Louis came back later feeling small. No one asked him to examine Norma
Crandall; when he crossed the street (rud, he reminded himself, smiling), the lady
had already retired for the night. Jud was a vague silhouette behind the screens of
the enclosed porch. There was the comfortable squeak of a rocker on old linoleum.
Louis knocked on the screen door, which rattled companionably against its frame.
Crandall's cigarette glowed like a large, peaceable firefly in the summer darkness.
From a radio, low, came the voice of a Red Sox game, and all of it gave Louis Creed
the oddest feeling of coming home.
'Doc,' Crandall said. 'I thought that was you.'
'Hope you meant it about the beer,' Louis said, coming in.
'Oh, about beer I never lie,' Crandall said. 'A man who lies about beer makes
enemies. Sit down, doc. I put an extra couple on ice, just in case.'
The porch was long and narrow, furnished with rattan chairs and sofas. Louis
sank into one and was surprised at how comfortable it was. At his left hand was a
tin pail filled with ice-cubes and a few cans of Black Label. He took one.
'Thank you,' he said, and opened it. The first two swallows hit his throat like a
blessing.
'More'n welcome,' Crandall said. 'I hope your time here will be a happy one, doc.'
'Amen,' Louis said.
'Say! If you want crackers or somethin', I could get some. I got a wedge of rat
that's just about ripe.'
'A wedge of what?'
'Rat cheese.' Crandall sounded faintly amused.
'Thanks, but just the beer will do me.'
'Well then, we'll just let her go.' Crandall belched contentedly.
'Your wife gone to bed?' Louis asked, wondering why he was opening the door
like this.
'Ayuh. Sometimes she stays up. Sometimes she don't.'
'Her arthritis quite painful, is it?'
'You ever see a case that wasn't?' Crandall asked.
Louis shook his head.
'I guess it's tolerable,' Crandall said. 'She don't complain much. She's a good old
girl, my Norma.' There was a great and simple weight of affection in his voice. Out
on Route 15, a tanker truck droned by, one so big and long that for a moment
Louis couldn't see his house across the road. Written on the side, just visible in
the last light, was the word ORINCO.
'One hell of a big truck,' Louis commented.
'Orinco's near Orrington,' Crandall said. 'Chemical fertilizer fact'ry. They come
and go, all right. And the oil tankers and the dump trucks, and the people who go
to work in Bangor or Brewer and come home at night.' He shook his head. 'That's
the one thing about Ludlow I don't like anymore. That frigging road. No peace from
it. They go all day and night. Wake Norma up sometimes. Hell, wake me up
sometimes, and I sleep like a goddam log.'
Louis, who thought this strange Maine landscape almost eerily quiet after the
constant roar of Chicago, only nodded his head.
'One day soon the Arabs will pull the plug and they'll be able to grow African
violets right down the yellow line,' Crandall said.
'You might be right.' Louis tilted his can back and was surprised to find it
empty.
Crandall laughed. 'You just grab yourself one to grow on, doc.'
Louis hesitated and then said, 'All right, but just one more. I have to be getting
back.'
'Sure you do. Ain't moving a bitch?'
'It is,' Louis agreed, and then for a time they were silent. The silence was a
comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a
feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced
until now. He felt ashamed of his casual thoughts about free medical advice
earlier.
On the road a semi roared by, its running lights twinkling like earthstars.
'That's one mean road all right,' Crandall repeated thoughtfully, almost vaguely,
and then turned to Louis. There was a peculiar little smile on his seamed mouth.
He poked a Chesterfield into one corner of the smile and popped a match with his
thumbnail. 'You remember the path there your little girl commented on?'
For a moment Louis didn't; Ellie had commented on a whole catalogue of things
before finally collapsing for the night. Then he did remember. That wide mown
path winding up through the copse of trees and over the hill.
'Yes, Ido. You promised to tell her about it sometime.'
'I did, and I will,' Crandall said. 'That path goes up into the woods about a mile
and a half. The local kids around Route 15 and Middle Drive keep it nice, because
they use it. Kids come and go… there's a lot more moving around than there used
to be when I was a boy; then you picked a place out and stuck to it. But they seem
to tell each other, and every spring a bunch of them mows that path. They keep it
nice all the summer long. They know it's up there. Not all of the adults in town
know it's there—a lot of them do, of course, but not all, not by a long chalk—but
all of the kids do. I'd bet on it.'
'Know what's there?'
'The pet cemetery,' Crandall said.
'Pet cemetery,' Louis repeated, bemused.
'It's not as odd as it prob'ly sounds,' Crandall said, smoking and rocking. 'It's
the road. It uses up a lot of animals, that road does. Dogs and cats, mostly, but
that ain't all. One of those big Orinco trucks run down the pet raccoon the Ryder
children used to keep. That was back—Christ, must have been in '73, maybe
earlier. Before the state made keeping a 'coon or even a denatured skunk illegal,
anyway.'
'Why did they do that?'
'Rabies,' Crandall said. 'Lot of rabies in Maine now. There was a big old St
Bernard went rabid downstate a couple of years ago and killed four people. That
was a hell of a thing. Dog hadn't had his shots. If those foolish people had seen
that dog had had its shots, it never would have happened. But a 'coon or a skunk,
you can vaccinate it twice a year and still it don't always take. But that 'coon the
Ryder boys had, that was what the oldtimers used to call a "sweet 'coon". It'd
waddle right up to you—gorry, wa'n't he fat!—and lick your face like a dog. Their
dad even paid a vet to spay him and declaw him. That must have cost him a
country fortune!
