Like summer, like winter…
Where he stood, Jay laughed. Out among small waves, a twenty-foot ceramic “C,” chipped and ancient, stood in the slosh and slough, as though it had escaped from between the book covers.
Between, their shared tail writhed.
“Come on,” Jay said. “Help us open it, now.” All three took hold of the cover and pulled it up — it was heavy as a picnic table top — their hands above their heads, they worked their way under, to push it higher. Eric was shoeless and the paper slid under foot, wrinkling. The book was a lot bigger than he’d thought: more like twenty feet than four. When they got the cover vertical, it tottered a little — Mike raised both hands to catch it if it fell back, and Jay only stepped aside, staring upward.
It fell out, open, its far edge, with its leather binding down, splatting foam and seawater.
Eric took a great breath. His birthday was in less than a week…
Reaching up to tug around the orange visor (one of those old Turpens caps, like they used to sell at the truck stop four, five years ago…), Jay strode out beside it on the book’s cream-colored end paper, with its intricate watermarks. In his other hand, Jay already held his welding arc in his gloved hand. Dragging behind, the red rubber hose wound back across the inside cover to become intertwined with the men’s immense shared tail. “Weld it to the stars,” Jay said. “And the sun — the moon. And the clouds.”
“You see,” Mike said, from the book’s landward edge, “he got the easy job.”
Jay squatted down, one knee in the water. From the arc tip, a white spark bit into the binding. Steam billowed up, hiding him.
Back where Mike stood, just on the endpaper, his boots had left footprints. Eric wondered if he should suggest his father take his shoes off.
“Yeah.” Mike scratched his head. “The white man always got the easy job — You gonna help me weld this book to some of these people around here?”
The only person Eric could see was scrawny Frankie in her ragged sweater, lurking half behind a tree, one hand up on the bark. And, unlike Jay, Mike didn’t even have welding tools. But, then, Mike was a senior welder. He could do the job with the black, crackling power from his bare fingers. Because he was black like Bull. “Come on, little girl — don’t be scared. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. We just wanna bind you here with this book — it’s only philosophy…” Eric and Mike had started forward. There was Miss Louise, sitting at her table, in the dark, under the leaves. And Mr. Johnston. And, clowning around behind the fence, the guys from Dump Produce. Horm. And even Lurrie, though Eric didn’t recognize him at first because he didn’t have his hat.
Imploringly, Eric said to Mike, “How about Shit and Dynamite? I wanna bond with them…!”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Mike sounded uncertain. “I ain’t so sure if I really hold with the kind of stuff you guys been doin’ out here…”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be like that, Dad. Come on — ”
“—Come on,” Shit pushed at Eric’s shoulder.
“What,” Eric said. “Wha…?”
“Come on. It’s your turn now.”
“If he’s sleeping,” the Asian woman was saying, “we can do it later. You gave me a lot to think about, Mr. Haskell — ”
“No,” Shit said. “He’ll chew my damned head off, if I don’t wake him up to talk to you. He actually got some stuff to say. Me, I was just blabberin’.”
“Oh…” Eric said. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He moved forward in the seat. His head felt immense and hollow. Unsteadily, he pushed up, for a moment sure the floor was crooked beneath him.
“I got ya!” Shit grasped him by the shoulders. “Get your balance, now. Come on — ” the floor righted — “take your time. I’m gonna get you a glass of water — or do you want some more eggnog?”
“Naw,” Eric said. “Naw — just some water. With ice, if they got it. You know I ain’t a drinker.”
“I ain’t a drinker.” Shit grinned — he’d taken out his teeth again. “But sometimes I wonder about you. You put away two whole cups. That stuff’s almost pure whiskey. You take ’im on back to the office. I’ll bring you both a glass. Hey — make ’im show ya his tattoos. He’ll do it in private, but he don’t like to show ’em off in public.”
“Come on, be quiet, Shit — !”
“I’m serious. I’m gettin’ yall some water.”
The woman said, “Water would be nice.” She took Eric’s arm. “You’re sure you’re ready for this…?”
“Oh, yes.” Eric tried to exaggerate his readiness and wondered if he sounded silly. He started walking. “Of course I am. Now, which way is this office…?”
The Asian woman thought that was funny. At least she laughed. “Right back here.”
But he knew this place as well as he knew Anne’s. He’d helped Hanna pack her paintings the same way he helped Anne box her pots. Only he’d just woken…
As they walked through the guests, Eric took a big breath. “You know, my book — I’m sure they all told you how I’m always readin’ this one book.”
“Yes, that’s right. Anne said something about a philosopher you were interested in.”
Carefully, Eric said, “Benedict de Spinoza. Ethics. I was just thinkin’, you know, I read that book so many times. I shoulda done somethin’ with it. I always tried to do good, to help people, to feed ’em when they was hungry. But I coulda done some more — a lot more. I could have told some of the young people about him — helped them to understand what he was sayin’, too. I probably coulda done it through the Library. Had a class or something, for youngsters who wanted to read it — it didn’t have to be just youngsters. It could have been anyone. ’Cause it’s so hard to read — especially at the start. I could have helped them all that way. But now, I think I’ve forgotten too much — maybe that just means it’s time for me to read it once more. But I think I’m…too old.”
Young Ann had walked through the door, where a desk had chairs on either side. “Hanna says you’re…eighty-six?” She looked at him questioningly. “I don’t see why you’re too old. You could still do it.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. You see, I’m not a teacher or a writer or anything. I never was. I’m just a handyman — ”
“But you’re a handyman who reads Spinoza.”
He thought she sounded proud of him, the way the young could sound proud of any dip-shit thing the elderly managed to do.
(You know, I got up this morning and put my shoes on.
(You did? Well, I’ll be!
(I mean, it’s not that they understand you almost pass out when you do it. Because you had to hold your breath when you bent over…)
“Well — ” Eric smiled — “who used to read Spinoza. Handyman work — me and Shit — that’s all we can do. And at this point, we can’t do much of that. We have a perversion,” he said, glancing down at the seat and readying himself to sit. “We like to eat up dried mucus. Our own, each other’s. A doc told us once that it was even good for you — because it helped your immune system. Makin’ it sexual — that was Nature’s or God’s way of keepin’ you at it. It could even have been a survival trait. Lots of kids do it, but most of ’em get it shamed out of them unless they sexualize it. If we’d been into havin’ babies and stuff, maybe we coulda passed it on. Maybe you don’t even have to pass it on genetically, though. It could just happen socially, if we’d had ’em around us more. But we didn’t do that, neither. It’s too bad we wasted all that — ”