Billy smiled. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to remain aloof, wanted to hover over Buck Fennelson the way a foreman should, the way the Lace Curtain Irish—whatever the hell that was—probably hovered over the Shanty Irish. But he couldn’t act anything but pleased to know he had another solid fan of his Grateful Elvis.
“Sure, if she deserves it,” said Billy. “That’s why I invented it.”
Lydia Hatch stepped cautiously onto her front porch, the wind pressing her dress against the pudgy calves of her legs.
“Nice stack of wood,” said Lydia, and Billy smiled.
“We sure worked our butts off,” he said, throwing a small glance at Buck, who was stuffed inside his ski jacket. Lydia reached into her dress pocket and came out with a few rolled bills, which she handed to Billy.
“Good job,” she said again. She turned back to the warmth of her house, anxious to be inside with Owl no doubt, where the two could stuff their faces with cake until the cows came home. Billy wasted no time in looking at the numbers in his hand. Three twenties. Sixty lousy dollars.
He did the math quickly. With the pair of gloves, the donuts, the Cokes, and tobacco—good thing he hadn’t agreed to supply Buck with toilet paper—he’d be lucky to break even once he gave Buck a share. They had worked all day, and they had worked hard; at least Billy had while Buck was on his siesta.
“Miss Hatch?” Billy said. Lydia was about to close her door when she heard this. She turned, impatient.
“Yes?” she said. “What is it?”
Billy held the bills up. Then he did his Elvis impression, his lip curling, a lip with a mind of its own. The words came quickly and somewhat slurred, a trick that had taken him a lot of stoned nights to perfect.
“I just wanna say, FuckYouMa’amFuckYouVeryMuch,” Billy told her.
“You’re welcome,” Lydia said and closed the door. He could see her silhouette inside the frosted glass as she stood immobile, thinking. Ever since he had invented the Grateful Elvis, five years earlier, he had seen this same reaction on a multitude of people. Billy knew what was going through her mind. Did I hear what I think I heard, or did he actually say thank you?
Buck was sitting on the porch, his puffy ski jacket shaking with laughter. Billy motioned for him to follow. There would be beers at Bert’s Lounge in Watertown, and they wouldn’t be so cold your lips hurt to drink them. The pitiful money he’d made would cover a small pizza too, and maybe a few songs on the jukebox. Buck caught up to him.
“You gonna pay me what I’m worth, Billy?” he asked.
Billy opened the door on the Mustang and heard it creak. The windshield seemed ready to crack and break if a feather wafted down on it. Winter hadn’t yet started. What could December and January possibly be like?
“What do you think you’re worth, Buck?” Billy asked.
“I worked hard, and them sticks were heavy,” Buck said.
“You did work hard,” Billy told him, “till the lava started pouring out of your ass.”
Billy gave Buck one of the twenties and then pulled his last ten from his pocket. Thirty of the sixty dollars. He should deduct expenses, but he had no heart for it. Buck’s face was a solid smile as he went around and cracked open the passenger door. Billy heard it creak with the cold, the way an arm is wrested behind a person to have it snap and break. As Buck settled into the front seat, the leather screamed beneath him. Billy got in and shut the door. He turned the key and heard nothing but a soft, painful click.
“You should have plugged it in,” said Buck. “There’s not much keeping it warm, given you got no roof.” That wasn’t it, but Billy had no intention of telling Buck that when he came to get his earmuffs and found the beer, he’d stayed to drink one while listening to the radio. And that meant he’d forgotten to turn off the ignition switch.
Billy sat there, saying nothing. He watched as the blue evening pushed in over the mountain range beyond the Mattagash River, as if the cold were a living thing, a thing with arms and hands and fingers, a thing that could come and get you if sat waiting for it. Maybe the cold was a clown riding an elephant. Billy tried the switch again, in case a miracle had occurred in the last sixty seconds.
Click.
“It ain’t gonna start,” said Buck. Billy slapped a hand against the steering wheel, but all it did was hurt his numb fingers. He looked at Buck.
“How’d you get so smart all of a sudden?”
