They stretch their necks to look out the window We’ll start across the road. Madge is in the green house; she’s a nun.
Josh: She’s not.
Toby: No, but close to it. Next to her is closed up, but Et Coombs, she used to live there.
Josh: Lives in the graveyard now.
Toby: The Rumboldts, they got a little tiny house and a little tiny car. Tom Rumboldt we calls him Tommy Ginger, cause he’s always crooked.
The boys rhyme off fifty-four families that live along the road. They are like old men in their depictions and knowledge. They are far more knowledgeable of the people they love than I am of my own.
15 I’ve asked Lydia Murphy to marry me. I’ve called her and asked her. On the phone her voice was little. Yes, she said, I think so.
When I responded that she sounded dubious, she said, nervous and excited, Okay, I’ll marry you. I said, Are you sure. I said it as a statement rather than as a question. She hesitated. She had to go. She’d call me back. I waited for two hours. Then the phone rang. Maybe we should talk about it tomorrow, she said.
I e-mailed Maisie to tell her about the burst water pipe. And then I got into the issue of marriage. I felt a woman would be closer to another woman’s ambivalence.
Maisie wrote back, You never meet hesitation with hesitation. That only fosters doubt. When Lydia says no, you say okay. When she says yes, I think so, you say okay. When she says no, you say okay. When she says yes, you say, again, okay. When she says no again, you say okay. And when she finally says yes, you say okay. And then you get married.
This, apparently, is how everyone gets married.
16 I watch Josh and Toby run from the school bus straight to my door. They want to pet down Tinker the town dog and tell me who lives on the Head. They are flaked out on the couch with Tinker between them as I type this. I close up my novel file and open the Heart’s Desire one. I am going to use these boys in the novel. What they tell me I’ll inject into the story.
I read what they told me yesterday and they crack up.
Jamie Groves just west of us, Josh says, he paints cars. And has a beautiful wife. Toby’s grandmother died of a fluke. Renee Critch has a butt so big she walks through a door sideways. Smooth Jude drives the bus and he’s so fat his car can barely carry him. There’s Uncle Mary, who looks and acts and talks just like a man. Joey Langer couldnt walk before, then he had a operation and he walks perfect now.
John St George was captain of the SS Eilleen, a boat they blew the motor in her and smoke went flying everywhere and gas. Then it’s Harld Powr.
Me: Why do you say it like that?
Josh: Cause he talks so fast and he walks so fast you can’t pass him on bike.
They both laugh and slap each other’s legs.
17 I’ve laid some snares and Tinker finds a dead grouse. It startles me (the snares are set for rabbits). Its long neck rubbed down to a red hose, brass wire wrapped several times around the branch. Feathers in the moss. A struggle, a large, long battle to get free. But now lifeless. His chest flattened a little to the moss. I set the snare again instinctively. I set the snare even as I feel shame.
I show the white grouse to Josh. He says it looks healthy. Let’s go clean him, he says.
I’ve never cleaned a bird before. Cutting off the head and feet and wings. Beautiful plumage. Prying the beak open to see its perfect mouth. The feathers peel off like a pelt. Coiled black entrails flop out and stink. The heart solid and big, the fresh liver. The chunky flesh of the breast.
Tomorrow I’m taking those snares up.