River of Heaven Read online

  “I was helping my dad,” I said.

  “That’s right, Snuff. The boy was helping me with the sand.”

  “Nah,” Snuff said, “it’s not as simple as that. You weren’t with him for a while now. Something went on between the two of you, but Dewey, he wouldn’t say what it was, only that the two of you were on the outs.”

  “Sammy?” my father said.

  I didn’t know what to say on that night in the Finns’ house where sorrow had come any more than I know how to say it now.

  “We just got to knowing we were different,” I said. “I guess that explains it as best I can.”

  My father and I left the Finns’ house and went back to our own. My mother was on our front porch, watering the tomato seedlings she’d just set out to harden before planting them in our garden. The lights were on in our front room. Big drops of rain were coming down, drops the size of half-dollars. They slapped the broad leaves of our maple tree, punched the sandbags my father and I had stacked, clanged against the watering can my mother set down on our steps.

  “More rain.” My mother shook her head. She’d taken care to keep the tender tomato seedlings back on the porch, away from any downpours that would drown them. “Can we stand it? Will we be all right?”

  I looked out over our yard. “We’ve got more sand,” my father said, “more gunny sacks. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of things.”

  He walked to the edge of the porch, looped his arm around a post, and leaned out into the rain, turning his head in the direction of the Finns’ house, where Nancy had come out into the yard and was sitting on the muddy ground—just sitting there in the rain—her arms crossed over her stomach while she rocked back and forth. The other girls came out into the yard and took her up by her arms and led her back into the house.

  “What was it like over there?” my mother asked.

  “Just what you’d think.” My father ducked back under the porch roof and wiped the rain from his face with his red bandana handkerchief. He blew his nose, and then folded the bandana up and stuffed it back into his hip pocket. “You can imagine, can’t you? To lose a boy like that? Jesus, what a thing.”

  “I’m baking a cake,” my mother said, and I could smell it, that smell of sweetness coming from inside our house. “I’ll take it over to Betty Finn tomorrow. That’s all I can think to do.”

  She came to me, then, and she wrapped her arms around me. She was a flesh-starved woman, just an itty-bit of a thing, but she squeezed me so hard I felt an ache in my chest and back. “Sammy,” she said, and she went into the house to see to her cake.

  I remember that the dark fell all of a sudden, the way it can when you’re thinking the twilight will last a little longer. I looked up at the sky and saw a skein of clouds pass over the moon.

  The rain came in earnest. My father and I stood on the porch and watched it slant down.

  “Different,” he said in a low voice. “The two of you were different. What did you mean when you told Snuff Finn that?”

  “Just what I said.”

  The wind was up now. Rain scattered across the front part of the porch, and my father and I moved out of its way, retreating toward the house.

  “So you knew it was true about Dewey?” my father asked. “All the talk about him being queer? You knew it to be a fact?”

  “It was true,” I said.

  “And you didn’t want no truck with it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So you stopped being friends.”

  “He was…” My voice shrank inside the noise of the wind and the rain, and I couldn’t find the words that wanted to come next.

  “You couldn’t say what he was to Snuff.” My father went on. “That’s nothing a man would want to hear about his boy.”

  “I couldn’t tell the truth.”

  “That’s right,” my father said, as if we were coming to an agreement never to speak of this again. “Some things you just can’t say.”

  4

  ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, ARTHUR AGAIN ASKS ME TO COME with him to the Senior Center for his Seasoned Chefs cooking lesson. I’m so grateful for the help he gave me with Stump’s ship, I don’t see how I can refuse him. I take a deep breath. Then I tell him I’ll be glad to accept his invitation.

  He claps his hands together. “Sammy, you won’t regret it. I promise.”

  At the Senior Center, the Seasoned Chefs wear cooks’ aprons, the kind that tie around the neck and at the small of the back, only these aprons aren’t white. They’re egg-yolk orange with black script letters that say, REAL MEN DO IT IN THE KITCHEN.

