of sixty-five, with or without Viagra? Of course, both he and Meg had been born, had grown up, and had married B.V.
Before Viagra.
Reading in his brochure about the little blue pill, Orville was reminded of that Greek god named Prometheus who went up to the sun and brought back fire to give to mortal man. But while it took only one person to swallow the pill, it took two to enjoy its benefits. And it appeared that Mrs. Craft would rather flirt with a bird wearing a tuxedo than her own husband. The pill would remain in a photo on page two of his brochure.
Orville poured hot water over his tea bag, and while it was steeping, he looked again at page one. It set the tone for the rest of the brochure, and it was Orville’s favorite page. Why VIAGRA? Because the children are gone and it’s time to fall in love all over again. Because you can’t spend all day Sunday reading the newspaper. Because that special look on your loved one’s face is meant only for you. This last line always saddened him. Meg’s “special look” was strictly reserved for that penguin.
Orville put the brochure back under the sticks of firewood, and that’s when it occurred to him. What was different about his road up the mountainside? There was something out of place, wasn’t there? Something missing? Five minutes later, his cup of tea getting cold back at the cabin, Orville was sitting on his four-wheeler, staring at the spot where only sawdust remained of what had been a nice maple tree. The wooden sign he had nailed to it the day before, shortly after he’d discovered the transmuted moose, was now on the ground and leaning against a small fir. NO TRESPASSING TO CRAFT POND was still dark and bold, as Orville’s marker had intended the words to be. But below them, in scraggly, piss-poor handwriting, someone had scrawled words with red timber chalk. Guess who was here.
Orville would never say the word aloud, but it’s the one he thought of first.
Bastard.
***
Billy Thunder sat with his feet up on Buck Fennelson’s hassock and waited for Buck to return from the kitchen with two beers. Life in the camper was getting more hazardous and now there was a cold in Billy’s bones that he couldn’t shake off. He had finally wrapped up in a small blanket he found lying on Buck’s sofa, soft and warm, with dark blue dots in its design. Along with needing a bigger heater for the camper, if he didn’t soon fix the Mustang’s roof, he would turn into one of those ice sculptures he had seen at the winter carnival in Quebec City.
“What kind of job?” asked Buck, as he offered Billy a beer.
Billy had met Buck Fennelson his first week in town and had listened as Buck explained how they were fourth cousins. “Wait, maybe it’s fifth,” Buck had said, staring at the rug in Billy’s camper as he thought hard. “But it could be sixth. We’re related in at least three different ways, so maybe it’s all of the above.” Until he came to Mattagash, Billy hadn’t realized he needed to know algebra to learn his family tree.
“Put it on the coffee table,” Billy told him. “I’ll drink it when my hands warm up.”
“That blanket belongs to Frankie,” Buck said and dropped onto the sofa beside Billy.
“Frankie won’t mind, will he?”
“Naw,” said Buck.
Billy didn’t know who Frankie was, nor did he care. But now he wondered if Buck’s new girlfriend had brought a kid with her when she arrived. He was going to ask but decided against it. Buck had enough problems as it was, one being his IQ. It was clear to even an outsider that Buck’s brain had driven in first gear all its life. The whole town kept thinking the boy would shift one day, if not into third, then at least into a respectable second. But now, in his thirtieth year of life, it looked as if Buck was content to go it at his own speed.
“So, what kind of job is it?” Buck asked again. He popped the top off his beer.
“Lydia Hatch needs her firewood cut and piled,” said Billy. “Do you know her? She sounded nice on the phone.”
Buck took a drink of beer as he thought of Lydia Hatch.
“She ain’t so nice in person,” he said. “But then, she’s got Owl to look after.”
Billy now had the blanket up around his neck, which was also freezing. He pushed the tip of his nose down into the blue flannel and looked at Buck.
“Who’s Owl?” he asked. He was starting to think that something about the blanket wasn’t as it should be. He sniffed. What was it? Bleach?
“Owl’s her grandson from downstate,” said Buck. “That’s his nickname.” Buck allowed a fart to punctuate his last sentence, as if the fart were a period.
“Buck, the fumes in here are thick enough,” Billy said. “What did you eat?”
Buck reached into his pocket for his can of Redman and flipped a chew under his lip.
“Mona’s been cooking new stuff she finds on the Internet,” Buck said. “She’s in a club where they make recipes from different countries.” Another fart arrived, this one louder and in bursts, more like an ellipses. “We just got to a place they call Brazil.”
