Call If You Need Me (19 page)

“It’s a shame,” Frank said, “all this land without grain half the time with half the people in the world starving.” He shook his head. “If the government would keep its fingers off the farm we’d be a damn sight better off.”

The pavement ended in a jag of cracks and chuckholes and the
car bounced onto the rubbery, black pitted road that stretched like a long black avenue toward the hills.

“Have you ever seen them when they harvest, Lew?”

“No.”

The morning grayed. Farrell saw the stubble fields turned into a cheat-yellow as he watched. He looked out the window at the sky where gray clouds rolled and broke into massive, clumsy chunks. “The rain’s going to quit.”

They came to the foot of the hills where the fields ended, then turned and drove along at the edge of the fields following the hills until they came to the head of the canyon. Far below at the very bottom of the stone-ribbed canyon lay the river, its far side covered by a bank of fog.

“It’s stopped raining,” Farrell said.

Frank backed the car into a small, rocky ravine and said it was a good enough place. Farrell took out his shotgun and leaned it against the rear fender before taking out his shell bag and extra coat. Then he lifted out the paper sack with the sandwiches and his hand closed tightly around the warm, hard thermos. They walked away from the car without talking and along the ridge before starting to drop down into one of the small valleys that opened into the canyon. The earth was studded here and there with sharp rocks or a black, dripping bush.

The ground sogged under his feet, pulled at his boots with every step, and made a sucking noise when he released them. He carried the shell bag in his right hand, swinging it like a sling, letting it hang down by its strap from his hand. A wet breeze off the river blew against his face. The sides of the low bluffs overlooking the river down below were deeply grooved and cut back into the rock, leaving table-like projections jutting out, marking the high-water lines for thousands of years past. Piles of naked white logs and countless pieces of driftwood lay jammed onto the ledge like cairns of bones dragged up onto the cliffs by some giant bird. Farrell tried to remember where the geese came over, three years ago. He stopped on the side of a hill just where
it sloped into the canyon and leaned his gun on a rock. He pulled bushes and gathered rocks from nearby and walked down toward the river after some of the driftwood to make a blind.

He sat on his raincoat with his back against a hard shrub, his knees drawn up to his chin, watching the sky whiten and then blue a little and the clouds run with the wind. Geese were gabbling somewhere in the fog on the other side of the river. He rested and smoked and watched the smoke whip out of his month. He waited for the sun.

It is four in the afternoon. The sun has just gone behind the gray, late afternoon clouds leaving a dwarfed half-shadow that falls across the car following him as he walks around to open the door for his wife. They kiss.

Iris and he will be back for her in an hour and forty-five minutes, exactly. They are going by the hardware store and then to the grocery. They will be back for her at 5:45. He slides in behind the wheel again and in a moment, seeing his chance, eases out into the traffic. On the way out of town he must stop and wait for every red light, finally turning left onto the secondary, hitting the gas so hard that they both lean back a little in the seat. It is 4:20. At the forks they turn onto the blacktop, orchards on both sides of the road. Over the tops of the trees, the low brown hills and beyond, the blue-black mountains crowned with white. From the close rows of trees, shadows, blackening into the shoulders, creep across the pavement in front of the car. New boxes are jumbled together in white piles at the end of each orchard row, and up against the trees or pushed into the limbs, some leaning in the crotches, are the ladders. He slows the car and stops, pulling off onto the shoulder close enough to one of the trees so that all Iris has to do is open her door and she can reach the limb. It scrapes against the door as she releases it. The apples are heavy and yellow, and sweet juice spurts into his teeth as he bites into one.

The road ends and they follow the dust-covered hard-track right up to the edge of the hills where the orchards stop. He
can still go farther, though, by turning onto the bank road that follows the irrigation canal. The canal is empty now and the steep dirt banks are dry and crumbling. He has shifted the car into second. The road is steeper, driving is more difficult and slower. He stops the car under a pine tree outside a water gate where the canal comes down out of the hills to slide into a circular cement trough. Iris lays her hand in his lap. It is nearly dark. The wind is blowing through the car and once he hears the tops of the trees creaking.

