Fellow Mortals (8 page)

“Joan,” Henry says. “What do
you
think he needs?”

She looks up spooked, shaken by her name, having sat there comfortably forgotten with her meal. Henry stares at her with open-faced sincerity and hope.

“A friend?” Joan asks.

Ava sighs and shakes her head.

“Absolutely right,” he says, drumming on the table. “It’s exactly that simple.”

Joan looks relieved.

*   *   *

Ava’s ready to sleep at nine o’clock, the arches of her feet full of buckshot and thorns. Before they go upstairs, Joan leads Henry into the kitchen. She’s been working on her puzzle all afternoon and has the border and the lower-left corner nearly done. Henry laughs, assuming she’s been having a marvelous time, and his laughter automatically convinces Joan she has. They all say good night and go their separate ways, Nan and Joan with cups of tea and a criminal forensics show, Ava to the bedroom with Henry at her heels.

“Tell me the truth,” she says, stopping him the second he’s in the room.

“What?”

“You pushed yourself today.”

“He needed help to clear a path. It wasn’t
dangerous
.”

“You promised me a year ago. You promised not to push…”

“I know, I know,” Henry says, defeated far too easily for Ava to pursue a proper argument. “I promise…”

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t.”

He had promised with cigars.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” he says. “Ava, look at me. I didn’t—”

“Let it go. I’m glad it went well, I’m glad you’re okay. But I’m really too exhausted for a long conversation,” and with that she turns away and leaves him at the door.

It feels later than it is, deeper into summer—almost like fall is right around the bend. The room’s muggy and she can’t raise the window any higher. She would like nothing better than to sleep outdoors with the June constellations moving overhead and the grass still warm from the afternoon sun. The room’s cramped and the ceiling’s too low to hang a fan. She’s tired of the wall paint—gingerbread tan—more suitable for winter when it cozies up the bed. She can’t stop yawning and her eyes have a leak. She sits and feels the mattress sag. They ought to flip it, ought to buy a new box spring. She wonders how it feels starting over altogether. Brand-new wardrobe. Bright white sheets. Working with an architect, drawing up plans.

Wingnut pauses in the middle of the room, neither wagging nor alert but lazily content. He’s filthy from the woods and needs a bath. So does Henry, who has the pine-sapped look of someone who’s sweat and dried several times in one afternoon. He peels off his shirt and stretches out his arms, works a rotator cuff and groans when it pops.

“He isn’t living very good,” Henry says. “I think I ought to bring him something.”

“We have enough to pay for already, feeding two extra mouths.”

“They barely eat.”

“And only one of us is working.”

“I’m still getting paid.”

“But only one of us is
working
,” Ava says, and shuts her eyes.

She’s noticed how he looks when he riffles through the mail, separating bills like a cardsharp handling a deck, knowing all his pals are out delivering their routes. Even his body misses work; he’s gained ten pounds since the fire, and it’s taken an afternoon of threatening his heart to make him look spent instead of restless.

“Did I do something wrong? Aside from moving logs?”

“I’m tired and my feet hurt.”

“Give me those.”

He kneels and rubs his hands together, building up heat.

“You’re exhausted,” Ava says. “I ought to be giving
you
a massage.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I told you—it was really easy work.”

He lifts her foot, intuiting the one that hurts most, and tips her back gently onto the bed. Ava props on her elbows, just to show resistance, but the pressure of his thumb immediately glows. Henry hums at her foot, near enough to kiss it, his mustache not quite tickling her sole.

Mr. Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute
 … She’s never decided if it’s worse that he hums old commercials, or that she always hears the lyric bouncing in her head. But she’s happy they’re in tune, that his hands are on her foot, and that he really did survive the visit out to Sam’s. He hits a spot along her arch that prickles up her thigh. She settles back and hears maple leaves swishing in the yard. She thinks of fireflies bobbing outside, gold-green, and it’s almost like dozing in a hammock in the breeze.

“I’ll tell you,” Henry says. “Seeing him alone out there, living in a trailer…”

“Shh,” Ava says, opening her toes.

