31

 

       ART

 

    See?  Can you get a little better idea now?  This'll be the kitchen, and there'll be a wall right here, and the living room will be right over here.  See that?  What's the kitchen now can just be an open area between the two and the dining room.  That'll be where the living room is now.

    She looks down at me from the rim of the hole, her sandals pushing little bits of dirt over the edge.  Well, it looks like you're going to do it.

    Of course I going to do it.  I told you I was going to do it last week.  What do you think?

    Looks okay to me, she says.  I'm going to go in and see Daddy.  You do whatever you want.  Take your time.

    She turns and goes away from me.  I just stand there in the hole, up to my belly in the ground, and watch her go.  Somehow it doesn't bother me as much as it would have just a few weeks ago.  I can hear her open the door and go in, hear her say something to him before the door closes.

    Walt's man did a pretty good job.  The hole is more than deep enough; it'll make a good crawl space once the cement's poured and the block's up.  I walk off the edges of the hole, looking for problems, ending up where I started.  Before I hoist myself up, satisfied, I bend down and scoop up the little balls of packed earth Lorraine kicked into my hole.  I throw them into the weeds.

    The old boards of the porch give way with no trouble.  What doesn't just lift off, the nails pulling loose as if from butter, breaks off like brittle piecrust.  With a claw hammer and pry bar, I make fast work of it.  I toss the boards into a sloppy pile off to the side.  The nails--old handmade, square-headed things--I put in my shirt pocket.

    The ground under the porch is black with the dead leaves and rot of God knows how many years.  It is rich and fertile under the old boards; it just hasn't been used, that's all.  There's a kind of warm, musty smell that comes up from it, like the smell of a bog, a smell that makes you think of death and dying, but, when you think about it, is the real smell of life.  It strikes me that this is the first time this ground has had the sun on it since before I was born.

    A ground squirrel runs across in front of me and disappears into a hole at the base of the foundation.  The basement's probably full of them.  It should have a concrete floor put in.  Maybe later.  I can just see it in my mind; the whole place swarming with the fuzzy little buggers and me down there with a broom and a stick chasing them around like an idiot.  I know some guys whose sons would do that for them.  Probably even have some fun at it.  I know better than to even mention it.  If you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.  Or pay to have it done.

    I hear steps behind me.  From the shape of the shadow that falls across the black ground under the porch, I can tell it's John Plummer.  I go back to ripping the remaining boards loose and tossing them aside.  His shadow shifts and shuffles a little.

    How's it going, Art?

    Oh, John!  Didn't see you there.  How are you doing?

    Fine, fine.  Can't complain.  Whatcha doing over here?

    Aw, you know, just fixing up some.  You know how you get in the spring.  The smell of it just gets in you, and you got to get yourself into something.

    Looks like it really got you good.

    What do you mean?

    Well, you got the whole place dug up.

    Yeah, looks that way, don't it?  Well, it's not as bad as it looks.

    Word has it you bought the old man out.

    Uh huh.

    Then you did?

    Uh huh.  Lock, stock, and barrel.

    He's quiet for a while, and I go back to pulling the nails loose from the old boards.  As I finish each board, he takes it from me and stacks it on the pile.

    You don't have to do that, John.  I can do it when I'm done.

    That's okay.  I don't mind.

    Just let 'em lay, I say a little harder than I mean to.

    It surprises him some.  He steps back, his shadow clear of my little plot of black soil.

    I've been meaning to call you up or drop by, John.  When I say I bought him out, I mean the whole thing.  The trees are mine now.  There's a couple of 'em that he gave to the kids when they were little, and they can keep them, but the rest of them are mine now.  Now, I know you put a lot of work into them already and sprayed and everything and I'll go along with the deal the old man's had with you for the rest of this year.  But next year I'm taking over the whole thing.

    Okay.

    I know you like to do all that stuff, and I'm sorry about this but I'd like to do it myself from now on.

    Uh huh.  I can understand that.

    I'm glad.  I'm glad you feel that way about it.

    Yeah well, it doesn't look like I have much to say about it.

    Uh huh, well if you got any spray--I know you usually buy it a long time ahead--I'll be glad to take it off your hands.  Anything else you'd be stuck with.

    No, there's nothing.

    I'll give you full price for it.

    There isn't anything to sell you.

    Okay.  I pull the last top board loose and lay it aside.  If I shore up the remaining stuff it should do pretty nicely for a form when they pour the cement.  I gave it a few good whacks with the hammer to see how solid it is.

    You know about growing things, John.  What do you think of this dirt here?  I was thinking about taking some of it back there to where the garden is.

    Uh huh.  Looks good.

    That's what I thought.

    What about the old man?

    What about him?

    What are you going to do with him?

    That's a hell of a question!  What do you mean, what am I going to do with him?

    Well, I assume you're going to move in up here when you get all this finished.  I was just wondering what you planned to do with him.

    Don't you  worry about it!

    Cause if you were planning to put him in a

    John.  Don't you say nothing else!  Don't you say it!  I'm not planning nothing.  He's Lorraine's father, for God's sake!  And even if I was, I don't see how it's any of your business.

