Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (23 page)

“Mornin', darlin',” he said, his voice as soft and growly as ever. The darlin' was nothing personal, however. To him everything that can be remotely construed as being of the female gender is darlin'. He sighed deeply and kept flipping channels.

“You'll never guess what I saw on my walk this morning,” I said.

He obviously didn't give a rat's ass.

“A unicorn,” I said.

“That's nice,” he said.

“It almost killed me,” I said.

“Huh,” he said.

But two cups of coffee later he was up pacing a dented place in my splintery softwood floors and talking a mile a minute. He wanted to get his gun out of his van and go looking for the critter.

“Not a good idea,” I said. “In this wind, a tree could fall on you.”

“Well, bring the sunuvabitch on then,” he said in that bitter tone he gets when he's both grieved and pissed about something. “It's not like I'm gonna live that long anyway.”

“You've made it farther than I thought you would,” I told him, a little tartly. He's like a quadruple Pisces and prone to throwing pity parties, so I wanted to head him off at the pass.

He stopped pacing and sipping coffee long enough to look over at me and grin. “Yeah, me too,” he said. Then he shrugged, “But I pushed the edge of the envelope, babe, and now the doc says I've ruptured the sunuvabitch.”

“What do you mean?”

“The big C, darlin'.”

“You've got cancer?” I asked. “Where?”

“Liver,” he said. “Just like you always told me.”

I used to warn him about cirrhosis but after all the ups and downs he'd been through, I figured he was probably made from good old pioneer protoplasm and would end up grossing out the staff of a nursing home some day. I also figured I might hear about it from one of the mutual friends I was still in contact with. Funny that I hadn't. Now I didn't know what to say. Finally, I resorted to being clinical. “Did you get a second opinion?”

He lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Yeah. No good. They wanted me to go through chemo and all that crap but I figured, hey, I'd rather keep what hair I got and go finish up a few things while I feel like it.”

I swallowed. “You know, doctors are wrong about a lot of stuff. And I have several friends who were supposed to have cancer and just got over it. How about alternative therapies? Have you tried that?”

He just shook, kind of like a dog, kind of like someone was walking over his grave. Now I noticed that his color under his tan was terrible. He'd always been thin but now he looked like he was made of matchsticks. He took a long shuddering breath and said, “It hurts, Sue.”

“I'm real sorry,” I said. Another friend I would have offered a hug but though he always talked like he could barely wait to jump any woman in his vicinity, he was weird about hugs when he was upset. So I put my hand in the middle of the kitchen table and waited to see if he'd take it. It seems to me that we had always taken turns being White Fang. He being wild and needing to trust and me being, at least in some ways, blindly loyal.

He took my hand and gripped it hard for a moment, then got up to pace again. By that time the wind had died down a little and the rain was just a drizzle. “Look,” I said, “Do you want to walk someplace instead of just around the room? That way you can smoke and I'll show you where I saw the unicorn.”

“It's still raining,” he said.

“We'll be in the trees. Are you up to it?”

“I ain't dead yet,” he said.

His breath was even shorter than mine but he enjoyed the walk and picked up the unicorn's tracks right away. We followed them back into the woods but then it started pouring rain again and I felt bad because I'd encouraged him to come out and he was shivering, despite his Marlboro man hat and sheepskin jacket, by the time we got back to the house.

I felt worse (and so did he) when the his chill didn't go away, in spite of a shower and being tucked back in bed. The cats showed up again and curled up next to him. He seemed to appreciate the warmth. I asked him for the name of his doctor but he wouldn't give it to me, said he was going to “ride it out.” Well, I respected that, but by the second day, when he still hadn't improved, I called my own doctor as well as the mutual friends to find out if any of them had any ideas. He had no kin left, I knew, except for a couple of ex wives. Finally Brodie Kilgallen told me that Jess had walked out of the hospital, telling the doctors what they could do with their tests and treatments, and that was the last anyone had seen of him down there. Brodie knew the name of the hospital, so if everything went well, I could have my doctor call and get his records from there if need be.