Mona. That would be the toothy girl Buck had met and fell instantly in love with at Bert’s Lounge in Watertown during the Fourth of July weekend. At least, his bottom half fell in love. The top half was running on automatic pilot. Billy figured the romance would be over in a week or so, but in August he had seen Buck’s green pickup go by, painfully loaded with everything from a washer and a dryer to a computer and a snow blower. That’s when skinny Mona had moved into the tiny house Buck’s mother left him in her will, the last mailbox at the end of the Mattagash road. Billy pushed his nose deeper into the blanket and inhaled. Not bleach but maybe some kind of ammonia? He noticed a movement in the corner, behind the color TV set that must have arrived with Mona since the only color Buck could afford was on his can of Redman. A dog lay sprawled on the floor there, sleeping soundly atop what had to be a dog pillow. The pillow had dark blue dots as its pattern, same as the blanket. Billy stared. Those weren’t dots. They were small dog heads. This was the kind of pillow and blanket he had seen in pet shops. Buck beat him to the answer.
“That’s Frankie,” Buck said. “Mona’s dog. He’s been pissing on everything since he got here.”
***
It was late afternoon before Jorge and Raul Delgato arrived at the Catholic cemetery on Ocean Avenue. Raul cruised the Cadillac Deville around the visitors’ parking lot three times before he found enough empty spaces. It wasn’t his car, but he knew that cousin Jorge liked to park it across two spots, crisscross, so no other vehicle could come close enough to dent the sides. A 2000 model, it already had a dozen respectable scratches and dings, but Jorge had always treated the car as if it had just that day rolled off the assembly line.
“Don’t forget the candle,” said Raul. He watched as Jorge eased his big body out of the passenger seat, a muffled grunt getting him onto his feet. Jorge worked his arms back and forth to straighten the sleeves of his black trench coat. It was always twisted under his ass whenever they went somewhere in the Cadillac. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the box of white utility candles, held them up for Raul to see.
“You should start wearing a corset, dude,” said Raul. “You got tits now like a hooker.” He leaned into the backseat and grabbed the brown package that was addressed to William Thunder, Box 46, Mattagash, Maine.
“Be nice,” said Jorge, “and I’ll let you play with them when it gets dark.”
Raul took the brown package around to the trunk, which unlocked with an invisible click from his key chain. He put the box inside, next to the baseball bat, and covered it with a greasy towel.
“The post office closes in an hour,” said Raul. “Let’s make this quick.”
The cousins headed for the closest entrance to the cemetery, just beyond the Visitor Parking sign. Two feet past the entrance archway, they stopped. Ahead lay hundreds of markers, headstones of all
shapes and sizes, with avenues branching out into other parts of the cemetery, rows and rows, a battlefield for the dead.
“Fuck,” said Jorge. “Are we at the right entrance? Where’s the big angel with the big wings?”
“We should have asked Grandpa Delgato,” said Raul.
They moved forward, past stone angels and praying saints, past many Madonnas and what looked like a cement donkey, maybe the same one Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem, now fossilized. They passed memorial markers to veterans, granite benches and circular flower beds, and still nothing looked familiar. They paused before an enormous pietà that made up the centerpiece of the cemetery, so huge it loomed over them. They stood staring at it in reverence, at Mary’s bereaved face, at the lifeless body of the crucified son she held in her arms.
“I thought he was bigger than that,” said Raul. “He’s small for thirty-three.”
Raul was first to make the sign of the cross and then Jorge. They moved on, turning north now and following a cobblestone path.
“There was a big angel with big gray wings, remember?” asked Jorge. “You could throw a stone from that angel to Grandma Delgato’s grave.”
“I don’t see a big angel,” said Raul. “Just them little ones.”
“Where’s a fucking map?” asked Jorge. “Even a mall has a fucking map.”
“Don’t swear,” said Raul. “Maybe Grandma Delgato can hear you.” He looked back over his shoulder, past the rows of headstones and plastic flowers, checking to see if perhaps the Virgin Mary had taken her eyes away from her dead boy to turn them angrily on the Delgatos.
“How can you find your loved one with no fucking map?”
“There should be a girl here,” said Raul, “like at the movie theater. She could come with a flashlight and lead us to the right grave.”
“I gotta sit down,” said Jorge. “My feet are killing me.”
The One-Way Bridge Page 4
