The Call

WHAT ED SAID: Oh, yes. I did see them. It might have been her fawn at that, but he was big. He might turn out to be a buck.

WHAT I SAID: What were all the fires about last week? Was it just people starting rubbish fires?

WHAT ED SAID: Yes, that was it. It’s too dry now to start a fire, but people are fooled. They think because in places there is still snow on the ground and mud on the roads that it’s wet enough. But it’s not. The dead grass on the fields is like tinder, and the leaves from last fall on the ground are like paper. They go up like that, Ed said, while snapping his fingers in the space above his blinking radio in the patrol car.

WHAT I SAID: Well, let’s hope the fires are over.

WHAT ED SAID: Yes, let’s hope so. Well, I’ll be seeing you then. Take care. And then Ed drove off ahead of me.

WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: What did that cop stop you for? Were you speeding? Was your taillight out? The town cop stopped you for nothing, but meanwhile he sits in his car and lets the man who shot your son freely wander the town? What kind of town is this? said the spaceman.

WHAT I SAID: Oh, no. That was just Ed, I said. Ed likes to chat sometimes. What is it you were saying before Ed stopped us? The spaceman leaned his head back on the headrest of the seat. He looked up at the ceiling of my truck.

WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ve got kidney disease.

WHAT I THOUGHT: Was there someone he could see on the ceiling of my truck that he was talking to? Maybe I had left the shade to the sunroof of my truck slid open and he was talking to someone through it. Was his spacecraft up there floating above us, flashing its lights, talking back to the spaceman? Was he telling the spacecraft that he had kidney disease?

WHAT I SAID: I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear that.

WHAT I WANTED TO SCREAM: Alarm! Alarm! in a German accent, and I wanted to lower my truck to the safety of the depths of the sea.

WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ve been on the donors’ list too long. My father, the other one, he offered to donate one of his, but we’re not a match. I could have told them that at the hospital before all the tests, that we were not a match. It was something I knew from a long time ago. Maybe something I figured out while watching him swim, the way he swam only sidestroke that we were not a match, but he insisted on trying. He is that kind of father. Then the spaceman looked at me. I knew he was looking at me because we were going past the third streetlamp in our town and the streetlamp was on. It hadn’t been turned off to save the town money yet. The spaceman said, while he was looking at me, that he bet that he and I were a match. I bet we are a good match, he said, and then he put his face in his hands again. We now had turned up a road that eventually would take us home. It was one of the reasons I came to see you, to ask you, he said into his hands. The road we were on was dirt, and in the headlights I could see how the mud had turned the road into a washboard of ruts. The truck bounced over the ruts and I could see how the spaceman’s hands were moving up and down his face from the bouncy ride and then the spaceman took his hands off his face and set one on the armrest and one on the console between us. I noticed after I drove over a very deep rut that the CHECK ENGINE light in the truck went off, and I thought, finally, something’s been fixed, and I wondered if I were on some kind of streak and maybe my levels would be the next thing to be magically repaired. I started driving up our driveway, but I didn’t drive all the way up. I didn’t want the spaceman to have to get out of the truck and be close to the house, where the children might come running out to see us. One of them, probably Sarah, would see his face and ask right away why he had been crying. I stayed parked at the start of our driveway with the engine off.

WHAT I TOLD THE SPACEMAN: I think you’re very brave to come here and ask me this and I will think about it. Right now, though, we had better drive up to the house and we better see what there is to eat because I’ve forgotten that we didn’t eat. I forgot that we had said we would get something to eat on the road. Are you ready to drive up to the house? I said to the spaceman. He nodded and wiped his eyes and then said mierda, Spanish for shit, because he had lost a contact lens while wiping his eyes and I had to turn the truck light on above our heads so we could find it. It was on his knee the whole time; I saw it winking there like a splash of water. I told him I didn’t know he wore contacts and that I wore them too and that without them I was blind. He said he was also blind without his. I then told him how I could see perfectly without them. I just had to hold whatever I was looking at very close to my eyes. I told him that sometimes my wife made fun of me while I was reading without my contacts and she would push the magazine or whatever I was reading even closer up to my face so that it knocked into my nose. But it was just as easy to make fun of her, I said, because she now needed glasses to read. When she wasn’t wearing them she held the book or whatever she was reading very far away from her. She would stretch her arms out as far away as they could go and sometimes when she leaned over my shoulder to read the same article I was reading, I would hold the article close to my nose and she would try to push it far away and we would fight that way for a while, just trying to read the print.

WHAT WE ATE FOR DINNER: The cold roast.

WHAT SARAH ASKED THE SPACEMAN: Why are your eyes so red? Were you crying? Would you like to hold our rabbit? She can make you feel better.

WHAT I SAID: Sarah, isn’t it your bedtime?

WHAT SARAH SAID: Oh, Dad, Lyle says he knows a boy who eats bugs.

WHEN THE SPACEMAN LEFT: Sometime in the middle of the night. I didn’t hear his car, but I did hear what I thought was the top of the rabbit’s cage being opened. Maybe the spaceman had taken Sarah’s advice after all and was petting the rabbit.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID SHE HEARD: Something whirring outside in the dark, and she thought it might be the spacecraft. I figured it was his electric car.

WHAT I THOUGHT: I would not find out the name of the man who shot my son now. The spaceman is too upset. The spaceman should be upset. I should not bother knowing the name of the man who shot my son when the spaceman is this upset. I don’t really even want to know who shot my son. I am okay not knowing. I can keep going on calls if I do not know. It is a good trade to make. I can keep admiring Dorothy’s sheep and Arlo’s ghost cows if I do not know. I can visit the calm Belgian whose throat I incised so that he could breathe from the plastic handle of a milk jug for the rest of his life. I could visit the woman with the hair so long it always became stuck in the buckles of her horse’s bridle. I could still visit the Zodiac Killer. He is full of advice. I’d like to know what design for a barn he’d suggest. I could still go to Phil’s. I could walk down his well-worn aisles where the floorboards creak and heave and I could stand in front of his glass meat case and I could order sausage he had made himself and bacon he had cured on his own. I could visit Arthur still and listen to the horse’s talk through him and watch the geese land on his pond, their feet out in a pose to brake, their wings not beating, coming down on water flat as glass on a windless day. I could still visit the Mammoth Mules and I could still see the minis, Molly, Netty, Sunny, and Storm. What a good life I have not knowing the name of the man who shot my son.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID WHEN I TOLD HER THE SPACEMAN NEEDED MY KIDNEY: No.

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID WHEN I CALLED HIM ON THE PHONE: I’m so glad you decided to call. I told him I wanted to schedule a time to talk.

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID: That’s a wise thing to do.

WHAT I SAID: No, not for me, I mean not for my levels, for my kidney. I’d like a discussion, I said. Is it possible to talk over the phone?

CALL: Jen screaming, telling me there’s a bat in the sink drain. She went into the bathroom to wash her face, and there in the sink was a small bat, nose crammed into the space between the drain and the metal stopper.

ACTION: Called the children to the scene of the emergency. The bat is obviously sick, I said to the children. I sent Sam off to find a plastic container. Tore off a piece of cardboard from a Tampax box and scooped the bat up into a plastic container that Sam brought that once held fancy greens. Told Sarah to fold up toilet paper to put inside the plastic container to keep the bat warm. Sent Sam and Mia off to catch flies in our house. The bat needs food, I said. Sam and Mia were more than happy to go up to the window glass where the cluster flies were clinging and pinch the wings of the flies and put them inside the plastic container. We gave the bat water, but he was too weak to drink.