He slept all through the day while the wind drove the rain against the windows, made the trees do the hula and the wind chimes ring. I tried to write but finally, after the storm outside caused two brownouts and one brief power failure, I gave it up for fear my computer would be ruined. The TV's old, though, so after dinner I settled into my nest of pillows on the end of the couch and with cats, remote, hard-wired phone and a bag of pretzels, flipped on the evening news. The wind was booming now, window-rattling, and house-shaking, a thug growing bolder in the dark.

According to the news, the storm was raging throughout the Puget Sound area. Trees were across the roads, across power lines everywhere. One motorist had been killed already. Highway 101 was closed along the Hood Canal, and both the Hood Canal Bridge and the Narrows Bridge, which joined the Olympic and Kitsap Penninsulas with the mainland, were closed. They often were, especially the Hood Canal Bridge, during high winds. Right after the bridge was built, the first big storm blew it away and people had to drive around or take a ferry for a couple of years until it was repaired. With 101 closed, you couldn't even drive around now.

Pretty soon Jess padded into the room, wearing only his jeans. He walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on for his first transfusion of the day, then, for a wonder, came and sat down on the couch next to me.

“I didn't know y'all got hurricanes up this far north,” he said, and we sat in one of the only companionable silences I can remember in our association, just touching, watching the tube. He didn't drink or pace or smoke or anything but watch the tube, making a brief remark occasionally or responding to one of mine without rancor at me for interrupting the sacred broadcast.

Then the kettle went off and he got up to fix his coffee, even inquiring if I wanted any.

Just as he returned with the tea, the TV winked off, along with the lights and the fan on the propane stove and we were left staring at a ghostly blue screen.

I found a flashlight, lit a couple of candles, and called the power company. The line was busy, of course.

Jess started telling me about hurricanes he had lived through along the Gulf of Mexico and continued into a rambling story about his boyhood. I'd heard it before, many times. He always revises it in the retelling. I opened the blinds to try to see how far the power loss extended. The whole neighborhood was dark, as was the hill above us and the streets all the way into town, as far as I could see.

“Jess?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Play me something, will you? I haven't heard you play since you've been here. You up to it?”

“Hell, yes,” he said, and got out his guitar and began playing a song about the death of the Nez Perce appaloosas. He kept on singing one after the other, songs he had learned since I'd last seen him, songs he used to play constantly, new songs he admired but had only learned bits of. I heard a sort of tapping sound and looked toward the window.

Four whiskery mouths were pressed against the glass, above them the tips of four horns. I touched Jess on the shoulder and turned him, still singing, to look. He caught his breath and gave me the same “Oh, my god,” look he'd worn when we saw the Marfa Lights together. But he kept singing, segueing from “Blowin' in the Wind” to the Shel Silverstein unicorn song. At this the critters gave a collective snort and turned tail for the woods between my house and my northern-most neighbor's.

“I never cared for that one myself, actually,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn, Susie-Q, what the hell do you folks do around here when this happens?”

“I was thinking we might go see my friend Doc and seeing if he's up to a visit,” I told him. “He's a vet counsellor who lives out in Port Padlsock at old Fort Chetzemoka, which is a pretty interesting historical site. I think you'd like him and find the area interesting.”

“Okay with me. You think he's got a beer?”

“Could be,” I lied. Doc's been dry for fifteen years, six months and he'd have to tell you the rest. “We should take some candles though.”

Soft light glowed from Doc's windows when we drove into the park grounds. Several pale four-legged shapes lurked at the edge of the woods, down by the water, and behind the house and the caretaker's buildings at the park. Randy's truck was in the driveway beside Doc's.

