The Other Shoe Read online

  “Sorry,” she said. It did not seem to him that she was yelling, though she was. “Scraped the muffler off last week. Kinda got high centered. It’s pretty loud if you’re not used to it.”

  Less anxious about love than anyone he knew, he had always expected that it would come to him, eventually, in some stately way befitting his patience. A comfortable, durable love. He leaned out his window to clear his head; the air was turpentine. His sober self floated near, there in the gummy ether with Janice and his mother, and they were all disappointed in him. He was another man entirely than the boy he’d been this morning, but he knew that if he said so the girl would think he was getting carried away. As he happened to be.

  “You married?” she wondered as if from far away. “Got a girlfriend or anything?”

  He felt much as he had while sitting in the river; the girl had asked a simple question, she’d want a simple answer. “No,” he said.

  “Any kids?”

  “Kids?” Calvin Teague could not remotely see himself as a family man, not yet, but this girl seemed to think it feasible. Girls. Women. They were to him the furthest, strangest end of biochemistry. This girl, at least, did not seem deliberately to confuse. He liked her very much. She made a second turn and they began to mount a road that had in some recent season been a streambed, the surface was still channeled and the truck wallowed over it like a boat. “Forest Service always wants to close this road,” she said. “But so far they can’t. ’Cause it’s our access.”

  “You sure have a lot of privacy.” He did not ask how much. Could she be alone here?

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve always lived somewhere off in the woods. Always will, probably.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Oh? Why’s that? Good?”

  “It’s sort of everybody’s dream,” he said, though it was not particularly his own. “Living off by yourself, you know, like Walden Pond.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Make your own rules, only responsible for yourself. That’d be pretty ideal for a lot of people.”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “I think it’s been way overrated.”

  They came to a small clearing where an antique bulldozer stood mired at the end of its ugly work, the end of the road, an end of civilization. The girl’s dog flung itself from the top of the load, and Teague flinched as it flew past his window. The dog’s legs buckled on landing, but it bounced up and pranced to meet three penned goats, and these, in their own odd, stiff friendliness, pressed themselves to the edge of their enclosure in greeting. “Ethel, Jean, and Jenny,” said the girl. “You just hate to get too attached to the little buggers, ’cause they don’t survive real good up here—that’s why we don’t have a billy at the moment—but they get to be pets anyway. And then, the minute you’re a little bit sweet on ’em, then along comes a cat and chews ’em up for you. Those cougars got long memories, too; they’ll come fifty miles outta their way once they’ve had a nice snack on Fitchet Creek. Cats, coyotes, we even lost one of these little guys to a hailstorm.”

  He followed the girl toward the trailer that must be her home. There was a considerable garden enclosed by chicken wire strung on tall poles; he recognized staked tomatoes and feeble stalks of corn. There was a pile of cordwood on a pitch of high ground, better situated than the trailer and about as big. “Fifteen cord,” she said, “give or take. And I’ve already sold quite a bit right off the truck, too.” She said she dealt almost exclusively in larch and that a truckload of it was worth an awful lot of money these days. “I’m dumb as a post most ways, but I do know where to find the premium firewood. Keeps me in beer and Cheerios all year long.” Her residence, parked in mud, was thirty-two feet long, ten feet wide, and sheathed in quilted aluminum. The ModernAire wore pot metal winglets as its crest, and it was flanked by a number of large wooden boxes. “Laying coops,” said the girl. Also attached to the trailer was a sleeping porch built of graying plywood and green netting; the girl led him into it and offered him the use of a lawn chair, and when he settled on it she stood above him, her fist on her hip. “You hungry? You like venison?” He so adored the color and pace and inflection of her voice that his pleasure in it often cost him the thread of what she was actually saying. It didn’t matter. And if his legs ached for having walked so many miles on asphalt, that was also of no account. He was soaring; least of all was he hungry.

  “I should probably try and call my folks,” he said, “see if they’ll wire me some money.”

