“I think I’ll take Mona out to eat on her birthday,” Buck said. “Someplace warm. How come you don’t have a steady girlfriend, Bill?”
Billy left the pump in the tank and reached into his shirt pocket for his pack of Winstons.
“When it comes to women,” he said, “I believe in catch and release.”
“I wonder how it knows,” Buck said. He was still staring at the rolling numbers, his face full of wonder.
“Knows what?” asked Billy.
“How does it know when it’s done?”
Billy stared at him. Sometimes, he didn’t know for certain if Buck was fooling around or if he was sincerely stupid. He pushed up his jacket sleeve and found his watch. Two o’clock.
“We need to get back to Blanche’s before Orville stops in for his pie.”
Inside the store, Billy pulled off his earmuffs and let them dangle around his neck. He went first to the aisle where pet foods were kept and selected a small bag of dog food and a rawhide bone. He grabbed a six-pack of Buds from the cooler and made his way to the cash, where the fresh packs of Winstons waited.
“Let me give you some free financial advice,” Billy said to the sleepy-eyed girl who was clerking. “Start selling Playboy.”
“Know what I’ve been thinking, Bill?” Buck asked when Billy came out carrying the cigarettes and beer and dog food. “We could go into business together. We could call ourselves Billy and Buck.”
Billy forced a smile. It sounded like an old vaudeville act, tuberculoid and down on its luck. But if Billy’s luck didn’t improve, that’s exactly what they’d be. Billy & Buck.
“Get aboard ship, Luke Skywalker,” said Billy. “I’m gonna buy you a piece of pie.”
8
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
On his way back from Buck Fennelson’s mailbox, Orville drove slowly. He wanted to remember the way the road followed the river, with houses strung along each side. He wanted to savor it in a way he hadn’t done for thirteen years. He knew the old logic that lay behind the plan, why the first settlers had built along the river. It had little to do with a pretty view and much to do with practicality. That river used to be a well-used road, a means to visit friends and family who lived on either side of it and along its banks. It was there for a man to canoe down to St. Leonard and Watertown for supplies and necessary business, before poling back upstream. The earliest coffins had been taken by canoe downriver for burial in St. Leonard churchyards, back before Mattagash established its own graveyards. And then, the river was the only way lumberjacks could get all those logs, millions of feet of lumber, from the woods camps to the mills waiting downstream. Having lost all that to time and technology, the river now seemed almost cosmetic, as if it had been ordered from L. L. Bean and shipped to Mattagash by FedEx.
He would miss that daily drive along the river. Was he doing the right thing to retire? When had he decided it was the best choice at this stage of his life? Now, on his last day, Orville couldn’t remember. It was what everyone wanted, wasn’t it, to retire so they can spend time with the family, play golf, go fishing, travel? The truth was that Orville Craft no longer had a family to spend time with, unless you counted his wife, who was rarely home. His children were married and gone, building their own families and lives elsewhere. Orville had never played a game of golf in his life and even though he had forbidden Harry Plunkett to fish at Craft Pond, thus adding fuel to their feud, he wasn’t all that crazy about fishing. All he really had was his four-wheeler and his little cabin. If only he still had Meg’s interest in those things. Better yet, if only he had her interest in him, the husband who still loved her. And that’s the thought that had awakened him so many nights, nights that turned into predawns and the roar of logging trucks flying by, bleary-eyed drivers hitting the Jake brakes before crossing the bridge. Would Meg have been more satisfied if she’d married Harold Plunkett? Orville couldn’t compete with someone as charismatic as Harry, not when he felt threatened by a computerized penguin in a tuxedo.
Orville drove slowly past the nine silver mailboxes at the trailer park. He drove past Lauren Harrison’s house, the younger of his two widows, and thought again of the tanned summer cleavage that always tumbled toward him when Lauren leaned down to take her mail from his hand. Was he doing the right thing? Or was he retiring early because of Harry Plunkett’s moose? Could it be possible? Ed Beecher had said to him, “I wish you’d reconsider this retirement thing, Orville. You’re not pretty to look at, but you’re a damn reliable mailman.” Even Meg had questioned him about it. “Folks don’t retire to the pasture these days unless they want to go or they’re pushed,” Meg had said. “You’re not the type of person who can sit idle. You might have a nervous breakdown if you’re not busy.”
