His coughs came with sure violence. Breath forced its way in. The women offered him water when he could take it. It was as warm as something from a body, but it was easier to swallow for that. He tried to speak, but his voice was cracked and Rain and Winter told him not to try. In time, he obeyed their counsel, and they all watched the building burn. Their faces glowed by the pretty animal of fire.
2
STRATTON BRYANT met the man who meant to rid him of the house. It was late and a crash of rain had touched off the present noise and spasm. He stood on the porch, waited to see when the headlights would flood the drive. It did not take long. As soon as the Chrysler appeared he lifted his hand. The car engine balked and stilled in the rain, ticked. The night seemed to hollow itself while he stood there against the bulk of the farmhouse. He thought of all that was behind him, all that there was still to hold on to. Only a year had gone by since Liza had died, though the time had rolled and rolled.
The silver-headed real estate agent got out of the car and came at him through the weather, snapped his hand out like some tool made to cut.
“Sorry to bring you out here in this,” Stratton told him as he took the hand to shake it. “I would have come to town to spare you the trouble.”
“Not at all. No trouble. Here, let’s step inside.”
He could hear in the agent’s voice something from up north, vaguely Midwestern. Ohio likely. Practical and measured. A man, like him, not native to the Tennessee hills. He closed the door and the din subsided. They walked up together through the hall with its bruised wood and talking floor. A warm span of light brushed across from a lamp at the living room entrance, and they went on through it into the farther darkness, the space smelling faintly of dust and furniture oil.
Stratton took him on to the kitchen where he often ate his meals over the sink, now that he was a widower and free to his own brand of neglect. He was aware of the broken puzzle of dirty saucepans and dishes on the draining board, marinara viscous as engine grease. He did not explain or apologize. He did not care to justify the way he went about hurting.
“Can I get you a coffee? I’ve got some decaf in the pot.”
“No, that’s fine, Mister Bryant. I just need you to go over these papers with me and we’ll have you listed by the beginning of next week.”
Stratton tipped the carafe above his mug and drew out a chair across from the real estate man, saw on his hand the gold wedding band with encrusted diamonds. Big and expensive but handsome. A man who wore his money like a tailored shirt. Stratton went through the papers without comment, initialing and signing where he was told.
“You’re sure this is the price you want to list?”
“Yes. I want to sell as quick as I can.”
The agent nodded, pleased.
“I can’t promise anything, of course, but we’ll do what we can. There won’t be any repairs to worry about. Maybe some paint, put down as many personal items as you can. People don’t like clutter. They like to be able to see themselves in the home. Reduce as much as you can stand. I’ve heard there’s another structure on the property. Is that right?”
“Yeah. An old homeplace. Something left over from the Great Depression. Not much more than sticks and a tin roof now.”
“Well, that’s fine. Might even be a selling point. There’s a certain type of buyer who might even find it romantic. We’ll be sure to include a note about it in the listing.”
Stratton saw the agent’s eyes take in the counters and shelves before they worked across the walls with Liza’s pictures. The burned-down mountain home up around Pigeon Forge. An orphan girl in a field of chicory. Liza’s father’s face the morning after he died.
“Your wife was famous for what she did, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” he said. “People admired her photography.”
Neither said anything more for a while, just sat with the company of the images. When people became aware of Liza’s work it often resulted in social awkwardness. Her view of a profoundly flawed and compromised world. She’d once told Stratton she knew she had a photo right when the viewer looked sorry to have seen it. Surrounded by her pictures, Stratton felt he knew his wife better now than he ever had when she was alive.
Once Stratton had seen the agent to the front door and watched him drive off he went to the kitchen to tidy up, tossed what remained of the coffee. He tried the television but at this time of a Friday night it was all melodrama and local news. It was still too early to sleep so he went into the library and rooted through his collection of CDs until he found the Philip Glass, his Violin Concerto No. 1. He sat and tried to place himself in that soundscape of vista and repetition until there was little of this world left to him. He’d tried to explain to one of his music theory classes at the community college that there was a particular advantage in understanding what music made of the listener, what new space it could create, though he doubted that they had listened, had truly desired to understand. He was glad that he now had the summer break to escape the pressure of dealing with students and what they expected him to solve for them. This annual rhythm of teaching was strange in that it seemed he was always trying to catch something that remained elusive. The year took a lot from him and these periods at the end of a semester were a chance to collect himself, to remain beyond the scorch line of final burnout. But the breaks depressed him too, all that time without specific containment.
He woke sometime past midnight, sitting up in his chair, the tabby cat tucked into the crook of his arm as if it had grown there. He carefully lowered it to the floor, tried not to make it fuss with arthritic pain. It was supposed to have been her pet, a shelter rescue kitten from when they lived in Berea. More than fourteen years ago now, just as her work was beginning to get serious attention. Liza sneezed whenever the cat nosed her, called it “that damn cat,” which in time became its name. Now, Damn Cat was grinding his decaying teeth against kibble in the next room and Liza was nowhere at all.
He knew he should shut down all the house lights and go up to bed while he could, find the rarity of untroubled sleep, but there was a warmth in the downstairs silence that kept him there. It was in the timbers of the house, the life still locked up inside. This had been their realized hope, finding this place in the woods, with all the folded land around them, the Smoky Mountains at their backs. How was it possible for a forty-seven-year-old man to feel this old? And yet here he was—geologic—covered up like something to be excavated at a later point in time, some remnant to unlock the problem of a future history.
Upstairs, he took the pistol out. Studied it as if it belonged to a symbolism he couldn’t quite solve. The ritual: the loading and unloading, the snug clasp of the magazine into the receiver, the snap of chambering, the cool kiss of the muzzle against his temple. Then he placed it on the pillow beside him, the pillow where she’d lain her head, available if he decided he had no other choice but to follow her.
HE DROVE in early the following morning to gather what he would need to dress up the house. The roads were emptied of commuting traffic and it was easy to slip into the Lowe’s, where he wandered around for a few minutes in its sheer warehouse enormity before he began piling paint buckets and brushes into his cart. His hand fell to whatever brightly advertised itself as a bargain. He considered it a virtue to trust in the marketing that had gotten the product this far, considering he had no expertise to rely on.
On his way back, he stepped into the Hardee’s just off the I-40 exit and ordered a coffee and sausage biscuit. Inside, there was a clutch of retired men wearing caps with stiff brims and glasses held in place with nylon cords or rubber bands. They were tacit and workmanlike about their meals, hands smoothing wax paper on tables, eyes sidling even as they spoke to one another. They discussed upcoming planting schedules, the chances of a furniture factory moving into Jefferson County, the Braves’ likelihood for a wild card berth. He caught himself thinking absently