Fellow Mortals: A Novel Read online

  “You ought to try an animal,” Henry says. He settles back and chews his food, pondering the notion, looking like a man feigning inspiration. “At least get off the torture kick you’re on. Your stuff’s great—don’t get me wrong, you’re better than what’s-his-name … the really famous sculptor.” He snaps a couple times, trying to remember. “Doesn’t matter,” Henry says. “I’m just thinking that you might shift gears to something else. What about a bear—”

  “I don’t need suggestions.”

  “Yeah, no. I wasn’t trying—”

  “Then don’t,” Sam says.

  “Sam, I’m sorry,” Henry says, hives rushing up his neck. “Shoot, damn it. I didn’t mean to apologize, either. I know I promised—”

  “I want to finish this wall before you go. We need the first four logs ready on the sides.”

  Henry goes without a second’s hesitation, sneaker untied and threatening to trip him. There’s a cowlick on his crown and when he jogs, it’s with the jerkiness of someone playing dodgeball.

  Sam keeps relaxing in the sun, sipping beer. He watches Henry wrestle with the logs on the pile. He’s lifted plenty worse but the morning’s worn him out and Henry’s skin begins to mottle as he’s scraping it along.

  Wingnut stands, looking back and forth between them. Sam gets up and strolls around the platform, trying to imagine where the furniture will go. He’ll have a table and a chair, a loft to lay a mattress, and a woodstove back against the innermost wall. He’ll need to get a water tank and hook it to a sink. He’ll have to dig an outhouse and pile up supplies.

  Henry struggles on, crimson to the ears—probably the color of a Pump-n-Go rose. Nobody would harbor a suspicion if he dropped, if he buckled from a heart attack and didn’t make it out.

  Sam’s walking with his beer, looking up to see the leaves again, and suddenly he’s bending at the waist around a log. It’s the one they raised to cut, balanced on the horses, and he’s walked directly into it and moved it with his gut. He drops the beer and pulls the log back, trying to arrest it, but he pulls too hard and rolls it into his hips.

  He stumbles in reverse, knocked beneath it with a bump. The horses start to tip and Sam tries holding up the log, but it’s all too rapid and impossible to stabilize. He and the horses topple down together. Now he’s lying on his back with the log across his chest. It rolls along his palms, moving to his neck. He wants to shout except the weight of it is resting on his diaphragm, squeezing out his breath and scraping at his chin. He can still hear Henry pulling wood across the clearing, too preoccupied to notice. Wing’s barking at the birds. The sun is overhead and there’s a bright-white cloud, like a rabbit or a lamb, shining in his eyes. He locks his jaw and pushes with everything he’s got, imagining a bench press, lifting it a foot. Once it’s up, he can’t sustain it and the log begins to fall. In a moment it’ll drop directly on his throat.

  Henry finally notices and runs to pick it up. He cups his hands beneath the end of the log and orders him to go. Sam shimmies in the dirt until he’s clear of it completely. Henry drops it and the two of them are still, breathing heavy.

  “Holy shit,” Henry says.

  Sam trembles there awhile, staring at the log. His beer has left a small dark puddle where it fell. Wing waggles up between them, thinking it was fun, lapping at the beer from the puddle and the spout. The little bright cloud covers up the sun and suddenly it’s dark and even chilly on the ground. Sam can see it in the shade without looking up, an afterglow that never quite settles in his eyes.

  “You should have let it fall,” he says.

  The red in Henry’s face darkens like a stain. He grabs Sam’s arm and says, “Knock it off.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Hey … look.” Henry’s eyes are so blue, they’re difficult to bear. “I don’t want to hear that crap. Understand?”

  “You don’t have the right—”

  “The hell I don’t,” Henry says.

  He loosens his grip and Sam escapes it with a flourish, shaking out his arm as if he’s broken free alone. Henry gets up. Sam walks away and stands aloof, not enough to look defeated, but his breathing comes in shudders and he wishes he could sit again. The sun returns, deepening his shadow on the ground, and he starts to think of Laura when he hears:

  “Come and help me with the log.”

