Townie_ A Memoir Part 23

I TOLD Fontaine and Helena my dream. Fontaine listened as if I had just read to her from a pa.s.sage of fiction and she was interested to read more on her own. Helena looked concerned, not about the content of the dream but that I had taken it so literally. She made me some tea from herbs she said were calming. She talked to me about symbolic death versus literal death, how the dream was suggesting an old part of me was giving way to something new, that's all.

I sipped my tea with two hands and listened. This was a logical and more sophisticated reaction than mine had been. But she hadn't seen the preacher's face when he looked at me. She hadn't seen the urgency in his eyes. She hadn't heard his voice.

No, she was wrong. I was going to die soon. It was just a matter of hours now, or days.

DAYS Pa.s.sED and I didn't die, but sometimes dreams come back like fevers, and you deny that first p.r.i.c.king along the skin just before your eyes ache and your flesh burns once more and you sink back into a malevolence you thought you'd put behind you.

We were on an overnight ferry crossing the Irish Sea, a ferry of loud, drunk men on their way home from beating a British team in one of those games with a ball in it. The boat smelled like beer and vomit, and there was no place to sit that was not in a crowd of them, laughing and yelling and raising paper cups of ale and calling the Brits a bunch of focking conts focking conts. We were on the main deck, an enclosed s.p.a.ce with the chairs and tables bolted to the floor, the tops of them strewn with empty cups and cans, sweaters and caps, a spilled pack of cigarettes left behind in a pool of wine.

It was after two in the morning and Fontaine and I sat up against the wall in a corner. She was one of the only women on the ferry, and every now and then one of the Irish fans would glance over at her, then at me, and I'd stare at him and try to leave enough on my face he would look away without thinking he'd been challenged. There were so many of them and they did not remind me of my dream, they were were the dream, and so this is where it would happen, late at night on the black Irish Sea. the dream, and so this is where it would happen, late at night on the black Irish Sea.

Fontaine's friend Audrey lived in a farmhouse on twenty acres of land on the west coast of Ireland. Once we got to Dublin, we were going to rent a car, then drive five hours across the country to Audrey in County Kinvara. We were going to spend our last week with her. That was the plan. But sitting in that smoky, pulsing crowd, it was clear to me these things would probably never happen. What mattered then was protecting my wife, and I was relieved when she curled up on the plastic bench seat and lay her head in my lap and now when one or two or three looked over, they saw only me.

After a while, there was sleep. The bar never closed and the crowd kept drinking, and there was the soft tilt and roll of the boat and all the loud, raucous focking conts, focking conts, the roaring laughter of young men, the victorious blood in it, and now a shouting match broke out somewhere back near the smudged windows, darkness on the other side, and I woke Fontaine and nudged her under the bolted table where we lay down side by side on the thin carpet between the metal legs. After a while we closed our eyes. Above the din came more shouts, then a m.u.f.fled thud, then another, and I pulled Fontaine into me, her cheek and ear resting against my arm. I could smell her hair-sweat and Helena's shampoo-and the musty carpet: seawater, dried vinegar, and dust. the roaring laughter of young men, the victorious blood in it, and now a shouting match broke out somewhere back near the smudged windows, darkness on the other side, and I woke Fontaine and nudged her under the bolted table where we lay down side by side on the thin carpet between the metal legs. After a while we closed our eyes. Above the din came more shouts, then a m.u.f.fled thud, then another, and I pulled Fontaine into me, her cheek and ear resting against my arm. I could smell her hair-sweat and Helena's shampoo-and the musty carpet: seawater, dried vinegar, and dust.

Then there was the ship's horn, a long mournful honk, and the room was empty and bright with daylight from the windows. We were up and trudging down the gangplank with all the subdued half-drunk boys, their hair tousled, their cheeks and chins stubbled and pale.

So I would not die on that boat, but where would it happen then? Maybe the dream had been just that, a dream, and now its afterimages were stranded in another country on the other side of the Irish Sea.

