He woke when his grip loosened and his face slid down the little roof, the shingle stones pulling at his beard, woke with a violent start, released his hug on the house.
Jesse handed him tools. “Here’s the hammer. Didn’t want to wake you. Mom’s still in z-land, too; you set the record, Rockin’ Joe Heath!” He dropped the other tools, beat his thin chest, yodeled like Tarzan.
Annoyed: “Chill, man.” Joe wasted no time, swung the hammer, tapped the padlock precisely. It sprang open. Jesse clapped his hands and hissed breathily to imitate big-auditorium applause, very convincing. Joe grinned despite himself at this teasing, at first hiding it, but then he looked up to give the grin to Jesse. He felt gauzy but remarkably better after his tiny upright nap.
The pump house door fell open. Joe reached inside past spider webs to snap the perfectly modern breaker bar in there and cut the electricity to the ungodly ancient motor. He stared at the piping, at the electric heater, at the old iron wheel and belt of the pump. “This is an incredibly stupid setup,” he said.
“That’s what Carl says.”
“I mean, check it out. Why not sink a pump in the goddamn well? And they got to have a heater in here, for Christ’s sake. What happens to this thing in the winter? Hand me a wrench.”
Jesse patted Joe’s palm with the big old adjustable wrench twice, took it back twice, ha ha. He said, “My father built this whole thing. And he dug the well his self, too, the whole thing. And restored the pond, which was just a mudhole then.”
“It’s not so bad.” Joe poked around the base of the pump in the dark, unscrewed a bolt, retightened it, tried another. There was no room to reach in, really, and the door ledge pressed on his chest painfully. He said, “Oh, it’s not so bad at all,” knocking his knuckles against the greasy metal of the pump motor. “And the stone work down below here looks awfully nice. Must have been quite a project. Your old dad was more a mason than a plumber, maybe.”
“I helped him, at least a little. I was four?”
“Four,” Joe said. “We’re messing with first memories here!”
Long silence, Joe feeling his way along the base of the pump.
In some kind of robot voice Jesse said, “My first memory, if you want to know, is actually the band, Joe, you guys really, really loud on a stage outside somewhere with Hell’s Angels and a big giant crowd dancing and me on Mommy’s shoulders and I didn’t like it.”
That last delivered like another punch line, but not at all funny, not one bit. Joe kept probing, and at last, in the most inaccessible spot possible, back edge of the old pump body, his fingers found the priming port. Fighting the wrench in there, slipping off the nut repeatedly, grunting, stretching his arms, pulling then pushing that wrench in no room at all, he finally managed to loosen the threaded plug, back it out, and not drop it or the wrench He stuck his pinky in the port to be sure he had it right.
“Now we need some water,” he said, extricating himself.
Jesse had brought the Kool-Aid pitcher and not a bucket—good enough—raced to the pond to fill it. Joe poured that water into the little threaded opening, slowly, six pitchers full, Jesse a whirlwind getting more. Finally, the port gurgled and overflowed. Joe screwed the threaded plug back in (not too tight—someone would be doing this again soon), pulled his beard, twice, hoping he’d done the priming right, then hit the breaker. The old pump jumped to life. The trickle pipe that fed the pond began to drip, then to flow, lightly.
“Showers!” said Joe, exultant. His feet were freezing.
“Cold showers,” Jesse told him seriously. “No gas. Mom did a firing Wednesday and used up the tank. End of savings! Doom and destruction!”
Walking back to the house in the shuffling leaves, Jesse kept pace with Joe, no clowning. The sun wasn’t far from setting, long shadows, wind now, and cold.
Jesse said it again: “How come you’re not famous anymore?”
Joe pushed his collar up. He said, “I do all right.”
Jesse pushed on: “But I never hear of you at all anymore. I mean, you’re still on the road. You’re still playing at little bars. I thought you old guys kicked back and wrote songs or something.”
“I thought so, too, chief.”
Silence.
“And wait a minute—I do write songs. Lots and lots of songs. They’re on the stinking radio.”