Had it been the moose? Had it finally worn him down? Its two flared nostrils, those silly antlers screwed to the top of its head, that thrusting nose that had mocked Orville for three long years. Until the nose turned into the ass. He touched the newspaper lying on the seat beside him, felt the bulk beneath it. Awful thoughts kept free falling into his head. Could the moose be a substitute for his own unhappy marriage? His own uneventful life? Was it that Harry Plunkett had come home from the war a decorated hero clutching the Purple Heart, when Orville didn’t have the courage to drive his four-wheeler over twenty miles an hour? Even his feet hadn’t met the challenge, being flat and therefore not good enough for those long marches the Army required, especially in wartime. So he had been classified 4-F, as if that F stood for failure.
Orville knew one fact for certain, and he had accepted it. He was on a combat mission. And when that mission was over, no post office from here to wacky California would give him a job. He slowed the Ford as he rounded the curve. There was Harry’s house, straight ahead. Maybe he should have brought a gun instead. He could stick it into the moose and pull the trigger, blow its guts out. But he had decided on the hammer, the lesser of two evils—and hopefully a misdemeanor in the state of Maine. He had kept his cool all week. That was the best way—use the element of surprise. He slid his hand under the newspaper and felt the cold, metallic claws. He kept his eyes on Harry’s front door as he pulled up next to the box. He didn’t want to be interrupted should Harry burst out of his house and run to the moose’s rescue. And this was when Orville Craft realized that the element of surprise had backfired on him, for he was the one surprised. The moose was gone. In its place was the same sensible silver box Harry Plunkett used to have before he bought the moose. Orville stared at the mailbox, a small cobweb still attached to its red flag, a regulation mailbox that had not done a single thing to insult him.
***
Edna was having a coffee at her kitchen table when the phone rang. She answered, hoping it wasn’t Mama Sal. It was worse. It was Dorrie Mullins.
“They’re peeping again,” said Dorrie, and Edna felt quick tension in her stomach.
“Who might you be talking about?” she asked.
“The twins,” said Dorrie. “I caught ’em looking in the bedroom window last night at my granddaughter. She’s only thirteen and now she’s hysterical. You been warned twice already, Edna. You need to do something about them boys.”
“And how do you know it was my boys looking in the window?” Edna asked. She had never liked Dorrie Mullins, a bully of a woman.
“How do I know it was the twins?” Dorrie asked. “Well, let’s see. There were two heads, with two faces, and the two faces were identical. You do the math.”
Edna was still sitting at the table an hour later, a cup of cold coffee in front of her, when the front door opened. Roderick was home from his doctor’s appointment in Watertown. He came into the kitchen carrying a plastic sack in his hand. When he saw her at the table, doing nothing but staring at that cup of coffee, she could tell by his eyes he was already on the defensive.
“Turning cold out there again,” he said. “Probably snow any day now.”
Edna watched as he took off his winter coat and draped it over the back of a kitchen stool. The collar of a red shirt peeked above the gray woolen sweater Mama Sal had knit for him, love and admiration in every stitch. Edna knew how to knit, but her patience ran out for anything bigger than a mitten or a sock. That’s why Mama Sal had knit the sweater, to set a good example. If Edna found the talent one day to knit Roderick a sweater, Mama Sal would knit him a pulp truck.
“I’m back from the doctor’s,” Roderick said, as if Edna hadn’t figured that out. She saw him look over at the stove, the empty burners where there should have been pots hissing and spitting, potatoes and carrots and a chunk of meat boiling.
“Dorrie Mullins called,” said Edna. “The twins are peeping again.”
“Heck,” said Roderick. “I wish I had a dollar for every window I peeped into when I was a boy. It’s natural. They’ll outgrow it.”
