Why the Tree Loves the Axe. Jim Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ her windshield as she carefully steered down the street, wearing a look of mild surprise on her face, as if she’d never gotten used to the fact that her car moved forward at such an even rate, and changed direction when she turned the wheel. She saw me looking at her and made a gesture that I didn’t understand; she could tell that I hadn’t understood it, but she let it lie.

      In time we came to a brown building with a neon sign outside that said Ollie’s Lounge. Inside there was a dark bar with a kitchen in the back and a few tables covered with plastic-coated gingham tablecloths; overhead, the grey-brown blades of a greasy ceiling fan slowly turned. Bonnie ordered a baked potato and a glass of iced tea, and then said, Um, um, and absentmindedly tapped her knife on her napkin. When she finally spoke, it was in a tone of voice that suggested that nothing mattered much, but her eyes were wide and she sat slightly forward and bent over in her seat, as if she wanted to protect herself by protecting the table.

      You just moved here, yeah and I know what you’re going through, I think, she said. I came down here on a bus from Oklahoma City, about six months after my mom died, that was a couple of years ago. My father was long gone, like twenty years, and there wasn’t anyone else.—She reached across and drew a packet of sugar out of the holder in the middle of the table, tore off the top, and casually emptied the contents into her mouth. The truth is, though, is that I was following a man who wanted to marry me, and he got a job down here with the phone company. Then we split up and he moved away, somewhere, and I was just too lazy to go anywhere else, so. She thought for a moment about the day he moved. I don’t know. That was my crash, I’m still here, this is my city.

      Through the plate-glass window at the front of the bar I could see people hurrying to and fro in the sunlight, such busy fish, such a bright fishbowl. Do you like it here?

      Sugartown? she replied. Sure. She nodded, I love it here, I wish I’d grown up here. It’s where nice buildings go when they die. You’ll love it here, too, I can tell. She said this not because she was trying to convince me, but because it was gospel, just a song she knew and believed. Have you found a job? she asked.

      I’m just about to start, I told her. I’m going to be changing bedsheets at an old-age home.

      Is it good? she said.

      I don’t know yet, I said.

      I’d like to do something like that, she said. Help out. Now I’m tending bar, but I’m not going to do it for the rest of my life. It’s O.K., but I’m going to get out.

      She was playing with a ring of keys, twisting them in and out of her fingers, humming very softly, not a song but sheer want of better work; she was quietly levitating just an inch or so above her seat. Do you want to conquer distant lands? Do you want to bring back spices, silk cloth, and silver? Do you want to be carried in through the gates of the city on an ivory chair? Someone dropped a glass in the kitchen and swore as it shattered. She took a sip from her soda and smiled. Soon as I pay my doctor, she said.

      We rose to leave and she reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill; when I started to open my bag, she said, I’ve got this, let me, and she touched my wrist. No, come on, I said.—Just let me, she replied. So I put my money away; but as we were walking out the door I turned back for a moment and watched as the waitress put her hand over the banknote and transferred it into the pocket of her apron without looking at it.

      Out in the street, Bonnie seemed to burn a little bit, like an ember in the sun. A black dog lay sleeping on the sidewalk across the street. On a passing car radio a singer was crooning, Have you seen my baby? It was a consummate moment, everything seemed to fit into one faultless composition: calm, proportionate, meaningful. Bonnie was standing beside me; and I knew at once that I wanted her there all the time. Call it love at first sight, or sudden beatitude, or just one of those things, I don’t care. She drove me home and we traded phone numbers; we stood on the sidewalk and said a thousand last things quickly, as if a whole new conversation was trying to fit itself into the time we had left. Twice she took one step toward her car; twice she gave up and took the distance back. At last she laughed and said, Good-bye. Call me. So it was that she became the first best friend I’d had since I was in high school. I watched her taillights glowing madly as she braked at the corner, like some strange little spaceship trying to force its way into the traffic on the main road.

      At nine the following Monday morning I arrived at Eden View; by nine-thirty the administrator had started me on a tour, and for the next few hours she led me up and down the hallways. In all that time I never heard a sound louder than our heels on the floor: the residents roamed noiselessly through the place, shuffling in their bare feet, creeping along behind shiny steel walkers, wheeling inch by inch, drifting in and out of the rooms, through the foyers and down the halls, while the staff moved among them, more quickly but just as quietly. The atmosphere was at once exact and inane: each thing had its place, was named and counted and put away in a closet, each resident had a file in the office and a chart in the nurses’ station, and every event and activity was scheduled to the quarter hour. But none of it made any difference. I could see right away that the years had driven the old folks deeper and deeper into disorder; their lives were shaped like hourglasses, and as they neared the far end all the natural laws that had held them together were coming undone; right before my eyes, they were returning to the original chaos from which they’d fallen.

      Here we have the Nutritional Counseling Office, said the administrator. In a wheelchair outside the door sat a woman so aged that she looked like a wormwood tree. Hello, Mrs. Chapman. The woman raised her eyes and opened her mouth, but she said nothing, and we walked on.

      Cafeteria. Nurses’ station. Supply room. Staff lounge. In the residents’ recreation room we came upon a group of old men sitting around a round table playing cards, while a thin black man dressed all in yellow played aimlessly on an upright piano that sat a few feet away from the rear wall. Andre, snapped the administrator. Can you come here? He hit three more notes and left the rest of the song hanging. For a moment he stared at the air before his eyes, as if he were watching the music disappear; then he produced a final, silent flourish of his hands, quit his bench, and came across the room.

      Yes, ma’am? he said.

      This is Caroline Harrison, said the administrator.

      He reached out and shook my hand; his fingers were so long that they extended to my wrist. Welcome, he said.

      Caroline is our newest orderly. I’m giving her to you. Will you show her where to change and get her started?

      He nodded seriously and watched her back as she passed out the door. For a full thirty seconds he waited, one hand held up to quiet me, while I wondered if he was going to be good to me. At last he smiled. Come on, then, he said, and led me from the room.

      The sunlight on the windows was ancient and brittle, the hallway was dark, the air smelled of ammonia. This way, this way, said André, and he set off down the hall in the opposite direction from the administrator. Shhh, he said.—But as soon as we’d rounded the first corner, he began to prate. I’ve been here three years, he said. Almost four years. Every two weeks I get my paycheck and send half of it home, go down to Western Union. I’m still here, the big lady can yell at me, but I’m still here. She doesn’t like anyone but the doctors—ha!—but the doctors don’t like her. They have her for blood trouble, they yell at her and she goes in her room. I put my ear to the door and booo … booo, she’s crying. So I know. I know.—And he went on, and he never let up: for the next two hours I trailed him through the place and listened to his pitch: he gossiped, he joked and flirted, he ran down the nurses and mimicked the doctors. I caught no more than half of what he had to say—somewhere along the line it came out that he was from Kingston, and his accent was so strong that every other sentence was lost to me. He didn’t notice, he laughed and СКАЧАТЬ