ON THE return trip, the day was cool and gray, the damp air smelling of peat moss, cow dung, and woodsmoke. In Dun Laoghaire Fontaine and I boarded the ferry back to Holyhead where we would buy tickets for a train to London. The cheapest was for an overnight ride across England, and just before midnight we found our seats in a car of old couples and thirty-five schoolgirls from Germany. They were twelve or thirteen years old. Their teachers were two women in their forties, and one of them sat across the aisle from Fontaine. She told my wife they were on the train because of what had happened over Lockerbie two and a half years earlier. The mothers and fathers of these girls did not want them in the air.

In the seat across from her sat a retired Irish carpenter and his wife. They both wore white wool sweaters and she was reading a book while he and I talked about the differences between building materials here and in the United States, how a tradesman in the U.K. worked less with wood and more with stone and brick and plaster. The car was new, well-lit, and warm, and as soon as the train pulled away from the station, the two schoolteachers had their students stretch out in the aisles on blankets and pillows they'd brought with them. Soon they were curled up toe to head all along the floor between the seats, and when the conductor came by for tickets he smiled down at them and stepped carefully, punching a hole in our tickets and wishing us all a good sleep. Our car felt as safe as a fairy-tale grandmother's home, infused with good-hearted warmth, soft edges everywhere, and soon it seemed that only the old carpenter and I were awake. He was reading a book. I was revising a novel I'd just finished. Fontaine dozed beside me, her cheek on my shoulder, and there was the comforting chug and sway of the train, the cool gla.s.s of the window to my right. Every few minutes I'd look up to think deeper than the page would allow me, and the old carpenter would nod and smile at me over his book. I'd smile back and keep writing.

THEY CAME in loudly and all at once. There was the rattle of the outer door, then the jerking slide of the inner door, three men in their twenties walking in and laughing mid-joke. Each of them held a cup of beer from the bar car and one wore black wool, the other two denim. The shortest of them said, "Look, mates, it's a f.u.c.kin' slumber party." They laughed and walked down the aisles, stepping between the sleeping girls, grabbing the backs of seats to balance themselves, spilling beer here and there, laughing as they reached the opposite door and jerked it open, the short one draining his cup and tossing it behind him.

I closed my notebook. My heart was beating in the tips of my fingers. The inner door opened again and two more stood there looking at the schoolgirls blocking their way. Some of them were awake now and lifted their heads from their pillows, blinking at the light.

These two were tall and scrawny, pierced and tattooed, one of them with a blue Mohawk, the sides of his head newly shaved. His dull eyes were lit with the surprise of the happy drunk who has just stumbled through the wrong door into somebody's living room, not a drink in sight, but instead of turning around he and the other started forward in their hobnail boots. One of the teachers stood and said, "Please, gentlemen, there are girls sleeping. Can you go to another car?"

The one with the blue Mohawk raised his hand in a gesture that was both placating and threatening, his fingers long and white, the nail of the middle finger bruised or painted black. "We're just seeing a friend, luv." And they lurched forward down the aisle, their hands grabbing the seat backs. Most of the girls were awake now, and one or two were crying softly. It was the sound of children waking from a bad dream, the solitary misery of it, but it was what they had woken to that scared them, and the rear door rattled open as these two left and the first three made their drunken way back over the students. "Hush, girls. Hush now. Be good good. Be good good." A laugh, then the dirty fingernails of a hand on Fontaine's headrest inches from her hair, then they were at the door, sliding it open, a chest-deep whoop whoop as it closed behind them. In it was the joy of the addict about to get just what he craves, the drunk who's been promised a brand-new tab; there was only one more car behind this one, and it was clear that in it someone was dealing dope, for now the other two were already stepping over the girls, most of them awake, a few of them sitting up and leaning away from the boots and legs of these men who did not speak this time, just seemed intent to get out of this grandmother's kiddie car to where the party was farther down the train. as it closed behind them. In it was the joy of the addict about to get just what he craves, the drunk who's been promised a brand-new tab; there was only one more car behind this one, and it was clear that in it someone was dealing dope, for now the other two were already stepping over the girls, most of them awake, a few of them sitting up and leaning away from the boots and legs of these men who did not speak this time, just seemed intent to get out of this grandmother's kiddie car to where the party was farther down the train.

