Ron Rash - Chemistry and Other Stories

“Want to get in the lake?” Matt asked, softly kissing the top of her head.

“Yes,” Jamie said, though she felt, to use her mother’s words, tired to the bone. In some ways that was what made their lovemaking so good, especially on Saturday nights — finding in each other’s bodies that last ounce of strength left from their long day, their long week, and sharing it.

They walked down the grassy slope to where a half-sunk pier leaned into the lake. On the bank they took off their clothes and stepped onto the pier, the boards trembling beneath them. At the pier’s end the boards became slick with algae and water rose to their ankles. They felt for the drop-off with their feet, entered the water with a splash.

Then Jamie was weightless, the water up to her breasts, her feet lifting from the silt as she wrapped her arms around Matt. The sway of water eased away the weariness of eight hours of standing, eased as well the dim ache behind her eyes caused by hurry and noise and cigarette smoke. Water sloshed softly against the pier legs. The moon mirrored itself in the water, and Matt’s head and shoulders shimmered in a yellow glow as Jamie raised her mouth to his.

THEY SLEPT LATE the next morning, then worked on the house two hours before driving up the mountain to her grandmother’s for Sunday lunch. Behind the farmhouse a barn Jamie’s grandfather had built in the 1950s crumbled into a rotting pile of tin and wood. In a white oak out by the boarded-up well, a cicada called for rain.

“Let’s not stay more than an hour,” Matt said as they stepped onto the front porch. “That’s as long as I can stand Linda.”

Inside, Jamie’s parents, Charlton, Linda, and their children already sat at the table. Food was on the table and the drinks poured.

“About to start without you,” Linda said sharply as they sat down. “When young ones get hungry they get contrary. If you had kids you’d know that.”

“Them kids don’t seem to be acting contrary to me,” Matt said, nodding at the three children. “The only person acting contrary is their momma.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. “We were working on the house and lost track of time.”

“I know you all are trying to save money, but I still wish you had a phone,” her mother said.

Grandma Chastain came in from the kitchen with a basket of rolls. She sat down at the table beside the youngest child.

“Say us a prayer, Luther,” she said to her son.

For a few minutes they ate in silence. Then Charlton turned to his father.

“You ought to have seen the satinback me and Matt killed Wednesday morning. Eight rattles and long as my leg,” Charlton said. “Them chain saws have made me so deaf I didn’t even hear it. I’m just glad Matt did or I’d of sure stepped right on it.”

“Don’t tell such a thing, Charlton,” Grandma Chastain said. “I worry enough about you out in them woods all day as it is.”

“How’s your back, Son?” Jamie’s mother asked.

It was Linda who answered.

“Bothers him all the time. He turns all night in bed trying to get comfortable. Ain’t neither of us had a good night’s sleep in months.”

“You don’t think the surgery would do you good?” Grandma Chastain asked.

Charlton shook his head.

“It didn’t help Bobby Hemphill’s back none. Just cost him a bunch of money and a month not being able to work.”

When they’d finished dessert, Jamie’s mother turned to her.

“You want to go with me and Linda to that flower show in Seneca?”

“I better not,” Jamie said. “I need to work on the house.”

“You and Matt are going to work yourselves clear to the bone fixing that house if you’re not careful,” her mother said.

Jamie’s father winked at Jamie.

“Your momma’s always looking for the dark cloud in a blue sky.”

“I do no such thing, Luther Alexander,” her mother said. “It’s just the most wonderful kind of thing that Jamie and Matt have that place young as they are. It’s like getting blackberries in June. I just don’t want them wearing themselves out.”

“They’re young and healthy, Momma. They can handle it,” Charlton said. “Just be happy for them.”

Linda sighed loudly and Charlton’s lips tightened. The smile vanished from his face. He stared at his wife but did not speak. Instead, it was Grandma Chastain who spoke.

“You two need to be in church on Sunday morning,” she said to Jamie, “not working on that house. You’ve been blessed, and you best let the Lord know you appreciate it.”

“Look at you,” Linda said angrily to Christy, the youngest child. “You got that pudding all over your Sunday dress.” She yanked the child from her chair. “Come on, we’re going to the bathroom and clean that stain, for what little good it’ll do.”

Linda walked a few steps, then turned back to the table, her hand gripping Christy’s arm so hard the child whimpered.

“I reckon we all don’t get lucky with lake houses and such,” Linda said, looking not at Matt but at Jamie, “but that don’t mean we don’t deserve just as much. You just make sure your husband saves enough of his strength to do the job Charlton’s overpaying him to do.”

“I reckon if Charlton’s got any complaints about me earning my pay he can tell me his own self,” Matt said.

Linda swatted Christy’s backside with her free hand.

“You hush now,” she said to the child and dragged her into the bathroom.

For a few moments the only sound was the ticking of the mantel clock.

“You don’t pay Linda no mind,” Charlton said to Matt. “The smartest thing I done in a long while is let go that no-account Talley boy and hire you. You never slack up and you don’t call in sick on Mondays. You ain’t got a dime from me you ain’t earned.”

“And I wouldn’t expect otherwise,” Matt said.

“Still, it’s a good thing Charlton’s done,” Jamie’s mother said as she got up, “especially letting you work percentage.” She laid her hand on her son’s shoulder as she reached around him to pick up his plate. “You’ve always been good to look after your sister, and I know she’ll always be grateful, won’t you, girl?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jamie said.

The bathroom door opened and Christy came out trailing her mother, her eyes swollen from crying.

“We ought to be going,” Matt said, pushing back his chair. “I need to get some more shingles on that roof.”

“You shouldn’t to be in such a rush,” Grandma Chastain said, but Matt was already walking toward the door.

Jamie pushed back her chair.

“We do need to be going.”

“At least let me wrap you up something for supper,” Grandma Chastain said.

Jamie thought about how much work they had to do and how good it would be not to have to cook.

“Okay, Grandma,” she said.

MATT WAS IN the car when she came out, the engine running and his hands gripping the steering wheel. Jamie placed the leftovers in the backseat and got in beside Matt.

“You could have waited for me,” she said.

“If I’d stayed any longer I’d of said some things you wouldn’t want me to,” Matt said, “and not just to Linda. Your mother and grandma need to keep their advice to themselves.”

“They just care about me,” Jamie said, “about us.”

They drove back to the house in silence and worked until dusk. As Jamie cleaned the blinds she heard Matt’s hammer tapping above as if he was nailing her shut inside the house. She thought about the rattlesnake, how it could easily have bitten Matt, and remembered twelve years earlier, when her mother and Mr. Jenkins, the elementary school principal, appeared at the classroom door.

“Your daddy’s been hurt,” her mother said. Charlton was outside waiting in the logging truck, and they drove the fifteen miles to the county hospital. Her father had been driving a skid loader that morning. It had rained the night before and the machine had turned over on a ridge. His hand was shattered in two places, and there was nerve damage as well. Jamie remembered stepping into the white room with her mother and seeing her father in the bed, a morphine drip jabbed into his arm like a fang. If that skidder had turned over one more time you’d be looking at a dead man, her father had told them. Charlton had quit high school and worked full-time cutting pulpwood to make sure food was on the table that winter. Her father eventually got a job as a night watchman, a job, unlike cutting pulpwood, a man needed only one good hand to do.