He brushed the new spots and the rough spots inside and out with gray wood primer, and then he cleaned the doorframe of the old hinges and plugged the old screw holes with split shims and mashed them flush with the head of his hammer, and then he measured the aperture twice and wrote down the numbers on a card in his pocket. He’d install a new door, a lift door on tracks. Craig would know how.
SEVEN
Kathleen
The next day by noon, Mason had run one more spray of house-white exterior latex along the bottom plate of the wooden garage. He’d given a good coat to the inside and the outside, and he backed out of the space looking right and left for any streaky holidays. The backs of his legs were pinging, and his eyebrows were dusted white. Craig was geared to go with the airless sprayer, and as he began painting the interior with the first of twelve gallons of Navajo white, which he would use by nightfall, Mason went out and cleaned the yard once again and then cut the front lawn. The day rose and held on the fulcrum of the ripe summer morning, then tipped without a breeze or a weighty cloud into a fall afternoon, the yellow light now an ounce removed and shadows drawn from the old book, unmistakable; the season had capitulated. Mason edged the front walk with a shovel, realizing he was just hanging out. He washed the shovel and leaned it inside the bright garage with his rake and broom. The old cracked cement inside the garage was clean; he’d scrubbed it with the charcoal lighter, a solvent. From the house he could hear the periodic hissing of the airless. His furniture, such as it was, was all covered with tarpaulins, and he’d spend tonight up with Craig and Marci while the paint dried. For a moment he lifted the rake and thought about pulling through the lawn one more time, the satisfaction, but he put it back. Mason walked down the old block to the Brands and stood at the end of the driveway for a moment. He approached Mr. Brand’s boat and put a hand on it, a boat he hadn’t touched in thirty years, and as he did he heard voices, a female voice, and by the cadence he could hear that a woman was reading. By the open side door he stood and listened for a minute, the words coming steady in a young woman’s voice. Mrs. Brand’s garden had stepped out of its bed. Several pumpkins showed their orange shoulders in the dusty green growth. The voice stopped, and Mason considered knocking, calling hello, and then he heard Jimmy Brand’s voice, the same voice in a tenor whisper. Jimmy was remarking on whatever she had read, and Mason heard only parts: “No, it’s going to tell you where to go now. It’ll take all your attention, but you’re in. Well done.”
Before Mason could move, the young woman came past him, her face flushed, agitated and glorious, smiling, and she said, “Excuse me,” and settled her papers into a folder as she grabbed up her bicycle and wheeled toward the street.
“Hello, Jimmy?” Mason called into the dim garage as he entered.
“Mason, for chrissakes.”
“Something like that,” Mason said. Jimmy stood from where’d been sitting on the bed. Mason hugged his old friend. He said quietly, “You’re sick then.”
Jimmy smiled, rolling his head back in the pillow. “I’ve been slightly worse. Kathleen Gunderson got me on some killer drugs. She told me you were back in town.”
“We’re neighbors again, big boy. We’re going to be seeing each other.” Mason sat in the armchair at the foot of Jimmy’s bed. “What I mean is, Jimmy, I’m sorry I haven’t been down here sooner.” As he said the sentence, it felt inane to him and it hurt, but he claimed it and continued: “I came back to this weird planet, and that was one kind of tough, and I didn’t know you’d be here, and all the days in these years I wanted to call you, how many, hundreds, they suddenly stacked up and . . .”
“Got heavy,” Jimmy said. “Don’t let them. I am glad to see you, mister. You were kind to me, and I knew you were all right or doing all right, and I also knew that I’d see you again. I always knew it, but I didn’t know it would be like this, with this.”
Mason sat and looked at Jimmy and felt again his heart beating the seconds away. It felt unreal to be in the same room again. “Thirty years,” he said. “What is that?”