In Reach Page 3

  Esther loads up her lunch tray, two tuna sandwiches on plates, mayo, no lettuce, a pile of potato chips for each, glasses of iced tea. She opens the door to the den, glances toward the chair, is pleased to see that Leland, for once, is not sitting in it. Her eyes adjust to the dim light. He’s up, but what the hell’s he doing? He’s tearing pages from books and gluing them to the paneling. He’s got a jar of rubber cement—thank God for that, easy to remove—he’s gluing like mad, and when she stops him and yanks on his arm, he turns glassy eyes on her.

  “Paper. Paper. The rays can’t get through the paper. See, Esther? See?” His fingers jiggle. His voice rasps.

  “What rays, Leland?” She tries to keep her voice calm, like she used to do on the farm when approaching a skittish horse.

  “They have microphones everywhere.” He’s whispering now, shielding his mouth with his open hand. “I thought I could hide in this room, but the microphones. They send out rays that bounce off everything. Not paper, though, see?”

  Her hand reaches out to him, her fingers fluttering aimlessly in the air between them. Several Lelands dance before her and retreat, the boy who waltzed her around the Veterans’ Hall, the frightened young man who sobbed when their baby died, the fiddle-playing jokester, all the Lelands she has known and loved turn their backs on her, and she is left with this stranger. She withdraws her hand. “Who’s sending the rays?” she asks, but he’s too far gone. Could be the sheriff, could be the Deacon Board, makes no difference, and she can hardly get him to sit still long enough to eat his sandwich.

  She assesses the situation. He’s crazy, but he’s moving. He’s up and taking control over what little of his life he can, and she guesses that’s better than the way he was before. Maybe after he papers the whole room, he’ll settle down and get some peace. Maybe this is a primitive form of therapy, like screaming into a pillow, which she has tried on several occasions. Maybe his motion will keep him going right out the door and fishing. He’s all talk now, his voice rising with excitement, but what he says is gibberish, crazy stuff about rays and spies and how Larry’s out to kill him.

  She gathers up four more jars of rubber cement that she finds around the house. She rescues a few books she can’t bear to have torn apart, Jane Eyre and Robinson Crusoe and what’s left of the family Bible. He’s already torn out the Book of Revelation, the fiery phrases beaming off the pine paneling, “Babylon and smoke,” “hail and fire,” “woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth.” She shuts her mind against the damnation from the Lord and goes upstairs to her scissors, her thread, her perfectly cut squares and rectangles. Hell on earth, that’s what she thinks. Who needs to wait for eternity? She whacks herself good on the side of the face to keep from crying, and she gets down to work.

  She peeks in at him before she starts their supper. The den is a good-sized room and he’s got one whole wall done, top to bottom, pages fluttering in the air conditioning, upside down, sideways. He’s not paying the least attention to what’s on the paper. It could be typing paper as far as he’s concerned, but it takes him longer to tear pages from the books, and she thinks the longer this takes the better, because he’s occupied.

  It’s still light out. Summer sun takes a long time to go down, and the days seem endless. Rosalee could call, if she had half a mind to. Too bad they live so far away, down there in Grand Island. She’s sure Rosalee would pop over if she lived here, in spite of Larry. Maybe to spite Larry, although Esther’s never picked up on any animosity between Rosalee and Larry. In fact, Rosalee seems to think Larry’s the be-all and end-all, but then, you never know what’s in a marriage, take Esther’s for example, who would have guessed that she and Leland were engaged in a life of crime? Leland never should have asked Larry to get him off or speak to the judge. She could have told Leland that, if he’d bothered to check with her first, Larry being such a self-righteous little prick, acting like he’s the only person in recent history to pass the bar exam. “I could be disbarred,” he’d whined, as if Leland had asked him to store heroin or hide a dismembered body. Rosalee could call.

  Esther gets busy frying the hamburger she’s thawed from the freezer. She cooks up only half a pound because her supply is getting low, and why should she be the one to subject herself to public scrutiny? As long as Hal keeps delivering milk and eggs to the door, they can last a long time on what she’s got put by in the pantry and the freezer. She takes a box of Hamburger Helper off the shelf. She despises this stuff, but it makes the meat stretch farther. She keeps it on hand for church potlucks.

