A Peculiar Grace (11 page)

Without knowing it he’d tiptoed right up to the edge of his own emotional fault line on all fronts and her tone more than her words snapped inside him and he said, “I don’t know. Sometimes.” As he spoke a fragment of doubt or worry or pain came over her face and again without any idea beforehand he said, “No, you’re right. I lose sight of it. And I don’t know anything about where you came from or where you’re going but it seems a few more days here wouldn’t do you any harm. Unless there’s some reason I shouldn’t offer it.”

She took her hand away from his knee. “What do you want, Hewitt? A list of where I’ve been the last ten years? Shit Hewitt, you want it, I can tell you what it’s like. Some things are always the same—there’s always the others. They all live off in the edges, the bits of woods or the underpass or sometimes in shelters but you try to avoid those. And there’s always a big dog guy who’s fucked-up but has a rap about this is the only true right way to live. Like he chose it or something. Nobody ever chooses. It’s easy to get in and hard to get out. And there is always cops and if you’ve really picked a bad place people from social services out tracking you down to give you help which is not the kind of help you want. Night is better than day. Even if at night it’s all drugs and boosting, all crack and heroin and big-ass boys who will work you over even quicker than the cops to try and get you to do what they want which is the only time you get crazy and that stops em fast. Even those boys know that shit’s no good for their needs. Women strung out on whatever gets them through the night because getting through the night is what it’s all about. But there are also the ones
who walk up and talk five seconds and are gone and they’re the ones you can trust—they tell you where to go and where not, they tell you which fast-food dives will tolerate you for hours on the price of a cup of coffee or where it’s best to try to sleep. It’s fucked up because there is almost no one you can trust but you got to trust someone so you pick and take a chance. The sad thing is mostly you can’t trust the women. Because most are already sucked down and terrified of some man. The worst time is the couple hours before dawn. It’s when you’re the most cold and tired and all the sudden the traffic picks up with men on their way to work and they roll those trucks alongside you and say ‘Hey girl’ and I know what they want and I’ve been up all night trying to make sure nobody steals my car and trying to figure out a new place to park it the next night and then there’s twenty bucks all yours to suck a dick and I’m already days dead on my feet and I think Leave me alone shithead and if I’m lucky enough to be working I get a meal later that day or night at work so I skip lunch. If I eat some breakfast I can move my car to all-day parking and cover up in the backseat so no one knows I’m there and sleep until it’s time for work and then go to the Y for a shower. And maybe if I’m lucky there’s a convenience store clerk who’ll like me enough and knows I’m not a crackhead hooker and they’ll maybe give me a hot dog. And a packet of mustard to spread on the bun and I’ll walk out of there at four in the morning feeling like I’m doing alright. All the while patting my jeans pocket to make sure the keys are still there and back behind to check my license and feeling every step the three twenties folded tight under the lining of my shoe and hoping I didn’t fuck up and park where they’d tow my car and the hot dog has slicked enough grease into that bread so I can eat it walking along thinking I just have to last a couple more hours but at least I’m eating a hot dog and swearing I’ll never eat that kind of shit again, someday, and then some guy in a truck rolls slow alongside and says ‘Hey girl’ and I’m faced with that all over again. And all the time knowing this is not what I should be doing but it’s all I can do. It’s all I can do.”

She hadn’t moved although her body was arched tight and her eyes electric and furious. She said, “You know what I mean? Hewitt? You ever been down
that
road?”

He was silent.

After a bit of time she said, “What other questions do you have?”

When he was quiet she said, “You can change your mind you know.”

He finally said, “I’ve seen a few mornings where a hot dog would’ve been mighty welcome.”

He rose from the cooling stone. She had to be cold. She stood also and they were standing close. Twilight draining around them. Less than a foot apart. Her eyes were clear again and she reached up and touched his cheek with one finger and said, “I’m freezing my butt here. Could we go inside now?”

Then they were holding on to each other, hands on elbows, eyes wide. Hewitt said, “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes tight. Don’t open them until I tell you.”

“Where’re you leading me?”

“Nowhere. Will you close your fucking eyes?”

