“I guess so. You want to see them?”
“Yes.”
He explained them to her one by one. The circumstances for most of them he remembered exactly. A few he was unsure about. “That’s in the apartment, either in San Diego or Santa Cruz, they looked alike.” A few times he stopped talking, just looked, then flipped the big pages over, the clear sheets that covered the photos flapping. Fairly quickly he was through to the last page, which was empty. He stared at it.
“Just things.”
“Not exactly,” Nadezhda said. “But close enough.”
They clicked glasses, drank. Overhead stars came out. Somehow they still smelled of smoke. Slowly they finished the glasses, poured another round.
Tom roused himself. He drained his glass, looked over at her, smiled crookedly. “So when does this ship leave?”
* * *
It was strange, Kevin thought, that you could fight a fire, running around slashing brush with an axe until the air burned in your lungs like the fire itself, and yet never feel a thing. To not care, to watch your grandfather’s house ignite, and note how much more smokily plastic burns than pine.…
Numb.
He spent a lot of time at work. Setting tile in Oscar’s kitchen around the house computer terminal. Grout all over his hands. Getting into the detail work, the finishing, the touch-ups. You could lose yourself forever in that stuff, bearing down toward perfection far beyond what the eye would ever notice standing in the door. Or lost in the way it was all coming together. Oscar’s house had been an ordinary tract house before, but now with the south rooms all made one, and clerestory windows installed at the top of their walls, they formed a long plant-filled light-charged chamber, against which the living rooms rested, behind walls that did not reach the ceiling. Thus the living rooms—kitchen, family room, reading room—were lit from behind with a warm green light, and had, Kevin thought, an appealing spaciousness. Some floors had been re-leveled, and the pool under the central skylight was surrounded by big ficus trees alternating with black water-filled pillars, giving the house a handsome central area, and the feeling Kevin always strove for, that one was somehow both outdoors and yet protected from the elements. He spent several hours walking through the house, doing touch-up, or sitting and trying to get a feel for how the rooms would look when finished and furnished. It was his usual habit near the end of a project, and comforting. Another job done, another space created and shaped.…
He never saw Ramona any more, except at their games. She always greeted him with a smile both bright and wan at once, a smile that told him nothing, except perhaps that she was worried about him. So he didn’t look. He avoided warming up with her so they wouldn’t get into another session of Bullet. Once they were in a four-way warm-up, and lobbed it to each other carefully. She didn’t talk to him as she used to, she spoke in stilted sentences even when cheering him on from the bench. Deliberate, self-conscious, completely unlike her. Oh well.
His perfect hitting continued, like a curse he could never escape. Solid line drives these days, slashed and sprayed all over the field. He didn’t care any more, that was the key. There’s no pressure when you don’t care.
Once he ran into her at Fran’s bakery and she jumped as if frightened. God, he thought, spare me. To hell with her if she felt guilty about deserting him, and yet didn’t act to change it.
If you don’t act on it, it wasn’t a true feeling. One of Hank’s favorite sayings, the text for countless incoherent sermons. If the saying were true, and if Ramona was not acting, then … Oh well.
Work was the best thing. Get the breakfast room under the old carport as sunny and tree-filled as possible. Put the skylights in place, boxes into the roofing, bubbles of cloudgel onto the boxes, get the seal right, make it all so clean and perfect that someday when roofers came up here to repair something they’d see it and say, here was a carpenter. Wire in the homeostatic stuff, the nervous system of this rough beast. More kitchen tiles, a mosaic of sorts, the craft of the beautiful. Sawing wood, banging nails in the rhythm of six or seven hits, each a touch harder, the carpenter’s unconscious percussion, the rhythm of his dreams, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP. Rebuilding the northside roof and the porch extending out from it, in a flash he imagined falling off and his elbow hurt. Gabriela wore an elbow sleeve for tendonitis, carpenter’s elbow, and she was the young one. They were all getting old. The master bedroom would be cool no matter what.
