There were more, but I stopped my progress and stood at the foot of Mando’s grave, looking at the fresh carving on the cross. Even the Bible says something about men living their three score and ten, and that was ever so long ago. And here we were, cut short like frogs in a frost.
The dirt filling Mando’s grave had settled, and it was sinking more in the rain. I went to the broken-up pit at the back of the clearing and took the shovel that Nat always leaves there, and started carrying dirt over to the grave, shovelful by shovelful. Mud stuck to the shovel, it spread out badly, it wouldn’t tamp down right. Bad idea. I threw the shovel back at the pit and sat on the grass at the side of the grave, where I could hold the crossbar of the marker. Frogs in a frost. Rain thinned the mud, puddled on it. I looked around at our crop of crosses, all of them dripping in the gray afternoon light, and I thought, This isn’t right. It isn’t supposed to be like this. Mando was under me and yet he wasn’t; he was plain gone, vanished, no more. He wouldn’t come back. I took a handful of mud and squished it between my fingers.
22
But the old man lived.
The old man lived. I hardly believed it. I think everybody was surprised, even Tom. I know Doc was: “I couldn’t believe it,” he told me happily when I went up to see them on a cloudy morning. “I had to rub my eyes and pinch myself. I got up yesterday and there he was sitting at the kitchen table whining where’s my breakfast, where’s my breakfast. Of course his lungs had been clearing all week, but I wasn’t sure that was going to be enough, to tell you the truth. But there he was bitching at me.”
“In fact,” Tom called from the bedroom, “where’s the tea? Don’t you respect a poor patient’s requests anymore?”
“If you want it hot you’ll shut up and be patient,” Doc shouted back, grinning at me. “How about some bread with it?”
“Of course.”
I went into the hospital and there he was sitting up in his bed, blinking like a bird. Shyly I said, “How are you?”
“Hungry.”
“That’s a good sign,” Doc said from behind me. “Return of appetite, very good sign.”
“Unless you got a cook like I do,” said Tom.
Doc snorted. “Don’t let him fool you, he’s been bolting it in his usual style. Obviously he loves it. Pretty soon he’ll want to stay here just for the food.”
“When the eagle grins I will.”
“Oooh, so ungrateful!” Doc exclaimed. “And here I had to shove the food right down his face for the longest time. It got so I felt like a mama bird, I should have digested it all first for him I guess—”
“Oh that would have helped,” Tom crowed, “eating vomit, yuck! Take this away, I’ve lost my appetite for good.” He slurped the tea, cursed its heat.
“Well, it was hard to get him to eat, I’ll tell you. But now look at him go.” Doc watched with satisfaction as Tom tossed down chunks of bread in his old starvation manner. When he was done he smiled his gap-toothed smile. His poor gums had taken a beating in his illness, but his eyes watched me with their old clear brown gaze. I felt my face stretched into a grin.
“Ah yes,” Tom said. “There’s nothing like a mutated freak immune system, I’ll testify. I’m tough as a tiger. So tough! However, you’ll excuse me if I take a little nap.” He coughed once or twice, slid down under the covers and was out like one of his lighters snapping off.
So that was good. Tom stayed at Doc’s for another couple of weeks, mostly to keep Doc company, I believe, as he was getting stronger by the day, and he surely wasn’t fond of the hospital. And one day Rebel knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted to help move Tom and his stuff back to his house. I said sure, and we walked across the bridge talking and joking. The sun was playing hide and seek among tall clouds, and coming down the path from Doc’s were Kathryn and Gabby, Kristen and Del and Doc, laughing as Tom cavorted at the head of the parade. “Join the crowd,” Tom called to us. “The young and the old, a natural alliance for a party, you bet.” Kathryn gave me Tom’s books, heavy in a burlap sack, and I threatened to throw them off the bridge as we crossed. Tom swung at me with his walking stick. We made a fine promenade up the other slope of the valley. I had never allowed myself to imagine this day; but there it was, right in my hands where I could grab it.
