A Peculiar Grace (50 page)

He heard her crying so he waited. Then she said, “He asked if I wanted to ride out with him and get my car and I said I’d rather not
and he said he and Mother would drop it off that evening after chores in case I needed it but unless I felt otherwise Nora wanted to spend the night. I told him if that’s what she wanted then it was probably the best thing. Then I went upstairs and slept, just all given out. I came down a while ago and the car was here and on the kitchen table was a fresh peach pie. And guess what, Hewitt?”

“You sat down and ate the whole thing.”

“With ice cream.” She laughed. “God, I can’t explain it. Maybe I really am going nuts. I mean here I was at the end of this totally bizarre fucked-up day at the end of a totally bizarre fucked-up summer and I sat there and ate a whole pie. But you know what? It was great.”

“Sure it was. It’s good to be reminded there are good things. Like pie.”

“Do you eat pie, Hewitt?”

“There’s a woman in town bakes and now and then I get a pie.”

They fell silent. Then, her voice suddenly shy, Emily said, “Hey, Hewitt. Tell me about your life. How you live.”

He considered briefly and immediately decided to skip almost all of the last twenty years, at least all the parts that touched upon her, or the absence of her.

So he talked about his forge, his work, the satisfaction it gave him, wanting her to know he had moved far beyond the simple reproductions she might recall but at the same time being matter of fact, as if his mastery and control over his work was nothing more than an obvious progression and truth was it was not that hard to do because he’d always felt the difficult image he projected of himself was truly not only self-preservation but a real and lasting inability to comprehend or cope with the world’s rush of demands. Her own responses were simple as well and so he knew she was hearing exactly what he intended, which was far more than what he put into words.

When he was done she said, “So you did it. You made the life.”

He chuckled honestly and said, “Or the life made me. But you know, Em, all that aside, it’s been a strange summer for me also.”

She was silent then and he’d expected that. So he told her what she didn’t know; of his father’s first marriage and the loss of that first wife and daughter and then went on and told her about Jessica. Here he was more forthright, thinking rise or fall, whatever happens or doesn’t with Emily, if Jessica returned or not, he owed it to both to be clear as he could be. He told how she’d arrived, the strange difficult first days, the ways he opened to her and how Jessica slowly responded, how she’d finally come to tell him who she was, the episode with his mother, sister and niece, and only here fudging a bit, how she’d departed and how he had no idea if that was to be a short or long time but as far as he was concerned, and he believed Jessica knew this also, there always was, and always would be a place for her with him.

When he was done Emily said, “I’ve seen people like that. Not too many because Bluffport’s off the path for most but they’ve ended up here. Some come from right here. They’re hard to work with—they seem to want help but once it’s offered they pull away. I don’t know what it is, Hewitt. You said she had meds but wouldn’t take them?”

“I never saw any. But they were in her past, at least.”

“That’s frustrating. Because they could really help her.”

Hewitt was quiet and then said, “So is it really all about drugs then? Or has the world narrowed up so tight it just squeezes the bejesus out of some of us?”

“It’s not drugs, Hewitt. And the world has always squeezed.”

“I know that pretty well, Emily. But I’m not rambling around the country not trusting a living soul.”

She said, “Yes, it sounds like you’re doing just dandy. Like I said, living the life.”

“I still believe most of what I knew was true when I was nineteen, if that’s what you mean.”

“But who do you trust, Hewitt?”

“Well, Em. I trust myself. And a couple of good friends. Not much beyond that.”

“I see.”

“Well, you asked. I still trust you. I mean the spirit, the essence of the woman I once knew. I’m trying real hard not to fool myself but Emily, I have to tell you, tucked in around the edges, is the same woman I placed my trust in a long time ago.”

A drawn out silence and he guessed again he’d blown it but also again felt he had no choice but to tell her how he saw things. It was so quiet he could hear the soft rain. He waited and was about to give up and admit it, apologize because he had to and let it go. Or let it go and see what happened. He’d learned something over the summer although at the moment wasn’t sure what it was.

Then Emily said, “What about Jessica?”

“What do you mean? Do I trust her? Do I trust what I know about her?”

“Do you trust what you feel about her?”

