by Joe Woodward
Applebaum and
Bridgewater are waiting on the water to boil. The kitchen is cold, the cupboards empty, the world dark. It is December again,
winter again, and still little news from the front. There are no televisions left by now, no comp screens, newspapers, or
pigskin scrolls in clay jars. Who is winning the war depends upon whom you believe is waging it. Grandsons, naturally, always
grandsons, grandsons in matching pajamas bottoms, Applebaum likes to say and Bridgewater likes to hear him. Applebaum is a
Jewish pastry and Bridgewater a watercress sandwich with the crust cut off. They have their problems like real people do.
—Tomorrow
at daybreak!
—Earl Grey, that’s all that’s left.
—It’s my favorite.
—I know.
—Why do you ask, if it’s
all you have?
—All WE have. Painting illusions.
—Yes.
—Yes.
—Do you think you’ll outlive me, or the other way around?
—No.
—Why
shouldn’t you?
—I’m all light and
air.
—And I’m not.
—No.
—No.
They both laugh.
—Well,
you’ve been friendly through it all?
—Convenience.
—No.
—No.
—I hoped you would change.
—Into what?
—Something of moderate value.
—To the Commonwealth?
—To me.
—Did I?
—You did become rich, after all, late, but eventually.
—And what good did that do?
—None at all. But it was, finally, something enviable about you.
—What about my history books, my collection of ivory statuary?
Applebaum is
opening and closing cupboards, searching as he talks.
—I have a tin of cookies here, somewhere.
—When
you bend your head back like that, in the candlelight, you’re bald as a baseball diamond.
—Baring more and more every day.
—Did you hear anything from Noah?
—No.
—From Sam?
—Nothing
since the last transmission.
—They’re fine, I’m
sure, I know.
—Yes.
Applebaum stops
moving when he finds the tin of sugar cookies and leans his hip against the counter to balance himself. Bridgewater watches
him as long as he can, then he turns away, into the street. The heater vent above them rattles; dogs bark as troops of police
sweep down the street in the dark.
—We should do it, bring them home, I mean. Applebaum laughs.
—This is nothing.
—It will not always be like this, even here.
—You’re a foolish old man.
—I won’t
believe it.
—That doesn’t make it so.
Bridgewater turns himself in his
chair directly toward Applebaum.
—We’ll leave at sundown. Backpacks, water bottles, that tin of your best sugar cookies.
—We won’t make it.
—Maybe not, but we won’t be waiting anymore, either.
—Is that it? You’re tired of waiting?
—I want what I had.
—That’s history.
—Foolishness.
—Yes,
yes, maybe, but I’m richer than God.
—Isn’t
that funny?
—Sit down, sit down and listen to me.
—Just a minute, will you.
Applebaum shuffles around his white kitchen,
gathering his cups, tea, and cookies. It takes him two days to slide into his chair. It takes two more days to catch his breath.
He finally gathers himself, holding the white cup of warm tea between his gnarled hands. He looks up and sees his friend.
—I’m ready, now, to
listen. Go on. I can’t stop you, I suppose.
—What was I saying, again?
—Oh, God.
They both laugh
and laugh and laugh. The first piece of morning surrounds the black trees. Police dogs
are barking, but far away now. Two cats scream. Applebaum raises an eyebrow and Bridgewater nods back. This is how it is waiting
for something. Your whole life is waiting, then one day it is not. This is how it is in the Bible, the funny stories in there,
one after the other. Destitution interrupted by miracle and triumph. Applebaum is a Jew, remember, so history is a heavy black
overcoat, and Bridgewater is a blend, a half-breed without a church, and so his history is a wide-brimmed hat. Applebaum is
warm and hunched and Bridgewater is ready for shit to rain from the sky.
—We have nothing to lose. They’ll let two old men pass.
—We are merely the wind.
—The wind. Bridgewater smiles.
—You should have been a
writer.
—A novelist?
—No, someone who could make
a point in 20 pages or less.
—A poet?
—No. Someone who writes something plain, and brief, breathtaking.
—Okay. I see.
They are both quiet, drinking tea and rubbing the smooth lips of
their cups.
—I sometimes look at that cat there, and see her.
—My Margaret is that ring of gold daylilies
in the front yard.
—She loved them, didn’t
she though.
—How did it happen like this?
—When’s the last time you took a trip anywhere at all?
—I got this tea in town just yesterday morning.
—What did you hear?
—There’s progress, people are saying. There is advancement in the high desert, I heard.
—Hmmm.