Once up to his house the old man got positively boisterous. With a dramatic flourish he kicked the door, but it stayed shut. “Great latch, see that?” He puffed at the dust on the table and chairs until the air was thick with it. There was a puddle on the floor, marking a new leak in the roof. Tom pulled his mouth down into a pouting frown. “This place has been poorly tended, very poorly tended. You maintenance crews are fired.”
“Ho ho,” said Kathryn, “now you’re going to have to hire us back at wages to get any help cleaning up.” We opened all the windows and let the breeze draft through. Gabby and Del yanked some weeds, and Tom and Doc and I walked up the ridge trail to look at the beehives. Tom cursed at the sight, but they weren’t that bad off. We cleaned up for a bit and went back down to the house on Doc’s orders. Smoke billowed white as the clouds from the stove chimney, the big front window was scrubbed clean, and Gabby was balanced on the roof with hammer and nails and shingles, hunting for that leak and shouting for instructions from below. When we went in Kathryn was on a stool, thumping the underside of the roof with a broom. “That’s it,” Tom said, “bust that leak right out of there.” Kathryn took a swing at him with the broom, overbalanced and leaped off the falling stool. Kristen dodged her with a yelp and quit dusting, Rebel took the kettle off the stove, and we gathered in the living room for some of Tom’s pungent tea: “Cheers,” Tom said, holding his steaming mug high, and we raised ours and said back cheers, cheers.
* * *
That evening when I came home Pa said that John Nicolin had come by to ask why I wasn’t fishing anymore. My share of the fish was our main source of food, and Pa was upset. So I started fishing again the next day, and after that I went fishing day in and day out, when the weather allowed. On the boats it was obvious the year was getting on. The sun cut across the sky lower and lower, and a cold current came in and stayed. Often in the afternoons dark clouds rolled off the sea over us. Wet hands stung with cold, and hauling net made them raw red; teeth chattered, skin prickled with goosebumps. Hoarse shouts concerning the fishing were the only words exchanged, as men conserved their energy. The lack of small talk was fine by me. Blustery winds chafed us as we rowed back in the premature dusks. Under the blue clouds the cliffs turned brown, the hillsides were the green-black of the darkest pines, and the ocean was like iron. In all that gloom the yellow bonfires on the river flat blazed like beacons, and it was a pleasure to round the first bend in the river and see them. After getting the boats up against the cliff I huddled with the rest of the men around these fires until I was warm enough to go home. As the men warmed (hands practically in the flames), the usual talk spilled out, but I never joined in. Even though I was happy the old man was well and home, the truth was that it didn’t do much to cheer me in the day to day. I felt bad a lot of the time, and empty always. When I was out fishing, struggling to make cold disobedient fingers hold onto the nets, I’d think of some crack or curse Steve would have made in the situation, and I longed to hear him say it. And when the fishing was done, there was no gang up on the cliff waiting for me to join them. To avoid climbing the cliff and feeling their absence I often walked around the point of the cliff to the sea beach, and wandered that familiar expanse. The next day I’d take a deep breath, push myself into my boots and go fishing again. But I was just going through the motions.
It wasn’t that the men on the boats were unfriendly, either. On the contrary—Marvin kept giving me the best of the fish to take home, and Rafael talked to me more than he ever had, joshing about the fish, describing his latest projects (which were interesting, I had to admit), inviting me by to see them.… They were all like that, even John from time to time. But none of it meant anything to me. My
heart felt like my fingers did when the fishing was done, cold and disobedient, numb even next to the fire.
Somehow Tom figured this out. Maybe Rafael told him, maybe he saw it himself. One day after the fishing I clawed my way up the cliff path, feeling like I weighed as much as three of me, and there was Tom on the top.
I said, “You’re getting around pretty well these days.”
He ignored that and shook a knobby finger at me. “What’s eating you, boy?”
I cringed. “Nothing, what do you mean?” I looked down at my bag of fish, but he grabbed my arm and pulled it.
“What’s troubling you?”
“Ah, Tom.” What could I say? He knew what it was. I said, “You know what it is. I gave you my word I wouldn’t go up there, and I did.”
“Ah, the hell with that.”
“But look what happened! You were right. If I hadn’t gone up there, none of it would have happened.”
“How do you figure? They just would have gone without you.”
