She stopped talking long enough to put her hand on his shoulder as she reached in to take the passing dish for potatoes back to the stove for a refill.
“You should have called us.”
“I didn’t see it happen. I came on the scene about three hours later, at the end of my work shift. The man, King, he was almost dead when I got there.” He paused, realizing that a dozen people were listening. “He didn’t make it.”
The questions that followed kept Mikesh uncomfortable. He didn’t talk religion, even to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to his door. His father’s ancestors were buried in the cemetery of the Czech free-thinkers, the Ceska Svobodna obec, where no marker bore a cross and the monument at the center was merely inscribed with the words: “work, sacrifice for families and humanity.” That statement of purpose was a more-than-tall-enough order for him. He lived his life staying clear of every religious group (Catholic, Holy Roller, Lutheran, Mormon) the assembled table of people could name. The accident, however, associated him with something Dale kept calling a “hippie church.”
As people were leaving, Barbara cornered him. “Really Arnie, you aren’t looking good at all. Have you felt sick?”
“No. I’m just shaken up. Just tense enough to have trouble getting to sleep, and to give me a headache.”
Barbara was a heavy-set freckled woman of mild temperament who did not hesitate to air the gaudy clothesline of her thoughts. She grabbed his arm. “You know, Arnie, you should drive into Decorah. Get yourself a massage.”
Barbara’s husband Dale, a compact red-haired man, walked in for a cup of coffee and heard this. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” he mouthed in disbelief. “Barb, maybe I should come along with Arnie. We can make it a two-fer!”
“Hush, Dale. I’m serious. There’s a woman in our office. She was just about ruined by stress for eight weeks. Her doctor was going to medicate her and send her to the medical center for daily physical therapy which would cost her a fortune because it was only half covered by our health plan, and then she went for a session with this lady massage therapist and she came back to work feeling better than she had felt in a year. No meds, no hospital therapy.”
“Like I say,” Dale quipped. “Sign me up!”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe what happened with your woman friend,” Mikesh told Barbara, “but that doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.”
“I know. You’re like Dale. Assume that having a couple of beers, throwing around some hay, tightening bolts for a few hours, will work it out.” Barbara’s eyebrows knit. “But I’ll bet you’ve already tried that. Forgive me for saying it, Arnie, but you look terrible. Listen, if one of your lady Murray Greys developed so much as a sneeze, you’d call out the vet to look at her. Give yourself at least as much respect, and call for an appointment.”
From there the talk shifted to Barbara and Dale’s daughter and son, and the three of them shifted to the privacy of the mudroom just off the kitchen. The Murphys’ son Davy lived in Des Moines, and with the economy in turmoil, his parents were worried about his employment. They wanted him to have health insurance. Times were good for farmers like Dale with corn and beans to sell, but money was getting tight, the economy swirling its way right down the toilet, and it was giving Dale and Barbara the parental jitters.
“Davy’s working two half-time jobs as a sales clerk,” Barbara said. “We wish he could find an opening in agribusiness.”
“That’s for sure,” Dale affirmed.
“I know it’s been years since you’ve worn a suit, Arnie, but Dale and I thought maybe you knew someone you could call, to put some feelers out to see if there’s a spot where Davy could get a start. He knows how to work, and he’s got the right education. With the economy the way it’s been for the last year it just seems that everyone he talks to is firing instead of hiring.”
Mikesh wasn’t happy about this request to help someone get a start in a line of work he had been so anxious to leave. It cost Mikesh some effort to put his life in futures trading behind him. He’d let those old business friendships grow cold. But Barbara and Dale Murphy were his closest friends.
“I’ll have to give that some thought,” he told them.
After chores that evening, Barbara called Mikesh with the telephone number of the therapist and a name. “I think you should do this, Arnie. You rattle around over there on your own, with no one to take care of you and no one to talk to. You’ve been through something traumatic. I don’t like the way you look, and it’s got me worried. If you won’t call for yourself, then do it for me. Okay?”
Mikesh said he would make the call, and let Barbara know when he thought of something for Davy.
That night, Mikesh’s pain was like a bass drum, hammered by a hundred frenetic monkeys. Once asleep, in his dreams he went flying; when he landed he was underground, up against a face that was going soft but talking, and then bursting into flames. Mikesh sat upright. The clock read four. He didn’t have the stomach for staying in bed any further.
He had the day free. At eight thirty he called the number Barbara left. An answering machine said the woman was away on personal business, but Mikesh left his name and number. He went out to tinker with a tractor in the shed and when he came back in at noon the old black rotary phone, still on the wall from his uncle’s time, was ringing. The woman, her business completed, could see him at three.
chapter 6
“Silent waters wash out banks.”
Czech proverb
The therapist opened the door at the top of the shadowy, closed-up-smelling stair to find a large, solid man with dark, tousled hair, twisting a stocking cap uncomfortably in his hands.
“Arnie?” She held out her hand. “I’m Mary Towers.”
“Hi,” the man faltered. “Arnie Mikesh. Thanks for finding time to work me into your schedule. That was short notice.”
She gestured him into the bright foyer and noticed that he nervously eyed the abstract red painting on the wall as he stood, parked tentatively in his jeans and his tan canvas coat, like an untamed animal sniffing the air for a reason to bolt.
The truth was she had spent most of Saturday and Sunday in bed, cancelling her appointments to stay there again today. The news of Josh’s death had hit her system like a narcotic, slowing her reactions, dulling her senses, draining the energy from her so that her feet and hands, even her head, felt heavy. She slept through much of the past two days, and stood at the windows of her apartment, staring mutely at sky and streetlights for half the night. Then came the voice on her answering machine. It worked a kind of enchantment, piquing her interest, quickening her pulse. With men, her policy was to carefully screen them in conversation before she took them on as a client. But given the circumstances, this was a man she didn’t want to scare away.
“I cleared out my schedule for the day, because something came up. It didn’t take as long as I thought, so there we are. Have you had a massage before, Arnie?”
“Backrubs from friends. Nothing more than that. Come to think of it, that was in my university days.”
“University days,” she figured, were probably twenty years ago. He was in his early forties, with no gray in his rough black hair or thick eyebrows. His square face had seen plenty of weather and was showing lines. One of his cowboy boots had an elevated sole and heel. The imbalance in his legs showed in the constricted swing of his body when he walked. Mikesh’s worn cowboy boots called up a memory of her father’s hard hands and strong grip, the chin bristles that abraded skin, the smell of alcohol strong on his meaty breath. Her dad’s battered boots by the couch in the television room or the foot of the bed smelled of him, of mold, and of whatever animals he had most recently