  “You’re miles from the nearest phone, honey.” As if he were a child wanting comfort and direction. “Why don’t I just feed you? Myself, I’ve been dreamin’ since noon about some fried spuds and a little bite of backstrap.”

  The girl went inside the trailer and shortly, through the open door, he heard ironware resound dully on a burner. “We run most of our appliances off propane, the rest off the generator. When you hear that motor kick in every so often, that’s the generator keepin’ the meat and whatnot froze. People don’t know how good they got it, just to hook up to the power line.” She began to hum again, and he heard her chop something, then oil spitting, and soon enough the odor of frying onions called up a general memory of boyhood. “This guy’s quite lean,” she told him. “I took him outta season, poached him, you know. You don’t mind eatin’ illegal?”

  He had never, not even legitimately, shot a deer, though he’d been on several expeditions for that purpose. He recalled himself walking through thickets in the narrow ravines that drain upstate grain fields—clumsy and loud, his borrowed shotgun rigged for plugs and sleeping like a babe in arms.

  “I was out fishin’,” she said, “and there was this little spike buck, and he kept hangin’ down by the creek; I drownded a couple three worms, and there he still was, so I walk up to the truck for my .243, and when I get back down to the creek, he’s still standin’ there, not even browsin’ anymore, just standin’ there like he’s been waitin’ for me. So I shot him. Heart shot. Felt like I ’bout had to.”

  He could no longer see her through the door; the girl did not have to move very far within the trailer to disappear in it. He tracked the sound of her boots on an insubstantial floor, heard her performing small tasks, heard a wood partition slide open at the far end of the trailer, which was not so far from him. She quietly lay down a scolding in terms he couldn’t make out. Her voice. No answer. Her voice again, a long pause, no answer. Talking to herself. Terribly, terribly lonely. He hoped so. Taking herself privately to task. But why? A cat, he thought, she must have a naughty cat, maybe a captive forest rodent living back there.

  His thoughts veered wretchedly then toward Janice. His Janice, more or less, lodged in his imagination wearing a peach pantsuit. She stood behind some endless paper-covered serving table, offering food and pleasantries and subsisting nicely on her sense of duty, in her fog of old-fogey perfume. Because she was a nice person. A very nice person. Janice, who deserved better than his slim enthusiasm for her. Guilt rose up and sloshed back to the floor of Teague’s being, all muffled. He felt very well. Drunk, perhaps. Unafraid, and yet acutely aware that he’d got himself pretty far into the wilderness.

  “We,” she had said. She’d said it several times. Or “our.” “Our road,” “our appliances.” There was a battered old sports car parked in the clearing. There were jeans hung on a line, two very different sizes. He told himself that it couldn’t matter whether they were or weren’t alone—acts of civil kindness, that was all—and though he was in love with her, he was in love so preposterously he wasn’t about to reveal it. He craned to see her and saw more of the inside of the trailer—black pots, an enameled kettle, blond cabinets. He hated to see her so meagerly provisioned, but then it must be thin living that settled the girl so wonderfully within herself; she was, he believed, of some slightly better species. He smelled the onions caramelizing. This girl, it seemed to him, could make a home anywhere. Be a home. She’d claimed the very word and slipped it off its mooring.
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br />   She appeared at the door. “How ’bout another beer?”

  “I’ve had enough. For me.”

  “Yeah, I forgot you’re kind of a teetotaler. I know you’re still thirsty, though.”

  Moving quietly now—she’d removed her boots to walk around barefoot—she brought him out a tall glass of tea. “Sun tea,” she said. “You put the bags in a glass jug and let the sun color it up. You get a real nice do this way, maybe it’s more natural. You like?”

  He liked the curvature of her jaw, the way her neck swelled from her shoulders. And her eyes, of course, though their particulars, color and so on, were not so clear. Dusk had finally, fully given over. Before he said another word, he thought, he should really ask if they were alone. The girl wouldn’t be frightened or offended. No, the girl, bless her heart, would hear any question he might care to ask in exactly the spirit he intended it. But what, exactly, did he intend? What did he want to know? Do you live by yourself? Are you alone? Are we alone? His intentions had always been so plain, his motives and his curiosity so easily managed. What could she ever be to him?

