Before Familiar Woods Page 9

  Della’s religion hadn’t been an issue all those years they were friends. Mostly they didn’t talk about it. Both women became pregnant soon after they met, and they had Mathew and William within a week of each other. Ruth supposed that had a lot to do with their friendship. The two also had a way about them that was honest. They weren’t afraid to complain about things or talk about things with each other that a lot of women kept quiet about. Things like money and sex and boredom. It was Della who had talked Ruth into returning to work after Mathew was born. Who made her feel it was all right for a woman to want things. Of course it seemed unbelievable now. And maybe there had never been any honesty to it. Maybe all her bold talk was just another sort of lie.

  The wind picked up and the bird feeder started to swing again. Ruth watched the string twist around itself.

  “Have you got more to say? Is there something else you want to tell me?”

  Della was quiet. “No.”

  “Okay then. Thanks for telling me about Leo.” Ruth turned from Della and pulled open the door. She closed it behind her and stood in the darkened hallway and waited for the engine to start and then fade away. When it did, she removed her coat and hung it on the nail. She went to the living room, where her mother sat on the burlap chair with the television muted.

  “What was that about?”

  “Elam didn’t come home the other night.”

  “I know that. I’m not blind.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  “What the hell has it got to do with that woman?”

  “Horace has gone missing too. He went missing the same night. The thought is they’re together.”

  “That don’t seem likely.”

  “People saw them together.”

  “You sure he’s gone?”

  “Who?”

  “Horace.”

  “I told you. That’s what Della says.”

  “Well, she’s a liar.”

  “Not about this. I don’t think she’s lying about this.”

  “Horseshit.”

  “It don’t matter. Elam’s gone. I don’t need for her to tell me that.”

  Ruth’s mother narrowed her eyes. “That woman is the reason the whole town thinks your son is some sort of monster. She could’ve put all those rumors to rest.”

  “I know it. It isn’t that I’ve forgotten.”

  “It seems like maybe you have.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Fine, then. Don’t listen to me none. Don’t expect no help finding him, though.”

  “I don’t.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t expect no help.”

  “Good. Because you won’t get it. Not in this town and certainly not from her.”

  Ruth took a deep breath. The television flashed to a man in a blue parka leading cows down a dirt path. “I’m going to the shed.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I’ve been out walking and I’m tired and I need to relax, so I’m going to the shed.”

  “Fine. Take that old dog with you. He keeps trying to lie on my feet.”

  “It’s probably because he’s cold.”

  “Probably. But it won’t be me to warm him up.”

  “No. I guess it won’t.”

  * * *

  THE RAIN STARTED coming down harder and at a slant. Ruth crossed the yard with Woodstock following closely behind. The shed was a sixteen-by-eighteen timber-frame structure with plank siding and large windows. Potted plants surrounded the shed—most of the pots cracked and the plants all dead.

  Ruth opened the door and flipped on the light. A large oak table sat in the center. A smaller table sat against the back wall, underneath the largest window. On the side of the shed facing the drive were an old cast-iron double-basin sink and an electric space heater. On the other side were the kick wheel and the twenty-six-liter oven.

  Ruth hung her coat and turned on the space heater. She removed her shoes and socks even though the floor was cold. She liked the feeling of the hardened clay on her bare feet. She went to the old blue Dansette and placed Crown of Creation on the platter, and then she went to the cupboard and removed a block of clay. She set the clay on the small table and removed the plastic and kneaded the clay and pounded it into a ball. She filled a bowl with warm water and carried the bowl and the clay to the kick wheel. Woodstock lay down beside her.

  Ruth had built the wheel thirty years ago. The frame consisted of four-by-four uprights and two-by-four cross members. Two flywheels were attached to a long spindle and supported by a lower socket and an upper bearing. It was close to three hundred pounds, and sitting in the shed it looked like some sort of medieval torture device.

  She had gotten the idea from an American Indian art magazine she had seen at Hinman’s Grocery Store. She had been drawn to the brown slip jug on the cover, and then she had been drawn to the photograph of a woman standing in front of a woodshed shaded by white-flowering dogwoods. But mostly she had been drawn to the idea—almost obsessed with the idea—of building a small shed in the woods. A place she could go to.

  Ruth had read the article that accompanied the photograph and then she’d called the North Falls Library and had the librarian order the book referenced in the article from the library in Burlington. When the book arrived, she brought it home and told Elam that she wanted to build a shed and a pottery wheel. He asked her if she knew anything about using a pottery wheel, and she told him she would figure that part out.

  The wind blew the thin birch branches, and they scraped the side of the shed.

  Sometime after Mathew died, Ruth had been cleaning the dishes when Elam came into the kitchen and asked her if she was going to start the divorce proceedings. It shocked her and she couldn’t think of how to respond. Elam met her eyes and then left the kitchen without saying another word, and they never brought it up again.

