Part 25 (1/2)

He began talking about his own father, and while I don't remember one detail of what he said, I can still hear Pop's voice, the acceptance in it, the forgiveness, and it brought ht at his and Peggy's house on ca, Pavarotti was singing and I knewHe sometimes played opera as he wrote, and lately he'd wear a japanese kimono at his desk

But when I cli in his ki tea there, and he was crying I asked hilanced atabout my old ht I was” He lowered his chin and cried and I hugged iveness for his father had begun then, maybe later or earlier, but as I sat on Pop's couch at nearly three in theempty, Pop talked about his own father as if he were simply anotherout of bed each day to try and do the best he kne to do I listened and I nodded I said little and did not need to say much That had been true of my father too, hadn't it? He'd done the best he'd kno to do, and if it wasn't enough, then we still had this, didn't we?

Across froht of the TV, a grownnear another man in a wheelchair Nine miles down the river, my own children slept in a house without

I stood and told ht,I leaned down, the glass in ed him with one arm His back felt broad and thick, and I could snac on his whiskers He held on and looked into my face and said to me what he said to all six of his children all the time, those three words his father had never said to him I said thelass and rested it in his lap with his, then he turned his chair around, gripped the railings, and pulled hi rooht I put on my jacket and opened the door The stars were out, the air so cold s ached with the first few breaths Pop followed me out in just his black shi+rt and sweatpants He stopped at the end of the landing before the descent of the first ra about this new novel I'd written, his tone generous and encouraging, the way it ithme

I turned and waved and headed down the first ramp, then the second, third, and fourth From the driveway I could see hiht, his breath thin and white, rising into the air where it vanished Beyond him was the steep hill behind his house, the bare poplars in snow, their upper branches against the stars

Pop was talking, and while I couldn't make out his words, his tone was upbeat, and I kneas still speaking about me and my neork

”I'll call you fro else I couldn't hear I started h time to warm up I backed it to the frozen sobnk, drove down the hill, and away

21

THE COFFIN WAS a siht to build Even with power tools it took two h our as interrupted by visits froent, Philip Spitzer, as like a brother to him, his wife Mary, Reverend Bob Thompson from Exeter, others too Jeb and I would be at the table saw or the chop saw, or we'd be claether on the worktable, when the front door of Jeb's shop would open and people wouldconcrete corridor We'd stop and walk over to thes, a shake of the head, tears and son, that he'd decided on a coffin with no nails, just glue and dowels He'd show theet the arc of the domed lid, how he'd used that to trace the final shape onto pine boards he then cut on the band saw My main job was to rip the forty staves ould need to cover those supports for the finished cover

We told thes, and we listened to whatever they had to say Our father's body lay in a funeral home in Haverhill not far froan to take shape in Jeb's shop, people who loved Pop would stand before it and lower their voices They looked from the coffin to Jeb and , they'd take a s it into their coat pockets or holding it in one hand They hugged us once more and walked back down the concrete corridor out into the night

For long stretches Jeb and I were alone In many ways it felt like old times Jeb was the artist at this; I was the slow, careful, lued and claarette between his lips, three-day-old whiskers across his chin and cheeks, I was cutting the shorter lengths for the end panels Solance over at each other at the same time, and our eyes would catch and we'd shake our heads and well up Othereach other's balls the way you did on a job: ”You call that square square? What a butcher” More than once, one of us would pass closely by the other on the way to a new tool or task and we'd reach out and squeeze a shoulder or upper ar

Many tiht-pine dust in the air, sine smell of the power tools-one of us would shake his head and say, ”Three hours, an to tire but not e when the shop door opened and against the gray light stood the silhouettes of two men One of the down the corridor, a cooler over the shoulder of the shorter one, a bag under the arht were Saht froht beer and sandwiches There were hugs and soot quieter as we stood back and looked at ht, the corner joints tight and clean, a router bead running the length of the closed lid whose arc was slight, all forty staves glued tightly together and sanded sainst the wall We ate our sandwiches and drank cold beer Maybe we talked about the wake that would start in less than twelve hours Maybe about the funeral the next day and how the ground was too frozen for the burial and we'd have to wait till spring for that, Pop's body to be kept in a vault in a local cemetery until then

