Home Another Way (19 page)
“Yeah,” Jack said. Though, that would be a fitting end. Hiram Dennison may have had an icebox and cooking stove in his bus, but he didn’t have running water. He came to church each Sunday with scent of body odor ground into his clothes, and sat in the front row, belting each hymn out in his gurgly baritone. On particularly pungent days, Jack would have one of the elders douse him in a fog of disinfectant; Hiram graciously agreed, apologizing for being unable to smell himself—“Lost the old sniffer in the war,” he’d say—and would stand with outstretched arms, spinning slowly, so the spray would coat him completely.
“I’ll take care of the arrangements, then,” Jack said.
He only spoke with Doc when someone was sick or dead. Quite honestly, Jack didn’t know what to make of the man. He kept to himself, didn’t attend church or town events, and rarely accepted a dinner invitation—from anyone. But, he slaved for the people on the mountain. Jack’s initial distrust had disappeared years ago, after a quick phone call to the state medical board. Doc’s record was clean.
He shook Doc’s hand and began the drive home, mentally listing the things he’d need to do to prepare for the memorial service. He lost four or five congregants each year, and faithfully made certain that those without immediate family left written instructions, with him or Rich Portabella, regarding the distribution of their worldly goods. He knew he would be getting several hundred magazines from Hiram, and his favorite ratchet.
Jack hadn’t been concerned that Hiram wasn’t in church Sunday. He missed a handful of services in the winter when his old snowmobile wouldn’t start. In fact, Jack had offered up a small praise for the respite from the bitter cut-grass-and-boiled-onion smell he usually had to breathe while giving his sermon, followed by halfhearted repentance for his callous celebration.
If only Sarah had known how caring he’d been, then.
He’d wanted to smack her earlier. She exhausted him, and each battle-weary day he swallowed down the urge to tell her, “Fine. If you want me to leave you alone, I will.” He’d expected opposition, but her attacks ate at him. He took them personally now. And, despite his constant prayer, he felt as if he were running circles in the mist.
With God, nothing is impossible,
he reminded himself, holding on to that promise with a child’s hands, all sticky with lollipop and faith. He needed to, because his clumsy fumblings were no match for Sarah’s pain, her past.
I left Nola alone at the cabin Thursday when I went to the variety store for dog food—I’d scrambled eggs for her breakfast, and gave her several slices of bologna—and a leash and collar. Earlier that morning I had learned she loved to pounce in the snow, and expected me to jump around with her. When I didn’t, she dashed down the road and stood, cock-eared, just within eyesight until I called her and stepped off the porch. Then she ran around the bend. I took the truck to find her. She jumped into the passenger seat, ice matted in her fur, grinning and drooling.
I refused to play that game again.
I returned not an hour later with a value-priced bag of dog chow and discovered Nola also did not like to be left alone. She had chewed Luke’s pillows and dragged them around the cabin, scattering gray feathers everywhere, and gouged the front door trying to tunnel through it. She also defecated on my sleeping bag.
I fastened the new collar around her neck, dragged her outside, tied the leash to the porch post, and kicked snow on her. Then I went back inside to sweep up the feathers. The broom did little more than puff the down around the room. I’d have to borrow Maggie’s vacuum.
After rinsing my sleeping bag in the shower, I read the feeding instructions on the dog food bag. Nola looked to be about forty pounds. One cup twice a day. I dumped the food into a dish and went outside to get her.
The leash and collar dangled from the post. Nola frolicked in the snow fifty yards away. She saw me, barked, and ran down the road. I followed again in the truck.
I took her with me on Friday while I visited Doc’s other patients. She clawed at the window until I rolled it down enough for her head to fit through, and chewed the armrest when I shut her in the truck by herself.
And it didn’t matter how often I knocked her off the couch. I’d still wake four or five times each night, Nola between my legs, head resting on my hipbone. But the cabin had a certain fullness with her in it. In those murky moments between sleep and waking, even before I remembered she was there, I sensed a difference in the air—maybe it seemed warmer from two bodies instead of one, or moved with two breaths—and that fullness comforted me.
I didn’t know if I wanted to kick her, or keep her.
Doc pulled his Jeep into my driveway Saturday morning as I stood there in pajamas and boots, holding Nola’s leash, shaking from cold and cursing at her to hurry. She began whimpering at six, but I wouldn’t take her outside until at least seven. She nipped at my feet, face bearded with snow, backside wagging up in the air. I flicked the leash, snapping it against her side. She barked and jumped around some more.
“It might help if you walked with her,” Doc said.
“I can’t. I’m frozen.”
He took the leash from me and whistled. Nola pulled him along, tunneling through the snow like a groundhog. I went inside and dressed, for no reason other than to stay awake until the dog came in. I’d be going back to bed as soon as Doc left.
Nola burst through the door with all her early-morning canine exuberance, jumping up on me with her wet paws. I shoved her, filled her bowl with food. Doc followed, tossing a plastic grocery bag at me.
“What’s this?” I asked. The handles were tied together, so I ripped open the bottom and a rumpled white shirt fell out. White, with an angry coffee splotch on the front.
“Patty expects someone to pay for that. Either you,” he said, “or me, because I hired you.”
“It’s so hard to find good help these days.” I said. “Don’t you want my side of the story?”
“I think I can fill in the blanks.” He picked up the shirt and handed it to me. “It’s designer, I’ve been informed.”
“Right, vagabond chic,” I said, looking at the label. “She got this at Kmart. I have socks that cost more.”
