Many, many years ago, Pat Dutt was faced with the prospect of writing a thesis on igneous bodies and heat flow.  She finished the thesis knowing full well that she still could not write.  Pat took a chance and enrolled in writing classes at the University of Houston and started putting one word after the other until a story appeared. She’s been writing stories ever since, working on them between jobs and kids.

Nightshift: Chapter 1: March

Joe Emerson found the dirt road and drove along it through a forest of spruce and fir and where the road ended, his headlights picked up the trailer, and the rise of land behind the trailer.  It looked very different from what he had remembered, but some things were still the same: the limp clothesline strung up between two poles, a battered car in back.  The trailer, once a brilliant red, had faded to a washed-out pink.  To the right of the trailer, a 55-gallon drum smoldered with burning garbage.  Beside the drum was a charred boxspring, the springs red with rust, weeds growing through them.  Behind the trailer where the land rose, white round rocks, some the size of pillows, cropped up here and there.  As he drove toward them, his headlights picked up the rows of bushes; blueberry bushes he recalled, but there were no berries now, only spindly twigs.

Joe turned off the Jeep, the lights, and removed the flask from his leather jacket.  He swallowed two aspirin with some schnapps, then screwed the top back on and put the flask beside his briefcase and computer manuals on the Jeep’s floor.  The moonlight shined on the rearview mirror gave him a peek at his tired eyes, and his teeth, the bottom ones crooked and tobacco stained.  With his fingertips, he traced the edge of a mountainous acne scar below his cheekbone.  He’d always believed that when he grew up the scars would disappear, but every time he looked, he wondered who else saw them.

He opened the Jeep door and his snakeskin boots, a birthday present from his wife, crunched on the gravel.  Yellowish light poured out through the mobile home’s small, filmy windows and fell around the spruce trees.  He smelled the pungent odor of pine and thought his brother, Ralph, was lucky in some ways; this far out, it seemed unlikely that anyone or anything could bother you.  You could be your own person.  Walking in closer, the wind shifted and he smelled the burning garbage and he had to hold his breath until he reached the front door.

He knocked.  There was no outside light.  He heard a generatorís hum, a television, the dull clatter of plastic dishes.  An owl hooted and he looked at the trees, and feeling a chill, he raised the collar of his leather jacket.  Knocking quickly again, he called out, “Hello.  Anyone home?”

A misty light went on above his head.  A lock turned with some difficulty, and the door opened revealing Ralph’s thin pale face.  His hairline had receded an inch or two, and his short hair was nearly completely gray.

“Joe, well. . . I wasn’t expecting,” Ralph said, his hand still pressed against the screen door.  His eyes shifted and settled for a moment on the far end of the trailer, then the eyes came back to Joe.  Ralph grinned.  “Come on in, Bro.”  Ralph held out his hand, and it shook a little.  Taking the hand, Joe felt the bones beneath Ralph’s skin, surprised at their thinness.  Joe took two steps inside and glanced where Ralph had been looking.  Two portable fans whirled on high and a television blared.  He saw the bottoms of a woman’s very large feet.  The woman had on a sleeveless, scoop-necked dress of an indeterminable color, its design washed out.  She was cracking open peanut shells with her teeth, and the floor around her was littered with the empty shells.  The woman completely ignored Joe.

Joe looked away and said, “I hope this isn’t a bad time, I-”

“Bad time?  No time like the present.”  Ralph stuck his head outside the door and peered about.  “Nice Jeep, what I can see of it.”  He stepped back inside.  “No wife?”

“I’m on business.”

“Well, have a seat and I’ll make you a drink.  Vodka?”  Ralph backed up into a dish rack sending a plastic cup thudding onto the linoleum floor.

Joe pulled out a chair and hung his jacket around on its back.  When he sat down, he could not see the large woman.  He faced a wall that was completely covered with photographs, many of them small prints in black and white.  The color in the newer ones was not quite right.  The photographs were of Ralph’s wife, Marilyn: the brilliant, red ripple hair, the sharp blue eyes, and her father, a successful businessman, his arm around her waist.  Her father had been dead 10 or 15 years now.  Joe rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and loosened his tie.  The air inside was warm and stale.

“I was just about to get dinner started.  You like macaroni and cheese?”

