The Dead

   Three of us sat on the battered sofa that Mick found outside his building a few weeks back. He and Jill sprawled on the single-seater across the room by the window; she sitting sideways on his lap, taking care to keep her skirt from riding up. She the only one sober. 

   Sarah sitting at my side with her legs tucked up under her, leaning on the arm of the sofa. She passed to me. I drew and passed to Dean who was asleep, head back and mouth open as though preparing to suck the air out of the room. When I motioned to Mick he shook his head. I drew again and leaned over Dean to stub it out on the ashtray perched on the arm of the sofa.

   I leaned back into the cushions letting my head fall back, looking up at the ceiling. Minutes passed, an hour maybe. I was thinking about the part in The Great Gatsby when Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose with the palm of his hand and Nick goes along with the photographer. I always think about that when I'm high. And how Nick goes to bed, and what happened there.
   A moth the size and shape of a bottle-cap flew in through the window and made for the light. It struck the bare bulb a few times with its body making a fizz before resting on the wall. I had never seen one so big.

   A book struck the wall catching the moth flush and fell to the ground. It left a fat brown stain on the emulsion that streaked down about an inch.

   Jill flinched.

   “Couldn’t do that again if I tried,” Mick said.

   “That’s one use for a book,” I said. A grin spread across his face as he leaned back in the chair. Jill sighed.

   “Sorry,” she said. 

   “Jill’s all on edge,” Mick said.

   She smiled at me. It was a forced smile.

   “Go on and tell him why,” Mike said, flicking her ear.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” she said, still looking at me. Sarah's had fallen asleep too, her head slid along the cushion and onto my shoulder with a bump.

   “Jill’s all worked up over this dream she had.”

    She was looking at the stain on the wall. 

   I started to feel uncomfortable. I was about to excuse myself when Mick started on her. It was probably a good thing. I wasn't sure if I could stand.

   “Go on and tell him. Tell him about the dream you had.” He spoke directly into her ear like an imp.

   Jill took in a deep breath. She was looking at Sarah, who had started to snore loudly.

   Mick put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. 

   “It’s silly,” she said. It seemed like she was apologizing for what was to follow, but there was worry in her tone too. As she spoke, her eyes never left mine.

   “It's...silly. It was about my brother, Peter. I dreamed that...that there was a breakthrough of some sort. Some pill you could take that would let you be awake in your own dream with a loved one who has...passed...for a few hours. So you can see them one last time, you know. Brought them back in your dream, as they were before they died. Apparently I had applied and been accepted to take part in the trial. There was a condition with the drug, something about a chance of the person in your dream knowing that they are supposed to be dead. This was a rare side-effect, and was something the drug company was refining. It meant that when you took it you had to be monitored by a psychologist. I used it to bring Peter back. You know we lost him last year. I had so much I had wanted to say to him, things that I wish I had said the last time I saw him. We didn't know. It just happened so suddenly." 

   “Well the pill worked. It was...it was awful. He looked exactly as I remember him - tall, slight, his hair combed to one side. He was like a man brought by light to another planet, he just gazed wide-eyed around him. But soon he became distressed - he was screaming that he knew he was dead, and that this wasn't real. He started writhing on the ground, and when I tried to approach him he...he turned on me. He was on top of me, screaming and throwing punches, pushing my head into the ground..." 
   She trailed off. 
   "I felt myself go unconscious. I could hear the psychologist shouting something. And then I woke up."

   We sat quietly. Jill was looking up at the stain on the wall.

  Mick had fallen asleep. His mouth was in a crooked, nasty grimace. His head was back. 

   “I’m sorry,” Jill whispered to me.

   I realized I was leaning forward on the sofa. Dean was still asleep on the arm of the sofa. Sarah had slid behind me and was face down in the cushions. She was drooling.

   I knew the dream, of course. She had told it to me one night as we lay together in my bed. Mick was out of town for the weekend. She had woke up screaming. It had bothered her enough that that bastard Mick had forced it out of her.

   Mick spluttered and sat up abruptly, forcing Jill to stand and readjust her skirt. He sat upright for a moment, his left hand coming up automatically to his face, his fingers spread out as though he were measuring up to catch a pitch. He slumped back into the chair, his eyes closed.

   "Nice dream, you prick?" I asked him.
    He had began to snore.
   For a while, minutes maybe, Jill and I looked at each other across the room. She had the prettiest grey eyes, and through the haze of smoke she looked like an angel.

   “It’s all pretty far-fetched,” she said, sadly.

   She smiled and through the smoke I could see tears in her eyes.

Looking for Sue

   When the doorbell rang Kate was in the kitchen breading a chicken breast. She was whistling to the saxophone solo in Louis Armstrong’s A Kiss to Build a Dream On which she’d have to turn off when her guests arrived. It was too early to be Steve and Sandy, who she expected at around seven p.m., and her husband Mike wasn’t due back from work for another half an hour, unless he got away early. She lowered the heat on the stove with her elbow - she had raw chicken on her fingers – and, grabbing a fistful of kitchen paper from the holder, made her way to the door, scrunching it up in her hands as she walked through the living room. She turned the handle of the door and opened it, realizing that she’d have to disinfect everything before they arrived. She put on her hostess cap, so to speak, in case her guests were early.

   “Hello?”

   A tall black man in a baggy grey shirt stood on the porch peering into the house through the window. Three white trash bags were slumped at his side. Beads of water ran down the side of the bags and he had spots on his shirt from the rain. Kate’s first instinct was to close the door and lock it.

   He swayed slightly like a statue at sea. “Can I help you?” she asked. He jolted, as though suddenly brought to life. He smiled. His teeth were yellow.

   “Evenin.’” He seemed embarrassed. “I’m lookin’ for Sue.”

   Kate thought about telling him that her daughter didn’t live there.

   “What is it regarding?” she asked.

   He looked down at his feet as though he might find the right words in his shoes.

   “Is she home?” he asked.

   Sue was not home; she was working late at the community center, but she would be back for dinner. She said she would try to get there before the guests arrived.

   “Sue doesn’t live here,” Kate said.

   The man looked down at his feet again. He seemed disappointed; he wasn’t looking for words now. He turned his head and looked at the slumped white bags.

   After a thoughtful pause he said, “My mistake.”

   Kate nodded. "I'm sorry," she said. She closed the door and locked it before he could say anything else, or worse, push his way into the house. She remembered hearing about a scam on the news where some crooks were posing as cable guys to work their way into people’s homes. The thought of it made her stomach cold. She waited a few seconds with her back against the doorframe. She heard him mutter, then the sound of the bags scraping across the porch, and six heavy clinks as they caught on the steps that led to the drive. She climbed up onto the sofa, and on her knees she squinted through the blinds. The man closed the gate behind him and dragged the bags to the corner of the street and out of sight. Whatever was in them looked heavy.

   Kate turned around and sat with her legs still folded under her. What could he have possibly wanted with Sue? Was she using again? From the kitchen a commercial was playing on the radio. Something about home insurance.

