Homesick Creek (27 page)

“Doreen called us,” Hack said, watching him. “She was afraid something had happened to you.”

Outside, an ambulance door slammed.

“You want us to tell her?” Hack said.

“Yeah, you could tell her.”

“Do you have some way of getting hold of Patrick?”

“What? Naw, Nita’s got something somewhere about that.”

One of the paramedics appeared in the doorway. “We’re ready, sir.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Hack clapped Bob on the back as he passed in front of him, thinking he’d never noticed before how small a man he was.

Bob followed the paramedic to the ambulance. He was young, maybe Patrick’s age. What would Patrick and Doreen say when they heard Anita was gone? Doreen would be annoyed, probably, the girl not being one to see farther than the end of her own nose. Patrick now, Patrick might be different. The boy would suspect. He had seen Bob and Warren together once, in the woods where they’d gone to play. They’d been done and were cleaning themselves up, but Bob was sure Patrick had figured it out, his being eighteen by then. He’d stopped twenty feet away, stricken. Bob hadn’t said anything. What was there to say? The boy had fled without a word, blindly snapping twigs and tripping over ferns and roots. Next day he’d told Anita he’d enlisted in the army. Yes, when he heard about Anita, Patrick might figure things out. If Anita hadn’t already written to Patrick that Warren had died, Bob would keep it from him. Patrick didn’t need to know right now. Bob couldn’t have him knowing.

What had Gabriella Lewis said?
I don’t know if you pray at all,
but if you do, this might be a good time to step things up a little
. Well, all that was past now. Bob would have to stop by and see her one day, let her know that Anita was out of danger. He figured she’d be glad.

Hack wondered how many deaths he had witnessed. Dozens, certainly. In Vietnam, death had waited around every bend in the road, in every jungle clearing, every town and field and paddy. You could kill with the most basic technology: a can of nails, a canister of fuel, a trip wire attached to a forty-year-old grenade. He once saw a soldier sheared in half by a spinning saw blade. Even the smallest child could carry a bomb.

Death doesn’t hurt, Buddy. You should know that.

It doesn’t?

No.

Well.

It was brave of you, offering to tell the daughter like that.

I figured it was my turn. Minna had to tell me.

She loved you.

Did she?

Yes, Buddy, she did. Too much. It scared her. She’d never loved anyone
like that before.

Like what?

So much it was hard to breathe after we were gone. Like being on the
moon without a spacesuit.

She never forgave me.

She never blamed you in the first place.

No?

No. Only in your mind, Buddy.

I don’t want to talk about that.

She used to say people don’t mourn death; they mourn their inability to
prevent it.

Is that true?

What do you think?

Bunny watched Hack step out the cabin’s front door and come to her as she stood in the creek.

“Are you all right?” he said when he reached her.

“No.”

“No,” he said. They went back to the cabin’s front door and sat side by side on the sill with their knees drawn up. Hack drew lines in the dirt with a twig. “Would it help to know that she wasn’t in pain?” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen people die in pain. That’s not what it looks like.”

“Do you think she knew what was happening to her?”

“I think she might have.”

“Was she scared?”

Hack ran a blade of grass over the toe of his boot, tracing the decorative stitching. “I don’t know. No.”

Bunny drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I keep thinking I could have done something. I should have done something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Known, or something.”

“Listen to me. No one could have known about this,” Hack said. “It happened way too fast.”

“But what if we’d looked for them sooner?”

“Don’t.”

Bunny looked directly at him for the first time, imploring, her eyes swollen and her nose running.

“Don’t do that,” Hack said. “What if.”

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Bunny dropped her head into her arms. Hack leaned against her, pressed into her a little more deeply with the length of himself.

“Say something,” she said after a while.

“You want a Kleenex?”

Bunny gave a half laugh, half sob and held up a sodden tissue she’d held balled in her fist. “God, what I must look like.”

“You look okay,” Hack said. And she did.

“Everyone’s leaving,” she said.

“Leaving?”

“Leaving me.” Bunny turned to him bleakly. “Anita. Vinny. You.”

“I’m right here.” Hack patted the doorsill.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know it’s not what you mean.”

“You’re in love with that girl,” Bunny said. “You don’t need to tell me.”

“Look.” Hack pulled away from her. He could feel her stiffen beside him, lock her eyes on her shoes, fortify herself against more bad news. He pressed his thumb and index finger into his eyes.

Tell her about me, Buddy. Tell her about me now.

“There are some things you should probably know.”