Both teachers stood and spoke in German to the girls. Their tone was consoling and instructional. As the last two men reached the doors, one turned and winked flirtatiously down at the schoolgirls, then they were gone, and something was pressing against my ribs. There were whispered words in my ear.

"Honey, do do something." something."

Ahead of us the outer door was already opening again. Through two sets of gla.s.s, I could see it was one man this time. Blond hair and black leather, the dull flash of silver. I glanced past Fontaine to the nearest teacher. Her eyes were on mine, and the old carpenter's were too, alert beneath white eyebrows. The inner door was jerking open. I was already up and squeezing past my wife, but it was like stepping into a cold, black cave, a final place that had been foretold in my youth. I stepped over a brown-haired girl lying on her side. Her eyes were as alert as the old man's, and I was struck with a razored dread and a cosmic wonder too; of all the cars in this train, how was it possible that I had chosen one where I was the only young man, the one in front of the dealer's car, the one filled with old people and frightened children? The preacher knew my fate and had given me time to pack my bags: why hadn't I? Instead of working on my mediocre novel, why hadn't I written letters home? To my mother in Miami, to my father in his wheelchair in Haverhill, to my sisters and brother? I would have told them I loved them, that I wished I'd been a better son and brother. I could have written to my friends and to former lovers. I could have written to anyone I'd ever hurt, and I could have apologized. I could have begun to atone for all the harm I'd learned to do. My dream had delivered me the bill, and now was the time to pay up.

The inner door slid closed and the man's eyes pa.s.sed over the school-children in the aisle and he kept walking forward without slowing. He was a parody of street-mean; his head was nearly shaved, his nose and ears pierced with silver. Draped over his beefy torso was a black leather jacket festooned with giant safety pins and hooks, a metal chain hanging across his heart. At the base of his throat was the green tip of a dragon's tail, the rest down under his T-shirt and across his chest.

I stood in the aisle, the brown-haired girl directly behind me. The man kept coming and I held up my left hand, my weight on my back foot, my right hanging loosely at my side. "This car's closed."

The man stopped. I could see he was five or six years younger than I was, his face contorting into a mask of instant hatred I'd seen so many times before.

"You don't tell me me what to do. f.u.c.k you and your f.u.c.kin' what to do. f.u.c.k you and your f.u.c.kin' closed closed car, I'll cut your head off and stick it down your f.u.c.kin' car, I'll cut your head off and stick it down your f.u.c.kin' throat. throat."

Now was that half second in which to move. Now was that flash of time to tear through the membrane around his yelling face, to drop him where he stood. He stepped closer. My fingertips touched his chest beneath his T-shirt-flesh and muscle and bone-and he was yelling louder, like seeing a chained German shepherd, hearing its chest-croaking bark, sincere and unrepentant, and he smelled like beer and nicotine and the sweat of the unwashed. Why did my right hand stay still? Why was I letting him go on like this in front of all these watching people?

"You hear hear me? I'll f.u.c.king me? I'll f.u.c.king kill kill you." you."

Behind us one of the girls whimpered. There were hoa.r.s.e whispers from the old.

"Fine, but this car's closed."