  The rain pounded the roof and ran down the window in narrow rivulets. Ruth placed her left foot on the bottom wheel and flicked her ankle until it began to spin. She wetted her finger and caulked the bottom of the clay so that it stuck to the wheel. Most people used automatic wheels, but for Ruth the kick wheel felt right. She had more control and was more apt to remember the importance of changing speeds. She appreciated the quiet, too. The automatic wheels whined and groaned. The kick wheel was all but silent.

  She locked her elbow on her knee and began to center the clay. She wetted her hands and glanced at the simple shelves on the wall opposite the wheel. Most held books, but one shelf held a photograph of Elam standing in front of the partially built shed. His face was covered in a dark beard that he’d let grow from the end of one baseball season to the start of the next. He held a cigarette in his right hand and squinted his eyes at the sun.

  Ruth didn’t have many pictures of Elam. There were some at the beginning when they got married. And some more when they began to fix up the house. But at some point she stopped taking pictures. At some point it seemed enough that she saw him every day and that it might always be that way.

  When the clay was centered, she made a hole in the middle with her thumb and began to pull the walls. She and Elam had drifted a little before Mathew died. But that was what couples did. Thirty-five years was a long time to be with someone. Parts got closer. But other parts got further away. You drifted even from yourself. She thought back to the day she took the photograph. She remembered telling Elam to take the cigarette out of his mouth, and she remembered setting the camera down in a shady spot in the grass after she had taken the picture and helping Elam lay the remaining rafters across the roof of the shed. She remembered the sun that day and the smell of dry earth and wood. But mostly she remembered the way she and Elam worked together. How comfortable it had been. How easily they communicated with one another.

  Ruth reached into the bowl and splashed more water onto the clay, but the clay was already stiff and she couldn’t seem to do much with it. She couldn’t seem to do much with anything.

  MILK
RAYMOND

  In the morning Milk got in the truck and made sure Daniel was buckled, and then he pulled out onto the road, which was covered with a light snow so that the pavement was only visible where the treads had dug down.

  “Did you call the school?” Daniel wore his goggles and his winter coat with the polyester hood that scratched every time he shrugged or tilted his head.

  “We don’t need to call the school.”

  “Grandma always called.”

  “We don’t need to call.”

  They moved along the road lined with green pines. All the other colors had turned to shades of gray, like tangled patches of fur.

  “I need a note. For tomorrow.”

  “Fine. I’ll write you a note.”

  “I’ll get in trouble for missing school if I don’t have a note.”

  “I said I’ll write you a note.” Milk adjusted the vents. He had considered dropping Daniel off in the morning, but he didn’t know what to expect at the Veterans Outreach Center. He didn’t need help with his paperwork; he only wanted help finding work. But he figured that’s probably what most guys wanted, and he didn’t know if he would have to wait a long time to see someone and then have to sit around and fill out applications or even take some sort of aptitude test like they’d made him take when he entered the military. He didn’t want his boy at home waiting on him. He was worried that someone from Social Services would come by the house while he was gone.

  They passed a narrow hill littered with old stones where flowers grew from the clefts. “What’s your favorite subject?”

  “In school?”

  “Yes—in school.”

  “I don’t know. Reading, I guess.”

  “What do you like to read?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must like to read something.”

  “I guess.”

  “So what is it, then?”

  “Wolf and Sheep.”

  “Wolf and Sheep?”

  The boy nodded.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s about a wolf and a sheep that are best friends.”

  “The wolf and the sheep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t the wolf want to eat the sheep?”

  “They’re best friends.”

  The woods broke, and Milk passed a home with a yellow station wagon sitting outside on chocks. He slowed the truck and went around a bend in the road marked with a metal guardrail and a sign with a black arrow indicating a sharp turn. The trees behind the rail were tall and dark and their limbs poked through the utility wires.

  “Wolves and sheep can talk where I’m from.”

  Milk looked over at the boy. “Where’s that?”

  “Planet Mador—they can talk there. All animals can.”

  “Planet Mador?”

  “That’s where I’m from.”

  “I thought you were from Vermont.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “I never heard you talk about being from nowhere else before.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “You got any pictures—of this planet Mador?”

  “We don’t take pictures there.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  “We take videos.”

  “How come I never seen none of them?”

  “Our videotapes don’t fit the machines here. They’re a different shape.”

  “They wear goggles on planet Mador?”

  The boy nodded. “For protection. It’s closer to the stars than planet Earth.”

  Milk looked to the boy and back to the road. “How long you figure you’ll wear yours, though—now that you’re here on planet Earth?”

  The boy didn’t say anything.

  “You figure you’ll wear them when you get your first job? What about when you’re old enough to start going out to bars and playing pool and meeting girls? What about the first time you’re alone with one—a girl? You figure you’ll wear them then?”

  Daniel was quiet. He turned to face the window.