I shook my head. “No. I could have stopped it.” I explained to him what had happened, what my part had been—every bit of it. He nodded as I got each sentence out.
When I was done, he said, “Well, that’s too bad.” I was shivering, and he started up the river path with me. “But it’s easy to be wise afterwards. Hindsight et cetera. You had no way of knowing what would happen.”
“But I did! You told me. Besides, I felt it coming.”
“Well, but listen, boy—” I looked at him, and he stopped talking. He frowned, and nodded once to acknowledge that it was right for me to reject such easy denials of my responsibility. We walked for a bit and then he snapped his fingers. “Have you started writing that book yet?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Tom.”
He shoved me in the chest, hard, so that I staggered out of the path and had to catch my footing. “Hey!”
“This time you might try listening to me.”
That stung. I was round-eyed as he went on. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this sniveling of yours. Mando’s dead and you’re partly to blame, yes. Yes. But it’s going to fester in you not doing you a bit of good until you write it down, like I told you to.”
“Ah, Tom—”
And he charged me, shoved me again! It was the kind of thing he used to indulge in only with Steve, and at the same time I was getting ready to punch him I was flattered. “Listen to me for once!” he cried, and suddenly I realized he was upset.
“I do listen to you. You know that.”
“Well then do as I say. You write down your story. Everything you remember. The writing it down will make you understand it. And when you’re done you’ll have Mando’s story down too. It’s the best you can do for him now, do you see?”
I nodded, my throat tight. I cleared it. “I’ll try.”
“Don’t try, just do it.” I hopped away so he couldn’t shove me again. “Ha! That’s right—do it or face a beating. It’s your assignment. You don’t get any more schooling till you’re done.” He shook his fist at me, his arm a bundle of ligaments under skin, skinny as a rope. I almost had to laugh.
* * *
So I thought about it. I got the book down from the shelf, where it had been propping up a whetstone holder with only two legs. I looked through the blank pages. There were a lot of them. It was as clear as a stonefish is ugly that I would never be able to fill all those pages. For one thing, it would take too long.
But I kept thinking about it. The emptiness still afflicted me. And as the days got shorter the nights in our shack got longer, and I found those memories were always in my mind. And the old man had been awful vehement about it.…
Before I even lifted a pencil, however, Kathryn declared it was time to harvest the corn. When she decided it was time, all of us who worked for her worked dawn to dusk, every day. Right after sunup I was out there with the others slashing at stalks with a scythe, then carrying stalks to the wains, pulling them over the bridge to the barrows and warehouses behind the Marianis’, stripping off the leaves, pulling off the husked ears.
The bad summer storms made it a poor harvest. Soon we were done and it was time for the potatoes. Kathryn and I worked together on those. We hadn’t spent much time together since the night at Doc’s, and at first I was uncomfortable, but she didn’t seem to blame me for anything. We just worked, and talked potatoes. Working with Kathryn was exhausting. In the mornings it seemed all right, because she worked so hard that she did more than her share, but the trouble was she kept going at that pace all day, so I got hooked into doing more than a day’s work every day no matter how much I let her go at it. And harvesting potatoes is dirty, backbreaking labor, any way you do it.
When the harvesting was done we celebrated with a little drinking at the bathhouse. No one got overjoyed, because it was a bad harvest, but at least it was in. Kathryn sat beside me in the chairs on the bathhouse lawn to watch the sunset, and Rebel and Kristen joined us. At the other end of the yard Del and Gabby tossed a football back and forth. The flames of a bonfire were scarcely visible against the salmon sky. Rebel was upset about the potato harvest, even crying a little, and Kathryn talked a lot to cheer her up. “Pests are something you have to live with. Next year we’ll try some of that stuff I got from the scavengers. Don’t worry, it takes a long time to learn farming. It ain’t like those spuds are your children, you know.” Kristen smiled at that, the first smile I had seen from her since Mando died.
“Nobody will go hungry,” I said.
“But I’m sick of fish already,” Rebel said. The girls laughed at her.
“You couldn’t tell by the way you eat them,” Kristen said.
Kathryn sipped her whiskey lazily. “What you been up to lately, Hank?”