My mouth was dry, my tongue thick. He yelled more words back, every other one f.u.c.kin' f.u.c.kin' or or c.u.n.t, c.u.n.t, and I wanted to get him away from the girls. I could hear some of them crying in the aisle behind me, and I nodded at every insult and threat he spit into my face. It was like opening my mouth and swallowing whole the ugliest part of him. He a.s.sured me he was going to murder me, how easy it would be to do it, and I nodded and agreed with him. I said, "Let's continue this outside." and I wanted to get him away from the girls. I could hear some of them crying in the aisle behind me, and I nodded at every insult and threat he spit into my face. It was like opening my mouth and swallowing whole the ugliest part of him. He a.s.sured me he was going to murder me, how easy it would be to do it, and I nodded and agreed with him. I said, "Let's continue this outside."

"Happy to, motherf.u.c.ker. Bleedin' f.u.c.kin' Bleedin' f.u.c.kin' happy happy to." And he backed up, his eyes on mine. He reached behind him for the handle and flicked the door open. I could see he was strong, that confrontation was nothing new to him. Under the pale fluorescent light between the two doors, he glanced back at the platform separating the train cars and he flicked open the outer door, his eyes still on me, and I followed him out into the cold roar of speeding air and the train's wheels clicking over the ties and a deep darkness on both sides of us beyond low steel rails. to." And he backed up, his eyes on mine. He reached behind him for the handle and flicked the door open. I could see he was strong, that confrontation was nothing new to him. Under the pale fluorescent light between the two doors, he glanced back at the platform separating the train cars and he flicked open the outer door, his eyes still on me, and I followed him out into the cold roar of speeding air and the train's wheels clicking over the ties and a deep darkness on both sides of us beyond low steel rails.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you to tell me what to do? No one No one tells me what to f.u.c.kin' do. You hear that?" His face was inches from mine. In the dim light from both cars I could see his eyes were brown, a life in them somewhere, one he'd lived over here while I'd lived mine over there. I wasn't going to let him throw me off this train, but I noticed I was standing normally too, my weight even on both feet. And I did not care if he truly believed he could easily beat me up, kill me, make me disappear. tells me what to f.u.c.kin' do. You hear that?" His face was inches from mine. In the dim light from both cars I could see his eyes were brown, a life in them somewhere, one he'd lived over here while I'd lived mine over there. I wasn't going to let him throw me off this train, but I noticed I was standing normally too, my weight even on both feet. And I did not care if he truly believed he could easily beat me up, kill me, make me disappear.

I leaned one shoulder against the outer wall, felt its shifting sway, and I stared at this man I'd filled so immediately with rage. I stared and I waited.

It's what I did every morning. Tried to sit and stare at the page without expectation, without judgment. In order for something true to come, I had to disappear.

He was still yelling. I was aware of the black English countryside falling away behind his back and behind mine. There was the smell of diesel, the scorched iron of steel wheels zipping along steel rails. His brown eyes, two slits as he yelled, were ringed with moisture, and it was clear how much he needed me to know he was not one to be dominated by anyone else. He was not one to be f.u.c.ked with, couldn't I see that? Was I blind blind?

He did not say these words, but they were in the dark sheen of his eyes, and they looked to me now like a young boy's, and I said, "So then you would do the same thing I'm doing, wouldn't you?"

"What?"

"You'd protect those girls, too."

"You're b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.kin' right I would. I wouldn't let anyone f.u.c.k with them girls."

"Then we're on the same side, aren't we?"

He didn't answer. He glanced back at the car of children and old people. He looked at me.

"D'you know what I've f.u.c.king seen in my life?"

"No."

It was as if he'd never asked anyone that question before, or maybe he hadn't quite asked himself. He began to talk. He told me of getting kicked out of his house when he was thirteen. He told me of his father's drinking, his mother's "f.u.c.king around." He told me of b.u.mming all over Europe, living homeless in Madrid, Ma.r.s.eille, and Rome. He told me he'd done things he wasn't proud of, bad things, only because of the bad things done to him. He told me he hated people who did bad things to little kids. "Bleedin' f.u.c.king hate hate them." them."

"Me too. I'm just doing what you would've done." He'd been talking a long while. I was shivering.

