“That makes you-”
“Eighty-three,” Crandall said, and Louis was mildly relieved that he didn’t add years young, a phrase he cordially detested.
“You look a lot younger than that.”
Crandall shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve always lived there. I joined up when we fought the Great War, but the closest I got to Europe was Bayonne, New Jersey. Nasty place. Even in 1917 it was a nasty place. I was just as glad to come back here.
Got married to my Norma, put in my time on the railroad, and here we still are.
But I’ve seen a lot of life right here in Ludlow. I sure have.”
The moving men stopped by the shed entrance, holding the box spring that went under the big double bed he and Rachel shared. “Where do you want this, Mr.
Creed?”
“Upstairs… just a minute, I’ll show you.” He started toward them, then paused for a moment and glanced back at Crandall.
“You go on,” Crandall said, smiling. “I’ll see how y’ folks’re makin out. Send em back over and get out of your way. But movin in’s mighty thirsty work. I usually sit out on my porch about nine and have a couple of beers. In warm Weather I like to watch the night come on. Sometimes Norma Joins me. You come over, if you’re a mind.”
Well, maybe I will,” Louis said, not intending to at all. The next thing would be an informal (and free) diagnosis of Norma’s arthritis on the porch. He liked Crandall, liked his Crooked grin, his offhand way of talking, his Yankee accent, which was not hard-edged at all but so soft it was almost a drawl. A good man, Louis thought, but doctors became leery of people fast. It was unfortunate, but sooner or later even your best friends wanted medical advice. And with old people there was no end to it. “But don’t look for me, or stay up-we’ve had a hell of a day.”
“Just so long as you know you don’t need no engraved invitation,” Crandall said-and there was something in the man’s crooked grin that made Louis feel that Crandall knew exactly what Louis was thinking.
He watched the old guy for a moment before joining the movers. Crandall walked straight and easily, like a man of sixty instead of over eighty. Louis felt that first faint tug of affection.
5
By nine o’clock the movers were gone. Ellie and Gage, both exhausted, were sleeping in their new rooms, Gage in his crib, Ellie on a mattress on the floor surrounded by a foothill of boxes-her billions of Crayolas, whole, broken, and blunted; her Sesame Street posters; her picture books; her clothes; heaven knew what else. And of course Church was with her, also sleeping and growling rustily in the back of his throat. That rusty growl seemed the closest the big torn could come to purring.
Rachel had prowled the house restlessly with Gage in her arms earlier, second-guessing the places where Louis had told. the movers to leave things, getting them to rearrange, change, or restack. Louis had not lost their check; it was still in his breast pocket, along with the five ten-dollar bills he had put aside for a tip. When the van was finally emptied, he handed both the check and the cash over, nodded at their thanks, signed the bill of receipt, and stood on the porch, watching them head back to their big truck. He supposed they would probably stop over in Bangor and have a few beers to lay the dust. A couple of beers would go down well right now. That made him think of Jud Crandall again.
He and Rachel sat at the kitchen table, and he saw the circles under her eyes.
“You,” he said, “go to bed.”
“Doctor’s orders?” she asked, smiling a little.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” she said, standing. “I’m beat. And Gage is apt to be up in the night.
You coming?”
He hesitated. “I don’t think so, just yet. That old fella across the street-”
“Road. You call it a road, out in the country. Or if you’re Judson Crandall, I guess you call it a rud.”
“Okay, across the rud. He invited me over for a beer. I think I’m going to take him up on it. I’m tired, but I’m too jived-up to sleep.”
Rachel smiled. “You’ll end up getting Norma Crandall to tell you where it hurts and what kind of mattress she sleeps on.”
Louis laughed, thinking how funny-funny and scary-it was, the way wives could read their husbands’ minds after a while.
“He was here when we needed him,” he said. “I can do him a favor, I guess.”
“Barter system?”
He shrugged, unwilling and unsure how to tell her that he had taken a liking to Crandall on short notice. “How’s his wife?”