While we talked and ate and drank, I kept looking at the coffin sitting over on the worktable, this last project for our father I stood and brushed the crus I walked up, opened the lid, climbed onto the table, then stepped inside and lay down I asked Jeb to close it, told hih room for a body inside These are the words I said, and part ofthat, but another part of me had to feel what our father would not, had to see what he would not, the new lid closing, then the darkness, the nearly lue, the sap and sawdust, the walls of this final box at my shoulders and toes

When the call ca in the lobby of my hotel in San Francisco It was cocktail hour Businessco quietly to one another or on their cell phones Jazz was playing softly on the sound syste bass, a lone horn Outside, on the other side of the street, candles burned in the s of a restaurant, and I stood near the revolving glass door withreviewed around the country, the response overwhelood news, and earlier that day, cold and sunlit, I'd walked up and down nob Hill, I'd walked through Chinatown and Ghirardelli Square, I'd looked for gifts to buy ood ever co to happen and ould it co?

This was neurotic and self-absorbed, I knew, but as I stood in that lobby, justout the door and down to the Clean Well-Lighted Place bookstore to read, it was as if I hung suspended in this o to break, this barrier betas and ould be, and now ca of the phone at the front desk, thencalled in the air It was from the man who'd checked elled, his tie in a snug Windsor at his throat He held his hand over the receiver as if it were a ho at the desk, the jazz and cocktail chatter behind et her breath to speak

”Honey, what? What? What?”

I saw my children's faces-six-year-old Austin's deep brown eyes, swollen froies, his curly hair; Ariadne and how she'd h, as if she were fourteen and not four; two-year-old blue-eyed Elias, his big hands and feet, his patient sweet stillness-which one, which one one ”Fontaine-”

She kept crying and couldn't stop

”Just tell me Tell me”

There was the shudder of her breath ”Your dad-”

Relief jabbing intoand a right cross of black grief before I even asked the words and she confir carpetedfrohts before, just three nights, and I was unlockingDaddy Daddy, Daddy Daddy, a word I hadn't used since I was a young boy and in it wasfor me, and my father's voice for his father, too I had lived thirty-nine years without ever losing someone this close, so fortunate really, so blessed, so why did it feel so fa the first? a word I hadn't used since I was a young boy and in it wasfor me, and my father's voice for his father, too I had lived thirty-nine years without ever losing someone this close, so fortunate really, so blessed, so why did it feel so fa the first?

Then I saw it, Pop's back as the four of us followed hi inside the house There was the glint of frost on gravel, Pop touslingdown the hill and Jeb running after it, You bum! You bum! You bum! You bum! You bum! You bu in the light at er brother who held out his hand

THE LADY I'd bought the plot froan I asked her if she owned her own backhoe She said no, they dig it themselves

I could feel the blood descend into my hands ”Would you mind if we did that then? His sons?”

”No, I don't mind”

But ould have to wait over two months, Pop's body kept in a concrete crypt in that same cemetery behind the old Hale Hospital and the doctor's office Mom had rented for us at the base of Nettle Hill Life continued Despite this black grief, I orking on so new and needed to do some research at the local county jail I called thelassed-in enty feet over the e or tan jumpsuits at tables and benches bolted to the concrete floor They were playing cards or checkers, reading newspapers, or watching one of the TVs hung high in the corners of the roolass, I could see a lot of shaved heads and hos spread wide and their chins up, an unlit cigarette between their lips Others, narrow-shouldered or obese, sat off to the eye contact The public affairs officer besideand talkative man in his late fifties who'd worked here for years, was brioodfor any; one of my characters had found himself in a jail like this, and I just had to see it for myself

The man from public affairs pointed out one in one there? He kidnapped his oife You don't even want to know the rest of that story See those two under the TV? That old man and the other one? Uncle and nephew, only they never ot in here at the same time”

I nodded and listened The uncle was nohair tied back in a ponytail, his nephew a foot taller and half-black or half-Latino The officer kept talking about theood story their lives would make, but ten feet away from them sat someone I knew