"f.u.c.kin' right." He looked tired now, the beer fading, the rage dissipated. His shoulders were slumped under his black leather, and he was smiling at me. "Where're you from anyway, mate?"

"America."

"You're a f.u.c.kin' Yank Yank? What the Christ you doing in the U.K.?"

"Talking to you."

He nodded slowly, like I'd said more than I just had. The train was hugging a curve and I grabbed the door handle to keep from leaning into him. He squeezed my shoulder. "Look me up in Trafalgar Square, mate. You can't f.u.c.kin' miss me."

There was only one door into the car he'd come from, and he turned and pulled it open and walked down the fluorescent-lit aisle. The door didn't close, and I watched him move down the length of the car. In that light I could see how dirty his jeans were, a rip in them beneath the hem of his leather jacket. His skin there looked pinkish and vulnerable, then he turned and walked deliberately up the aisle. I thought he might be coming back to talk some more, but he wasn't even looking ahead and out the door he'd opened that still hadn't shut. It was colder than before, loud with wind and spinning iron wheels, but in the font row sat two elderly ladies, one in a gray cardigan sweater, the other under a train blanket she'd pulled up to her chin. They were awake and at first looked startled to see him, but soon they were nodding and smiling.

He straightened up, blond bristles on his head glistening under the light, and he moved down the aisle, stopping every few seats to kneel and say something quietly to somebody-a middle-aged man, a woman old enough to be the mother he hadn't seen since he was a kid, two plain young women, both of whom he'd woken to say what he had to say.

"Isn't this remarkable?" the lady in the cardigan said. "He's apologizing to everyone. He's apologizing apologizing."

I stepped over and pulled the door shut. It was two or three in the morning, and my fingers were numb as I slid open the outer door, then the inner. Fontaine smiled sleepily at me from her seat. I tiptoed around the brown-haired girl on the floor. She lay curled under covers, her cheek resting on a pillow, her eyes no longer alert but closed. Her teachers were asleep, too, slumped in their seats across from the Irish couple. The wife was snoring slightly, her head leaning against the window, her reading gla.s.ses at the tip of her nose, and her husband still had his book open. He was looking over at me. He nodded and winked. I smiled and nodded back and sat down next to my wife who apparently would not be a widow just yet.

She lay her head on my shoulder. I stared straight ahead for a long while. I couldn't remember ever feeling this good. Not just about what I'd somehow done by not doing something else, but about people, the stories inside every one of us, the need for them to be known. known. And the boy in that young man's eyes; he was all I saw after he began to talk, he was the only one I could hear. And the boy in that young man's eyes; he was all I saw after he began to talk, he was the only one I could hear.

THE DOORS were opening again and three new young men were stomping into the car. I stood and stopped them just before the pillow of the brown-haired girl. I was met with the same resistance, the same threats, and now there were three, but I heard myself pointing out all the sleeping children, I heard myself appealing to the young boys inside them they used to be. I complimented them on their size and strength and told them I knew they'd be doing the same thing I was doing if this was their car, wouldn't they?

Right, mate.

Right.

Cheers.

They turned and were gone, and I was halfway back to my seat when the outer door rattled again and now came two in rugby shirts, later one in a long brown coat, after that three more, drunker than the rest, the tallest one slurring "Ficku, ficku," trying to slide past me, his breath bile and whiskey, and I was somehow able to talk him and all the rest back to where they'd come from. How How was I doing this? was I doing this?

With the first one, as I'd stood normally between the train cars, there was the vague sense I was being guided by something greater than me and my own fears, a presence that began to flicker inside the man who'd promised to cut off my head and stick it down my throat. It flickered inside him and it flickered inside me, then it was a steadily burning flame, a found warmth I'd been inviting intruder after intruder into, but now, three or four in the morning, my limbs were heavy and my eyes were burning and it began to feel like some cosmic run of good luck was about to go dry: I knew this was still an unreasonable world; I knew I could not keep this train car clear all night long with words alone.