Anita’s body had been secured and covered with a sheet on the gurney inside the ambulance. That was all right with Bob. In death the body was nothing, not Anita or anybody else. He thought about telling the paramedics that, but it was too much of a struggle to find the words. As they climbed the valley wall— no siren now, everything so still, so
over
—he knew he would never come back to this place again. The memories were that perfect.

chapter eighteen

Hack sat in Gabriella Lewis’s office at the public health clinic, relaxed and expansive. It was two weeks before Christmas, and he was feeling good, all things considered. There was no official reason to keep her informed about Bob’s case, but he had found her insights comforting in the past, and she always seemed glad to see him.

“He’s not eating. Drinking, yeah, but not eating. You think that’s going to bring the AIDS on?” Hack asked.

“I don’t know. It could. Or not. Even HIV positive people can die of other causes. He certainly doesn’t appear to be symptomatic.”

“No. He ever tell you how he got the thing in the first place?”

“We discussed it briefly.”

“He said he got it when he gave blood a couple years ago, remember that, when the blood banks were so low?”

Gabriella started to say something and then evidently changed her mind, saying simply, “Yes, I remember.”

“He says you’re an archangel. Do you know what that’s all about?”

“He’s thinking of the angel Gabriel, I suppose.” The nurse’s face was as soft and worn as chamois. She regarded Hack with some amusement.

“
Are
you the archangel Gabriel?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” She smiled at the thought.

“Well, don’t tell him that, because he thinks you’re keeping an eye on him and Anita.”

“I suppose that’s harmless enough.”

“You think this whole AIDS thing might be God’s way of getting back at us for fucking things up?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have an inside track into the thoughts of the Almighty. For what it’s worth, I think it has more to do with viral mutation. The granddaughter—how is she?”

“Good—she’s good.” Hack had told Gabriella about Crystal, even brought her in one day so the nurse could meet her. “She and my wife have gotten real close, closer than she ever was with Vinny.”

“People change.”

“Yeah, I guess they do. That’s not what everyone says, though.”

“I don’t think it happens all that often.”

“Yeah.”

“It must be making things a little easier for Crystal, having Christmas to look forward to. After all those losses.”

“Oh, man,” Hack said. “Bunny has presents hidden all over the house for her. She’s getting a Barbie car. Can you believe that? Her first set of wheels at four.”

“You’re very generous.”

“Nah. We just have the money to spoil her a little, is all. People always pretend they’re buying stuff for their kids, but don’t believe it, we do it for ourselves.”

“Even so.”

Hack stood and patted down his pants pockets for keys. “Yeah. Well, I better get going,” he said. “Listen, you have a merry Christmas.”

“Thank you.” The nurse stood too and held out her hand. Hack grasped it warmly. “I hope your family has a wonderful holiday too,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve earned it.”

Hack raced the rain to his truck, thinking that if Gabriella Lewis
was
an emissary of God, He had made a good choice. She reminded him of Minna Tallhorse, about whom he’d been thinking more and more lately, though he wasn’t sure why. On pure whim he turned into the parking lot of the public library. The Katydid would have been appalled that he’d never been inside it until now, not once in all these years. Now he asked a reference librarian how he could find telephone area codes in North Dakota. She found them in a reference directory on the first try. Hack borrowed a pencil stub and a slip of paper and wrote down the numbers. He wondered if Minna’s hair still hung to her waist, thick and coarse and strong as horsehair and gleaming like armor. It had been a long time since he’d seen her face even in his dreams, but suddenly there she was, as perfectly rendered as a hologram in his mind’s eye. And she was so young, much younger than he was now. He’d never realized how young she was when she took them on, him and the Katydid. The last thing she’d said to him before he left the safety of her apartment for good was:
I love you. Remember that. It might help
.

He folded the slip of paper in half and stuck it in his left breast pocket.

Most Thursday afternoons before dinner Hack took Crystal to visit Bob, who still lived at the house on Franklin Court, now a sorrowful place with its thick layer of grime and prevailing odors of cheap beer, machine oil, and rust. There hadn’t been a scrap of toilet paper in the house in weeks, and Anita’s plants were all dead, blackened and upright in their pots as though seared by a sudden blast of hellfire. The smallest tap, and the leaves would shatter.

Tonight Crystal fidgeted under Hack’s hand, which he’d rested on her small shoulder for whatever reassurance it gave. She held a stuffed rabbit in her arms, a Grammy doll Bunny had made for her after Anita’s death. At first Crystal had looked for Anita anew every time they went to the house, but it had been six months now, and she seemed resigned to Anita’s absence even if she didn’t understand it.

