The Rest is Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

grab a towel from the rack and rub my hair. The towel smells like Lina. On the shelf above the toilet is a bottle of geranium essential oil. I consider putting a drop of it on my wrist but think better of it. In the kitchen, I sit on a stool at the counter where Art cuts vegetables for a one-pot chicken casserole. He pulls two bottles of homemade beer from the fridge and puts one in front of me. The cap flips off the stubby brown bottle and rolls in a spiral in front of me.
    â€œTo shit staying underground,” he says as he raises his bottle.
    Our bottles click and he raises his to take a sip.
    â€œYou want a glass?”
    I shake my head and tip the bottle to my lips, pretending to drink it. The pine floorboards creak at the back of the house. Lina comes into the kitchen and washes her hands at the sink.
    â€œI was telling our friend here that you don’t care much for the sludge at the bottom of my beer.” He winks at me.
    â€œAnd I told you, Art, it has nothing to do with your sludge.”
    Her back is to us. I could lift that braid, feel its heft, coil it around my neck like a heavy scarf. She dries her hands on a dish towel and pours a glass of tap water. She comes to sit on the stool beside me. She smells, not only of flowers, but of laundry hung out in the sun, and when she smiles, I take a small step toward feeling human again, as if there is more to life than splitting firewood and hauling water.
    â€œI tried to draw him while you were in the woods, but it didn’t work out.”
    â€œHe’d make a good hawk with a nose like that,” Art says.
    â€œHis nose wasn’t the issue. Some days I can draw and some I can’t.”
    â€œOn the days you can’t, you might as well lay your pencil down and take up a hoe.” He turns to me. “Lina’s here to look after Louise’s gardens for me. I can do the rough work, but it takes a feminine touch to make the flower beds look like they used to.”
    â€œYour wife?” I say.
    â€œShe’s living in a home in Bridgetown. Her memory’s all shot to hell.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    He waves me off with a snort. “How can you be sorry? You never knew her.” He continues chopping the onions and carrots. “I hate this time of day. She called it entre chien et loup . Soon after Louise and I married, Joshua sold us this land at the edge of the farm he and I grew up on. There was an old house here with its roof caving in. Louise and I were up there together, into November, with the rain beating down on our backs, repairing it. She passed me boards and I’d nail them in place. We shingled the whole thing too.”
    He is staring through the window. It’s dusk, and though I can see his reflection, he’s looking far beyond it as though he were expecting his wife to return from the garden, a spectre holding a hoe and her gardening gloves, mind intact.
    After supper, while I help Lina do the dishes, Art gets out his fiddle and plays a melancholy tune. His mood has infected me, and, given Lina’s reticence, she and I say little, listening to the plaintive singing of the sheep-gut strings under his bow. She hands me a heavy pottery plate, handmade, and our hands touch for the second time. Her tapered fingers return to the sudsy water and massage the sponge against a cup. When she hands it to me and meets my gaze I realize I’ve been staring. I look down and go back to wiping the plate.
    Before it gets dark, I get on my bike for the long, slow ride uphill. Half an hour later I climb into my tent. The air is hot and the sweaty skin of my legs and back sticks to the nylon of my sleeping bag. I close my eyes, see Lina’s, and can’t sleep. I turn on the AM radio and tune in stations from the States. The baseball game from Boston, music, evangelists spouting their apocalyptic gibberish. Then, farther along the dial, a news report that makes me question if it is gibberish after