Fellow Mortals: A Novel Read online

  “If you don’t want to help…” Sam says, growing cold.

  “No, God, it isn’t that,” Henry says. “I’ll definitely help. I was just … nothing. I was trying not to apologize again. I want to do this. Wait till Wing finds out. Assuming that’s okay…”

  “Sure,” Sam agrees. “As long as he isn’t running around the neighborhood. You don’t want Peg calling Animal Control.”

  “Right,” Henry says, freeing up his feet. “When do you want to start?”

  “Now,” Sam says.

  11

  Billy Kane’s worked at True Value for three years and bets that he could build a house from scratch, given money and time and no distractions, same as he could get in shape if he didn’t work forty hours a week and the gym fees weren’t so offensive. His entire life boils down to organizing screw drawers and mowing dandelion heads; next week it’s like he didn’t do a thing, and his manager and Sheri only notice that the screws are intermixed and the backyard’s a weed farm. Work leads to work, not some fantasy reward, and if his current income is any indication of the future, he’ll be working past retirement, right until he’s dead.

  He’s been stocking pesticide and fungicide this morning—he can almost taste the chemicals and feels a little poisoned. Cleary’s, Compass, Merit. Toxic, every one. There’s a satisfying name for everything he knows—gainful employment, home insurance, helpmate—and they all leave residues and odors in his nose.

  It’s dead in here today, nobody but pros who know exactly what they need and where to find it. They intimidate Billy, men with pipe dope in their fingernails and muscles you can only get at work sites, but then he notices a woman in the fertilizer aisle.

  “Can I help you find something?” Billy asks.

  She smiles up and shrugs—kind of yes, kind of no. She’s short and wearing office clothes, clearly on her lunch, and he can almost see a gap between the buttons of her blouse. She reads a pair of labels and compares them very closely.

  “This one’s popular,” he says, picking up a box.

  She shakes her head politely. “I need a lot of phosphorus.”

  “This one has it,” Billy says, pointing at the word.

  “No, it’s too much nitrogen. I need a better mix.”

  He laughs and puts the box away. “You really know your stuff.”

  She chuckles at the compliment and shows a pair of dimples. “I’m sort of a fanatic,” she confesses. “I spend an hour every day tending flowers in my yard.”

  “You smell like it,” Billy says.

  The dimples disappear.

  “I mean the flowers,” Billy stammers, “like you smell really nice.”

  She tightens up crisp, focusing on the shelf, and then she finishes comparisons and quickens her selection.

  “That’s a good one,” Billy says. “Let me carry that up for you.”

  “I think I’ve got it,” she decides. It’s an eight-ounce box.

  He watches her the whole way up toward the register and finally has to wave because she looks back and catches him. It’s right around lunch; he could linger in the break room, anywhere but here with the woman glancing over like she’s ready to report him.

  Billy’s walking to the back, jingling nails in his pocket—a handful he took, nothing anyone’ll miss—when he spots Henry Cooper up an aisle with a chain saw. Billy’s eyelid flickers and his groin goes soft, but before he has a chance to hustle out of sight, Henry turns around and brightens up in recognition. They’re the only people standing in the power tool department, just the two of them surrounded by the nailers and the drills.

  “Billy,” Henry says, like a long-lost pal.

  He ambles with the chain saw cradled in his arm. In a moment they’re together, shaking hands, face-to-face, Henry talking too insistently to fully comprehend.

  “I mean it, Bill,” he says. “If there’s something I can do for you and Sheri…,” and his own wife’s name, so affectionately spoken, makes the whole conversation feel private and familial.

  “And about that civil suit,” Henry says, “I understand completely. No hard feelings. You have every right to get what’s coming to you.”

  “Thanks,” Billy says. “No hard feelings either way.”

  He studies Henry carefully—bright teeth, good shave, a picture of health from his haircut to his tube socks, the kind of guy who doesn’t get drunk and never dreams of cheating on his wife.

  “I’m getting this for Sam Bailey,” Henry says. “He’s working in the woods … Of course you live right there. He’s got another saw except it isn’t very good.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Oh, you know,” Henry says, now evasive. “Cutting wood, keeping busy.”