*   *   *

Henry and Wing drive back to Arcadia Street the next morning. They follow Ava going to work until she turns her own way and blows them a kiss out the window, more professional and beautiful than Henry’s used to seeing her at home. She’s a woman he’d admire if he passed her on the road, and he thinks of other people that’ll see her this way—patients at the lab, businessmen and doctors—when her smile is directed at the world instead of him.

For days and days she swaddled him up, petting his hair and bringing him drinks, calling him from work every two or three hours just to see if he was doing okay. But when the newness of the fire wore off, when the aftermath and living with the Finns grew familiar, he began to feel a starchiness in all her ministrations. He’d sensed a similar detachment from a surgeon last summer when he had to get a coronary stent. The surgery itself had gone as well as they had hoped, but the artery they’d pierced to get the catheter inside kept bleeding, just a little, when it should have knit together. Each day, Henry’s surgeon grew increasingly annoyed, subtly at first and openly at last, as if the bleeding were a voluntary failure of his patient.

Wing tracks Ava for as long as he can see her. Then he’s back, eyes ahead, remembering the way and sniffing in the wind. Henry’s eager, too. He’s in agony from yesterday, sore at every joint, but Ava’s kiss pepped him up and what’s a little rain? He’s brought along a thermos and a bag full of sandwiches and pears. He could haul a whole forest. It’s a wide-open day.

He parks in front of the Bailey lot and double-toots the horn.

Like a shot, there’s Sam striding at the car. He’s wearing long johns and socks without shoes, pounding into puddles and electrically awake. Henry steps out, shutting Wingnut in.

“Get out of here!” Sam yells, ten feet away and bearing down fast.

Henry backs up and stumbles off the curb. Sam shoves him in the chest.

“
Whoa…,”
Henry says.

Sam pushes him again. They tangle at the feet and topple in the road. Wing snarls in the car, scratching at the door. Henry gasps and doesn’t move. Sam grabs him by the neck, kneeling on his stomach, and his face is inescapable and near enough to blur. There’s banana on his breath and mud below his eye, and Henry has a feeling like he’s staring at a relative, everything familiar from the oil on his nose to the one stray whisker he neglected when he shaved.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Henry stammers.

“You killed her,” Sam says. “Understand?
Understand?
” punctuating each with a jostle and a bump.

“I’m sorry,” Henry moans, incapable of stopping. He’s shaken by a sob. Snot bubbles from his nostril.

Sam is catatonic when he wobbles to his feet. He walks away, leaving Henry like he isn’t even there. Wing’s stopped barking but he presses at the glass. Henry stands and has to catch himself; he might have sprained an ankle. He watches Sam trudge toward the trailer, where he walks around back and shuts the door too quietly to hear. Henry wipes his hands, conscious of his heart and of the rainfall just now beating on his head.

He slumps into the car, holding Wingnut back with an outstretched arm. Wing’s beside himself and jumps around, front seat, backseat. The air smells heavily of overwrought dog.

“Settle down,” Henry says.

The engine sounds offensive and he stalls when he turns. He starts the car again, grinds a gear, and drives away, clipping the curb and squealing when he jerks around the corner. Wing jostles up against him.

“Sit!” Henry yells, frightening him down.

He clears the neighborhood and drives toward the busier part of town, unaware he’s doing fifty till he skids to meet a red light. He’s pretty sure he jumped a couple of stop signs, too, and when he turns to park the car, once again too abruptly, Wing topples in his seat and thumps against the door. A truck hisses by, buffeting the car. Henry shuts his eyes and breathes through his nose, smelling water and exhaust, remembering the fire trucks and craving a cigar, imagining the taste until his heart feels clenched. He fumbles in the glove box, pops a jar, and chews three aspirin as quickly as he can.

He turns to look at Wing.

“I’m sorry. You’re a good dog. Good dog. Come here, you’re a very good dog.”

Wing licks him on the mouth. Henry pets him up and down, trying not to cry, and then he reaches into the bag and offers him a sandwich. He can barely see the road through the fogged-up glass and his head’s still roaring like he’s revving up the engine.