“How’s my favorite baby girl?” Bob said too heartily, reaching for her and pulling her into an unsteady embrace.

Crystal pulled away. “You don’t smell good, Granddad.”

“No?”

“Pee-yew.” She held her small nose between her thumb and index finger with elaborate conviction.

“Kid says I smell bad,” Bob announced to Hack, as though he hadn’t been standing two feet away. “You think I smell bad?”

“Yeah.” Bob had on his oily Vernon Ford coveralls, which he’d been wearing for more than a week straight, even though he hadn’t worked in much longer than that. His real profession now was drinking, which he dedicated himself to with singular cunning, energy, and purpose.

“When’s the last time you ate something?” Hack asked him.

“Now, that’s a tough one.” Bob frowned. “Coulda been yesterday. Day before, maybe. Some of that flank steak Bunny fixed— I had some of that.”

Hack sometimes brought their leftovers by. If Bunny didn’t exactly sanction it, she didn’t stop him either. “That was last week.”

“No kidding? And see, it stayed fresh and delicious that whole time. She’s a fine cook.”

Hack sighed. “Look, you need to eat. How about coming home with us and we’ll rustle up something?”

“Bunny don’t like my being in the house. She thinks I don’t know that, but I do. Woman can’t even look me in the eye,” Bob said.

“She’s doing her best.” Bob was right, though. Bunny didn’t want him around, though she tried to treat him civilly—not for his sake, as she told Hack, but for Anita’s.

Bob gave Hack a sly look. “So, hey. You got a little beer money for your old friend?”

“Nope.”

“Cheapskate,” Bob muttered. He dug an empty peanut butter jar out of the back of a cupboard and regarded it dolefully. “Nita and me, we always kept our change in here. Usually had enough for a beer or two. Someone musta taken it, though.”

“You did.”

“No kidding?” Bob frowned. “Coulda, I guess. Nita, she always got so mad when I took money out of there. Our nest egg, that’s what she said it was. Saving up for when we got old.” Bob leaned in and stage-whispered, “Don’t need to worry about that now, though, huh?” He chuckled. “Nope. No need to worry.”

Crystal slipped a hot, damp hand into Hack’s.

“Look,” Hack said. “You think you can make it to work tomorrow? The old man’s on my case, says he could hire some young guy who would cost less and be more reliable.”

“Aw, hell, I don’t know.” Bob gave Hack an earnest look. “You could tell him I’ve got some medical problems. Need a little time.”

“He doesn’t want to hear that anymore.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, what the hell can you do anyway?” Bob said sympathetically. “Man’s put you in a tough spot, all right.”

Hack shook his head. Crystal gently tugged on his hand. “Time to go, kiddo?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey now,” Bob said, “you just got here. Don’t you want to spend some time with your old Granddad?”

“No,” Crystal said.

“No?”

“No,” she said firmly.

“Well, kid’s got a mind of her own, and I say that’s good,” Bob said with some dignity.

“Look—” said Hack.

“Nita, she’d say so too.” He leaned in again and said, “You know, she’s seeing all of this from up there.” He lifted his face to the ceiling, lost his balance, and stumbled backward. “Don’t matter if I can’t see her.” He pulled his filthy coveralls straight. “She’s up there all right.”

“Bob—”

“Her and Warren, they’re up there smilin’ down.”

Hack gave up. “Listen, sport, we’ve got to go.”

“Well, course,” Bob said. “And tha’s okay too. I got me a houseful anyway.”

Hack looked up from retying Crystal’s shoe. “Houseful of what?”

“Souls. Whatever.”

“Oh. Right,” Hack said, but he’d already moved on. “Look. Tomorrow the old man wants to talk to me about you. You sure you can’t come in? He’s a pushover; he’ll keep you if he thinks you’re trying.” The truth was, Hack had already been stalling Marv Vernon for months, telling him Bob would come around if they just gave him a little more time.

“Naw, tha’s okay. Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.”

Hack couldn’t tell if Bob was alluding to himself or to Hack. He guessed it worked both ways: Bob wouldn’t come to work, and Hack would have to fire him. There wasn’t any point in putting it off anymore; even Hack could see that. Bob was a smoking ruin by the side of the road. He and Bunny would bring over food more often, slip Century 21 a couple of months’ rent, pay the electricity, pay the phone bill so Bob could call if he needed them. There wasn’t anything more they could do. As Hack backed out of the driveway, Bob lifted a hand in farewell or benediction. Every good-bye now looked like forever.

