The Constant Heart (22 page)

My father and I got our things out of the back of the car, through the hatch, but Sara walked across the parking lot, and as she stood next to MD's door, he opened it and stood out in the cool air, too. Every now and then an insect flew, its wings like golden tissue. My father and I rolled our waders up and tied them with the safety belt so we could carry them, and we put the vests and the food we had brought, some fruit and a couple of power bars, along with a water filter, into a backpack with a couple of jackets and Sara's stuff, too.

MD's hair made the golden light look cheap, and he leaned in Sara's direction, as though he were her boyfriend or something, and while it wasn't insulting, not exactly, she looked as though she were trying to stand up to a current or a wind or something that pushed against her in a way she didn't like.
Then he leaned forward and whispered in her ear, pushed her hair aside as he did so. She stepped back. The insects flew in the air above them, their paths describing chaos itself. Sara stood there as though she had been spit on: more surprised than hurt. The air was perfectly still, not a bit of movement, nothing at all aside from the sound of my father's labored breathing. MD spoke again and as he did, I took another fentanyl out of the bottle and handed it over, and my father took it and went right on standing in that calm air.

“What kind of trouble is she in?” he said.

“I don't know anymore,” I said.

“Have you got another one of those?” he said. He held out his hand and I put another fentanyl into it.

“It hurts in the morning the most,” he said. “They say you want to stay ahead of the wave.”

“All right,” I said.

“Have we got enough for me to take as many as I want?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We've got plenty.”

“Don't lose them,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Good. Then we're all set,” he said.

 

 

SARA WALKED BACK through that golden light, her figure in her new jeans and blue shirt, her red hair, even her freckles pale now, paler than before, and as she came she looked right through me, my father, and, for that matter, the landscape itself, as though she could see into some deeper, more ominous realm.

She came right up to me and put her arms around me, just
like that, in a way she had never done when we were kids or any time since, and as she pulled on me, as she pressed her small figure against me so that I felt a warmth in the cool morning air, she said, “MD wants an answer for that business proposition. That's why he's here.”

“What's that?” I said. “What does he want you to do?”

“Oh, Jake. Oh, Jake,” she said.

“Let's get going,” said my father. “There's always time to talk.”

“Is there?” said Sara. “And what would you say, Mr. Brady?”

“Jason,” he said.

“Jason,” she said. And swallowed. “What would you say?”

Their faces were opposite one another, and her skin had a sweet fragrance in spite of being up all night and sleeping in the back of a car.

“Anger is never dishonest,” he said.

She nodded and went right on staring at him.

“And?” she said.

“Let's just worry about right now,” he said.

“That's enough?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

MD and the other two with the bleached hair dug around in the bed of their truck, took out a tent that must have weighed eighty pounds, a cooler, and began to work on a black tarp that looked like it was covering a dead animal, like a small elephant.

“What are we waiting for?” she said.

“The rate of absorption,” my father said. “It works best on an empty stomach.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sure.”

MD unzipped his pants and took a long, slow leak as he
stood on the other side of the truck, but he kept his eyes on Sara.

“But I think we should go,” said my father. “There are two kinds of drugs. One makes you not feel the pain. The other makes you not care that you have it.”

“Which are you taking?” said Sara.

“I like to mix them,” said my father. “But then I'm not so alert. So I'm staying with the one that makes me not feel it so much.”

The two men with the bleached hair unloaded cases of beer.

“And you want to be alert?” she said.

“Don't you think it's a good idea?” said my father.

Sara swallowed and took his hand.

“Yeah,” she said.

“They don't look like they've spent a lot of time in the woods,” said my father. “Of course, they're going to try to follow us, right?”

“Yes,” said Sara.

My father rubbed his back and hip.

“Is it working yet?” said Sara.

“Some,” he said. “Jake, you can carry the pack, right?”

 

 

THE TRAIL CROSSED a suspension bridge made out of metal cables and pieces of wood, and when you walked on it the whole thing swayed up and down. Perfect wave phenomenon. I remembered this bridge as being almost new, but then that was another distortion. A lot of time had passed. It had been years since any work had been done here, and the
cables were frayed at the U-joints where they were fastened to a couple of half-rotted posts, but even so, Sara stood in the middle of it to feel that swaying, as though the danger here replaced some other one. The U-joints that held the cables at the bank made a long, slow sigh, as though about ready to give up. The water here was tea-colored, although it had a tint of something else, like snake venom, and she hung there, swaying in the moist air, as though if she could just stay there, even if the bridge was coming apart, everything would be fine. I guess it was just her testing something like will. She had changed on one side of the car in the parking lot of Outfitter's North while we waited on the other side of the car, and she wore blue jeans, a shirt, and boots in a way that looked like she had always worn them. She appeared so cheerful it broke my heart. She had a small pack, too, that my father kept in the car. Her stockings, for the soccer mom outfit, leaked out of it, and when I came up behind her the scent of baby powder hung in the air. The tea-colored stream was still overwhelmed by the sky, and it looked like a tongue of blue paint ran down the middle, and tongues of green liquid, from the reflection of the trees on the bank, ran along that cobalt blue.

From time to time my father said, “Look, see that?”

“What?” said Sara. “I don't see anything.”

My father pointed at some bear sign. Scat, the same color as that black ash from those pill-like fireworks we used to set off on the Fourth of July. Not solid, though, which meant they were new.

“The bears are out. I bet they still have cubs now,” he said.

“Now you're trying to scare me,” said Sara.