'Ryder, he worked for IBM in Bangor. They went out to Colorado five years ago…
or maybe it was six. Funny to think of those two almost old enough to drive. Were
they broken up over that 'coon? I guess they were. Matty Ryder cried so long his
mom got scared and wanted to take him to the doctor. I s'pose he's over it now,
but they never forget. When a good animal gets run down in the road, a kid never
forgets.'
Louis's mind turned to Ellie as he had last seen her tonight, fast asleep with
Church purring rustily on the foot of the mattress.
'My daughter's got a cat,' he said. 'Winston Churchill. We call him Church for
short.'
'Do they climb when he walks?'
'I beg your pardon?' Louis had no idea what he was talking about.
'He still got his balls, or has he been fixed?'
'No,' Louis said. 'No, he hasn't been fixed.'
In fact there had been some trouble over that back in Chicago. Rachel had
wanted to get Church spayed; had even made the appointment with the vet. Louis
cancelled it. Even now he wasn't really sure why. It wasn't anything as simple or
as stupid as equating his masculinity with that of his daughter's tom, nor even his
resentment at the idea that Church would have to be castrated to make sure that
the fat housewife next door wouldn't need to be troubled with twisting down the
lids of her plastic garbage cans so Church couldn't paw them off and investigate
what was inside—both of those things had been part of it, but most of it had been
a vague but strong feeling that it would destroy something in Church that he
himself valued—that it would put out the go-to-hell look in the cat's green eyes.
Finally he had pointed out to Rachel that they were moving to the country, and it
shouldn't be a problem. Now here was Judson Crandall, pointing out that part of
country living in Ludlow consisted of dealing with Route 15, which was very busy,
and asking him if the cat was fixed. Try a little irony, Dr Creed—it's good for your
blood.
'I'd get him fixed,' Crandall said, crushing his smoke between his thumb and
forefinger. 'A fixed cat don't tend to wander as much. But if it's all the time
crossing back and forth, its luck will run out, and it'll end up there with the Ryder
kids' 'coon and little Timmy Dessler's cocker spaniel and Missus Bradleigh's
parakeet. Not that the parakeet got run over in the road, you understand. It just
went feet up one day.'
'I'll take it under advisement,' Louis said.
'You do that,' Crandall said, and stood up. 'How's that beer doing? I believe I'll
go in for a slice of old Mr Rat after all.'
'Beer's gone,' Louis said, also standing, 'and I ought to go, too. Big day
tomorrow.'
'Starting in at the University?'
Louis nodded. 'The kids don't come back for two weeks, but by then I ought to
know what I'm doing, don't you think?'
'Yeah, if you don't know where the pills are, I guess you'll have trouble.'
Crandall offered his hand and Louis shook it, mindful again of the fact that old
bones pained easily. 'Come on over any evening,' he said. 'Want you to meet my
Norma. Think she'd enjoy you.'
'I'll do that,' Louis said. 'Nice to meet you, Jud.'
'Same goes both ways. You'll settle in. May even stay a while.'
'I hope we do.'
Louis walked down the crazy-paved path to the shoulder of the road and had to
pause while yet another truck, this one followed by a line of five cars headed in the
direction of Bucksport, passed by. Then, raising his hand in a short salute, he
crossed the street (road, he reminded himself again) and let himself into his new
house.
It was quiet with the sounds of sleep. Ellie appeared not to have moved at all,
and Gage was still in his crib, sleeping in typical Gage fashion, spreadeagled on
his back, a bottle within easy reach. Louis paused there looking in at his son, his
heart abruptly filling with a love for the boy so strong that it seemed almost
dangerous. He supposed part of it was simply an emotional displacement for all
the familiar Chicago places and Chicago faces that were now gone, erased so
efficiently by the miles that they might never have been at all. There's a lot more
moving around than there used to be… used to be you picked a place out and stuck
to it. There was some truth in that.
He went to his son, and because there was no one there, not even Rachel, to see
him do it, he kissed his fingers and then pressed them lightly and briefly to Gage's
cheek through the bars of the crib.
Gage clucked and turned over on his side.
'Sleep well, baby,' Louis said.
He undressed quietly and slipped into his half of the double bed that was
for now just a mattress on the floor. He felt the strain of the day beginning to pass.
Rachel didn't stir. Unpacked boxes bulked ghostly in the room.
Just before sleep, Louis hiked himself up on one elbow and looked out of the
window. Their room was at the front of the house, and he could look across the
road at the Crandall place. It was too dark to see shapes—on a moonlit night it
would not have been—but he could see the cigarette ember over there. Still up, he
thought. He'll maybe be up for a long time. The old sleep poorly. Perhaps they stand
watch.
Against what?
Louis was thinking about that when he slipped into sleep. He dreamed he was
in Disney World, driving a bright white van with a red cross on the side. Gage was
beside him, and in the dream Gage was at least ten years old. Church was on the
white van's dashboard, looking at Louis with his bright green eyes, and out on
Main Street by the 1890s train station, Mickey Mouse was shaking hands with the
children clustered around him, his big white cartoon gloves swallowing their
small, trusting hands.