Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart

The wind began to post off the lake. He could see the sock sprung out in the airfield, the funnel showing east. The clouds had blackened and were revolving fast and moving the air in different directions through the trees and under the house. Elinor woke, winded, and relocated herself behind one of the pilings.

In the woods he began to hear the sputter of the Willys, and walked out behind the Gin Den to watch for them, the wind flooding his satin shirt, making it cold down his back.

All he could see at first were Newel’s bare shoulders buckled over the wheel as if he were forcing the jeep toward the house with the strength in his arms. As they came nearer he could see Newel’s face fixed in an odd, exasperated expression he hadn’t seen before, as if Newel had left the old man in disgust and come in by himself. Though finally he could make out the old man’s feet, nylon socks rolled over his ankles, hung side by side across the gate like two sides to a stepladder. And there wasn’t any urgency. Newel drove the jeep to where he stood, gave him the same exasperated look, and slumped backward in the seat.

He looked over the sill and saw Newel’s blue shirt draped over the old man’s face. Mr. Lamb’s body seemed skinny, his wrists and ankles turned blue in the time it took to cart him back to the house. He had a keen urge to take a look, but looked up instead at the window and saw the glass was the color of swamp water and couldn’t be sure Mrs. Lamb wasn’t looking and would see the old man before she was ready.

The wind whipped under the jeep and tumbled out on the yard, making Newel grimace and get goose-pimply.

“What the hell happened to him?” he said.

“The old fart electrocuted himself,” Newel said, and rubbed his hands together under the wheel. “Monkeying with his goddamned box and the first thing I knew he’d grabbed the wires and knocked over. He said oops.”

“Said what?”

“Ooops.” Newel smiled pathetically.

He took an unhappy look at the window. “I’ll get the nigger. Get him behind the shed.”

He trotted with the wind behind him to Landrieu’s house and went straight inside. Landrieu was perched on the edge of his bed watching an enormous television set, and gave him a look of irreconcilable outrage, as if it were beyond all his comprehension anyone should tread into his one good safe place.

“Whatchyouwant?” Landrieu said, clenching the corners of the bedspread as if he wanted to pull the bed in on top of him. Over the bed was a large photograph of Landrieu, much younger, wearing a baseball uniform and smiling.

“He’s dead,” he said loudly, stepping out of the wind, getting a whiff of Landrieu’s room, which was warm and smelled like rancid bacon grease. The television was on too loud.

“Who is?” Landrieu stood erectly and tried to see past him through the door.

“Mr. Lamb,” he said over the TV, breathing the unhealthy air. “You gotta catch the old lady before she has a hissy fit.” The wind kicked the door out of his hand and slammed it against the wall.

Landrieu got very grave. His left eye closed and his cheeks thickened. “Where he at?” he said, still trying to lean toward the door.

“In the goddamn jeep.” He stepped out of the way so Landrieu could see where Newel had pulled the jeep around the Gin Den. Landrieu took a careful step to the door, looked out, saw nothing, then marched straight into the yard, stuffing his shirt down in his coveralls and sniffing. He walked across to the back of the jeep, reached in, and yanked the shirt off Mr. Lamb’s head as if he expected the old man to pop up howling and was just going to go along with the foolishness. But the moment he saw the old man’s face, his nostrils flared and he stood back and looked gray. The wind came up stiffly. Landrieu’s hair shifted to the side of his head like a hunk of sponge, and he took another step backward and almost fell over his feet.

“What done happened to him?” Landrieu smiled queerly as if still not positive it wasn’t a joke. His big television was blasting out into the yard.

“He took a collect call,” Newel said irritably, and jerked the shirt out of Landrieu’s hand and put it back on the old man’s face. “Get on inside and tell Mrs. Lamb. We’ll carry him in quick as you tell her.”

Landrieu eyed them both, then the old man and the black box, which Newel had put in the back beside him, and tried to figure out just how duties were being assigned. “Who gon’ tell her?”

“You,” he said, wishing Landrieu would just go on. “ We can’t tell her.”

Landrieu glared at him, hiked up his coveralls, and started legging it toward the house without another word, limping stiffly on his right leg. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped and looked back at them, then disappeared.

Newel leaned against the jeep, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and rubbed at his eyes, his flesh rigid in the wind.

Across the airstrip it was raining, like smoke creeping out of the woods. Behind it, the greenish sunlight narrowed the gap against the curve of the earth. The air smelled strong. He wondered just how long it was going to take the rain to cross the field and reach them.

He looked at Newel, then thought a moment. “What was it you said about my eyes? Something ignorant, I remember.”

“I forgot,” Newel said, looking away.

“No you didn’t neither,” he said. He bit up a tiny piece of his lip.

“You gettin worried?” Newel smiled at him.

“Screw yourself,” he said, and stalked inside the Gin Den and let the door spring out in the wind. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched Newel through the open door and wished he’d never seen him.

Newel walked inside the doorway and leaned against the jamb and looked out. “I said there was something grieved about you.” The wind had begun to keen in the joints, and the tin seemed to expand as if it wanted to explode. “Grieved might not be the right word,” Newel said, wagging the back of his head against the chase. “Heartbroken might be.”

“Nothin ain’t broke my heart,” he said, staring at the points of his boots, wishing Newel would disappear.

“I don’t know,” Newel said. “You know more about it than I do.” He walked off from the doorway.

“I sure as hell do,” he said loudly, trying to decipher just what there could be to break his heart.

Landrieu limped down off the porch, eyes big as buttons, arriving out of breath, hiking at his coveralls and looking up at the house nervously. “She comin,” he said, and immediately made for the other side of the jeep and established himself so he could watch the screen door and the old man’s body at the same time.

Mrs. Lamb came down into the wind wrapped in a black afghan, her hair strewn around her head and her mouth bent into a look of anger. She strode across the yard, acknowledging no one, and walked to the edge of the jeep and peered down. She looked at Mr. Lamb from one end to the other, studying him as if she wanted to be sure all his parts were there. When she wanted to look at his face she motioned to Landrieu, and he lifted the shirt off and the old lady regarded her husband even more carefully, without speaking to anyone. Her complexion seemed slowly to be losing its olive color, and the set of her mouth hardened as though interior shifts were taking place she herself didn’t know about but which had already corrected her outlook toward the rest of the world.

She stood back, girding herself in the afghan, appearing dark and immense, so he wasn’t sure if under different circumstances he could have ever identified her as a woman. She eyed both him and Newel, as if for a moment she couldn’t tell who was who, then settled her eyes on Newel, who was standing half naked in the wind.