Bone Fire Read online

  He sat with her while Jim went into the kitchen to find a damp cloth to clean his wife’s face. For a short while she sobbed quietly, then stiffened and began clawing at him, and he was forced to grip her wrists, pinning them crosswise in her lap, and still she twisted and shrieked that she hoped he’d die just like her son had. Then she spat in his face.

  Jim got her to swallow a sleeping pill, and when they felt they could briefly leave her lying on the couch with her eyes wide but unfocused, they went back outside and walked to the curb. They stood by the cruiser, staring into the sky, and he told Jim again how sorry he was. He said there’d been drugs involved and that he didn’t want him to read about it in the paper without already knowing. Jim nodded, once, then he sat down on the curb. He didn’t weep or curse, just sat there with his head bowed, and after a while he got to his feet and looked back at the house. “I don’t know what I ought to do now,” he said. “I haven’t a clue.”

  When Crane heard his name called he got out of the chair. A thick, mannish-looking woman stood in the doorway beside the receptionist’s cubicle, lifting her chin to indicate that he was next, and he followed her down the single hallway and into a windowless white room. She had him step on a scale, then he sat on a stool so she could take his blood pressure and temperature. She asked him to roll up his sleeve.

  She thumped at the blood vessel on the inside of his arm and inserted the needle, loosening the rubber tubing she’d cinched around his biceps. They both watched as she filled three vials with his blood, then she had him fold his arm back against a cotton ball.

  She got a light blue hospital gown from a drawer and handed it to him. “You’ll need to put this on,” she said.

  He had a leg crossed on his knee and was examining a mole on his calf, comparing it to the stage-four mole on the skin-cancer chart hanging on the wall, when Dan walked in, apologizing for the wait.

  For the next half hour they talked about their inability to afford the homes they wanted, the sorry rise of evangelical right-wingers and how video games were turning out a generation of surly clerks, while Dan listened to his heart, looked in his ears, eyes and throat, pushed and prodded his abdomen, checked his reflexes, finally pricking him here and there with a pin and asking if he could feel it. Or that’s how it came to be lumped together in his memory, as a single blunted and humiliating episode, but about a hundred times easier than telling a man and woman that the child they’d loved and raised was now lost to them.

  He then sat on the end of the examination table, watching Dan at the sink in the corner. He made a fist with his left hand and the grip seemed improved. His arm just tingled, and his legs weren’t cramping anymore.

  “Why don’t you put your pants and boots on and we’ll see what your heart’s got to say.” Dan was drying his hands.

  “Not my shirt?”

  “You’d just have to take it off again.”

  He followed Dan to a room at the end of the hallway where a young, pale nurse stuck electrodes on his bare chest and guided him onto a treadmill. “It goes easy like this if you don’t have much hair on your chest,” she said, her voice sounding more like chirping than speech.

  Dan stood at the head of the machine, studying the readout while they worked him into a trot and faster still, until he hardly had enough air to shout that he ought to be allowed to quit.

  Dan tore the printout evenly away from the machine, folding it back upon itself as he started for the door. “Come on down to the office when you’ve got your breath.”

  Crane stood crosswise on the inclined tread, gripping the handrail, red-faced and gasping, and the nurse helped him off onto the tiled floor where he stood leaning into her. She was strong for her size.

  He sat across the desk from Dan, still overheated, only half-listening to the telephone conversation Dan was having with a doctor at the Billings Clinic. He pulled off his right boot and sock, and when Dan hung up, writing something on a notepad, not saying anything at all, Crane said, “My foot’s blistered.” He moved the pad of a thumb over the blister forming on the ball behind his big toe.

  Dan held a slip of paper pinched up in front of him, both forearms resting on the desktop. “I should’ve told you to wear tennis shoes.”

  “It’s not my heart, is it?”

  “No, your heart’s just fine.” He leaned forward in his chair, and Crane took the slip of notepaper he offered. “Bill McCarthy’s a good guy,” he said. “He’s up in Billings but well worth the drive.”

