The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [282]
He called the police from Matt’s phone—a rotary dial, another of Matt’s Salvation Army finds. That was what Cahill thought Matt had been doing: going here and there, collecting trivia as a way of getting over his wife’s death. The policeman who answered on the eighth ring—eighth!—seemed none too interested in what he was saying until he raised his voice. “That child molester you’ve got up there in Warren,” he said. “You might want to come over to his house and check through it. This is his landlord calling.” Already, he had retreated from the notion of friendship. “I can’t understand why you haven’t been here before now,” he added. The Coke rose up his throat, the acid rush subsiding sickly. He looked at a pencil sketch of trees in an open sketchbook on the counter. A rather lovely little depiction. Well, he thought, nobody does what they do all the time. Another person came on the phone and took down his name and address. When the police appeared, about fifteen minutes later—local police first—he found out three things: that Matt had given an address in Syracuse, though he claimed he’d been living out of his van; and that there was an address in Syracuse—the address of his second wife, who was not dead at all. The third thing he found out, but not until they were leaving, was that Matt had got into an altercation with a man in the holding cell and had been stabbed with a homemade shiv.
A few weeks later, Cahill received a note from You Got No Choice, whom he now resolved to think of, more charitably, as Bill: “My boss is breathing down my neck and even though these are rough times and you have my heartfelt condolences, Doc, the wall around the grave still hasn’t been fixed to come up to code. I’d be glad to drop by this weekend and have at it with some stone.” It was nice of Bill to offer to pitch in, but the letter only strengthened Cahill’s resolve to fix the wall himself.
Which he set out to do, after eating a grilled-cheese sandwich for lunch. Protein and carbohydrates were good together, midday. Bad eating had contributed to his wife’s untimely death; she’d been diabetic and sometimes wouldn’t eat anything for an entire day, calling him a nag. She “felt sick,” yes, but it was a vicious circle: feel sick, don’t eat; don’t eat, feel sick.
He walked to the side of the house where the soil was mixed with chips of old brick and rocks. Nothing much would grow in the shady area, but it was a good place to harvest rocks. He piled them into a discarded one-gallon plastic flowerpot. After some digging, he had what he hoped was enough, and set off with the pot pressed to his ribs, his other hand grasping the handle of his toolbox. Hi ho, hi ho. He wondered if Matt would expect him to get in touch. Hear his side of things. Offer help—if not as a doctor, then as a friend? Whatever Matt expected, Cahill could not bring himself to make an attempt to contact him—at least, not at this point in time.
The barn wasn’t roped off, though he supposed it wasn’t really a crime scene. So many men had come in unmarked cars lately: anybody could have been rummaging around inside, after a while. What was he supposed to do, run out every time he saw another car and ask to see identification?
Cahill turned to see Napoleon bounding across the lawn, foolish ears flapping like luffing sails. The dog tipped sideways as he came close, rudderless with friendliness. “Come to see the old man?” he said. In answer, Napoleon snapped at a bug. “Cross the busy road for the billionth time, tempting fate?” He rubbed the dog beneath his ears. “Let’s let