  He tries ignoring it at first and yet he can’t, he really can’t. Henry’s standing like he always does, spitting on his hands, so insistent in his energy that Sam begins to move.

  “Why don’t you just go.”

  “Come on,” Henry says. “Over here. Chop-chop.” He lifts the end of it and holds it there, waiting for assistance.

  Sam approaches it with caution; it’s the log that almost killed him. Then he’s lifting it with Henry, which they do in perfect sync. He’s distracted by the weight and by the shudder in his arms. They have to feel it out and move at equal speed, careful of their footing on the uneven ground. Soon they reach the pile and the satisfaction’s mutual. They lower it in unison and gently put it down.

  13

  Saturday morning, mid-July, a salad of a day enticing Ava out—farm stands, flea markets, barbecues, lakes, fifteen hours of sunlight and everything in play. She’s slept late and feels both languorous and rushed, satiny with sleep but eager to begin. Henry’s up and dressed and packing a cooler in the kitchen, and at first she almost wonders if he’s filling it for them.

  “She’s awake!” Henry says.

  He hugs her so emphatically her breasts jelly up. She holds him in a cling and doesn’t let go. He’s gotten noticeably firmer in a few short weeks, widening his back and rounding out his biceps, and even though his appetite has steadily increased, his stomach is tight and he has more definition to his jaw. All from pulling weeds and clearing up a trail. She suspects he doesn’t eat half of what he packs, finding some excuse to give it all to Sam.

  “Let’s swim today,” she says, talking so close their mouths intermingle.

  “I promised Sam … I’m already late,” he says, lazy and aroused by the sugar of her breath.

  She slips a hand up his shirt and rubs the middle of his back while her hips sway counterrevolutions lower down.

  “Ava…”

  “Mmm.”

  “Babe, I got to go.”

  “Right,” she says, pushing him away.

  He kisses her, a quick little peck atop the head. She may as well start breakfast—it’s an hour past dawn—but when she opens up the fridge they’re out of orange juice and cheese. She makes a mental shopping list, adding tile scrub and dryer sheets, remembering the mildew in the shower, and the laundry, and a promise to the Finns that she would drive them to the mall. Before she cracks an egg, her day is cut in stone.

  “Good morning,” Nan says, walking into the kitchen.

  Ava greets her with a smile, especially when Nan holds the newspaper up. The paperboy’s lateness is a shared consternation: they’ve been phoning in complaints as a team for several weeks, increasingly aware of their united sensibilities. With Henry off at Sam’s and Joan doing puzzles, they’ve spent the last few weekends cleaning, shopping, cooking, and landscaping together. They’re growing peppers, squash, berries, peas, and heirloom tomatoes—the garden, and the home, cooperatively cultivated.

  “Sam says hi,” Henry tells Nan. “You wouldn’t believe those sculptures,” he adds for maybe the fiftieth time that week. “I hope you get to see them someday. You too, Av.”

  Nan and Ava trade a look about the rank of invitation. He’ll do anything for Nan, he’ll speed right off to buy Joan another puzzle, and whatever’s going on, he’s always there for Sam.

  “I’ll come today,” Ava says, turning from the stove.

  Henry holds the cooler like she’s threatening to snatch it.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “He wouldn’t know you’re coming. We should tell him. But he doesn’t have a phone and really, either way, he’s still pretty fragile.”

 
“Then why invite us out?”

  “I didn’t mean today. I thought you had to shop.”

  “You can drop me at the market,” Nan says, picking up a pad and reaching for a pencil. “I can shop and take the bus home.”

  “He doesn’t like talking when he’s sculpting,” Henry says.

  “Is he sculpting today?” Ava asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well. If he doesn’t want me there, he can charge me at the car and knock me over.”

  Henry puts the cooler down and fiddles with his whiskers. “Maybe just a real quick visit to the trailer. How long—”

  “I’ll be dressed in twenty minutes.”

  Henry stands there erect, gazing at the yard. Eventually he sighs and says, “Wing’ll be excited.”