She did. He waited. The western low sky was pale bright blue and the sky above that was a void. And as he gazed at the void one and then another star appeared. But look down around and there was plenty of light still pooled around the ground. Caught in the flower beds and blooms.

He said, “Open now.”

She did.

He waited and then said, “Can you see more than before?”

“I be damned.” She still held his arm. “The flowers are glowing.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s get to the house.”

Three

They entered into days of a slender domesticity. Hewitt continued to cook suppers but the rest of their meals each took when they wanted. Jessica was a sleeper, often not rising until midmorning. At first Hewitt thought this was a womanly thing—his greatest experience with women had been in those years when it seemed all women could hardly be roused from bed. After a couple of days he realized that she was depleted to full exhaustion. All she had told him seemed worth weeks of rest.

Meanwhile he was caught in a splurge of energy, demanding that he set things right about the place. Every June he went through the same ritual. It might after all prove to be the summer his mother or sister and her family or, God bless them, all, might decide to visit. It had been half a dozen years since any had come north for a spot of New England summer. The last visit with Beth and her husband and daughter had been more or less a disaster. And his fault although he’d chosen not to acknowledge this but continued with the yearly round of birthday cards and Christmas gifts, all of which Beth herself, regardless of the recipients, chose to answer. Beth had manners. Beth was a proper citizen. Beth was a colossal pain in the ass. He suspected he was at least partly responsible for her deliberate decision to have only one child. As if her younger brother was an outstanding example of the risk involved. At least his mother had a sense of humor. Although she too tended to stay away but in this case Hewitt had sympathy; it was not himself she wished to avoid as much as the place itself.

The work he’d done on the flower beds was just a beginning and so he worked with wheelbarrow and trowel and hand cultivator to clear the weeds and loosen the soil and transplant a few things that would bear the strain. And sometimes just sit somewhere in the garden and watch around him. In a small nook with a circle of slates perhaps ten feet in diameter with a two-foot opening in the center sprang the most magnificent bleeding heart he’d ever seen, the circle hidden by other plantings on the terrace above and the one below, the pods of white and crimson flowers a treasure available only to those who searched. In the same hidden glade but out where the sun struck fully was another discovery: a stub of granite post buried with an old grindstone resting atop. The granite worked up to a point as if his father had possessed a swage expressly built for stone, so the granite post fit through the grindstone opening as tight and smooth as if they came out of the ground that way. Atop this was an old sundial his father had found somewhere. The bronze base was warped and the crescent wobbly so the dial was never close to accurate time. Which Hewitt was sure had been his father’s intent.

One of those afternoons she changed the oil on her Bug, backing onto a pair of hemlock planks up on concrete blocks. Hewitt showed her where the tools and oil were. Then he sat back and watched. They’d been eating his lunch and her breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches when he suggested it might be a good time to get the work done. Not mentioning he’d like the car out of the driveway and maybe tucked under the ell shed extending out from the side of the barn. Jessica had strawberry jam on her cheek and she wiped it with the back of her hand and told him she’d like to do that if he’d show her his tools. But she wanted to do it herself.

He thought at first it was that taint of mistrust going on, so told her that was fine. But perched on the old milk can where the used oil would be saved, he watched her. Once she went to work he felt like the usual asshole guy who thinks a woman can’t do a thing with a machine, a notion his female friends and neighbors had long since
disabused him of. She put tools back where she’d found them. She drained the oil from car to trough to can with slow patience so those last drips came. When she was done she kicked dirt to cover the few spots dripped.

He thought perhaps she was lighter, her smiles easier come by. But couldn’t say for sure. It wasn’t his job to track her. But still it was a strange pleasure to go to sleep at night knowing someone was down the hall in their own room thinking their own thoughts or dreaming their own dreams.

And Hewitt Pearce felt something he could only guess was what a father would feel. One night late stood at his window and looked out at the star and moon lit hillside and wondered if this was his daughter. Not one bred and born but the closest he would get. Some remote undefined rough compensation for that child never born.

Jessica was a substitute for no one.

