Fellow Mortals Read online

  He saw the smoke driving home that afternoon, a black plume rising in the distance, and it didn’t cross his mind that he should worry, not about the house and not about her. But the closer he came, the more his blood pressure rose, until he had to roll the window down and try to cool his face. A neighbor’s house, he figured, something on the block. Even when he stopped and saw where the fire was, he didn’t believe that Laura was in danger. She was a grown woman, wide-awake at that hour. Only kids and old people got caught in house fires, he thought to himself, remembering the Carmichael boys and the Finns.

  He parked on the side street and ran along the road, never noticing the mailman, wondering where she was amid the cavalcade of trucks. There was fire and light and sprays of mist, long jets of water flopping in the air. He saw his own burning house, vacuous and black; she wouldn’t be standing that close to the flames so he looked across the street and checked the onlookers standing near the unburned homes, where the windowpanes flashed with reflections of the fire. He passed a dozen different firemen who paid him no attention. He thought an officer or somebody would lead him off the road, but he carried on, invisible, entirely alone, shouting “Laura!” very flatly, scanning everywhere at once.

  He started back and met a cop who took him by the arm, and even then he called her name, certain she was safe. Finally Nan Finn approached him in a robe. She was hesitant and stiff, rough-hewn around the eyes, but it wasn’t until he recognized Joan, twenty feet away and scared of seeing him, that he first understood something terrible had happened.

  “What next?” Henry asks.

  Sam jolts at the voice and wipes sweat around his eyes. He looks at Henry, stupefied, recalling what he’d read in the paper—that it must have been a match or a half-lit cigar, that he’d carried out the Finns and now they’re living in his house. That he hadn’t lost his job—it was only a suspension—and the jury let him off as if he’d dented Laura’s car.

  “That one over there,” Sam says, very low. He points where he means, far across the clearing, to a thick white pine fully rooted in the ground. He picked the tree at random, one of many big trees, fifty feet tall and solid as a barrel.

  Henry rubs his jaw, gazing all the way up, but instead of saying “That?” or even “What?” he says, “Right. You got a chain saw?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll get the ax.”

  He frees it from the ground and strides across the clearing. Then he spits on his palms—really spits on his palms—squares up true, and starts chopping at the pine.

  Sam sits for a while watching Henry work, prickling when the sweat starts drying on his back. The afternoon light flutters through the leaves, and the shadows and the colors intermingle like flames. The thumping of the ax grows monotonous and thick. A trace of nutmeg wafts up gently from the ground. He thinks of Laura in the kitchen, crimping dough around a pie dish, skinny in her dress. No … jeans, Sam decides. The oven smells warm; it makes the kitchen like a bedroom. Evaporated milk cans open with a kiss. There’s a little spot of pumpkin at the button of her cuff and a faint taste of flour when he pecks her on the neck.

  Wing gambols from the woods, covered in burrs. He rolls in the one rank puddle of the clearing, raising a mosquito cloud before drying his fur in the dirt. He looks delighted when he stands, steaming with fulfillment. Sam smiles—almost smiles—for the first time in ages. The sun is noticeably lower and he wonders if he dozed; his thoughts about Laura had the color of a dream. Henry hasn’t slowed or broken rhythm all the while.

  There’s a popcorn sound and the pine tips away, leaning into the woods and swishing off the nearby trees. Wing snaps to his feet.

  Henry backs off, stumbling with the ax, saying “Whoa” at the fractures and the great deep whump. Then he bounces, like the shock wave’s bumped him off the ground. Sam feels it where he sits, from his shoes to his hair.

  The forest falls still, birdless and astounded.

  “I need it over there,” Sam says.

  Henry slumps. “What time is it?” he asks.

  Sam checks the sun.

  “Maybe six.”

  “Shit. You got a phone?”

  “No.”

  “My wife,” Henry says, wincing at the word. “I’ve got to go.”

  Sam wishes he could smirk but he’s drained by the sun. It’s the light of going home for ordinary people.