  “That’s good,” Billy says. Kill his wife, buy him a saw. “If he needs something else, tell him I’m around.”

  “I’ll let him know.” Henry beams. “Listen, though, I’d better get going. It was great seeing you, Billy. Give my best to Sheri, and best of luck with all your renovations.”

  “You bet. Brandon up there can ring you out.”

  “Thanks!” Henry says, a regular VIP with the cashier’s name in his head, and he shakes Billy’s hand a second time and walks away satisfied and flush.

  Billy stands there, staring at the back of Henry’s scalp, right where the barber leveled off his hair. Plenty more time to chase him up the aisle. Plenty more to say, things occurring to him now. Instead he holds the nails in the bottom of his pocket, squeezing till it feels like a real man’s pain.

  In the late afternoon after Billy’s out of work, he looks for Henry’s car but doesn’t see it on Arcadia Street. Sam’s trailer seems abandoned but beside it, near the trees, there’s an ATV that Billy’s never seen. It’s a hauler with a cargo bed, obviously used, with a drab orange body and a big set of wheels. Billy parks the car and saunters back to have a look. There’s a trail through the woods—when did that get cleared?—but it curves out of sight less than thirty yards in. He checks the ATV again. The engine feels warm and Henry’s chain saw is resting in the middle of the bed. He thinks of hopping on to get a feel of what it’s like but suddenly the trailer bangs open right behind him.

  “Sam,” Billy says, jerking up straight.

  Sam freezes at the door, watching him intently.

  “I came to say hello. I was looking at your ride. Really sweet,” Billy says, checking out the tires. He smiles at the chain saw and says, “I sold this to Henry at the store. Just this morning. If you need to swap it out…”

  “That’s the one I wanted.”

  “Great,” he says. “You can always change your mind. I’ve got to say, I can’t believe you’re talking to the guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Henry Cooper,” Billy says, lowering his voice. He walks a little closer to the trailer, man-to-man. “If he’s giving you any trouble…”

  “I asked him here,” Sam says. He steps down to the ground, locks the door, and walks past Billy to the ATV, where he lays a heavy backpack snug against the chain saw.

  “Why?” Billy asks. “He killed your fucking wife.”

  Sam answers but he fires up the engine when he speaks, drowning out the words and kicking up exhaust. Then he rumbles up the path, leaving Billy on his own. Go home, he might have said, or go to hell. Either way.

  * * *

  Billy doesn’t talk much before and during dinner. When Sheri doesn’t ask, he finally has to tell her.

  “You’ll never believe who came in the store.”

  “Who,” Sheri answers, deadening the question. She’s preoccupied with dolloping Cool Whip onto her berries.

  “Henry Cooper,” Billy says.

  She sucks her finger with a snick.

  “He apologized again. Walked right up and tried to shake my hand. Can you believe this guy? He said no hard feelings about the lawsuit, like he’s letting us sue his ass into the ground. He was buying a chain saw for Sam Bailey. I talked to Sam tonight. He got an ATV.”


  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Now he’s lost his train of thought because she couldn’t follow along. He plays it backward in his head: dinner, go to hell, sweet ride, Henry Cooper.

  “I don’t get it,” Billy says. “Sam told me he wants to be alone but now the two of them are clearing an ATV trail together? I mean, Jesus.”

  “What did you say?”

  “When?”

  “To Henry. At the store.”

  “I turned and walked away.”

  Sheri closes up the fridge. “That’s it?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Punch him in the nose?”

  Sheri looks at him and blinks and twists a button on her blouse. “You didn’t say anything?”

  “I guess I could have shared my feelings,” Billy says. “It’s tougher when the other guy’s holding a chain saw.”

  Sheri laughs out loud. It’s like the bark of a Chihuahua. “Did you think he’d fire it up and chase you through the aisles?” Then she loses it completely, picturing the scene. Billy scowls at his hand where he pricked it with the nails. “I’m sorry,” Sheri says, noticing he’s mad, pinker than a girl being tickled in the ribs. She finally simmers down, looking ravaged and relieved.

