Blue Stew (Second Edition) (23 page)

“No. It wasn’t terrifying at all. I didn’t sober up all the way. I reached this middling point where I started thinking, you know,
maybe
I should think about this more. And then, randomly, I caught on the shoreline, and I pulled myself out.”

“Then what did you do, lost in the woods, alone and freezing?”

Victim Number Two laughed quietly, and Walter laughed with him: The reporter didn’t know how
not
to sensationalize, even as Victim Two rebuffed him so entertainingly with his blithe words and tone. This was fast solidifying Walter’s choice to avoid giving any interviews himself, in fact.

“I walked. I just walked. I didn’t mind the cold. I didn’t mind being lost, not in that sense. I was too lost
mentally
to care. I considered killing myself a few times . . . but I guess I never did. Then I reached the road, recognized where I was, and I walked through the night back here, to my apartment.”

“You say you never tried to contact anyone. What have you done with yourself all week long?”

“I slept. I slept so hard that it’s a wonder I ever woke. Then I sat, borderline comatose, contemplating suicide, watching TV. I only ate after I’d been here two days.”

“And you made no effort to retrieve your car from the field?”

“I had no need for it.”

There was a pause in which Walter could almost see the unseen man nod his head.

“Any guess as to why your place here never was searched, or your landlord never was alerted to the situation?”

“Poor police work and a lazy landlord?”

“
Okay
.  . . . You indicated that your mind has not yet returned to normal, even after learning the truth of what happened to you that night. Obviously you’re traumatized. Do you plan on seeing a therapist, now?”

“What would a therapist do for me?” For the first time, Walter found Victim Number Two’s tone to be less amusing and a little more disconcerting.

“Well . . . help you sort out your
real
frame of mind from your
drugged
frame of mind?”

“
That’s
the problem. There’s
truth
in what I felt while on the drug, the Blue Stew. The world has
never
made more sense than it did that night, when I threw myself into the river. It has slowly made less sense, ever since.”

An alarming shudder occurred in Walter’s mind. He bent over fast and fumbled for the TV set’s power button.

He didn’t want to hear any more.

Deep down, Walter knew that his refurbished frame of mind was in the fragile infantile stages—he couldn’t expose himself to these kinds of ideas yet. It was too dangerous.

When life is what you make it, truth becomes relative.

•   •   •

Nigel was perfectly willing to act as Walter’s chaperone that day.

It began with an innocent request for a lift to the dump, where Walter wanted to drop off the four overloaded bags of trash that he’d stacked outside his front door. Then, when Nigel got there, Walter realized he really should take the opportunity to use Nigel’s washer and dryer, too. After that, Walter reluctantly—only because he knew the answer would certainly be yes—asked for a ride to the nearest supermarket, twenty minutes away, where he wanted to replenish his food supply with more nutritious products than the usual frozen dinners.

It was only after Walter had unloaded all the bags of food into the fridge and cupboards, and had started folding his clean laundry on the living room floor, that Nigel, who had suspiciously stated that he wanted to hang around, brought it up.

“Walter, if you want I can help you sort out your insurance claim with the van. Then, maybe we can swing down to the used car shop on Fuller Street.”

Walter looked up after tossing a pair of folded boxers into their designated pile. He sighed before saying, “Wow.
Yeah
. That would be amazing. You’re amazing.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

•   •   •

At the end of that busy Saturday, Walter chose to host what he dubbed a “housewarming party” at his “new” place. Through the afternoon, in his few spare moments of thought, he had conceived it as a larger gathering including many people from his extended, neglected pool of friends—those that had come to his first, failed intervention, mostly. But, as the day wore on and wore him down, the concept downsized in his mind to just the three usual suspects.

The choice to downsize was impeded for a while by one mental snag. At the core of the initial concept had been the idea that he could have Maddie Wendell over, and from there reassess her interest in him without taking any large, awkward steps. The snag snapped loose when he realized that the thought of taking a large, awkward step with Maddie did not bother him at all. When he thought about it, such social inhibitions seemed pretty small after all he’d been through.

Nigel was arranging chips and veggies and dip on the coffee table and Jamie was sorting through a stack of board games when there came a quick knock on the door. Walter, washing late-lunch dishes in the kitchen, slipped into the living room at the same time as Henry.

Pulling off his cardigan jacket, Henry asked, “Who else is here? Who’s yellow VW is that?”

Nigel pointed at Walter. Henry’s neat black beard lifted as he smiled at him.

“Yep,” said Walter. “I’m mobile again. I got one that doesn’t break down if you drive it through a puddle, too.”

•   •   •

Throughout the evening, mention of Victim Number Two was kept to a minimum, likely because everyone privately felt that it was Walter’s place go there or not go there as he chose. The amazing and surprising nature of his story
was
agreed upon initially, but because Walter remained conspicuously mute on the matter, it was soon dropped and never retrieved.

