His horrific vision—the only one he’d ever had—turned out to have some validity, though it was wrong in the specifics. There was no sign of digging, but there were scratch marks in the soil, and the smallest of the gravestones was leaning toward the ground. But no: the ground had not been dug in. In the center of the plot—he could not stop a wry smile: dead center—was a pile of dog shit, immense in size. A mound of it. Napoleon! Some of Cahill’s earlier handiwork had been toppled yet again, and he realized with embarrassment that his efforts had been slapdash.
He went back to the house and found Roadie standing in the hallway inside the screen door, holding his cap in one hand and a clipboard in the other. “Roadie,” Cahill said.
“Yes, sir,” Roadie said, replacing his cap on his head. It said “SHERYL CROW.”
Cahill blurted, “Neighbor’s dog just took a huge crap in my backyard. Really annoying.”
“Dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do,” Roadie said.
“Right,” he said.
Roadie cleared his voice. “Doc, I’ve talked to two people I respect, who’ve advised two different approaches to your porch situation. One thinks sliding thermal doors, and, for my personal opinion, it’s more money but that’s what I’d be inclined to go with.”
“Then that sounds fine with me, Roadie,” Cahill said.
“Approach No. 2, Doc, for full disclosure, this comes from Hank, down at Elbriddle’s. He thinks . . .”
He let Roadie drone on. As a younger man, he might have studied the figures longer, asked more questions, but if it was Roadie’s opinion that the first option was the best, he was inclined to go along.
“Awful about your friend,” Roadie said suddenly, with no segue. “My wife said, ‘Don’t you be bringing that up, it’s none of your business, and how do you think the doctor feels? Don’t tell me that no-good didn’t hoodwink him, because the doctor wouldn’t have a tenant but what he thought he was an honorable man—’ ”
Roadie stopped, seeing that Cahill was numbed by this sudden outpouring. Roadie cleared his throat again—a nervous habit. He said, “Men like that ain’t much liked by other men. Way I’ve always heard it, you’d get more sympathy from the jailbirds if you killed your mother than if you’ve fooled with a child. I’ve got Hannahlee and Junior, as you know. Any pervert touched a hair on their head, I’d be on ’em in one second flat. How do you suppose a guy like that seemed so regular?”
Silence. Finally, Cahill spoke. “Roadie,” he said, “do you think I should undertake such a project at all, given my age? Do you think I’ll last the winter to enjoy it?”
Roadie’s tongue darted over his lips. “Well, Doc, you’d know the answer better than me. You in bad health?”
“No,” Cahill said.
“Well, I ain’t here to build if you think your money should best be used elsewhere, but a closed-in porch with a real one down at the end? That’s something I’d spring for if I had the money.”
For Roadie, this was tactful—turning the subject from death to money. Roadie made a fist and pounded a black ant racing across the table. “Something my wife said, she said, ‘Roadie, you go over there and express some human kindness to the doctor. That’s a man’s done a lot for a lot of people, and, if he had a moment of misjudgment, you tell me who hasn’t.’ She says, ‘Come to think of it, I guess time’s proven me a fool for marrying somebody like you, needs this much instruction before he goes to see somebody who lost his wife and his friend!’ ”
“She thinks herself a fool for marrying you?” Cahill said.
“You met Gloria Sue. Turns out she married me thinking I was going to build the Taj Mahal, or something. Where’d she get that? Nothing I ever told her.”
“Do you love her?” Cahill said.
Roadie looked up, surprised. “Well, I don’t know,” he said slowly.
“I stopped loving my wife,” Cahill said. “First, I thought I was just overloaded with all her minor annoyances— snoring, refusing to take her diabetes medicine, the way she ignored the phone every time it rang. Half the time it turned out to be her sister.”
Roadie looked sideways, kicking some grass off his boot. “That right?” he said. He took a deep breath. “Well, these plans here, Doc—you want to give me a deposit, I’ll run down and get some things Monday morning?”
“No,” Cahill said. He waited for Roadie’s face to register surprise, which it did immediately. “But I will,” he said, “because it seems like closing in the porch is betting against death. Today I feel like that would be a good idea.”
“You do?” Roadie said nervously.
Cahill clasped his hands. “Roadie,” he said, “how often do men speak frankly? I think some of the things we’ve just been talking about . . . We’ve spoken frankly to each other.”
Roadie nodded silently.
“One more thing,” Cahill said. “I’ve never been a mystical person, but things change as you age. You’ll find that out. Some things—people, even—disappear, then something else comes in to replace them.” Cahill paused. “Life is like having a garden, Roadie, because inevitably the time comes when the deer eat everything, or you don’t mulch and the soil gets exhausted. Right away, the weeds are in there. So I suppose what I’m getting at is that, well, tending your garden seems to me now like a young man’s game. When you don’t have the inclination or the energy or the . . . optimism to tend it anymore, the weeds rush in.” He looked Roadie square in the eyes. He barely knew what he had said himself. He said, “The moment you stop loving something, the moment you’re inattentive, the wrong things and the wrong people take over.”
“That’s one of the best ways of puttin’ it I ever heard,” Roadie said. “I’ll go back to talk to Gloria Sue, try to tell her what we discussed. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to put it like you did, though.”
“Express it in your own way,” Cahill said. “It seems to me you love her if you’re going home to talk to her.”