  “I’ll finish up tomorrow,” Henry says. His cheeks are red but under the flush he looks sallow, probably dehydrated, definitely shot. “You got my number there,” he adds, as if he hasn’t just declared he’s planning to return.

  Sam walks away without a gesture of goodbye. Henry has the sense to let him go without a word and Sam lingers in the trees, out of sight, until he can’t hear the jingle of the dog’s collar and he’s positive they’re gone.

  Evening’s coming in, the shadows of the woods long and unavoidable, the last glowing bars subtly diffused. Once again he smells nutmeg faintly on the breeze. There must be some plant with a similar aroma. Then it fades and he’s alone, totally alone.

  And that’s the end, Sam thinks. The last he’ll hear of Henry Cooper.

  7

  Billy saw Henry in the early afternoon. He had just stepped out to take a breather in the yard and pulled his ventilator off when the Buick caught his eye. At first it idled at the curb, an ordinary car, but Billy grew suspicious when the engine stopped and no one opened the door. Window glare prevented him from seeing who it was, so he ducked inside and watched from the living room, where he’d spent the whole the day breaking things apart.

  Peg had warned him: hire pros to handle the water damage. Billy had rented fans and kept the circulation flowing, but although the house had seemed completely dry, moisture from the fire hoses lingered out of sight, softening the walls and building up mold. Everything was rotting from the inside out, and so he’d taken today off work, dragged the furniture out, pried the molding up, and torn the damp drywall away, piling all the wreckage in the yard until at last, only fifteen minutes ago, he’d gotten the entire living room down to the studs. He’d been sweeping up debris when he walked out back and saw the car, and now he’s standing in amazement, eyes burning from the dust, watching Henry from the window of his dark, stripped room.

  Henry walks behind the trailer, where he knocks: no one’s there. And then, to Billy’s surprise, he goes all the way back to the car, gets his dog, and hikes into the woods.

  “What balls,” Billy says.

  He finishes sweeping up and Shop-Vacs the crud from the newly opened walls. There’s a nickel, which he keeps, and a vintage playing card—four of hearts—which he cleans off gently with a cloth to give to Sheri. Then he opens both doors to get a better flow of air and uses half a can of Lysol, proud of the room’s refreshing orange scent. No mold, no rot, clean wooden floor, and so much space with all the furniture removed.

  Half an hour has passed and the Buick’s still there. Billy showers upstairs and changes all his clothes and suddenly he’s starving from the long day’s work. He decides to get a sub—Sheri’s working late tonight—and walks outside to look at Henry’s car. Billy loiters out front, staring into the trees, but there isn’t any sound and nothing he can see. Whatever Sam’s doing back there, he’s doing it way back, and it’s strange, very strange, that he hasn’t driven Henry straight back out.

  Billy’s seen him with an ax. What if something happened? Dead dog, Sam bloody—Henry Cooper with the blade half buried in his skull. “No, his chest,” Billy thinks, picturing the scene, holding for a moment the imaginary ax and knowing how he’d swing it with an overhead chop. Henry would defend himself, putting up his hands, but the blade wouldn’t stop—it’d cut right through, maybe cleaving through his chin before it got him in the heart.

  He considers staying put or walking back to see, except whatever’s going on, it isn’t his concern. He’ll either get himself in trouble or be forced to make excuses. So he drives to get a sub and breathes through his nose, tryin
g to clear away the lingering stink of the mold.

  He takes the long way home past the Cooper house. He got the address from the phone book and checked it out last week, and now he parks across the street and spies Nan Finn for just a moment in the living room. But he’s determined to get a look at Henry’s wife—Ava, Billy learned—and cranks the hand brake tight as it’ll go. He stares for so long in the same crooked hunch that his neck grows stiff, threatening a knot. Ten minutes later, Ava’s on the porch. She wears a pale blue dress, fitted at the top and airy at the knees, with bare feet and soft brown hair below her shoulders. She’s a full-bodied woman, the opposite of Sheri, round in all the right ways and easy in her movements. She puts her hands to her hips and glances up the street. Eager, Billy thinks. Happy in her skin.