*   *   *

Sam trembles on the flip-down bedding of the trailer and the rain ticks metallically above him. He can’t sleep, can’t sit, can’t go out or walk around, and when he punches the wall, harder than he means, it leaves a two-foot fracture in the cheap wood veneer. He opens a can of chicken noodle soup and eats it cold. The oil in the broth reminds him of Laura but he can’t remember why—some memory of winter and the clink of metal spoons. It’s a terrible meal even by nonperishable standards, and he reminds himself he has to call the power company and see about electric. Peg was right: he needs a better plan than living like this, especially with everybody knocking on the door. He makes a shopping list: batteries, a radio, sanding cloth, rope. Another round of groceries and a few more books. He could really use beer, now instead of later, but he can’t imagine driving into town right now.

To hell with the weather. He grabs his backpack and a cooler full of hot dogs, soda, and potato chips and hikes into the trees. They swallow him at once, branches sagging down, leaves reaching out and clinging to his clothes. It’s damper in the shade where the ground stays cool. Little molecules of fog hover in the air. He has a memory of driving up a mountainside with Laura—Mount Paradox, a tourist peak with a paved road and a restaurant waiting at the top, spectacular in leaf season, scarier going up than coming down, the backward pull more insistently alarming. He white-knuckled the ascent but Laura didn’t mind, not until the summit, where they had to turn around. That was when it got her, on the long drive down. She kept her hand against the dash and wouldn’t speak until the bottom, whereas Sam preferred to know that gravity was driving. He can feel it right now—the sense of nature taking over, the inevitable tug of moving in the wild. This is where he doesn’t have to fight to stay in motion. This is where he feels more solid on the ground.

The weather settles down by the time he’s in the clearing. He looks directly up and can’t see the rain, just a bright gray sky and mist around the leaves. The place has grown familiar, and despite being soaked he’s happy that he’s come, safe from any visitors and bigger, more at ease, in the broadness of the woods. If only he could pull the trailer out here, but he’s something like a quarter mile in without a road. He notices the logs that Henry piled yesterday. The notion isn’t new: build a cabin, settle in. He could clear the way enough to get an ATV and then deliver what he needed. Keep it simple, off the grid.

He finds the ax where he left it and continues past the clearing to an elm tree looming in the shade. He rejected it the first few times he came across it. The trunk has a hole too pronounced for him to work around, an oblong pit, deep black, full of rot. It’s the hole that draws him in today, focusing his thoughts. It reminds him of the burned-out window of the dormer, and he swings the ax with terrible precision at a limb. Everything dissolves in the action of the cuts—Henry and his dog, Peg and her concern—and he picks another limb and hacks that, too. His blood warms up and pretty soon he’s settling into shorter cuts, aiming them at angles. After that he takes his chisels and a mallet from his bag, concentrating closely, roughing out the form. His nerves begin to settle like he’s had a couple drinks and he continues for an hour, maybe two, maybe more.

He started working with wood in eleventh grade, whittling sticks with a pocketknife he’d gotten for his birthday, just trying out the blade by shaving bark and chipping knots off the side. Later he began to carve symbols and designs, and after the knife snapped shut and almost severed a fingertip, he bought a proper carving set with chisels, gouges, and a fixed-blade knife.

He moved to songbirds and people but he’d always liked mythology, and before long he was carving nothing but monsters and female nudes. He made a three-headed dog that was crude but recognizable, a minotaur, a winged man, and every nymph or goddess he could find a good picture of. After high school he earned his MFA, tried a few small gallery shows, and had a sculpture,
Death of Hercules
, featured in an issue of
Woodcarving Illustrated
.

Laura liked his work but struggled with his
working
, especially once she took an overnight shift at the hospital pharmacy. She went to her job at eight p.m. and left Sam sculpting in the basement, hour after hour, until he finally went to bed at one or two in the morning. He’d wake the next day underslept and noncommunicative, just as Laura was getting home, ready to talk and share a meal, and after that she’d go to sleep and Sam would teach lithography and watercolor at the high school. Their schedules aligned on afternoons and weekends. Laura would be up and fully slept when Sam returned from teaching. They would talk and watch the news and go for walks after dinner. They liked making love in the five-o’clock light, right when half the town was buried in commute. But after a while, Sam’s eagerness to sculpt preoccupied his thoughts and he found himself waiting for the hour she would leave.