  Crane nodded, folding the paper and slipping it behind the bills in his wallet. He saw the appointment was scheduled for one-thirty in the afternoon, so he wouldn’t have to wake in the dark to get there in time. He hated waking up at night. “Should I wear tennis shoes?”

  “No, you’re done with that. McCarthy’s a neurologist.”

  Crane nodded again, pulling his boot back on.

  “This doesn’t have to be what you think it is,” Dan said.

  Crane stood out of the chair. He put his hat on, squaring it. “You don’t know what I’m thinking. You’re not that kind of doctor.”

  “But I know you never thought it was your heart.”

  He didn’t sleep well that night, or the next, or any of the nights before he told Jean he had to escort a prisoner to Billings and drove by himself to the clinic.

  That had been a week ago, and this afternoon he was standing on the screened-in porch off the east end of the house, watching Jean work in her garden. He was on the phone. First it’d been McCarthy’s nurse, but now it was the doctor.

  “There’re a few more tests I’d like you to consider.”

  McCarthy’s voice sounded farther away than Montana, as if he were calling from somewhere overseas, and Crane wanted to ask, “Did I flunk the others?” or something smart-ass like that, but he hadn’t been able to finish his cereal that morning, his left hand wobbling so much he couldn’t keep the spoon level. He asked, “Is there a problem with the tests we already did?”

  “No, Mr. Carlson, the other tests were conclusive.”

  “You can call me Crane.”

  “Then how about Monday, Crane?”

  Jean was dragging a cardboard box behind her, filling it with weeds. When it got too heavy to drag she’d empty it into the wheelbarrow.

  “If you have something to tell me I’d rather hear it now.”

  “I’d prefer to discuss this in person, Crane.”

  “I’m not coming back up there.”

  There was a pause on the line, the sound of papers being shuffled. Jean scooted a foam pad ahead of her in the row, kneeled on it and pulled the sodden box along. The bottom was stained dark and looked about ready to tear.

  “Your electromyogram indicates certain abnormalities, and along with the other—”

  “It’s Lou Gehrig’s, isn’t it?” He moved the phone to his other ear, watching Jean staring up at the sun, checking the advancement of the afternoon. It seemed clear to him how alone she must feel, how little he’d done to fill any part of her life.

  “Yes, it is. It’s ALS.”

  He sat back against the edge of the wrought-iron table, heard its legs scrape on the redwood and then catch, holding his weight. “Well, goddamn.”

  “I’m very sorry, but I think it’s important for you to come in and—”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a cure now?”

  “What I’d like to talk about are your treatment options, Crane. We need to set up a schedule to monitor the possible progressions I believe you can expect.”

  Again, the shuffling of papers.

  “What I can expect is to lose more control of what muscles I’ve got, until a year or two from now when I’ll die choking on my own spit.”

  “That isn’t exactly how I’d choose to characterize it.”

  “It’s what killed my granddad.”

  At the funeral for the Tylerson boy he’d sat in a back pew, and when Nancy came in, walking very straight with her hands forming fists at her sides, s
he’d stopped at the end of the row, staring directly at him. Her mouth hung open slightly, like she might be about to speak, or else just didn’t care about closing it anymore, and even though it had only been a little more than a week since he’d seen her, she appeared older, like she wasn’t there at all and had sent her mother instead.

  “I’m not finding that in your medical history.”

  “I didn’t put it down.”

  “There’s a great deal that’s changed, Mr. Carlson. With nasal ventilation, patients can now expect—”

  “The same thing they always could.” He hung up, set the phone on the table and pushed through the screen door, standing on the apron of gravel below the stoop. He couldn’t remember if he’d intended to go any farther, but at least he was away from the phone.

  “Who was that?” Jean called.

  “Work,” he said.

  “I thought you were taking a long weekend.”