  He could go and introduce himself. Hi, I’m Billy Kane—I talked to your husband on the phone. Thanks, thanks. We’re doing okay. Far as I’m concerned, what’s done is done. I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Cooper.

  Call me Ava.

  “If there’s anything you need,” Billy whispers to himself.

  When he makes it back to Arcadia Street, Henry’s car is gone but Sheri’s is parked in front of the house. He’s disappointed: he didn’t expect her home before ten and wanted to surprise her with the living room.

  Bob Carmichael’s throwing a Nerf football with his boys on the sidewalk. He has a dopey grin whenever Billy sees him, as if he couldn’t ask for more than two skinny sons, a fire-damaged house, and a wife who looks fresher going out than coming in. He throws a high, wobbly pass that bounces near the car.

  “Afternoon!” Bob yells.

  “Hey. How’s it going?”

  “Good, good,” Bob says, grabbing a pass with an awkward clap of his hands. “You say hi to Mr. Kane?” he hollers to his sons, seven and nine, with names Billy never quite remembers. The younger one is quiet but generally friendly. The older one’s more talkative except when Billy’s around, at which point he clams up as if encountering a stranger.

  “Hey, guys,” Billy says.

  “Hey, hi,” they mumble, turning back to Bob, who in spite of his womanly arms, high voice, and partial balding, is an automatic hero to his sons. They’ll hate him when they’re older, Billy thinks. They’ll avoid him.

  “Go long!” Bob yells, and throws a blooper right to Billy.

  Billy catches it and wrings it like a sponge. He fits his fingers into the grooves and fires it back, but it slips off his hand and flies into the Bailey lot.

  “Shit, sorry!”

  Bob winces at the curse and glances at the boys, who look at Billy with disdain, less for swearing than for throwing the football like a spaz. The older boy runs across the lot to pick it up. Peg emerges from the house, ignoring Billy and talking straight at Bob.

  “I told you I don’t want them playing in the dirt,” Peg says. “There’s glass in there.”

  “My fault!” Billy waves. “The ball got away from me.”

  Peg rolls her eyes.

  Billy goes inside and he’s in luck—Sheri just got home and went straight upstairs to shower. She meets him in a robe with a towel on her head and says her friend agreed to finish out the end of her shift.

  “You see the living room?” he asks.

  “Why?”

  He grins and says, “Follow me.”

  “What?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He leads her by the hand all the way down the stairs and makes her close her eyes until they come around the corner.

  “What the hell happened?” Sheri asks.

  “I ripped the drywall out.”

  “I can see that. Was it really that bad?”

  “You should have smelled it.”

  “I can smell it right now. Jesus, Billy…”

  “It had to be done. Half the wall was so bad you could have put your hand right through. It’s gonna be great,” he says. “This is just the necessary wreckage.”

  “This whole place is necessary wreckage.”

  “Here,” he says, handing her the old four of hearts. “I got it from the wall.”

  “Thanks.” She frowns, unsure of what to do with it.

  He follows her into the kitchen, where she notices the sub and says, “You bought yourself dinner?”

  “I didn’t expect you home this early,” Billy said.

  “I left you a message.”

  “My cell died.”

  “I left a message here. You told me you’d be home all afternoon.”

  “I went out for a sub.”

  “Obviously,” Sheri says, opening the fridge and scowling at the week-old Tupperware bowls.

  “Have mine,” Billy says.

  “I’m not that much of a bitch,” she says.

  “We’ll share it. It’s a foot-long.”

  She smiles at him now, softening enough to take the towel off her hair and shake them out, hair and towel, like she’s shaking off her day. They grab a couple beers and eat together at the table.

  Once her hunger wears off and the beer relaxes her a bit, she says, “I’m sorry, all right? I’m just sick of coming home to such a mess.”

  “I know,” he says. “That’s why I’m trying to fix it.”

  “I think we ought to bite the bullet and hire a contractor,” she tells him for the umpteenth time.

  He wants to say it’s too expensive but he’s tried that before, over and over, and she doesn’t want to hear about the mortgage, the credit cards, the car insurance payment, and the stack of other bills that never seems to shrink. Instead she acts like do-it-yourself is the cheapskate’s way of dealing with a problem.