One day after work Hank pulled a six-pack from his bike box and plunked it down in front of Kevin, who was taking off his work boots. “Let’s down this.”
They had downed a couple of dumpies when Hank said, “So Ramona has gone back to Alfredo, they say.”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad.”
Kevin nodded. Hank slurped sympathetically at the beer. Kevin couldn’t help declaring that Ramona was now living a lie, that she and Alfredo couldn’t be happy together, not really.
“Maybe so.” Hank squinted. “Hard to tell. You never really can tell from the outside, can you.”
“Guess not.” Kevin studied his dumpie, which was empty. They opened two more.
“But ain’t none of it cut in stone,” Hank said. “Maybe it won’t last between them, and could be you might pick up where you left off, after they figure it out. Partly it depends on how you act now, you know? I mean if you’re friends you don’t go around trying to make her feel bad. She’s just trying to do what’s right for her after all.”
“Urgh.”
“I mean if it’s what you want, then you’re gonna hafta work for it.”
“I don’t want to play an act, Hank.”
“It ain’t an act. Just working at it. That’s what we all gotta do. If you really want to get what you want. It’s scary because you might not get it, you’re hanging your ass out there, sure, and in a way it’s easier not to try at all. Safer. But if you really want it…”
“If you don’t act on it, it wasn’t a true feeling,” Kevin said heavily, mocking him.
“Exactly, man! That’s just what I say.”
“Uh huh.” And thus Alfredo had gone down to San Diego.
“Hey man, life’s toof. I don’t know if you’d ever noticed. Not only that, but it goes on like that for years and years. I mean even if you’re right about them, it still might be years before they figure it out.”
“Jeez, man, cheer me up why doncha.”
“I am!”
“God, Hank. Just don’t try to bum me out someday, okay? I’m not sure I could handle it.”
Years and years. Years and years and years and years. Of his one and only life. God.
“Endure,” Hank would say, standing on the roof and tapping himself in the head with his hammer. “En-doourrr.”
Pound nails, set tile, paint trim, scrape windows, lay carpet, program thermostating, dawn to dusk, dawn to dusk. Swim four thousand yards every evening, music in the headphones drowning thought.
He didn’t know how much he depended on work to kill time until it came his turn to watch the neighborhood kids for the day. This was a chore that came up every month or so, depending on work schedules and the like. Watching all the adults leave as he made breakfast, herding all the tykes over to the McDows’ house, starting up the improvised games that usually came to him so easily … it was too slow to believe. There were six kids today, all between three and six. Wild child. Too much time to think. Around ten he rounded them up and they made a game out of walking down the paths to Oscar’s house. It was empty—with Kevin gone, the others were off to start a new project in Villa Park. So he got the kids to carry tiles from the stacks in the drive back to the hoist. Fine, that made a good game. So did scraping putty off windows in the greenhouses. And so on. Surprising how easily it could be made into a child’s game. He snorted. “I do kindergarten work.”
Onshore clouds massed against the hills, darkened, and it started to rain. Rain! First a sprinkle, then the real thing. The kids shrieked
and ran around in a panic of glee. It took a lot of herding to get them back home; Kevin wished he had a sheepdog. By the time they got there everyone around was out getting the raincatchers set, big reversed umbrellas popping up over every rainbarrel and cistern and pool and pond and reservoir. Some were automatic but most had to be cinched out. “All sails spread!” the kids cried. “All sails spread!” They got in the way trying to turn the cranks, until Kevin got out a long wide strip of rainbow plastic and unrolled it along a stretch of grass bordering the path. The rain spotted it with a million drops, each a perfect half sphere; shrieking louder than ever the kids ran down the little rise between houses and jumped onto the plastic and slid across it, on backs, bellies, knees, feet, whatever. Adults joined in when the raincatchers were set, or went inside to break out some dumpies, singing “Water.” The usual rain party. Water falling free from the sky, a miracle on this desert shore.