  “It’s good,” he said, raising his glass. “My mom makes it this way, too. I’ve always preferred it this way.”

  She fed him a meal swimming in grease and salt, and powerfully savory. The venison, his first, was as dense as calf’s liver and tasted like the decaying floor of the forest. They sat knee to knee on lawn furniture, their plates balanced in their laps, and they ate without much comment. He was entirely sober again, beginning to see how the beer had never been all that responsible for his glow. The girl sopped primitive gravy with bread. He did the same.

  “What was that song you were humming before? In the truck? That was so familiar.”

  “I don’t even recall,” she said. “They kinda spill outta me. I remember every tune I’ve ever heard, to hum it, but usually not the words. Hardly ever the names of ’em. Strange, huh?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m not too musical myself. Not at all, really. You should be grateful for whatever little gift you’ve got that way. I mean, they kicked me out of the church choir, if you can believe that. Tin ear.”

  “That was mean. You’re big on that church thing, aren’t you?”

  “My family is,” said Teague. “No. I guess I am, too. Or at least I try to be.”

  “Around here, seems like it’s mainly assholes that pack them churches every Sunday. Aw, that’s not quite it either. But you know what I mean.”

  “Maybe. But I have to say, the majority of the people in our church are really nice. It was the same in Iowa City. I’m a Congregationalist.”

  “I probably don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. I’m kinda goin’ off what I know about my family. They’re kind of assholes. The deal with churches—I just don’t like people lookin’ down on me, but you probably never had to put up with that. You must think I’m pretty bad, the way I talk?”

  “You’ve been very nice to me,” he said. “Very Christian, I might say.”

  “I’ve got somebody you really oughta have a little chat with, ’cause with your education you could sure tell ’em—some of these people, you know, they give out them pills like candy. Real expensive candy. I never saw a pill cure anybody of anything, except maybe aspirin fix a headache.”

  “Deeply Christian,” Teague emphasized. “I’m humbled.” Her mention of someone else had brought him up short. He was not interested in her future, or his future, or anything or anyone outside this very moment.

  “You’re what?” she said, “‘humbled,’ did you say? I never had that effect on anybody before. You’re a lotta firsts for me. That what I said about my family—I don’t want you to get the wrong impression or anything, or take it the wrong way. I really do love ’em. Most of ’em. Kind of. But religion-wise, you know, I’m nothing. Must be nice to be a believer, if you really do believe.”

  She had invaded the borders of his cosseted life, and he’d never be just as he had been before, but how, exactly, he’d changed was not yet clear. The girl undid her braid and ran her fingers through it, and it was a wave, nearly a cloak on her shoulders. Teague was forming a new faith.

  “Love,” she said, “is a very tricky deal.”

  “I’ve heard that. But for me it’s been just Mom and Dad and the grandparents. My little sister. Pretty straightforward stuff.”

  “Some guys have a way of keeping things simple. I bet you’re one of ’em.”

  “I was. Simple. But that might be a nice way of saying stupid. Because I think if I’d been paying attention, I would have known better. I would have known that things are not simple.”

  “No. I meant nice,” she said. “You seem very nice.”

  “Oh, gee.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. But it doesn’t seem to count for much, either. Especially if you don’t know any other way to be.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t have a girl.”

  “I do and I don’t,” he said at last. “I guess I should have mentioned it before.”

  “Oh.”

  Teague wallowed in. “I don’t love her, is the thing. We’re friends. Or just companions, you could even say.”

  “Do guys even need to be in love? I think that’s way down the list of what they’re looking for.”