Otherwise, it was another happy evening with friends, and a more prolonged one this time, too, for Walter no longer harbored discolored spots in his life that required immediate tending.

At any rate, there was nothing he could tend to
that
night.

Jamie Astley was a pretty shapeless girl, but, in spite of this, throughout the evening Walter had trouble keeping his eyes from falling on certain parts of her skinny body, especially whenever he caught her leaning over to move her piece on the board or to grab a snack. Every time, the lust mingled with guilt, for Nigel was such a great friend. Then, at some point midway through the night, all this fell away in place of a powerful new insight: like it or not, he was behaving like a normal guy.

Soon after this, Walter recognized that the short bursts of elation for stray bits of life—which he’d been experiencing throughout the day yesterday—had more or less leveled out that day. Now, instead, there were growing stretches in which he simply felt
normal
.

•   •   •

Chewing greedy spoonfuls of Cheerios, tired eyes glued to the TV set, Walter breakfasted alone on his sofa the next morning. If anyone had asked, it would’ve taken him a second to say what he was eating or what he was watching.

His mind was already lost in his plans for the day.

Lunch was best, he’d gotten that far already. Dinner was a little too forward—and a little too far away, to be honest—and, it being a Sunday, he wasn’t sure if she would be at Church that morning, or, alternately, how late she might sleep in. So brunch was out, too.

Yes, he would ask Maddie Wendell out to lunch that day. It was a nice, neutral meal. Plus, from the warm morning glow creeping over the land beyond his house, it looked like it was shaping up to be a crisp, attractive late-fall day in Sutherland, Vermont.

Walter was now contemplating what he might say to her over the phone; how exactly he might approach the lunch proposal. He was finding that the more time he spent phrasing and rephrasing the words in his head, the stiffer and more robotic the words seemed to become. As hard as it was with nothing else to do but let the hours pass by, he decided to just put it out of his mind—don’t over think it, as they say.

When he finished his breakfast, Walter retrieved a rag and some new all-purpose cleaner and set about attacking the food-stains on the carpet of his otherwise clean living room. He knew it was futile—the forty-odd minutes he’d spent on them two nights ago had fast hit a wall beyond which there had been no improvement—but he also knew that it would consume him and annoy him to no end, too.

By ten-thirty his hands were pale and pruned and his head ached from the citrus smell of the cleaning product. The stains were all wet and all present.

Finally he slammed the floor with a closed-fist, “God damn-it!”

Then he laughed at himself and got up and washed his hands.

Nauseatingly thirsty for fresh air, he made for the hallway, where he was then struck by a much better idea than just sticking his head outside. He grabbed his coat and hat, confirmed that the new key was fastened to his keychain, and then opened the door.

The yellow VW could not have appeared more modest, the tiny little thing. It had been manufactured in the early nineties, and it showed the wear of a car that’d spent two long decades suffering through New England weather and New England roads. The paint was faded and rust crept up from the undercarriage—as though the yellow frame had been dipped in mud—and there were dents in the body and scrapes in the windshield that had thwarted the dealership’s half-hearted patch-up efforts.

A small swelling of pride filled Walter as he stepped outside and looked at his new vehicle in the morning light. It was
his
; he owned it. He
earned
it. The proud, selfish happiness compelled him with an urge to buy more material goods for himself.

Unfortunately, he had emptied his bank account on the car yesterday. The shopping spree would have to wait until he got his insurance money back, at least.

Walter got into the car and fired it up. He eased on the gas with no clear goal in mind: just a careless joyride on a nice autumn day.

Ambling along a road that spanned the major stretch from his home to the center of town, Walter spent as much time looking out of his side windows as he did his forward windshield. The last of the leaves were clinging hopelessly to the naked, cold trees covering Sutherland. Tall grass around the crop fields and hayfields he passed were bent over submissively, frostbit from the last few frozen nights.

A ruined beaver pond now shifted by on his left. Walter remembered that the dam had been torn down after a makeshift committee had decided that the water was getting too close to the road. Now water remained only in a handful of swampy puddles littered with fallen trees and brown stumps. Ice had crept over most of it, moving outwards from the banks.

Winter was closing in, there was no doubt.

Rather than what might’ve happened a week ago, with his mind reflecting off of this acknowledgement and falling straight to the dark, short days of a long, cold winter, Walter’s first thoughts were of the annual first day of heavy snow. He thought of how it would cover the trees and the land in a clean and white new outfit, and, with all the schools closed, he thought of the crowds of elated children who would drag their sleds to the long, slopping hill at the foot of Morris’ cucumber lot. Walter thought about the Christmas tree they would light at the center of town, and of the families who’d always go out of their ways to present their own festive front yard displays.

Walter decided that he would buy some Christmas lights that year. And a sled, for certain.