I felt immensely relieved. Randy and Doc would know how best to help Jess. I could get him medical help, of course, but Jess has been in the habit most of his life of turning over the unattractive practical details of daily existence to some woman until she had control over all of his associations, jobs, and where he'd be and who he'd be with at any given time. Then he'd rebel and sabotage her, chewing his own foot off to escape from the trap he'd laid for himself. I was too old for that game and he was too sick. I wasn't going to turn my back on him, and I didn't want to do a whole co-dependent number either. What was left of his life was his to do with as he wished and if he was going to drink it away, I was going to need backup to deal with it.

“Hi, Doc,” I said, sticking my head in the door. Doc likes to adapt Indian ways when he's off duty and it's rude to knock. Usually you try to make a lot of noise outside the door but there was no way we'd be heard over the storm and I wasn't going to expose Jess to another chill.

Doc and Randy sat in the recycled easy chairs Doc keeps by the fireplace. A candle burned in the window and on the table between them.

“Don't you have sense enough to come in out of the rain, young lady? Getcher buns in here,” Doc said.

I walked in, half pulling Jess behind me and as we shook the water from our ponchos I introduced him.

Randy said, “I was just warning Doc to start filling up water containers, Sue. I heard on the scanner that the flood water's reached the point where it's within an inch or two of compromising the reservoir.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “That'll shut down the town
and
the mill.”

“You betcha,” Doc said. “I got some extra jerry cans though. I could let you have a couple.”

“I wouldn't want to run you short,” I said, “But I'd appreciate it.”

Jess was standing at the window, staring out at the rain and the pale shapes dancing in it. Randy looked over his shoulder. “Wonder where they all come from.”

“I don't know, but they're getting bolder,” I told him. “Jess was singing me some songs and they came right up out of the woods and crossed the yard to listen.”

“No kiddin'? They're music lovers?”

“Good to know they like something besides destroying trees and flower bulbs,” Doc said. “You folks want some coffee?”

“Sure,” Jess said, his hand going to the jacket pocket with his flask.

“I'll hold a flashlight for you while you find stuff, Doc,” I told him, catching his eye with a meaningful look that he met with a puzzled one. But he nodded me toward the kitchen and we left Randy and Jess to stare at each other.

“So, you're going to tell me who this guy is, right? Long lost love?”

“Close enough,” I said. “He's lost anyway.” I filled Doc in while he made loud noises crashing around the shelves of the white tin cupboard he packs both dishes and nonperishables in. The coffee was instant, not that big a deal.

Randy was regaling Jess with some of his better stories about Central America. Like Jess, Randy can be so quiet you can't get a word out of him or so garrulous you can't get a word in edgewise.

Jess seemed content to just sit and listen. Doc handed him his coffee and after giving his a splash from his flask, he offered it to the others. He didn't have any takers.

By the time the coffee was gone, Jess, Doc and Randy were swapping stories. Jess felt compelled to keep his hand proprietarily on my knee, though I knew from long experience he had no interest in that knee at all - it was a territorial thing, about as romantic as your cat pissing on your shoe. But aside from that, everyone was getting along famously. Both Doc and Randy liked music and at one point someone said something that reminded Jess of a song with a yodel in it and he started singing again, but this time he winked and half-turned to the window. Sure enough, there was a whole herd of unicorns out there, their faces blurred impressionistically by the rain.

“That's the damndest thing I've ever seen,” Doc said. He peered more closely at the creatures in the window. “You know, I haven't looked at these guys this close up before. There's something a little funny about them.”

“Funny how?” Randy asked.

“Funny familiar,” he said. “I'm getting one of those psychic things I used to get in Nam -”

“Maybe we ought to call Atlanta,” I said facetiously. “ We could have a storm party.”

Doc turned away, chewing his lip. Without another word, he pulled on a slicker and went out in the yard. I watched through the window while Randy and Jess pretended not to notice he'd done anything out of the ordinary.

The unicorns scattered at first, then Doc hunkered down beside a mud puddle and waited. I thought, oboy, he's going to look like a sieve by the time they finish with him. A couple of them did feint towards him and I saw his mouth moving, his hands making gentling gestures.