A Peculiar Grace (48 page)

It threw him a bit. He wondered if face to face hearing the girl speak he’d still hear her mother. He said, “Yes, thanks.” Waiting, he heard the distinct clink and rattle of a supper table.

“Lo.”

“Hi, Em.”

A pause and then cheery, “Hi, how are you?”

“Okeydoke, bad time to call. Sorry. Is everything all right?”

“Oh, thank you. Yes, she’s just fine. Went home today. What a scare she gave us all.”

“No letters?”

“There don’t appear to be any, although the doctors say wait and see.”

“Which means you still plan to talk to her with your kids.”

“Oh, absolutely, I’ll tell her you called. It’s so thoughtful of you to check in.”

“I’m almost always around later in the evening. At least until eleven or so. If you want to talk sometime.”

She laughed, again that low lovely Emily laugh. “Well, you know I will. Listen, I have to run. But thanks again. Oh, and before I forget, Mother sends her best. Bye now.”

He stood with the dial tone in his ear until he realized he couldn’t make sense of any of it. Except Elsa seemed to be all right. After a bit he realized that was enough. If Emily had spoken to her mother about him that meant something but it could all be part of the camouflage.

He sat up that evening with an ordinary bottle of wine, just what the occasion called for. Around ten a light drizzle began, so quiet at first he didn’t understand what he was hearing. At eleven thirty he went on up to bed, passing the shut door to Jessica’s room. He supposed he should strip the bed and wash the linens. In the morning perhaps. Vaguely recalling waking sometime indeterminable the night before and going down the hall to lie facedown on her bed, his head deep in her pillow, the scent of her almond soap clinging as he breathed it in.

N
EXT MORNING WAS
an ideal day to work in the forge, the sort of day he loved to be down there moving around the hearth, the heat just enough, maybe the doors open, the dim light, the steady drip of rain on the roof, the water glazed windows, the bright color of the worked metal precise and easily readable. Then another idea came to mind. Because the same way such weather heightened perception in the forge, it did the same in the woods. And he was a man after stones.

An hour later, with his denim barn coat and a billed cap with the Agway logo pushed back as far as it could go and still keep the rain from his eyes, he was up in the sugarbush with the tractor and manure spreader turned wagon. Still littered with chunks of bark from the firewood but now holding a heavy crowbar, a couple of light chains, a come-along and one of the three Flexible Flyer sleds that hung on the interior shed wall where he parked the tractor—sleds that predated his childhood and his father had recalled using on winter days as a boy. It was a lot of equipment for a simple job but Hewitt knew that given the random array of woodland, the two stones he sought would be found down in a steep draw or tucked away uphill with no easy way to get them to the tractor and wagon. Thus the tools.

The woods were perfect. After the night and day of steady easy rain everything growing was a bit pressed down and back, opened. And all things, trees, lichen, brush, berry canes and stones, especially
stones, were sharpened in outline, brighter in their color, more distinct. Revealed. It might take the entire afternoon but he felt confident he’d find those he needed for the hitching posts. It would be more of a trick than a job. Because he needed two stones near identical which was like saying he needed two clouds or two women identical.

In his jacket pocket he had a scrap of paper with the rough measurements he’d concluded could be utilized and a small eight-foot tape measure. But those were last resorts. He was confident he’d find the stones by sight, recognition.

In the way of such things he found the first within half an hour. And uphill as well. He didn’t even need the measuring tape—it was the right stone. All it took was a short rocking with the bar to free it and then wearing heavy gloves he rolled it slowly down to the flat where he paused and considered getting the sled to haul it to the spreader but it had worked so well underneath his lift-and-roll hands that he abandoned the idea and spent the better part of an hour bent over moving the smooth-cornered triangular stone along the woods-floor. There was no hope of getting it rolling because of the shape but still it went along and, as importantly, he was growing deeply intimate with the surfaces of the stone—information that would be invaluable once he was turning it into the base of a hitching post.

Once he got the first stone loaded it was no more than another half an hour of tramping when he located the second. The rain had picked up but he was soaked through already so it made no difference. He was exultant. He’d fully expected to spend days intermittently searching for these near matching stones. And here they were. He was tempted, once more, to think the day was providential. But decided it was just luck and the sense to get out in the revealing rain.

