David Gates - Preston Falls

Now the rain's pinging on the metal and bouncing off the windshield. So it's hail, actually; can that be possible? He locks the doors and lies down on the seat, knees bent, face jammed into the woven seat-back, heavy feet hanging off into space. He closes his eyes: white sparks seething.

When he finally makes it back to the house, he just leaves all his shit right in the truck and slinks inside like an evfl thing exposed in daylight. The rest of this day is nuked out for sure. Though he's proud to have a day nuked out by drugs again after all this time. He reads Dombey and Son until he falls asleep on the couch, then wakes up with his head hurting. Takes Advil, makes coffee, finishes Dombey. Starts Our Mutual Friend. In the chapter about the R. Wilfer family he falls asleep again, then wakes up from a nightmare he can't remember. It's dark outside.

He steps into the bathroom to piss in the toilet like a civilized man, and down goes his left foot through the fucking floor and up goes the other end of the board like a seesaw. It's just crawl space under there; his bare foot touches wet, cold earth. Great: so now we've got a hole in the fucking floor. Plus he's scraped the living shit out of his calf and shin, right through his jeans. He works his leg free, goes outside onto the step-stone and pisses into the grass, which is what he should have done in the first place. Big skyful of stars. He feels guilty for not having spent more time looking up at them during his life. Christ, the fucking stars and you're not impressed?

Okay, better get back in there and start dealing. He yanks that floorboard out, kneels and shines the halogen flashlight in underneath: sure enough, got two floor joists rotted through. And why have two floor

joists rotted through? Because there's a pipe down there and the son of a bitch is leaking. And what does this mean? This means ripping up enough floor to get down in there to patch the fucking pipe, and then doing something about those joists. Maybe cut away what's rotten— looks like a foot or two of each joist — and piece them back together with pressure-treated two-by-six.

He gets the pinch bar and wrenches up a couple more floorboards to make room to work, then plugs in a droplight so he can see what the fuck he's doing. Yep, there's your problem right there: little bulge in the copper pipe, with water pissing out of a quarter-inch slit. Son of a bitch froze and split down in there, maybe last winter, maybe the winter before. Or the winter of '72—^who the fuck knows? Okay, so the next step is to shut off the water to the bathroom and hunt around for the plumbing shit.

He gets that section of pipe cut out, cuts a piece to patch in there and steel-wools the ends. Only then does he discover that he doesn't have any straight fittings. Son of a bitch. So this means he's got to go into town. For two fucking thirty-five-cent pipe fittings. Except everything's probably closed anyway at this hour. Okay, fine: tomorrow. He can make it one night without a bathroom.

So back to Our Mutual Friend. When he comes to where Silas Wegg tries to buy the bones of his amputated leg, he gets up and starts more coffee. And of course forty-five minutes later has to shit. He takes the roll of toilet paper and the flashlight, gets the shovel out of the woodshed and heads out behind the house. In a stand of sumac he's been meaning to cut down he sets the flashlight on the ground; by its light he digs a hole, takes down his pants and squats over it like a fucking aborigine. The Robert Blys was a good name and not too obscure.

He takes three fingers of Dewar's up to bed. This puts him under, but an hour later he wakes up quaking from some dream about the devil. He turns on the light and reads awhile. Goes downstairs for more Dewar's. Sleeps again, sort of. Eventually it's gray outside the window, then blue. He goes down and starts coffee.

He makes it into town in time to have the morning bowel movement in the rest room at Stewart's. Front page of the Rutland Herald says it's Friday; so a week ago he was in his office in New York? Not possible. He remembers to get Calvin Castleman's $150, then hits the post office

PRESTON FALLS

for the first time since he's been up here. Bunch of junk mail, and bills for fucking everything. Then to True Value, where he picks up four fittings — couple extra just in case.

In Calvin's dooryard, he pulls up behind that big-ass Ford F-250, with the homemade stake body and the deck of rough-sawed lumber where Calvin's piled his woodcutting shit: two chainsaws, peavey, gas can, jug of bar-and-chain oil. He finds Calvin out by the Cadillac; the engine's suspended above the gaping hood by block and tackle rigged up to a branch of a maple tree, and yellow leaves are plastered on the windshield.

"Look like you're raising holy hell," says Willis.

"Yah, had to pull the fuckin' engine." Calvin sets an extra-long wrench down on the fender.

"Thought I better come pay you for that wood." Willis gets out his wallet. "Td have come by sooner, but I guess you heard about my little— adventure." He was about to say contretemps. No response. "Hundred and fifty?"

"Yup." Not quite an ayup. Calvin wipes hands on pants and works his bulging wallet out of his hip pocket.

Willis counts out the bills. "By the way. I also wanted to thank you for putting me onto your lawyer."

Calvin nods. "He will get the job done." He takes a pack of Luckies out of his shirt pocket. "So you and him hit it off, did you?" He lights the cigarette with a pink plastic lighter.

"Yeah. He seems to be an okay guy." It feels like a bad idea to teU Calvin about going over to jam. Though why, exactly?

"I had an idea you and him probably hit it off," says Calvin. "Him playing in a band, and I know you play some. Once in a while I'll hear you if the air's just right."

"You're kidding. Shit, you have to let me know if it bothers you." He sees the pure white paper of the cigarette is grimy where Calvin's fingers touched it. Jesus, every once in a while the smell of a fucking cigarette.

"Nah, don't bother me. See, I had an idea you probably hit it off."

It's like every other conversation with Calvin Castleman: the subtext is that Willis doesn't know what the subtext is.

Crouched in that hole in the bathroom floor, Willis smears on the soldering paste and pushes pipe and fittings together; he fires up the BernzOmatic, touches the solder wire to the hot copper and sees it melt away into quicksilvery liquid racing in to seal the joint. He gives it a minute to cool, then goes and turns on the water. The pipe shudders and goes still again. He comes back and looks the joints over. Good. But shit — there's a drop of water gathering. Then another. Then a tiny spout whizzing up out of a fucking pinhole. God damn it to shit.

He goes and cuts off the water again and tries to sweat the son of a bitch apart, but of course now that there's water in the pipe, you can't get it hot enough. So he ends up cutting the son of a bitch. And now he has to go through all this shit again? No fucking way. Out in the shed he's got some radiator hose that should be about the right size and if he's lucky some hose clamps. He cuts off six inches of hose with the hacksaw, works soldering paste into each end with his pinkie, then twists and forces the ends onto the cut-off pipes. He tightens the hose clamps to the point where he's afraid he'll crimp the pipe, turns the water back on, and bingo. After all that fucking BernzOmatic Sturm und Drang. Hillbilly plumbing: why the fuck not?

The thing with his greased pinkie working in that tight hose inspires him to lie on the couch and haul out the Unnamable just on the off chance. But he can't get it happening. Which is cool. Okay, so now the next thing is, patch those joists and put the floorboards back. Though of course he forgot to stop at the lumberyard for two-by-sixes. Fine. Tomorrow. Today he'll stack that wood, maybe hit that lawn too. He zips up and reads Our Mutual Friend until he starts to doze, then has to wake himself from another devil dream, which he can't remember except that the devil really does have horns.