  “We’ll take another loan,” she says.

  Billy shakes his head. Sheri opens a second beer and lights a cigarette—more smoke, Billy thinks—and something in the twilight catches in her face. She’s beautiful, her haggardness disguised by the glow. A year ago they sat in the yard every weekend, sipping drinks and listening to music after dark, getting drunk and acting flirty till she led him upstairs and, more often than not, pushed him onto the bed. Now he has to bring it up or nothing ever happens. Half the time she does it like a job, late at night when both of them are tired: two minutes on her knees, three minutes on her stomach, reaching over when he’s done to set the clock like she’s punching out at work.

  Billy stands and puts his arms around her, kissing at her throat. She holds her beer and cigarette out of the way and says, “Billy,” leaning back until her bathrobe opens at the neck. He’s about to reach inside when Sheri notices the drywall piled in the yard and says, “Ugh,” which Billy assumes is her reaction to his kissing.

  He doesn’t stop but holds her even tighter. Sheri loses balance, just enough to flail and touch him with her cigarette. Billy jumps away, swatting at his arm. He’s mad enough to yell but tries to keep it in.

  “Well, what did you expect?” Sheri says.

  He doesn’t know.

  * * *

  “It’s guacamole,” Peg tells Danny, the younger of her sons.

  They’re together in the dining room, parents on the one side, children on the other. She was late coming home because the order wasn’t ready and the credit-card machine had “started acting up.” Now she’s sitting in her work clothes, barely out of the car, and the meal feels rushed before they even settle in.

  “What are the chunks?” Danny asks.

  “That’s guacamole, too.” She scoops some onto a chip to set a good example, but they’ve overdone the lime again and Danny sees her grimace. “It’s good for your cholesterol.”

  “That’s okay,” Bob says, shrugging at his wife. “They don’t have to worry about cholesterol yet.”

  “That’s because I feed them well.”

  Takeout every night. It’s a fortune but she never has time to cook dinner. She forgives herself. She always buys organic at the market. Greek yogurt with granola. Juice for antioxidants. Bob likes to joke about her cage-free eggs, how they love to roll around when nobody can s
ee.

  “It’s iguana,” Ethan says, savoring the guac.

  “The cheaper places use frog,” Bob says. “They have deals with the local biology labs.”

  “It’s avocado,” Peg says, as if it’s seriously in doubt.

  She’s so annoyed she fails to notice Danny loading up a chip; he’s not convinced to try it yet but closer than he was. Bob begins to concentrate closely on his food, acting like it’s something genuinely foreign. He does it every meal, be it Mexican or pasta, and it drives her up the wall to see him furrowing his brow.

  “Did you get the right order?”

  Bob nods in affirmation, shattering his taco with the very first bite.

  “I wanted refried beans,” Ethan tells his mother.

  “They’re with the rice in your burrito.”

  “These are pinto beans.”

  “Here,” she says, sliding him a dish.

  She makes him wait until she’s rolled another place mat down because she doesn’t want lid steam dripping on the table. Danny spills milk and everybody jumps, backing up before the puddle starts pouring in their laps.

  “Paper towels!” Peg yells.

  Bob hustles to the kitchen. Danny’s goggle-eyed in fear because it isn’t just the milk. The guacamole fell, too, facedown on the carpet. Ethan sees it while their mother’s still distracted by the drink. He takes a round paper lid, slips it underneath the Styrofoam, and puts it on the table virtually intact. They rub the rest of it away with the bottoms of their feet and Danny smiles at his brother, terribly relieved.

  Half a roll of paper towels and the table’s back in order, though it takes Peg and Bob a few more minutes to clean the dribbles between the dining room and the kitchen, wash their hands, and get the boys settled in their seats. Peg doesn’t lecture when she pours another milk, but she puts it in a sippy cup and Danny’s forced to use it.

  They sit and try the meal again and no one says a word.

  Except Peg. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to have a nice dinner for a change. I remembered that we all liked Mexican the last time we got it.”