   She started to worry. After high school Sue had insisted on studying out west. She was a liberal arts major, and they half-expected her to go into teaching, though Mike always said he wanted a better return for their investment. He was joking of course; he was a massage therapist. She was always impulsive and often overly optimistic. From a young age she seemed bent on living without effort or care, like a leaf cast to the wind; and like so many leaves she fluttered gloriously for a moment before finding herself downtrodden. She met a boy, some waste of space named Phil. Kate suspected it was Phil that got her using, though she could not prove it. Sue was having “the time of her life”. She dropped out after a year and Mike had to fly out to California to bring her home. She was living rough when he picked her up, squatting in an apartment outside of town. 
   That was a year ago. Sue had been through rehab and therapy. Mike went with her to all of her sessions, but Kate could not bear to.

   Kate dialed Sue’s number. Of course, there was no answer.

   After a minute or so kneeling there with the cell phone in her hand, she stood and stretched her back like a cat and returned to the kitchen. She tried to shake the thought from her mind.

  

   When Sue got home she shook the rain from her coat and hung it to dry on the hook by the doorway. She could hear her mother’s voice through the thin walls and she followed it to the dining room, kicking off her shoes one at a time as she went, tossing them through the open door of her bedroom where they clattered against the head of the bed. The rough carpet felt good on the soles of her feet through her stockings. She tiptoed lightly into the kitchen.

   Kate was seated at the table talking brightly to Sandy about their plans to travel that summer. Steve sat quietly at his wife’s side, smiling every now and then in polite response to the not-so-subtle cues in Kate’s speech and eyeing the door to the living room. Mike was getting beer from the garage.

   “The Schwartz’s swear by this place they’ve been going to forever,” Kate said. “And it is such a pretty city in the summer, don’t you think?”

   Seeing Sue appear in the doorway, and sensing an opportunity to move the focus of the conversation, Steve stood from his chair. “I hope they’re paying you overtime,” he said loudly, taking the chance to cut off Kate without being impolite.

   Sue smiled. She was not shy, but she always felt cold when Sandy looked her over and sick when Steve did.

   “Hi love,” Kate said. “I was just telling Stephen and Sandy about our vacation plans. Sue has been to Paris before as well, haven’t you?”

   Sue leaned down and kissed her mother lightly on the cheek by way of a reply. It was more a gesture of resignation that of love. Steve watched her.

   “Oh your hair’s all wet!” Kate complained.

   “It’s fine,” Sue said. She sat in the empty chair.

   “How was work?” Steve asked.

   “It was alright.” Sue scratched at her wrist where her bracelet was bothering her. Her fingernails were too short to do the job properly. She’d have to stop biting them. “Nothing new,” she said.

   “When do you think you’ll go back to college?” Sandy asked. Steve looked at her.

   “Sue’s taking her time,” Kate said, making the effort to smile. It was a topic to be avoided. A source of shame for a well-to-do mother.

   “You’re mother tells us you’re thinking of switching fields? Maybe studying social work?” Steve said. He made a conscious effort to take the scrutiny off of the past and to put a positive spin on the conversation. Yet he was staring at her.

   “That’s one thing we’ve talked about,” Kate said. She didn’t sound thrilled about it.

   Mike barged into the kitchen, shouldering the door open to keep his hands wrapped around the crate of beer.

   “Oi oi,” he said, winking at Sue.

   “Mike what do you think you’re doing with those cheap beers?” Kate said, laughing awkwardly. She glanced nervously from the crate of cheap beer to her guests. She had bought expensive wine just for the occasion. She felt that she was being judged. Steve was looking at Sue. But she could have sworn she saw Sandy roll her eyes.

   “Jesus Kate, relax,” Mike said. “I’m putting them away for the game on Saturday. Who do you fancy for the cup Steve?”

   He didn’t really care much for sports, he said, smiling politely. Sandy’s face was a mask.

   “Oi Sue,” Mike said, readjusting the crate of beer in his arms. “What’s this your mother told me about some bum showing up at our door looking for you?”

   Kate’s cheeks grew red. She wanted to bore a hole into her husband with a scowl, but she didn’t dare look up from the table. The faintest hint of a smirk crept across Sandy’s now-curious face.

   Sue stared at her father blankly.

   “Earlier on today, right Kate? Some old fellow came by looking for you. Had a big bag full of something or other, you said.”

   “Not now, Mike.” Kate was livid. 

   “Oh, what did he want from Sue?” Sandy said.

   “Ask Sue, not me,” Mike said. 

   “Why are you doing this?” Kate said.

   “Go on and ask her,” he said again. He said it kindly, but there was a hint of resentment in his tone.

   Kate turned to Sue. Sue raised her eyebrows in expectation.

   “Who was that man?” Kate asked meekly.

   Sue stared at her mother. Sandy and Steve watched Sue, one for the spectacle, the other for the pleasure.

   Kate looked up at Mike as though awaiting directions.

   “That was Eli,” she said. “From the shelter. He's been working with the community center for ten years."

   Steve cleared his throat. Nobody looked at him.

   “I asked him,” Sue went on, “if he could drop off the equipment for the weekend program. I didn’t have room in the car to drive it all home. He was doing me a favor. He walked all the way back to the center with the equipment and told me he was sorry he couldn’t help.”

   Sandy seemed let down by the tale. She was hoping for a scandal.

   Mike still stood in the doorway, a formidable figure, holding the crate under one arm. He had met Eli. They played pool once or twice at the center. 

   "Well, I wasn't to know that that was...Eli," said Kate.
   Nobody replied.
   "Anyway," said Kate, putting on a smile, "who would like some wine?"
   Steve and Sandy acquiesced. 
   "Sue?" Kate met her eyes reluctantly.
   Sue walked to the doorway. She reached into the crate, still held by Mike, and pulled out a beer.
   "Not for me," she said. "I'll stick to the cheap stuff."

   

The Therapist and the Woodcarver

   There is always a lull in the afternoon, and when a patient cancels you have no choice but to face the paperwork. Sally stared at the pile on her desk. Having a patient meant work; not having a patient meant menial work. She leant back and was drawn to the small dark wooden frog that sat on the window sill. It had been carved by familiar hands

***

   It was six months ago that Jose walked into Sally's office. She remembers it was a Friday because they were supposed to visit her sister in Maine for the long weekend but their dog Buck was hit by a car. Sally and her husband Mark spent the Thursday night consoling their two little girls and debating whether they could travel. She was flustered when she got into the office. He walked in sheepishly. When she asked him if his name was Jose, he smiled and nodded and took off his coat.

   He was around fifty years old and everything about him was stocky; he had the shoulders and back of a retired boxer, and his waist, though broad, was not marred by a paunch. His face was open and often-graced by an irrepressible smile, and a shock of long grey hair that ran to his shoulders was ponytailed at the neck by a thin black band. He was handsome, with small lively, intelligent eyes and a high forehead.

   What were most remarkable about him, though, were his hands. They were thick and flat and looked heavy, like battered leather mitts, and when he rubbed them together by habit they scraped. The fingers were squat too, the nails like square tabs of flint, split here and there on the tips. Sally knew those hands. Her grandfather had the same hands.

