Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [117]
Olive parked in the gravelly parking lot, took her walking shoes out of the trunk, tied them on, and took off. It was the best, and only bearable, part of the day. Three miles in one direction, three miles back. Her one concern was that such daily exercise might make her live longer. Let it be quick, she thought now, meaning her death—a thought she had several times a day.
She squinted. A body was slumped on the path not far from the first mile’s stone bench. Olive stopped walking. It was an old man—she could see that much, as she walked tentatively closer—a balding head, a big belly. God in heaven. She walked with faster steps. Jack Kennison lay on his side, his knees bent, almost like he’d decided to take a nap. She leaned down and saw his eyes were open. His eyes were very blue. “Are you dead?” she asked loudly.
His eyes moved, looked into hers. “Apparently not,” he said.
She looked at his chest, his big stomach bulging out beneath his L.L.Bean jacket. Then she looked in both directions, up and down the path. No one was in sight. “Have you been stabbed or shot?” She leaned closer to him.
“No,” he said. Then he added, “Not that I remember.”
“Can you move?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried.” His big stomach was moving, though, slowly up and down.
“Well, try.” She touched her sneaker to his black walking shoe. “Try to move this leg.”
The leg moved.
“Good,” said Olive. “Try an arm.”
Slowly, the man’s arm moved onto his stomach.
“I don’t have one of those cell phone things,” Olive said. “My son keeps saying he’ll buy me one, but he hasn’t. I’m going back to the car and drive to call someone.”
“Don’t,” said Jack Kennison. “Don’t leave me alone.”
Olive stood, uncertain. It was a mile away, her car. She looked at him, lying there, his blue eyes watching hers. “What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then you ought to get to a doctor.”
“Okay.”
“I’m Olive Kitteridge, by the way. Don’t believe we’ve ever formally met. If you can’t get up, I think I should go find you a doctor. I hate them, myself. But you can’t just lie there,” she said. “You might die.”
“I don’t care,” he said. A small smile seemed to come to his eyes.
“What?” Olive asked loudly, bending way down toward him.
“I don’t care if I die,” the man said. “Just don’t leave me here alone.”
Olive sat down on the bench nearby. The river was calm, barely seemed to be moving. She bent toward him again. “Are you cold?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“It’s nippy out.” Now that she had stopped walking, she felt a chill herself. “Do you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is it your heart, do you think?”
“I don’t know.” He began to stir. Olive stood and put a hand beneath his arm, though he was much too heavy for her to do any good. Still, after a great deal of struggling, he managed to get himself up, and settled on the bench.
“All right,” said Olive, sitting down beside him. “This is better. Now we wait for someone to come along with a phone.” She added suddenly, “I don’t care if I die either. I’d like to, in fact. Long as it’s quick.”
He turned his balding head toward her, studied her tiredly with his blue eyes. “I don’t want to die alone,” he said.
“Hell. We’re always alone. Born alone. Die alone. What difference does it make? Long as you don’t shrivel for years in a nursing home like my poor husband did. That’s my fear.” She pulled at her sweater, clutched it closed with a fist. She turned to look at him carefully. “Your color seems all right. You don’t have any idea what happened?”
Jack Kennison stared out at the river. “I was walking. I saw the bench and felt tired. I don’t sleep well. So I sat down and started to feel dizzy. I put my head between my legs, and next thing I knew I was lying on the ground, with some woman squawking at me, ‘Are you dead?’ ”
Olive’s face became warm. “You seem less dead every