Two hours later not only had that sense of luck changed but he was close to serious trouble. True, right away on finding that second stone he knew it would be more of a job, but seemed doable. It was about thirty feet down the slope of a small draw. So he’d need to wrap
it in chain and then use the come-along to get it up to level ground. But the bank was soaked and soft from the rain and although he wrapped the chain around the stone all he had to do was tip it gently with the bar and it lifted and tumbled all the way down to the bottom of the draw. Where a small brook was now flooding. He spent an hour fussing with the other chain and the come-along stretched as far as the cable would allow and the stone was only ten feet out of the brook up the slope. And his chains and cable were stretched to their limit to hold it. The come-along barely reached to the top of the draw, fully extended and no matter how many times he threw himself against the handle the come-along wouldn’t budge, the slope and angle and length adding to the wet ground and the weight of the stone.

A smarter man would’ve left it there. But at the moment Hewitt was determined, not smart. It was only after he’d unhooked the tractor from the spreader and backed the tractor slowly to the lip of the draw and found himself heaving up and down as the tractor ground and worked itself over the remains of a stone wall now spread along the lip of the draw that he began to doubt the plan. But all he had to do was transfer the upper hook of the come-along to the tractor drawbar and edge forward and all would be fine.

Except the tractor was at the edge of the draw with its rear tires tilted in nervous angle up on the old wall rocks. And then, even with the engine shut off, the tractor in gear and the brakes set, he’d had the bowel-loosening experience of being down in the draw after slowly, carefully moving the hook of the come-along to the tractor drawbar, then going down to remove the deeply driven crowbar from behind the desired rock but no sooner did he pull the bar free when the rock tipped backward, toward him, unbelievably toward him, and as he jumped free he looked up and saw the back end of the tractor edging down over the lip of the draw toward him, those hind tires slipping easily off the rocks they had seemed to rest so securely upon. He stood back and watched as the tractor slid partway down and then those small front tires somehow caught at the top and the whole thing came to a
halt. Hewitt was so frightened he didn’t even know he was. He stood staring at the tractor, waiting for it to continue. Only after an undefined period of time did he think to look at the source of all this, the fucking stone he was trying to extract. And saw it was lodged against a tree, going no further downhill.

He moved away fifteen feet or maybe more and sat down on the ground. Looking at the whole thing. His first thought was he was well and fucked. His second was but for a handy tree he could right now, this very moment, be crushed by his own tractor. Dead. Very nearly the stupid accident.

“W
ELP
, H
EWITT, WHAT
you got here,” Bill Potwin paused to spit, savoring the line, “is a tractor on the rocks.”

Late afternoon, still raining, they were up in the woods with Bill’s old pickup, one side panel replaced bright yellow against the burnt brick dull red of the rest of the truck, the lace and filigree of rust running around the lower edges. But the truck had a heavy V-8, near waist-high mud-grabber tires and, most important, an electric winch with heavy cable mounted on the front end. Bill used the truck around the farm but also admitted he liked to get off in the woods roads and see how much a mess he could get himself into and back out of again. Hewitt, like a good many others, knew Bill especially liked to do this in October, in the weeks before deer season started, traveling at night and for the sake of wisdom carrying along a heavy electric flashlight, more truly a spotlight, and naturally his deer rifle. Because the light could come in handy if Bill did get hung up bad and needed to see where the headlights wouldn’t allow and the rifle just because. Bill always hunted the first week of the season and always managed to get his deer, which, at least in his mind made the two or three others already cut up, wrapped and in his freezer, legal. As far as Hewitt was concerned it was Bill’s business; he was certainly not the only farmer to feed his family most of the winter on venison. They might get sick of it but it was meat on
the table. And with more of the old marginal farms growing back up to woods there were plenty of deer for men like Bill, as well as the usual hunters. Deer died of starvation. More deer, Hewitt guessed were killed by running dogs each winter than by men like Bill Potwin.

Bill went on, “Climb up on there and let it out of gear and let off the brakes and then get the hell off in case the cable don’t hold.”

“I thought you said that cable could hang an elephant.”

Bill looked at him and said, “Did I say how big a elephant?”