  These real men are milling around, helping one another tie their aprons, chatting about the new coffee house uptown where you can buy espressos and cappuccinos and herbal teas, even cucumber-infused water if that’s your pleasure. “Cucumber water,” a man says, and shakes his head, amazed.

  It’s easy to pretend that our town is a different place than it was years and years ago, more progressive and enlightened. We have that coffee house, and the Arcadia Theater, where I used to watch Rock Hudson pictures from the balcony, now has three screens. In those days, everyone knew that Rock had family here—his real name was Roy Scherer—and from time to time he’d come to visit. His aunt and uncle had a farm not far from town, and, when he was a teenager, he spent his summers there. Once—this was much later when he was a star—I saw him drinking a root beer float at Tresslers’ lunch counter. Imagine that. Anyway, as I was saying, the Arcadia has those three screens, and at Christmas there’s a spectacular light display at the city park, and cooking classes like this one for men who suddenly find themselves on their own. When you get down to it, though, nothing much has changed about the way people feel about men like me. It could very well be that some of the men in this room would shy away from me if they knew the truth, but still I can’t help but envy the Seasoned Chefs and the easy way they move among one another, knotting aprons, patting backs. Ask anyone who lives alone. Ask them what it’s like to go days, months, sometimes years and have no one to touch them, not even a finger grazing a wrist, a hand brushing across a shoulder. A hug? Some people would pay money for that. Trust me, there are these people in the world, more than you probably want to know.

  The teacher, a woman with rouged cheeks and bright red lipstick, is setting out mixing bowls and saucepans and measuring cups, laying out whisks and ladles and spatulas and stirring spoons. She’s maybe a few years younger than the youngest of the Seasoned Chefs, a trim woman with blonde hair—dyed, if I’m any judge—wearing dark slacks and a white turtleneck sweater. A woman who seems vaguely familiar to me.

  “That’s Vera.” Arthur slips an apron over my head and helps me tie it. “She’s got that household hints program on the radio. Very Vera. You ever catch it? If you need to know anything—how to get barbecue sauce out of a good shirt, how to make refrigerator pickles—you can just call her up and ask.”

  “Have you ever done those things?” I ask him.

  “Not yet. But I could if I ever wanted to.” He leans close to me and whispers. “Sometimes, I phone up her show and ask her a question just to hear her talk—you know, right to me.”

  Vera claps her hands together and tells us it’s time to learn her special recipe for chili con carne. She does a little flamenco stomp, the stylish heels of her black boots clicking smartly on the floor. She snaps her fingers over her head, and the Seasoned Chefs—“Ready, boys?” she asks—gather around her.

  I work with Arthur. “Stick with me, Sammy,” he says, “and everything will be shipshape.”

  We listen to Vera as she shows us how to brown the ground beef. “Stir it over a low flame,” she says. “Don’t let it stick to the pan.”

  “That’s a snap,” Arthur tells me, and we get to work.

  It’s easy, this cooking. I stir the beef while Arthur opens a can of tomato juice. We’re getting everything ready: beef and juice and kidney beans. We gather the seasonings: cayenne pepper, chili powder, salt, and then Vera’s se
cret ingredient—just a squeeze of lime juice. “Oh, that’s zesty,” I hear a man say, and the other Seasoned Chefs agree. Yes, that’s zesty. A little squeeze. That’s very Vera.

  I don’t mind saying that I’m caught up in it all: the satisfying aroma of beef sizzling and browning, the men’s high spirits, Vera’s heels tapping over the tile floor and her bright voice cheering us on: “Follow the recipe so you won’t make a mess-of-me.”

  Once, she even stops and pats my back. “That’s lovely,” she says. “That’s wonderful. Arthur, you’ve brought us a ringer.”

  For some reason, I get a picture of Stump in the side yard, carrying around that rubber horseshoe he likes to gnaw on. He’s probably dropped it on the step, the way he often does when I’m out of the house. I find it there when I come home, and old Stump, sitting beside it, waiting for me to open the door and let him in.