So Kevin kept an eye on his kids, and organized a sliding contest, and took off on a few slides himself, and got a malfunctioning raincatcher to work, and caught a dumpie from Hank as Hank pedaled past in a wing of white spray, throwing beer and ice cream like bombs; and he sang “Water” like a prayer that he never had to think about. And all of that without the slightest flicker of feeling. It was raining! and here he was going through the motions, sliding down the plastic strip in a great spray, frictionless as in a dream, heading towards an invisible home plate after a slide that would have had to begin well behind third base, he’s … safe! and feeling nothing at all. He sat on the grass soaked, in the rain, hollow as a gourd.
* * *
But that night, after an aimless walk on the hill, he came home and found the message light blinking on the TV. He flipped it on and there was Jill’s face. “Hey!”
He turned it on, sat before it. “—having trouble getting hold of me, but I’ve been in Atgaon and up to Darjeeling. Anyway, I just got into Dakka tonight, and I can’t sleep.” Strange mix of expressions, between laughing and crying. “I umped a game this afternoon back in Atgaon, I have to tell you about it.” Flushed cheeks, small glass of amber liquid on the table beside her. She stood suddenly and began to pace. “They have this women’s softball league I told you about, and their diamond is back of the clinic. It’s a funny one, there are trees in left field, and right in the middle of right center field there’s a bench, and spectators sit there during the games.” Laughter, brother and sister together, a world and several hours apart. “The infield is kind of muddy most of the time, and they have a permanent home plate, but it’s usually so muddy there that you have to set a regular base about four feet in front of the home plate, and play with that as home. And that’s what we did today.”
She took a sip from the glass, blinked rapidly. “It was a big game—the local team, sponsored by the Rajhasan Landless Coop, was taking on a champion team from Saidpur, which is a big town. Landowners from Saidpur used to control all the local khas land, which is supposed to belong to the government. There’s some resentment here still, so it’s kind of a rivalry.
“The champions arrived, and they were big women, and they had uniforms. You know how unie teams always look like they really know how to play. I saw some of the local team looking at them and getting worried, and all in all it was a classic underdog-overdog situation.
“The locals were actually pretty good—they looked ragged, but they could play. And the unies could play too, they weren’t just show. They had a big fat catcher who was what I would call neurotic, she would yell at the pitcher for anything. But even she could play ball.
“So they played the first few innings, and it was clear the unies had a lot of firepower. But the local team turned some great defensive plays. Their third baseman nabbed a couple of shots down the line, and she had a good arm, although she was so pumped up she kept almost throwing them away. But they got the outs. Their defense was keeping them in the game. They gave up a few runs, sure, but they got some, too—their center fielder came up with two women on base, and powdered a line drive that shot under the bench in right center, it scattered the spectators like a bomb!” She laughed. “Home run.”
Another slug from the glass. “So that made it four to three in favor of the unies. A tight game, and it stayed that way right to the end. You know how it gets tense at the end of a close game. The crowd was going wild, and both teams were pumped up.
“So.” She paused to take another sip. “Scotch,” she said, shivering. “So it got to the bottom of the ninth, and the locals had their last chance. The first batter flew out, the second batter grounded out. And up to bat came that third baseman. Everyone was yelling at her, and I could see the whites of her eyes all the way around. But she stepped into the box and got set, and the pitcher threw a strike and that third baseman clobbered it! She hit a drive over the left fielder’s head and out into the trees, it was beautiful. Everyone was screaming, and the third baseman rounded the bases as fast as she could, but the unies’ left fielder ran around out there in the forest and located the ball faster than I would have thought possible, and threw between trees to the shortstop, who turned and fired a bullet over the catcher’s head into the backstop, just as the third basemen crossed the plate!”
She stared into the screen, rolled her eyes. “However! In her excitement, the third baseman had run across the old home plate, the permanent one! Everyone there saw it, and as she ran toward her teammates they all rushed out at her, waving their arms and screaming no, wrong base, go back, and the crowd was screaming too, and it was so loud that she couldn’t hear what they were saying, I guess—she knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. Saidpur’s big boss catcher was running around the backstop chasing down the ball, and when the third baseman saw that she knew the play was still going, so she just flew through the air back toward the plate, and slid on her face right back onto the old home plate again. And that big old catcher snatched up the ball and fell right on her.”
