I Was Here(53)

             “Good night, Ben.”

                          x x x

             I sleep until noon and wake up rested, the achiness I wear like a second skin gone. When I go into the kitchen, Ben’s already up, drinking coffee and talking to his housemates, whom he introduces me to. He’s eating a bowl of granola and offers me some.

             “I can get it,” I say. I find a bowl from the drying rack and the granola from the cupboard, and it’s weird how I’m making myself at home here.

             Ben grins at me, like he recognizes the novelty of this, too, and then chats with his housemates about the tour. They’re nice, not the rocker types I’d expected but students and people with jobs. One of the guys grew up in a town about twenty miles from where I live, and we lament the state of eastern Washington, stuck in some kind of time warp, and question why, when you cross the Cascades, heading east, do people start talking with southern accents?

             The sun is out and Mount Rainier is lording it over the city, and it’s one of those days that make you forget what happens here between October and April. After breakfast Ben and I walk down the steps leading to the yard. Off to one side is a big bunch of lumber, all covered with a tarp.

             “What’s that?” I ask Ben.

             He shrugs. “Just something I do in my multitude of spare time.”

             I pull up the tarp. Under is the beginnings of some shelves, all clean sloping lines like the ones up in the house. “You made these?” I ask.

             He shrugs again.

             “They’re really good.”

             “Don’t sound so shocked.”

             “Not shocked. More like mildly surprised.”

             We sit down on the wooden steps and watch Pete and Repeat chase leaves and tackle each other.

             “They do know how to enjoy themselves,” he says.

             “What? Wrestling?”

             “Just being.”

             “Maybe I should come back as a cat.”

             He gives me a sidelong glance.

             “Or a goldfish. Some dumb animal.”

             “Hey,” he says, mock offended on Pete’s and Repeat’s behalf.

             “Look how easy it is for them. What good is all of our intelligence if it makes us crazy? I mean, other animals don’t kill themselves.”

             He watches the cats, who have turned their attention to yanking on a fallen twig. “We don’t know that for sure. Animals might not swallow poison, but maybe they stop eating or separate from the herd, knowing it means they’ll be someone’s dinner that way.”

             “Maybe.” I point at the cats. “Still, I’d like to be carefree like that again. I’m starting to doubt I ever was. Were you?”

             Ben nods. “When I was little. After my dad left, before my mom hooked up and got pregnant with my little sister. Me and my brothers used to go exploring. We’d go swim in the river or build forts in the forest behind where we lived. It was like being Tom Sawyer.”

             I look at Ben, trying to imagine him young and unburdened.

             “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks. “You don’t think I’ve read Tom Sawyer?”

             I laugh. It’s a strange sound, that.