Universal Harvester(40)

Jeremy opened his eyes but stayed put for the moment. “How long was I out,” he said.

Steve chuckled. “Well, I wasn’t here when you went down for your nap,” he said.

Jeremy sat up. “Nap,” he repeated, also laughing.

Steve spotted the shirt on the floor and saw the deep stain on the front. “Everything OK?” he said.

“It’s real bad,” Jeremy said, opening his dresser, grabbing the first shirt his hand landed on: Cyclones ’98. “Ezra went into a—his car went off the road.”

Steve’s eyes grew wide. “Where?”

“In Collins. Well, near Collins,” Jeremy corrected himself. “He’s in the hospital now. We called—he’s stable now, they say.”

“Who called?”

“Me and Sarah Jane.”

Steve looked like a schoolboy learning long division, trying to hold too many figures in his head. “Did she see the accident?” He’d reached the end of the obvious questions, but his need to know more was feral: by the time the paramedics pulled Linda from the ditch, she’d been there for hours, no witnesses to the crash, no way of knowing what her last moments had been like and only the pathologist’s estimation of when they’d finally come to pass.

“No, nothing like that,” Jeremy said. “She stays out in Collins sometimes, she was at her friend’s house when it happened.”

Steve took a quick measurement of the expression on his son’s face: he could see that there was more to know. But he knew his own limits. Once an overturned car came into the picture he had only so much time to get onto a different subject before his mind would start wandering to places best avoided. But Jeremy caught him looking, and then it was too late.

“It wasn’t like Mom’s, Dad,” Jeremy said. “He was out in front of the car when I found him. I think he went through the windshield. But there wasn’t—”

“Nothing on top of him,” Steve said, finishing the thought: no point in shrinking from it now. “OK. Thanks. You going to go to the hospital?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Jeremy. “Give the family a little time.”

“Good thinking,” said Steve.

“Guess I’ll get a shower,” said Jeremy, stretching.

“Fine,” said Steve, and then, impulsively, clumsily, worried that there wouldn’t be a better opportunity to say it: “Hey, big man: if it’s all right, I don’t want Shauna to know about any of this.”

Jeremy scratched the back of his head with both hands, head down. “Of course not,” he said. “She coming over?”

Steve blinked. “Not tonight, no.”

Afternoon light traced the shape of a sugar maple onto the carpet; the tree’d been there for as long as Jeremy could remember. Once, as a child, he’d asked his dad how old it was. “Who knows?” Steve had replied cheerfully from his station at the Weber, flipping a burger and admiring the fresh black grill marks on it. “Older than anybody here, anyway!”

“It’s all right,” Jeremy said after a minute, with a tenderness beyond his years. His father was still standing in the doorway, visibly waiting for some kind of reply. “I know what you mean.”

*

The northbound lane is closed now. Fat orange barrels scroll past the passenger’s-side window, bobbing into view like buoys on a lake. It isn’t clear what kind of work the road needs over there on the other side of the cones; it looks fine, and there aren’t any workers around. At one point a parked steel drum compactor breaks the spell, but there’s nobody up top.

A low table with some back issues of Family Circle on it, and a modest sofa, and an old recliner, and the television resting on a cabinet originally meant for storing plateware. Lisa and Sarah Jane sitting together, visiting in the bluish light of the screen.

“Why are you letting me move in?” said Sarah Jane. “It’s kind of strange, if you think about it.”

“You look tired,” said Lisa.

“It’s a pretty—” She looked for a word that wouldn’t sound like she was complaining. “It’s a pretty generous thing to offer somebody just because they look tired,” she said.

“It’s not a big deal. You’re not the first person to come and stay here for a while.”

She had suspected this fish was down there in the depths somewhere, but it was a surprise to see it flop up onto the deck like that.

“Where’d the others go,” she said.

“They’re fine.”

“What do you mean, they’re fine.”

“They’re all just fine.”

“Where are they, though.”

Lisa waved her hand toward the big window.

“They’re out there somewhere,” she said.

“You knew them, though.”

“Of course I knew them, they were here.”

“Isn’t that them?” Here nodding toward the TV.

Here laughing: “No, no. Those are just people in transition.”

“But you know who they are.”

“Maybe. I think. Mainly in a general sense.”

“In a general sense.”

“Loosely. Generally who they are, were. At any rate they’ve moved on.”