Jill took a deep breath, had a drink of Scotch.
“So I called her out. I mean I had to, right? She never touched the home base we were playing with!
“So her whole team ran out and started yelling at me, and the crowd was yelling too, and I was pretty upset myself, but what could I do? All I could do was wander around shouting ‘She’s out! She didn’t touch the God-damned home plate that we’re playing with! Game’s over! She’s out! It’s not my fault!’ And they were all crying and screaming, and the poor coach was pleading with me, an old guy who used to live in Oakland who had taught them everything, ‘It was a home run and you know it was a home run, ump, you saw it, those home plates are the same,’ and so on and so forth, and all I could do was say nope, she’s out, those are the rules, there’s only one home base on the diamond and she didn’t touch it, I’m sorry! We must have argued for twenty minutes, you can see I’m still hoarse. And all that time the unies were running around congratulating themselves as if they had really won the game, it was enough to make you sick. They really were sickening. But there was nothing I could do.
“Finally it was just me and the coach, standing out there near the pitcher’s mound. I felt horrible, but what could I do? His team was sitting on the bench, crying. And that third baseman was long gone, she was nowhere to be seen. The coach shook his head and said that broke her heart. That broke her heart—”
And Kevin snapped off the TV and rushed out of the house into the night, shaking hard, crying and feeling stupid about it—but that drunken look of anguish on his sister’s face! That third baseman! He was a third baseman too. That broke her heart. To step in the box under that kind of pressure, and make that kind of hit, something you could be proud of always, and then to have it change like that—Night, the rustle of eucalyptus leaves. When our accomplishments rebound on us, when the good and the bad are so tightly bound together—It wasn’t fair, who could help but feel it? That broke her heart. That broke her heart.
And Kevin felt it.
9
Night in th
e dormitory, in the heat and the dark. Sounds of breathing, hacking cough, nightmare whimpers, insomniac fear. Smell of sweat, faint reek, that they could do this to us. There’s noise at the far end of the room, someone’s got a fever. One of the signs. Bleeding gums, vomiting, high fever, lassitude, disorientation. All signs. Trying to be quiet. They’re trying to talk him into calling the meds, going into the hospital. He doesn’t want to go of course, who would? They don’t come back. That there’s a place makes people want to stay here. Smell of fear. He’s really sick. They turn on the light in the bathroom to get a glow, and try to stay quiet and yet every man in the dorm is wide awake in his bed, listening. Meds are here. Kill all of them. Whispered conversation. Shifting him onto a stretcher, the sick man is crying, carried between beds and everyone is silent, no one knows what to say, then one shape rises up—“See you over there, Steve.” Several people say this, and he’s gone.
* * *
He took off into the hills. Up the faint track switchbacking up Rattlesnake Hill. Late sun pierced breaking clouds, pencil shafts of light fanned down over the treetopped plain. The eucalyptus grove on the lower south knob of the hill looked like a bedraggled park, the trees well-spaced, the ground beneath clear, as if goats were pastured there. Nothing but packed wet dirt and eucalyptus leaves. There were chemicals in those leaves that killed plants. Clever downunder trick. Stepping on soft green acorns and matted leaves. There are people like those trees, harmful to everything smaller around them, creating their own fine space. America. Alfredo. Tall, handsome, strong. But shallow roots. And fungicidal. Everything on this hill killed, so his space would be secure. So he would be a hundred. Where would he send his directable overhundred? Defense, no doubt. Create more business for his medtech. Business development, sure.
Everyone was a kind of tree. Ramona a cypress. Doris an orange tree, no a lemon tree. Old Tom a gnarled Sierra juniper, hanging on despite the dead branches. Oscar, one of the El Toro sycamores. Hank a manzanita, nature’s bonzai, a primal part of the hills. Kevin? A scrub oak. Strong limbed, always shedding, looks like it’s falling apart.