“Sure,” Joe said.  He drummed his fingers on the Formica table top. Ralph got out some clear plastic glasses from an overhead cupboard and made two drinks.  He handed Joe a drink then set a dented pan of water on a burner, and lit it.  Joe was close enough to feel the heat.  The flame was too high and it started licking around the pan, so Ralph turned the gas  down.

The kitchen was all aquamarine, like Joe remembered it, but the color seemed faded, like the linoleum floor.  The refrigerator was new.  On another wall, which looked as though it had never been painted, were craft hangings that said: “Home of the Fearless” and “My Other Home is a Mansion.”

“Hon,” Ralph called to the large woman on the bed.

The woman kept her eyes on the television.

“Marilyn, in case you didn’t notice, Honeybunch, I’m home.  And guess what?  We have a guest.”  To Joe, he said, “I was out back.  Seeing if there were any apples in the storage shed.  Most of them didn’t make it.  Oh well.”

“Son-of-a-bitch.”  Marilyn was propped, slumped-shouldered on a substantially concave king-size bed, her enormous legs slightly spread.  Numerous books were scattered around the bed.  She stopped eating peanuts, and opening her eyes slightly, she said, “Who’s there?”  She tried to pull a yellowish comforter up over her legs then said, tentatively, “What does he want?”

Joe stood up so she could see him.  “Hi, Marilyn,” he said, saluting her with his plastic glass.  “It’s me, Joe.  I didn’t recognize you at first.”  He stopped.  “What I meant was, see I thought . . . well, that. . .”  He was about to take a step towards the bedroom, when Joe felt Ralph’s hand, the fingertips cold, on his shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” she said.  Her legs started to shake and her back arched.  Using leverage from an end table that had several dirty glasses on it, she rose.  Then she closed her eyes, and breathed deeply and she began, slowly, one leg at a time, walking towards them.

Joe tried to smile.  He had a smile for everyone: for his wife, for his clients, his boss; drunk smiles and sober smiles; friendly smiles and smiles that could mask surprise at anything.

The dishes in the rack shook as Marilyn approached them.  She sat down at the table in an extra large chair.

“How was your day, Marilyn?” Ralph said.

She squinted at him and replied: “How do you think my day was?  It was just like every other day.”  She put her hands on the small table and closed her eyes, wheezing from the exhaustion of walking.

“Just every other day?” Ralph said.  “Nothing new?” Ralph took a few steps, and turned down the television.

Marilyn stared at him.

Joe watched her tiny eyes, eyes hidden almost completely by the soft flesh.  It was a face that made him think of many people crowded together, competing for recognition with a single solitary person trying to emerge, but unable to.

“My day was like every other day,” she said, her voice flat.  “It was a day of hell.  I had a day of hell.”

Ralph went to the counter and opened a plastic tub and poured macaroni from it into the boiling water.  “I was going to fix the place up a little,” Ralph told Joe.  Ralph opened the freezer, and Joe felt a welcome current of cold air.  The freezer was stacked with plastic ice-cream tubs.  Ralph made another drink and handed it to Marilyn.  “I thought you said you were coming tomorrow, Joe.  Your postcard said, in your typical cryptic Joe Emerson style: ‘To settle things.  Be there on the ninth.’”

“I must of meant by the ninth.  I don’t write much.”

“I was going to fix things up a little–before you got here.”

“That’s what you always say,” Marilyn said.  “I’m going to fix the leaky sink, or paint the walls.”

“It’s true, I just haven’t had time.  And you have to take down your photographs first,” Ralph said, indicating the wall.

Marilyn stared at the photographs.  The fans whirled endlessly.

Joe shifted in his seat, and asked Ralph, “Still working hard?”

“I sell real estate, work security at the food warehouse and do seasonal accounting at Lamark’s Lumber.”

“That real estate,” Marilyn said.

“I’m getting close, Marilyn.”

“You haven’t sold a damn thing.”

“You’re still writing your book?” Joe said.

Ralph looked at Marilyn.

“He’s always writing his book,” Marilyn said.  “Just open any drawer and you’ll find a scrap with something on it.  The woodshed is full of his files.  He thinks he’s the next Hemingway.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Marilyn, but I take that as a compliment.”  Ralph smoothed back his unruly hair.  “Actually I prefer to think of myself as the next Dostoevsky.”