  “What would you have said?” Billy asks.

  “I’m not the one who’s crucified him every day since it happened.”

  “Which I’ve never understood.”

  “It was an accident!” she says. “I could see if you were Sam…”

  What a broken record. He wouldn’t trade places with the guy, not at all, but at least Sam Bailey has a real fresh start. He can buy a new house, find a woman when he’s ready. Everybody else has to fix what’s left, doing all this work and spending all this money, just to get back to where they already were.

  She turns away and eats her berries at the counter. Billy scans the news and finds some interesting stories, but before he has a chance to make nice and change the subject, Sheri’s heading upstairs.

  “Leave the dishes,” she instructs.

  He waits until she’s gone and gets another beer. The second-floor bathroom’s directly overhead, and when the water starts flowing through the pipes in the wall, he knows she’s in the shower and it wrings Billy’s stomach, thinking that she’s naked up there. Out of reach. He considers going up and standing at the door, but he smells his own armpits and really needs a shave. Sheri wouldn’t touch him, let alone enjoy it. So he stands on the chair and puts his hand against the ceiling, picturing her foot mere inches from his palm, and then he walks out back and listens to the trees—land he might have bought if he had known that it was selling.

  12

  “Careful over here,” Sam says.

  He’s standing with a log balanced on a pair of sawhorses. They laid it there to notch it, sixteen feet of solid pine, easier to cut when he doesn’t have to stoop.

  “It’ll stay,” Henry says, dismissing it like every other danger in the woods.

  “I mean it,” Sam tells him. “This one’s barely staying put.”

  They’d cleared a path fairly quickly for the ATV and by the end of the first week, Sam was driving tools and bags of concrete into the clearing. After that they cut, delimbed, and dragged more than sixty young pines out of the woods, beginning with the nearest trees but roaming ever farther in the search for arrow-straight, eight- to ten-inch diameter trunks. A number had been cut a half mile out and there were days when all they got were three or four logs. In addition to the wood, they also gathered rocks. Sam built a two-man sling to carry them out and it was backbreaking work, hiking through the forest with a hundred pounds of weight swaying in between them. They built the foundation early this week but skipped proper footings; there was simply no way to bring enough concrete to pour below the frost line. Henry isn’t worried—pioneers did without—but Sam keeps thinking that it might become a problem. Too late now, Henry told him, and he’s right: the mortar’s set and they’ve begun to place the logs.

  The flat-cut sills are in position on the stones, fastened tight with anchor bolts and ready for the walls. They’ve set the girder on the piers, laid the joists, and nailed the flooring. It’s a satisfying platform, ten feet wide and fourteen long, its newness in the clearing seeming natural and clean.

  “Taking a leak,” Henry says.

  The two of them have found an easy rhythm in the work, most of their exchanges practical and brief. Turkey or bologna? Watch your head there. Stop. On the very rare days when Henry doesn’t visit, Sam sculpts from dawn to dusk, knowing if he doesn’t, then he’ll never leave the trailer. He’s gotten more muscular and calloused from the labor, able to exert himself for hours and rejuvenate fully overnight. He has energy to burn, a healthy spring he hasn’t felt since high school. He eats because he needs it, falls asleep fast, and wakes without cobwebs, but standing here now with the cabin floor completed, he begins to see the permanence of all his recent whims.

  Henry zips up and says, “I brought meatball sandwiches and coleslaw.”

  “I got that beer you like.”

  “Great.”

  Wing flounders in the weeds. He tries to bite a wasp and runs toward the cabin, where he basks in a sunny patch of flooring while they eat.

  “How are Nan and Joan?” Sam asks.

  “They’re okay,” Henry says. “Settled in. They’re looking for a house.”

  “Must be tough.”

  “I don’t think their hearts are really in it.”

  “I mean about sharing your home,” Sam says. “How big’s your place?”

  It’s the most they’ve openly talked in one continuous shot and Henry puts his sandwich down, a move more instinctual than courteous, it seems, with his stomach rumbling audibly and coleslaw sticking to his mustache.