   She asked him how long he had been a carpenter. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. Thirty-two years, he said. She told him her grandfather had been a carpenter.

   Jose told her that he was also a sculptor. He lived until he was twenty in Puerto Rico. His father taught him when he was a boy how to carve wood. Jose told her that he could sculpt full time when the demand for his work was high enough. He made only custom pieces, and he worked only with mahogany. When demand was low he would work contracts, but that was dirty work, he said. The same thing, again and again. It is not good for the spirit. He pointed to his heart.

    When she asked him what the problem was, though she had already seen his chart, he turned over his right hand, palm facing up to show her. A stark pinkwhite line ran from the base of his thumb up to the tip near the nail and down again on the other side to the base of his index finger. It snaked as it went and curved on the thumb where the flesh must have lifted from the bone.

    Normally, he said, I never wear a glove. A glove is not a necessary thing for me. But this one time. He shrugged. One in a million, no? I wear a glove when I am cutting a board at the college. And the glove it catches at the end, and fizz. He made a motion with his right hand, jolting it forward and pulling it back into his left which cradled it. He smiled. My wife she drive me to the emergency room. Three hours we sit there. And when the doctor see me he tell me they'll stitch me and to come back early tomorrow. My wife she told him no, and when the surgeon see us he tell us the tendon is, how do you say, severed? And that surgery is required and the other doctor did not know what he was talking about. And a few months later when I am at work, again it goes. He opened his left hand sharply to imitate the popping of the tendon. It just goes. So I have another surgery and now...now I do not know. He shrugged again.

   Throughout the telling he spoke sadly, though he smiled at the worst parts. Sally was used to wry smiles and sardonic accounts of injuries, but the way Jose told his story, so simply and without bitterness, and the familiar hands, endeared him to her. He smiled out of humility, or with the conviction that he’d be fine soon enough. She said how angry he must be. He shook his head and told her that so long as there were good people to help and he had insurance he could not complain. There was something fatalistic in the way he spoke and shrugged.

   Sally had him on heat and started to passively move the thumb. It was swollen slightly and his range of motion was poor; the thumb would barely budge even when she forced it. She was often sworn at by her patients as she did this, but Jose sat there quietly, and occasionally screwed up his eyes and grimaced to cope with the pain.

   Over the next six weeks Jose made slight but significant progress. Sally had him almost able to grip a can, and the swelling was close to gone. She heard more of his story; how he and his wife Maria had moved from San Juan in the eighties to settle in Vermont, and how she had had to retake classes to be ‘qualified’ to be a teacher’s assistant. He had carved and sculpted to put her through college. She helped teach Kindergarten at a nearby state school, where their youngest son went. They had two sons and the oldest was in high school.

    It is important for him to have more education than his father got, he said to her. She smiled at him politely. He was quiet serious.

   On the day of his seventh session he came early and apologized. Maria has been let go by the school, he told her. He stood in the doorway with his coat still on.

   How awful, Sally said. Oh Jose I’m so sorry. She sat quietly, looking up at him sympathetically, waiting for him to sit.

   I just come to tell you in person, he said.

   You’re not going to continue therapy, she asked?

   I was on her insurance, he said.

   We have a sliding scale here, you know. I think you only need ten sessions or so.

   Yes, he said. He shrugged and smiled. I got an offer with a contractor. I can almost hold a screwdriver now. He raised his right hand and waved it like a baseball mitt in front of his grinning face.

   He shrugged again, his smile fading. We need the money. If anything happens.

   Sally smiled and stood. She put out her left hand to shake his. He instead put out his right hand with the bright scar and took hers in his. He smiled and turned and left.

***

   Sally told her husband Mark about it that night, and the night after. She felt terrible about the whole thing, about how such a kind man who creates for a living cannot afford the treatment to restore him his gift. How he has to take base work that is soulless. Mark did not argue with her; he knew far better than that.

   Jose and Maria were not difficult to track down. Sally remembered the name of the school Maria had worked for. The school, in an effort to avoid controversy, had preserved on their website Maria’s name and the names of the other assistants who had been let go to stave the budget cuts. She was surprised to find that they too stayed in Woodberry.

   Once a week on her way home from the hospital Sally would drive to their house. She used equipment she took home from her office, and improvised when necessary; she used her daughter’s play-dough for motor skills and a fistful of rice in one of Mark’s old socks as a makeshift ball. The smell of burnt rice was well masked though by the sweet smell of the alto grande that Maria brewed for them. They were both so kind, Sally remembered. Pro Bono was not a term that Jose understood too well, but the relationship between two artisans well trained and skilled in their trades was. It took them more than ten sessions, but when his thumb was mended and he could work, he and his wife thanked her to no end. He would make it up to her, he said. He would make her something to thank her.

***

   Sally opened her eyes. The polished frog sat staring at her. No matter what mood she was in, it never seemed mocking; it always calmed her. Another like it sat in their daughters’ bedroom; a small carved retriever with ‘Buck’ etched into the base. They were beautiful pieces, carved by familiar hands. Hands which use only mahogany.

The Money Jar

   Rain whipped the decking as the wind picked up and the birch swayed like a soldier on shore leave. Milton struggled to the house and shouldered the back door open. Stepping into the kitchen, he heaved the burlap bag full of rusty tools onto the kick stool and pulled with a wet suck the sodden cap from his bald head.

   He slammed the door; no simple feat in a gale. The burlap bag, with hammer-head and rusty saw-tip poking through the holes in its side, slid off the stool and cracked a kitchen tile. He growled and kicked the stool with his good leg forgetting his bad one. He was flat on his back as the squat grey turret careered across the floor and crashed into the glass paneled door of a cabinet. Dusty jolted in his chair. Jesus Christ, he said. Glass lay scattered on the faded rug. Milton struggled to his feet and turned his head to look at the broken cabinet and the toppled framed photograph. Him and Rose. Him short and powerfully built. Her fair-skinned and choppy-haired. Both smiling; him so broadly you could tell it despite the fact he was wearing a snorkel. Milton limped to the settee and sat down. The kick-stool stood triumphant amidst the shattered glass. He rubbed his bad leg at the thigh.

   When he had his breath back he stood and limped to the fallen photograph. He placed it on the windowsill, careful to avoid the glass which covered the rug. Dusty’s eyes followed him from the corner of the room. Don't you bother with that cuss jar on my behalf you son bitch, he said. Milton thought for a second about the jar. He held off putting anything in it. Nothing ever happened when he did, of course; but always after a few seconds the familiar feeling came. He stuffed three dollar bills into the half-filled jar, two for Dusty, and apologized to Rose. The jar was her idea and it meant more to him since her death than it did when she was alive. She used to tease him about it, and trick him into cursing when she wanted him to put some money aside for home improvements. He limped to the counter and flicked the kettle on. Three mugs sat on the granite work-top with teabags inside. He poured water into the first two and watched the steam rise from them. He lifted the dry tea-bag from the third and put it back into the plastic tub, and placed the mug back on the rack beside the others.