Billy opened his door to a loud and painful squeal. It was as if the cold could get into iron and steel the way it got into human bones. They would get the blue tarp from the trunk and cover the car. Tomorrow, he would ask Tommy Gifford to come with his pickup and give the dead battery a boost. Tonight, he would hitch a ride to Watertown with someone who had a top to their automobile. And he would spend the night there, coming back the next day around noontime when the sun would be shining its best warmth. Watertown would mean hot food and some good beer, maybe a shot or two of tequila. And if there was a god, it would mean sleeping next to one of those young French girls who are always so warm when they open up their arms to the night.
5
THURSDAY MORNING
When Orville woke, he thought it was because his alarm clock had gone off, as it always did, at six thirty. By seven fifteen, he’d have eaten his breakfast and be out the door to the post office, ready to sort that day’s mail for delivery. But the clock was sitting there quietly with that smug, illuminated look on its face. A couple minutes to six. Unable to fall back asleep, Orville stared up at the light Meg had installed over their bed years earlier, a rectangle of painted glass that hid the bulb above. Most Mattagash men who worked in the woods would be on the job for two or three hours by this time of morning. Those who drove the trucks were the earliest birds of all, usually roaring past Orville’s house at two o’clock. He had heard them on those dark mornings when he’d risen to pee, heard the Jake brakes as they approached the bridge. Many of them didn’t get home for their suppers until Orville had driven down from his cabin and put the four-wheeler back into its shed, around 7 p.m. Did he feel guilt? Sometimes. But then he’d remember what his father, Simon Craft, used to say. “See the pictures little boys are drawing in Mattagash? They’re all trucks and logs and skidders. The parents are so proud they tack ’em to their refrigerators. Is it any wonder they’re raising future lumberjacks who gotta get up hours before a mailman? Lumberjacks ain’t born. In this town, they’re grown.”
And that’s what Orville would remember, at two o’clock, when the first huge trucks went rattling by like trains, dragging their long bodies behind them. He’d peer out the lower window at yellow lights coming up the road, emerging from the darkness, and then hear the whoosh as the truck passed the house. Looking out the upper window, he’d see red taillights and hear the sound of Jake brakes. Then the truck would clatter over the bridge, on its way miles up a logging road where some poor half-asleep bugger was drinking the last of his coffee and waiting to crawl up onto his loader so he could load the truck with logs. And there Orville Craft would be, shaking his pecker dry and stuffing it into his shorts, seconds away from crawling back into that warm bed.
Meg didn’t like to hear him call it a pecker. “It sounds vulgar and crude,” she’d say, and that pinch of disgust would appear around her mouth muscles, an act that made her face look puckered. Back in their earlier years when they were still a threesome—a ménage à trois that included Meg, Orville, and his pecker—he would have been more careful with his wording. After all, he was often rewarded back then for listening to Meg’s criticism and paying attention to her advice. He was delivering milk for the Watertown Dairy, before he began delivering letters and packages. Sometimes, on his route up through Mattagash, he’d pull the milk truck into his drive and flip it in park. He’d bound out of the seat and in a matter of a few long strides would be standing at his kitchen door. He’d open it slowly, noiselessly, although
he knew the kids were safe in school in those old days and never a problem. That’s when Meg would look up from whatever she was doing and see him standing there. And she’d smile as if she had not only missed him, but she really missed him in that husband-wife way. Maybe she’d be knitting or doing the dishes or folding clothes or cooking something for their supper, and there he’d be, standing in the kitchen in the middle of a workday. She’d look up, that sweet look of surprise on her face, followed by the smile. And she’d stop whatever she was doing, she’d drop her knitting needles or half-washed plate or half-folded bath towel, half-mixed cake batter, and she’d come to him, put her arms around his neck, and that’s when he’d touch her breasts beneath her dress. He’d undo her apron and let it fall on the floor. Let other men long for the days of nylon stockings and garter belts. Pointy high-heeled shoes. To Orville there was nothing sexier than a female wearing a dainty apron. “Let’s go upstairs,” he’d whisper. “Do you think we should?” she’d ask, and he knew it was her way of holding on to her modesty, of being a shy girl and letting the man in him take control. And he’d say “Yes, honey, I think we should.”