  “I’d need it,” he said. “I see that now. And with Janice—that’s her name, Janice—we’ve been off in different schools, and we always see each other when we’re home, summer and the holidays, but . . . we don’t date anybody else, at least I haven’t . . . but . . . and we have a lot in common, you know, we’re both going back to good jobs in Courville—she’ll be teaching kindergarten—and she’s a very admirable person, and sort of attractive, I think. Really, I’d always thought this whole ‘love’ idea was something people get too worked up about. I was wrong.”

  “You must be awful tired. You’ve had quite a day.”

  “No. I could go on quite a while longer. I like talking to you. A lot.”

  “I’m kinda bushed. Usually by this time of year the woods are closed. Fire danger. But it’s been a rainy summer. Means a hard winter’s on the way, probably. And, greedy me, I’m gettin’ in all the wood I can. Hauled two loads today all by myself. Small ones, but still, ’bout wears you out.”

  He heard for the first time a sorrow or reluctance in her voice, something not to do with what she was presently saying. She leaned down to take up his plate and her face hovered near him a beat longer than necessary, within reach, he thought. His heart bumped, a menace, and as the girl went into the trailer with their dishes, he thought to offer her his help but found that he was mute again, just as he’d been in the moment they’d met. She worked at the sink briefly and then moved off to the back of the trailer, back to where she’d been angry before.

  She hadn’t put out the lamp in the trailer. She hadn’t said good night. The moon had risen and slanted in at him through the green screen. There was a breeze in the trees, waxing and waning, and saying Fooohl. Fooohoohl. He strained to hear anything else, anything of her, but from where she’d gone there was only that silence, and it persisted so long and was so complete that it seemed to him it must be intentional. He’d have heard the water running if she’d brushed her teeth or washed her face, he’d have heard the bedsprings if she lay down—he was that close and that attentive—but instead he heard nothing at all. Nightfall had brought a penetrating cold, so Teague curled in on himself, thinking God must have sent him a miserable night so that he might remember himself, his entire sense of himself, and quit wanting what was not his to want. He threw his arm over his eyes and could only too easily imagine how silly, how pathetic he must look.

  “You asleep?”

  The girl had floated to the door. Her whisper brought him well up off the lawn chair.

  “Sorry,” she said. She stood in the doorway, blankets draped over one arm, towels over the other. “Didn’t mean to scare you or wake you up or anything.”

/>   “I was just lying here, thinking, I . . . Kind of thinking over the day.”

  The girl didn’t move. She didn’t speak, though she seemed to want to.

  “I was thinking about you, mostly.”

  She wore a long T-shirt for her nightgown. It bore the ghostly imprint of a frolicking unicorn and was so threadbare he could see through it; there was a remarkably detailed shadow between her legs.

  “I’m just filthy,” she said. “How ’bout you?”

  Teague yawned, or faked a yawn to keep from panting.

  “You one of those morning shower people? I like to take my shower at night. Hate to go to bed dirty. All sticky and . . . ” She laid the blankets at his feet. “Come on.”

  He followed her out of the sleeping porch and over a short wooden walk to a shed; she cast a flashlight on the shed, and a fifty-gallon drum was mounted on its roof; a garden hose fed into that. “If you fill this thing in the morning, by night the water’s nice and warm. Specially on a day like this one was. Some people’ll go to quite a lotta trouble for a warm shower.”

  “That’s very clever,” he said in a voice he’d never heard before.

  “Oh, yeah. One of his . . . ” The girl put the towels and the shining flashlight on a rock near the door of the shed. “Wasn’t my idea. Come on, I’ll show you how to work it.” She drew the T-shirt up over her head and laid it on the towels. Fully revealed she was unearthly, suffused with the same interior light as the moon. Teague’s legs threatened to give way beneath him. His eyes strained as the girl entered the gloom of the shed. “All you do,” she said, “is pull on this deal.” She seized a sort of lanyard and there was a trickling sound. She swept water over her face. “Come on,” she said. “There’s room for two, and only so much water.”

  Then she demanded it. “Come on.”

  He stepped into the shed, partly under the fall of the water.

  “Well, you’ll have to take your . . . you’ll get your things all wet again.”