  “I’m just giving you a hard time,” Milk said. “Men like to give each other a hard time—you need to be able to take it.”

  “I can take it.”

  “That right?”

  “I popped a kid in the nose one time.”

  “Who’s that? A kid in your class?”

  “Gordon.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  The boy shrugged. “His dad was in the war. His last name’s Beckwith.”

  “Beckwith?”

  “He said he was in the Army.”

  “I didn’t know no Beckwith. There were a lot of guys out there from all over the country—we weren’t all in the same group. It’s not like school.”

  The boy continued to look out the window.

  “Did he hit you back—this Gordon?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Did it hurt?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Good. The key is to be able to take it as good as you give it.”

  Milk slowed as he passed the gas station. He studied the large window but couldn’t see much past the posters for cigarettes and hot dogs and lottery tickets. He stopped at the blinking traffic light and then turned east onto Route 7. The snow had started to fall. Just light flurries. Barely visible.

  “You miss your mother at all?”

  The boy didn’t say anything.

  “It’s okay if you do.”

  “A little.”

  “What do you miss about her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. Just her being here, I guess.”

  A metal rake lay in the middle of the road, and Milk crossed the yellow line to get around it. In the distance a burgundy-colored Ford was pulled over on the side of the road and an old man with a ball cap stood in the road next to the truck looking at the front tire.

  Milk glanced in his rearview mirror and slowed the truck. “Roll down your window.”

  The boy hesitated and then grabbed the lever.

  The old man wore a blue winter coat and a cap that said MILLER LUMBER. Milk put him at seventy years old.

  “You look like you’re having some trouble,” Milk said.

  The old man put his hands on his hips. Behind him, a border collie sat in the driver’s seat looking out over the steering wheel.

  “It’s the goddamn lug nuts,” the man said. “Rusted over, I think. I can’t get ’em to budge.”

  Milk looked in the rearview mirror at the empty road. “Hang on tight,” he said. He drove a little farther and pulled to the side of the road so that his tires were up on the grass. “Anybody ever show you how to change a tire?” he asked Daniel.

  The boy shook his head.

  “No. I suppose not. I suppose that would’ve been my job.”

  Milk shut the engine and pulled the key from the ignition. He got out of the truck, and a moment later Daniel followed.

  “They won’t budge,” the old man said again.

  “Maybe the two of us can get ’em turning.”

  “I don’t know. They’re real stuck. Son of a bitch. My wife will worry if I’m late.”

  Milk walked to the front of the truck. The tire iron lay on the pavement. He bent down to look at the lug nuts, and a blue Honda with a lowering kit drove by, hugging the right lane.

  “Sons of bitches,” the old man shouted at the car.

  Milk watched the Honda head south down Route 7. To the north the road was empty. He picked up the tire iron and secured the lug nut and pushed. It wouldn’t budge. Milk repositioned himself. He set his knees on the pavement and then looked back to where his boy was standing in the grass. “Grab my gloves,” he said. “In the utility box.”

  The boy went to the truck and Milk studied the lug nuts. Then he studied the road already covered in dirt and salt and flurries.

  “The c
old don’t help,” the old man said. “Cold as hell and it ain’t even December.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t have a sledgehammer.”

  “I’d have used it if I did.”

  Milk nodded. He looked over to his truck and saw that the boy had climbed inside the cab. His shoes came out the passenger’s side door. Milk got up and went to the truck.

  “Did you look in the utility box?”

  The boy didn’t say anything.

  Milk went to the bed and popped open the metal case. “Right here,” he said. “You know what a utility box is, don’t you?”

  Milk pulled the gloves from the box and slammed it shut. He carried the gloves back to the truck and kneeled down on the cold pavement. He put on the gloves and checked for vehicles and then positioned his hands on the tire iron and pushed down toward the pavement. The lug nut loosened a little. He moved onto the next one and then the next. By the time he was done, he was breathing pretty heavy and he didn’t have them anywhere near off.

  Milk looked at the road again. “You got the keys?”

  The old man looked at Daniel and then pulled the keys from his pocket. “Her name’s Dixie,” he said. “She don’t bite unless you try to take her duck.”

  Milk got in the truck, and the dog pressed herself against Milk, panting and drooling on his neck. There was a toy duck on the passenger seat. Milk swung his arm over the back of the seat. “Go on,” he said. But the dog didn’t move. She just started licking his face. “Christ.” Milk put the truck in reverse and backed up quickly about fifteen feet. The dog’s legs stiffened. Milk then put the truck in drive and shot forward quickly about the same distance and slammed on the breaks. He pulled the key from the ignition and opened the door. When he stepped out of the truck, the dog shot past him like water through a busted dam.

  “Dixie,” the old man shouted.

  The dog went straight for the road. She crossed the first lane and then the second lane and then started south like she was running toward town.