She knew exactly how he’d be sitting: his legs splayed, his soles on the fabric, his left arm hooked lazily over his head.
She opened her eyes to confirm it. “I’ve got a headache,” she told him.
“I’ll get you an aspirin,” he said.
“I don’t want any,” she said.
But already he had cracked the chair back into upright position and started to the kitchen. When he returned she took the pill and glass from him and placed them, untouched, on the table beside her. “Thank you very much,” she said kindly.
He gave another of his deep sighs and went to the doorway. “I thought we might barbecue,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“That new grill we got. When we first bought the farm. Maybe you don’t remember. But it’s still in the barn, unopened. I thought we might, you know, get some use out of it.”
She laughed loudly, and kept laughing. He pulled the dandelion stem out of his shirt pocket and was nibbling it. “For heaven’s sake, why should we get some use out of it?” she asked, finally.
He spit a piece into the room.
“Then forget it,” he said.
He lumbered out of the room and into the kitchen. His footsteps stopped, and for awhile there was no sound. Then he started. She knew by the sounds what was being damaged: the oven door, a leg of the harvest table, the cute little vintage television set, the tableware drawer, the china cabinet, and then, at the same time, the terra cotta vase and the big window over the sink. She heard the gripey porch plank, then a series of two-footed stomps, on and on, like he meant to take the house down. The grouchy plank gave up with a cracking yell, Ed finally fixing it good. She almost laughed. She was going to bellow a laugh loud enough for him to hear. His shout froze her. It was partly the roar of an animal and partly the scream of a woman. She shut her eyes and reopened them slowly. She had gotten sufficient revenge.
She went outside and was startled to see how lively things were. The grass, shaggy from three weeks’ neglect, was practically dancing with insect life. The big maple was wrestling wind in its top branches. A migration of small clouds was ripping and regathering northward in the blue sky.
Although she had known it, it struck her like a revelation: she had kept herself inside for all the last week.
How could I, she thought.
As she moved through the grass, panics of insects erupted onto her. Brushing them from her arms and clothes, she crossed to the little barn.
“Ed?” she called. She looked into the barn through its big doorless doorway, as always a little frightened to enter. After three decades it still had a smell of the prison it had once been. She always felt that the outrage of livestock was still in some way present there. They’d found horrible things in the barn — huge hooks hanging from the beams, a club with spikes hammered through its business end, a rope tied into a kind of noose. Ed, silly with the excitement of finally owning property, had hung the loop from a rafter. “In case we can’t meet the mortgage,” he had said. “Please,” she had replied. Typically, he had never bothered to take it down.
She looked for it now, but looking into the barn from daylight was like peering into a wall. “Ed?” she called again. She stepped inside and waited anxiously for the blindness to pass.
Her eyes picked out the empty noose, and she sighed with relief.
The door of the last stall was open. Looking into the little room for only the second or third time since they’d filled it she saw a large box blurred and ghosted with twelve years of dust — except where Ed had recently touched it. His big handprints were vivid with color and glossy newness from the first year of their marriage.
She went outside again. The sunlight burned her eyes and she had to force them open. Barbecue, she thought, trying to laugh, her eyes watery. It’s just like him to come up with something so pointless. “Ed!” she called again, trying to sound curious rather than afraid. Sniffing back the sun tears.
She heard a sharp crack in the distance. Her imagination created an image.
“Ed!” she shouted, but still holding back a little. Still embarassed
She hurried towards the sound, into the down-sloping woods, stumbling on a branch, then on another, as if she were being warned — for your own good, turn back. She called his name again, and finally she screamed it, trying to run now. This time she did fall, and as she scrambled to her feet she saw him lumbering clumsily uphill towards her, embracing a load of rubbish from the forest.
She looked at her hands, brushing leaves and dirt from them, and he slowed to a walk. He dropped his load on the leaves, breathing hard. “What’s wrong?” he asked, gasping.
“I fell,” she said. “Like an idiot. Over that stupid little log.”
“You screamed,” he said, his big voice louder than he probably intended. “I thought something was wrong.”
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“I just wondered where you were.”
“Where would I be?”
“Down in the woods, I would assume,” she said, too matter of factly.
He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure it out. He looked at her with realization. “Oh, come on.” He laughed his deep laugh. “Give me some credit. I was breaking up wood.”
“Okay, okay!” she said. She turned to hide her embarassment. She crossed her arms and picked at the dried paint on her fingers. He began busting up the branch that had tripped her. Without watching, she could see his bulk reducing it to pieces. One crack was again like a gun shot.
“I guess that’s for the barbecue,” she said.
“What else.”
“You’re so wierd,” she said.
“When have I ever not been?”
He gathered his firewood into one arm and with the other grabbed the thick end of another fallen branch. He always takes more than he needs, she thought. He has that weakness, that ability. But then he shares it. You have to give him that.
They walked uphill and onto the level yard, out into the pretty part of it, where the big maple stood. Ed dropped his load and collapsed on the high grass, breathing heavily. “I’m not what I once was,” he said.
“It feels like fall today,” she said. She went alone to the edge of their hill and looked down at the forest and rolling landscape, the handful of other houses tiny with distance, a landscape so lovely and their view of it so lofty they had called their luck in buying this hilltop a miracle. She had painted the view at least a dozen times. Sometimes, in the ten years he was gone, she had told herself the view alone should be enough to satisfy her.
She came back to where he was sprawled in the grass, next to his pile of wood. He was breaking a piece of bark into little bits, and had a splinter of white dead wood in his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, facing the house.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.”
They both grew still and listened. They heard it at the same time and faced one another.
“Oh my god,” she said.
He stood up. “Why don’t you get some meat from the freezer and I’ll get the grill.”
“Will you need anything else? Utensils? Something to start the fire with?”
“The fire. Okay, what do you have? Lighter fluid? Gasoline?”
“I don’t have any of that. Can’t we just use newspaper or some other trash?”
“Ouch,” he said.
“I didn’t mean —
“I couldn’t care less. Come on. Let’s be creative. Wait a second — vodka!”
“Vodka! I’ll get the cheap stuff — no, I’ll get the Stolie’s.”
“Get the goddam Stolie’s.”
“Okay. And utensils…”
“Get whatever you think. We’ll figure it out as we go. I’ll get the grill.”
“You get the grill. I’ll get the Stolie’s and whatever I think. Do we go now?”
“We go now.”
They ran in separate directions. When she came back to the maple he was dragging the big box across the grass, distributing a little glory of dust with every jolt.
“I’ve got a blanket to put stuff on. Here’s the Stolie’s and…”
“…no matches?” he asked.
“…my dad’s silver lighter…”
“Way better.”
“…and here’s the stupid Book-Of-The-Month Club Automatic Selection.”
“You know, at any other time…”
“Let’s burn it and say we didn’t,” she said.
One by one he took the items from her arms.
“And a very, very old knife,” he said.
“I should have brought a good one. What am I thinking?”