  I wish I could trust this feeling I have, this thing rising up in me I can only call joy. I want Vera’s hand to linger on my back because at this moment, when she’s telling me that what I’m doing is lovely, she’s touching me in a way I haven’t felt for years, her hand rubbing slow, gentle circles.

  “This is my neighbor,” Arthur says. “Sam Brady.”

  “Sammy?” Vera takes me by the shoulders and turns me so we’re face to face. “My goodness,” she says. “You must not remember me. I’m Vera Moon. I was a friend of your brother’s.”

  It comes to me, then, exactly who she is, and I nod and say hello. “Of course,” I say. “Vera.”

  She and Cal weren’t just friends. They were sweethearts. In fact, he’d told me that out of all the girls he had a fancy for she might just be the one who could keep him. “I really mean it, Sammy,” he said. “She doesn’t know it yet, but I believe she’s got me on a string.” Then he went away, and, as far as I know, that was the end of things between him and Vera. He came back to visit from time to time, but he never stayed long enough for anything between them to stick, and he never took her with him, and now all these years have passed and here she is on the end of a life she lived without him, without even knowing, maybe, how close she came to having a completely different one.

  “Whatever happened to Cal?” she asks me.

  I’m too ashamed to tell her I don’t know, and I’m thankful that one of the Seasoned Chefs calls her name, and she excuses herself, and I don’t have to tell her that seeing her makes me wonder what all our lives would have been like if Cal hadn’t gone away from us. He went to Germany, the Korean conflict winding down by then. He worked in a dental clinic on the Army base in Frankfurt, and when he came back to the States, he learned a carpenter’s trade and moved around the country—North Carolina, Kansas, California—before finally settling in Alaska, where he made good money helping build the oil pipeline. He came back to visit only on occasion, and then as the years went on he didn’t come back at all, and now it’s been more years than I can count, so many years it seems most of the time like I never had a brother at all. We don’t speak on the phone. We don’t exchange letters. Truth be told, I don’t even know for certain that he’s still alive. The last thing he said to me—I remember this very distinctly—was, “I guess we all have to live the lives we’ve made, but I don’t think I can live mine here, not now.”

  I’m glad I don’t have to tell Vera that it was in some measure my fault that Cal left town. I’ve spent all these years mourning that fact, wishing he’d walk through my front door sometime and say, “Hello, Sammy. It’s me.”

  At the end of the evening I thank her, as I do the other Seasoned Chefs before I leave—Thank you for letting me join you. Thank you for your conversation—and Arthur when he drops me off at home—Thank you for inviting me.

  “Sammy,” he says. “Forget about it. We’re neighbors.”

  He insists I take our leftover chili con carne, freshly sealed in one of Bess’s Tupperware bowls he knew to bring.

  This politeness, I think, as I step through my gate. Yes, the rubber horseshoe is on the step, and yes, Stump is waiting. This courtesy, I tell myself as I unlock the door and hold it open so Stump can waddle into the house. This is as much as I can hope for; this is what I have.

  ON FRIDAY, WHEN THE PAPER COMES, I CAN BARELY BRING myself to look, but, of course, eventually I do. That’s the way we are, isn’t it? Too curious for our own good.

  Here I am on the front page. In the photo, Arthur’s chest is puffed out, and there’s a grin on his face, as if he’s got everything right where he wants it. Stump seems equally at home, sitting there at the bow, his muzzle tilted to the sky, the dignified captain of his ship.

  And then there’s me—little, old, bald-headed man, his face tipped down, eyes just up enough so you can see them but not enough, like Arthur, to stare you full in the mug. Here I am, looking just about as scared as a man can be. Now what kind of face is that to show to your neighbors? Right now, in homes across our town, folks must be calling out to someone, Hey, c’mere and take a look at this. Saddest damn thing.

  That’s the sad-assed truth of me. Old bachelor man, so much time on his hands he can build a fancy house—a ship, for mercy’s sake (oh, I can hear the neighbors talking now), all for his dog. Says here he’s got plans to put in a heating system. Geez-a-loo. I thought I’d heard it all.