   He still made an extra cup. It was an old habit.

   Dusty was watching him still. This had to stop soon, he knew. He was amazed it had gone this far. A few months back it was the doors; the son bitch spent all mornin unhinging and dumping them in the garden then the next two fitting the lacquered ones from the home store. Persuaded three of them up the stairs cussin all the way.

   Then the goddam yard; prying up the slabs with that pitchfork and edging them like an old timer teaching his young'n to walk. Left swing right swing left swing right.

   And now the shed. The materials weren't cheap, and no matter how much Dusty cussed the money in the jar was growing sparse.       

***

   The three of them met in the war. Milton and Dusty served together in the same regiment in Sicily. Dusty was eighteen at the time, a straight-laced boy from Maine. His naivety endeared him to bigger personalities in the regiment, like Milton; it was Milton who first called him 'Dusty'. Milton was Canadian; he lived in Massachusetts where his father settled. He was twenty-two when they met, clean-faced, energetic and handsome. He was broad in the shoulder, ham-handed, and smiled effortlessly and often.

   The regiment arrived in Messina after the Landings. The two friends were on watch duty, a consequence given after their lieutenant found Milton drunk and naked urinating into the canteen tent, and Dusty unconscious beneath the flagpole where his boots had been erected. Watch duty was dull punitive work; but it often provided the opportunity to escape for an hour or so without detection. Milton dragged Dusty to the nearby town Saint Elia regularly during these stints.

   It was there that Milton met Rose. They stopped for a beer one afternoon, as all good soldiers in their regiment did when the war was slow. Three drinks in, Milton slammed his glass down on the wooden table and rose, his attention grabbed by something outside window of the cafe.

   Her hair was short, her skin olive, her eyes lively and keen as the eyes of the lovely so often are. She wore a white dress.  Milton followed her as she wandered from house to house; she hummed quietly and turned occasionally to smile at the pair of young soldiers. Dusty followed Milton, not daring to interrupt him. He looked for landmarks in case they got lost, but the white-painted walls of the short, narrow houses which sloped down to the sparkling sea were all identical to him. The waves were crashing gently.

   Milton’s Italian was passable; his father, a trader, taught him to read and to speak it when he was a boy. Within an hour he had convinced Rose, and more importantly himself, that he loved her. American soldiers always show up here with that story, she said. I’m not American, he said, quite seriously. When she told him he was Canadian, she feigned disinterest. She was like that.

   They kept up their clandestine meetings with Dusty as their unwilling lookout for four months, when the news broke out that the regiment would be deployed in Sangro, four hundred miles North of Messina. Milton proposed to Rose and she said yes, God yes. Neither truly believed they would see the other again.

   Milton distinguished himself in Sangro, but Dusty never had the chance to see it. He was discharged after suffering burns when a stray hit the fuel tank of the Daimler he was repairing. Milton wrote him a letter, which he received in the hospital, six months later. He was on home soil too; he’d taken enough shrapnel in the leg to render it useless in the eyes of the military.

   It was a year after the armistice that Rose arrived in the US, and they married quickly. They moved up to Maine, where Milton drank with Dusty at least twice a week. They bought a place by the water. She sometimes nagged him to curse less, to drink less, to finish his little projects around the house. She was wicked like that; she could make him feel bad and she sometimes did it to tease him. She had the finest sense of humor of any woman he’d known.

   With time Dusty’s straight back was bending; with time Milton’s good leg carried the lame one with trouble. And with time, both agreed, Rose did alright.

***

   Milton watched the steam rise from the mugs. He poured milk into them and almost poured some on the counter, anticipating a third. The shed was finished. He felt let down by it. There would always be something else.

   He was torturing himself, he knew. He was atoning for sins that he knew would never have meant a thing to Rose. She used to tease him about how serious he took things.  
   To hell with it, he thought. He poured the hot tea into the sink and turned to the living room where Dusty was slouched in the chair.

   Fancy a pint Dusty? He said.

   Dusty turned his head. I’ve no money you son bitch, you know that.

   Milton reached over the counter and clutched the jar. Drinks are on me, he said.

Bored

   The courtroom was stifling. The prosecutor looked relaxed. Sitting next to him was Rick, his lower jaw wrapped in bandages. Colin was pallid, though his wife looked hale. He was not a confident man.

   Colin was a dentist. He had left work early one day for an insurance conference across town. He got there early, figuring he might as well since he was being paid for it. He parked round the back and walked into the coffee shop on the corner.

   He ordered steamed milk - coffee stains the teeth - and sat outside in the terrace at a cast iron table facing the sun. He liked to face the street so he could watch the women clipping by in their tall heels, their narrow shadows leaping and loping beneath their feet. He liked to try to catch their eye. He was not a confident man, and the game required a certain amount of self-deception in order to keep it in motion.

   He finished his milk quickly, drinking it with a straw - he had sensitive teeth. The street was quiet and birches lined the sidewalk, and the sidewalk was uneven where the birch-roots pushed through. Across the street was a bar decorated with crossbeams and an open front, in which were scattered trendy slender tables. By one of them a tall man in a grey suit was sipping lager. He wore a form-fitting white shirt, tight around his chest and arms, his sleeves rolled up carefully. He had hair; the type that stood up and back a little and looked careless while being entirely intentional. Even from across the street Colin could tell that the man’s watch was expensive; its faceted face caught the light so finely.

   The bar was quiet with a few customers lunching in the back. Like Colin, the man was watching the women go by, until, as though hailed, he turned to someone in the bar and stood up. A tall, slender woman in a black skirt and a white blouse approached him. He pulled a stool for her and they sat down and shared a passionate kiss. He watched them for a moment, envious of the man. He was quick to notice the familiarity of the gestures the woman used, but slow to realize the woman was his wife. He sat, astounded. She was laughing and leaning into the man at everything he said, and the man was quick to smile; but only after she smiled, as those who are aware of their own charm are apt to do.

   She excused herself to go the bathroom. The man watched her walk away, and when she was out of sight he raised a silver butter knife to his mouth and angled it as he smiled to check his teeth. When she came back, the man frowned at her and tapped the face of his watch with two fingers, indicating in jest that she had taken too long. She went straight to him and kissed him.

   Colin barely made it through the conference. He drove home in a stupor. It was her, yet it was not her; she carried herself too well. She was as he had never seen her before; vital and incandescent like a balefire.

***

   That night he confronted her. He told her he suspected she was sleeping with somebody else. She laughed at him, perhaps cruelly to hide her surprise. She told him there was nobody else, but that there might as well be, seeing as how things were between them. Hesitantly, he told her what he had seen at the café.

   And that night Colin slept on the couch. How the hell could you accuse me of such a thing? Maybe if you paid a little more attention to me. Maybe if you loved me. He felt guilty and confused. He knew in his heart what he had seen, and in his heart he was relieved that she had lied to him, for he was not a confident man. He believed that she couldn’t help herself.