I sat heavily in my seat. Fontaine lay asleep against the window. I heard the doors slide open once more, and I looked up to where I'd been rising since after midnight, but the rattle and swoosh had come from behind and I turned and he was already at my side.

"Someone in this car's not letting me friends through. Now who would do that that?"

He spoke in a full voice, his accent working-cla.s.s British. He stood in a crouch, must've leapt over each girl to get to my seat.

The girl with the brown hair opened her eyes and looked up at him. He squinted down at her as if she were misbehaving and would now have to be punished.

The girl pushed her face back into her pillow.

He was deep into his forties, his dark hair slick and long, his sideburns shaved into a point halfway down his cheek. He wore a tight black shirt open at the chest, the skin there pale and nearly hairless. If his buyers weren't getting through, how did he know why?

"That was me." I tried to state this as evenly as I could. I tried to state this from the larger warmth of the world I'd somehow stumbled into tonight, but my voice sounded defiant to me, and scared, for smiling sideways at me, his teeth gray and yellow, was the death I'd been waiting for.

"Who are you to keep my friends from visiting me me? What gives you the f.u.c.king right, mate?" The dealer's voice was lower now, his face too close to mine, and I could feel him taking me in: I felt young and weak and exposed: Who was was I to keep anyone from moving freely up and down this train? What I to keep anyone from moving freely up and down this train? What did did give me the right? My hatred of cruelty? My nearly pathological need to protect others, one I could follow all the way back to my youth? How was my problem all of a sudden everyone else's? give me the right? My hatred of cruelty? My nearly pathological need to protect others, one I could follow all the way back to my youth? How was my problem all of a sudden everyone else's?

I stood and said, "People are sleeping. Let's talk somewhere else."

"I'm not talking, mate. I'm not here to f.u.c.king talk."

He said it calmly. He stepped back between the girls so I could walk ahead of him and out the doors.

He was not large or well-built, but he moved with the c.o.c.ky ease of the truly dangerous. So it would be a knife then, wouldn't it? I'd die the way Cleary had six years earlier, his wife stabbing him in the lower back, my friend collapsing into the weeds and slowly bleeding to death.

I kept my back to the windows. I stepped sideways through both doors out into the perpetual noise between both trains. The air was colder, and in the zipping darkness on the other side of the steel rail a porch light came and went. The dealer had taken a moment longer to follow me through the doors, and I was sure this was to pull the knife he would start jabbing at me very soon. My left hand hovered six inches away from my hip, my weight sinking back onto my right foot, locking me, the way it always had, into what would happen now.

He stepped in front of me, but he stood in his own fight stance, his hands low and empty, and I began to talk; it was like getting in the first punch without the punch, and I talked more than I wanted to. I told him I hadn't asked to be put in this train car. I told him I'd rather be sleeping than doing this. I told him I was tired and if there were no children trying to sleep in the aisles, I wouldn't give a s.h.i.t who was walking up and down this train. And it wasn't just so the girls could sleep, it was so they would stop being scared.

"Because some of your friends are scary-looking to kids."

While I talked he'd crossed his arms over his chest. He leaned against the wall and scrutinized me. In the pale fluorescence from the cars, with his long hair and sideburns, the narrow face and deep eyes, he was every street-tough I'd ever known: he was Cody Perkins about to knock out Sully; he was Clay Whelan just before he chased me down; he was Kenny V. punching me while Ricky J. beat on Cleary; he was Dennis Murphy slapping the old lady with the thin branch; he was Tommy J. walking away from my bleeding brother, and he was Steve Lynch the second before I threw my first punch. Except now I wasn't going to throw a punch, even if the dealer was to step away from the wall and square off to shut me up; I wasn't going to fight him either, and it was as if, in my explanation to him, I had stood between those trains and taken off all my clothes, then began to pull away every muscle I'd ever built: I ripped off the plate of my pectorals, dropping them at my feet. I reached up to each shoulder and unhooked both deltoids and let them fall, too; then I reached around for the muscles of my upper back, the first to show up years earlier, and dropped them at the feet of the dark dealer, speaking to him all along as if I'd never learned to do anything but talk, as if this armor I'd forged had never been needed because I could trust the humanity of the other to show itself. Trust. Trust. I was going to trust this stranger, this man who had entered my train car and not to talk. I was going to trust him to see and to listen and to do the right thing. I was going to trust this stranger, this man who had entered my train car and not to talk. I was going to trust him to see and to listen and to do the right thing.

