Eventually Knute woke up and decided to go home. First she sat in that blue tuft and examined the grass marks on her bare legs and then she wondered is it better to try to understand life or is it better not to? Which makes you happier? She remembered a book of Dory’s that said the mystery of life is one with the clarity and she thought, Yeah, okay, makes sense. Fighting and anger don’t necessarily drive a person away. And love and friendship don’t necessarily keep a person from going away. She had S.F. but she was losing Max. She knew she would in the end. She just knew it.
fourteen
“Are you drunk?” asked Lorna.
“Maybe,” said Hosea. “I was drinking beer with Johnny. In the sun. A lot of beer, I don’t know how many, but a lot. Good beer, though, very good beer. We had a good time, just sitting there at his little picnic table and—”
“Hey, Hosea!” shouted Lorna over the phone. “Snap out of it. I get the picture.”
“Okay,” said Hosea. He was writing the name Johnny Dranger in the Soon To Be Leaving Algren column and Veronica Epp and three babies in the Moved Away column. “Okay,” he said again to Lorna. He slapped a hand over his right eye and tried to focus on the page. “I wanted to tell you what we were doing.”
“You were drinking beer in the sun, you already told me that. Call me when you’re sober, Hose, and please don’t make a habit of getting hammered with losers like Johnny Dranger. You’re going to be a father soon.”
“That’s right,” said Hosea, slurring his words.
“Man, that beer should have been mine,” Lorna continued. “I wouldn’t mind having a cold beer, it’s so fucking hot, and I’m so itchy, do you think one would hurt? Hosea? Hosea!”
“We were celebrating, Lorna,” said Hosea. He’d put his head down on the desk and had the phone resting on the side of his head so he could still hear her. His eyes were closed. His hands dangled down by the floor. “I’m so happy. Everything’s just … so good. I’ve got fifteen hundred. I’ve got it right.”
“Really?” asked Lorna. “How?”
“Johnny’s leaving,” Hosea said. “He wants to meet women.”
“Really?” asked Lorna.
“Yup,” said Hosea happily. “And fight fires all over the world.” Hosea could hear Lorna laughing at the other end. His lips slid into a kind of half smile. “Do you love me?” he whispered, and the phone fell off his head and onto the desk, and Hosea was sound asleep.
Knute went home. The sky was a beautiful shade of blue, dark and soft and warm, and she could hear people talking in their houses because all the windows were open, and she could smell barbecues, and maybe a bit of rain on its way, and she could hear a lawn mower off in the distance and a car with no muffler tearing down deserted Main Street, looking for a race, and the crickets were starting up but sounded a bit rusty, and in front of her house, on the road, was a small woollen mitten covered in dust. It was S.F.’s so she picked it up and took it in.
Dory and Summer Feelin’ were playing Junior Monopoly and eating ice cream. They didn’t think anything was wrong. “Hi, Mommy!” said S.F.
“Oh, Knute,” said Dory, “Max said you’d be late. There’s some pizza left on the counter if you’re hungry.”
She gave S.F. a kiss and said thanks to Dory. Then she walked into Tom’s room. He knew she was coming. He was awake and was wearing his glasses. Knute closed the door quietly and sat on the edge of his bed and began to cry. “I didn’t tell them,” said Tom. “They don’t know what happened.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Max told me.”
“He told you? Max came in here and talked to you?”
“No. I got up and went down and helped him clean up the glass and I put some hydrogen peroxide on his cuts. S.F. played outside the whole time with the neighbour kids.”
“So,” said Knute, “aren’t you going to tell me you told me so, about Max being the same old Max?”
“He was talking to a girl. A little girl. He had a job taking care of her in London, her and her baby brother, and he was calling her to tell her he wouldn’t be back. When he left he had told her he might be, and now he just wanted to tell her the truth.”
Knute looked at Tom. “He told you that?” she said. “And you believe it?”
“Yes, I do. He called her back after you had, well, interrupted him, and he apologized, and then he told her what he wanted to tell her.”
“That he wasn’t coming back,” said Knute.
“Right,” said Tom. “That he wasn’t coming back.”
“Because he wants to stay here?”
“Yes.”
“So where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he going home?”
“No, Combine Jo called here looking for him.”
“Oh God,” Knute said, and put her head in her hands.
“He can’t have gone too far,” said Tom. “He’s got a cast on his leg, and no car. Looks like Helen Keller dressed him this morning …”
“Oh God.”
“You know, Knutie,” said Tom, closing his eyes. “If you have fun with the guy …” Tom took a deep breath “… I hate advice,” he said. “But why don’t — if you have what you want — Why don’t—”
“Knutie!” Dory yelled from the kitchen. “It’s Jo on the phone. She’s wondering if you have any idea where Max could be.”
Hosea woke up from his nap with a stiff neck and a dry mouth. The room was much darker than it had been. He put the phone back where it belonged and put his notebook in the drawer. “I’ve got my fifteen hundred,” he whispered. “I’ve got the smallest town.” He sat at his desk with his hands folded in his lap and wondered, Was I coming or going? Well, he thought. I’m here now so I must be going. He stood up and walked to the open window and stared out at Main Street. It was completely deserted except for two small girls. They sat on the curb in the yellow light under the streetlight, playing a clapping game, and taking time out for sips from a Coke they were sharing. “Concen-tray-shun,” Hosea heard them chanting, “Concentration must begin-keep-in-rhyth-UM!” One of the girls slapped her thighs at the wrong time and both of them put their heads back and roared with laughter. “Okay, start again. Start again,” one girl said. “Okay, okay, hang on, okay, no, wait, okay,” said the other, and began to laugh again.
Hosea didn’t feel like going home. Tom, he thought. I’ll visit Tom. He was about to leave a note reminding Knute to spray the petunias with cockroach killer one more time, before July first, but then remembered that he’d be seeing her at Tom’s. Or, if she was out, he could leave the message there and she’d get it in the morning. Hosea left his office and his car, which he could barely remember parking, and set off for Tom and Dory’s. “Hello,” he said as he passed the girls on the curb. “Lovely summer evening, isn’t it?” The girl who’d been having a hard time concentrating was trying not to laugh, and nodded her head, and the other one said, “Mm hmmm.” She made a face at Hosea as soon as he had passed, and both girls burst into laughter yet again.
“C’mon, Summer Feelin’,” said Knute, “we’re going to find Max. Hurry up, let’s go.”
“Is he lost?” she asked.
“We’ll see,” said Knute. “You can go barefoot, c’mon. We’re taking the car.”
Dory stood up from the table. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Ask Tom,” Knute said. “He knows.”
“Tom knows?” asked Dory, as Knute and S.F. ran out the door.
“Ask him!” Knute yelled. “Wake him up!”
“Oh, Hosea,” said Dory, answering the door. “Is something wrong?”