We're All in This Together (20 page)

Emma turns off the television and goes to him.

"Can I have my Jell-O?" he asks.

"I ate it," I say.

He sobs. He half smiles. "It's okay, George. They give us all we
want."

At their wedding, my mother and Dr. Vic's first dance is to a song by
the Flying Burrito Brothers. If nothing else, I have come to appreciate
my stepfather's solidity, his consistency. He loves comestible bands,
and my mother loves him. I accept it.

For their honeymoon in December, the newlyweds tour the islands
of the Mediterranean. I have Christmas with Ty and we go to see Bob
Dylan at the State Theater in Portland. Bob is as spindly as a
grasshopper. "Do you think Bob kind of looks like the Queen of
England?" asks Ty. We seem to get along, my father and I.

On the drive home I ask him about his polydactyl toe. He laughs.
He says his fell off the first time he was in rehab. "I found it in my
sock. It just fell off."

I don't believe him. But he pulls over and shows
me
—
and it's true.
There's a fine scar at the edge of his foot, nothing more.

"Did it hurt?" I ask.

"No," he says, "but I miss it."

"Why?"

"Because it was a part of me," he says.

I am the last six-toed man in my family.

We visit my grandfather at the assisted living center where he has
been moved. There is an orange zeppelin of a cat that wanders
among the infirm and the elderly, and Papa has become the creature's
greatest friend. The cat's name is Softball. While we try to engage
Papa in a conversation about the weather or the seniors' bowling
league, he ignores us and talks to the cat. "Softball would eat any
terrorist that tried to kill the geriatrics, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he just
kill those terrorists?"

In the halls at school, I nod to Steven Sugar and his former
lieutenant, Tolson. They flip me vague salutes. Tolson's face has
healed, but one side is dark, as if he is always thinking bad thoughts.

My mother tells me that the Mediterranean was beautiful, and that
"yes, the reports of numerous naked breasts being on display in
Rhodes were true." She laughs like crazy about that, but I'm
embarrassed.
So I only let her kiss the top of my head. The last thing she says
to me is, "I'm going to be late for work."

My mother and Charlie are locking up the clinic late that afternoon
when the rusted blue minivan comes screeching into the parking lot.
The GFA woman, the one who likes to scream about whoremasters,
and wears a baseball cap emblazoned with a sparkly crucifix, leaps
out of the van with a bucket. My mother steps forward, and Charlie
fumbles for his gun. The GFA tosses the bucket, drenching my
mother in a spray of dirt and earthworms, and then catching her
across the mouth with the plastic rim. Emma tumbles to the
pavement,
and there is the sound of something cracking just right, like an
egg on the rim of a bowl. The egg is my mother's skull and the rim is
the curb, and in a moment she is gone.

She feels nothing, they say, but no one could know that.

And then, my vision becomes real, and the three men meet at the
Beachcomber in their black suits, and my father and Dr. Vic and I
pick them up. Dale has come in from Boston where he moved with
his new wife and family, and Paul has come from Blue Hill, and
Jupps has traveled from the hydroponic farm in the Netherlands.

Jupps presents me with a beautiful tomato that he snuck through
customs. I return his suitcase. "We took it everywhere," I tell him,
and he starts wailing and drops his beautiful tomato in the mud.

"Man," says Paul in the car, "oh, man."

"I have been bummed before, but this is brand fucking new. This is
a kick in the nuts to end all kicks in the nuts." Dale unrolls the
window and sticks his head out like a dog. Jupps gives Dale the
tomato and tells him to throw it.

"I'm sorry very much about that," says Jupps.

Paul tells him not to sweat it, man. "These things happen, you
know?"

Instead of the "Internationale," we sing "Amazing Grace," for
obvious reasons.

After the funeral, Myrna Carp insists on speaking with me privately.
She pushes me down on a couch in a dark room. She has mascara all
over her face. She sniffles and cuddles my head against her breasts. It
is her duty, insists Myrna, unbuckling my pants, something she owes
to my mother.