“Mom always says how he shouldn’t have fired you. She told Carter and Betty the other night all about it, ‘cuz they said you were coming back for the reunion.”
“Your mom likes me, Jess.” Laughing in the window seat, her room, some kind of extended trouble with buttons, serious dark eyes suddenly—kissing again.
“She thinks you’re so handsome,” the boy said, imitating her inflections perfectly. He tried to keep clowning, but this was serious: “I was just kidding about the musician every month, Rockin’ Joe. And I knew you were you. Also, she’s thirty-eight.”
“I know how old she is.”
“Were you ever married or anything?”
Joe laughed. “Who would marry me?” He looked at Jesse, saw how the boy’s jaw rose strongly back to his ear like Connie’s.
“Are you the one she used to visit in New York?”
Joe shrugged, embarrassed: “Maybe so.”
“Just maybe every weekend for a year.”
“Your dad was gone, Jess.”
They stopped walking. There was the house, right there, that big old spruce tree. A new shot of wind came, hard chill, bearing leaves from the maples, flapping Jesse’s big shirtsleeves. Joe’s bare feet all of a sudden were bricks of ice, prickly, fucked.
Jesse said, “There’s never time to get things done around here. I mean I’m in school, and I’m a teenager, I’m not going to do much, am I? What’s more useless than a teenager? There’s a ton of insurance money someplace, if you think that’s the problem. It’s invested. And you know what? My dad grew thirty thousand dollars worth of pot here one year.”
Joe raised a doubtful eyebrow, fought the old bad feeling. He knew the band bus had left with the equipment, knew no one had thought or cared to come get him. His fading Jaguar was on the street in Trumansburg, safe enough. “I got to get out of here,” he said. “I really do.”
“Well, you’re going to have to walk. Granma D’s got the car.”
“With the little girls.”
Teen irony, full force: “That’s right, Rockin’!”
“So what’s on the VCR tonight?” Joe said, picking up the joke. He could walk to Hall’s Corners, hitch from there.
Jesse, suddenly sincere: “Actually, I lied. We don’t have a VCR. We don’t even have a TV. Sorry. But we got stuff to make lasagna, we really do, and Mom’s got a jug of wine, okay? I’ll read to you from Dune or something. And make a huge fire.”
Joe got a picture of Connie much younger, not so different from now, Connie nineteen at her wheel throwing these perfect pots, one after the next, turning them, shaping them while he watched, amazed. Just that, a picture from the past.
“I got to get back to New York,” Joe said finally. “Thanks, though.” He could still split before Connie woke—poor Connie, never a great partyer, way out of practice—and that would be that, the perfect goodbye.
Joe patted Jesse’s shoulder a couple of times, then back to the house in a hurry, frozen feet.
Jesse raced to gather a huge pile of sticks from the lawn, brought them in by the stove, rushed out to load himself with logs from the tumbled woodpile. Joe held the screen door for him, didn’t let it slam, danced a little on the cold tile floor as he entered the kitchen. He wanted his socks and shoes—time to hike on out of here—but he didn’t want to wake Connie, and the shoes were in her room. He made a few false starts toward the stairs. Forget it.
Abruptly, he remembered his pump project, went to the sink. The faucet sputtered and coughed and bubbled, spat some rusty sludge, ran rusty two minutes, muddy two more, then clear, good, cold water, flowing well, time a-wasting. And once aga
in Joe grinned despite himself, pleased as hell with his success, watched the water, put his hands in it, drank, washed his face, dunked, lifted his dripping head, saw out the window when he opened his eyes that the dusk had begun to descend, pink as the dawn.
Jesse banged around at the old woodstove, building his fire as noisily as possible. Joe thought how you might just sit down there at the table, put your feet up close to the stove. Jesse’s flames leapt up out of the cook rings. The boy knew what he was doing. Joe’s feet—two stinking ice bricks. To walk would warm them. Hustle down the hill to Hall’s Corners, put out his thumb. He leaned back on the sink as if relaxed, said, “Hey, maybe you could get my shoes and socks for me upstairs there, Jess, what d’ya think?”