Marilyn grunted.

“Who’s that?” Joe said.

“He wrote Notes From The Underground.  He’s dead, of course.  When you have some time, Joe, take a look at it.  And Cervantes’, Don Quixote.”

They drank more while the noodles cooked and they talked about how the nearby town, which had never been a Mecca for businesses, was undergoing severe belt-tightening.  When the food was ready, Ralph handed everyone a plastic plate, a knife and fork.  Using a rusted ladle he plopped a huge scoop of macaroni and cheese on Joe’s and Marilyn’s plate, then he positioned a two-pound container of garlic powder and one of chili powder at the table’s center.  “Don’t wait for me,” he said, “eat while it’s hot.”

Marilyn started eating.

Ralph refreshed the drinks and put some white bread on the table.  Joe saw mold on the crust and told Ralph he was fine with what he had.  Then Ralph sat down with his plate, and grabbed the neck of the chili container and sprinkled his food liberally with the red powder.  He did the same with the garlic. “After it cools, it loses some of its appeal,” he told Joe, holding out the garlic to him. “Have some.  They say it’s good for bronchitis too.  Keeps the mucous flowing.”

“Ralph’s always been a vast repository of arcane and dubious medicinal advice,” Marilyn interjected, then returned to her food.

Joe sprinkled on a little garlic, and they ate and drank and talked about Joe’s last visit, twenty-five years ago when he’d spent the summer in an army tent 50 yards from the mobile home.  He’d driven up from Florida in his red Mustang, ready for a summer of hard work after his first year of academics at a small Florida college.  Ralph and Marilyn had just gotten married and they were trying to live off the land.  They’d bought 50 acres of mostly hills and rock and planted 100 blueberry bushes.  After that, they were so poor that they couldn’t even afford electricity.  They got their water from a spring. They rented a tractor and plowed an acre of rocky land and planted corn which Ralph predicted would  be their cash crop until the blueberry bushes matured.  Of course, he hadn’t anticipated that there were other farms with the same idea.  And then he’d planted the corn too late in the year and none of the corn reached maturity before the first snow.  Luckily, Ralph found a job in town otherwise they would have starved.  That was the summer Joe had been there.  Joe suggested they grow spinach, and they did the next year, and the harvest was moderately successful.  That Christmas, everyone in Joe’s family got jars of spinach for presents.  Joe threw his out.  The last thing he wanted to eat was spinach in a jar.  Plus, knowing Ralph’s disdain for rules and instructions, he suspected the jars harbored botulism.  The next year Ralph and Marilyn tried watermelon.  Joe also threw out the canned watermelon.

All the driving and talking made Joe feel light headed.  He’d been drinking since he left his last client in Middletown, Connecticut.  The client decided to network his office with the system Joe recommended, and Joe’d felt so good about it, he’d called his wife.  She wasn’t home.  He thought he’d try calling again to let her know that if he drove all night he could make it home by three or four tomorrow, then he’d take her out to dinner at a place on the lake that had the best fish fry in town.  Maybe they’d go dancing.

“That was some summer,” Ralph said.

“The event I remember most vividly is the time you quit your job, Ralph,” Joe said.

Marilyn looked at Ralph, and Ralph looked at the table and started playing with his glass.

“Twenty-five years ago,” Joe said.  “Remember, Ralph?  Marilyn?  We were living like one big happy family.  We never had a family life at home, not with the way Mom was.”  Joe watched his broth

er’s eyes, and he didn’t see any reaction, so he continued.  “I was working road construction and you were working at an Agway in town, trying to pick up pointers on farming so you and Marilyn could live off the land.  You were going to night school.  What was it?  Trying to get your MBA?”

Ralph nodded.

“Then you quit or got laid off or some shit, I don’t know.  But you left the house everyday at eight on the dot.  And Marilyn was out there every morning with the blueberry bushes.  So one day I came home from work, and I said to Marilyn, ‘Did Ralph find anything yet?’ and her mouth went taut and her eyes kind of squeezed together, and I told myself: ‘I ain’t gonna be here when Ralph gets home.’  Oh, the screaming, the dishes that flew.”  He laughed, and looked at Marilyn.  Then Ralph.