Fifteen minutes later, he’d be back in the kitchen, tossing down a glass of water and Meg would be fixing her hair and making sure his shirt was straight and proper as she kissed him good-bye. That night at supper, the kids around the table, noisy and squabbling, their eyes would meet, his and Meg’s, they’d meet halfway down that table of kids. And then their eyes would talk to each other. Their eyes would say things like “Remember today?” and “I love you.” Sometimes, they would wake before the alarm clock, knowing the kids were still deep in their dreams. And Orville would turn her to him, would hear her coo and snuggle against his neck as he made quiet love to her, a love she accepted and even seemed to enjoy. Orville knew it was his for the taking since he was her husband, and that the one thing Meg wanted most in return during those early morning moments was not an orgasm, but that he not wake the children.
Nowadays, Meg Craft’s eyes let her mouth speak instead, saying things like “Did you get my liter of Coke?” and “Don’t forget to let the dog out when you leave” and “Please don’t call it a pecker.”
Penis. Organ. Member. Family Jewel. Phallus. Big Pete. What did it matter what you called it if you never called it?
The alarm clock began its modern bleat that Orville had come to despise, along with other modern things—like pantyhose for nylon stockings. He missed the alarm clock he’d had for years, the kind that had a silver crank on its back and two little knobs on its head, like ears, and when it went off, it rocked back and forth as if it was dancing for him, charming him out of his warm bed. He felt Meg stir as he pushed the off button on the digital clock to shut it up. He slid his legs out from under the covers and put his feet into the slippers waiting on the floor. He looked over at Meg’s face, knowing that if he stared at her long enough, she’d sense it in that weird way human beings know things. The day was still dark, but he could see by the nightlight filtering in from the bathroom the shape of her nose, her mouth, her closed lashes. Meg twitched, as if feeling the weight of his eyes.
“Why don’t you wear an apron anymore?” Orville asked, in those first words of the day that are so soft when spoken they arrive more like whispers. “You had a lot of them, all different colors. I remember one was a pale yellow and had a bluebird on the front, sitting on a brown twig.”
Meg didn’t even open her eyes for this.
“Orville, are you having a nervous breakdown?” she asked. “Where do you get those foolish notions?”
Orville felt a wave of emotion wash over him, as if his whole past life had come and gone in that one instant. Where was he when his life happened? What had he been doing for six and a half decades? He remembered a magazine article he’d read once, that if a man were an atheist he should put on his tombstone “All dressed up and nowhere to go.” Now, Orville saw it differently. He was sixty-five years old, a good Christian man about to retire, and he too had nowhere to go. Nowhere but downhill, anyway. Or maybe uphill to Craft Pond. But how many fish can you catch? How many rides can you take on a four-wheeler before you have to stop and face mortality? He reached for his pants from the chair where he always put them. His shirt was draped over the chair’s back. He grabbed socks from the sock drawer where Meg stuffed them on laundry day. He knew his shoes would be where he always left them, down in the kitchen, on the rug near the door.
“Don’t forget to let the dog out,” Meg said as Orville made his way downstairs.
He had two more days of his life to live as the town’s mailman.
***
When Edna arrived at her mother’s house, Mama Sal was waiting in the kitchen, the silver walker wrapped about her and the smell of breakfast bacon still in the air.
“So, where’s that early snow everyone’s been talking about?” Edna asked as she flung her purse on the counter.
“One of these days,” said Mama Sal, “I’ll give you the money so you can have that purse surgically removed from your arm.”
Edna had already decided, given her plans for that afternoon, that she wouldn’t let her mother spoil the day. She waited as Mama Sal took off her sweater and draped a towel about her neck. Then she stepped her walker up to the sink and put her head in under the faucet. Edna had already turned on the tap water and felt with her fingers that it wasn’t too hot. She guided her mother’s head under the running water.