“Okay. But maybe you want to take a bath before you go.”
“Can’t.”
Jesse, entreating: “Take a bath before you go.” No kidding around, now. “I’ll heat some water here. You can take a nice hot bath. You’re shivering anyway.” He looked to the ceiling, looked to Joe, began again to clown, noisily as hell searched the cabinets to find his mom’s gargantuan canning kettle, then two large buckets and two smaller pots, bumping them into everything, clang and bang to fill them at the sink then splash to the stove, pushing Joe out of the way, one vessel at a time, big groan heaving each to its circle of fire in the blackened cooktop. The ritual did not seem new to Jesse. He put more wood in the fire, which was already raging.
Rockin’ Joe Heath stepped through Jesse’s puddles to the table and sat, put his feet up on a chair, let them burn in the heat. He picked up Dune and read from Jesse’s place in it, waiting. Giant worms, strange planet. Another hour wouldn’t matter. And Jesse wasn’t going for any shoes. The stove was hot, the boy quiet.
Quickly, the water in the smaller pots began to steam, then to bubble and boil. Soon after that—big fire—the buckets, too. The water in the big canning kettle took longer, never quite boiled, but rolled a little, and steamed. Joe pretended to read, even turned pages, saw himself starting the Jag in T-burg, New York City a long drive, five hours.
Jesse made four fast trips across the nicely overheated kitchen, splashing into the bathroom to fill the claw-foot tub, avoiding the hot spills. Joe heard him adding cold water from the tap. “Your bath,” Jesse announced. He had folded a towel over his arm and bowed like a small, worried butler.
Joe stood and undressed where he was, old hippie, leaving his clothes in a simple pile on the kitchen floor. He walked naked past Jesse into the big bathroom—lots of hand-done tile work—slipped into the tub, sighed, lay back. The boy had surely got the temperature right. Jesse smiled happily, watching Joe, clanged the canner and the buckets and pots back for more water, more fire. Joe heard the clank of the firebox door: get that thing roaring. And about when the bath was going chilly, Jesse reappeared, bearing buckets. Joe closed his eyes and let the boy pour the water over him. Jess went back for the smaller pots, poured those.
“Save that big one for yourself,” Joe said.
Jess banged off with the buckets and pots, filled them at the sink, put them on the stove, panting with the effort of carrying so much water, no clowning.
Joe stood when the water went cold again, stood wrinkled and wasted, took himself a quick cold shower, drained the tub, rinsed it for the boy.
He called, “Get ready, Jess,” wrapped himself in a worn Barbie beach towel. Jesse undressed quickly, demure, as Joe stepped dripping into the hot kitchen to fetch the boiling new batches of water one vessel at a time. And Joe filled the tub, adjusted the temperature with the very cold water from the well Jesse’s dad had dug. Jesse, child again, poured Mr. Bubble and climbed into the tub in his underpants. He splashed and goofed while Joe in his swinging towel filled pots, brought them to the stove.
And Rockin’ Joe stoked the fire, turned the pots, breathed in steam, stood in warm puddles tending his chore, the kitchen a sauna. When the smallest pots were hot enough—not long—he carried them to the bath, poured the water over Jesse, two buckets next, huge kettle last, a very long bath. Jesse splashed and sang and dunked himself, blew bubbles, splashed and sang.
Joe kept moving, clang and bong of the pots, put more water on—let the kid soak all night!—stoked the fire even more, sat down in the great heat at the table and opened Dune, read a little, thinking lasagna didn’t sound half bad, thinking how in one of these pots here he’d boil the noodles shortly, layer ’em up in cheese and sauce, let the fire burn down for baking, glass of wine. He stood twice to check the water. The third time he rose he heard Connie coming down the stairs. Joe bumped in a rush past the table, losing his towel. He lunged for his pants and shirt, picked them up fast, but they were soaked. That left him pretty well naked and barefoot in a puddle, keeping back big laughter, holding his bundle of dripping clothes. And right away Connie was there in the doorway, surprised, her hair awry, her bathrobe open over the Harley T-shirt, her cheeks rising into her dark eyes as she grinned at the mess.