  “Wing is staying here.”

  “He loves it out there!”

  “Two sweaty men and a dog is a lot to ask of a woman. I’ll entertain Sam. Nan and Joan can entertain Wing.”

  Nan writes Nylabone on the grocery list.

  “Fine.” Henry sulks. “But you’re the one who tells him.”

  * * *

  If Ava didn’t know better, she might have assumed that he was harboring a woman in the woods, a thought that makes her smile, since he can’t hide a Christmas gift without her knowing what it is, where he bought it, and how proud of himself he is for keeping it a secret. She talks little on the drive across town, calmed by the wind swirling up her hair. Henry’s quiet, too, and even when she wants to point something out—a double-seat bike, a license plate that reads DR FOOT—she keeps it to herself to see if Henry says it first.

  “Why didn’t you want me to come?”

  “Huh?” Henry says, drifting in the road. “What makes you think that?”

  “You said I shouldn’t come.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t want to pressure Sam is all. I can’t figure him out,” Henry says. “He seems happy one minute, then a black cloud hits him out of the blue. He got talking about suicide the other day.”

  Ava shuts the window right as Henry says it, and it sounds as if the word’s sucked air from the car. A classmate of Ava’s killed herself in high school—pills, coma, complications. No one saw it coming till it happened, at which point everybody swore they saw it coming, her death a kind of pale, backward shadow in their memory.

  “It’s good he’s staying busy,” Ava says. “He needs to feel alive, even if it hurts.”

  Her own philosophy of late, dubious at best. They’d planned to share a bath last night, and even though Henry made it home well before dinner, he’d been quick to eat and roughhouse with Wing before asking how her day was, pacing while she talked, and falling asleep before she finished undressing in the bedroom. She filled the bath, deciding she would take one alone, but the stillness of the water made her open up the drain. They had laundry in the washer, dishes in the sink. She put a blanket over Henry, pinched a snore strip onto his nose, and spent the next two hours cleaning house and feeling terribly alive.

  “It might take a year for any kind of normalcy,” she says.

  “If he makes it that long.”

  “We’ll have to make sure.”

  They come around the block and Ava’s bothered by the openness. The only time she saw Arcadia Street was coming here for Henry, when the trucks were in the road and both the houses were engulfed. It’s simpler now, and lonelier, and sadder with the trailer.

  “Here we are,” Henry says, stopping at the curb.

  She’s sorry to have come today and isn’t sure why, and she’s about to call it off when Sam appears around the back. He waves and does a double take a hundred feet away and notices it isn’t Wingnut sitting next to Henry. He straightens when he walks and moves a hand to his hair, thinks twice, and does a last-second comb with his fingers.

  “This is Ava!” Henry yells. “I should have told you she was coming. Ava, this is Sam.”

  She hasn’t even gotten her seat belt off. Sam offers her a hand when she steps from the car. His palm has the texture of a sawed piece of wood, like it needs a good sanding and a warm coat of oil. He looks at her without quite locking on her eyes and says, “It’s nice to meet you,” in the same polite voice he used on the phone.

  “Sorry to spring her on you.”

  “I made him bring me,” Ava tells him. “I can go if it’s a problem.”

  Sam shakes his head, not exactly answering.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ava says, expecting him to slump, but he watches her impassively and seems to grow taller in the pause. She gives him back his hand, embarrassed to have kept it. The yellow of her dress looks paler in the sun, and when the silence of the moment carries too long, she faces him again and says, “We brought an extra breakfast.”

  “Isn’t she great?” Henry says. “Let’s eat in the trailer. After breakfast I can drive—”

  “Let’s eat in the woods,” Ava says. “I mean, if that’s okay.”

  Sam reluctantly agrees by failing to answer either way.

  “Maybe you’d like to change before we go?” she thinks to add, giving him a chance to switch shirts and find deodorant.

  They walk across the lawn and Ava lags behind. Henry turns to Sam and whispers something private, likely an apology for bringing her along. She gets a peek inside the trailer when Sam opens the door. It’s spartan, neatly ordered: scarcely anything at all. Books, tools, a coffeepot. Nothing on the walls. There’s a power cord connected to an outdoor receptacle but otherwise he may as well be living in a box.