  She finds a shriveled cucumber in the refrigerator, ah, a green vegetable, washes it off under the tap. She looks across the alley at Janet’s, but everything is quiet. Esther’s neighbor, that Michael somebody who married the Swartz girl, is throwing more junk on an already overflowing pile in the alley. He’s practically ruined that place, nothing but dirt in the yard, old tires and pieces of two-by-four piled out back, big fat slob of a man, his bare chest matted with hair, belly hanging over his pants top. He’s yelling at somebody cowering by the garage. He’s swearing, striking his closed fist in an open palm. Esther stretches to turn the water off when she sees Michael reach out and grab whoever’s standing in the shadows. He yanks his son by the hair, the boy can’t be much more than ten or eleven, what’s his name, his name, and while Esther rummages through her mind for the child’s name, her eyes register the blows to his face, closed-fisted, his father pummeling the boy like he’s a punching bag. Shocked, she stands too long. The boy throws his arms up to protect his head. The father is kicking him now, kicking him while the child curls up in the dirt.

  Esther’s hand fumbles for the telephone, she has the receiver off the hook, her finger in the dial, she’s looking for the sheriff’s number, but how can she call? How can she report her neighbor when the whole town has branded them? Who will believe her? Even if they do, everybody knows these domestic abuse cases are a lost cause, and that’s the Swartz girl who’s lived here all her life. The gossip will kill her, she’ll be papering her living room with pages of books. There would be questions. The sheriff, maybe Pastor Fowler, the Deacons, all the self-appointed judges swarming through their house, looking at Leland and what he’s come to. Esther’s hand trembles.

  She may have misjudged the whole thing. She’s been under a lot of stress. Parents need to discipline their children. Sometimes it gets out of hand, but children recover. Her father smacked her sometimes, her brothers more often, but she grew up. She turns her head, sees the boy lying in the dirt, his father walking away. It’s over, then. The damage done. There’s nothing left for her to do. She can’t right all the wrongs in this world.

  She breathes easier, still watching when the father turns. He’s back on the boy, straddling him, banging his head into the ground. The boy’s hands flail wildly, helpless against his father’s brute strength. She’s the only witness, her view a narrow tunnel created by the sides of both houses and their shed. The boy’s name is Samuel. She drops the phone on the cradle. By the time she reaches the sheriff or 911, Samuel could be dead. Brain damaged. Her eyes fixed out the window, she gropes through the flour canister and pulls out Leland’s gun. She dumps the sugar bowl to find the bullets. She knows how to load the thing, Leland made her learn to fire it when she worked late in the office at the elevator. She knows how to aim and shoot straight through the heart of a target. She prays Janet is home to call the cops and has enough guts to do it. Samuel, Samuel, she mutters, his name an incantation on her tongue. Leland’s in his never-never land, pasting paper on walls to ward off unseen enemies, while she stands with a cocked gun in their kitchen. She barks out a short laugh. She’s thinking that she hopes Rosalee won’t have to know, as she opens the back door, steps outside in the full glare of the sun, aims the pistol at the bleached blue sky, and fires.

  All the Wildness in Her

  Janet never should have accepted that gift from Leland. He wanted to thank her for all she’d done for Esther. That poor woman,
shrinking from cancer. Esther died a year ago, and Janet has hardly seen or spoken to Leland since. When he phoned, Janet tried to tell him he’d no need to give her anything. He insisted. He said Rosalee thought it would be all right. Janet knows he’s lonely, and since Rosalee approved, what’s the harm? She agreed to meet him in the alley between their houses. She doesn’t want him coming to the door.

  Broad daylight, he hands her a flat, narrow box. She doesn’t open it. Looking past his shoulder, she sees nothing but gravel and spent hollyhocks against her neighbor’s garage. The air smells like fall, of wet decay, yet crisp. She slides the box down, close to her hip, hiding it inside her palm and wrist.