    I just feel I should look out

    Well, don't you bother!  He's got his family to look after him, and we'll take care of him just fine.

    There's nothing to get all mad about.

    We'll take care of him.

    Okay.

    Damn right!

    Okay, I said!

    Listen John, I know you and him are close, I don't want to start any bad feelings, so you just mind your own business, and we'll get on just fine.  You've been a friend to this family for a long time.  If it wouldn'ta been for you, he'd have let those trees go long ago, but I won't have anybody

    I said okay, Art!

    I realize I probably went too far, probably said too much and too loud.  I go back to stacking the wood.  He hems and haws around, poking the ground with his shoe.  It's tense between us; we can feel each other trying for words, words that'll make it all not have happened.  I try first.  How's your wife?

    Fine, she's just fine.

    Still down at the drug store?

    Yeah, uh huh.  She likes it, I guess.  Busy.  She just wants to be busy.  Some people are just like that, I guess.

    Yeah.

    She can't be happy to just sit and relax.  Even when she's not working, she's doing something.

    The sun is starting to go down.  There aren't any more shadows.  The lights go on in the kitchen; I can see them through the window.

    You saving them old nails?

    Yeah.

    That's good.  They're better for holding wood than the ones you get now.  I don't think they make 'em like that anymore.

    They don't do anything the way they used to, John.

    No, no they don't.  That's the nature of things.

    Time was when a man could expect certain things.

    Will you listen to us?  Anybody'd think we were a couple of old farts, ready to die.

    Yeah.

    What, you can't be any more than forty-four forty-five.

    Yeah, that's what I keep telling myself.

    He laughs.  I better get on home 'fore we get to standing out here in the dark and getting morbid.  We both give that a laugh, and soon I can hear his feet crossing the street, still chuckling a little to himself.

    No sooner is he gone than the door opens and a new shadow falls across my nice black dirt.  The edges are harder, cast by the harsh white bulb reflected off that putrid green and silver wallpaper.

    She stands just inside the screen door, a silhouette.  I thought you were going to salvage the porch.  You said it wasn't that bad.

    Yeah, but then I said I'd tear it out so they could pour cement.  We'll have a nice little closed in porch here.  Be able to sit out here and catch the breeze.  I don't see the point in doing it halfway.

    No, I suppose not.

    I guess you heard most of that?

    Most of it.

    I can't believe

    You didn't have to yell at him.

    Me?  Did you hear what he asked me?  Asked me what we were going to do with him.

    So?  You going to let on like you haven't thought about it?  We even talked about it.

    Course we did, but that's not the point.  And anyway, that was before we decided to move up here with him, when it was such a problem coming up here all the time.

    And you think this is going to be easier?  Living in the same house with him?  Maybe for you.

    He asked for it.  What did you want me to do?

    She doesn't answer.  We stand there like that, staring at the shapes of one another, she in the face of the light, me in the outer edges.

    Finally she says, I also heard what you told him about the trees.  Why?  Why, when he likes to do it, would you take on one more thing?  One more thing to drive me crazy!  As if we don't have enough to do!

    You know how I feel about that.  I'd cut 'em down before I'd let him use them.  I don't want him over here on my property all the time.  They're mine.

    And you'd drive me crazy with one more thing to worry about before    You don't even care about those trees.

    How do you know what I care about?  I thought maybe Eric and I could work on the together, maybe we          How do you know what I care about?

    I guess I don't!

    We're silent for a long time, letting that sink in.

    I don't want to fight, I tell her, almost in a whisper.

    No.

    All of the sudden she laughs.  You know what?  Elvira left a note in here.  You know what he told her?  He told her that he needed juice.  He's got enough juice in that cupboard to last a year.  I just bought some last week.  She goes off, laughing, into another part of the house.  She leaves the door open.

    I listen to her for a minute, the heart to keep on with the front porch gone from me.  She talks to him like he was a child, a baby, asking him questions that he won't answer and probably doesn't even hear.  They are questions that she just enjoys asking, enjoys hearing.  Her voice is too loud, too high.  When they start talking to me like that, like I was deaf, I think I'd as soon die.  I can just see him sitting there, looking out the window, that disgusted look on his face and his mouth working at those teeth.  I can see it in my memory like it was before me.  She's right there; I don't know how I'm going to be able to take having him around all the time.  Not being able to just get in the car and go home.  Listening to the stories and the times when he just sits and coughs and watches his hands rub the chair.  And telling me how I should do this, that, and the other.  Maybe I painted myself into a corner this time.

    She laughs and he starts to cough and there's something turns inside me.  I reach inside and pull the door closed.

    The night smells like the ground at my feet.  It's the smell of living, I tell myself, it's the smell of spring and things that are thawed out and rottening again like they were when the frost hits in the fall.  Things just going on with it.  I step out of the foundation for my porch and start back to the shed for a wheelbarrow.  That ground there'll be good for a garden.  The shed sits in the darkness at the edge of the orchard, the light from the kitchen windows making the unpainted wood look white.  Something runs up through the trees.  The dog trots to the end of his chain and smells at my hand.  It's just me, I tell him, It's just me.