Envious Moon(35)

“Anthony. Thanks.”

When I took the beer, I got a better look at him. He wore a white T-shirt and jean shorts, wool socks and sandals. His wrist had a tattoo of an anchor and on his calves, veins as thick as noodles stuck out of his skin.

“Some day, Anthony,” he said.

I looked up at the blue sky over the woods. “Yeah,” I said.

“You just passing through?” he asked.

For some reason I told him the truth. “I’m waiting for a girl.”

Terrence laughed at this. “Waiting for a girl? Doesn’t seem a great place for that.”

“She goes to the school the next town over.”

“The one on 75?”

“That’s it,” I said.

Terrence took a cigarette out and lighted it and I got one of my own and did the same. “I should be working,” he said. “But I just got here. Take a day off and start tomorrow.”

“What kind of work?”

“Mushrooms,” he said. “Yup. I harvest mushrooms.”

“For real?”

“Oh, yeah. These hills are full of ’em. And if you get the right ones, they’re worth a pretty penny.”

“So you just go into the woods and look for them?”

“No, no, there’s much more to it than that.” He pointed to his head. “You got to use this. Know where they’re hiding. What kind. Chanterelles and oysters, lobster mushrooms, hen-of-the-woods, you name it.”

“Hen-of-the-woods?” I said.

“Yup. Those are huge. Found one at the base of an old tree a few miles from here last year. Thing barely fit in the bed of my truck. Got three hundred dollars for it from a restaurant owner in New York. That was a good day. Bought a lot of beer that did.”

“I bet,” I said.

“Anyway,” Terrence said, and for a moment we sat in silence. I had not really talked to anyone since Victor came into my small yard in Galilee and I realized how much I missed other people. Then Terrence said, “What do you do when you’re not waiting for a girl, Anthony?”

“I’m a fisherman,” I said.

“Yeah? Where’s that?”

“Galilee, Rhode Island.”

“Ah,” he said. “Know it well.”

“You do?”

Terrence pointed to his wrist, and the tattoo of the anchor. “Merchant Marines. Twenty-five years. I been in and out of that old harbor more than a few times.”

“I work on a swordboat,” I said.

“That’s some work,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, “I miss it.”

“That’s what girls will do to you,” he said. “Mess up what you like. I travel light myself. Of course I’m not your age anymore. I used to wait for girls, myself.”

“This girl is worth it,” I said.

Terrence reached down to the cooler underneath his chair and brought out two more beers. “Drink up,” he said, and I drained the rest of that first beer and took the second one from him. “Drink up and tell me about her.”

I looked over at him. I saw his eyes for the first time clearly and they were the strangest shade of gray. I looked at his tattoo and his long hair and then I looked beyond him to his rusty pickup truck. And I thought that there are whole bunches of people that nobody knows about who live outside of normal things. Men who live on their own terms and make a living how they can, even if it means picking mushrooms in the woods. Who go where they want and when they want. Who answer to only themselves. Terrence was one of these men and I realized sitting next to him drinking beer in the morning that I was too.

I said, “She’s something.”

“What do you like about her the most?”

“Her eyes,” I said. “Maybe her freckles.”

Terrence nodded. “The eyes. What color?”

“Green. But not just any green. Bright. Beautiful.”

“What color is her hair?”

“Kind of red. More blond. It changes with the sun.”

“I like that,” said Terrence. “Especially redheads.”

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

“How about her titties?”

I laughed. “Her titties?”

Terrence smiled. “She got titties, don’t she?”

“Yeah,” I said, though I didn’t really like the question.

“How are they?”

“They’re fine,” I said, a little firmly.

“Is she skinny or fat?”

“She’s skinny.”

Terrence made a hrmph sound. “I like a little meat on mine,” he said. “Some cushion, you know what I mean.”

I drank from my beer. I had a sudden feeling of not wanting to be there anymore. I looked over at Terrence and I saw him differently now, less benign, and I knew it was because I didn’t like him talking about Hannah like that. He didn’t know her and it was none of his business what she looked like. But there was something Terrence could do for me that I couldn’t for myself.

I said, “Terrence, what do you think about buying me some beer? My money. I buy, you fly. Some to buy some for yourself too.”

His eyes narrowed. “How old are you?”