We looked at each other, his expression carrying the quiet selfdeprecation that usually held some hidden meaning. “Beer, Tonto?” he asked as he handed me an open Rainier and continued past with what appeared to be a tire iron in the other hand. I looked through the poolroom into the bar proper and could make out about eight people seated on stools, outlined by the fluorescent glow of the beer coolers. Big night. I took a sip and followed him to the far end of the room where he seemed to be preparing to tear apart the wall. Leaning against the offending structure he slipped the flat end of the tire iron behind the weenie-wood that made up the interior of the bar.
“You forget to pay your REA bill again?” He paused for a second to give me a dirty look and then put all 220 pounds into the tire iron and propelled the four-foot board from the wall, with nails still attached, to clatter at our feet. I bent from my vantage point to look at the ringshanked holes in the plaster surface that lay underneath the removed board. Henry’s face was, as always, impassive.
“Damn.” Without another word, he slipped the tire iron beneath the next board and popped it to the floor. Same result. “Damn.”
I figured it was time to ask, “Are we redecorating, or are we looking for something specific?” He gestured to the wall with a hand that pleaded and threatened at the same time.
“Fuse box.”
“You covered it up with boards?”
Another sidelong glance. “At least I have walls.”
Henry was one of the chosen few who had been to the cabin. His statement was hard to refute. “I’ve been thinking about getting an imitation sheepskin cover for my recliner.” This got a long look.
“Are you drunk?”
I gave the question thought. “No, but I’m working on it.” He grunted a little laugh and popped off another board, which added to the considerable pile that was collecting at our feet.
“Damn.” He placed the tire iron in the next board. “Cady call you?”
“No, the brat.”
“Huh . . . She called me.” He popped the board loose to reveal the gray cover of an ancient fuse box. “Yes.”
I turned to look at him. “What?”
He tapped the small, metal cover and glanced at me. “Fuse box.”
“Cady called you?” His eyes were dark and clear, the far one split by the strong nose that I knew had been broken at least three times, once by me.
“Yes.”
I tried to contain myself and sound casual, but he had me and he knew it. “When did she call?”
“Oh, a little while ago . . .” His casual was far more convincing than mine.
With a forefinger he pulled open the small metal box to reveal four fuses that looked as if they hadn’t been changed since Edison was a child. The box itself was rusted out in the back, victim of some age-old roof leak. The conduits surrounding it were rotten and peeled back, revealing frayed tendrils of green and black corroded wire. The four fuses were covered in a thick coat of dust and were surrounded by sockets, which held a strange patina of white and green crystals. They looked like two sets of angry eyes embedded in the wall, just waiting to unleash 220 volts into anything that came close.
He placed a hand on the uneven surface of the plaster where he had taken most of the wall apart and leaned all his weight against it. His other hand brushed back the crow-black hair, smattered with touches of silver, in an arch over his shoulder and down the small of his back. “One in four, I like the odds.”
“Did she say anything about calling me?”
“No. Hey . . .” He bristled with mock indignation and gestured to the fuse box. “I have a situation here.”
I tried to be helpful. “They’ve got little windows in them so you can see which one is blown.” He lowered his head and squinted into the box.
“It is not that I do not trust your home-improvement skills, even though I know you do not have any.” He carefully wiped the dust from the surface of the four fuses. “They are all black.”
“Do you have any extras?”
“Of course not.” He held up the roll of pennies that had been hidden in his front shirt pocket. “I have these.” He smiled the coyote smile, the one that had made offensive linemen part their hair in the middle, NVA officers sweat between their shoulder blades, and otherwise intelligent women occupy bar stools in his immediate vicinity. Henry was the dog that wouldn’t stay on the porch.
I watched with great apprehension as his fingers began twisting one of the rusted fuses from its corroded green outlet. The muscles on his forearm writhed like snakes rolling under sun-baked earth. To my knowledge, Henry had never lifted a weight in his life, but he still carried with him the tone of the warrior and was betrayed only by a very small amount of baggage at the middle. As the applied pressure began to take its toll, the glass knob turned and the remainder of the building went black. “Damn.”
Hoots and laughter came from the darkness as we stood there trying to see each other. “I don’t think that was it.” I listened to him sigh and replace the fuse, and the lights from the beer coolers once again lit up the far room. There was a smattering of applause from the patrons.
“She did not say anything about calling you.” He was still staring into the metal box, his odds having improved dramatically.
“So, what’d she have to say?”
“Nothing much. We talked about you.”
“What about me?” Throughout the entire conversation, he studied the fuse box with the half-smile that told me he didn’t take either the electrical crisis or my familial life all that seriously. Cady and Henry had a symbiotic, avuncular relationship that had led her into a quasi-bohemian lifestyle. She was professionally adept at billiards and darts, had majored in Native American Studies at Berkeley, his almost alma mater, had continued on to law school at the University of Washington, and was now an attorney in Philadelphia. When together, they spent the majority of their time whispering to each other, pointing toward me, and giggling. The thought of the two of them conspiring at long distance was enough to worry me but, with Ruby’s involvement, something was definitely up.
Deciding on the fuse diagonally opposite the first, Henry reached in and boldly twisted. The red neon horses that had stampeded across the parked vehicles outside flickered off to more cheers from the peanut gallery. From his lack of response, I wasn’t sure if Henry had noticed. “The pony . . .”
“Damn.”
He screwed the fuse back in. The neon roan paused and then leapt across the hood of the Bullet. The flurries were letting up; the bad weather had decided to whistle on down the Bozeman trail to the rail-heads. The bar held a kind of conspiratorial coziness what with the subdued light of the beer coolers filtering through the cracks in the dividing wall. The soft murmur of small talk provided a buffer against the landscape that was now scrubbed with snowflakes.
“So, what about me?”
He tapped one of the remaining fuses accusingly with an index finger. “She is worried that you are still depressed.”
“About what?” He looked at me, decided better of it, and looked back at the fuse box. I pushed off the wall and stepped carefully over the nail-laden boards that covered the floor. “I need another beer.”
“You know where they are.” I started to turn, but he caught me by tapping on one of the last two fuses. “The suspense is killing you, right?” I made a quick face, placed the empty beer bottle on the edge of the pool table, and bent over to pick up one of the boards. I spread my feet in a good, open stance and held the bark-covered board on my shoulder with both hands. This got a look. “You are going to knock me loose from this if I get electrocuted?”