***

    Six months later Colin walked into the waiting room and called out the name. Ferguson. A tall man in a grey suit grabbed his briefcase and stood up. He was talking on his cellphone, but he smiled at Colin. I have to go. Yep. You too. Ok, bye. He grabbed Colin’s hand eagerly and smiled with his eyes. Call me Rick.

   He had the man sit in his chair. He checked the teeth. They were bright, but from the gums he could see that they were not healthy. They were fine in appearance only.

   Colin gave him the local anesthetic. He went about preparing the tooth and the drill.

   Ten minutes in, Colin asked him if he was doing okay. He was trying to be stoic, but he winced. Don’t worry, we’ll be done soon.

   Rick rolled his eyes and raised his right arm and with two fingers he tapped the face of his watch on his left wrist, imitating in jest that he was keeping count.

   It was a familiar gesture and Colin placed it at once. He froze with the drill still in Rick’s mouth. Rick looked up at him. Colin’s eyes were wide and his face was pallid. He seemed to stare through Rick.

   They were locked in this stare for what must have been a minute. Colin looked drained and he swayed slightly. Rick, sensing that his dentist was about to passout, put his arms up and grabbed hold of the drill in the hope of getting it as far from his face as possible. Colin could smell Rick’s cologne and he felt the hands soft like a caress on his wrists as though from within an etherized sleep. And waking as one who kicks out in his sleep he jolted and pressed his weight on the butt of the drill. There was a wild fizz and a sickening crunch. Then silence. Rick was unconscious. Colin, wide-eyed and panting, slid down on the floor and dropped the drill, still fizzing. It had only taken a moment.

***

   The trial was almost over and they all looked worn out. Before the judge pronounced the verdict, he reminded them all of the violence of the crime, and the unusual circumstances under which it had been committed. That it was reactionary. That it was instant. That there was no excuse. That the victim had almost been bored to death. The courtroom is no place for irony. In the back of the room the bitch smiled wryly. She couldn’t help herself. 

Nothing Matters

     There were four of them in the elevator; Bierce with his cane, two short women dressed in suits, and a teen wearing headphones which blared. They stood, all of them but the kid, facing the opposite set of doors. Being the last one to squeeze in, Bierce stood at the back. Their eyes were adjusting to the darkness.
     Bierce liked to stand at the back; being able to scrutinize the others without them knowing gave him a queer sense of power. He liked watching and not being watched; he was like an invisible inspector in a panopticon. Bierce was at the back today, but he was bothered by the paradox of being simultaneously at the front too; the kid's facing the wrong way had altered the dynamics. It irked Bierce that this mattered to him; his philosophy had long been that nothing mattered, and to care about a thing like this was not true to his ethos.
     The elevator groaned as it slowed and slumped as it stopped. Bierce cleared his throat as though he anticipated an acquaintance on the other side, causing one of the women to glance at him. Old men and sickness.
     The doors opened and he stepped around the boy being sure to shake his head to convey his disapproval. In the mezzanine the two women clipped and clopped in their heels to the turnstiles. Bierce took a few steps out into the dim light and the dusty floor before he glanced back to enjoy the boy’s embarrassment. To Bierce's surprise he was still standing in the elevator, absorbed by his cell phone which he patted with adroit thumbs. Then as though sensing that something was not quite right, the boy scanned the unopened door from left to right, before turning and meeting with a confused look the eyes of Bierce in the mezzanine. There was moment before the doors began to close, and Bierce felt a stab of pity. He dropped his cane and made to move forward, but the doors closed before the kid could stick his hand in them. His desperate face disappeared and he was ushered back up to the entrance. It was an undignified thing. Bierce grabbed his cane and straightened up. He had an appointment. He had a train to catch.
     His doctor’s name was Proctor; a thing the clinician took more joy in than the patient. Proctor was less competent than Bierce’s insurance provider had claimed; he had once told him to try acupuncture. And despite being told to be realistic and to face the possibilities, he had suffered the chemo and taken the drugs and defied expectations by living. He had half expected to die. He would find out today if he was to carry on this trend. He would take the good news, but it was futile to be hopeful.
     He got off the train at the hospital station and hobbled towards the exit. The wind was swirling in the mezzanine, and it nipped the back of his neck as he rode the escalator. Beyond the moving hand rail, between the metal bolts, the tiny white petals of a Bradford tree raced up the slope in the wind like weightless pearls. He watched them climbing until his eyes were drawn to clump in the steps. A dead mouse stared at him from a few steps up; its top half caught by the mechanism, its bottom half perhaps long gone. Doomed to go round and round.
     When he reached the top the mouse disappeared, as it had no doubt done many times that day, into the darkness to repeat the cycle. Bierce stepped off and out into the light of the street, relieved to be off the contraption. His eyes readjusted. Bright white petals were falling softly in the street on the ground like snow and gathering, and to it were gathering the petals swept up from the underground. He pretended it was snowing. It was nice to think so.
      He put no stock in signs; he knew the petals meant nothing, and that the dead thing meant nothing too. Nothing mattered, not truly, and that it was wishful to think otherwise.
     And despite this, as he walked, he was grateful for the sun.

Not to Think

     Jack was gutting the closet. He wanted her crap gone and along with it anything of his that she had given him. He was kneeling on a green plaid shirt she bought him a few years back, pulling items out and sorting them. Behind him were two piles; one by the door which was stacked with her clothes and make up and political science textbooks, all destined for the trash. The second pile he would keep; his albums, business journals, manila envelopes stuffed with papers. He hadn't been through the closet for years and he was increasingly angry at what he found. A broken air conditioner. A way-overdue library book. An uncashed check. Old pairs of her fucking shoes. He was immersed in this when he came across a box stuffed at the back beneath a permanently bent foldaway ironing board. He reached to the back of the closet and opened it. He had not seen the spikes in nearly fifteen years. They were folded double and looked like they had been forced into the box, crumpled and torn to shit. He turned and threw them carelessly into the trash pile. He was picking up an abysmal print of a pokey sail boat in a squall she had bought for the apartment from a charity shop in North Berwick when he realized that the old man must be dead now. The thought came to him naturally and with no emotion, like a cold fact.

     The old man had trained him to sprint when he was young. He was a retired sprinter and lived a few doors down from Jack’s house. In the fall when the ground was hard and the cold wind blew he would drive Jack and two other boys out to the field by the barely-funded community centre and teach them how to run. He had them circle the flat topped hill with the oak trees and the steep sides to warm their skinny knee-knocking legs and they ran hundreds on the uneven dry ground by the rugby posts kicking up dust that blew across the field in the wind. To cool down they ran up the hill and through the quiet open clearing that passed through the trees and came out on the other side by the field, then rounded the field and came back through the clearing. They must have been around fourteen years old.