“Then you won’t mind reimbursing her.”
I tossed the shirt at Nola. She rolled onto her back, on top of it, grinding her dog scent onto it. “Whatever. It’s not coming out of my wallet. That can’t be the only reason you’re here at this ungodly hour.”
“It’s not ungodly if the sun is already up.”
“It is if it’s before eleven.”
He jiggled Nola’s leash. “I’ve come to get the dog.”
“Who’s taking her?”
“No one. I’m bringing her to the county shelter.”
“You were supposed to find someone to take her in.”
“I’m not a pet-matching service. I asked around. No one wants her. You don’t want her. I’m getting rid of her for you. What’s the problem?”
“Nothing, except they kill dogs at the pound if no one adopts them.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d almost think you cared,” he said. “Speaking of which, Hiram Dennison’s memorial service is tomorrow at ten, if you’re interested.”
“I’m not.”
“He would have liked you to be there.”
“He won’t know the difference. He’s worm food.”
“He was cremated.”
“It’s all semantics. He’s still dead.”
“Would it hurt you to have some decorum?”
“Probably,” I said, grabbing the orange juice pitcher from the refrigerator and pouring a glass. I took a gulp and spit the fermented mouthful into the sink. “Oh, that’s gross.”
“Lovely,” Doc said. “So, am I taking the dog?”
“Yeah.” I dumped the remaining juice down the drain. “But tell them . . . tell them if no one takes her, to let you know. I’ll go get her before they put her down.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, and tell them to call you if she’s adopted. Just so I know that, you know, I’m rid of her, for good.”
Doc fastened the collar around Nola’s neck. She strained toward the door. “By the way,” he said, “Memory told me about Robert.”
“Well, don’t get too excited. I’ve played for him every Sunday since, and he hasn’t responded again, not like the first time. It must have just been some sort of coincidence.”
“One man’s coincidence is another man’s miracle.”
“Come on,” I said, opening a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. “You’re not serious.”
He put on his hat, the old man kind, with the flaps that covered his ears. “I’ve seen too much that can’t be so easily explained.”
I felt as if I’d lost an ally. My only ally. Doc, some kind of freaky closet Crusader? He’d betrayed me. “Just go,” I said. “Your optimism is ruining my day.”
“Good,” he said. “Because your pessimism ruined mine.”
He left with Nola, and instantly the cabin emptied of life.
On the eve of Beth’s wedding, the Grange building had been transformed into a white paper wonderland. The children in Beth’s Sunday school class had snipped and strung hundreds of snowflakes, which now dangled from the ceiling, dancing each time the wind snuck in through the front door. Half of them were made from doilies with lacy, scalloped edges.
Maggie and her friends had sewn enough muslin chair covers to dress three hundred chairs—a couple hundred metal folding ones from the church, and another hundred pillaged from basements and attics across Jonah. And the chipped plaster walls were disguised with white crepe-paper streamers. Every evening of the past week, Tom Hardy had pulled out his monstrous ladder, climbed to the ceiling, and stapled the end of a streamer roll to the very top of the wall. Then he’d dropped the roll to Carl Brooks, waiting at the bottom, and Carl twisted the strand two dozen times, cut it, stapled it against the floor, and chucked the roll back up to Tom. They still had ten feet of wall left to dress.
Beth didn’t want a rehearsal; she didn’t want Dominic to see her come toward him until the moment her wedding began, even if she wore her corduroys and turtleneck. She didn’t want to hear the ceremonial words until she stood in front of those who came to witness her marriage. I wouldn’t be walking down the aisle anyway, emerging instead from Jack’s office to join Patty at the piano. So she and I practiced one last time, tucked in the corner as dozens of people scurried around us in last-minute preparation. We didn’t make eye contact. Finishing, I closed my violin in its case and picked it up.
“You know, you can leave it here,” Patty said. “No one will steal it.”
I shook my head. Now that I had an instrument again, I needed to keep it close. Since New Year’s Eve, I didn’t play it while alone at the cabin, to myself, for myself. But I tucked it under the couch while I slept, and sometimes held it just to feel it in my hands, or pushed my nose between the strings to smell its belly.
“Suit yourself,” she said, closing the piano. “But you better not forget it tomorrow.”
I ran into Beth in Jack’s kitchen, filling his refrigerator with flowers. There’d been no snow or ice storm for more than a week—a minor miracle, according to Maggie—and Beth had been able to drive an hour down the mountain to a florist. She’d bought whatever two hundred dollars would allow—lilies, mostly, but some daisies and stephanotis, as well. And pots of white poinsettias, left over from Christmas and a bit shriveled, but perfect, she said, to flank the altar.
“You’re still coming over, right?” she asked.
“As long as you’re making the popcorn,” I told her. Beth had said she wanted one more movie night as a single woman, and invited me to stay at the inn afterward. I thought she simply wanted assurance I wouldn’t oversleep and spoil her day. The ceremony began at eleven in the morning, and the hairstylist wanted to have us completely beautified by nine.
I followed Beth home, and we watched an awful remake of
The Beverly Hillbillies.
“Don’t make any comments,” she said. “Do you see a video store around here? I had to borrow this from the neighbors.” After the movie, Beth went to spend the last night under her eyelet canopy, and I took a shower in the guest bathroom, upstairs, so I wouldn’t have to get up earlier the next morning. Maggie made up a guest bedroom for me—the same one I slept in the first night I arrived in Jonah.
