Wordsmiths

ARBORETUM




I sit on the porch with a cup of coffee steaming its way up to my nose and eyes. Partly I am waking up, but mainly I’m just staring out into the thick, green expanse of woods that I wake up to every morning. It’s why I put the trailer here. Well, the land does belong to my family. But why it’s here, beside what’s left of some make-shift road to some forgotten mine, is so I can get up and look out onto this forest.

Mandy is coming up the road. I guess I expected her to come over, because I barely even turn my head as she turns onto the driveway from the road. She parks her old Ford Bronco by the shed. The slamming door reverberates in my aching head. She hesitates before walking up to the porch. As she sits down next to me she says “Jody’s dead.”

“I know,” I say, sipping coffee. I knew it this morning when I woke up on the floor with the whole left side of my face hurting. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did, and it was too much for me to think about first thing. All I wanted was my coffee and to come out here and look at my forest. Sometimes I pretend it’s one of those forests in Mexico I’ve read about, so dense that only two men have been known to cross them in the course of a century. But this morning it’s cold, so it’s a medieval forest, where there might be dragons and griffins lurking. But mostly it was just the green wall I rested my eyes against. “When?”

“Well, his Aunt Sue called me from the hospital just a little while ago. So some time this morning, I expect. She didn’t say. She was pretty shook up.”

I nodded. I’d guessed she would be. It made enough sense that she would be the one to make the call. Jody hadn’t talked to his Mama in maybe a year. And Jody’s Daddy, well, he just isn’t anyone to be making phone calls is all. So it made sense Sue would call, even though she hadn’t been in the bar that night herself.

Mandy puts a hand on my arm. “Look, no one blames you. Everyone knows how Jody’s been.”

But somebody should blame me, I want to say. Nobody made me work at the bar.

“Still,” Mandy said, “you may have to find somewhere else to call home for a little while.”

I look out at the forest, and suddenly the only thing I can see is Jody’s face as he came across the bar, beer bottle in hand, that crazy sneer in his eyes. I half remembered the feeling of the gin bottle in my hand, the sweep of my arm along the bar.

“No,” I say. Somewhere else to live, maybe. But home is where the heart is.