“I’ve been writing in that book Tom gave me,” I lied, to see how it sounded.
“Oh yeah? Are you writing about the valley?”
“Sure.”
She raised her eyebrows. “About—”
“Yeah.”
“Hmph.” She stared into the fire. “Well, good. Maybe something good will come of this summer after all. But writing a whole book? It must be really hard.”
“Oh it is,” I assured her. “It’s almost impossible, to tell you the truth. But I’m keeping at it.”
All three of the girls looked impressed.
So I thought about it some more. I took the book off the shelf again, and kept it on the little stand beside my bed, next to the lamp and the cup and the book of Shakespeare’s plays Tom had given me as a Christmas present. And I thought about it. When it had all begun, so long ago … those meetings with the gang, planning the summer. It wouldn’t actually be grave-robbing, Steve had said, and I had snapped awake.…
So I started writing it.
It was slow work. Me trying to write is like Odd Roger trying to talk. Every night I quit for good. But the next night, or the one after, I would begin again. It’s astonishing how much the memory will surrender when you squeeze it. Some nights when I finished writing I’d come to, surprised to be in our shack, sweat pouring down my ribs, my hand stiff, my fingers sore, my heart pounding with the emotions of time past. And away from the work, out on the boats heaving over the wild swells, I found myself thinking of what had happened, of ways to say it. I knew I was going to finish that book no matter what it took from me. I was hooked.
The evenings of the autumn took on a pattern. When the fish were on the tables I climbed the cliff. No gang to meet me. Steadfastly I ignored the ghost gathering and hiked home, usually through the early evening gloom. At home Pa greased the skillet and fried up some fish and onions, while I lit the lamp and set the table, and we made the usual small talk about what had happened during the day. When the fish was ready we sat down and Pa said grace, and we ate the fish and bread or potatoes. Afterwards we washed up and put things away and drank the rest of the dinner water, and brushed our teeth with a scavenged toothbrush. Then Pa sat at the sewing table, and I sat at the
dinner table, and he stitched together clothes while I stitched together words, until we agreed it was time for bed.
I don’t know how many nights went by like that. On rainy days it was the same, only all day long. Once a week or so I went up to Tom’s. Since I promised I was writing he had relented and agreed to give me more lessons. He had me in Othello, and I was pretty sure I knew why. I thought I had things to regret, but Othello! He was the only man in Shakespeare more fool than I.
“… O fool! fool! fool!
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that lov’d not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand
(Like the base Indian) threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu’d eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian’s trees
Their med’cinable gum. Set you down this…”
“So they had eucalyptus trees in Arabia,” I remarked to Tom when I was done, and he laughed. And when upon leaving I demanded more pencils, he cackled wildly, and scrounged them up for me.
* * *
The days passed. The further I got in the story of the summer, the further away it was in time, and the less I understood it. Perplex’d in the extreme. One day it was raining and Pa and I both worked through the afternoon. We tried keeping the door open for light, but it was too cold even with the stove going, and rain kept blowing in when the wind shifted. We had to close it and light the lamps. Pa bent over the coat he was making. His hands moved as quickly as fingers snapping as he punched the holes, and yet the holes were perfectly spaced, in a line that could have been drawn by a straightedge. He slipped a thimble on his middle finger and stitched. Poke and pull, poke and pull … cross-stitches appeared in perfect X’s, the thread tugged so that the tension on it was constant.… I had never paid such close attention to his sewing. His calloused fingers clicked along as nimbly as dancers. It was as if Pa’s fingers were smarter than he was, I thought; and I felt bad for thinking it. Besides, it was wrong. Pa told his fingers what to do, no one else. They wouldn’t do it alone. It was truer to say something like, Pa’s sewing was the way in which he was smart. And in that way he was very smart indeed. I liked that way of saying it, and scribbled it down. Stitching thoughts. Meanwhile his deft fingers plied the needle, and it kept slipping through the pieces of cloth, pursing them together, pulling the thread taut, turning, piercing again. Pa sighed. “I don’t think I see as well as I used to. I wish it were a sunny day. How I miss the summer.”
The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) Page 37