“That water is too hot,” said Mama Sal. “This is a human head you got here and not a potato you need to boil.”
“Sorry,” said Edna. She reached for the tap handle but did nothing at all to move it over to Cold. “There, how’s that?” she asked. She felt the stiffness in Mama Sal’s body relax, as it always did.
“That’s good,” said Mama Sal. “I wish you’d learn the temperature I like.”
Edna rolled her eyes for her own benefit and reached for the shampoo. She lathered up Mama Sal’s head and then massaged the shampoo into the hair, kneading the scalp. She knew this was one of her mother’s favorite things, having her hair washed and set in curlers. Yet Edna had to endure the criticisms every week.
“How’s your back feeling today?” she asked. She was ready now to rinse. She put the tap over Mama Sal’s hair and began washing away the suds.
“Still hurting,” said Mama Sal. “I’d give anything to go down to the basement like I used to do. I gotta wait on Tommy now to carry up my box of Halloween decorations.”
“I met him on the bridge early Monday evening,” said Edna. “He tooted at me, which is more than I expected.”
“That water’s a tad hot for my taste,” said Mama Sal. Edna moved the tap aside, but again did nothing to adjust the temperature. She positioned the faucet back over her mother’s head and let the same water spray down. “Perfect,” Mama Sal said. “I wish you’d learn my likes and dislikes.”
“Has Tommy been by to visit you?” Edna asked. She’d much rather get Mama Sal’s mind on Tommy and his estranged wife than on her relationship with Roderick or her visits to Bertina, which she knew had to be waiting in the wings.
“He rarely stops,” said Mama Sal. Edna had squeezed excess water from the hair and now Mama Sal was toweling it dry. “We can thank that little girl he married for turning him against his family. And now where is she? Cutting hair in Watertown like she’s a banker or something.”
Edna smiled. What also upset Mama Sal about Tommy’s divorce was that she’d lost her professional hairdresser, one who came to her house and did her hair for free every week. Now, she had to depend on Edna.
“Well, we tried to warn him before he married her,” said Edna. “And because we were right, we’re getting his cold shoulder.”
Now Mama Sal had the towel wrapped around her head and fixed in place like she was an Egyptian queen. She put both hands on her walker and rocked herself around so that she was facing the
kitchen table. Then she walkered her way over to the chair Edna had pulled out for her. She turned, backed up to the chair, and sank down. Edna’s most comic twin, Roddy, the one Mama Sal seemed to favor for his sense of humor, liked to make the sound of a truck backing up whenever Mama Sal did this. The boys and Roderick could make sport of her and with her all day long, but Edna was doomed by birth to respectability.
“This is the danger in a child marrying,” said Mama Sal. She had her lecture voice in place, and Edna knew a moral would be arriving soon. “At least your sister didn’t bring any of those Latinos home. How's Roderick? That's one hardworking man.”
Edna combed through the wet hair and selected a section on top for the first curler.
“I was thinking of giving him poison mushrooms for supper,” said Edna, “but I changed my mind.”
To her surprise, Mama Sal laughed one of her big laughs, the kind she reserved for Roderick and the twins.
“Roderick’s got a stomach like a steel drum,” said Mama Sal. “He loves food so much, he’d probably ask for seconds.”
Edna found herself laughing too. It was pretty funny when she thought of it that way. She was five curlers along the top of her mother’s head when Mama Sal said something she wasn’t expecting.
“You’re the only one of my three children to have a successful marriage,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”
Mama Sal said this last part as if maybe she’d been rehearsing it all day. She had never before told Edna she was proud of her for anything. And there had been so many times when she should have said it. There were days when Edna stood by the stove with school papers in her hand, a B that had once been a C, the occasional and unexpected A. And there were times when she brought drawings home with that scrawl across the top where Mrs. Bingham, the art teacher, had written, This is wonderful work, Edna. You have the talent to move on to bigger things. Or when Edna won the spelling bee in the sixth grade. Or when her pies and canned pickles were always first to be bought at any town fund-raiser. Never a word of praise and now here it was, all these chances down the road.
The One-Way Bridge Page 7