Applebaum fingers his gray bushy eyebrows, his yellow teeth, around
the rim of his eyes, which are pushing into pink. Bridgewater isn’t pretty either. He’s gopher bumps and sewing
scars with an August cornfield on his head. What Applebaum and Bridgewater are to each other is the will to live, the point
of heaving air in and out. They even argue over the course of things, as if they have some investment in their outcome. Of
course, they don’t. Whatever happens at the front, excepting that it changes the fate of their lost grandsons, matters
not at all. The rest of everything is all walruses and whales and white polar bears.
—Okay.
—Okay, what?
—Let’s
go, go after them, at nightfall.
—Really?
—Bring them home, yes.
—Don’t you start that.
—I can’t
be sentimental? I can’t cry after all this?
—Not this morning, like this, at this point!
—I see.
—We are at the precipice.
—The precipice, yes.
—It has been grand, actually.
—We’ve
had everything, and so everything to lose.
—And
we lost it.They both laugh.
—Yes, yes,
we did.
They both start laughing, laughing slow, then hard and fast.
—We’ve lost everything!
—Oh, my God. Everything! Every-single-thing!
—Yes! Yes!
—And,
now, now we shall go get it back.
All day Applebaum and Bridgewater ready themselves for the front. They don’t know exactly where it is, or essentially
how to get there. But they will go. They will fill their daypacks with tea and sugar cookies and take off in a single direction.
They will walk into the distance until they disappear. Applebaum is wearing his black wool overcoat and Bridgewater his wide-brimmed
hat. They travel as wind travels. They travel as winds travels, carrying everything and invisible to all.
Published in The Dos Passos Review, 2010
THE KING, AND I
by Joe Woodward
She is waiting for the paper to come. It isn’t
even 5:00 a.m. Curled up on the brown leather couch in the dark living room, she fingers the black figurine
and thinks about Robert. A pregnant deity from the Congo, of all things to give her. A
fire goddess with hair aflame, yes. A griffin-headed lioness, sure. But, a melon-bellied,
sag-breasted, closed-eyed doll!
She rubs her own belly and looks out the plate glass window. There’s
a light on across the street, in the bedroom window of the girl who went away to college last fall. Strange, she thinks.
The black silhouette of a magnolia tree cuts against the gray sky.
Robert is missing.
Robert is an astronomer who works on light garbage, among other things. He writes articles about
light garbage and sends them into newspapers. One of these articles is framed above his desk.
He’s at an astronomer’s conference in New York this morning. He called last night to
say he almost slipped on the ice in front of his hotel, that he almost went “lights out.” Almost.
Robert with a brain injury is almost as good as dead, she thinks.
It has been a month since she took the test in the master bathroom. She
waited on the results, while worrying about the tile work. Why slate in the first place? Why?
Or was it his idea, like the house, the remodel, here? She can’t remember there because
of so much, here. What happened to everything else? What happened to New York?
Hong Kong, too? Wasn’t there a long list of things that were supposed to have happened instead
of this? She was forty-two and he was ten years on top of that.
She traces her finger over the
doll’s closed eyes, rubs its creaseless forehead. Forever young, forever fertile. Robert
told her that only a woman is strong enough to carry a king inside her. This is what they believe.
This was the point of the figurine, he said. The baby inside her would be a boy, Robert knew somehow.
The baby was a cramping uterus, she thought, but she could not tell him that. They believed in witchcraft
in the Congo, she read. They burned girls as witches and boys as sorcerers in the Congo—it was in
the paper.
There were so many things she knew she could not tell anyone.
There is a king inside her.
The paper still hasn’t come.
Since Robert left for New York
two days ago, she’s had coffee every morning. This has helped. She drinks it alone,
in the dark—my-body my-self, and so on. She has a 9:30 a.m. appointment at the clinic this morning,
for the procedure. She is not sure about it, though. She never was. She
never has been. Robert doesn’t know about the appointment. Robert doesn’t
know. Nobody knows. Everything is an accident, or everything is destiny.
Which is it?
She’s a painter, if you’re wondering, an abstract painter. She thinks you probably
aren’t wondering though, because she’s carrying a king insider her. The ability to paint abstractly
is not something most people believe is a talent. It is something few people appreciate, deeply.
An abstract painter is not a Madonna, or a saint. A mother is. Mother Earth,
and so on. A mother plays a central character in many plays. An abstract painter does
not. My-body my-self, and so on, she keeps telling herself.
The sky lightens
up, turns silver. The magnolia tree is still a dark silhouette in the gray sky. A white
fog hovers above the ground like a lost sheet. She laughs. She smiles and rubs the belly
of the black figurine, and then buries it between the cushions of the couch.
The paper comes.