They were both staring at the Formica-topped table.

“You don’t think that’s funny?”  Joe laughed and rocked back in his chair and the front feet lifted off the floor, and for a second he thought he was going to fall, he felt himself falling backward, but Marilyn grabbed the chair and her blue eyes opened.  He looked up and caught a glimpse of the shape of her face as it had been, and he saw her blue eyes smiling slightly, and he remembered how the sun had made her red hair shine and how he had almost kissed her at the back door, twenty-five years ago.

“I think you’ve had enough vodka,” Marilyn said.  Then she reached for the pan and scraped the remains of the food onto her plate and started eating it.

“You don’t think that’s funny?” Joe said, because he had to say something.  He looked down at the worn linoleum floor. “I thought it was funny.”

“Sure, Joe,” Ralph said.  Joe looked up and Ralph grinned.  “I think it’s funny.”

“Where’d you go every day?” Joe said.

“I went to the library.”

“Ralph,” Marilyn said, slowly closing her eyes.  “Make me another drink.”

“Sure,” Ralph said.  He made three big drinks and distributed them.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” Joe said.  “Marilyn, I have to tell you, that was the best summer of my life.  I went to work everyday.  I was doing road construction.  It was some

thing I could see, and I didn’t have to use my mind, or my imagination like I have to now.”

Ralph stood up and cleared off the table and put the dishes and silverware in the sink.  He filled a bin with hot water and added some liquid soap.

“I’ll tell you what I remember,” Marilyn said.

“What?” Joe said.

“Those notes.  You always had to leave us notes.”  Closing her eyes, she almost smiled.  “I can still see your handwriting.  Scratchy.  Small, and up and down, like a kid’s handwriting, like what you had to say wasn’t important, because you weren’t sure of yourself.”  She opened her eyes.  “Like you didn’t want anyone to think too much of you because you didn’t want to disappoint them.”  She closed her eyes again.  “The notes said things like, ‘I won’t be home for dinner.’  Or, ‘I’m working late.í  ëI left some pancakes.í   ëLet’s go to Grady’s and play pool tonight.’”

Ralph started washing the dishes and said: “Marilyn’s been reading books about the mind and the imagination.  Every night we talk about them–the mind and the imagination.  The imagination and the mind.”

Marilyn looked at Ralph skeptically.  “Ralph who was going to own his own lumber business.”

“This is more important,” Ralph said, drying his hands on a thin towel that hung on a nail.  He sat down opposite Joe, and talked mostly to him.  “This is the way I look at it.  Everybody’s looking inside themselves.  They’re going to therapy, reading self-help books, doing yoga and consciousness raising.  I’m not trying to ridicule them, but people are forgetting to look outside themselves.  At the larger factors.  The larger factors that shape the culture.  The world.”

“Don’t listen to him, Joe, you have to look inside too.  It’s not all one way or the other.”

“Marilyn,” Ralph started, “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

“People change,” Marilyn said.

“So what’s this novel about?” Joe said.

“Ralph’s going to solve the world’s problems,” Marilyn said.

“I am solving the world’s problems,” Ralph said excitedly.  He looked at Joe.  “It’s like this, American culture is in serious decline.  Serious.  Everyone admits that.  Values gone to hell.  Serial murders, robberies, rapes, college kids joining terrorist cells: people are out of control.  They’re nuts, they’re crazy.  Really crazy.  It’s the bad food…all the chemicals, and the drugs, and more meds than any society has ever had. Everybody lives in la-la land.  The people need an awakening.  And those ones seriously out-of-control?  You have to put a giant rubber band around them.  My approach is different from everyone else’s–and it may not be one hundred percent right, but it’s different–”

“He’s always been different,” Marilyn said leveling her blue eyes at Joe.

“–and different counts.  Marilyn’s been a big help in that respect.  She stays home, because she likes to,” he raised his eyebrows at Marilyn.  “She reads all the time.  Every goddamn minute her nose is in a book.  Did you know she has a photographic memory?  Sucks it up and spews it out.  She’s given me lots of great ideas.  Most recently about lawyers and unions, and government conspiracies.”