  She’s shocked at the look of him, the white hair, sagging skin. Her own short hair is gray, full and wavy. She looks a bit like a schoolmarm, buttoned up, proper, a crisp cotton blouse worn loose over beige pants. She stays fit, mows her own grass, scoops her walks, bends over rows of greens and burgeoning tomato plants in her garden. She takes a few medications, heart, mostly. Her body has compressed. She’s shorter, heavy breasts sagging toward what passes for a waistline. She hates the droop of her jaw, the loss of definition between face and neck, but you can’t fight gravity. She’s not one to carry on about it. Freckled as a girl, her face, arms, and hands are mottled with brown age spots. Even so, she’s alarmed by the change in Leland. He must be, what, eighty-five? A few years younger than her.

  “How are you, Leland?”

  He shrugs. “You know.”

  She does know. She’s been widowed. Long time ago, but it sticks with you. She’s lived across this alley from Leland and Esther for over thirty years, but she didn’t know them beyond a passing acquaintance until Esther took sick. Of course, she knew about that rough time they had. The bankruptcy. They stuck it out, though. Once the target of gossip, they had become legends of a certain kind.

  “Well, it’s hard.” At a loss for what else to say, she nods and turns back to her house. She knows he’d like to talk. He’s a talker. She’s scared someone will see them, make this out to be something it isn’t, though why anybody should care what two old coots do on an autumn day is beyond her reckoning. She doesn’t stop to consider why she cares what people think. Conditioned by a lifetime of small town living, she draws her curtains at night. Puts her trash in sealed bags.

  She perches on the edge of her bed, the lavender chenille worn smooth from years of sitting in this exact spot to put on her shoes or talk on the bedside phone. She lifts the lid off the box. A bracelet winks up at her, gold discs with small stones, all different colors. Must be glass, though it looks expensive. Damn fool. He ought to know she can’t manage the clasp. Let him to try to put a bracelet on himself at this age.

  She holds it up to the light. Her eyes aren’t what they used to be. The jewels twinkle, green, yellow, pink. It’s a pretty thing, she does admit that.

  She ought to thank him proper. She sits at her kitchen table to write a note but can’t shape the words. She pictures the mailman, that Jerry, the smirk on his face. Plus, a note could lie around, if Leland wasn’t careful, and she’s never known Leland to be careful. Shocking, really. When Esther took sick, Leland was helpless. Couldn’t even boil soup. Some men are like that, but not her Carl. Carl liked cooking more than she did, was better at it. Ribs, his specialty, dry rub. She smacks her lips.

  Not thinking more about it, she calls Leland’s house, the number still in her memory from those times with Esther.

  When he answers, Leland’s voice sounds gruff. Not like him, in real life.

  “I called to thank you,” she says.

  “Did you like it?” There, that high whine at the end. That’s more like him.

  “It’s beautiful.” She doesn’t say, I can’t wear it, you damn fool.

  “Rosalee helped pick it out.”

  “Oh.” She should have known. She sinks a little, a surprise to herself.

  “It was my idea.”

  Okay, then. Feeling bold, she says, “Some time, if you want to drive out to the farm, I wouldn’t mind.”

  The three of them drove out to that farm often, Esther in the backseat with blankets and pillows. They watched the sunsets, the pheasants floating above the wild hay. Janet has missed that bit of country. It took her back to her childhood.

  Months go by, robins show up, the forsythia blooms, and one day Leland calls. “Thought I’d take you up on that offer,” he says.

  She’s not coy. Sees no point. “I’d like that,” she says.

  “What about now?”

  She has a day planned, but it can wait. There’s little urgency left in her goings-on. “I’ll meet you in the alley.”

  They drive the ten minutes to the farm. If there’s a coal train, it can take fifteen or twenty, but the tracks are empty today. Her heart speeds up when Leland pulls into the long drive. There’s that meadow, crowning with larkspur. Across the creek. Past the windmill and into the yard. The house isn’t much, never has been. Marty waves from the front porch. Having Marty on the place is one step shy of it being vacant. Leland keeps him around to ward off thieves. That, and for old time’s sake.

  Leland drives out past the alfalfa field, along the old windbreak creaking with age. He stops the car in that north pasture. Leland doesn’t run livestock anymore, so this stretch has reverted to prairie. It’s her favorite part of the place, wild and bountiful, flooded with insects and birdsong, monarch butterflies scavenging for milkweed, dragonflies with cellophane wings, dark-veined like stained-glass windows. Leland still keeps bees in this section, stacked hives abuzz. The honey is pure amber, dark and golden. He pays somebody to harvest the honey now, having lost the dexterity to move fluidly and not excite the hive. They stop under a stand of cottonwoods. She breathes in the scent of sweet clover and sighs.

