The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (6 page)

“I don’t know if
brave
is the right word,” he said back.

Sarah stood, reached into the pocket of her sweatpants, emerged with another cigarette, and lit it. “That vet’s an asshole. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“He couldn’t be bothered with it until after Christmas, apparently,” Thomas said. “Joan and I talked about it. It doesn’t seem right to wait that long. This is something we can do. Something I can do. He’s in pain. We discussed it.”

“You want me to come?”

Thomas looked at the alpaca. “It’s going to be messy, I think,” he said.

Sarah snorted. “You don’t know messy. Try the ER. Try arterial blood. Try a bunch of maniac drunks trying to kill each other in the waiting room. Blood doesn’t bother me.” She smiled, and looked at him. “As you know.”

“We,” Thomas said, “your legion of lucky patients.”

“Lucky indeed. That’s me. Dr. Luck. That’s what I’ll be called.”

“It’s going to be cold,” Thomas said. “And probably awful. I can handle it.”

“Let’s not worry about it,” Sarah said. She stubbed her second cigarette on top of the first. “I don’t have much else to do. I’ll get my coat.”

As she disappeared back into the garage, Thomas hushed the sick animal into the trailer and closed the gate behind him. Zachary nestled down in the center of the trailer as he had in the field, as if, Thomas thought, he knew the sort of remoteness required of him now. Thomas could hear Sarah clomping up the garage steps, heard her door closing. He looked up to her window—he’d wave her off, say thanks but forget it—but the shade was drawn. Maybe her company would be welcome after all. It would prevent him, at least, from thinking too much about John. He dropped his keys in the cab of his truck, went back inside the house. He yelled good-bye up the stairs to Joan, and retrieved one of his shotguns out of the gun cabinet on the first floor. When he came back, Sarah was already sitting in the passenger seat, and the two of them drove, with the sick alpaca, out of the driveway, and away from the house.

S
uicide, Ma,
John had said on the phone to Joan three months ago
. Don’t you ever think about it?
Once she heard this, the receiver she’d been holding to her head had suddenly turned heavy and cold on her ear. John had been talking about his new obsession: the death of a childhood hero, a musician who’d stabbed himself in the heart, collapsed in a bathtub, and hadn’t been found for seven days.
That guy, he had the whole world in his hands. And decided to end it. So tell me what I’ve got? Why are you so sure I’m going to pan out?
He went on, digressing here and there, grandstanding, and backtracking. It was manipulative talk, but John had always had a bit of that in him. This conversation was different, both aimless and purposeful, and she didn’t recognize where it was coming from. It felt stagey, mobilized to elicit a response which, she knew from past experience, would only send him further down his own private rabbit hole. Nothing she said was ever “right”; nothing she’d ever said to John had been “right.” Her therapist had told her she ought to take the things her son said both seriously (engage with the ideas presented) and not seriously (not to let those ideas infect their relationship). What relationship? she’d wanted to say. I’m a life-support machine here, all tubes and knobs. Fuzzed-out beeps, posing as sentences with a life of their own.

They hadn’t done much to John’s room since he’d left for college, and Joan now stood leaning against the doorframe, looking in, as if there were an invisible line in the carpet that separated where he’d slept from the rest of the house. The posters he’d put on the walls with rubber cement still hung slightly off center; the news articles he’d carefully clipped and pinned to his bulletin board, though yellowed now with age and brittle, were undisturbed. He’d wanted it kept that way. This was the room where they talked to him during the night. Or, rather, where Thomas talked to him. After long nights, bad nights, she’d find Thomas diagonal on John’s bed, phone resting on his chest, an expression that looked like anger, or, sometimes, sadness, caulked onto his sleeping face.

It was almost one o’clock. Joan crossed the threshold and finished her tour of what she and Thomas had begun calling the amber museum, straightening pillows, making the bed—it was a single, almost child-size, she had no idea how both John and his new girlfriend were going to share it, but that was their intention—and then she surveyed the room. John’s posters and clippings—of overdosed and dead musicians and obscure Japanese movies; reports of unsolved crimes and natural disasters, sunken ships raised to the surface—these things told her nothing she wanted, needed, to know. Surely, these chosen artifacts were important, these records of her son; surely they were clues a careful and loving parent could assemble to glimpse the whole. But she couldn’t piece them together. She had no clarity, overwhelmed, as she was, by the desire for him to be all right. All right. Whatever that meant.