He paused and said, “I trust what I feel about you. But I know how I feel about her.”

She said, “I hope you do. I hope so, Hewitt.”

Then there was only the rain.

Ten

Asplendid late summer or early autumn morning with Hewitt deep in the defile of Crawford Notch heading east, the roadside thick with purple asters and here and there on the lower reaches of the gorge slashes of red among the trees below the cliff faces stretching above, the single hawk too high to be identified drifting effortless the thermals of what would be a pleasantly warm, near hot isinglass day. Walter’s jeep with its hardshell top and sturdy road-eating tires, nothing beyond what it was intended to be, a small hardy engine, not a workhorse but more akin to a donkey; plain, functional, able to grind on long after fancier beasts had fallen in the harness. And to the point of the day—a vehicle designed to blend into its surroundings. As Walter pointed out when Hewitt called at break of day, requesting nothing but merely laying out the situation.

He got caught behind a log truck and so eased back and tooled along, relaxed and enjoying the ride, contemplative but not over-thinking anything. Nothing at all. A part of this peaceful vitality was the day before he’d installed the completed hitching posts, after calling two days before that and telling Anne what needed to be done to prepare. So his twin monuments, his stones encased in their elegant refined cages were now in place and looking exactly as he envisioned, wonderfully unique but immensely practical. Placed either side of her main stable entrance, anchored deeply so the hardest frost would never budge them, surrounded by mums, the oiled rubbed ironwork complementing the white walls of her barn and the black-painted cast bars
within the open stall windows. Once they were in, Hewitt was patiently agreeable as one of the long-legged Thoroughbred studs was led out and tied for a bit to see how a horse would react and he behaved as all expected and hoped—he nickered for his mares and stablemates, peered around at the clustered humans and then began to crop the lawn bordering the beds and took a trial nip at the mums. After he was led back inside Hewitt and Anne conferred briefly and he undercharged her, making a joke about selling rocks and adding they came with a lifetime guarantee. He asked if he could have a couple of minutes alone before one of the guys gave him a lift home and Anne glanced at him and nodded, disappearing into the cool depths of the barn.

The only thing he’d done to the stones was use an old buffing head to gently polish their surfaces, so the black spots and veins and the golden flecks of pyrite sharpened in appearance, not enough so even a thoughtful observer would discern his effort but the effect was what he wanted—the stones would appear always as he’d found them, glowing wetly in the lustrous subdued light of a rainy day. He’d squatted about five feet back midway between the posts and studied them. Sometime during the finishing work it came to him that the stones were for more than Emily and himself and their unborn children but comprised a vast circle of his past, back into his father’s life, his father’s lost wife and child and then as something breaking open in him; to all of the gone, the long lost, however close or remote within the broad net of his life.

H
E’D GOTTEN UP
at his usual time and it was dark outside. The summer was indeed shrinking toward what Hewitt thought of as the long lovely dark time—not forgetting the pleasures of autumn and Indian summer or the usual brown drab of November but thinking ahead to those short days where the forge was a haven and the world periodically refreshed itself, the deep shoveled paths between house and forge and out to the mailbox, the dark oily glisten of the hemlocks and spruce in the low afternoon light, the mighty gliding strides
on snowshoes up through the pasture and woods along the old road or as the snow deepened anywhere at all he wanted to go, the deadfalls and cumbersome boulders of summer as good as gone, coming again to stand on the hill above the place and spy out his neighbors’ lights up and down the valley, the small glow from the single streetlight in Lympus, and along the hills to the south and east a smear of light from Sharon. Or the nights few and rare when the streams of greenish or more rare red, yellow and green aurora borealis pulsed against the sky, never forecast, never expected but only immediately and wondrously there—the lights always a gift beyond the reach or expectation of humans. Although when they were out the telephone network buzzed, one of the few times he loved the phone, the excited voice on the other end and he’d do his part, make a call even as he was strapping on his snowshoes in the kitchen before clattering down the porch steps and off into the snow.

