فصل ششم

SIX

Louis came back later feeling small. No one asked him to examine Norma Crandall; when he crossed the street (rud, he reminded himself, smiling), the lady had already retired for the night. Jud was a vague silhouette behind the screens of the enclosed porch. There was the comfortable squeak of a rocker on old linoleum. Louis knocked on the screen door, which rattled companionably against its frame. Crandall’s cigarette glowed like a large, peaceable firefly in the summer darkness. From a radio, low, came the voice of a Red Sox game, and all of it gave Louis Creed the oddest feeling of coming home.

‘Doc,’ Crandall said. ‘I thought that was you.’

‘Hope you meant it about the beer,’ Louis said, coming in.

‘Oh, about beer I never lie,’ Crandall said. ‘A man who lies about beer makes enemies. Sit down, doc. I put an extra couple on ice, just in case.’ The porch was long and narrow, furnished with rattan chairs and sofas. Louis sank into one and was surprised at how comfortable it was. At his left hand was a tin pail filled with ice-cubes and a few cans of Black Label. He took one.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and opened it. The first two swallows hit his throat like a blessing.

‘More’n welcome,’ Crandall said. ‘I hope your time here will be a happy one, doc.’ ‘Amen,’ Louis said.

‘Say! If you want crackers or somethin’, I could get some. I got a wedge of rat that’s just about ripe.’ ‘A wedge of what?’

‘Rat cheese.’ Crandall sounded faintly amused.

‘Thanks, but just the beer will do me.’

‘Well then, we’ll just let her go.’ Crandall belched contentedly.

‘Your wife gone to bed?’ Louis asked, wondering why he was opening the door like this.

‘Ayuh. Sometimes she stays up. Sometimes she don’t.’

‘Her arthritis quite painful, is it?’

‘You ever see a case that wasn’t?’ Crandall asked.

Louis shook his head.

‘I guess it’s tolerable,’ Crandall said. ‘She don’t complain much. She’s a good old girl, my Norma.’ There was a great and simple weight of affection in his voice. Out on Route 15, a tanker truck droned by, one so big and long that for a moment Louis couldn’t see his house across the road. Written on the side, just visible in the last light, was the word ORINCO.

‘One hell of a big truck,’ Louis commented.

‘Orinco’s near Orrington,’ Crandall said. ‘Chemical fertilizer fact’ry. They come and go, all right. And the oil tankers and the dump trucks, and the people who go to work in Bangor or Brewer and come home at night.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s the one thing about Ludlow I don’t like anymore. That frigging road. No peace from it. They go all day and night. Wake Norma up sometimes. Hell, wake me up sometimes, and I sleep like a goddam log.’ Louis, who thought this strange Maine landscape almost eerily quiet after the constant roar of Chicago, only nodded his head.

‘One day soon the Arabs will pull the plug and they’ll be able to grow African violets right down the yellow line,’ Crandall said.

‘You might be right.’ Louis tilted his can back and was surprised to find it empty.

Crandall laughed. ‘You just grab yourself one to grow on, doc.’

Louis hesitated and then said, ‘All right, but just one more. I have to be getting back.’ ‘Sure you do. Ain’t moving a bitch?’

‘It is,’ Louis agreed, and then for a time they were silent. The silence was a comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until now. He felt ashamed of his casual thoughts about free medical advice earlier.

On the road a semi roared by, its running lights twinkling like earthstars.

‘That’s one mean road all right,’ Crandall repeated thoughtfully, almost vaguely, and then turned to Louis. There was a peculiar little smile on his seamed mouth. He poked a Chesterfield into one corner of the smile and popped a match with his thumbnail. ‘You remember the path there your little girl commented on?’ For a moment Louis didn’t; Ellie had commented on a whole catalogue of things before finally collapsing for the night. Then he did remember. That wide mown path winding up through the copse of trees and over the hill.

‘Yes, Ido. You promised to tell her about it sometime.’

‘I did, and I will,’ Crandall said. ‘That path goes up into the woods about a mile and a half. The local kids around Route 15 and Middle Drive keep it nice, because they use it. Kids come and go … there’s a lot more moving around than there used to be when I was a boy; then you picked a place out and stuck to it. But they seem to tell each other, and every spring a bunch of them mows that path. They keep it nice all the summer long. They know it’s up there. Not all of the adults in town know it’s there – a lot of them do, of course, but not all, not by a long chalk – but all of the kids do. I’d bet on it.’ ‘Know what’s there?’

‘The pet cemetery,’ Crandall said.

‘Pet cemetery,’ Louis repeated, bemused.

‘It’s not as odd as it prob’ly sounds,’ Crandall said, smoking and rocking. ‘It’s the road. It uses up a lot of animals, that road does. Dogs and cats, mostly, but that ain’t all. One of those big Orinco trucks run down the pet raccoon the Ryder children used to keep. That was back – Christ, must have been in ‘73, maybe earlier. Before the state made keeping a ‘coon or even a denatured skunk illegal, anyway.’ ‘Why did they do that?’

‘Rabies,’ Crandall said. ‘Lot of rabies in Maine now. There was a big old St Bernard went rabid downstate a couple of years ago and killed four people. That was a hell of a thing. Dog hadn’t had his shots. If those foolish people had seen that dog had had its shots, it never would have happened. But a ‘coon or a skunk, you can vaccinate it twice a year and still it don’t always take. But that ‘coon the Ryder boys had, that was what the oldtimers used to call a “sweet ‘coon”. It’d waddle right up to you – gorry, wa’n’t he fat! – and lick your face like a dog. Their dad even paid a vet to spay him and declaw him. That must have cost him a country fortune!

