“Take a load off your bones.” The old man patted the bench next to him, using the hand that held the knife, when Jimmy got to within three or four steps of him.
Jimmy stopped again. The old man not only had not opened his eyes, he didn’t have eyes. The eyelids were deeply sunken. There could be no eyeballs under them.
“Sit down, young man, before you fall down,” the old man said, his voice firmer now.
“How did you know I was there?” Jimmy asked, standing directly in front of the whittler. “You couldn’t see me.”
“Couldn’t I?” There was a laugh in the voice now. The old man tilted his head back. For all the world, he seemed to be staring directly into Jimmy’s eyes.
“Blue eyes,” the old man said. “And far too many wrinkles in your face for one so young. Sit, sit.”
Too astonished to protest any further, Jimmy sat. He felt as if he were melting, flowing onto the bench without effort, without will. The wood was rough, deeply textured. Jimmy used both hands to raise himself and adjust his position a little, worried about getting a sliver in a delicate spot.
“Something to refresh you? Lemonade perhaps? I have a fresh pitcher of homemade.”
Jimmy nodded. “I could use something.”
“I don’t have any alcohol here, I’m afraid,” the old man said, as if he had read Jimmy’s thought that he could use something stronger than lemonade.
“Lemonade is fine,” Jimmy said. Shock kept him from reacting more intensely, shock and exhaustion.
“My name is Walter,” the old man said as he set his knife and the chunk of wood he had been whittling at on the bench next to him, on the side away from Jimmy.
“I’m Jimmy Lohman.”
Walter stood, in apparent slow motion, and put his hands to his hips. He stretched backward for a moment, then sighed. “Sometimes I sit too long without moving around,” he said. “The joints stiffen up then. I’ll be right back.” He was wearing baggy tweed trousers held up by suspenders. His shirt was gray, as baggy as the trousers.
Jimmy watched closely as Walter walked into the cottage. The old man didn’t move with the slightest hesitation or sign of handicap. He went around Jimmy’s outstretched legs and turned precisely into the doorway. When he came back out, not more than two minutes later, he was carrying a metal pitcher and two tall glasses on a small three-legged table. He set the table down, took the pitcher, and poured lemonade into both of the glasses. Ice cubes clattered around in the aluminum pitcher. The glasses frosted over as the drink was poured into them.
“It might be a little tart for your taste,” Walter warned. “The older I get, the less sugar I add to my mix.”
Jimmy took a cautious sip while Walter sat. The lemonade was very sour, almost painfully so, but it tasted remarkably good for that. “It’s fine,” Jimmy said when his mouth quit puckering.
Walter chuckled softly. He drank down half of his own drink in one long gulp, then set his glass down. He picked up his knife and the chunk of wood, then started whittling again.
“You look like a man with a world of troubles.” Walter didn’t look at Jimmy. He “stared” toward his whittling.
“Where is this place?” Jimmy asked, looking around. “I don’t see how I could possibly have missed this.”
“It’s just a place,” Walter said. “I’ll grant you, most people do miss it. You must have needed it powerfully to have wandered in.”
Jimmy stared at Walter, watching the old man’s expressionless face. “Will you tell me one thing, straight out?” Jimmy asked after a moment.
“If I can.”
“Have I already died? Is this some gateway to the afterlife?”
Walter didn’t laugh. Jimmy had more than half expected laughter, had almost hoped for it. The silence knotted his stomach until Walter spoke again.
“No, you’re not dead.”
“Then what is this place?”
Walter stopped carving and turned his face to Jimmy. “You’ll think me less than candid if I say merely that it is only my home but, in truth, it is no more than my home.”
“Then I guess I’ve gone crazy.” Jimmy took a long pull at his lemonade. Even the astringent taste didn’t sway his belief in that last statement. “The news tipped me over the edge. I couldn’t handle it.”
Walter sighed. “It’s always the same. People find this place because they need it, and then they can’t believe that it’s real.”
“How could I?” Jimmy challenged.
“That’s an answer I’ve not yet found. Will you tell me about yourself and what puts you in such a dismal mood?”
Jimmy took more than a minute to consider that request. “Why not?” he asked. “Whether I’m crazy or not, what can it hurt to talk?”
“You might even find some help in it,” Walter suggested when Jimmy paused.
“It’s simple enough. I’m dying,” Jimmy said. It hurt to say it out loud like that. He had been thinking it ever since the doctor told him what the tests had shown, but now, finally, he had actually said it. I’ve sealed my doom now, Jimmy thought, not seeing how irrational it was to think that saying the words guaranteed their truth.
“We’re all dying, from the moment we’re born,” Walter said. “What makes you feel your mortality so strongly?”
“Terminal cancer.” Jimmy let those two words hang. “Some of what the doctor said is a bit fuzzy. The shock was too much. I got hung up in the start and missed some of it, I think. A pair of inoperable tumors in my brain, growing. I was having headaches, and started to have a little trouble with my eyes. Doctors, tests, consultations, more tests. Today, the brain specialist said that I’ve got a month, six weeks, maybe two months left, at most. I start chemotherapy tomorrow, but the doctor wasn’t optimistic. There might be a temporary remission, he says. The tumor might stop growing for a while, or even shrink, but it will only be a temporary reprieve. The cancer is too far along to really hope for a complete cure, and he says it is extraordinarily aggressive, whatever that means. And he says that I’ll be in a great deal of pain before the end, and that I’ll almost certainly go blind first.”
“Did you expect him to wave a magic wand and make the disease go away?”
“Isn’t that what doctors are supposed to do? You get sick. The doctor makes you well.”
“Well, they don’t use leeches at the first sign of a fever anymore, perhaps, but doctors aren’t magicians. They can’t work miracles.”
“Miracles.” The world sounded like a curse the way that Jimmy said it.
“You’re looking for a miracle but you don’t believe in miracles,” Walter observed.
“Is that what you offer, miracles?”
“I offer neither miracles nor magic.”
“What do you offer?”
“Lemonade, a place to sit and rest, and a sympathetic ear.”
Jimmy held back a bitter reply. The anger surprised him, and how ready it was to leap out at the slightest excuse. He took another sip of lemonade and tried to control his emotions.
“I appreciate it,” he said at last. “The lemonade, the seat.” He gestured vaguely. “Perhaps I need the sympathetic ear most of all. I don’t know how to deal with this… this.” He shook his head. He couldn’t decide: this what?
“How old are you?” Walter asked.
“Twenty-seven. I won’t see twenty-eight unless somebody comes up with one of those miracles I don’t believe in. My birthday is six months away.”
Walter didn’t speak right away. He was busy at his carving again, making a series of very small cuts. Jimmy looked but couldn’t tell what the old man was trying to make. Maybe he had nothing special in mind. After perhaps five minutes, Walter spoke again.