     Jack was small and weaker than the other two. He was teased by them because he always did what his parents and teachers expected of him. On one of the first days when the man had them line up and run the hundred he had called them back in a circle and had shown them one by one what it meant to run with their arms. Jack walked the hundred swinging his arms like a soldier and the other two laughed at him, and the old man told them that if they were not interested in learning they could wait in the goddamn car. But once they understood that the man knew the sport inside and out, and that he had more or less made his living by it and had paid for his knowledge of it with effort and perseverance, they began to listen to him more carefully when he talked. He paid particular attention to Jack.

     Jack’s mother lived alone. She was reluctant to talk to the man. He was a catholic and he had his own community at the church. It was a working class neighborhood and the man was truly the last of the old stock; it had turned into a modern sprawl of grey block houses, like filing cabinets cheaply built by the state to drop lower income families into. Nobody was really close to him and his wife had died years back of bowel cancer, which, in Jack's mother's mind, would make talking to him insensitive and tactless. He had long ago adjusted to what had happened, but it required less effort on her part to assume the contrary was true. She also told herself that it was Jack’s business and she should stay out of it.

     The old man had been a great runner in his day. For five months when he was at his peak, long before any of the boys were born and perhaps before their fathers were born too, he held the national record for the hundred and for the hundred and twenty. He had travelled in those days and he competed against many good runners and a few who were great. He did not make much money but each morning when he woke up he was able to commit himself honestly and fully to what he did and he lived with purpose because of it. He was forty years into his retirement from running and twenty from carpentry. He spent most of his time back then training talent passed to him by an old friend who was a scout of sorts, and training boys from the neighborhood who were not talents but who, filed in their grey block cabinets, would never realize any talent that they had. On Sunday he went to church and in the evenings he drank.

     When Jack and the boys had settled into the regime and were training regularly he gave them each an old pair of spikes, sad tattered things so worn the boys could wrap them around their wrists or twist them entirely so that the heel touched the toe. Some were from runners he’d once trained. One pair he had once worn. These were brown and faded leather shoes, with thin leather laces and cross stitched with emerald green thread on the front. He gave this pair to Jack.

     Jack remembered that the first time they wore the spikes one of the boys stepped on the other’s hand while he was tying his laces and the third boy nicked open the skin on his calf while he ran. After a few weeks as they got used to wearing the spikes there was less blood and they felt queer without them.

In winter it rained and bitter winds from the mountains to the north turned the days icy and fierce and the nights dangerous. On most nights the tiled roofs that capped the houses were slashed and drummed hard with sleet which could shift in the wind like a swarm. On such nights while the boys slept Jack would picture the old man sitting listening to the irregular tinny patter of the rain on the corrugated roof of the hut in the yard, sipping whisky and soda with the television on with the sound turned down. He was an avid reader once; he told Jack that his own father had pushed Carlyle and Connolly and Lansbury on him when he was young, and he read London and Sinclair and Orwell when he grew up.

     During the winter it was too wet and cold to train outdoors, so they used the Church where the old man had a back room full of equipment. He was well liked by the priest.

     The church was a modern thing set in a concrete yard on a second housing estate nearby. It was grey and always looked wet, with an asymmetrical roof that sloped and did not drain and let the damp in. A dented metal cross was perched beneath the eave on the front just above the entrance. The first time the used the church they pulled up by the side door they followed the old man along the path by the side of the church where a high metal fence ran and stopped where a gate must have once stood. They passed through the gate into an alley, where broken glass covered the ground. He opened the door with the key and they stepped into the hall. It was cramped and smelled of dampness, with a low ceiling, and the hall was lit by a bright bulb and led to the back room. The back room was large and had high ceilings, and near the ceiling were small wide windows. The floorboards were mahogany, and black dirt and wax filled the gaps between them and clogged the lines and scrapes that ran along their surface. The walls were breeze blocks painted white and the ceiling was plaster-boarded over and sank in the spots where the water had seeped through. In the corner there was a treadmill and jack recalled that the oldest boy went straight to it and said that it didn’t have no power cord. The man told him it was manual.

     In the middle of the floor where the light was good there was a bench and a set of dumbells and a rack for barbells. There were no barbells. On the wall on the opposite side there was a black and white poster of a sprinter crossing the line with his head ducked down. The man told them that this was a station and that in this station they would skip. There were five stations; push-ups, squats, sit-ups, and a metal bar wedged in the door-frame for pull-ups.

     In a closet by the rear door there was a speed bag hanging from a flat circular cut of timber. He taught them how to hit it without skinning their hands, and to time each hit with the bag so that it thudded three times on the wood.

     Always while they trained the old man would smoke in the hall with the door open listening to the rain slap on the concrete path in the alley. In between cigarettes he’d pull on his rain cape and sweep up the glass. There was always broken glass.

     Jack was a sickly boy and shorter than the others. When he trained they made fun of him because he had to use the light set of weights and they derided him for running distance. They were proud that they were stronger and they focused more on him because they were acutely aware of how the old man favored him. They joked that if he tried too hard and managed to force the heavy bag a few feet from where it hanged with a flurry of taps he had better run before it falls and knocks him to the floor. He took it well though and concentrated on his sets. The old man would stand with the two while they worked but he was often watching the shadow on the wall outside the closet where the boy was working the speedbag and listening to the irregular drumming of it on the wood. He was struck at how the boy would lose the rhythm often and yet never get frustrated. He felt there was something in that. The old man told him early that he couldn’t compete in the hundred with the other two because they were stronger, but that he could be a decent distance man if he put his heart into it. Of course the old man said this as a kindness as the boy would never be a decent runner. And at some level the boy knew it.

     Often the old man would wander over to the closet where the boy worked and he would lean on the frame of the door looking at the two in the larger room, and without looking at Jack he would talk to him. And a few times if the two were busy he would walk into the room and tell him, ‘stop, before you break your hand,’ and he would work the bag himself for a minute or so, almost lazily with short, deft jabs with the back of his closed old hands, going three left to two right then two for two then one on each, mixing it up to show off to the boy and ending it with a hook or a straight. He dragged in a bench one day and had the boy hit the bag while standing on it and in time he had a steady rhythm going. Jack remembered how after the heavy bag, hitting the speed bag was like drumming a weightless balloon. And even now when he has a chance to hit one it comes back effortlessly like a skill loyal to him because of the time he spent earning it, as though the regular bur-a-boom bur-a-boom, bur-a-boom is etched in the memory of his muscles and mind. It was the one thing he could do that the other two could not and they pretended to be unimpressed with it.


                         ***

                                                                    

     Jack had stopped taking things from the closet. His memory of the days spent training was followed by the memory of when it started to end. For a year the boys met the old man at his front door and he’d have them in for a minute before they went to the park or the Church. Jack would stand in the house bashful and awkward looking at the trophy cabinet reading the inscriptions, each a recognition of the man’s past greatness. He went there sometimes without the others to watch football or to talk about track, and years later to talk about books, and when there was gout, to bring the old man his medication and his pension. He always felt that he needed an excuse to be there and the man was conscious of this.