“You okay there, peanut?” Hack asked Crystal. “Granddad didn’t look so good, huh?”

Crystal nodded in vigorous agreement. “He was stinky.”

“Well, he’s not feeling too good right now.”

Crystal nodded solemnly. Hack wondered what went on in her small head. So many separations in such a short period of time, and it hadn’t only been separation from Danny and Anita. After her death Bob had plunged alone into a bottomless sea of beer, and a month later Doreen had moved up to Portland alone to live with Vinny and work at Meier & Frank. But maybe that was for the best. She was appalled by Bob’s HIV status, which she had discovered when the medical examiner’s report showed that Anita had died of AIDS-related
pneumocystis carinii
, and refused to see him. She’d lost ten pounds since moving and had a boyfriend now, a nice boy, not like Danny. He wasn’t thrilled at the idea of having a kid around, though—he was only twenty himself—and anyway, day care was too expensive to afford on Doreen’s wages.

It had been Bunny who’d suggested that Crystal live with her and Hack. With Vinny gone, they had the space. Rather than give Crystal the back guestroom with its one small window and stale air, Hack had cleaned out Vinny’s old room one day when Bunny was at work. Bunny hadn’t known about it until she came home and found Vinny’s things boxed and ready to take to a storage place over in Sawyer, the room itself as empty as a blown egg. He and Bunny hauled the things over to Sawyer the next day, arranging everything neatly with an aisle down the middle and the boxes stacked and labeled high on either side, orderly enough for eternity. Bunny had made Crystal new curtains, a new dust ruffle, and a bedspread, cheerful things with, what else, rabbits all over them. That’s when Bunny had made the Grammy doll too, to keep Crystal company when she felt lonesome. She told Hack she hadn’t been able to bring herself to make a Granddad doll to go with it—the bastard was still alive, for one thing—and on her own Crystal had never asked for one.

As soon as they got home, Crystal raced to her room and brought back a new rabbit dressed as Santa Claus. “Look what Bunny made me.”

Hack frowned. “I give up. Who’s it supposed to be?”

Crystal put her hands on her tiny hips. “
Santa.
Santa Claus.”

“Boy, you’d think the elves would be missing him, though, huh? It’s their busy season and everything. Maybe you better send him back.”

From the sink Bunny shot him a look. Crystal held out the doll to Bunny uncertainly.

“What’s she doing?” Hack said.

“Sending him back.”

Crystal had started to cry. “Oh, no, honey,” Bunny said, folding the doll back into Crystal’s arms. “Hack was just teasing you. He’s yours for keeps. He’s not the real Santa Claus, he’s just Santa Bunny.

“Shame on you,” she said to Hack once Crystal had stopped crying, accepted a juice box from Bunny, tucked the rabbit more firmly under her arm, and gone off with considerable dignity to watch
Sesame Street
.

“Jesus, I never expected her to take me seriously,” Hack said. Vinny had always loved to be teased and could give as well as she got. “Poor kid.”

“I don’t think anyone ever teased her before,” Bunny said “You know, I don’t think she got that much attention, period. I’m sure Nita did the best she could, but you can tell she had her hands full just keeping Doreen’s feet on the ground.”

Hack leaned on the kitchen counter, watching Bunny wash lettuce.

“So how was Bob?” she said, giving him a sideways look.

“Blotto.”

“I figured.” Bunny took a tomato out of the vegetable bin in the refrigerator and cut precise wedges with a knife she kept lethally sharp. Lately Hack had found it comforting to watch Bunny prepare food. She had a sure hand and moved around her appliances and cutlery with an athletic grace. It surprised him that he’d never noticed it until recently. The Katydid had been all business when she was in the kitchen. Minna, on the other hand, had been a slovenly cook for their Thursday night dinners, gesturing with a loaded spoon to illustrate some point, cutting meat and vegetables into large chunks and then cursing at the stove when they failed to cook through. On Thursday nights they always said a mock grace:
God help us eat this food
. It cracked up the Katydid every time.

“How soon till dinner?” Hack asked now.

“Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.”

“All right. I’ll be done by then,” Hack said.

“Done?”

“Phone call.” He waved the slip of paper he took out of his breast pocket, went into the living room, and called directory assistance. Minna was listed. His hands were trembling faintly as he punched in the number. He listened to two rings, and then he heard that voice—a little deeper, a little huskier—shoot like a burning arrow straight into his gut.