“Yes, that's it,” said my father.

“Now you're really trying to scare me,” said Sara. “But, you know, you come to a limit about that.”

My father turned, looked at the sky and the water, and then back to Sara's green eyes.

“That's right,” he said. “You begin to accept it.”

He put his hand on the side of her face, where the shiner was, the touch as delicate as I have ever seen, and she said, “I'm sorry.”

The trail went along the stream, which was a collection of riffles and pools, fast water and slow water, and here and there a boulder stuck up. The usual flowers grew along the stream and in the woods, or what was left of them in the early fall, little white flowers I never learned the name of, but which looked like somebody had left a trail of torn paper along the path.

Beads of silver appeared along Sara's upper lip and on her forehead. After we had walked for a couple of hours, she said, “You know, they're going to come after me.”

“I should have kept my mouth shut to Judah,” I said. “I shouldn't have told him where we were going. They probably followed us there.”

“You get used to that, too,” said my father. He touched his back and wiped his brow. “Having something follow you.”

We stopped for lunch and had the sandwiches my father took out of his pack. Turkey on white. He split his in half and gave it to Sara, and she said, “Won't you be hungry?”

“No,” he said.

The mayflies started to hatch, some small fall ones with gray wings and pink bodies. They just floated on the surface of the water like small sailboats, and after a while, when their
wings were dry, they took off. Then they hung in the air over the stream and a couple of them blew into Sara's hair. She had a short, rough cut, and the mayflies clung to the bushy strands and flapped their wings. She turned and looked at me and laughed, saying, “What the hell are these things?”

After we had walked a couple of hours more we sat down to rest, and when we did some black military jets flew up the stream. The first thing you heard was a long, low whistle, just like in the movies when a bomb is being dropped, but the whistling got louder and even the ground began to tremble. Just then, when you were unsure as to what was happening, or just when you thought it was an earthquake, the jets came in, black, sleek, going right along the terrain. They were training here where there were hills and streams, coming in low, hugging the ground the way they would in Russia or Bosnia. Or Afghanistan or Pakistan. Or Iraq or Iran.

As the jets went by, I thought I saw a fish rise out of the water, taking one of the mayflies on the surface, but I didn't say anything because the best fishing was farther up, and if we stopped here we'd never get up to the pools where there were brook trout of good size. Twelve and thirteen inches and fat.

We walked for another hour, and my father fell behind, so we waited for him in some pines that seemed to be planted in rows, but this was just the way they grew, each tree equidistant from the ones around it. My father appeared between the even trunks, their formality making him seem frail. Sara said to him, “So, do you mind if I ask what's wrong?”

“No,” said my father. “You think I want to hide something at this stage of things?”

“What is it? Where are you sick?”

“It's pretty much everything now,” he said. “It was one of those cancers that is hard to see in the beginning and so by the time you know you've got it, it's everywhere.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn't mean to be nosy.”

“That's OK,” he said. “Be as nosy as you like.”

The gray mayflies drifted on what seemed to be an almost visible current of air. He pointed at those gray shapes.

“Something that beautiful doesn't have to be noticed or praised or anything. What can you add to it?”

“Nothing,” said Sara.

“Let me rest for a minute, OK?” he said.

“You said you came up here to think something over,” she said.

I have never seen her with less guile. Maybe, after all, they were facing the same thing. Maybe her end would just be more sudden.

“Oh,” he said. “That.”

“Under the circumstances,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Circumstances.”

“So what were you thinking?” she said.

“I don't know . . . ”

“No?” she said.

“It's just not the way I wanted the end,” he said.

“And what's that?”

He shrugged, touched his back.

“Somehow I didn't think I'd be ashamed,” he said.

“No one should be ashamed of being sick,” she said.

“I don't mean that,” he said.

The lines of space were open between the trees, the way you can see rows in a vineyard.

“Somehow I, well, the thing that makes it harder is to die when people think . . . ”

“When people think badly of you?” said Sara.

“Yes. Like Frank Ketchum,” said my father. “Jake, you remember Ketchum?”

“You mean the guy who got the job you wanted and then he died in a motel room with a hooker?”

“Yeah,” said my father. “See? Somehow, if one asshole does that, a lot of men are sort of smeared . . . ”

“Or maybe you get blamed if your wife goes crazy,” said Sara.

“She wasn't crazy,” said my father. “She just wanted to be a potter.”

“Same thing,” said Sara. “When you mix in macramé, weaving, shiatsu massage . . . ”

“It's the age. Self-realization. Being creative.” He turned to me. “So you've told Sara about your mother. But did she try massage, too?”

“Maybe it was just feng shui,” I said.

“It's just a feeling of not belonging. Sort of banished,” said my father. “That's what makes it hard. Maybe you think you should just try to do the right thing, you know, and you don't dismiss what you have to do. You don't ditch your kids, but yet somehow you end up feeling smeared. You're not cool. So you die feeling guilty.”

“Is that the way it seems to you?” said Sara.

“I'm thinking it over,” he said. “Feeling the contours of what's coming. It's hard to explain. But you end up feeling like something left over at a fire sale.”

“But you're not alone,” said Sara.

“I've got Jake,” he said. “And I guess I've got you, too.”

“You won me over with the chocolate soufflé,” said Sara.

“The recipe is in the
Egg Cook Book
at home,” said my father. “Jake will show you where it is.”

The wind moved through the trees with a kind of chant, a hiss of leaves, a slight squeak in the trunks, all coming to a variety of sigh.