He put the plastic sack on the counter, then tossed his P. J. Irvine Company hat at a chair near the window. Edna watched it fly like a Frisbee, hit the seat, and careen off. It fell to the floor, visor-up. If she didn’t get it now and put it where his eyes could see it, he’d make a racket searching for it in the morning.
“I bought some more nicotine patches,” Roderick said and nodded at the plastic bag. “I run out of my last supply.”
Edna took the coffee cup to the sink and rinsed it under the faucet. She knew Roderick was watching her. She could almost hear him forming the words he would later tell Mama Sal. She must have sit there all day in front of that cup. That’s what she was doing when I left for my doctor’s appointment.
“I got something to tell you,” Edna said. “You might as well hear it from me before you hear it from the town gossips. I had an affair.” She turned and looked at Roderick.
For a moment, she saw herself through his eyes, her short hair beginning to speak of a gray strand here and there, wearing her old jeans and a rose-colored blouse that brought out the blue of her eyes. Everyone knew that the color rose was Edna’s signature color. She was big-boned and pretty, at least Roderick thought so. Now here she was, three years from forty and yet feeling as if she had lived several lifetimes in Mattagash, and all of them as Roderick Plunkett’s wife. What would it be like to be a secretary for a little company that cared about its employees, with a good-looking boss who flirted with the girls in the office? Or what if she had become a lawyer? She would have made a great stewardess even though she’d never been on an airplane in her life. Would you like coffee or tea? How about a pillow for your head? Peanuts anyone? But all Edna really wanted to be was happy. Could a stay-at-home artist find personal joy between fixing supper and doing the laundry? Artists, at least the famous ones, seemed to have lots of affairs in between drinking themselves to death and even cutting off an ear. That little bald man, Pablo Picasso, had been like a bull in the cow pen according to one documentary Edna had watched. And the younger the cows, the better the old bull liked it.
Roderick was still waiting, knowing the way a deer knows that those headlights are coming right at him and maybe they’re going to hurt.
“What kind of affair?” he asked. Edna felt her eyes water. She wanted to slap him.
“It was a love affair, Roderick, for crying out loud,” she said. “I cheated on you. I broke our marriage vows. This past summer. He was here working for the state. Soil. I tried to end it, but I don’t think I can. He loves me, and I suppose I love him too. I may have to move downstate to be with him. The boys can go to school down there if I can find one that will take them. I want a divorce. There, I said it.”
It had spilled out, one thought pushing the next ahead of it, anything and everything she could confess. What was making her do this? Was she really suffering from a lack of sun? Were there women in Alaska who would love to trade places with her that very second?
“Walking out on your marriage for another man,” Roderick said. “That’s like switching horses in midstream.”
“Horses,” she said. “How romantic.”
One thing was certain. If Roderick Plunkett and Ward Hooper were horses, Roderick wouldn’t be the stud.
“Mind if I ask his name?” Roderick said, his voice too small now for such a big body.
“Ward,” said Edna. “You don’t need to know his last name.”
Roderick nodded, as if to say he understood. What’s in a last name, anyway? He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers undoing the ridges made by his cap. He turned and looked out the window as Billy Thunder’s topless Mustang flew by, headed toward the bridge and the heart of town. He looked back at his wife.
“Doctor says my blood pressure is down,” he said.
***
Billy Thunder sat next to Buck on one of the four wooden stools at Blanche’s. When the bell over the door rang out, he glanced up to see Orville Craft. Orville took the stool at the end of the counter, leaving one empty between him and the two men.
“Last day, Orville?” Billy asked. He saw Blanche cutting a slice of blueberry pie and fitting it onto a plate. “Let me pay for that piece of pie, Blanche,” said Billy. “And anything this man is drinking.”
“There’s no need,” said Orville, but Billy held up a hand in protest. He pointed a finger at his bill and watched as Blanche added the price of the pie and a cup of tea.
“A little retirement present for my mailman,” Billy said.
“Thanks, Thunder,” said Orville. He even appreciated the token now that there seemed to be no sign of a retirement party anywhere in town. How could Orville have known when he first began delivering the mail thirteen years earlier that his only retirement gift would come from a foul-mouthed rooster from Portland?
