“Promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“Promise me I’ll die first.”
I tucked in my shirttail. “What are you saying?”
“I want you to promise that I will die before you.”
“What?”
“I don’t think I could stand to be left alone.”
“I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s go down to dinner.”
Reskin cleared his throat to announce that he was about to recite grace. He fitted a fist into a palm, set his elbows on either side of his plate, and closed his eyes. He paused to let his silence spread across the table. “Dear Lord,” he said, his voice a bit deeper. “First of all, let me ask You a question: Why such a big bird? This is a large tom and I’m not sure I’m worthy of him. But I thank You. We thank You. And thank You for allowing us once again to sit at this table as a family. Please watch over us, protect, though we may screw our brains out in the room next to our parents.” Laura sighed loudly, but he didn’t miss a beat. “And watch over our guest. He is a good man. One might hope better for him than my daughter, but You do work in mysterious ways.”
“James,” Edith complained.
“So, Lord, let us finally say thank You for the lovely meal before us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Though upset by her father, Laura did not cry. Instead, she loaded up on mashed potatoes and refused turkey.
The turkey was a little greasy, as game meat is likely to be, and strong of flavor. I couldn’t recall a tastier bird.
“Very tangy,” said Edith.
Reskin sat back in his chair and looked at her. “If you don’t like it, just leave it on your plate.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said it was tangy.”
“Of course, it’s tangy.” Reskin stuck a forkload of meat into his mouth. “Game birds have more flavor than your everyday, force-fed, overweight, crippled, domestic clones.”
He looked to me. “How do you like it?”
“It’s very good.”
“See,” he said.
“Jesus Christ,” Laura muttered.
Reskin slammed his fork down on the table.
“Lighten up,” said Edith.
He looked at me, again. “Do you hear them? On the one hand, my daughter. A painter with no visible inroads to the land of talent, an irresponsible sperm bank who excused an act of murder with the words, ‘It’s my body.’”
“James!” said Edith. “That’s enough!”
Laura was crying. She took more potatoes.
“And my wife,” Reskin went on. “A political groupie who has intimate fantasies about invalid presidents past.”
Laura got up and ran from the table. Edith collected breath, grew larger, stood, said, “At least I’m still a Jew?’ With that, she too was gone.
It was just me and Reskin. We ate on in silence turned the bird over and split the oysters. I studied this man. I didn’t understand him. He was spiritual and sensitive, yet as hard, mean, and vicious as anyone I had ever met. I didn’t understand his anger. I reserved judgment, being a newcomer to a scene with a long and complex history.
He stopped chewing and looked at me. “You think I’m a mean bastard.”
“Yes, sir.’
“Mad at me?”
I shrugged.
He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I’m sixty-two years old and I don’t know what to do with my life, don’t know if I’ve done anything in it so far.” He chuckled softly. “You’re a smart fellow. Have you figured any of this world out?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I read the papers and watch the news and I’m sure they’re lying to me. I used to get upset about it, but now I find it entertaining.” He shook his head as if to shake something free. “You’d think that in over thirty years as a doctor I would have learned something about the meaning of life, but I haven’t.” He took up his wineglass, raised it. “To these sad times.”
I drank with him.
Gaining the Door
The horses huddled together against the icy northern wind. Their exhalations condensed and rose in clouds, drifted away. Cody Wilson circled the corral and studied them. The horses were exhausted and winter was on.
“That’s right, Jake,” the aging Wilson said to his hand. “Gotta unshoe ’em and turn ’em out. That way they won’t be petty and nasty come spring. Petty and nasty. That’s how exposure to man will make a beast.”
Jake nodded, having heard it all before, and followed Wilson through the gate. He held the sorrel while Wilson pried his shoes off.
“So, you didn’t tell me how your wife’s leg is,” Wilson said.
“Fine.”
“She at home?”
“Came home the same day.”
“Hunh.” He stood and tossed the sorrel’s fourth shoe to the corner of the pen. “Grab the grey.”
Jake caught the young gelding.
Wilson bent down to work. “I remember when they’d keep you in the hospital for days for that sort of thing.”
“Same day,” Jake said.
“Hunh.”
They finished with the horses. Jake opened the gate. Wilson hung on the fence and watched them trot away.
“Well, there they go,” Jake said, loading his cheek with tobacco.
“There they go.”
The night rolled in colder and noiseless, with off and on flurries of snow. Wilson built a fire and sat in front of it. It felt good to be in out of the wind. He thought about the world outside. He thought he might never go to town again, or anywhere. He’d turn himself out, cut himself loose, rustle for sustenance and not grow fat. He might just sit where he was by his fire until there was no heat left, just a matterless flame.
He thought about songs that he had come to know in his life; he had never set out to learn them. He hummed and whistled a few while the fire made his feet hot. He recalled poems he’d read, but could not remember the words, only how they had made him feel. This seemed right, to remember just the feelings conjured.
Christmas was drawing near, but he refused to think of it. It was just another day. A day that would come and go as always, see him alone and leave him so.
He drank some whiskey and it warmed his gut. He cursed his house for being a magnet for cold winds. He cursed his wife for having found death before him. His children for having grown up and away. And he cursed himself for being an ornery son of a bitch, a man who had driven his family like stock and finally away. He’d have to turn himself out, he reasoned, and he laughed, thinking he was the man to whom he’d been too long exposed.
He got up, tied his boots, and bundled up in his down-filled parka, a gift from his children. Damned if he knew how a man was supposed to get any work done wrapped up like a fat snowman. He opened the door to find a steady snow falling.
The wind pressed against his back as he walked toward the road. He found himself desperately accepting the push of cold air. He tried to occupy himself by looking back on the year. Prices had been good, handsome even. But soon all thinking was gone. He walked, numb to all things, inside and out. He walked the six miles to town.
He stepped into the tavern and stomped the snow off his boots and some feeling into his legs. “I’m here,” he said, “and I walked and I’m on the prod.” He fell into a chair at a table near the door.
“What’ll it be, Cody?” the bartender asked.
“Whiskey.”
Wilson’s face burned as it thawed. His feet were heavy and numb. He sucked down one shot and nursed his way through another.
Two men came in, one tall, the other medium with a game leg.
“What’re you doing out, Wilson?” asked the tall man.
“I’m turned out.”
The lame man coughed into his fist as he slid onto a stool at the bar. “Didn’t see your truck outside,” he said.