"No," I say. "Do you have a condom," I say, and Myrna reminds
me that she's on the pill, but I insist, and on the night I bury my
mother, I ball up my dirty shorts and throw them under the bed. I do
not believe in an afterlife, but I know Emma would be pleased that I
used a condom.

I do what anyone would do: cry like I'll never be able to stop. No
one comes to check on me.

Three years later, my grandfather has lost interest in the news. It is
unclear how much he remembers, but he likes to pet Softball and to
be wheeled around the grounds of the nursing home. He is sleeping
now beside me, the two of us seated beneath the boughs of an elm
tree. I am home on vacation from my freshman year of college.

I don't know how I feel about it. I wish someone could explain it,
make it all neat and simple, like a ballot. I could just check off a
choice, and never worry about free will again.

I wonder where Steven is at this moment. He joined up right after
graduation, just like he said he would.

It must be night over there, a night like blue silk over the desert
city, and the dust and the sand and the quiet between outbursts.

"Okay," says Captain Sugar. "Okay, men." His troops are
gathered around him in a circle. From the wrecked town square
there are crooked little lanes running in all directions, pointing a
dozen different routes out of the combat zone.

The captain's face is scorched and haggard, but he meets every
gaze in turn. "If we work together," he promises, "we can still get out
of this mess."

Frozen Animals

The three men moved in a close line, tied to one another by a hemp rope: Kosskoff, the biggest man, took the point; second
in the procession was Funt, the other trapper; and third was Pinet, a dentist. A heavy snow was falling, thickening the pass,
and slowing their trek. They carried lanterns, and from a distance, if any creature had observed them, it might have conceived
of the three men as a single beast made of flickering light, shambling and swaying, perhaps wounded. But no creature observed
them.

They were on their way to Kosskoff's wife. The trappers kept a cabin and a carving shed on the south side of the mountain,
three or four miles up. Kosskoff's wife had something wrong with her teeth. She was pregnant; it wasn't safe for her to travel.

The way between the two cliffs was a bottleneck of snow curving gradually up and out of sight. Whorls of deep freeze marked
the rock faces on either side. Rising hundreds of feet, the cliffs folded in jutting piles of slate, stopping only where they
seemed to meet the sky—a sliding gray-black mat of clouds—as if the weather were made of something solid. The snow fell over
and across everything.

Several times the third man, the dentist, seemed to lag. He would pause, appearing to collect himself, and rub his arms through
his jacket. The dentist would press the flaps of his hood tight against the sides of his head, as if he were trying to hold
something in. Then he would plod forward.

Behind the travelers, their tracks walked away on the wind.

Powerful, intermittent gusts obscured Funt, the second trapper, from Pinet's window of vision. The dentist was still feeling
the effects of his morning dose; he heard the snow too loudly: to his ears it was like the sound of metal scraping on metal,
a sound that had nothing to do with falling snow or gusting wind. Pinet was used to such incongruities, but this situation
was unusual, and the noise added to his discomfort.

His greatest concern was that something would cause the line to break, and he would be separated from the other two. In his
life Pinet admitted that he was far from guiltless—he had, for instance, been unfaithful to his wife—but he felt a death by
freezing was a punishment that should be reserved for sins greater than his own. He understood that he was a weak man, susceptible
to temptation, cringing in confrontation—and wasn't the knowing of it punishment enough? This was the way the dentist was
thinking as he walked, putting one heavy boot in front of the other, the nose on his face like a stalactite, and his head
filled with the idiot sound of a fork being dragged across a tin plate.

And beyond this lay the morbid prospect of spending the night—or God forbid, even longer—with the two trappers and the woman.
There was no chance that he would be able to return down the mountain until the weather cleared.