Now as the coffee made he was still aglow from the hitching posts and headed toward the forge to sit and sip as the fire caught and burned toward the furnace of ancient gods, the smiters and alchemists of iron, bronze and brass. And go again through his stack of notes not only to see what caught his eye but with a strategic edge—midwinter he didn’t care to be caught with a project so large he might need the big doors which could be wedged by snowfall and the impacted slides off the roof until whatever thaw, January or March or even April would once again open those doors. So he was thinking all this when the phone rang and even as he’d thought he was getting used to these unusual calling times, knowing who it was.

“Hey there.”

There was a pause and then, tentative, “Hewitt?”

“Jessica? Jeezum! Where are you? What’s going on?”

She made him wait. Then said, “Portland.”

“Oregon?” Praying she heard the tease.

“You sound kind of out of it,” she said. “Have you had your coffee yet?”

“I’ve got it right here.”

“Portland Maine.”

“What’s happening there?”

“Oh. Not much. What’s up with you?”

He sipped the coffee, scalding his tongue but trying to slow it down to whatever level she was calling from. He said, “Not so much either. Well. I finished those hitching posts and got em in the ground yesterday.”

“How do they look?”

“They look good.” All he needed to say. “Roger called. Wanted to know about you. I told him you were off on a toot. He said if you showed up he still had plenty of work.”

She was quiet and he wondered if mentioning Roger was a mistake. Then realized she was sniffling, crying and trying to hide it. She said, “My car. It’s all smashed up.”

“Jesus, are you hurt? Jessica?”

He heard the snap of a lighter and pull of a cigarette and she told him the car had been parked but the brakes or whatever gave out and it rolled backward down the sidestreet hill she’d left it on and rear-ended fast and hard into a light pole, an old wooden one and the car was trashed and then she began to cry again, not trying to hide it this time.

He said, “Oh, goddamn, honey. I’m sorry. But you’re okay, right? What about the cops?”

“They were nice about it. I mean, I wandered back and found three cruisers parked around it and a tow truck already there and they established it was my car and all the papers were up to date. The light pole didn’t even budge. Although it was a job getting the Bug pulled off it. Aw, damn, Hewitt. It’s gone. It’s really gone.”

“Was that this morning?”

“It was yesterday afternoon.”

“Where are you now? Where’re you calling from?”

“A hotel. Right up the top of the hill from where it happened. But I couldn’t sleep and figured you were up—”

“Hey Jessica?”

“Hey, Hewitt.”

“What do you want to do?”

She made him wait. Later he realized it wasn’t that. Finally in a small voice she said his name again.

“I’m right here.”

“Can I come back?”

D
ESPITE THE OFF-SEASON
it was a slow push through North Conway and he idled along, his elbow out the window. It was almost lunchtime but he wasn’t hungry and even if he had been wouldn’t have stopped. There would be time enough for food in Portland. But years ago, the spring before he’d gone to work with Timothy and met Emily, he’d made a trip over here to spend a day with a smith, a long tall man with a beard halfway down his chest who had a small shop in town with the usual array of fireplace tools and kitchen utensils, latches and hooks and racks for pots or hanging outdoor clothing. The shop was all burlap and bright paint with Dylan on the stereo and the man whose name Hewitt could no longer recall had taken him out of town to his handbuilt cabin in the woods where his forge was and in a short afternoon taught Hewitt how to true-weld, using two pieces of flat stock straight from the forge. Over and over until he got it right. Two little boys ran naked through a vegetable garden with a high tight plank fence against deer and a woman worked out there without a blouse on, at one point bringing iced chamomile tea to the forge for them, her sloped breasts heavy, as lovely as anyone Hewitt had ever seen. The man told Hewitt they’d been at Woodstock and this at a time when no one would consider making that up. The man had dark brown eyes and the other thing learned that day came from those eyes—gently deep and patient but with an edge, a wariness to them. And Hewitt wondered what cost the man had paid for living a life according to a wheel of his own design. In some ways not so different than his own father, or Hewitt later realized, himself. They’d smoked
some bad homegrown together and Hewitt had gone on his way, carrying the precious three pieces of welded stock with him. It was an afternoon forever etched and yet he’d never gone back, being too preoccupied with his own life for so many years that when it occurred to him to try and find the fellow again there seemed no point. It had been what it was—a moment. One brother to another.