T
HREE DAYS ALONG
, Bill Potwin showed up middle of the day to cut hay. Hewitt met him in the dooryard and Potwin killed the big John Deere, reared back in his seat and propped one foot atop the fender.

“Bill.” Hewitt nodded a greeting.

Potwin said, “You doing, Hewitt?”

“A bit like always.”

Potwin nodded. “Well now,” he said. “June’s come off nice so far, ain’t she?”

Hewitt nodded. Bill’s eyes traveled the yard even as he pretended to look at Hewitt. He said, “Thought with the weather I’d get to your hay this year fore it gets all stemmy. Got a lady, horse lady up to Corinth, wants some. Told me she wanted rowen and I sat looking at her till she piped up she’d heard I was the feller to call. Shoot, I ain’t gonna sell her my milk hay. The hay’s bright and leafy she’ll be happy. Won’t know the difference. And hear this. She wants six hundred bales.”

Hewitt said, “That right?”

Bill shook his head. “She idn’t got but two horses. And real good summer pasture. It’s them great big Dutch or German horses and I imagine they’ll take a bit of fuel. But Christ. She feeds that all out they’ll look like they got foals to drop come May. But I didn’t tell her that.”

Hewitt shook his head. “Not your job.”

Bill leaned now and spat a line of tobacco juice. “She only asked at the end how much a bale. I said, In the barn? And she looked at me like she was wondering did I expect her to do it. So I told her three and a half. Didn’t bat a eye. Got her checkbook out and I said Now hold on. Wait until the bales is at least in the barn. I think I’d of passed out she handed me a check for over two thousand dollars right then.”

Hewitt said, “You might of took it. She could be asking around.”

“Naw,” said Bill. “She’s got more important things to do. Ride them big friggin buggers every day. All she wants is to see the hay in the barn. Makes me think. I likely could’ve said four.”

“Well Bill, you’re close enough to a price she’ll tolerate, she thinks it’s special quality. So you’re getting rich off my hay now.”

“Do it yourself, Hewitt.”

“Hell no. I’m glad for you.”

Now Potwin turned his head away to look directly at the Volkswagen parked next to the Farmall. Taking his time registering the car but also the paint job. A minor theatrical that Hewitt waited through.

Potwin looked back. “Got yourself a new car?”

“Nope.”

“They still got your license?”

“For good I guess. I gave up keeping track. I still got my hunting license.”

“Don’t be out jacking deer or they’ll take that too.”

Another stream of juice shot from Bill’s mouth. This one landing an inch closer to Hewitt than the first, still feet away, a gesture too small for most to notice. Potwin said, “Saw Rog Bolton down to the
store the other evening. He’s working that job up to Tripp Hill, fancy cabinets in the kitchen and such. Said he saw a girl out along here that afternoon. He was just picking up his beer.”

“That so? He hadn’t already had a couple riding down?”

“Come on now, Hewitt. It idn’t gonna stay a secret for long. You finally got a new lady friend.”

Hewitt made a small frown, his brain an insane chipmunk. The truth of her, at least what he knew, was too odd for general circulation, especially the way truth as it circulates becomes both less and more than how it started. And he knew Bill Potwin had, in studying the car, noted the exotic plates.

He said, “Bill. I’d appreciate if this stayed between us.” Knowing this would get the story spread as fast as possible and perhaps with that speed kill the worst of the speculation. He went on. “You remember the Kimballs?”

Bill squinted. “Those the people summered at the Dodge place when we were kids?”

“Middle of the sixties, Bill. But yup. And the girl, the youngest one, Dana, she and I were friends.”

Bill was still turned back, thinking. “Those Dodges, they was partners with your great-grandfather and them, wasn’t they?”

Hewitt said, “That’s right. The lumberyards and the sawmill and such.”

“They’re all gone now. Cept for the cemetery.”

“When the bobbin business petered out I think what was left of them took their money and went west somewhere. Indiana, Iowa, somewhere like that. But—”

“I recollect those Kimballs now. He wore sneakers without any socks. She was an eyeful of a woman. From Rhode Island, wasn’t they?”