  “I am. Starla was just checking in.” His sunglasses were resting on the top of his head, and he pulled them off, cleaned the lenses with his handkerchief and put them on. The sky fell a deeper blue. “You want to go for a drive?”

  She stabbed her gardening trowel into a hump of dirt and stood. “I can’t. I need to study for my exam.” She placed her hands on her hips, pushing them around in a tight circle. She was wearing flowered gloves.

  “When’s that?”

  “Next week, but I’m behind.”

  She peeled the gloves off, tossing them beside the trowel, and pinched a joint out of her shirt pocket and lit it. She took a drag, holding the smoke in.

  “I thought you’d quit that.” He tried to spit but his mouth was too dry. He watched her exhale through her nose.

  “I did for a while. I decided I didn’t need to quit forever.”

  He turned toward the neighbors’ house to see if they were out in their yard, and when he looked back she was holding the joint up in front of her face, examining it like it was a bug she’d never seen before.

  “Don’t you just love the shit out of Rose?” she said.

  “Rose Bauman?”

  She nodded, clenching the joint between her teeth, squatting to get the weed box cradled up in her arms. “Her son sends it to her from San Diego.” Her head was tilted back to keep the smoke out of her eyes and she lurched forward, kicking out with her feet until she hit the wheelbarrow. She dropped the box in just as the bottom came apart.

  “I can’t hear you when you’ve got something in your mouth.”

  She cupped the joint in her left hand, bending the hand forward to rub at her eyes with the back of her wrist. When she was done she said, “It helps with Rose’s glaucoma.”

  A hummingbird hovered for an instant between them, its wings buzzing as it banked away, and the sudden lack of sound produced the effect of a greater silence. Then a dog barked, a car passed in the street, someone started a lawn mower down the block.

  They both stood watching the hummingbird arc back over the house, returning to a border of marigolds.

  She took another hit, holding the smoke in, pointing back at the wheelbarrow. “Could I get you to empty that for me?”

  “Sure.”

  He stepped past the tomato plants starting up lush and bushy in their wire cages, and carefully over the deep green peppers, lifting the handles and pushing the wheelbarrow through the soft dirt to the northwest corner of the garden, where he’d dug a compost pit in the spring. He turned it up, tilting it over onto the heap of decomposing weeds and kitchen waste. The wheel was caked with mud and spun slowly in the air, and the bottle flies rose from the soggy mulch in a high-pitched drone.

  “You hungry?” she called. She held the screen door open but hadn’t yet stepped up onto the porch.

  “I’m good for now,” he said. “But maybe after I take my drive.”

  Six

  KENNETH FINISHED clearing the table and when he had the oilcloth sponged clean he joined McEban at the sink. He shook a dishtowel out and dried the plates already washed and leaned up edgewise in the rack, and then they shelved them away in the cupboards and slotted the silverware back in the drawer. They left the pans to air-dry, tilted so they’d drain. It’s how they clean up every evening, and the boy will be eleven this winter and they never have treated each other like father and son, they’ve always managed better than that.

  He pushed their chairs in at the table, draping the towel over the backladder of a chair. The screen door to the mudroom stood open but the outside door was still closed against the day’s heat.

  “It’ll go quicker with both of us,” McEban said.

  The boy glanced down the hallway, where they could hear water running in the bathroom. “It’s your turn,” he said. “I got to go to town with her this morning.” He smiled. “Anyway, she’s just my mom.”

  McEban stripped off his yellow Playtex gloves, hanging them over the edge of the dishrack, and opened the window above the sink. He leaned back against the counter, looking down the hallway himself. “I don’t need to see her tonight. I can spend all day tomorrow with her.”

  They heard the water shut off and the pipes knock behind the wallboards and stop, leaving only an argument among the grackles in the windbreak, the distant lowing of cattle.

  “She might not be here tomorrow,” the boy told him.