  Sam returns better dressed. He needs a shave, his hair is matted, and even fresh deodorant has limits, but his white shirt highlights the color of his skin and there’s a touch of equanimity about him.

  “Off we go,” he says.

  Henry’s at his side but Ava pulls him back, pretending that she wants to hold his arm in case she stumbles. But the path is clear of obstacles and relatively level and they walk between the ATV’s tire grooves, the Coopers in the back and Sam far ahead. He often vanishes completely when the trail makes a bend. Henry’s silent as can be and Ava doesn’t press, preferring now to study her surroundings more attentively. The air is full of fragrances that fill her with up with color: mushroom, loam, evergreen, and violet. Something’s in the trees, deeper in the shade, where she can’t quite see and where the trail would be invisible. She thinks of hiding out there, on a bed of soft fern, with the jigsaw blue through the overhead leaves. She would sleep. She would wake and find pollen in her hair and it’s delicious to imagine being free of any care.

  She’s startled to her senses by a cabin in a clearing. Half a cabin, rather: four walls without a roof or even windows, extra logs piled neatly near a smattering of saws. Henry tenses and his arm feels leaden in her hand, and when she looks at him he winces with a shrug.

  “He made me promise.”

  “Promise what?” Ava whispers, watching Sam across the way. “Tell me that you didn’t—”

  “No, I didn’t lift a thing. He didn’t want Peg to give him trouble with inspectors. He said to keep it secret.”

  “Not from me,” Ava says.

  “She loves it!” Henry yells, drawing Sam’s attention. They walk toward the cabin in the flickers of the sun. It blinds them here and there and Ava shields her eyes, sizing up Sam and the muscles of his arms. He carries a pair of crosscut stumps one at a time and sets them in the grass, apparently a good deal stronger than he looks.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have chairs,” he says. “I built a table, though.”

  It’s standing in the shade: small, jointed oak, immaculately made. He places it between the stumps and Ava puts the cooler down.

  “It’s perfect,” she says, claiming one of the seats. “What are you and Henry working on today?”

  “Nothing big,” Sam says, hesitating slightly. “I need to chop some firewood but Henry—”

  “He can do it,” Ava says, setting out the food.

  “Is that okay?” Henry asks,
like it wasn’t her idea.

  “Go ahead,” Ava says. “Just take it easy. We’ll be here.”

  She stares at him and tries to make it clear: let us talk. Henry blanks for a second, then nods conspiratorially, subtle as a whisper in a five-foot room.

  “Yeah, take a load off,” he says. “Just stay away from those pepper sandwiches she brought.”

  “I have bagels, too,” she says.

  “Isn’t she great?” Henry mutters, heading for the trees where the chain-sawed limbs are waiting to be split.

  The air is smoother in the clearing, like the middle of a lake. Ava settles on a stump and watches Henry start. He looks tremendous, sturdy-shouldered with the ax overhead, and yet he keeps glancing over, mindful of exertion. All at once the sun’s above the tree line, shining on the table and her pale, pale arms. Sam dwells on his bagel as a way of keeping quiet but he’s equally attuned to Ava’s pepper sandwich.

  “That’s your breakfast?”

  Ava smiles through a bite.

  “What do you put in that?” he asks.

  “Grilled red peppers, jalapeños, pepper jack cheese, and chipotle garlic mayonnaise. Now and then I dice some habanero in for kick.”

  The heat begins to peak and Ava sips her water. She perspires and her sweat feels vaporous and clean. She dabs her temple and relaxes with her chin toward the sky, radiating up in answer to the sun.

  “I’ve never understood the appeal,” Sam says, and even though her eyes are closed, she feels the rapt expression on his face.

  “When chefs prepare puffer fish,” she says, “they leave just enough poison to make your lips tingle. Danger’s part of the experience. You feel entirely alive after dinner.”

  “Have you ever eaten puffer fish?”