Chapter 7
LOIS
Pauline called Sunday at nine-forty while I was pricing pallet wrap.
"Lois. Okay. What is happening up there."
"Pauline?"
"Harv called me last night. He calls me every night at eight-thirty from that camp, has for years, and last night he calls and he's — Harv doesn't get worked up, Lois.
Harv once described his own hernia surgery as fine.
" She was walking while she talked; I could hear the outside in it.
"He says Bud stood up in the middle of the main room before anybody'd even had coffee and gave a speech. "
I sat down on the edge of the loading dock.
"A speech," I said. "Bud."
"Your Bud. Standing up. Talking. Took the number off the corkboard and held it up. Told them about your mother, honey, and I want to say right now, I did not know that. I did not know that about the Tuesday, and I've known you at that church twenty years."
"Not a lot of people know."
"Well, Harv knows now. Dutch knows. I know." A car door. "And then — this is the part. He made Dutch say it back to him."
"Say what back."
"That if you call, they come get him. He said, say it back to me, Dutch.
And Dutch did." She let out that big unbothered Pauline laugh, then cut it off short, because she'd heard herself.
"I've known those three men since Carter and I've never heard of one of them saying a whole sentence about a feeling. "
"Pauline. What is happening up there?"
"You're asking me?"
"Something down here," I said.
I sat in the sun after she hung up with my ears ringing. Barb's boy went by on the forklift and lifted a hand at me and I lifted one back, and I could not have told you one minute later that it happened.
Ten minutes, in a room with two men he's known his whole life, before anybody had coffee. He could have done that any Sunday morning for thirty-one years. Nothing had ever been in the way.
I got up and went back to the pallet wrap and got the number wrong twice.
He called Wednesday.
The house phone rang at seven-fifteen in the evening. I looked at the ID and saw a 989 number, and my hands went cold, because that phone does not ring in October.
"Lois."
"Bud."
"It's — this is the lodge phone." He said it like a man reading off a badge. "I'm on the lodge phone."
"I gathered."
There was a silence with a lot of room in it. I could hear men behind him, a chair scraping, the hollow sound a room makes when it's got a woodstove in it.
"I'm coming home," he said.
"What happened."
"Nothing happened. Nobody's hurt. Nothing's wrong up here at all." He took a breath. "I'm coming home tomorrow. I've thought about it the whole week, I've barely slept, and I want to be home. And next year I'm not coming. I've decided that. I'll tell them Friday."
I could hear the shoulders in his voice. It's a thing he does — I've watched him do it at the plant Christmas party when he has to hand somebody a plaque.
"Don't you dare," I said.
"Lois—"
"Don't you dare, Bud. I told you I've never had a week. I did not tell you to burn yours down."
"It's not burning it down. It's one year."
"It's never one year, you know how this family works." I was going up and down the kitchen, three steps one way, three back. "One year becomes the year we don't talk about. Then it becomes the year I ruined. Then in 2031 somebody makes a joke about it at Thanksgiving and I have to laugh."
"That's not fair."
"It's completely fair and you know it. If you come home tomorrow, this is the year. Forever. The October I cost you. And you'd never say it, you'd carry it like a gentleman for the rest of your life, and it would come out of you sideways for a decade in silences I'd have to guess at."
Quiet on the line. Somebody laughing outside a long way off.
"So what do I do," he said.
"You stay. You shoot at something. You eat the chili in the order I dated it, all nine of them." My eyes stung, which annoyed me. "And then you come home and learn what a week costs. That's all."
He was quiet a second.
"The order you dated it."
"Two on the Wednesday."
"Yeah." Something happened to his voice. "Yeah. I ate the second one an hour ago, standing at the sink. Dutch asked me what I was grinning at."
"Bud."
"Yeah."
"Go to bed. You sound like hell."
"It's the stove. Dries a man out."
"It's not the stove."
We hung up and I stood there with my hand still on the phone thinking, that's the first time in thirty-one years.
He called again Thursday, and that one I wasn't ready for, because there was no reason for it. Six-fifty in the evening, same 989 number.
"Nothing's wrong," he said first thing. "I'm leading with that."
"Okay." I sat down on the arm of the chair with the phone against my shoulder.
"How'd the school drop go."
I looked at the phone.
"What?"
"Yesterday. The school district thing, the sixteen pallets. You said last week it'd be a mess because they moved it to a Wednesday and Wednesday you've got the one guy with the bad back." A pause. "Did they send the wrap, or did you have to buy it?"
I sat down at the table.
Thirty-one Octobers, and every one of them the house went quiet. I'd get through the week fine, because I get through everything fine, and on the Sunday he'd come in the door smelling like woodsmoke with his color up and tell me about the generator.
That phone had never rung once. Not once had a man four hours north wondered on a Thursday how sixteen pallets went.
"They sent the wrap," I said. "Wrong gauge."
"Course it was."
"I didn't do anything about it, either. Marisol drove to Findlay for the right stuff on her own initiative and she didn't call me first, which I've decided is the best thing that's happened to me professionally in two years."
He laughed. Four hours north, in a room with a stove in it, my husband laughed at my warehouse.
We talked nineteen minutes. I know because the stove clock was right in front of me.
He told me Dutch missed a shot he'll be defending till he dies.
I told him the church had over-donated cranberry sauce again, four hundred cans, the annual absurdity.
He asked about Denise's basement, because the forecast up there had rain in it and the rain was coming south, and I said it was fine, Tyler put the new sump in.
Then he said he'd let me go, because that's what he says, and I said okay, and neither of us hung up for a second.
"Lois."
"Yeah."
"It's a real nice number," he said. "Turns out. Ten digits, blue marker."
He hung up first, which he never does.
The rain came south Friday afternoon. Three inches in about six hours, which around here in October is a thing people tell each other about for a year.
Denise called at eight-twenty and I could hear the water in her voice before I heard the words.
"It's coming in the wall, it's not the sump, the sump's running, it's coming in the wall, Mom, the whole east side, Tyler's got the shop vac but it's like bailing, it's just?—"
"Is anybody hurt."
I had the keys out of the bowl before she answered.
"No. No, it's the boxes, all of Mamaw's stuff is down there, the?—"
"Boxes up on the dryer and the workbench first, forget the water. Boxes first." I was looking for my coat. "I'm coming."
Then I stopped with my hand still in the bowl by the door.
Of course I could go. Twelve minutes. I'd have that basement organized in twenty and be there till two in the morning with a wet vac and a plan, because that's what I've done in every emergency this family has had since 1994.
"Denise," I said. "Call your father."
"What?"
"Call your father. He's at camp. There's a phone. I'm texting you the number right now."
"Mom, it's camp week, he doesn't have?—"
"He has a phone." Saying it did something strange to me. "He's had a phone the entire time, honey. It's a landline in the main room and somebody picks it up. Call it and tell him what's happening in your basement."
"Are you coming?"
"I'm coming in twenty minutes with the good wet vac. Call him first."
I hung up and sent her ten digits off a card that's been on a corkboard since Nixon.
Then I put my coat on and stood another minute in the hall with the keys in my fist, listening to it come down hard on the porch roof.