“Very sweet,” Rachel said. “Gage sat on her lap. I was surprised because he’s had a hard day, and you know he doesn’t take very well to new people on short notice under the best of circumstances. And she had a dolly she let Eileen play with.”
“How bad would you say her arthritis is?” “Quite bad.”
“In a wheelchair?”
“No… but she walks very slowly, and her fingers…
Rachel held her own slim fingers up and hooked them into claws to demonstrate.
Louis nodded. “Anyway, don’t be late, Lou. I get the creeps in strange houses.”
“It won’t be strange for long,” Louis said and kissed her.
6
Louis came back later feeling small. No one asked him to examine Norma Crandall; when he crossed the street (rud, he reminded himself, smiling), the lady had already retired for the night. Jud was a vague silhouette behind the screens of the enclosed porch. There was the comfortable squeak of a rocker on old linoleum. Louis knocked on the screen door, which rattled companionably against its frame. Crandall’s cigarette glowed like a large, peaceable firefly in the summer darkness. From a radio, low, came the voice of a Red Sox game, and all of it gave Louis Creed the oddest feeling of coming home.
“Doc,” Crandall said. “I thought that was you.”
Hope you meant it about the beer,” Louis said, coming in.
“Oh, about beer I never lie,” Crandall said. “A man who lies about beer makes enemies. Sit down, Doc. I put an extra couple on ice, just in case.”
The porch was long and narrow, furnished with rattan chairs and sofas. Louis sank into one and was surprised at how comfortable it was. At his left hand was a tin pail filled with ice cubes and a few cans of Black Label. He took one.
“Thank you,” he said and opened it. The first two swallows hit his throat like a blessing.
“More’n welcome,” Crandall said. “I hope your time here will be a happy one, Doc.”
“Amen,” Louis said.
“Say! If you want crackers or somethin, I could get some. I got a wedge of rat that’s just about ripe.”
“A wedge of what?”
“Rat cheese.” Crandall sounded faintly amused.
“Thanks, but just the beer will do me.”
“Well then, we’ll just let her go.” Crandall belched contentedly.
“Your wife gone to bed?” Louis asked, wondering why he was opening the door like this.
“Ayuh. Sometimes she stays up. Sometimes she don’t.”
“Her arthritis is quite painful, isn’t it?”
“You ever see a case that wasn’t?” Crandall asked.
Louis shook his head.
“I guess it’s tolerable,” Crandall said. “She don’t complain much. She’s a good old girl, my Norma.” There was a great and simple weight of affection in his voice. Out on Route 15, a tanker truck droned by, one so big and long that for a moment Louis couldn’t see his house across the road. Written on the side, just visible in the last light, was the word ORINCO.
“One hell of a big truck,” Louis commented.
“Orinco’s near Orrington,” Crandall said. “Chemical fertilizer fact’ry. They come and go, all right. And the oil tankers, and the dump trucks, and the people who go to work in Bangor or Brewer and come home at night.” He shook his head.
“That’s the one thing about Ludlow I don’t like anymore. That frigging road. No peace from it. They go all day and all night. Wake Norma up sometimes. Hell, wake me up sometimes, and I sleep like a goddam log.”
Louis, who thought this strange Maine landscape almost eerily quiet after the constant roar of Chicago, only nodded his head.
“One day soon the Arabs will pull the plug, and they’ll be able to grow African violets right down the yellow line,” Crandall said.
“You might be right.” Louis tilted his can back and was surprised to find it empty.
Crandall laughed. “You just grab yourself one to grow on, Doc.”
Louis hesitated and then said, “All right, but just one more. I have to be getting back.”
“Sure you do. Ain’t moving a bitch?”
“It is,” Louis agreed, and then for a time they were silent. The silence was a comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until.
now. He felt ashamed of his casual thoughts about free medical advice earlier.
On the road a semi roared by, its running lights twinkling like earthstars.
“That’s one mean road, all right,” Crandall repeated thoughtfully, almost vaguely, and then turned to Louis. There was a peculiar little smile on his seamed mouth. He poked a Chesterfield into one