“The government is always engaged in conspiracies,” Marilyn told Joe evenly, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know anything about writing,” Joe said.  “I was never good in school.  You were always the smart one, Ralph–you with your merit scholarship.”

“Tell him where you’re getting your characters from,” Marilyn said, looking at Ralph from the corner of her eyes.

“See, all my jobs are solitary.  When I do security, I’m the only one.  Same with real estate.  Once in a while–”

“–a great while–” Marilyn added.

“–I take someone out.  So, I start conversations in my mind.”

“In your mind?” Joe said, and put down the drink he was about to sip.  “With yourself?” Joe suddenly thought of his Mom, and he wondered what she was doing right now, right this second.

“I make up characters.  Maybe it starts with something a clerk said.  Or something I see hanging in a truck’s back window.  It’s easy.”

Marilyn sighed, “The characters argue a lot.”

“What are you talking about?” Ralph said.

“I hear you in your sleep, all the way from the other end of the trailer.”

Joe followed Marilyn’s eyes: there was a plastic recliner, ripped at the arms, and either side, two makeshift bookshelves filled with paperbacks.

“He’s obsessed with his book,” Marilyn said.

“It’s going to be the greatest book,” Ralph said.  “You’re not going to believe it, Marilyn.”

“Can I see a few pages, Ralph?” Joe said.

Ralph was quiet.  Then he said, “Not yet.”

“Just the beginning.  I don’t read much, most books I don’t even finish.”

“He hasn’t started writing,” Marilyn said.

“You need a computer?” Joe said.  He smiled and put his hand on Ralph’s thin shoulder.  “All the writers use computers now.  Computers: that’s my business.  Mostly I network computers, but when my clients have some out-dated equipment, I take it off their hands.  I could get you a computer cheap.  Real cheap. ”

“You give him a computer, he might actually have to write,” Marilyn said.

“I don’t need a big fancy computer.  Real writers use paper.  You know me, Joe,  I  do things my own way.  See Joe, you have to prepare yourself.  Writing a novel is a monumental undertaking, especially if it’s going to be the great novel I envision.  I’m in the process of gathering data.  I’m telling you, this is going to be the greatest book.”  He slapped his hand on the table.  “The greatest!  It will leave unturned no stone.”  Ralph gazed upon Joe and leaned over the table and pointed his finger at him.  “The people who read it–and I guarantee many will, many millions–will learn about justice and truth and love.  They’ll learn about love’s strange manifestations.”  Ralph looked uncertainly at Marilyn.  “How love waxes and wanes–like the seasons.  Wait a second.”  Ralph produced a pen from his back pocket and wrote something down on a napkin and stuffed it in a drawer.

“See what I mean?” Marilyn said to Joe.

“Love’s many facets,” Ralph seemed to say to himself.  Then he looked at Joe.  “Joe: The Incurable Romantic.  Loves everyone.  Heart’s as soft as a pillow.  Maybe you could give me some insights?”

Joe shrugged.  “I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

“My novel will explore truth’s gray areas and its perturbations.  Truth coming from several different and independent directions, and disciplines.  A subtheme will be the infidelity of young wives.”  Ralph paused and glanced at the photographs on the wall.  “Young wives whose expectations are too high, who demand a lot of attention.  Needy women.  It’s a big phenomenon.”

“Is it?” Joe said.

Marilyn looked coolly at Ralph.

“Or maybe the wives do other extreme things,” Ralph said.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Joe said.

“I have to rest,” Marilyn said.  She put her hand on Joe’s chair, and he felt her weight, and smelled her warm breath, and for a moment he thought she was going to bend down and kiss him, and then he remembered the sun on her hair, the almost-kiss and the heat rose to his face, but she turned, and free of the kitchen table, she walked slowly, with her large shoulders slumped into herself, a drink in her hand, toward the bed.  Once comfortable, she picked up a book and took the remote control and turned up the television.