     The following summer something changed. One day they were sitting in the old man’s house talking about an upcoming race. When the old man walked out to the hut to dig out some tape to strap up an ankle, the other two boys started talking about how the place smelled of piss and they’d laugh at the picture of the old man and his wife who had died the year before. Jack laughed too and he could not meet the old man’s eyes when he came in from the hut. He went along with the talk about the old man behind his back and unlike the others he paid for it dearly because he was a kind, sensitive boy.

     It went like this for a while. The old man noticed and was often brusque with the boys. With two weeks before the winter sprint the oldest boy’s hamstring went. He had been training hard and the old man knew that he had a good shot of making the first three and losing his handicap for the New Year hundred. The boy was determined that he was going to run and the man told him that he would rub the leg down and knead the hamstring during their next session, and see how it went from there.

     On the day of the race Jack woke early. His room was cold and he could see snow had settled on the window ledge. He looked out the window and the tops of the rows of houses were capped with snow and only the hollow frame of the pylon stood out black against the white sky. He ate a quick breakfast of porridge and dressed warmly, and shouldered the sports bag with his spikes and his water bottle. He left the house and walked crunching through the snow, thinking about the race. He stopped at the house of the oldest boy and rang the doorbell. Both of them were there. They set off together.

     ‘Ready for that rub down?’ he said to the oldest.

     ‘I aint doin’ it.’ He said it without looking at Jack.

     ‘How come?’

     ‘I’m done with it.’

     They walked, he remembered, without talking, and the only sound was of the snow packing and tightening under their feet. Jack was acutely aware of a change in the older boy who was limping, flattening the snow with one boot and brushing through it with the other. His jaw was set and he scowled, and every response was curt. The other boy was aware of it too and he was quiet.

     When they rounded the corner the old man was scraping snow off the windshield. The trunk was still open and he had been loading up the car. In the front garden the branches of the maple tree were coated with frost and a robin sat in its midst. The old man turned when he heard the crunch of the snow and he waved. He pulled a towel out of the bag and raised it. The oldest boy stopped and looked straight at him.

     ‘I aint going.’ There was vitriol is his voice.

     ‘Hell you mean you aint?’ said the other boy.

     The old man was watching them and he whistled once sharply and the robin broke from the tree and disappeared into the conifers in the garden next door. The sound pierced the crisp silent morning. He cupped his mouth and said to them, ‘get movin’.’

     They did not move.

     The other two looked at him. His face was hard and he was scowling.

     ‘Christ hurry up,’ said the old man.

     ‘Fuck you I aint comin’, the boy shouted.

     And he slung his backpack off his shoulder and opened it and threw the spikes to the ground and they hit the concrete sidewalk and rested by the curb. He turned and limped off and his breath rose in the air in clouds as he dragged his lame leg through the powdery snow.

     The old man watched him.

     Jack and the other boy stood in silence, watching the boy limp away.

     ‘Comin’ or not?’ he asked them flatly. He was not looking at the oldest boy.

     Jack remembered walking up to the spikes and picking them up, and handing them to the old man. He never forgot the look on his face. He could tell he was deeply hurt.

     They got in the car silently and he drove them to the track. They never mentioned what had happened.


                         ***

                                                                                

     Jack made it a third of the way around the three thousand race, running through the snow on the horse track that they used for the distance races. When he gave up he turned to the right and marched with his head down straight through the middle of the course to the club house, where the old man was waiting for him with a hot drink and an overcoat. The other boy came in third in his race. It was his last.

     The two older boys never went to the old man’s house again. It was a phase, or something, they told Jack later. Jack still saw the old man regularly back then but what they said about the thing being just a phase moiled in his mind. He had always wanted to be like the old man. He was well educated and content to be a runner and a carpenter. He once found something simple and dignified in this, but he grew unsure.

     He got into the local college. He was the first in his family to do it, and he got a scholarship because of his ‘economic status.’ He told the old man he was thinking about studying literature and the old man was eager know the syllabus so he could tell him that was he studied was tripe and that he would give him some real literature. And though the old man no longer took pleasure in reading, he talked about what he had once read when he was a boy until he became embarrassed at how much he had talked.

     And Jack grew weary of him. When he visited he was no longer awed by the medals and trophies and he began to see the old man’s house as squalid, and he decided that he could smell piss after all. Whatever it was about the old man that was once romantic to him had died, not in stages or gradually, but suddenly. The old man was the same of course, though a little slower to get up, and drunk a little earlier each day. In time he saw the old man, without sympathy, as not worth the effort.

                         ***                                                                  

     Jack was deep in the corner of the closet still but sifting through the clutter with less fervor. Something was nagging at him. He gave up for the time being and turned on his knees hoping to rip the damned shirt and he stood up and walked over to the pile by the door. He picked up the spikes. They were heavier than the spikes the other two got, he thought. No wonder I was slower. He held one of them up in front of the light to look more closely at the sole. The heel was loose on one and a few of the spikes were missing. He turned it over and noticed that the laces were missing but the leather was still in good condition and the emerald green stitching across the front of both shoes was still intact. He tested one of the spikes with his thumb, long since worn down to a blunt nub. He undid the laces and loosened the tongue. On the back of it his initials were etched in faded blue ink in the old man’s hand. He ran his thumb over the letters. He placed the spikes carefully back into the shoebox and put the lid on. He stooped and, still standing next to the pile by the door, slid the box across the floor to the other pile. The spikes bumped gently against the coffee table and came to a halt, and he continued looking through the closet.

The Seawall

    Hailstones struck the plastic window pane intermittently like handfuls of buck shot being thrown at a tarpaulin, and gathered on the sill and on the gravel path which passed beneath the window. She lay there propped up in a cold steel bed swathed in white sheets with only her pallid arms and her head ­exposed. He sat by her side in the small wooden chair, wrapped in his coat. It was a tiny room with a broken heater which he had already complained about. Dust layered the inside ledge of the window and the rim of the huge ceramic pot which was empty. The doctor, with that matter-of-fact air that only doctors can pull off, walked in through the open door and spoke quietly to them while rubbing his eyelids with the palms of his hands. He told them that they would do what they could. There was a chance, he said, and that they should be hopeful but not over hopeful. 

     ‘I’m working through the night and I’ll personally look in on him,’ he said. He also said that he had done all he could do for the moment. They should get some rest. He would be down the hall. When he left them a nurse came and the boy was taken to an even smaller room where the blinds were partly drawn.
     ‘You should rest’, said the man.
     ‘I can’t.’
     ‘But you should. You’ll get sick.’
     She tried to sidle up the bed but could not.
     ‘You don’t understand. I can’t.’
     She did not say that she was afraid to fall asleep because she believed that if she slept the boy would die. She felt this but did not allow herself to think of it.

     The man's eyes stung. He wiped his hands on his jeans and rubbed his face, making a noise like sandpaper on a breeze block. He had been driving home after a ten hour shift when he got the call and he had driven straight to the hospital. It had been a long day and a long drive and he had not eaten since morning.
     ‘Hell I’ll watch him,' he said.
     She said nothing. She was always beautiful and in the places where he had aged and weathered she had done alright. Her eyes were deep and grey and when she was angry all that was serene in them disappeared and looking at her was like looking into a storm.
     She did not reply.
     ‘I said I’ll watch him,’ he said again.
     He held her hand in his. Her stare was cold. She was tired.
     And she gave in. She made him swear to watch the boy through the night, then they called on the doctor for something to help her sleep, and ten minutes later she was out.