He was smart. He always had been. He’d gone to a good and expensive college, where he’d won awards for his art projects. But he’d never been happy. He’d never stayed in one place very long, but until recently they’d understood his restlessness to be a symptom of what he called his high standard of living: he simply wasn’t content following the crowd, doing what everyone else was doing. But now, some sort of switch had flipped. He called when he got a job; he called when he quit, or lost it. He complained about the pressure everyone put on him. He called when his friends paired off, and stopped talking to him. He called when he was out of money. They gave it to him, and endured his resentment. Thomas had reassured her that this was just a phase; that he would grow out of it, that he would straighten his course on his own. But here he was, thirty years old. And here they were, trying to convince themselves nothing was wrong.

She went to the window. The snow had begun to stick. The room was in good shape. It was whisper quiet. It was, she thought with some satisfaction and some sadness, just the way he liked it. John’s favorite song, when he’d been small, had been “What Do We Do with a Drunken Sailor?” Now the melody came back to her, and, standing at the window, she hummed some fragments. She’d never liked the violence of the song, but what stuck with her this time was the question that began the refrain—what do we do? What do we do. The alpacas, who had not moved, and who would not move unless prodded, were turning white with the weather. They did not appear to mourn the missing.

W
hat had happened in September, the last time John was home, was this: they’d invited Sarah for dinner. They hadn’t thought much about it at the time—how John would react, showing up late as usual, the drive always taking him longer than anyone expected, upon seeing the three of them sitting around the table, already halfway through the meal. But they had waited to eat until it was too rude to Sarah not to. Thomas brought the phone to the table, said eat, eat, why not. As it was, the food was cold by the time they sat down. They’d finish the meal, and then, after Sarah had gone, reheat it for John when he arrived.

But he’d shown up middinner. Walked in the door with his bags, looked at the scene in front of him—everyone around the table, Sarah in his seat—and said,
So this is the famous doctor? I’ve heard some things about you
. She’d asked him what kind of things, and he’d shrugged, and said,
You know what doctors do? They make healthy people feel better about themselves
.

You’re late, John, Joan had said. We just sat down. It’s no one’s fault. Don’t be rude.

Roads were bad,
he’d said, still looking at Sarah.
I’m just talking. I’m not being rude.

Sarah had tried her best to recover—everyone had, Thomas getting up from the table to get a plate, Joan saying how good it was to see him, Sarah explaining she wasn’t a doctor yet, but could pass on some terrible doctor stories if he was interested. John had remained in the doorway, slack-faced and thinner than Joan remembered until Thomas came to take his bags. Apparently satisfied by the effect of his arrival, John shoved his hands deep in his pockets and went quiet, radiating a strange, barely coiled aggression that was unrecognizable to both Joan and Thomas. He walked over to where Sarah and Joan were still seated, politely pulled out a chair at the table, and began complimenting the food he hadn’t yet eaten. Thomas wasn’t sure if he smelled alcohol on his son or not. By the time the meal was over, a pall had descended over the four of them, and the discussion, when there was any, was stilted and vague. They knew why they’d invited Sarah, and they realized their mistake, suddenly plain to everyone. They’d invited her because they hadn’t wanted to be alone with their son.

The following morning, Sarah called early, upset, to say that the door to the henhouse near the garage was unlatched and open. She thought the worst, but had been afraid to look herself. There were coyotes in the area, they’d lost chickens before; but this time the coop had been locked. Thomas was sure of that. He left the house knowing what he was going to find, hoping he was wrong. The door to the coop stood wide open. Half the chickens were missing. Feathers covered the ground like snow. It hadn’t been coyotes. In the center of the coop lay a single dead chicken, its neck twisted and broken. There wasn’t much blood. John’s car was gone. He’d left before anyone was awake.

