I pondered the question all the way home, and got exactly nowhere.
Well. I got home. But I got no closer to an answer regarding what was weighing on my mind.
Chapter Six
Asking for a Friend
When I got out to the cabin the following morning, the lady was outside, hanging up her wash on a clothesline. And the dogs wouldn’t go running with me. They would only come along when she was inside the cabin. They weren’t about to give up the chance to be close to her.
She glanced halfway over her shoulder as I walked up behind her.
“Oh,” she said. “You again.”
She didn’t really make it sound as bad as those words could have been.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me.”
“Well, make yourself useful. Grab the other end of that bedsheet.”
The wet laundry was piled in a basket, which was sitting on the dirt at her feet. I wondered if she had a washing machine. I didn’t think she did. I had been all over the property and hadn’t seen any such thing. I figured I would know if she had one. Then I wondered how hard it must be to wash a bedsheet by hand.
She lifted it out of the basket and began to unfurl it, and I took it by one corner and stepped away until it was pretty well stretched out.
“Give it a good shake with me,” she said.
So we did that.
The dogs were wagging all around us, weaving in and out. Brushing under the wet sheet, which I figured was probably not ideal for something that was freshly clean. They seemed over-the-moon ecstatic to have both of us out and moving around at the same time. Some kind of doggie jackpot.
“Fold about four inches of that corner over the line,” she said, and handed me a clothespin. “So it won’t come down again.”
We pinned it up, and I stepped back to see if it would hold. When it did, I really had no idea what to do next. So I just stood there and watched her work. Watched her hang socks one at a time. Then, when it came to her unmentionables, I had to avert my eyes.
“What would you do if you had a friend . . . ,” I began. I waited to see if she was listening. She seemed to be. “Who you thought maybe wanted to . . .” But it was hard to go on.
“To what?” she spat after a time. “Just say what you’re thinking, kid.”
“Go,” I said.
“Go where?”
“Like . . . die. But not accidentally or anything.”
Her hands stopped moving and she shot me a scorching look. I mean, I honestly felt burned.
“You’re not supposed to do that ‘asking for a friend’ thing to the friend in question.”
“I’m not talking about you,” I said.
She hung up the last item in the basket. The overalls. Pinned them by their straps.
“Oh,” she said. “A ‘friend.’”
“Right.”
“Got it.” She let out a big, deep sigh. As if preparing to run a marathon she really didn’t want to start. “Okay. Go ahead and tell me what’s so terrible about your life.”
We began to walk back toward the cabin together, the dogs wagging all around and between us.
“My life?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I wasn’t sure I understood. But I didn’t have it in me to disobey her.
We reached the porch, and I sat on the edge of it. The girl dog, Vermeer, took advantage of the lack of height difference and kissed me right on the face with her long tongue. Neither dog had ever licked me before. I was ridiculously flattered.
The lady sat next to me and picked up something she had clearly been working on before the laundry project. It was some kind of whittling. A curved knife and a thick stick of wood that was beginning to take a shape, but I had no idea yet what it was trying to be.
“Well,” I began. “My parents fight like cats and dogs. And I don’t just mean they argue. They scream. They throw things. My dad’ll try to get me to side with him just to spite my mom. Once he crashed his fist right through the living room drywall.”
“Better that than right through your mom.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “But then there’s my brother. He got drafted. And I think he’s having a really hard time over there.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Then she waited a couple of seconds. I guess to see if I was done.
I wasn’t done.
“And the thing is . . . I just . . . love him.” I said it as though it was some kind of revelation. Something that had never crossed my mind before.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she said. “He’s your brother.”
“But I never really thought enough about it until he was gone. So now I’m worried because I think maybe I didn’t tell him.”
“You have an address to write to him, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“So tell him.”
I just sat a minute, letting that sink in. I never answered her.
“So, listen. Kid. Not to dismiss what’s bothering you, but . . . these are temporary problems. Your brother’ll come home. Your parents might not stop fighting, but you’ll grow up and move away where you don’t have to hear it.”
“But what if he doesn’t come home?”
Her knife held still for a beat or two. No curls of blond wood fell onto her porch boards.
“Well, that’s a whole other ball game, kid. But there’s a good chance he will. So you have to hang around and find out, don’t you? You’re talking about using a permanent fix on temporary problems.”
I just stared at her for a moment, and she stared back. I wasn’t understanding her. And then, a second or two later, I got it.
“Not me,” I said. “You thought I meant me?”
“Oh. An actual friend?”
“Didn’t you hear me say it was my friend?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t believe you.” More whittling. Then, “What’s your friend’s