****

He headed to the bathroom to wash up. He was a plasterer and worked on a site outside the city and his face was powdered here and there still with dust from a drywall. He washed his face and his hands, scrubbing his jaw where the pores were clogged. What a face, he thought. His nose was bent where it had been hit back when he used to box and his eyes were small and pale blue, and more red where they should be white. And a new line on it every day it seemed. Two kids already and medical bills for a third that probably won’t make it. If she knew I got three weeks left before they lay us all off. He cupped water from the tap and drank it, letting it warm before gulping it. He had small hands which were ugly and weak from the toil and the early bouts and training that was supposed to make them strong in the first place. He wore a red plaid shirt which had been soaked with sweat first at work then again during the birth. It stuck to his back. He dried his hands and walked the corridor back to where the boy was lying.
     He bought coffee for a dollar from the vending machine outside the room, black because there was no creamer. He opened the door. Green lights on one side of the machine where the boy lay and on the other side a red light and a grey tube expanding and contracting in time with the rise and fall of his tiny chest. He looked at the boy and believed in his heart that he would not live. But he had promised his wife that he would watch over him so he would sit and he would wait. He picked the firmest chair and placed it in a well-lit spot so he would not fall asleep.
     The window in the room faced south and was not struck by the hail in the same manner as the window in the other room was. It was still on the ground floor though, and through the window he could see the car park and the flurry of hail in the yellow of the streetlights, and beyond the car park the highway. With the blinds partly drawn narrow shafts of moonlight settled in lines on the carpet and caused a metal tray on the trolley beneath the window to glimmer. It dimmed and became an outline against the wall as a cloud moved overhead, and when it passed and the moon was open and the sky clear it shined again beneath the window. This went on for a while and kept the man occupied. He wanted to stay awake but he had worked long hours and the gleam became irritating so he got up from the chair and walked to the window and closed the blinds completely.
     The room was cold and with the shirt still damp on his back he wrapped himself in his jacket. The door was open and conversation spilled into the room as doctors and nurses passed the door. He remembered reading a short story set in a hospital once, and something about rooftops and the war. And a joke about friend or enema. There were no great snatches of conversation here, only murmurs about charts and patients. He entertained himself by trying to give meaning to half-heard sentences, but as before he grew annoyed with the noise and closed the door. His back hurt like hell and the cold was now in his bones, so he moved to the couch which was against a radiator.
     Though determined to watch the boy he realized he was not well and began to feel drowsy. It got worse outside and lightening fell a few miles away, lighting for an instant the big pines which stood stolid in the wind a few hundred yards away beyond the car park. He had driven through them on the road into the hospital earlier. He listened for the clap of thunder to work out how far off it had fallen. His father had taught him that when he was a boy during a storm, to calm him. Five miles, he thought. The last one was four. Are you coming or going storm? He looked at the boy and thought it a shame that he would probably never teach him how to count between the flash and the thunderclap.

     He was dozing and thinking of his father when the door opened and the doctor walked in. He carried two cups of coffee. He drank deeply from the cup in his right hand and offered him the second cup.
     ‘Coffee?’
     ‘Thanks.’
     He accepted the offer but he made no effort to get up so the doctor put the coffee on the floor in front of him. Steam was rising from it. He looked in on the boy and took down readings from the screen. He marked his chart, the pen scribbling against the paper on the clipboard.
     ‘You gonna watch him all night?’ he said without looking at him.
     ‘Yeah.’
     ‘You should get some sleep.’
     ‘S’pose.’
     He could hear the wind outside hard against the window now and against the walls which faced the wind, with no trees to act as a breaker, and it was cold and the room was queer in the moonlight and queerer still when the lightning fell. He was warm where he lay and he thought to ask the doctor how the boy was doing, but when he spoke he realized the doctor was no longer there. He was unsure if he had been there at all but on the floor by his feet was a cup of coffee with no steam rising from it. His eyes were heavy and his mind was sapped and sank without a fight.

***

Walking by the sea alone, the sky clear and open, the tide out. The riprap like behemoth coal in a giant's furnace beneath the curving sea wall. The sun low and the clouds grey and tinged red, the cool air more fresh than biting. Climbing the metal railing set in the concrete and leaning over the riprap pretending to fall then at the last moment clutching the railing. Going forward, carelessly while the water reaches onto the sand and seeps into it. Reaching the end of the beach by the station and seeing no way forward and turning knowing that he has to go back. And the way back seeming different somehow, barren now with the sun gone. Cupping his hands into circles and glassing the distance and seeing nothing, the horizon tenebrous. Conscious of the black sea slowly rising to his right. Great clouds gathering above and the breath of the wind no longer steady but fitful as though in an asthma attack. Walking quickly between the now immense wall of water on one side and the jagged rocks on the other. And up ahead coming into view the sea like a cliff stands and as though waiting for him to see begins to fall soundlessly towards him, polishing the rip-rap slick and black and marking the granite of the sea wall like oil. Forcing him up on the rocks. The sea no longer smelling of salt but of some foul miasma. He climbs the riprap in the dark holding onto the sharp rocks not letting go as the water continues to fall.
                                                    ***

The doctor opened the door. In the room the machine droned gently and the boy lay still. He was small and pale as he had been before, but he had survived and looking at him the doctor knew that he would be okay. In the corner by the radiator wrapped in his jacket and facing the couch the man lay asleep. His shoulders were hunched and he was mumbling and the doctor decided to leave him. He opened the blinds slightly. Sunlight sheathed the floor beneath the window.

*****

An hour later when the nurse came in the room the man was still asleep on the sofa in the corner. He had his back to the incubator and his jacket had fallen on the floor.
     ‘Sir? Mr Hyatt?’
     She pressed his shoulder. He woke and turned, and as he did he kicked the polystyrene cup and spilled the cold coffee on the floor. He sat up and stared at her, his eyes red.

‘Don’t worry, someone will clean that. Mr. Hyatt your son is with your wife in the ward. We will need to keep him in for a few days, but the signs are that he will be healthy. Do you understand?’
     He had expected to be told that his son had died in the night and that there was nothing anyone could do. He was blank for a moment then he began to think about selling the car or maybe renting out one of the rooms in the house. His face was haggard and the nurse waited for him.
     ‘Mr. Hyatt?’
     ‘Thank you. I was asleep.’
     ‘Yes, you must be tired. Would you like to see him?’
     He did not seem to hear. He shook her hand and thanked her quietly. She said she would give him a minute and she left.
     He leaned forward on the sofa. The incubator was empty now and the pump was lifeless at its side. On the floor the coffee had seeped into the carpet like water into sand. He shuddered at the thought. Standing up, he rubbed his face with his palms to wake himself. They were rough and his skin was too, and he was glad to have slept because the day would be long.