“By the way, Thunder,” Orville said, as Blanche put his cup of hot tea next to the piece of pie. “You got one of them little boxes you been waiting for.” He took up his fork and cut away the first bite.
Billy sat watching him eat. You got one of them little boxes you been waiting for. What did he take Billy Thunder for? A moron who would rush home again, his tires spitting up rocks and leaves, only to find a sample tube of toothpaste waiting for him? Billy wished now he’d gone for 100 milligrams instead of 75. Keep it stiff until spring. That would teach Orville Craft to mess with a man’s emotions. He looked down at the piece of pie, knowing he had to act fast or it would soon be gone. Buck was leaning over now to watch Orville eat, as though it were a new Olympic event. When Orville stopped to put milk in his tea, Billy turned on his stool and peered out the window.
“Wow, did Harry Plunkett just hit your mail car?” Billy asked.
Orville dropped his fork and pushed back his stool. In a matter of seconds, he was at the window, peering out at the cars in the driveway. Billy quickly lifted the top crust of Orville’s pie and tossed the bits of ground-up blue pill onto the blueberries. He had already considered that the food in Orville’s stomach might diminish the effects of the pill. That’s why he had chopped a quarter hunk off that second pill and added it, brought the dosage up to 75 milligrams. He estimated it would take effect in thirty minutes. With the tip of his finger, he stirred the pieces of Viagra into the filling and put the crust back in place. He was wiping his fingers on a paper napkin when Orville returned to his stool.
“You need eyeglasses, Thunder,” said Orville.
Billy threw some money onto the counter to pay his bill.
“Now that you’re retired, Orville, you need to take life easy,” he said. “Stop and smell the cannabis.” He looked at Orville and grinned. Orville decided to ignore the grin, given it came from downstate. “Don’t take any hostages,” Billy added, patting Orville on the back. Then he was out the door, Buck Fennelson following at his heels like a well-trained dog.
***
Five minutes after finishing his last workday piece of pie, Orville Craft had come home to find Meg typing away at her computer as s
he talked on the phone. He paused in the doorway to her sewing room after saying I’m home, Meg, seeing her wave a hand in the air as if to say I hear you, Orville. He stared at her back as she chatted up some friend and clicked keys, all at the same time. He now felt foolish that before he came inside the house he had glanced behind the garage to see if any cars were hidden there. So there would be no retirement party? The piece of pie from Billy Thunder would be his only gift, the only festivity to mark this important rite of passage?
Orville went on up the stairs to their bedroom, as he always did after work, and slipped off his work clothes. He hung the neatly creased pants on a coat hanger and topped them with the pale blue shirt and tie. He selected a pair of green pants and one of the green shirts that Meg had folded clean and put into his dresser drawer. There was an irony, he knew, in the fact that his clean and always neat after-work clothes were the very types that most Mattagash men used as work clothes. But theirs would end up splattered with oil or axle grease or spruce gum, grime from the floors of garages or dust wafting up from a woods road. Orville’s clothes rarely needed detergent in the wash, and Meg had often commented that she was lucky to have married into one of the few white-collar families in town.
Orville stood again outside the door to Meg’s sewing room. He often wondered why she didn’t call it her computer room. The computer had replaced the sewing machine ten years earlier. He figured the reason might be that Meg would have to admit she hadn’t sewn anything since the girls were in grammar school. He waited, hoping she might say, “How’s it feel to be retired? Do you want to sit and talk about it?” But she was still on the phone, her right hand still clicking and clacking. He went out to the garage and started up his four-wheeler. Instead of heading straight up the mountain road to his cabin, as he always did, he decided to give her one more chance. So he rode the buggy across the autumn lawn and past her window. Inside, Meg turned away from her computer to look out at him, that same pinch of disgust in the muscles around her mouth. He saw her point at the phone attached to her ear, telling him in hand signals that she couldn’t hear for his racket. Orville turned the handle on his four-wheeler, giving its engine full speed, and tore off across the backyard and onto the road leading up to his cabin.
The One-Way Bridge Page 11