“After her father died,” Ralph whispered, nodding toward the photographs on the wall, “she wouldn’t get out of bed–only to go to the bathroom.  She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

Joe nodded slowly.  “Ralph, I wanted to ask you–”

“Let me finish.  Then, she started drinking.  She wouldn’t go to a doctor.  AA helped for a few months, but then she stopped going, and she got worse.  Drinking all the time.  Drinking the hard stuff.  Eating too much.  Macaroni-and-cheese every single night.  Oh, sure, I know she was disappointed in me, not being pres of the lumber company, and disappointed that the community college where she had a teaching job folded.  Teaching English: she would have loved it.  So she started reading a lot…all the time, in fact.  You want to hear Marilyn’s philosophy?  ‘I’ll read enough and figure it out.’  She believes it.  She also believes now, that a lot of it’s genetic predisposition.  What can I say?  Maybe she’s right.  It’s her life.”

They were quietly drinking, and Joe said: “You know why I’m here?”

“You told me, Joe.  In your postcard.”  Ralph got up and started opening drawers.  “It’s in here somewhere,” he mumbled.  “I know I put it–”

“Ralph, sit down.  Sit down,” Joe said, louder.  “Forget the damn postcard.”

Ralph sat down.

“I put Mom in a home.  I couldn’t handle her anymore.”  Joe picked up his cup, and his hand trembled.  “She has her own room.  It’s clean.  There’s a television.”

“Sheís always liked television.”

Joe looked at his brother.  “Except for that one time, after watching Frankenstein.”

Ralph nodded.

“Ralph: you walk in the building, and you hear a moan.  You hear it all the time–it’s constantly there, even when you can’t hear it.  It’s a sound that makes the hair on your head stand up.”

“The doctors will put her on something, and she’ll be out in the world again,” Ralph said confidently.  “The drug companies come out with new medications every day.  It’s amazing what they can cure.  Any mood disorder.  You’d be surprised.”

“No.”  Joe leaned over the table and his eyes flashed.  “You don’t get it.  There’s nothing more to put her on.  Her brain’s gone. You can’t go back.”

Ralph stared at Joe, silently.

“She doesn’t even know where she is.  Thirty-five years of those kinds of drugs–nobody’s brain can handle it.  She’s a vegetable.”

Joe eased back in his chair and looked out a filmy window.  It was black outside and he couldn’t see a thing.  He didn’t know what happened to the moon.  “Remember those nights, during the summer, when we used to sleep outside so we wouldn’t hear her pacing and talking to herself?  Slamming things around?  Remember how we used to stare at the sky, looking for falling stars so we could wish she’d get better?  She’s never going to get better.  She can’t even get worse.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You got all that education.  You got your degrees and you’re sitting here rotting.  You’re rotting and I can smell it.   I can see it and hear it.  We always told one another we’d be rich, right?”

“Sure, Bro.  But it takes a while.  You have a plan to follow, which I do.  What about you?”

“I’m getting there.”  Joe had a big meeting coming up with Alder’s Graphics next Monday.  He was going to install a new computer software package on all their computers.  It was all but done.  They were a nationwide company.  The commission would be over $50,000 for two weeks of work.  He couldn’t believe how lucky he was.  When he got the money, Joe just decided, he would help Ralph out.

“And Marilyn–I don’t know what happened to Marilyn.  She was never a dope.”

Ralph shrugged.  “Things are going to change.  I can feel it.  I have it all figured out.  My plan, Joe, trust me.  I canít talk about it: that would break the tension, and I need that tension.  That keeps me working.  Maybe I’m getting up there in age, Joe, but I’m certainly not old.  See, I get my book published, and I get a little fame.  I become a minor guru.  This of course makes Marilyn very happy–it restores her faith in me, and she stops eating.  Then drinking.  I have faith in myself–that’s what a writer needs to succeed: faith and hard work.  Hard work and faith.”  Ralph grinned.

“You’re doing this weird stuff again, Ralph, and you don’t realize it,” Joe said, shaking his head.  “You don’t even fucking realize it.  I’ve come from the outside, and I can see it.  You can’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Remember when Mom started getting sicker, and you moved down to the basement?”

“You took care of her, Joe.  I remember you used to stay home from school.”

“I hated school.”

“Still, more than anyone, you took care of her.”

“Well…”

“You were the guardian angel.”

“But you, Ralph.  You’d come upstairs only to get food, then you’d scurry right back down?  That’s a kind of weirdness, Ralph.  You lived with those strange blue and green posters on your walls, and the strange books.  I used to ask myself: ‘What’s it like being Ralph Emerson?  What’s it really like?’  What the hell did you do down there?”

