Lime Creek (5 page)

That’ll do, he says, with the big dripping wad in both hands that he lays down on the board so the sides of it flop over in the dirt too. Both little boys kneel behind the tub trying to push up under it until Spencer bends over again and lifts up so the sudsy water and then the block of soap cascade out and splash against the ground.
Spencer lifts it all the way up on its edge with the little boys walking under it with their hands upraised as if they were pushing against it too, until it balances for an instant on its fulcrum and then topples over covering where the incongruity of the soap bubbles melt against the earth.

Spencer raises each of the sheets one at a time and then folds and turns them like a twist of rope with more of the water raining on the ground. Then he drapes one of them over Luke’s shoulders like a lady’s stole that hangs down either side of his little chest so his arms must rest against it. Whitney hangs back a step as if he were still contemplating the overturned tub, but comes back around when the filthy wet garment is draped over his shoulders too.

Now get on, Spencer says, and don’t wake up your ma. I’ll mind the fire. He kneels down with the tentative flame still aglow on his face and watches them as they stiffly move away. Lemon paces between them, darting ahead and trotting back and then running ahead of them once again, like the horses pulling against their reins in the direction of the barn no matter how far away it is. Or like those pilgrims, bowing toward their holyland when they prayed, which in most cases was somewhere on the other side of the world.

The ends of each of the sheets drag in the dirt and catch on sage and scrub as both little boys go, receding lopsided ghost shapes that dimly reflect the light from the stars and the peel of the new moon hanging somewhere between the barn and the distant wall of the invisible mountains. And then Spencer can no longer see them nor hear them either. But all the way across the meadow and raised up in that same darkness, they are bound toward that one constant light behind that one upstairs window that still persists in that vast and sightless night, like a golden yellow fragile hopeful thing to show them the way. And back to where they started from.

Spencer builds up the fire for himself and watches into it sitting with his back against the tree until his eyes close listening to the slow low creek of the end of summer clucking across its eternal bed of smooth and priceless stones. Listening. Eventually he senses that the dying firelight no longer interrupts the darkness and he stirs with his arms still folded on his chest. The fire has become just two glowing orange coils of ash. He pushes himself up groaning to himself and then crushes what’s left of it and scatters it with his boot. When he turns he sees that the moon has moved closer to the barn, while the yellow light in the upstairs window farther on still
reassures him as if it somehow anchored the close even arc of his life, along with those other beloved lives that slept behind it waiting for him.

He always limped some the first few steps when he stood up until he walked through it and through the stiffness. And to him his limp was Parker and somehow Parker’s abiding presence. His best friend in the War and truly his brother-in-arms. And so Spencer was glad that it was there because he never wanted to forget him. And of course he never would. Because that was the first lesson of war. Not the horror, which is its other name. But love. Because knowing you’re about to die, and that the person beside you is about to die too, all of what makes you who you are in an instant of fear so intense that it stops your breath and nearly stops your heart too, disappears. And all that is left is love. Unquantifiable love for the other man who for one more moment is still there beside you. Only love.

And so Spencer’s limp always reminded him of Parker, and especially of Parker’s eyes, which he also had never been able to forget. Not one day since that day. And since that moment when he watched them change, with Parker’s head lying in his lap. And then in place of Parker’s eyes frightened and questioning were the eyes of a statue that no longer could see him and turning to stone.

So that was Spencer’s lameness when he first stood up and not the arthritis nor the jag of the ill-healed bone. It was Parker and the machine-gun fire that hadn’t let up all day since pinning them down, and Spencer’s own life slowly ebbing away beneath the imperfect tourniquet made of his torn sleeve that he had bound about the top of his right leg. Until he suddenly realizes that the round olive-drab boulder in the grass that somehow he hadn’t noticed before was actually the top of a helmet. Was actually Parker inching towards him on his belly to try to help him. Until something that neither of them ever saw seems to just barely lift Parker and at the same time knock him backwards. And he doesn’t move again.

