Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [112]
“Why don’t you write?”
“Write?”
“Yes, honey. Go write.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you were good at it in school.”
“What good does writing do, Mom? Who cares about making up stories? I want to do something important for people.”
It was as if I’d reached over and slapped her face with a damp rag. “I can’t believe you just said that, Andre. I won’t tell anyone you just said that.”
I didn’t say anything. She said more, but I was thinking of my father, of the story he wrote about Suzanne when he should have done something for her in this world, not the one in his head.
I changed the subject. We talked about Suzanne and her marriage to this man I still wanted to kill. We talked about Jeb and his baby son, Nicole and her last year of high school, the schools out West she was looking into. Our breakfast ended soon after that. I hugged my mother on the sidewalk, thanked her for the eggs. Sam and I were to meet at the Y in an hour, and I climbed into my Subaru and went driving. I drove over the Basilere Bridge and the Merrimack, up the hill of Main Street past the shopping plaza and library, GAR Park and the statue of Hannah Duston and her raised hatchet. I drove through Monument Square past the Exxon station and insurance company and the VFW hall.
It was a cold bright day, and I headed east past Kenoza Lake where I’d run with my father, then under the highway, the same back road Mom used to drive us on in that Head Start van, those Mystery Rides when joy was something she willed herself to show us, something she raised from deep inside herself as a promise for what could be. Now her life seemed to have opened up into it as if it had been waiting for her.
What waited for me? I knew she was right to chastise me for what I’d said, but I did not yet know why she was right: How could art truly help people? Did it feed them? Clothe them? Keep them warm in the winter? Did it put a gun in their hands to fend off their oppressors?
Up ahead was a roadhouse. It wasn’t even noon yet, but in the gravel lot were parked five or six motorcycles, a neon Miller sign glowing in the sun-streaked window. I downshifted, pulled into the lot, then turned around and headed back to Haverhill and the long workout with Sam that always cleared my head, that always made me feel ready for whatever was coming next.
TREVOR D. promoted me from laborer to carpenter’s helper and he bumped my pay to five dollars an hour. Instead of hauling debris and fresh lumber and tools all day with Randy, I got to wear a tape measure on my belt and stick a pencil behind my ear. I was made the cut man for all the partition walls they were building.
It was a cold dry week, the sun heavy and bright in a deep sky, and first thing every morning I set up my cut station in the parking lot down below. I took three eight-foot two-by-fours, set them across two saw-horses, then laid a full sheet of plywood over them and carried over the chop saw and unrolled a cord and plugged it in.
“Hey, Ratchet.” Doug called down from the second-story window. He stood in the naked wood frame, a big grin on his face. He always wore a dark wool sailor’s cap down around his ears, and in the early morning sun I could see the sawdust in it. “Here’s your list.” He tossed a foot-long section of two-by-six out into the air and Randy ran and caught it over his shoulder, but Doug was already inside, and I said, “Nice catch, Randy.”
“Nice list, Ratchet.”
They’d been calling me that ever since Doug and I went up to the new flat roof and started lagging the perimeter joists to four-by-four posts in the corners. We each had a ratchet wrench, something I’d never used before. Doug was on the east side of the frame, I was on the west, and I could hear him cranking the galvanized lag bolts into wood, the clickety-clickety-click his ratchet made, but I couldn’t figure out how he could work his hand so fast; once I pushed the lag bolt into its predrilled hole and set the ratchet head on its end, I could