Pinet knew Funt vaguely from Limestone's only tavern, and found him typically repulsive. The tavern, a nameless black belly
of a place, windowless and airless, held only a few tables and on a couple of the occasions when the dentist had made his
bimonthly pass through town, he had been forced to sit with the diminutive trapper. Funt was crude and bad smelling, and talked
of nothing except whores and killing animals; he seemed emblematic of everything Pinet loathed about the dismal life of the
encampments that his itinerant practice condemned him to. Once, over pints of half-rancid potato vodka, Funt had regaled Pinet
with a horrific story about a legless prostitute in Ontario who specialized in obscene magic tricks. For a period of weeks
the dentist suffered from recurring nightmares about the poor woman.

Kosskoff he didn't know. The other trapper was certainly very large, and Pinet guessed, very stupid. But he did seem to be
in charge.

When they woke the dentist from his stupor—Pinet had passed out again, and the tavern keeper had deposited him in the hayloft
again—it was Kosskoff who explained the situation: the woman had a sick mouth, she was pregnant, and Pinet would have to go
up the mountain to see to her. Then he stuffed the greasy wad of dollar bills into the dentist's shirt pocket, and demanded
they be on their way. His size and manner seemed to brook no refusal, and ten dollars meant a great deal to a man like Pinet,
a man of needs.

In the lead of Funt and Pinet, Kosskoff climbed tirelessly, and the black train of his fur coat seemed to slither along behind
him.

Moving directly against the wind, the snow stinging his eyes, Pinet tried to imagine the life of the woman who was stuck—
trapped,
by his way of thinking—in the same cabin with a pair of men like these. A toothache probably seemed like relief to her. The
dentist shivered; he was tired and he needed a dose. The shiver collected in his groin, and Pinet realized that he needed
to piss, badly.

He yanked on the cord. The other two stopped, and waded back to the dentist.

Kosskoff drew the other two men into a huddle, and they put their arms over each other's shoulders, lowered their heads together.
In the circle of bodies they could speak with relative ease while the wind rose and snapped at their backs. All three men
wore the flaps of their hoods knotted tightly beneath their noses, so their talk was muffled.

"You stopped," said Kosskoff.

"I have to piss," said Pinet. "Stand there, please. I can't go in the wind—I'll freeze up. Just give me a minute." He bit
his ice-stiff mitten to pull it off and spat it onto the ground.

"Just do it in your drawers,
mon ami."
Funt sounded merry.

Pinet ignored him, and fumbled under his jacket for the buttons of his fly. The tips of his fingers were numb.

The snow dropped in sheets, powder rolled off their shoulders. In Pinet's head, the fork was scraping faster, the tines jerking
back and forth, scribbling and screeching.

Digging the buttons free, he found his penis and winced at the sharp cold.

He looked up, suddenly aware of the closeness of the other two men looming around him; they still had their arms over his
shoulders. He could see their eyes through the gaps of their hoods. "Back up a little," said Pinet. "I've got to piss."

Kosskoff blinked a few times, but said nothing. There were flakes of ice on his eyelashes.

"Back up," said Pinet. "It'll only be a moment. If you don't back up I'm going to piss on your shoes."

Funt chuckled and elbowed his partner.

"What?" The dentist clutched his penis beneath the skirt of the jacket. His bladder throbbed. The fork scraped around and
around.

Pinet looked again at Kosskoff. The big trapper shrugged and took a couple of steps back. Funt took a couple of steps back.

"Thank you," said Pinet. The dentist had heard stories about trappers, about men who lived together in the mountains. He didn't
like them standing there, but it was too cold to piss against the wind.

The dentist raised the skirt of his jacket slightly. He felt his testicles tighten up and ground his teeth against the accompanying
swell of nausea. He focused himself on the act, the release of the water. Nothing happened. For a second he thought a piece
of ice had lodged itself into his urethra, but when he looked down at his penis—a tinge of blue colored the head—he saw there
was nothing.

"Turn around!" Pinet swung his lantern ineffectually at them. "Fucking turn around—I can't go with you watching me."

The two trappers exchanged glances. Pinet saw Funt's jaw move, but the sound of his laughter was torn away by a gust. The
two men turned slowly around until their backs were facing the dentist.