And so finally dragging Parker to lie with his head on him while he sits back against the blasted tree trunk that still shielded him from the ceaseless wind of death that was all around them. That was Parker and the mortal scar torn down the length of the outside of Spencer’s thigh that resembled a broad shiny sword of flesh with little shiny lace-holes like buttons all up and down either side of it.

And then, reminded of his scar, he sees himself and his three boys upstairs in the bathroom after that tremendous water-fight that Lonny had started with the can of shavefoam that Spencer had set out on the sink.
Lying in the empty tub and playing the cool water over him with the rubber hose he’d attached to the tub spigot in the days before he’d put in the shower. And before he’d been attacked, with shaving-cream and water all over the black and white floor, and Elizabeth standing for a moment in the door with her hands all white with flour, and them letting her have it too so she jumps back into the hall and maybe even floats back downstairs.

And then finally spent, they declare a truce so they can all dry themselves. And Whitney touches the broad shiny scar that almost covers the outside of Spencer’s upper leg and says, What’s that? with his finger still resting there. And Spencer says, while rubbing his own head with his towel, That’s where your pa got hurt a long time ago. Then he lets the towel down at his side and sits on the curved edge of the tub. Somebody with a gun, Spencer says. And Lonny says, In the War, right Pa? And Spencer says, That’s right son, in the War. And Luke asks, How come? And by then each of the boys is also dry and Whitney and Luke sit on the edge of the tub to Spencer’s right while Lonny sits on his other side. And Spencer’s outspread arms like wings enfold them all.

Because in the War, Spencer says, people go to hurt each other. With guns. And Luke says once again, How come? And Spencer looks at the two little boys and says
almost in a whisper, I don’t know boys. I don’t really know if anyone knows. And Whitney says, Then why do they do it? And Spencer shakes his head as he watches the open window filled with green leaves that make a soft clattering sound when the warm wind blows, and tells them how people shoot the guns at each other to try to hurt each other. And that a bullet from one of the guns had gone into his leg and broken the bone. And Whitney asks, Did you do it too, Pa? And Spencer says, What? And Whitney says, Shoot the guns at the people? And Spencer whispers, Yes. And Luke says, How come? And Spencer whispers, I don’t know. And then as if he were really just talking to himself, I don’t know if I’ll ever know.

And so that was Spencer’s limp that disappeared altogether after his first five or six steps. And if you hadn’t been looking for it, expecting it when he stood up, you wouldn’t have even known it was there. Unless he was angry or in a hurry or both, and then it might come back again until something inside him would just bear down somehow and make it go away. Until the next time.

He could feel the night dew collecting on his boots as he followed the stubble where the first swath of hay had been mown. Above him infinitely familiar and far was Orion’s belt of stars with its lesser sword, and
brightest of all Sirius the home of the gods and where all wisdom was supposed to have come from. The Hunter and his Dog forever tracking Taurus across the northern summer sky. Then he watched up at the yellow bedroom window once more with his steps even and sure so that whatever hurt there may have been in the bone, or perhaps in the heart, was hidden inside him again and no longer made manifest to the night.

He turns the wick down in the ancient lantern on the nighttable beside the bed. Elizabeth is sound asleep and turned so she faces the open window with its delicate veil of a curtain, and with the shallow hump of her shoulder risen up beneath the quilt. Then he stands in the dark hall on the other side of Lonny’s open door listening to his first-born son’s breathing, and somehow satisfied he proceeds toward that same bathroom where a narrow strip of light now outlines the bottom of its door. He stands and listens once again but hears nothing. Then the slow steady drip of a faucet as if it were nearly closed but not quite. He silently turns the knob and enters.

A second door opposite him opens into the little boys’ room, and their light is on too. A haphazard trail of empty sneakers and formless garments flung every
which way as if their erstwhile occupants hadn’t had time enough to discard them before taking their leave runs from the sink across the tiled floor and through the other door where two little naked bodies are cast up on what could be if he narrows his eyes marooned pieces of some recent and obvious shipwreck.

