The journey ended right in front of the car’s left front tire, into which I smashed my head. I didn’t hurt anything. I stayed there on the ground for a minute, trying to comprehend what had happened. When you’re sixty such things are unforgiving-when you’re thirty-five they’re sort of laughable. Through the darkness, I saw the car door handle sparkling above my head. I grabbed it and pulled myself up. It was a major effort to remember what I had come down there to get-as if a jar of glue had been spilled on my head. Something to do with mosquitoes… yes… right… the Bug Bomb! I knew I’d thought of everything!
I got the can out of the glove compartment. I pretended not to see myself in the rearview mirror-I just passed a hand through my hair. I stayed there for a while, sitting in the front seat with my legs outside, watching the fire burning up top, the cabin dancing behind it as if it were sitting on top of the world. I tried not to think of what I still had to do.
At least I knew I couldn’t get lost. All I had to do was head for the light. Still, I felt like I was at the bottom of the Himalayas.
We woke up the next day around noon. I got up to make coffee. While the water was heating, I went into Betty’s purse to look for some aspirin. Inside, I found other bottles.
“What’s all this?” I asked. “These pills?”
She lifted her head up, then put it back down.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just for when I can’t sleep,”
“What do you mean, for when you can’t sleep?”
“It’s nothing, really. I don’t take them very often.”
I was annoyed with myself for having found them. I didn’t feel like talking about it. She wasn’t a little girl, after all, she already knew anything I might have told her. I let the bottles fall, one by one, back into her purse. I took two aspirin. I tried to get a little music on the radio. I tried to be easygoing. One of my arms was all scratched, and I had a bump on my head. I didn’t feel like fooling around.
That afternoon Betty decided to clear out a little of the land in front of the house-get a little exercise. I think she was planning to plant a few things the next time we came up. She dug out the grass with an old iron bar we’d picked up on one of our walks. It made a lot of dust. Seeing this, I moved off by myself and started reading. It was nice out. I had to struggle to keep from falling asleep on my rock. These days nine out of ten books are boring-I was ashamed of myself for doing nothing while all those others were out there writing like idiots. This shook me up, surprised me. I went to get a beer. On the way I stopped to mop off Betty’s forehead.
“Everything okay, honey? Making progress?”
“Hey, get me one, too!”
I got two beers and noticed that the stock was getting dangerously low. It didn’t get to me, though. I understood a long time ago that perfection is not of this world-all you can do is make the most of what you have. You realize this when you look in the mirror.
I said, Cheers, and we lifted our beer cans. The dust had settled. We’d been together almost a year now, and I’d learned how to answer the door when opportunity knocked. I didn’t want to end up empty-handed at the age of thirty-five, wondering if it was all worth it. I wouldn’t have liked that much. It would have been depressing-the kind of thing that makes you walk the streets at night.
“I just got an idea about how to have less garbage to take out,” I said.
I threw my empty can down the slope and we watched it fall.
It made it almost all the way to the car.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Not bad. Not great for the landscape, though.”
“Noted, my sweet.”
I made myself useful by doing the dishes from lunch. We climbed up the hill to see the sun before it went down-stretched the old legs a little. There was a light breeze.
“I dreamed last night that they published your book,” she said.
“Don’t start.”
She took my arm without another word, and we stood there surveying the countryside in silence. I watched a car go down the road in the distance, its headlights on. Suddenly it just disappeared. It took me a minute or two to unlock my jaw.
“What say we eat?”
When we got back, there was a badger furrowing in our garbage can. I’d never seen such a big one. We were about thirty yards from it. I took out my knife.
“Don’t move,” I said.
“Be careful.”
I lifted the blade above my head, then tore up the hill screaming at the top of my lungs. I tried to remember how you go about slaying a bear, but by the time I got there, the badger had slunk off into the night. I was glad it was him and not me. I threw a rock at him for good measure, to see his reaction.
This little episode gave me an appetite-I could have eaten a horse. I made some pasta with cream sauce. The day had completely exhausted me. There was no particular reason for this. It isn’t really so incredible that a guy should feel exhausted when he sees all the people who throw themselves out the window-or those who might as well. It’s quite normal, in a way. I didn’t worry about it.
After we ate, I smoked a cigarette and dozed off while Betty brushed her hair. I passed out cold. In the middle of the night I opened my eyes again. The badger was just outside the window-we stared at each other. His eyes gleamed like black pearls. I closed mine.
When we woke up the next morning the sky was cloudy. It got worse in the afternoon. We watched the clouds come, filling up every inch of sky. It was our last day. We pouted. It seemed like the land had suddenly shrunk. There was no more sound, as if all the birds and insects hopping through the grass had simply evaporated. The wind came up. We heard faraway thunder.
When it started raining we headed back inside the house. Betty made tea. I watched the earth steam outside, as the sky got blacker and blacker. It was one hell of a storm-the heart of it was less than a mile away. Bolts of lightning split the sky. Betty started to get scared.
“Want to play Scrabble?” I suggested.
“No, not really.”
Each time there was a clap of thunder, she froze stiff, her head tucked into her shoulders. Torrents of water pounded down on the roof. We had to talk loud to be heard.
“Anyway, the rain isn’t so bad, as long as we’re safe inside, and the tea’s still hot,” I said.
“Jesus, you call this rain? It’s a deluge!”
Actually, she was right. The storm was getting dangerously close. I suddenly knew that it was coming right for us-was out to get us. We sat down in the corner of the room, on the comforter. It felt like there was some huge creature beating himself against the house, trying to tear it out of the ground. Every so often the lighting from his eyes glared outside the windows. Betty drew her knees up to her chest and put her hands over her ears. Just perfect.
I was giving her a back rub, when a giant drop fell on my hand. I looked up-the ceiling was dripping like a sponge. We looked around us-the walls were wet. There were small puddles under the windows, and a tide of mud was trying to ooze in under the door. The house had turned into hell; surrounded by lightning, shaken by thunder. Instinctively, I put my head down. I knew that anything I might do would be futile. None of that Man-and-God-are-equals crap. I apologized for ever having thought such a thing.
When a drop fell on her head, Betty jumped. She glanced with horror at the ceiling, as if she’d just seen the devil himself. She pulled the comforter up over her knees.
“No… please, no…” she whimpered.
The storm had moved off by a few hundred yards, but the rain was coming even harder. The noise was infernal. She started crying.