She said, “Joe?”
A Job at Little Henry’s
Richard Milk thought about the stolen money all weekend, planned different speeches, different ways of dealing with Dewey Burke on Tuesday when Dewey was due to show up. Richard wanted to explode in Dewey’s pocked face, but yelling wasn’t going to work. Better to quietly ask that jailbird to admit the theft, then offer to let him work it off, solemnly hear his promises, and maybe no longer allow him in the house.
Such were Richard’s thoughts all weekend—a long weekend, as it happened, Richard following Gail to no fewer than six Memorial Day picnics and dinners and dances—the problem of Dewey Burke crowding into every crevice left by more immediate concerns. And, in truth, Richard found these thoughts of Dewey something of a relief, this new trouble much easier to think about than Lester Molina or the rocky going of late with Gail.
Late Monday night, Richard moved the money jar out of the kitchen, put it in Gail’s desk, put a few bucks in it to get it started again. That ridiculous money jar—the habit of a twenty-two-year marriage. Right now, they were trying to put together enough spare dimes and quarters and dollar bills and occasional fives to buy a good chunk of next year’s spring trip to Florida.
On Tuesday, Memorial Day weekend was over and Gail went to work. She was the area coordinator in School Administrative District 98, LaDoux County, Maine, which meant that she and Richard were comfortable enough, despite his recent troubles: Richard was out of work. Up until six weeks ago he’d been chief designer at Molina Log Homes, an enormous prefabricating operation that Molina had started in his back-to-the-land days. Now it was a small empire, stretching across the top of America clear to Montana. Richard had designed every home they marketed, designed them for beauty, designed them for comfort, designed them for the earth-friendly aspects Molina Log Homes advertised, designed them for profit, too, and so that logs could be shipped pre-cut aboard ever smaller trucks. Lester had talked lugubriously for an hour about housing starts and the shaky economy, but his theatrically sad eyes couldn’t hide what had really happened: Richard Milk had drawn all the designs Lester Molina needed to do his huge business forever, and so Lester had let him go.
Oh, yes, on Tuesday the long weekend was over. Richard stood in the yard an hour after breakfast (Gail long gone in her safe red Saab), just stood and looked at the hills across the way. The thief Dewey turned up exactly on time. Richard saw him coming up the road, slouching up the road with his bouncing reform-school swagger. Richard felt calm, told himself a few encouraging words, tried a sentence out: I’ll understand if you don’t want to admit it right away, but …
Then the bum was at the door, saying it was a decent day—in fact, saying just those words, with no inflection at all, no way to sense the man: “Decent day.”
“Nice ‘un,” Richard said. “Yup.” He found himself talking the way Dewey did, just as he’d found himself talking like the Koreans he’d met in the city, just as he’d found himself talking like Texans when he and Gail lived down t
here. Gail saw this cultural echolalia (that was the phrase she used, sometimes gently, usually not) as a lack of boundaries, as the symptom of a man with no self. Richard saw it as his quite firm self’s private brand of mockery, something he did unconsciously to nearly everyone, especially people he regarded as less sophisticated. In any case, it was something he meant to cut out.
Dewey had no more conversation in him, turned and walked back around the house to the shed, pulled out a shovel and rake, and headed over to the corner of the woodlot to continue exactly where he’d left off the Thursday before, digging out the old compost, putting it cartload by cartload on the garden. Richard followed him more slowly, choosing words: But don’t worry, we understand, we know a call for help when we hear it. You’ve worked for us faithfully for over a year. You won’t be fired. We only want … what? What did they want? Gail hadn’t seemed the least bit concerned. “We’ll have to get rid of him,” was all she said, meaning that Richard had to get rid of him, of course.
“Dewey?”
“Mister?”
“Dewey, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Right.”
“Dewey, we’re concerned. You’ve offended our trust. Let me put it bluntly: Gail and I know you stole our money.” That didn’t sound right—too confrontational. “Dewey, this really … pisses me off. You stole from us.”
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