Chapter 22 #2
"I noticed that. How's it working out?"
"The buttons are very small. But the function is sound. Are you receiving me well?"
"Very well. Your cell carrier has a much better signal than mine out here."
"That's very fortunate. You chose this phone well."
Scout had a habit of speaking with stilted formality when making a call. It was very endearing, like every other aspect of her personality. Hearing her voice clear and close loosened something in my chest. I realized how much I missed her.
"How's Abner doing?"
"Father is much improved. He has color in his face again. He slept through the night without the mask."
"That's great news, Scout."
"He is already speaking out about his surroundings, which is the surest sign of recovery. This morning he educated a nurse about the breakfast. He said the eggs were factory-farmed and the bread was full of corn syrup. 'Corporate food for corporate health care,' he lamented."
I laughed out loud, scattering a pair of dark-eyed juncos off the porch rail.
"That sounds like a man on the mend."
"It does." Her voice warmed. "Have you been to the homestead?"
"Just walked back. Animals are out, fed, and watered. Eggs collected. Eleven yesterday, nine this morning. Battery readings logged in the ledger. Water tank's at level. The deer fence is patched. I'm getting the hang of it."
"I'm glad. I was worried, but Father believed you were more than capable of tending things."
"I'm glad I've earned his confidence."
"Yes, it's rare." A pause, the sound of a hospital PA murmuring somewhere behind her. "The doctors want one more day. His levels are stable, but they want to run two more tests and watch him another night. We'll know tomorrow."
"I'll drive over and pick you both up whenever he's cleared. Just call me."
"I will. What will you do with the rest of your day?"
"Big plans, actually. I'm going to breakfast at the firehouse with DJ and Claire and Bessie Anne."
"The pancake breakfast."
She said it immediately, no hesitation. Of course she knew about the event. Everyone around Port Chasten knew it.
"You're doing the firehose contest with DJ?"
"That's the plan."
"Good luck. That hose will fight you." Her voice took on the instructional tone she used at the shooting stump.
"Don't try to hold it with both hands out in front of you like the fathers always do.
Link your arms around it and clamp it against your side, like you're putting it in a headlock.
Let your body take the push, not your hands.
Then DJ can aim. I have seen many fathers sit down very suddenly in the grass because they did not do this. "
"A headlock. Got it."
A small silence opened on the line. I could hear Scout's slow breathing. When she spoke again her voice was quieter. Different.
"DJ really likes you, Thomas. I have watched him when you're there. The way he looks at you, and tracks where you are, and shows you things. A boy only looks at a man that way when it matters to him, dearly."
"He's a great kid."
"He is." The silence again. "I have also seen the way Claire looks at you."
I stopped walking. I stood in the dewy grass and didn't say anything, just listening.
"There is a longing in her gaze." Scout's voice was steady, factual, the way she said important things. "I recognize it. I recognize it because it is the same longing I have when I look at you. I believe you recognize it as well. In both of us. And I wonder if it is reciprocal?"
The morning was very quiet, but the unasked question was quite clear. And what do you feel, Thomas? For her. For me. What is this thing we are all inside of?
I looked at the treeline and tried to find the true answer, but what I found was a knot I couldn't untangle, not yet.
"Claire is a lovely woman," I said finally. "I admire her tenacity. What she's built out there, a single mother, with everything against her. It's remarkable."
It was true and it was a dodge and we both knew it.
"She is a strong woman," Scout agreed, and there was no edge in it, no hurt that I could hear but something else, something almost gentle.
"You've made a strong bond with her so quickly.
It is a mutual affection to be envied. I hope you have a good day with Claire and DJ, Thomas. I mean that sincerely."
"Scout. It might be better to talk about this in person."
"Yes, that is probably true," she said. "But I also believe in 'A love that consists of two solitudes protecting and bordering on, and greeting each other.' Rilke wrote that. Father has his letters on the third shelf. I think about that line often."
"What does it mean?"
"That Love is not a fence, Thomas. It does not work by enclosure." She took a breath. "I have to go now. The doctor is coming and Father will be terse with him if I'm not there to moderate. Win the prize, Thomas. Goodbye."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone and stared at it. The screen returned to the Merlin app, still listening. As I stood there puzzling over what Scout had said, the app chimed and a new card slid onto the stack.
Western Tanager.
I looked up and saw it immediately, a blaze of yellow and black with a head of flame-orange, impossibly bright against the dark green of the firs. I had seen that bird before, but it had never announced itself before, I had never captured its song until now.
I stood in my clearing, holding my phone, with Rilke in my head and a flame-colored bird in my woods that had always been there but that I was only now recognizing and putting a name to.
The lawn beside the firehouse had been turned into a competition course laid out beneath the late morning sun.
A line of targets ran down the grass. Six bowling pins on a plank, a pyramid of tin cans on a barrel, a board strung with a dozen balloons, and at the far end, a ramp with a bowling ball resting at its base.
DJ and I stood with three other pairs of contestants, listening while a barrel-chested firefighter named Walczak explained the rules.
"Knock down all six pins. Scatter the cans. Pop every balloon. Then the hardest part, drive the ball up the ramp until it drops in the basket. Fastest time wins."
He held up a clear plastic cube with a baseball inside it and raised his voice over the crowd.
"And this year, the winning team takes home a ball signed by Brad Fitzgerald, catcher for your Seattle Mariners!"
The crowd cheered. There were some fifty people spread across the lawn behind us. I recognized several of them, including Stella from Charley's Diner. Her nephew was one of the firefighters.
DJ, beside me in his Chen jersey, let out a low whistle as he eyed the ball.
"Fitzgerald hit .291 last season," he whispered. "With runners in scoring position he hit .340."
"Then we'd better win that ball."
DJ went down the line and shook hands with the other three boys, solemn as a diplomat. I shook hands with the men and wished them luck and almost meant it.
Claire and Bessie Anne stood at the front of the crowd. Claire had her arms crossed and was wearing that smile that always made my stomach flutter. Bessie Anne had brought a folding chair and the bearing of a woman prepared to dispute any judging error.