John Gardner - Nickel Mountain

Henry nodded. “I sure appreciate this.”

“Forget it. I guess I’d better get a move on. It’s a long, long trail a-winding.” He grinned again, then stood up. “Say, I ran into—” He stopped, confused, then concentrated on his jacket zipper; but Henry understood.

“Who?” he said, sitting balanced, squinting.

George went on tugging at the zipper. He freed it finally, then looked up, pretending to smile. “He was bound to come back sooner or later. You know that.”

Henry watched him. “How long’s he been in?”

“I don’t know, maybe a day or two, maybe a week. I didn’t ask.”

“You talked to him?”

“I ran into him and I said hello; that was it. He’s got a job over at Purina. That’s where I saw him.”

“He means to stay, then?”

“No way of knowing.” He came a step toward Henry. “I’d really better get going, though. …”

Henry leaned forward, folding his hands, squinting more. He said — and in the half-dark room it did not seem a surprising thing to say—“I’m going to kill him.”

George blanched. He said quietly, looking at him, “You’re out of your fucking head.”

“I mean it.”

Abruptly, George got out his pack of cigarettes, shook one into his hand and lit the new cigarette from the one he had going. “I never heard such a thing,” he said. His hand trembled. “You sit there cool as a cucumber and—”

“I’ll tell you why.”

“I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear a thing about it. You’re crazy to even think it.”

“I’ll tell you what he did.”

George pivoted away, then back, determined. “Look, I’ve got to get started home. It’ll take me half-an-hour through this snow.” He came toward Henry again. “And listen, remember what I told you, get some rest.”

Henry reached out to block his way and George paused, but then Henry let it go. “I’ll try,” he said.

“Do it, now.”

He nodded. He sat perfectly still, his fists closed tight, watching George move past him and toward the door. George waved, and after a moment Henry returned the wave. He thought, So he’s come back. It made him feel light, as though the ground had dropped away and he hung in empty space.

He got up at last, slowly, looking at the doorway where a minute ago George Loomis had stood, where now there were only reflected lights and, beyond the reflections, snow. He turned it over in his mind: So Willard’s come back home.

Callie was still asleep when he went in. He sat down beside her and put his left hand on her back and closed his eyes. With his right hand he pulled at his upper lip. For two hours she didn’t make a sound, and then it started again,

worse. Her back was tender now and, gently, she pushed his hand away.

The night nurse was a spindly country woman, an old maid with a squeezed-shut face and brittle gray hair like steel wool. “This room’s a mess,” she said. “Clean up this room and in half-an-hour you got it looking like a hogpen.” She moved past the chair where Henry sat, sniffing at him as if he smelled, and straightened the unmessed second bed and the shelves on the wall. “Dominoes,” she said, disgusted, lifting the box from the bedside table with three fingers. “What’ll you people think of next.” And then she went out, not looking once at Callie.

He got no sleep, or no sleep that counted. He dreamed of the woods and thousands of birds turning and turning, a vortex above the trees, black against the gray of the sky. The next morning at seven, when Callie had been in labor for twenty-four hours, Dr. Costard came in again and sent Henry away while he made his examination. After five minutes the doctor came out and stood at the door pulling off his rubber glove.

“How is she?” Henry asked. His voice was like an old woman’s, or like his father’s — exactly like his father’s.

“She’s coming along,” the doctor said. “We’ll just have to be patient a while yet.” He walked over toward the desk and Henry followed him. The doctor said when the nurse looked up, “She’s dilated to three cm’s. Have her examined again in four hours.”

“Is that good?” Henry asked. “Three cm’s?”

“It’s a start.” The doctor smiled, plump-faced, like a hotel keeper. He had curly hair turned silver around the front.

“How much farther does she have to go?”

“Quite a ways yet.” He looked at Henry, then put his hand on his arm. “Ten cm’s,” he said. He smiled.

“Will it be today, you think?”

“Could be. There are a lot of things we’re not sure of yet in this business.” He started down the hall, toeing outward.

“She’s been in labor for twenty-four hours,” Henry said, following him. He said it quickly, his middle fingers interlocked and pulling at each other.

“They’ll do that sometimes.” The doctor waved at him vaguely, with his back turned, and walked on. Henry watched him go.

An hour later they called him to the waiting room and he found the breakfast George Loomis had left — cheese, crackers, two apples, coffee. George hadn’t been able to wait. It was eight miles each way from his place, but that wasn’t it, Henry knew.

He started back for the labor room to eat, and as he passed the cigarette machine he stopped and bought a pack of Old Golds with filters. He stood for a minute looking down at the package and then he remembered: Willard Freund leaning into the lamplight in the lean-to room behind the diner, rain drumming on the roof, the room full of the smell of burning wood, and Willard reaching toward the table for the cigarettes he’d laid there, the pack glossy under the lamplight, yellow and red. Old Golds were what Willard Freund smoked. He saw the woods again in his mind, the gray, dead tamaracks, the darkness farther in, the birds. He stood for a long while looking down at the package.

It went on, hour after hour. Doc Cathey came and went and nurses came on duty and went off again, and nothing happened. Once they gave her a shot to stop the labor and give her a rest. Henry smoked and just held Callie’s hand now. Delivery carts rolled by in the hall outside the door, and sometimes he heard the cries of newborn babies. When he looked out he saw new fathers talking, smoking cigarettes and looking in through the windows along the hall at the rows of baby beds — two squat, red-necked men with water-combed hair that needed cutting. Later there was another man, an Italian in an expensive suit. Callie lay still, white, with beads of sweat on her forehead. Outside the window the snow was still blowing, too thick to see through. At 6:oo P.M. Dr. Costard came in and examined her and gave her a shot. He smiled, as if sociably, then patted her arm. “I’ll drop back later to see how you’re doing.”

Callie ignored him.

Outside the door Henry said, “Still the same?”

The doctor puckered his lips, then smiled again. “No change to speak of.” He waved, then paused, turning back. “If things haven’t improved by morning maybe we’ll section her.”

Henry waited, balanced on the balls of his feet.

“Caesarian,” Dr. Costard explained. He winked, smiling. “But no use rushing Mother Nature. We’ll see how she does tonight.”

“She’s a bleeder,” Henry said. “When she cuts herself she keeps on bleeding.”

The doctor nodded, still smiling. “We’ll see.”

Henry went back, touching the wall as he walked.

It was dark. He stared at the shadows thrown by the nightlight, then turned his head to stare at the dominoes in the box. His father’s. They would sit up nights, his mother and father — his huge shirt would be open, showing spongy skin like wet clay and gray, curling hairs — and they’d stare at the oil-cloth-covered table where the dominoes lay, the winding paths, the boneyard, the fourteen in play up-ended like tombstones, and after a long time his father would place one and would smile, almost giggle, old-womanish, and his mother would place one right away, and then there would be the waiting again, like a wait in a game of chess, and then, as if kingdoms depended on it, his father would place another. He almost always won. There would be specks of dust on the bourbon in his glass, and once in a while his hand would move to the glass mechanically, and the corners of Henry’s mother’s mouth would tighten. He would sit with his eyebrows drawn outward for a moment after he’d drunk, his thick lips wet, his forehead white, and then he’d say, Ah! as if drunk for pleasure.