Pinet was trembling and there was a wobbly feeling in his knees. He threw his head back to steady himself. The cloud cover
was the turgid gray of laundry water. It seemed ready to fall. He had a sensation of vertigo, of himself being slammed down
and flattened by the solid sky. Pinet wondered what would come first, the piss, or the vomit.

The water came loose in a series of painful spurts. The urine pattered in the snow at his feet, and a few droplets blew onto
his boots.

Pinet stuffed himself back into his pants, and took several deep breaths. Maybe he wouldn't be sick.

He hauled on the rope and the other two men turned around. They huddled up again.

"You think that's bad," said Funt, "the clap,
mon
ami
—it's like broken teeth chewing—"

Pinet bent forward, gagging, but managed to hold back from vomiting. The bile was coppery on his tongue. He dropped to his
knees in the snow. He wanted to lie down and hug himself. Kosskoff grabbed the dentist's elbow and pulled him up straight.

"Not much farther," said Kosskoff. "My wife will make food. You can get a drink then."

The snow rained against their bodies. The weather seemed to be getting heavier. Pinet's groin burned from the exposure to
the cold. He wasn't used to this kind of exertion.

"Not much farther?" he asked.

Kosskoff shook his big head: No.

"And there's something to drink there? Something strong? I'll need to warm up."

"You bet," said Funt, winking, "we got vodka and whores and cards and an accordion player who sings out his ass. Steaks, too.
Big fucking steaks. Yessir, we got a saloon up there, and it's a pretty nice one."

"Do you hear a metal sound?" asked Pinet. "A scraping noise?"

Kosskoff stared at him. Funt snorted.

He wanted to explain. "It's like metal, metal cutting on metal." Pinet put a hand against the side of his head.

"You got knives in your head, doc?" Funt laughed.

Pinet nodded.

"Go," said Kosskoff, and put a hand on his chest, and shoved him. Pinet stumbled and fell onto his backside. The other two
men turned and started to move away.

As he watched the rope play out, cutting the new snow, a memory occurred to the dentist. It was often like that these days.
An odd association would rush up at him from nowhere, and accost him, like a panhandler, or a mad person. Pinet would find
his heart crashing, his breath catching, his head crowded. The shelves of the rock gathered around them, bearded with ice,
and the snow turned and spun and ghosted.

As a boy, he'd been a great keeper of pets, and beneath a floorboard in the barn he once discovered a pair of baby mice. Look,
Laurent. They're twins, his mother said.

Pinet named them Molly and Polly after two girls in a storybook, who ran away from home, and freed a witch, and won a magical
object, a golden eye that winked whenever it heard an untruth. It was Pinet's great hope that the mice were witches—this might
explain the absence of their mother—and that he might be the one to reverse the spell that bound them.
Two witches,
he thought.

He kept the mice in a wooden box he hammered together himself from scrap. Sometimes, after dark, Pinet snuck them little fragments
of venison that he secreted from the supper table.

Pinet let Molly and Polly scramble up and down his arms, bright eyed and squeaking. He stroked their fine brown fur with great
care, using just his index finger, because they were so small and fragile. He studied their tiny paws, and the eager way they
sometimes rubbed them together, and believed that he detected something human in the movement. The future dentist prayed for
his pet witches to be transformed and to make him a gift for loving them so well: a pair of golden eyes, one to wink at liars,
and the other to wither them.

But an illness claimed one of them—he couldn't recall which—and when his mother discovered the corpse, she also found the
living mouse nibbling on its dead sister's leg. Of course, his mother explained, because it had undoubtedly taken the sickness
from the dead flesh, they must dispatch the living mouse, as well. For mercy, she said.

Pinet observed dutifully as his mother put the survivor in the steel icebox. She permitted him to give the mouse a few strokes
to say good-bye.

It wouldn't suffer, his mother had promised, but thinking of it now, he wondered.

The dentist pulled on the cord again. Kosskoff came back. Funt threw up his arms.