He gets out of the car to light a cigarette, walking to the rim of the hill overlooking the valley. The wind has strengthened; the air is colder. The grass is sparse under his feet and there are a few flowers. The cigarette makes a short, twisting red arc as it spins down into the valley. It is six o’clock.

The cold was bad. The dead numbness of the toes, the cold slowly working its way up into the calves of his legs and setting in under his knees. His fingers too, stiff and cold even though they were balled into his pockets. Farrell waited for the sun. The huge clouds over the river turned, breaking up, shaping and reshaping while he watched. At first he barely noticed the black line against the lowest clouds. When it crossed into sight he thought it was mosquitoes, close up against his blind, and then it was a far-off dark rent between cloud and sky that moved closer while he watched. The line turned toward him then and spread out over the hills below. He was excited but calm, his heart beating in his ears urging him to run, yet his movements slow and ponderous as if heavy stones hung to his legs. He inched up on his knees until his face pressed into the brush wall and turned his eyes toward the ground. His legs shook and he pushed his knees into the soft earth. The legs grew suddenly numb and he moved his hand and pushed it into the ground up over his fingers, surprised at its warmth. Then the soft gabble of geese over his head and the heavy, whistling push of wings. His finger tightened around the trigger. The quick, rasping calls; the sharp upward jerk often
feet as they saw him. Farrell was on his feet now, pulling down on one goose before swinging to another, then again quickly onto a closer one, following it as it broke and cut back over his head toward the river. He fired once, twice, and the geese kept flying, clamoring, split up and out of range, their low forms melting into the rolling hills. He fired once more before dropping back to his knees inside the blind. Somewhere on the hill behind him and a little to the left he heard Frank shooting, the reports rolling down through the canyon like sharp whip snaps. He felt confused to see more geese getting off the river, stringing out over the low hills and rising up the canyon, flying in V formations for the top of the canyon and the fields behind. He reloaded carefully, pushing the green, ribbed #2s up into the breech, pumping one of the shells into the chamber with a hollow, cracking sound. Yet six shells would do the job better than three. He quickly loosened the plug from the underbarrel of the gun and dropped the coil spring and the wooden plug into his pocket. He heard Frank shoot again, and suddenly there was a flock gone by he hadn’t seen. As he watched them he saw three more coming in low and from the side. He waited until they were even with him, swinging across the side of the hill thirty yards away, their heads swinging slowly, rhythmically, right to left, the eyes black and glistening. He raised to one knee, just as they passed him, giving them a good lead, squeezing off an instant before they flared. The one nearest him crumpled and dived straight into the ground. He fired again as they turned, seeing the goose stop as if it had run into a wall, flailing against the wall trying to get over it before turning over, head downward, wings out, to slowly spiral down. He emptied his gun at the third goose even when it was probably out of range, seeing it stop the charge on the fifth shot, its tail jerking hard and settling down, but its wings still beating. For a long time he watched it flying closer and closer to the ground before it disappeared into one of the canyons.

Farrell laid the two geese on their backs inside the blind and stroked their smooth white undersides. They were Canadian
geese, honkers. After this it didn’t matter too much that the geese that flew came over too high or went out someplace else down the river. He sat against the shrub and smoked, watching the sky whirl by over his head. Sometime later, perhaps in the early afternoon, he slept.

When he woke he was stiff, cold and sweating and the sun was gone, the sky a thickening gray pall. Somewhere he could hear geese calling and going out, leaving those strange sharp echoes in the valleys, but he could see nothing but wet, black hills that ended in fog where the river should have been. He wiped his hand over his face and began to shiver. He stood up. He could see the fog rolling up the canyon and over the hills, closing off and hemming in the land, and he felt the breath of the cold damp air around him, touching his forehead and cheeks and lips. He broke through the blind getting out and started running up the hill.

He stood outside the car and pressed the horn in a continual blast until Frank ran up and jerked his arm away from the window.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy or something?”

“I have to go home, I tell you!”

“
Jesus
Christ! Well,
Jesus
Christ! Get in then, get in!”

