Light blasted through the windows that lined the front of Otto’s barn as I ran across the street. It reminded me of an old movie theater, each stall screening a different run. I hurtled toward it, flashing the light once behind me so Father could see.
Wilson was raking the hay out of the aisle when I came in.
“Hi Wilson,” I said. “It’s just me. It’s just Jean.” Wilson looked up and focused on me for a minute.
“I went to camp today,” he said. The way he was standing, belly over the belt, his chest puffed out, I could tell that today was a proud day for Wilson. It was odd to see an old man look so young again. He was bald and fat and graying. No less than forty in the light, the way the shadows clung to his face. And yet standing there in the aisle in that moment, his cheeks looked like a six year old’s the first time he hits his first solid ball over the diamond. A good wind comes in from the outfield and brings some color into his face.
“Was she pretty?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Daddy’s proud of me. I went to camp and I met a redhead. A pretty girl.”
“Your Daddy’s always proud,” I said.
“You’re pretty too, Jeannie,” he said. “Daddy says I like the pretty girls.”
“There’s few things I’m less wrong about than women,” Otto said. I hadn’t seen Otto standing at the far end of the barn. He must’ve been in the tack room settling the evening’s chores when I’d come in. I knew he’d go there occasionally when the feed was on and the horses were settled for the night. I’d walked in on him one evening sitting at the draftsman desk he’d bought for His Helene back in the days when she still kept the books for the riding lessons they ran out of the barn.
Otto’s face that night had a drawn, wan look that accompanies sleeplessness. I went to him out of pity.
“Tell the story again, old boy,” he said to Wilson as I snuck up under Otto’s armpit, wrapping one arm around his waist.
“What story?” Wilson said.
“The one about getting chased,” Otto said, draping his arm over my shoulder. His body was fit for a man of his age. It had that taut tension that comes from the small inhalation of a parent thrilling over an act of their child’s bravery.
“I went to visit the redhead in her cabin today,” Wilson said.
“And who caught you, son?” Otto said, egging him on.
“The counselor,” Wilson said. “He chased me out with a broom.”
“And what did you tell him when he chased you?”
“I told him my Daddy said I like the pretty girls.”
“That a way, son,” Otto said. “You old bastard, you. You’re just like your old man.”
I looked up at Otto’s eyes. A pride was rising in them, a glory he’d once thought fondly of and now recalled.
“That was a good one,” Wilson said.
“It sure was,” Otto said. “I’m proud of you. You might be ugly as shit but at least you’re still chasing tail.”
The two were laughing then. There was something in the way Otto laughed, his body doubled over, leaning forward toward his son standing in the thin light down the aisle, that made me realize that this was a feeling Otto’d been deprived of for a long while, the ability to connect with his son as a man. Otto glimpsed that for a moment. It felt damn good. They both felt damn good.
“The counselor said he thought he wanted to rape her,” Otto said between breaths. He was laughing so hard he was almost sobbing. “I got a call this morning. Can you imagine? That dim wit actually thought my son had enough man in him to rape that girl.”
Wilson understood his father’s laugh as a sign of encouragement.
“Rake a girl,” he said. “My Daddy says I’m gonna rake a girl.”
Wilson took the rake in his arms and started spinning with it. He looked as if someone had dropped a harness around his belly, lifting him up toward the rafters, lending him grace and spin.
“Maybe I’ll rake you, Jeanie,” he said. “You’re a pretty girl too.”
Otto was chuckling all the way to the house. His arm was heavy on my shoulder as we walked. After all that, he seemed to have given up on something of the evening. I looked at the stars over top of us and thought of Wilson dancing and the sight of the power lines over Bluecreek. I thought about asking Otto what Wilson had meant by all that in the barn.
“Back to work now, son,” he’d eventually said to Wilson when he got the air back in his chest. “That’s enough of that.”
“Will you be alright then?” I said to Otto.
“Right as rain,” Otto said. “Why don’t you come in for a minute and see if you can make that old piano play again.”
The piano was a small upright Otto kept in the back room near the porch. The top of it resembled a bench from an earlier time, a resting place where all the old faces still sat around and kept watch on the day. It was lined with frames and trinkets, relics of the days when His Helene had still been working her hand and saying her say over her two boys. The collection had the feel of an album — all the best moments splayed together despite the shit faces and gap teeth.
I started in on a sonata, quietly and without much breath at first. But then with more confidence as I went. There was a seriousness about Otto which I respected. His was not a soul easily turned.
I looked over my shoulder at one point while I played. Otto was sitting in the recliner. A peacefulness had invaded his face.
I hadn’t seen His Helene in the other room watching. She was sitting in her wheelchair with her feet in a bedpan. Here you are, she seemed to say, a bit of my letting go.
There I was, all these trinkets of hers, and her husband’s eyes boring into me. By the time I got to the final movement I felt I knew something of her inner life. I tried to tell it just as I heard it. Strong faithful chords. Easy on the flutes and the runs. I wanted to splay the notes in good conscience.
“You’ve been lonely then too,” His Helene said from the other room, when I had finished.
I went to her, kneeling down at her feet and putting my arms on her legs. I tried to be rough with her when I could to remind her that she was still a woman.
“Do you want to go for a stroll, Helene?” I said.
“Sure do, darlin’,” she said. “It’s frightful small in here tonight.”
We bundled her in the old fur from the front closet and all of Otto’s gear, her throat every bit covered. On her head we put the coon hat Otto wore riding in the winter. Wilson donated his glasses to shield her eyes. “We can’t let the wind take those now can we,” Otto said affixing them to her face. “There’s no natural tears left.”
It was true. I’d put the drops in. What water His Helene had left in her had congregated in her feet. They were bulbous and bloated. The doctor said next it would move to her heart. That’s what would take her. That one big rush of her own stream.
She took her grapes. I put them in a small blue bowl, which I wedged on her lap. In a panic, she liked to feel a frozen grape on her tongue. The nurse had shown me where to place it.
Otto took the flashlight. Together we rolled His Helene into the night. Otto’d built a ramp off the back porch that she’d used to wheel herself out to the barn when she’d still had some strength in her arms.
“Take her around front,” Otto said. “I want to show her off one last time even if there’s no one to see her.”
It took too much emotion out of him to push. He just wanted to run alongside and watch the fear being lifted from her face. I broke into a steady jog after we cleared the driveway. The shadows of the branches overhead splayed out on her lap. I watched them move over her as we ran.