Sam Wickshaw telephoned daily, at first strictly on the pretext of checking on the condition of his patient, his old friend and hunting companion, Harold Dame, but then, after a few weeks, it seemed he called to report on his own day’s activities. He described the patients he had seen that day, whether at his office in town or at the hospital in Concord, where he made early morning rounds; he referred to several real estate deals he was involved with, described his difficulties winterizing his summer cottage at Lake Winnepesaukee (mentioning his friend, and hers, Doctor Furman Bisher from Brookline, Massachusetts), and told her with great pleasure that he had bought a snowmobile, despite his wife’s objections; and in late November, four days before Thanksgiving, he described to her in great detail how, that very morning, he had shot and killed an eight-point, one-hundred-fifty-pound deer. “It was up behind Shackford Corners, a few miles from where you are,” he told her. “I was up on a ledge, a whole lot of larch trees around me, and all of a sudden, there he was, big as life, down below me tiptoeing through a grove of young ash trees. I gut-shot him, and he took off. Actually, even though I was above him a ways, I had a lousy shot,” he explained. “Anyhow, luckily he cut around to my right, and when I came off the ledge, there he was again, so I got a second shot at him, and that time, he went down for good!”
They talked. She explained how she herself didn’t like hunting or guns, but she didn’t judge those who did, and he said he sure was glad of that. Sometimes he asked her questions about herself, her family, her ex-husband, her ambitions, and she answered his questions. Not in detail, however, but briefly and, as much as possible, in general terms, which she knew was how he wanted her to answer them.
Once a week, he drove out to the house and examined the patient. The examination usually took less than five minutes, but his visits took most of the afternoon, for the two of them talked, Sam doing most of the talking. Sometimes they walked down the road a ways or drove to a particularly scenic spot that Sam wanted to reveal to her. And inevitably, when they returned in his car to the house, Sam turned somber and tried for a moment to tell Carol how much and in what ways he liked her. Each time, Carol was able to ease out of the conversation without doing more than frustrating the man, so that, with a wave and a cheery remark, he could pretend to himself that he had never said anything that could be misconstrued as inappropriate.
There was a Sunday, however, when it did not go so smoothly. Carol had slipped out of the car, crossed in front of it and waved good-bye, and this time he had stepped out also.
“Wait a moment,” he said seriously.
She stopped and stood before him, the same height as he but a larger person with a larger face, so that next to her he seemed suddenly fragile.
“Carol, I want to suggest something to you.”
She smiled and reached out with one hand and patted his shoulder. “I know you like me as a person, Sam. I like you, too. Let’s keep it that way,” she said.
“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant. What I mean is, I … ah… I’d like for you to work for me. I’d like you to stay up here, after Harold … after Harold is gone, and work for me. I like you … oh, hell, I know how that sounds. But I want you to work for me.”
Carol said nothing. She studied the man’s earnest, red face, as if searching for a lie.
“Well, you think about it,” he blurted. “You think about it.” He got back into the car and closed the door. Then he cranked down the window. “You think about it,” he said. He started the motor, dropped the car into gear and drove swiftly away, exhaust fumes trailing behind.
The night before Thanksgiving, Harold Dame the real estate man died. At ten-thirty, Carol walked from her room to the old man’s room, and as soon as she crossed the threshold, she knew he was dead. She had learned to hear his breathing without having to listen for it, so that when his breathing ceased, she knew. In the darkness, she reached forward and felt at his neck for his pulse, then turned and went back to her own room. She was in her nightgown, ready for sleep, with her bed already turned down. The portable television Sam had brought her was still on, and blue-gray figures flickered incoherently in front of her, as she sat down on the bed and picked up the telephone. She held the receiver in her lap for a moment and stared at the television screen. Finally, she dialed, and when Sam answered, she told him. “Harold died, Sam.”
“Well. When, Carol?”
“In the last half-hour. I just went in to check him.” Her voice was flat and without expression.
“Well. Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.”
“What about Ed and Sue? Do they know?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be right out there. I’ll handle everything, Carol, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” she said.
“Listen, Carol, why don’t you come in here tonight, stay here with us. I’ll bring you back in with me. We have plenty of extra room,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to have Thanksgiving dinner with us tomorrow,” he said in a thin voice, as if talking to someone whose mind were already made up.
“All right. Thank you, Sam.”
“You will? Wonderful! I’ll be there in five minutes!”
She said good-bye and hung up. Then she rose from the bed and switched off the television, crossed the room and sat by the window, peering into the cold, familiar, New Hampshire darkness.
Principles
1
EVERY MAN OUGHT TO HAVE A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. That’s what Claudel Bing believed, and you might think that was his philosophy of life, but it wasn’t. It was only a principle. It was like his father’s principles, which people used to joke about and say were his philosophy of life, but they weren’t. He used to tell his kids and Claudel’s mother and anyone else who got him to talk seriously about life, “There are three things a man should never do. Swear in front of women, throw stones, and spit.” But you won’t find philosophy there. You won’t find anything there that will get a man through a time of great suffering or moral confusion.
But when you’re a kid you try to figure out your mother’s and your father’s philosophy, and you do it constantly, until either you’ve got it and can accept it for your own or cast it away, or else you never get it and you end up sharing it with your mother and father anyway without even knowing it — which to Claudel seemed a shame. Because a man ought to be able to choose his own philosophy of life. That was another one of his principles.
Anyhow, for years he had struggled to figure out his father’s philosophy of life, but all he could come up with were principles. Like the rule against spitting. What Claudel was looking for was something like Chisholm’s Law, the one that says if things can get worse they will. Then, he figured, he could work out his own principles. A man can’t have principles, he reasoned, unless he’s got himself a philosophy of life.
It wasn’t until he was nineteen and had finished basic training in the army and was shipping out for Vietnam — that was in 1965 or ’66, when things were just starting to heat up over there — that he finally figured out his father’s philosophy of life. It was his mother who gave him the information that tipped him off to it. He had taken a little kidding in basic training from the guys, especially the guys from the cities who had never heard of a man with the name of Claudel so they used to kid him about it, “Why not Claude?” and, “Claudelle, you sure that’s a man’s name?” He could never come back at them with a smart or truthful answer, so when he was home on furlough before shipping out, he asked his mother one day at breakfast how come she had named him Claudel.