The Long Stretch Read Online Free PDF Page B

another word. Just stared at me. I grab my coat and a pack of smokes and out the door. Expecting her to shout something. Stop me.”
    “She must have known something.”
    “No way,” he says. “She’d have used it if she did. You know her.”
    With me it was a brief note. Life sentence.
    He says, “You must have been saying ‘Serves the bastard right’ when you heard.”
    “To tell the truth, I can’t even remember how I found out.”
    He stares into the cigarette smoke, the way his father used to. Then says brightly, “I think it’s great. You and me here. Grownups. Scars and all. But no hard feelings.”
    “But that’s not why you’re here.”
    “I suppose not,” he says, smiling.
    I’m not sure what I should say next. Don’t provoke.
    Eventually, he says: “Bottom line, I guess. I don’t know why the fuck I’m here.” He spreads his hands, preacher-like.
    “I think we’ve grown up a bit,” he says, with that smile again.
    Some more than others, I’m thinking, absorbed into the sounds of the storm outside, and the vastness of the history around us. All grown up and not even looking at each other. Speaking in parables.
    The loneliness of the long-distance runner, he said. Good line.
    “Some grim out there,” he says, tilting his head toward the outside.
    The wind is rattling furiously at the latch on the porch door. Trying to get in.
    “So you should have come in summer,” I say.
    He drains the glass. “It was hard this afternoon. The three of them there…planted in different, random spots. You’d never know any one of them ever had anything to do with the others.”
    Next time I surfaced, I stayed. I heard myself shouting, and the water splashing and the bump of the boat, where my arm must have been hitting. Then he had me by the hair. “Hang on!” he was shouting, but it was himself that was hanging on. Then he must have lifted me up or something, because I got my hand over the side. That’s how he became special. The first time. Gave me life, a piece of his own, if only to take it away again when it was finally worth something.

2
    “Home,” says Millie. “Home is where they have to let you in.”
    And so, you go home, fear following closely like a dog. Fever starting. Like Jack got once. Romantic fever, he called it. Chilled to the core. But fear dominant. If Mother Nature doesn’t get you, the old man will. So straight through the kitchen to bed. Ma there in the gloom later, hand extended to my brow.
    “You’re burning up.”
    “I’m good.”
    “I’ll bring something.”
    “No. Where’s Pa?”
    “Down there.”
    “Don’t tell.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    But I’m under the water again. Warm and silent. Ma told me later I was gone for three days, into the fever. Temperature over a hundred and four. It was touch and go for at least another week. I remember faces. Sextus looking anxious. Whispering something. Don’t say anything. About what? The first sorrowful mystery of the agony in the garden. Duncan kneeling where Sextus had just been. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. I’m wanting to laugh. What am I not to say? Feeling a small hot hand on my hand under the blanket. Effie’s round face, blue eyes wide and frightened, on the edge of the bed. Saying: Don’t die.
    “Die?”
    The old man gave me a reprieve. It must have been bad. Ma said he talked about Jack all the time. Almost like he cared about Jack again.
    “So we’re here,” I say helpfully.
    “The way we were. More like brothers then…for quite a while.”
    I nod.
    “But you were Sandy the Lineman’s boy.” He laughs and leans back. “Took after him too.”
    “Uh. No,” I say, smiling at his transparent insincerity.
    “Old Sandy,” he says, oblivious. “There was a man. Larger than life. What I wouldn’t have given…” Then, through the smoke, he asks: “What happened?”
    I act out my confusion, raising a hand to my temple, halfclosing one eye quizzically, struggling to speak.