His perfect hitting continued, like a curse he could never escape. Solid line drives these days, slashed and sprayed all over the field. He didn’t care any more, that was the key. There’s no pressure when you don’t care.
Once he ran into her at Fran’s bakery and she jumped as if frightened. God, he thought, spare me. To hell with her if she felt guilty about deserting him, and yet didn’t act to change it.
If you don’t act on it, it wasn’t a true feeling. One of Hank’s favorite sayings, the text for countless incoherent sermons. If the saying were true, and if Ramona was not acting, then… Oh well.
Work was the best thing. Get the breakfast room under the old carport as sunny and tree-filled as possible. Put the skylights in place, boxes into the roofing, bubbles of cloudgel onto the boxes, get the seal right, make it all so clean and perfect that someday when roofers came up here to repair something they’d see it and say, here was a carpenter. Wire in the homeostatic stuff, the nervous system of this rough beast. More kitchen tiles, a mosaic of sorts, the craft of the beautiful. Sawing wood, banging nails in the rhythm of six or seven hits, each a touch harder, the carpenter’s unconscious percussion, the rhythm of his dreams, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP. Rebuilding the northside roof and the porch extending out from it, in a flash he imagined falling off and his elbow hurt. Gabriela wore an elbow sleeve for tendonitis, carpenter’s elbow, and she was the young one. They were all getting old. The master bedroom would be cool no matter what.
One day after work Hank pulled a six-pack from his bike box and plunked it down in front of Kevin, who was taking off his work boots. “Let’s down this.”
They had downed a couple of dumpies when Hank said, “So Ramona has gone back to Alfredo, they say.”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad.”
Kevin nodded. Hank slurped sympathetically at the beer. Kevin couldn’t help declaring that Ramona was now living a lie, that she and Alfredo couldn’t be happy together, not really.
“Maybe so.” Hank squinted. “Hard to tell. You never really can tell from the outside, can you.”
“Guess not.” Kevin studied his dumpie, which was empty. They opened two more.
“But ain’t none of it cut in stone,” Hank said. “Maybe it won’t last between them, and could be you might pick up where you left off, after they figure it out. Partly it depends on how you act now, you know? I mean if you’re friends you don’t go around trying to make her feel bad. She’s just trying to do what’s right for her after all.”
“Urgh.”
“I mean if it’s what you want, then you’re gonna hafta work for it.”
“I don’t want to play an act, Hank.”
“It ain’t an act. Just working at it. That’s what we all gotta do. If you really want to get what you want. It’s scary because you might not get it, you’re hanging your ass out there, sure, and in a way it’s easier not to try at all. Safer. But if you really want it…”
“If you don’t act on it, it wasn’t a true feeling,” Kevin said heavily, mocking him.
“Exactly, man! That’s just what I say.”
“Uh huh.” And thus Alfredo had gone down to San Diego.
“Hey man, life’s toof. I don’t know if you’d ever noticed. Not only that, but it goes on like that for years and years. I mean even if you’re right about them, it still might be years before they figure it out.”
“Jeez, man, cheer me up why doncha.”
“I am!”
“God, Hank. Just don’t try to bum me out someday, okay? I’m not sure I could handle it.”
Years and years. Years and years and years and years. Of his one and only life. God.
“Endure,” Hank would say, standing on the roof and tapping himself in the head with his hammer. “En-doourrr.”
Pound nails, set tile, paint trim, scrape windows, lay carpet, program thermostating, dawn to dusk, dawn to dusk. Swim four thousand yards every evening, music in the headphones drowning thought.
He didn’t know how much he depended on work to kill time until it came his turn to watch the neighborhood kids for the day. This was a chore that came up every month or so, depending on work schedules and the like. Watching all the adults leave as he made breakfast, herding all the tykes over to the McDows’ house, starting up the improvised games that usually came to him so easily… it was too slow to believe. There were six kids today, all between three and six. Wild child. Too much time to think. Around ten he rounded them up and they made a game out of walking down the paths to Oscar’s house. It was empty—with Kevin gone, the others were off to start a new project in Villa Park. So he got the kids to carry tiles from the stacks in the drive back to the hoist. Fine, that made a good game. So did scraping putty off windows in the greenhouses. And so on. Surprising how easily it could be made into a child’s game. He snorted. “I do kindergarten work.”
Onshore clouds massed against the hills, darkened, and it started to rain. Rain! First a sprinkle, then the real thing. The kids shrieked and ran around in a panic of glee. It took a lot of herding to get them back home; Kevin wished he had a sheepdog. By the time they got there everyone around was out getting the raincatchers set, big reversed umbrellas popping up over every rainbarrel and cistern and pool and pond and reservoir. Some were automatic but most had to be cinched out. “All sails spread!” the kids cried. “All sails spread!” They got in the way trying to turn the cranks, until Kevin got out a long wide strip of rainbow plastic and unrolled it along a stretch of grass bordering the path. The rain spotted it with a million drops, each a perfect half sphere; shrieking louder than ever the kids ran down the little rise between houses and jumped onto the plastic and slid across it, on backs, bellies, knees, feet, whatever. Adults joined in when the raincatchers were set, or went inside to break out some dumpies, singing “Water.” The usual rain party. Water falling free from the sky, a miracle on this desert shore.
So Kevin kept an eye on his kids, and organized a sliding contest, and took off on a few slides himself, and got a malfunctioning raincatcher to work, and caught a dumpie from Hank as Hank pedaled past in a wing of white spray, throwing beer and ice cream like bombs; and he sang “Water” like a prayer that he never had to think about. And all of that without the slightest flicker of feeling. It was raining! and here he was going through the motions, sliding down the plastic strip in a great spray, frictionless as in a dream, heading towards an invisible home plate after a slide that would have had to begin well behind third base, he’s… safe! and feeling nothing at all. He sat on the grass soaked, in the rain, hollow as a gourd.
But that night, after an aimless walk on the hill, he came home and found the message light blinking on the TV. He flipped it on and there was Jill’s face. “Hey!”
He turned it on, sat before it. “—having trouble getting hold of me, but I’ve been in Atgaon and up to Darjeeling. Anyway, I just got into Dakka tonight, and I can’t sleep.” Strange mix of expressions, between laughing and crying. “I umped a game this afternoon back in Atgaon, I have to tell you about it.” Flushed cheeks, small glass of amber liquid on the table beside her. She stood suddenly and began to pace. “They have this women’s softball league I told you about, and their diamond is back of the clinic. It’s a funny one, there are trees in left field, and right in the middle of right center field there’s a bench, and spectators sit there during the games.” Laughter, brother and sister together, a world and several hours apart. “The infield is kind of muddy most of the time, and they have a permanent home plate, but it’s usually so muddy there that you have to set a regular base about four feet in front of the home plate, and play with that as home. And that’s what we did today.”