David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

Today she’d probably tell you I dragged her up here, but I remember how pumped she was when I had Jesse come over with the tractor to plow out a garden patch and she found an arrowhead; she thought she might write a book about a Mohawk Indian girl. But she couldn’t really talk with the locals—at first I didn’t blame her; it had taken me a while—and she found out the new people and weekenders had their own world that you couldn’t cross into. Jesse had the same problem with his wife—even worse, naturally, because people were always looking at her. Don’t think they didn’t look at Dana too, but for a whole other reason, which also got to be a problem. I was gone all day, and I guess when I got home I didn’t want to talk about much but what we’d done on the job today and what we were going to do tomorrow. She said she couldn’t believe I didn’t care about anything anymore. I said I couldn’t believe she had nothing to do up here—what about this, what about that. It made me sick to hear myself. Maybe she’d be glad now if she knew my little empire was falling to shit. I mean glad for me.

When we broke for lunch, I waited until Myron went into the Portosan, then took Jesse out to my truck and started the engine so we could warm up. He started taking stuff out of a paper bag. A bologna sandwich in waxed paper—like his mother had packed it for him. I bit the wrapper off my PowerBar.

“That’s your lunch?” he said. “Gonna make yourself sick. You want my orange? You better eat it first or it’s going to taste sour.”

“I’m good. How’s he working out?”

“Who, Gene? He’ll learn, he’s a good kid. That other one, though.”

“We might need all the help we can get,” I said.

“I wouldn’t give up on Johnny just yet. He might be trying to figure some stuff out. He needs to.”

“This is a fucking train wreck,” I said.

“Man? No, we got this. You’re tired, is all. Look at you. I tell you what. Me and Myron can hold things together for a week or two. And that girl—don’t sell her short. Why don’t you take your lady someplace warm?” He took a bite of his sandwich.

“I’m in a lot deeper shit than you know,” I said.

“Is it a money thing?”

“Jesse, can I just ask you? How the fuck do you stand it here?”

He put his sandwich down. “You mean as a black man.”

“Yeah, okay, that,” I said. “But Louise is gone, you go to the firehouse one night a week, go to church and that’s your life. Understand, I’m not criticizing you.”

“Black people can’t like peace and quiet? You go live in Hartford for a while. Vietnam. Which is the same goddamn place. How come you’re here? You’re a man with an education. Look, Louise gave me my choice. She was crying when she went out the door.” He picked up his sandwich again. “I better finish up.” He took a bite, swallowed hard. “I’m going to miss Billy, though. He never let on to me, but I know why that girl wouldn’t marry him. You see a lot of things in the military. I know I did. I was eighteen when I went in. Now you probably want the war stories too.”

“Not unless you want to tell me.”

“There’s a reason I don’t go down to the VFW,” he said. “I don’t want to tell anybody shit. That’s how come I’m here. You didn’t say about you.”

“I didn’t go through what you did.”

“Then don’t be a fool. Take your lady someplace nice. You keep her with you. Me and Myron can look after all this.” He took a last bite and unscrewed his thermos. “I ever got to where I couldn’t work anymore—But hey, all of us are going to get there.”

The bodybuilder kid had finished insulating the dining room, so I started with him on the walls; I had him hold up the panels while I drove the screws. I felt so lightheaded that I had to steady the driver with two hands, got a screw started crooked, chewed out the head trying to drive it in and then I couldn’t back it out, so I ended up taking a hammer to it. The mud would cover up the mess, but the kid was watching. “You and your friend can handle the rest of this,” I said. “Now that I showed you how not to do it.”

“He’s my brother,” the kid said.

“Okay,” I said. “Better still.”

Jesse was in the living room, cutting a triangle from a piece of drywall to go in the stairwell. “Coming right along,” he said.

“I got some business over at the office,” I told him. “I might not be back.”

“We’re making progress here. Rest up and book yourself some tickets. You know where’s a good place? Hawaii.”

“Never been,” I said.

“My unit stopped off there. Some of us did. You got the money. Spend it while you still can.”

Amber must have heard me come in, but she didn’t look up from the screen; her lips were tight together and she was tapping her nails on the desk. I stood and watched her. Finally she moved the mouse and sat back. “You ever play chess?”

“When I was a kid. My father used to let me win.”

“They say if you’re good with numbers, so I’m trying to teach myself. It’s hard . The computer just comes in and destroys you every time. I might be better with a person. If it was somebody stupid enough. I’m not really fucking off, okay? It’s slow this afternoon.”

“Any calls?”

“Oh, shit! Yes! The lawyer . That I found for Uncle Bill? I have to see him next week, but you know what he says? Rough figures? Like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Mostly from the house, but he saved a lot. What the fuck , right? I mean I’d give it all to have him back and everything.”

“Don’t let that asshole know about this.”

“I’m not. I’m not going to even tell my friends.”

“Don’t.” I sat down in my swivel chair, at the rolltop desk I used to think was cool. “Listen, what would get you to stay?”

“With him ?”

“With me.”

“And be stuck here ? It’s not like you can’t get some other girl to answer the phone and shit.”

“But they wouldn’t be you. Listen, what if I made you a partner? Maybe you and Jesse. I don’t mean put your money into it.”

“I don’t even get what you’re saying. Is this some fucked-up way of trying to get into my pants or something? Just because I got drunk and fucked an old guy one time—you’re even older than him. Anyway, you got your rich-bitch.”

“I just don’t want anything to change,” I said. My stomach heaved and I pulled the wastebasket over and retched into it. There was nothing to come up.

She came and put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay? Are you having like an episode? You want me to call somebody?”

“Like who? Just give me a minute. Then I’m going to go home and have a drink.”

“I don’t think that’s a real great idea.”

“You remember what Billy used to say—‘If nothin’ ails ya, it’s good for that.’ ”

“I never heard that one. What does that even mean?”

“Think about it,” I said. “You might as well take the afternoon. I won’t be needing you for anything.”

I was all over the road, and when I made it to my house I stayed in the truck running the heater to put off going in. The last time I’d fed the stove must have been before I’d gone upstairs with Kristin the night before, and I could see frost starting on the insides of the windows. You won’t believe this, given what I do for living, but I hadn’t touched the place since I bought it, not even blown in insulation so the house would hold heat. Dana used to get on my case about that, along with everything else. It had belonged to an old farmer named Clarence Johnson, who couldn’t keep it up anymore after his wife died and who went to live with his son in North Adams. Inside, it was the real deal: not the real deal circa 1803, when the place was built, but the real real deal: I’m a bigger purist than any of my clients. Flowered wallpaper that had turned sepia, flowered curtains that didn’t go with the wallpaper, rag rugs, linoleum in the kitchen, Depression-era cabinets with Bakelite handles, a pink electric range from the fifties—this must have been Mrs. Johnson’s call—and an old single-door Kelvinator with a foot-square aluminum freezer compartment. The cast-iron woodstove in the living room had a nickel-plated finial on top in the shape of an urn; the stovepipe, with its old-fashioned damper, ran through the wall and into the chimney with a tin collar against the wallboard. It felt as cold inside as it was out. Thermometer said fourteen. I sat on the sofa with my jacket on and the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I’d polished off half of it last night, but there was still that vodka out in the kitchen if need be. The days had been getting longer since December, but the sun was already down behind the hill.