  I fold the paper so the picture doesn’t show, and I stuff it down in my trash can. Then the phone rings, and it’s Arthur calling up to ask me whether I’ve seen the paper, and, of course, I have to say that I have.

  “A heating system?” he says.

  “Just an idea. Something I’m noodling around with.”

  I can hear newspaper rustling over the telephone, and I know he’s looking at the article as he talks to me.

  “Jesus,” he says.

  Then there’s a long silence.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “Nothing,” he says, and I know he’s taken note of the way I look in that photo, an odd man who can barely stand to look at the camera.

  I’m afraid I’m disappointing him. I’m not the confident sort—not a sailor full of swagger—that he’d wish for a friend. Still, ever since we built Stump’s ship, we’ve fallen into the habit of keeping each other company at night, usually at my place since he’s always looking for any reason he can find to escape his own house where he spent so many years with Bess. “I see her everywhere,” he told me once. “Just for a second, and then she’s gone.”

  So I’ve let him into my home. We’ve played dominoes. I’ve brewed coffee. We’ve watched old movies on television, pictures we remember from when we were younger men: Tie a Yellow Ribbon, or Arthur’s favorite, In Harm’s Way. Some evenings, we doze off in our chairs, and we sleep until Stump licks my hand and wakes me. For a few minutes, then, I watch Arthur sleep, and it pleases me that I can offer this place of ease and rest. Then Stump barks, or a cannon explodes in the picture on TV, and Arthur comes to and says, “I was sleeping good, Sammy. I was lost to the world.” He gathers up his coat and hat. “Another night,” he says. Then he goes back to his own house where he’s left the light burning above the steps to his side door—a watch light, he calls it—so he’ll be able to see his way in.

  A man can make a life like this—dominoes and coffee, and old movies and a nap, and now a photograph in the paper for everyone to see.

  THEY START TO COME. PEOPLE I DON’T EVEN KNOW. ALL through November and into December, they come. They drive slowly past my house, stop on occasion and sit in their cars, pointing at Stump’s ship. If he happens to be on board, someone might come to the fence and baby-talk him. Somebody else might start in with the sailing lingo.

  “Aye, Captain,” I hear a boy say this evening.

  The sun is setting, dipping down below the power lines and maple trees, their bare branches dark against what’s left of the light. I remember what the old-timers used to say when the sun set red: Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. I’m in the garage checking the antifreeze in my Jeep Cherokee and through the six small
glass panes that stretch across the top of the garage door, I can see the sun break apart as it sinks below the trees. Orange streaks the sky, which is a darker shade of blue now, a blue close to purple this near to dark.

  The boy is maybe ten or so, a boy I’ve seen in the neighborhood, but no one I know to call by name. He wears a sock hat—not a tight-fitting watch cap like sailors wear, but a loose one with a tail that hangs down his neck, a white yarn ball at the end resting between his shoulders. He snaps off a salute to Stump, who is unimpressed. Stump slowly tips back his head to watch a white squirrel skittering along a power line, his glorious tail curving out behind him. Another dog would set up a howl and tear across the yard to tell that squirrel to vacate the premises immediately. But not Stump. He calmly watches the world go by. Even this boy, yakking at him from the fence, is nothing he can’t tolerate.

  “A pirate walks into a bar.” The boy is telling Stump a joke now, not caring whether someone might come by and hear him. I imagine this is a joke the boy has taken a fancy to and now he simply wants to hear the sound of it coming from his mouth. “A pirate walks into a bar,” he says, “with a steering wheel down his pants.”

  Okay, I’m hooked—charmed, you might say, by the ridiculous premise. I’m eavesdropping, and I don’t feel guilty because after all this is my dog the boy has decided to entertain.

  He acts it all out, thrusting his narrow pelvis forward as if he’s got that steering wheel right where the pirate does. “Bartender says, ‘Buddy, you’ve got a steering wheel down your pants.’” The boy scrunches up his face into what he must feel a wizened old pirate with a steering wheel in his cargo bay would look like. “‘Arrgh,’ the pirate says, ‘and it’s driving me nuts.’”