‘Ryder, he worked for IBM in Bangor. They went out to Colorado five years ago … or maybe it was six. Funny to think of those two almost old enough to drive. Were they broken up over that ‘coon? I guess they were. Matty Ryder cried so long his mom got scared and wanted to take him to the doctor. I s’pose he’s over it now, but they never forget. When a good animal gets run down in the road, a kid never forgets.’ Louis’s mind turned to Ellie as he had last seen her tonight, fast asleep with Church purring rustily on the foot of the mattress.

‘My daughter’s got a cat,’ he said. ‘Winston Churchill. We call him Church for short.’ ‘Do they climb when he walks?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Louis had no idea what he was talking about.

‘He still got his balls, or has he been fixed?’

‘No,’ Louis said. ‘No, he hasn’t been fixed.’

In fact there had been some trouble over that back in Chicago. Rachel had wanted to get Church spayed; had even made the appointment with the vet. Louis cancelled it. Even now he wasn’t really sure why. It wasn’t anything as simple or as stupid as equating his masculinity with that of his daughter’s tom, nor even his resentment at the idea that Church would have to be castrated to make sure that the fat housewife next door wouldn’t need to be troubled with twisting down the lids of her plastic garbage cans so Church couldn’t paw them off and investigate what was inside – both of those things had been part of it, but most of it had been a vague but strong feeling that it would destroy something in Church that he himself valued – that it would put out the go-to-hell look in the cat’s green eyes. Finally he had pointed out to Rachel that they were moving to the country, and it shouldn’t be a problem. Now here was Judson Crandall, pointing out that part of country living in Ludlow consisted of dealing with Route 15, which was very busy, and asking him if the cat was fixed. Try a little irony, Dr Creed – it’s good for your blood.

‘I’d get him fixed,’ Crandall said, crushing his smoke between his thumb and forefinger. ‘A fixed cat don’t tend to wander as much. But if it’s all the time crossing back and forth, its luck will run out, and it’ll end up there with the Ryder kids’ ‘coon and little Timmy Dessler’s cocker spaniel and Missus Bradleigh’s parakeet. Not that the parakeet got run over in the road, you understand. It just went feet up one day.’ ‘I’ll take it under advisement,’ Louis said.

‘You do that,’ Crandall said, and stood up. ‘How’s that beer doing? I believe I’ll go in for a slice of old Mr Rat after all.’ ‘Beer’s gone,’ Louis said, also standing, ‘and I ought to go, too. Big day tomorrow.’ ‘Starting in at the University?’

Louis nodded. ‘The kids don’t come back for two weeks, but by then I ought to know what I’m doing, don’t you think?’ ‘Yeah, if you don’t know where the pills are, I guess you’ll have trouble.’ Crandall offered his hand and Louis shook it, mindful again of the fact that old bones pained easily. ‘Come on over any evening,’ he said. ‘Want you to meet my Norma. Think she’d enjoy you.’ ‘I’ll do that,’ Louis said. ‘Nice to meet you, Jud.’

‘Same goes both ways. You’ll settle in. May even stay a while.’

‘I hope we do.’

Louis walked down the crazy-paved path to the shoulder of the road and had to pause while yet another truck, this one followed by a line of five cars headed in the direction of Bucksport, passed by. Then, raising his hand in a short salute, he crossed the street (road, he reminded himself again) and let himself into his new house.

It was quiet with the sounds of sleep. Ellie appeared not to have moved at all, and Gage was still in his crib, sleeping in typical Gage fashion, spreadeagled on his back, a bottle within easy reach. Louis paused there looking in at his son, his heart abruptly filling with a love for the boy so strong that it seemed almost dangerous. He supposed part of it was simply an emotional displacement for all the familiar Chicago places and Chicago faces that were now gone, erased so efficiently by the miles that they might never have been at all. There’s a lot more moving around than there used to be … used to be you picked a place out and stuck to it. There was some truth in that.

He went to his son, and because there was no one there, not even Rachel, to see him do it, he kissed his fingers and then pressed them lightly and briefly to Gage’s cheek through the bars of the crib.

Gage clucked and turned over on his side.

‘Sleep well, baby,’ Louis said.

He undressed quietly and slipped into his half of the double bed that was for now just a mattress on the floor. He felt the strain of the day beginning to pass. Rachel didn’t stir. Unpacked boxes bulked ghostly in the room.

Just before sleep, Louis hiked himself up on one elbow and looked out of the window. Their room was at the front of the house, and he could look across the road at the Crandall place. It was too dark to see shapes – on a moonlit night it would not have been – but he could see the cigarette ember over there. Still up, he thought. He’ll maybe be up for a long time. The old sleep poorly. Perhaps they stand watch.

Against what?

Louis was thinking about that when he slipped into sleep. He dreamed he was in Disney World, driving a bright white van with a red cross on the side. Gage was beside him, and in the dream Gage was at least ten years old. Church was on the white van’s dashboard, looking at Louis with his bright green eyes, and out on Main Street by the 1890s train station, Mickey Mouse was shaking hands with the children clustered around him, his big white cartoon gloves swallowing their small, trusting hands.