  “Beautiful,” she says.

  “I remember how you liked it,” Leland says.

  They sit for a while, not talking much. Old companions with shared history. Janet soaks in the ease of it, the pleasantness. She wants nothing more than this, friendship and a whiff of countryside.

  He doesn’t call for a while, and then one day he does. She’s eager for it, and that bothers her. He says he’s got a surprise for her. Something lights up in her, and that bothers her, too. She doesn’t want to count on anything from this man. He’s not steady. Plus, she’s too old to start up any fuss.

  She agrees to meet him in the alley, settles into his car, rides with him out to the farm. He looks boyish, smiling like he’s got a big secret. She’s annoyed, with him and with herself. Such damn fools, the both of them. What’s he got to show her? A new litter of barnyard kittens? A prairie plant they’ve not noticed before? How big the alfalfa has gotten?

  She’s trying to decide whether she’ll give him the satisfaction of thinking he’s pleased her, the way a person fakes a response to an unwanted surprise party, one your best friend doesn’t even attend and you’d rather be free to take your Saturday night bath, when he pulls up alongside the barn and stops the car. There’s some newfangled contraption parked there that looks like an overgrown tricycle.

  Leland scrambles out, giddy as hot grease on a griddle. “C’mon,” he says. With some difficulty, he works a stiff leg over and straddles the seat. Janet has gotten herself out of the car, but she hasn’t strayed far from the front fender. “Git on,” Leland says.

  He grins at her, and she sees a flash of the man he once must have been. She suppresses a giggle, throws a leg over the seat, and snuggles behind him. He flips a switch that sputters the engine to life. “Hang on,” he yells. The machine lurches forward. She almost topples off the back, but she grabs at his waist in time. Away they go, following rutted trails, over the jangling cattle gate, alongside the cloying alfalfa, back to the big irrigation ditch, and the whole time she clings to Leland, his body pressed against her heavy breasts, dust clouding her face, thinking she should have worn more sunscreen. Sheer madness, the two of them out there like that, but oh, it’s fun. She laugh
s out loud, lays her head back, and closes her eyes, the way a girl does who’s swinging high, high, surrendering to the open sky and all the wildness in her.

  After that, they go riding three or four times a week. He calls first. She meets him in the alley. Their favorite time of day is dusk. Sometimes they stop and pick up hamburgers at Hardee’s. They stick the hamburgers and a thermos of coffee in the sidecar, climb on the three-wheeler, and ride across Leland’s land. They stroll through the twilight, past the cattails and the marsh grass, among the nodding goldenrod. They laugh and talk, voices bobbing up and down under the blossoming sky. He drops her in the alley back in town. Nobody knows.

  One day, mid July, the cicadas buzz up a symphony. Heat wobbles in the thick air. Humidity slathers their skin. They pick raspberries, lips and fingers stained red. Juice dribbles down Leland’s chin, and with a quavering thumb, Janet wipes it off. A creek wraps through Leland’s land, and they ride the three-wheeler to the backstretch, hidden from house or road.

  “Janet,” Leland says, still astride the seat. She can’t read his face, but she hears the lightness in his voice. “Have you ever gone wading in a creek?”

  Janet chuckles. “Oh, sure, Leland. Lots of times.”

  Careful to avoid the thorny wild roses, keeping an eye out for poison ivy, they thread their way to the creek bank and lower themselves in the shade of a Russian olive tree. Laughing, they peel off their shoes and socks. She tries not to notice his yellow, ridged toenails. Hopes he doesn’t zero in on the blue veins gorged above her ankles. They each roll up their pant legs. Leland gets first to his hands and knees, then pulls himself to his feet and holds a hand out to her. Worried that the creek bed might be slippery, they cling to each other and step gingerly into the water. It has occurred to her that if he fell or had a heart attack or a stroke, she’d have no way to get help. She doesn’t know how to drive that thing. With her eyesight, she couldn’t find her way back to the house. Eventually Marty would come looking for them, but by then, one or the other could be in a world of hurt. Or dead.