  “Fifteen hundred and thirty square feet, give or take,” Henry says. “That’s according to the public record but it feels a lot bigger, more like sixteen or seventeen hundred.”

  Sam’s amused by his precision and his willingness to share. He’d likely tell him anything without reservation.

  “What’s your credit card number?”

  “Why?” Henry asks. “You need supplies?”

  Sam shakes his head and takes a long sip of beer. “I was looking at my card the other day and noticed that the numbers made a pattern.”

  Henry reaches into his pocket and surrenders his entire wallet. Sam plays along, reads the card, and says, “No, it must be nothing.”

  “Check the other cards.”

  Even after Sam empties out the wallet, Henry doesn’t ask him what the pattern might have been. Sam reads his driver’s license. Organ donor: check. He has twenty-seven dollars and a photo of his wife.

  “How’s Ava holding up?”

  Henry glances at his sandwich. “She’s fine. She’s great. It was oil and water with her and Nan but things are getting better. Thanks for asking, though. I’ll tell her you were wondering.”

  “She doesn’t mind you being here?”

  “No, of course not,” Henry says. “She encouraged it. I wasn’t sure I should … I mean, the first time I came, before we met…”

  He trails away, lost, both hands on his beer. Sam continues watching him and eating in the lull.

  “She worries,” Henry says, pressured to continue. “Ever since my surgery…”

  “What surgery?”

  “I got a coronary stent last year. I’m still on Coumadin. It’s why I bleed like a hog with every little scratch.”

  “Is it serious?” Sam asks, twisting his bottle into the dirt.

  “Nah, it’s no big deal,” Henry says. “Everybody has stents.”

  “I wouldn’t have had you help…”

  “Stop—you sound like Ava,” Henry laughs, looking panicked. “I had to fight three months before she let me use the mower. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s not an issue. That’s the truth.”

  He picks his sandwich up and finally takes a good round bite. Sam reclines on his e
lbows, looking overhead, following the pixilated motion of the leaves.

  “You fight a lot?” Sam asks.

  Henry makes a noise swallowing his food.

  “Me and Ava? No, you know … just married-couple stuff.” He puts his wallet back together, studying the picture. “I try to keep her happy so we’re always pretty good. I used to get her a flower every Friday after finishing my route. You’d be surprised how nice the roses at the Pump-n-Go are.”

  Sam thinks of how he used to leave Laura little notes, scraps of paper in her coat or in the visor of her car—anywhere she’d find them when he wasn’t right beside her. They were short, like a lyric or a weird phrase they’d laughed about together. Maybe just hello or a drawing of a bird. He did it all the time the year that they were dating. Laura teased him for it, calling him the sensitive artiste, but that was half the charm—the element of play. Eventually he stopped. She mentioned it the month she accepted the late shift at the hospital pharmacy. They struggled with the rhythm of their separated days and he began to write her notes again, tucking them into her pockets and under the cap of her thermos, knowing she would find them in the middle of the night. But it wasn’t the same. He was too self-conscious, too aware he would have skipped it if she hadn’t brought it up. He finally let it go. It seemed a lot of work. He’s thought about it often in the weeks since the fire, how it could have been the last thing he said before she died instead of bye or see you later from the bottom of the stairs.

  “What are you sculpting next?” Henry asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  He’s completed three more figures since The Reacher and The Prisoner with the wound—a man below an outcrop, pushing up the rock; another man shouldering the whole upper tree; and his favorite of them all, the one he calls The Gazer, hidden farther back above a clearwater brook. It’s a sugar maple, fallen horizontal like a bridge, with its uprooted trunk settled on the bank. He cut the tree in half, leaving just enough wood to form the shoulders and the head. The figure is a youth gazing down at his reflection, one hand clasping at his heart, the other reaching down toward a pool ringed with stones. In the evenings, Sam’s been covering the trunk in dirt and moss. Now it blends like it’s always been a feature of the bank, as if a boy had really stared until the forest overgrew him.