Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [103]
The dog’s snoring became a rhythmic rasping. They drank cool water from a clay pitcher. “The thing is,” David said, “I feel so wide and full and clear, I’m willing for anything to happen. Some of it’s fear. But this fear is so spacious, and full of energy, and not dark at all—more dim, with a dull glow, like an empty cathedral.”
At midnight, everyone laughed a little and embraced one another. David went into the bedroom where he was staying. He lit a few candles of his own, said a prayer: “I am grateful to rejoin those who don’t know when they’re going to die.” The old dog curled up on a rug at the foot of the bed. David slept and did not dream, but woke in an hour or so to a room full of devils as a guttering candle sent shadows stretching up the walls. He blew out the flame, slept again. He awoke once more, this time convinced all the air had been sucked from the room. The night was so still, he thought for a moment he was indeed dead. He had the distinct sensation of a claw drawn across his chest. He leapt up and before he was halfway across the room, he knew what had happened.
He called Lewis the next day. “I’ll be starting at Round Rock on Monday,” he said quietly. “And the dog who already smelled dead? We buried her this morning.”
AND SO, David and Lewis went to work.
Ernie had agreed to stay on to train Lewis. Grayer, older, still precision-coiffed, he initiated Lewis into his meat-filing system in the deep freeze, the hot and dead spots on the griddle, the recipe for his much-adored Chicken Luxurioso—chicken parts baked in a murk of dried onion soup, apricot jam, and Thousand Island dressing. Together, on Monday night, they prepared Ernie’s last supper, a tribute to fifteen years of nonstop, super-fatted starch. Red Ray played host as dozens of alumni showed up to eat potato and macaroni salads, ham, biscuits, green bean casserole.
Lewis expected Red to show up the next night, too, for his first solo supper, but he didn’t come once all week. Although Lewis had moved into the bungalow right across the street from Red’s, he saw him only at the morning staff meetings, those rushed, fifteen-minute coffee klatches.
Lewis’s new residence was furnished like a tourist cabin from the forties: clunky blond bedroom set, the sofa and chairs he used to nap on in the office, a slack-stringed Steinway upright. Homey enough, except at night, when it was so quiet Lewis could hear mice chittering in the groves. How had Red stood it all those years—the lone resident in his own private ghost town?
At the fake-wood dinette in his breakfast nook, Lewis tried to write the last chapter of his dissertation; the effort invariably sent him straight down for a nap. He tried going to Denny’s again, but Phyllis, the waitress who’d afforded him squatter’s rights in her section, was gone, and it was too far to drive all the way to Buchanan just to piss off somebody else. David, his erstwhile partner in a drunk-farm takeover, had no time to spare, since the drunks clamored for his company, sought him out, hung close all week; then, on his days off, David made the exhausting roundtrip to Tijuana to straighten things out with Pauline. Lewis mourned Lydia and the Nightcrawlers, especially Barbara, and ran up a deadly phone bill calling L.A.
Heading home after serving dinner one night, he saw Red in the roadway hosing out the back of his truck. The lights were on in Red’s bungalow, and a round, lidded barbecue smoked