Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“O-kay!” I hear Bagosh say conclusively. It’s time to leave. I’ve said not a word since forcing us to come in here.

And then there’s a loud, violent, scrabbling, struggling commotion down the hall, where Bagosh is carrying out his unwilling presale inspection. “Oh my Gawd,” I hear him shout in a horrified voice. Then bangety, bangety, bang-bang. The sound of a man falling. I’m moving, without bidding myself to move, across the mud-caked floor of the back family room, with its water-clouded picture window overlooking the wrecked back yard. It’s less than twenty feet to the hallway entrance and another twelve down the passage. It’s possible Bagosh has come upon the overdosed Chet, Jr., is all I can think. Then “Ahhhhh,” I hear poor Bagosh shout again. “My Gawd, oh my Gawd.” I still can’t see him, though unexpectedly I’m faced with me, reflected in the mirror on the dark bathroom medicine chest at the end of the hallway. I look terrified.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” I call out. Though why would he be all right and be howling?

Then out from the right bedroom, where I take it Bagosh is and has hit the floor, a good-size bushy-tailed red fox comes shooting into the hallway. “Ahhh,” Bagosh is wailing, “my-Gawd, my-Gawd.” The fox stops, paws splayed, and fixes its eyes on me, hugely blocking the path of escape. Its eyes are dark bullets aimed at my forehead. Though it doesn’t pause long, but turns and re-enters the room where Bagosh is, provoking another death wail (possibly he’s being ripped into now and will have to undergo painful rabies shots). Immediately, the fox comes rocketing back out the bedroom door, claws scrabbling powerfully to gain purchase. For an instant, its spectral, riotous eyes consider the other tiny bedroom — the kids’ room. But without another moment’s indecision, the fox fires off straight toward me, so that I stagger back and to the left and pitch through the arched doorway into the living room and right off my feet onto the filthy green shag, where I land just as the fox explodes after me through the door, claws out and scrabbling right across my block-M chest, so that I catch a gulp of its feral rank asshole as it springs off, straight across to the metal threshold and out into the clean cold air of Timbuktu, where, for all I know, Mike may believe the fox is me, translated by this house of spirits into my next incarnation on earth. Frank Fox.

When the Bagoshes’ taillamps have made the turn up onto Ocean Avenue and disappeared ceremoniously into the post noon-time, holiday-emptied streets, Mike and I have ourselves a side-by-side amble down to the bay shore, malodorous and sudsed from last night’s storm.

Sally will have called by now. Paul will have answered and could possibly have blurted things I don’t want her to know (my illness, for one). Though Clarissa will be home, and the two of them can have a sister-brother parsing talk about my “condition,” my upcoming Mayo trip, etc., etc. Possibly Clarissa could also talk to Sally, fill in some gaps, welcome her back on my behalf, no recriminations required. As is often the case, one view is that life is as fucked up as ground chuck and not worth fooling with. But there’s another view available to most of us even without becoming a Buddhist: that with an adjustment or two (Sally moving home to me, for instance), life could perhaps be fine again. No need for a miracle cancer cure. No need for Ann Dykstra to vaporize off the earth. No need for Clarissa to marry a former-NFL-great-become-pediatric-oncologist. No need for Paul to dedicate himself to scaling corporate Hallmark (new wardrobe concepts, a computerized prosthesis for his sugar pie). I can’t say if this view is the soul of acceptance. But in all important ways, it is the Next Level for me and I am in it and still taking breath regularly.

Mike and I trek stonily down toward the bay’s ragged edge. He, it seems, has a proposition for me. The not-good outcome of the Bagosh deal, he believes, only underscores the wisdom and importance of his plan, as well as the “time being right” for me. There’s a bravura opportunity for “everybody,” should I take him seriously, which I do. I’m always more at home with chance and transition than with the steady course, since the steady course leads quickly, I’ve found, to the rim of the earth.

The Bagoshes, not surprisingly, couldn’t get away from us fast enough. Bagosh emerged uninjured from his ordeal — a small tear in his linens, a scuffed wrist (no chance of a bite), his hair disfigured. But the sight of the fleeing fox incited the big poodle, Crackers, to a primordial in-car carnivore rage, so that the kids got deep scratches, broke their computer games and eventually had to pile out on the street, letting Crackers give pursuit out of sight. (He came back on his own.) Mrs. Bagosh, if that’s who the Madonna-faced woman was, didn’t leave the front seat, never lowered her window, did nothing more than say nothing to anyone, including her husband, a silence lasting up to Ocean Avenue, I suspected, but no longer.

Bagosh himself couldn’t have been nicer to me or to Mike. Mike couldn’t have been nicer. And neither could I, since I was responsible for everything. Bagosh said he would “definitely” buy the house on Monday. He and his family, however, had Thanksgiving reservations in Cape May that night, planned to travel up to Bivalve to see the snow geese wintering ground, then on to Greenwich, Hancocks Bridge and around to the Walt Whitman house in Camden before driving home weary but happy on Sunday, back to Buffalo, where there’s now ten feet of snow. He’d be calling. The story made him happy to tell. And even though Mike knew Bagosh had at that moment a choker wad of greenbacks in his shorts pocket and could’ve counted out big bills while I executed a quit-claim deed on my Suburban hood, he seemed jolly about money he would never see. He actually took off his sports-car cap, revealed his bristly dome, rubbed his scalp and joked with Bagosh about what a dog’s breakfast the Bills were making of the regular season, but that with luck a new O.J. would come along in the draft — a possibility that made them both laugh like Polacks. They are both Americans and acted like nothing else.

When the Bagoshes were all loaded in and maneuvering the big Lincoln around on Timbuktu, Mike stood beside me, hands thrust in his sweater pockets. “Wrong views result in a lack of protection, with no place to take refuge,” he announced solemnly. I took this to mean I’d fucked up, but it didn’t matter, because he had more significant things in mind.

“I loused this up,” I said. “I apologize.”

“It’s good to almost sell a house,” he said, already upbeat. The Bagosh children were waving at us from inside their warm, plush car (unquestionably at the command of their father). The little girl — wispy, sloe-eyed, with a decorative red dot on her forehead — held up Crackers’ paw so he could wave, too. Mike and I both waved and smiled our good-byes to dog, money and all as the Lincoln, its left taillight blinking at the intersection, rumbled out of sight forever.

“I’d rather have their money than their friendship,” I said. I noticed that I’d ripped my 501s somewhere in the house. My second fall of the day, third in two days. A general slippage. “Did he say what he thought he wanted the house for?”

“He didn’t know,” Mike said. “The idea just appealed to him. It’s why I didn’t want him to go inside.” He looked at me to say I should’ve known that, then smiled a thin, indicting smile meant not to be condescending.