Hewitt grinned. He was soaked through all over again and a little chilled. He said, “Okay, let’s do her.”

He started toward the tractor that had the winch cable strung and hooked tight around the front axle. The snub nose of the little tractor pointing mostly toward the treetops, as if studying something up there, taking in a view it’d never seen before. Hewitt slid a little down the bank, reached up and got a purchase on the steering wheel and began to hoist himself up.

“Hold on! Hold on a friggin minute!”

Hewitt jumped back off the tractor, landing on the slippery bank and went down on one knee. He pulled himself up away from the tractor and clawed his way to the top of the bank. The cable seemed all right and the tractor hadn’t moved. He looked at Bill.

“What’s the problem?”

Bill grinned. “You got the rock, that stone, whatever twas you was after up here? You got that still hitched up to the ass end a the tractor?”

“Jesus Bill, I bout crapped my pants.”

“Welp, Mister. You got that rock fastened on or not?”

“It came loose when the tractor gave on me. It’s not right the front of my mind at the moment, if you see what I mean.”

“You know, Hewitt. Right this minute you got the safest most capable rig you could get to keep your little tractor from rusting away
its last years down that gully, and you’re balking over adding on another piddly couple hundred pounds? Of a stone you got to get somehow anyway?”

Hewitt just looked at him.

Bill grinned and said, “There’s one, two lengths of log chain the back of the truck you need it. A course I’m happy to scramble down, help you get it hooked up tight, you want.”

Hewitt said, “Why don’t you set up in your cab, get out the rain. I can handle that bastard myself. Though an extra piece of chain might come in handy.”

Bill nodded. “Help yourself.”

F
ORTY MINUTES LATER
Bill drove down the hill with a twenty-dollar bill folded in his shirt pocket, in time to help his wife and children with the evening milking. After towing the tractor and hitching post stone not only up but out to the clearing where the old manure spreader waited with the first stone, Bill had wordlessly stepped down from his truck to help Hewitt get the chains and come-along free of the stone and then the two of them hoisted the stone to rest in the spreader bed along its near twin. Bill then leaned his elbows on the side of the spreader and from all appearances was ready to settle in for a chat.

“Getting some jeezly rain at last. If it’ll last. Goddamn what a dry summer, bout to burn everything up it was.”

Hewitt was still separating chains, his from Bill’s. He said, “Couple days of rain, a week of sun, couple days of rain, then sun again—why if it kept right on like that till freeze-up we’d be set wouldn’t we?”

Bill darkened a little bit. “Sometimes I think we’d be better off without all the predictions. Wrong half the time anyway. And the old folks, my granddad, they could read the weather better than any of those slick shits on the TV. Probably better off that way. We don’t even know what we don’t know anymore, seems like.”

Hewitt paused.

Then he said, “That’s the God’s truth.”

Bill said, “Whatever happened to that cute little piece a ass was around most a the summer?”

Hewitt jimmied the iron bar in across the back of the spreader. Not as if the two stones would roll out going downhill or as if the bar would keep them from doing so but for the pure pleasure of mashing the bar in place instead of backhanding Bill. With that done, he straightened and shot his ragged coat cuff to look at his watch.

He said, “The truth is I don’t care much for that sorta talk Bill. You understand. It’d be like if I was to talk like that about one of your girls. Good Lord, Bill, I appreciate the hell out of this but don’t you got cows with full udders right about now? And I got to get this load down the hill, myself.”

Bill nodded. “Mother and the boy’ll already be to the barn. I best get going, if you’re set, Hewitt.”

Hewitt grinned then and said, “Hell yes. I’m good to go. Thanks again Bill.”

The Farmall was hitched again to the spreader and so for the shortest of times through the woods Hewitt followed Bill. Then the big tires on the truck ahead seemed to stop and clutch and dig and press deep and Bill went on through the sugarbush around the ridge and out of sight down the hill along the lane through the pasture and hayfield, most likely making a mess of the summer-baked smoothness of the track but that was okay. Hewitt putted along behind. In the end, all things said and done, Bill Potwin had enjoyed a break from his regular routine, twenty bucks he’d probably not disclose to his wife and had a pretty good story to tell around—Hewitt Pearce got hisself in a world of shit the other day and Bill bailed him out.