“Study.”

“Study what?”

“Well . .  . see I had my insect collection.  I used to take apart the butterflies, the flies and antsóthey were already dead of course–and identify their parts, then shellac them and glue them on posterboard.  Take pictures of them.”

“You’re almost as crazy as she is.  Goddamn, Ralph.  Look at yourself.”

“Hey–I’m a little obsessive, but obsession can be a virtue–if you know how to use it.  Almost anything can be used to your advantage.”

“Ralph, I’m a salesman.  It’s my job to look beneath the person’s exterior.”

“You have absolutely no faith, Joe.”

“I’ll level with you, Ralph: when you started living in the basement, coming up only for food, I told myself, if I ever had kids, I would never let them live in the basement.”

“You have kids?”

Joe shifted in his chair.  “My wife can’t have them.  Anyway, I work too hard.  I’m still struggling to make payroll every two weeks.  Beth works.  She’s a nurse.”

“A nurse, huh.  A pretty nurse?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, Joe.  Every time I hear something, I think: how can I use it in my novel?  I have lists and lists of potential ideas and potential characters.  This novel is going to be an all-encompassing treatise.  It will explain everything, or at least make a valiant attempt to.”

“I bet.”   Joe dug out his wallet from his back pocket.  “Here,” he said, placing a worn photograph on the table.

Ralph picked it up, and studied it, holding it up where the light was better.  “Oh.  She’s pretty.  Curly brown hair.  Nice green eyes.î  Ralph looked closer.  “She looks like she’s in love.  Did you take the picture?”

“I forget who took it.  But I love her,” Joe said.  “I love her more than anyone or anything.  More than I thought I’d ever love anyone.”

“Yeah?”  Ralph said, scratching the side of his face.  He put down the picture and looked at Joe.  “I think you loved every pretty girl you ever met.”

Joe laughed.  “Maybe.  But not everyone loved me back.”

“Why’d she marry you?”

“She loved me,” Joe said, his voice trembling a little.  “I mean, she loves me.”  He felt himself starting to sweat.

“She doesn’t mind you working so much?”

“Once I get the business rolling, I won’t be working so much.”  Joe looked around the trailer.  “See . . . Beth. . . I don’t know.  This is just a feeling.”

“What?”

“Do you have a phone?”

“You know me, Joe,” Ralph said, shaking his head.  “I’ve always been a thrifty guy.  There’s nothing extraneous about me or my life.  I’m fit and compact.  I live simply.  I have a Thoreau existence. “  He patted his thin chest and grinned.  “You know Thoreau?”

“That nutty guy who lived by himself near a pond.”

“That’s right.  You’re smarter than you think you are, Joey.  And I’m surprised you don’t have a cell phone.”

“When I get things a little more under control.”  He lost his cell phone in Connecticut.   That was stupid of him.

“Go on.  Tell me some more about your wife.  Beth.  Do you call her Bethy?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”  Joe took the photograph back, and straightened the edges and looked at it, wondering if she’d forgotten to tell him she was working the nightshift, imagining her white shoes making a soft patter along the shinning hospital floors.

“She’s working now?  At night?”

Joe slipped the photograph back in his wallet beneath some plastic then his hand went back to his drink.  “There’s a lot of people who work at night.”

“She shouldn’t, Joe.”

“Ralph, if you have something to say, say it.”

“Nothing, Joe.  I don’t have anything to say that you don’t already know.”

“I have to go,” Joe said.  He rose and put his glass in the sink.  He looked toward Marilyn, but she was busy reading and drinking and watching the television.

“You haven’t changed much, Ralph.  But you need to come down and see Mom sometime.  For your own benefit.”

“Maybe I will,” Ralph said.

“Ralph. . .”  Joe gave Ralph a hug.  “Take it easy.”

“You too, Joe.  Don’t drive too fast.”

Joe opened the screen door and it slapped closed behind him.  He got in his Jeep, and turned on the lights, and took one last look at Ralph: a small and frail man, gray against the backdrop of yellow light and pink tin.  Joe beeped the horn, turned around, and drove through the blackness.  At the first gas station, he called his apartment.  He called again, but kept getting his answering machine.  He tried at the next gas station, and the next, and after that, he just kept driving.