Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

At Durant the squeal of a cop car and a veer from the curb. Now they were in the back, her pale face tilted up. Speeding through the night. The twirling strobe cracking the world.

The steel gurney. The double doors. The gray mask pushed against her mouth.

—

“WHAT’D YOU DO?” he asked when they finally allowed him in. It was the next afternoon. He’d gone home in the early morning and picked flowers outside his apartment with a flashlight. Since daybreak he’d been waiting in the lobby.

A tube ran from her nose.

“Could have been laced,” she said.

“What could have been?”

She looked around. “How do I know?”

“Where’d you get it?”

She nodded off.

“Cle, where’d you get it?”

“Where do you think?”

“What was it?”

“Won’t—” She nodded off again.

“Won’t what?”

He pinched her hand. She looked bleached. The name bracelet on her wrist was stained with either blood or puke. An IV was taped into the crook of her arm.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. Her hand tilted toward the flowers. “Taking care of me—”

“You’re welcome.”

She might have smiled. Her arm twitched. He covered it with the blanket. She was asleep, but he said it anyway. “Looks like I wasn’t the one who needed to be saved.”

—

IN A ROOM at the end of the hall he found Biettermann, sitting up against the headboard reading Rolling Stone . A dripping noise. Andret pulled back the curtain. The tubing had been removed from Biettermann’s nose, but the white tape still clung there.

“What was it, Earl?”

“How do I know?”

“Nice.”

“Thanks, brother.”

Milo came around the bed. The dripping sound was the IV emptying onto the floor. “Interesting approach to treatment, Earl.”

Biettermann smiled wanly. “Ah, a joke.”

“You could both have died.”

“Ah, yes — you’re right.” He shook the magazine to turn a page. Then he looked into it and pretended to read. His eyelids closed.

“Well, I happen to care about her,” said Milo.

“That’s sweet.”

“What’d you give her?”

“What’d I give her? I didn’t give her anything.” He shook the magazine, but the page wouldn’t turn. Andret leaned down and lifted the sheet. The other wrist was handcuffed to the bed rail.

“Jesus Christ, Earl. What’d you do?”

“Evidently something.”

“You don’t even remember, do you?”

“Listen, Andret. I buy the best.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I take care of my friends. I took care of your friend.”

“What’d you give her?”

“Why don’t you go ask her?”

“I just did.”

“And?”

“She doesn’t know.”

Biettermann snorted.

“She doesn’t.”

“Listen, Andret. She begged . I don’t push anything on anybody. She’s not the Snow White you think she is. And you’re not Prince Charming.”

“Wrong fairy tale.”

“Doesn’t change the point. You think you’re going to save her with a kiss?”

“I couldn’t have. She wasn’t breathing.”

“Then how come you didn’t carry me away, too? How come you didn’t come back up for me ?”

“I’d say you’re lucky I called an ambulance.”

“Well, somebody called the cops, too.” Biettermann looked at him. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

“It should have been.”

“Listen, Andret, we’re not junkies. This stuff gives me ideas.”

“What stuff, Earl?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He leaned forward and shook the magazine. Then he said, “But when you’re ready to try it out, you just let me know.”

—

IN MARCH, THREE weeks before spring break began, he left school. A bag of sandwiches and a tank of gas. Bells ringing from the towers and a silver light in the hills. North on 80, a flask propped beside him. He stopped at the same places they’d stopped on the way out — Reno, Elko, Salt Lake, Rock Springs — and walked alone on the same paths they’d walked together. Napped in the same truck stops. Huddled in the same clear cold with the same rumbling big rigs. In his mind he was going to demolish her. In the back of the car where he’d once slept curled into her warmth, he dozed with a peacoat pulled across his chest.

He was going to think about her and think about her until she disappeared.

On a ruined trail near Rawlins he followed the path they’d followed that winter, blinking his eyes into the stiff wind. On the banks of a river east of Cheyenne, where hand in hand they’d sat on a boulder tossing rocks onto the snow-dusted ice, he sat tossing them into the rushing current. Each one splashed and vanished. She vanished alongside, down into the black. On his third night on the road, just past the Nebraska border, he pulled in at the same bright diner, where the same middle-aged waitress refilled his barley soup but didn’t come back with the bread.

When he finished, he found his way to the bathroom. Took a long pull from the flask. Before the same chipped mirror he examined his face. It had been hardened. It had been turned to stone.

Something had been removed, too. What remained was ambition.

He took another pull. Back in the dining room, the waitress was already wiping the table. He stood off to the side until she looked up at him and smiled. “Where’s your friend?” she said. “You leave her somewhere?”

He lifted the jacket off the chairback and worked his arms into the sleeves. “California. Things didn’t work out.”

She swept the utensils into her palm. “You’ll find another.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” she said, leaning to push in the chair. “You’ll find another.”

—

HE ARRIVED IN Cheboygan just as his parents were sitting down to Sunday dinner. His mother’s hand went to her mouth. His father reached to the china cabinet for another plate.

Almost a month remained before the university returned from break. The next morning, the phone rang. It was the registrar’s office. His sections had gone untaught. The police had been sent to his address. Did he wish to withdraw? Four days later, a certified letter, asking the same question. His fellowship money was on the line. Finally, a call from the dean. His father fielded it.

He did his work out in the woods. Frozen days. Bright snow. His thirty-second year on earth — late, in fact, for a mathematician. Wool coat. Spiral notebook. Flask. He’d brought the chain home with him, and on his first day in the woods he set it back in the maple where it belonged. After that, a month spent nearly entirely outside, in one of his old shelters under the trees. He wasn’t hungry, and he barely needed sleep.

He was going to make her sorry.

“You look terrible” was the first thing Hans Borland said when he walked back into his office. One day still remained of the break. The campus was quiet, the students just beginning to filter in.

“Kamil Malosz and I have been in battle,” said Andret.

“Good, good. I can see it.” Instead of sherry, the professor pulled a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and cleared off his desk. Two glasses, filled to the top. “And have you defeated him?”

Andret gulped the whiskey, then laid his notebook beside the glass. “Yes,” he said. “I believe I have.”

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY. MILO arrived on a day of hail — billions of white spheres the size of gumballs bouncing off the lawns and streets of central New Jersey as he carried his new briefcase across the quad. A miracle. Blue sky. Hot as a clothes dryer. And suddenly hail was bouncing up from the walk in a skittering dance higher than his belt — corn in a popper. Within a few seconds the brim of his fedora had filled with it.