They were quiet then but for Farrell’s asking twice the time before they were out of the wheat country. Frank held a cigar between his teeth, never taking his eyes from the road. When they ran into the first drifting patches of fog he switched on the car lights. After they turned onto the highway the fog lifted and layered somewhere in the dark over the car, and the first drops of rain began hitting the windshield. Once three ducks flew in front of the car lights and pitched into a puddle beside the road. Farrell blinked.

“Did you see that?” Frank asked.

Farrell nodded.

“How do you feel now?”

“Okay.”

“You get any geese?”

Farrell rubbed the palms of his hands together, interlacing his fingers, finally folding them into his lap. “No, I guess not.”

“Too bad. I heard you shooting.” He worked the cigar to the other side of his mouth and tried to puff, but it had gone cold. He chewed on it for a minute then laid it in the ashtray and glanced at Farrell.

“ ’Course it’s none of my affair, but if it’s something you’re worried about at home … My advice is not to take it too seriously. You’ll live longer. No gray hairs like me.” He coughed, laughed. “I know, I used to be the same way. I remember …” Farrell is sitting in the big leather chair under the brass lamp watching Iris comb out her hair. He is holding a magazine in his lap whose glossy pages are open to the scene of a disaster, an earthquake, somewhere in the Near East. Except for the small light over the dresser it is dark in the room. The brush moves quickly through her hair in long, sweeping, rhythmical movements, causing a faint squeaking noise in the room. He has yet to call Frank and confirm the hunting trip for the next morning. There is a cold, moist air coming in through the window from the outside. She is tapping the brush against the edge of the dresser. “Lew,” she says, “you know I’m pregnant?”

Her bathroom smell sickens him. Her towel lies across the back of the toilet. In the sink she has spilled talcum. It is wet now and pasty and makes a thick, yellow ring around the white sides. He rubs it out and washes it into the drain.

He is shaving. By turning his head he can see into the living room. Iris in profile sitting on the stool in front of the old dresser. She is combing her hair. He lays down the razor and washes his face, then picks up the razor again. At this moment he hears the first few drops of rain spatter against the roof …

He carries her out to the porch, turns her face to the wall, and covers her up. He goes back into the bathroom, washes his hands, and stuffs the heavy, blood-soaked towel into the clothes hamper. After a while he turns out the light over the dresser and sits down again in his chair by the window, listening to the rain.

Frank laughed. “So it was nothing, nothing at all. We got along fine after that. Oh, the usual bickering now and then but when she found out just who was running the show, everything was all right.” He gave Farrell a friendly rap on the knee.

They drove into the outskirts of town, past the long line of motels with their blazing red, blinking, neon lights, past the cafés with steamy windows, the cars clustered in front, and past the small businesses, dark and locked until the next day. Frank turned right at the next light, then left, and now they were on Farrell’s street. Frank pulled in behind a black and white car that had SHERIFF’S OFFICE painted in small white letters across the trunk. In the lights of their car they could see another glass inside the car inset with a wire screen making the backseat into a cage. Steam rose from the hood of their car and mixed with the rain.

“Could be he’s after you, Lew.” He started to open the door, then chuckled. “Maybe they’ve found out you were hunting with no license. Come on, I’ll turn you in myself.”

“No. You go on, Frank. That’s all right. I’ll be all right. Wait a minute, let me get out!”

“Christ, you’d really think they were after you! Wait a minute, get your gun.” He rolled down the window and passed out the shotgun to Farrell. “Looks like the rain’s never going to let up. See you.”

“Yeah.”

Upstairs all the lights of his apartment were turned on and blurred figures stood frieze-like at the windows looking down through the rain. Farrell stood behind the sheriffs car holding onto the smooth, wet tail fin. Rain fell on his bare head and worked its way down under his collar. Frank drove a few yards up the street and stopped, looking back. Farrell holding onto the tail fin, swaying a little, with the fine impenetrable rain coming down around him. The gutter water rushed over his feet, swirled frothing into a great whirlpool at the drain on the corner and rushed down to the center of the earth.