  McEban nodded, digging his pocketknife out of his jeans. He cleaned a thumbnail, slipping the knife back into the pocket. “I guess you’ve always known more about it than I have,” he said.

  The boy moved to the mudroom and sat down on the bench to pull a pair of hip waders on over his boots. The waders were faded a blotchy gray and patched and too big for him and he had to cuff the tops down twice. When he stood in the doorway he looked like a shrunken and shoddy musketeer.

  “I should get used to changing the water by myself,” he said, then shrugged as if to underscore the obvious. “So I know I can.”

  He drew the door shut against its broken spring, his features clouded by the screen. McEban thought it made him appear younger than he was, and wondered if they even made waders for kids. He thought he’d have a look in the Cabela’s catalog later on. “Have it your way,” he said, “but be careful at that headgate.”

  The boy turned away, waving like there was a chance he’d be gone longer than the irrigating required, and McEban watched him go down the drive kicking a rock ahead of him through the loose gravel, a shovel slung over his shoulder. At the edge of the pasture he bent through the fence and, when he was clear of the wires, slapped the blade of the shovel into the ditch, a spray of water fanning up before him, sparkling in the sunlight. For a moment McEban felt a jolt of contentment, something akin to a boy’s decent happiness.

  He popped a handful of ice cubes loose from a tray, filled a glass with the cubes and quartered a lime.

  Then he lifted the bottle of tequila down from a cupboard, easing the glass stopper out and holding it under his nose. Roses, cinnamon, vanilla. At three hundred dollars a bottle he’d come to imagine it as the scent of an exotic perfume. The ice cracked when he filled the glass. “Herradura Seleccion Suprema.” He liked to pronounce the name out loud. He’d done the same thing the first time he ordered a bottle on the Internet with Paul leaning over his shoulder, eating an apple while he studied the screen.

  “Jesus Christ,” Paul had said. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure it’s the right kind. I heard her say it once.” He turned in the chair. “That it was the best. Can I have a bite of that?”

  Paul handed him the apple, reached around to the mouse and scrolled down the screen. “Creamy to the palate,” he read aloud, then stood away. “I guess it better be.” And then: “It’s your money. You want to spend it on my sister, that’s fine by me. The rest of that apple’s yours too.”

  He waited until Paul left the room before clicking on the BUY IT NOW button.

  McEban carried the glass down the hallway, setting it on the floor to pull his boots off. He stood them to
the side of the door, and when he smelled the sour odor of his socks he pulled them off too, then knocked on the door.

  “Come in.” She managed to make the two words sound like lyrics from a song.

  He closed the door behind him and handed the glass down to her, and she held it balanced on the edge of the tub. He lowered the toilet seat and sat, watching as she pushed her feet against the foot of the tub to slide herself upright, closing her eyes as she sipped from the glass. Her shoulders and breasts were foamy with bath bubbles.

  “Oh, that’s perfect. Won’t you try it, Barnum? Just once?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Just a taste. I want you to know what a sweet thing it is you’re doing.” She held the glass out to him, her arm dripping on the bathmat.

  “All right.”

  He leaned over and took the glass from her and she slid back into the water, her knees folding up out of the bubbles. He took a sip, holding it in the back of his mouth, wondering if Kenneth was having trouble with the dams.

  “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Her face was turned toward him, watching as he swallowed.

  “It’s good.”

  “Just good?”

  “I thought it might be better.”

  “It’s not a crime to enjoy yourself.” She turned the hot-water faucet with a foot, until it started drizzling. “If you’re done you can set it there on the floor.”

  He placed the glass on the bathmat, the sides already slick with condensation.

  “The ranch looks better than I remember,” she said.

  “You were only gone three weeks.”

  “It always looks better than I remember.”

  “I might open this window a little,” he said. The boy was probably now at the headgate. He imagined the water boiling in the chute as the slide was raised, the smell of alfalfa and clover.

  “If you’re hot you could always take off those heavy clothes.”