Luke is turned upside-down clinging acrobatically to the foot of his bed so he seems to balance at just such an angle as to hang above the floor however precariously. His pillow hides the back of his head and his eyes are closed and his mouth open, but his breath makes no sound. His blankets are twisted up in his feet so one leg and buttock and one shoulder and arm are left uncovered.

Whitney sprawls on his back clutching his blankets to his chest but his legs hang over the side with one foot resting on Lemon’s shoulder, who sleeps beneath him on the floor. Whitney’s eyes are closed too and as he breathes behind his pressed lips he makes a faint buzzing sound as if a honeybee were caught inside him trying to find a way out.

Spencer closes the overhead light in the boys’ room so a flat pale wedge from the bathroom still shines across the floor. He places his hands under Luke and lifts him into the center of his bed, rearranging his covers and pillow
so his dirty face and hands are all that are left exposed. And of course still smelling of little boys in his hair all mixed up with sage and raw soap and cherry and dog. When he lifts Whitney, he rolls over so Spencer has to lift him again to get his blankets out from under him. Whitney sighs and his buzzing grows still when he lies his head back on his pillow smelling exactly like Luke, an amalgam of sweat and claydirt and soap and sugarcherry, and his face and arms and hands are just as dirty.

Lemon makes a sound when he yawns that’s like opening a door with hinges that haven’t been oiled in a long time, and as Spencer finishes tending to Whitney the dog’s tail beats happily against the floor. When Spencer finally turns from the bed he bends down and kneads Lemon’s muscular shoulders and neck so he lies his chin on Spencer’s foot until Spencer moves away, passing silently back through the bathroom and into the hall.

When he returns, the dog has gone back to sleep too and both boys are in exactly the same positions as he had left them. He places a piece of notepaper on top of their clothes-bureau, which still has half its drawers open with garments and socks spilling over and hanging down. And a five-dollar bill that almost covers the one word that he’s printed on the paper in pencil. Tomatoes. Then he
retrieves one of the little sneakers and places it on top of the money and the piece of paper so the soft breeze in the window curling the filmy curtains won’t blow them away. Tomatoes.

Inextricably joined from then on, like the rewiring of dissimilar synapses that once touched together become fused so in the fabric of memory. Immutable, irrepressible and inviolable to everything except death. Tomatoes. Forever after inspiring images that have little to do with the nourishment of the flesh. But like everything else having everything to do with the feeding of the soul.

Tomatoes.

The barn was closed off to us the whole day of Christmas Eve, Luke says. Because Spencer, our father, would be working there no matter how cold it was. And I remember how small we were, Whitney and me, wrestling and tumbling over each other. And how Lonny, our older brother, was always the leader. And so we always wanted to do what Lonny was doing. And too, how Lonny seemed to have this patient kindness for us, the almost-grown shepherd to his tiny flock of half-wild little boys.

And at that same time my memory of Elizabeth, our mother, is always of her cooking all day. And the smells
of it building and carrying us in a fever of expectation until it would reach a kind of fragrant crescendo that by the time we would finally sit down to Christmas dinner would have nearly exhausted all our senses. Her having to stop in the midst of her chores to see that we were bundled up enough against the cold and then ushering us toward the door with Lonny taking us each by the hand. You boys can walk up towards Doris’s to see those Christmas lights, she says, but I want you home again before it gets dark please.

We wanna ride Blue, Whitney says. The biggest animal that Whitney and I were allowed to be around. A great big sixteen-and-a-half-hand blue roan gelding as gentle as a long-legged old grandfather who had to be wary of where he placed his feet so that he would do nothing to jeopardize that unhurried gait of his, tired and knobbly but still eventually getting him where he figured he needed to go. And so solicitously careful when we were about him that in later years I often wondered if he had gained an instinct for us as being small two-legged creatures somehow akin to the phantom sons and grandsons never yet birthed into being but who still may have lived in his imagination behind that singular and imperturbable regard of his that was always on his greying face, bespeaking a boundless kind-eyed forbearance that
somehow in the ancient way of the beast loved the young, the foals and the puppies and the little boys too.