Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart

“What has happened to Mark?” she said, a tremble in her voice that he thought sounded more like anger than anything else. The wind was blowing sticks and field debris across the yard and dislodging her hair more and more.

“I think,” Newel said, shifting off one foot to the other and keeping his bare chest covered with his arms, “he electrocuted himself.” He tilted his head faintly toward the old man’s telephone.

She regarded the box indignantly, then back at Newel. “And you were there?” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” Newel said. “In the boat, and, ah, Mr. Lamb had the box up front and he just grabbed two wire ends by accident and fell backward. I don’t think he took a breath.” Newel lowered his head and looked out the tops of his eyebrows.

Mrs. Lamb pinched her mouth and considered that awhile. “So he didn’t say a word?”

“No ma’am,” Newel said. “Wasn’t time for him to.” He snapped his fingers softly.

The trees in the belt of gumwoods where the old man had been hunting were woven together, bending toward the house. Branches were breaking off and dragging across the dooryard. The charge of rain set up in his nostrils and he could hear the thunder, like buildings falling in.

“And he said nothing at all?”

“No ma’am,” Newel said, rubbing his arms.

Landrieu secretly relaid the shirt on Mr. Lamb’s face and tucked it under his head and backed off.

“T.V.A.,” Mrs. Lamb said, glancing at him before he’d even gotten reestablished. “Bring in Mr. Lamb, go and call Rupert Knox in Helena, say Mr. Lamb has passed away suddenly, then come back to me.”

She turned aside, paused, and regarded them both, the Gin Den bracking and buckling in the wind. “You men may go along,” she said imperiously, and was gone, rebinding her shoulders in the tails of her afghan, bending her head into the gale.

Landrieu frowned at the cold remains of Mr. Lamb, then frowned at the distance between himself and the first thicket of catalpa woods he would have to cross in order to reach the lake, and set his mind to working on a way out.

Landrieu watched Mrs. Lamb into the house, then turned his attention to him and Newel. “How I supposed to get him in that house, then me across that lake with all this?” Landrieu said, his eyes roaming grievously into the storm, then back at the two of them, awaiting an answer.

“Come on,” he said, and grabbed Mr. Lamb’s heels and waited for Landrieu to take hold of his shoulders. Newel shoveled in under the old man’s back, and the three of them put him up and ran with him across the yard and up the stairs just as the first drops hit the grass and popped the Gin Den roof.

They angled the old man through the kitchen, straight to the back, where the room was dark and warm. Mrs. Lamb had set up a vigilance in a chair beside the two-poster bed and had spread the afghan on top of the covers for the old man to lie on.

When they had him situated, there was a moment in the room when they all stood still and looked at nothing but Mr. Lamb as though they were surprised to find him in that state and wished the world he would relent and get up. He felt like the three of them were filling up every available inch of the room, breathing and squeezing the boards, straining the plaster on the walls. And he wanted out.

“Landrieu,” Mrs. Lamb said, and shut her eyes.

Landrieu’s mouth gaped as if he was scandalized to be discovered anywhere near where he was. “Yes’m,” he said, casting an evil eye at him and Newel and a quick one at the old man.

“Call Rupert Knox now.”

“Yes’m,” Landrieu grunted. He took a long backward stride and was gone, Newel behind him.

“Mr. Hewes,” she said with the same lasting patience, her face back out of the light.

Mr. Lamb’s mouth came open several inches and stopped.

“Ma’am,” he said.

“Your wages are put on the supper table. Mark would’ve been grateful for your loyalty. Leave his pistol in the Gin Den.”

“Yes’m,” he whispered, and could see her face then in her own darkness. “Mrs. Lamb, I’m sorry about him,” he said. He could hear Newel and Landrieu tromping down the porch steps into the heart of the storm.

“He slept on the right end of the bed last night,” she said, bemused.

“Yes ma’am.”

“When it got spring, Mark always slept with his head to the foot. He thought it equalized his body’s pressures. And when I woke up this morning he was sleeping with his head next to mine, and I said, ‘Mark, why are you sleeping to my end?’ And he said, ’Because I went to bed thinking I was going to die, and I didn’t want to be turned around like a fool. I had a feeling my heart was going to stop.’ And I suppose it did. I’ve spent the day getting myself ready, and now I am.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, looking around into the shadows, unable to make out the wallpaper. “I’m sorry about him,” he said.

“Not as much as I am, Mr. Hewes,” she said.

And he had to go that instant. He took a step through the dining room, grabbed up the money envelope, stapled and neatly written on in pencil, and headed out into the rain, thinking about situations that draw you in and wring you like a rag, and let you go in the rain when the use was out of you and you weren’t good for anything.

Landrieu limped to the Gin Den wearing his yellow raincoat, inside of which his face looked cold as the night. He poked his head in the doorway and announced he was ready to go.

He got his gun from under the seat, laid it in the middle of the bed, put on his slicker, and stood in the door while Newel dredged up an old paint tarpaulin and draped it over his shoulders, then the three of them took off in the jeep with Landrieu driving and Newel humped in the front, scowling.

When they got to the overlook, Landrieu paid the lake a menacing look. The water was swelling and the camp was invisible, and through the rain he could see only indentations of shore willows.

Landrieu untied the Traveler, and the two of them sledded it into the water. Landrieu hauled the little All State out of the brush from under an anhydrous ammonia sack, and screwed it on the transom. He then started pinching the bubble and spinning the crank, and staring at the lake as if he were watching a vision of his own calamity.

“Push ’em off,” Landrieu shouted meanly, installing himself in the bow. And they heaved until the boat rode out of the mud and came under power. Newel hulked in under his canvas at the middle of the boat, rain skating his cheeks and wetting his pants. They both faced Landrieu, who kept looking at them malignantly, as if they were undercutting his ability to pilot the boat by simply being there, and when the bow slipped clear of the timber, he whipped the rudder bar to the side and spun the boat into the wind, knocking Newel flat off onto the floor.

“What about the old lady!” Newel shouted when he’d gotten back on the bench. The slap of the water was getting fierce, like metal tearing on the boat’s underside.

“I’d rather leave her as leave me!” he shouted, and Newel made a sour mouth and disappeared in the canvas.

When they got where the dock was visible, the boat had collected two inches of active water and was low enough in the channel that the motor scudded bottom and kicked out suddenly with a whang that shocked Landrieu and almost rocketed him off his seat. He looked puzzled a moment, then motioned Newel out of the boat to wade. Newel crouched lower, shook his head, and pointed on to the dock. Landrieu looked reviled and whipped off down the lake sixty yards and veered back in and approached the dock from upchannel, easing the boat expertly against the swell, baffling the truck tires and cutting the motor.