Thomas found a hen outside the coop, near the garage, and picked her up. She made no move to get away, offered no resistance in his arms, but she was not calmed by his whispering. He saw Joan watching him through the kitchen window. He thought about calling the police, and knew as he thought it that he would not. He would tell Sarah it had been coyotes; that he had forgotten to latch the gate. He would tell Joan the truth, but he wouldn’t let her see it. Later that night, John called, sobbing, and Thomas said,
It’s okay, it’s okay.
John said he hadn’t meant to frighten anyone, and Thomas comforted him, said okay.

T
he pit was twenty miles to the southeast. The roads were empty, and as they drove Sarah twisted the radio dial, looking for a station that wasn’t wrapped up in storm tracking. She settled on a country station, and turned it down. As they’d pulled out of the driveway, Sarah had asked him how the law practice was going, but that conversation wrapped itself up quickly. Now they were on a road that continued to Montana, driving in what Thomas called the Farm Truck—a rusted old Tacoma he’d bought years ago, had repainted, and drove whenever they were transporting animals, doing dump runs, or otherwise trying to fit in around town. Sometimes, when John called, Thomas would leave the house just to sit in this truck while he listened to his son. The clutch, when engaged, hummed and clunked. The cab smelled like old boots. He liked that smell. He liked the way it blended, now, with whatever perfume Sarah was wearing.

Finally she switched the radio off and turned in her seat. “So John’s coming in today, right? Joan told me a while ago you were expecting him.”

“He is,” Thomas said. There was a muffled thud from the trailer, and he slowed down. “With his girlfriend.”

“Ah-ha,” she said. “So I don’t need to come for dinner, then.”

“Right,” Thomas said. “We didn’t figure you’d want to.”

“No. I’ve got plans,” Sarah said. “You know, most people love doctors. He didn’t like me very much.”

“It’s not you. He’s got other things going on. It’s not you.”

“What kind of other things?”

Thomas sighed. He adjusted the heater on the dashboard. “We don’t really know, I guess.”

“Is he seeing anyone now? You know, a therapist?”

“No,” Thomas said. “Well, yes. Sort of. The last one figured out some sort of medication regimen that seems to be working for him. I think the girlfriend has helped.”

“Joan told me you guys talk a lot.”

“More like, he talks.”

“Are you worried about him?”

Thomas gripped the steering wheel. This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to know who had been visiting her, blocking him in, but he didn’t know how to bring it up. “Worried like how?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. She was absently chewing one of her fingers. “Do you think it’s helped? I don’t— I’m not trying to pry. Not my business.”

“The therapist helped,” Thomas said. “Jocey’s helped. The medicine’s helped.” He felt his throat tightening. “It’s hard to know what he wants sometimes. It’ll straighten out. He will, that is. I’d rather not talk about it. That’s all I’ve been doing. Talking.”

Sarah adjusted in her seat. “Got it,” she finally said. “I’m glad things are working out.”

They went back to driving in silence. The heater was cranked and pushing hot air directly into Thomas’s face. He took his hat off, tossed it on the dash, and adjusted the vent. Sarah, Joan. John, for Christmas. He cleared his throat. “So you’ve got plans tonight?”

“I do.” She’d been digging around in her pockets, and stopped. “Now, that,” she said, “that’s healing nicely.”

At first Thomas was confused. Then he remembered—his forehead, the stitching, the scar. “It is,” he said. He lowered his head so she could get a better look. As she leaned over the center console, he brought his speed down. He’d taken the stitches out four days ago, in the mirror with sterilized tweezers like Sarah had instructed.

“Very nice,” she said.

“Something to be proud of,” Thomas said. He was glad the conversation had picked up again, had moved past John. He glanced at the road, then brought his eyes back to hers. Her lips were pursed. “You can barely see it,” he said.

Sarah unfastened her seat belt, and moved closer to study the scar. When he’d shown up, bloody, at her door, she’d been so concerned. She had guided him inside her apartment, sat him down in the kitchen. Wiped the blood away gently with a wet and warm towel, applied pressure. Took his face in her hands to inspect the wound and then decided, if he was up for it, that she could stitch him up right then and there. She’d given him painkillers and a small shot of anesthetic so he wouldn’t feel the needle. And he hadn’t felt it, not exactly. He’d closed his eyes. He could feel pressure and tugging and knew the wound was coming together.