A part of me was watching myself do this, the same part that watched my fictional characters say and do things. And when they did that apart from me and my authorial wishes for them, they were more truly themselves. As I was now, standing before the dealer in the whisking cold, more truly myself. No armor, no sword.

He lit a cigarette, the lighter's flame extinguishing in the wind. He took a deep drag and said, "You're just protecting the girls then." The words came sideways out his mouth, slipping through a stream of smoke.

"That's all."

His eyes were two slits of shadow. He held the cigarette to his lips. He nodded. It was as if he were seeing all the unfolding years that had brought me here with him between these two train cars and it was a story he knew well, one he'd already written and discarded and wasn't up to being reminded about.

He blew smoke through both nostrils. "f.u.c.k it, the night's done anyway, right, mate?" He flicked the smoking b.u.t.t over my shoulder into the black wind. I knew what this action meant, I knew what he was saying he had chosen not to do to me, but I didn't care one way or another. A part of me seemed to have died anyway, and what remained watched myself walk behind the dealer through both doors, through the outer and then the inner, into the warm and quiet car of safe and sleeping girls.

20.

THE LAST TIME I saw my father alive, we were both watching two men fight each other in the ring. It was February, near midnight, and I sat in damp work clothes on his couch in his house on the hill. In the past twelve years, Pop had learned how to live in a wheelchair, and there were signs of him and it all over the house: just weeks after his accident, one of his friends-a professor, Vietnam veteran, and Marine captain-had come over with one of his daughter's boyfriends and built a ramp spanning the two steps of the dining room down to the living room. Neither men were carpenters, but the pitch was right and the two-by-four railing didn't shake much, and twelve years later its top rail was worn smooth as bone from my father's hands.

Along both walls of the corridor to his bedroom we'd screwed in wood rails and he'd grab one on each side of his chair and pull himself rolling fast into the room where he slept and wrote on a desk he'd hired me to build, one he could roll up to, one that his surviving leg wouldn't b.u.mp underneath. Three years after his accident, Pop had taken out a loan and hired Jeb and me and some mutual friends, Beau Mullen and Jack Herlihy, to remodel his house. If we hadn't needed the work, we would've done it for free, but we did need the work so five days a week for two and a half months, we changed his home from what it was to what he now needed.

Jeb did the design, and we cut away and hauled off the old deck, we poured new footings then tore out walls and ripped away half the roof. We built a larger living room with a small deck he could wheel out to, one that looked over the wading pool he'd had installed. We built a larger bedroom for Cadence, a brand-new one for little Madeleine. We tore out the wall separating what used to be his and Peggy's bedroom and their library, and now his bed sat up against a wall of floor-to-ceiling books and there was more natural light streaming in from the windows facing the hill of poplars behind his house.

Later Jeb and I poured concrete footings for the posts of the long, staggered exterior ramp, and we ripped up the plywood decking and nailed stronger, much longer-lasting pressure-treated two-by-sixes. As the boards aged and bowed slightly, his wheels would make a clacking sound over them not unlike a far-off train's.

Pop had made peace with his crippling. Once, sitting straight in his wheelchair, he'd looked over at me in his small dining room and said, "I'd stop on that highway again. Even knowing what I was going to lose, I would."

"Why?"

"Because I've learned so much."