“I’m sure it would, but fortunately I have this.” He held up his left hand. In it was a gadget that looked like the sort of remote his old-school TV didn’t have. “Pain pump. Supposedly it allows me enough to damp down the pain, but not enough to get high. Only since I’ve never used anything stronger than Empirin, I believe I’m as high as a kite.”
“I think maybe you are,” I said, and this time he didn’t just chuckle, he outright laughed. I laughed with him.
“It will hurt, I suppose.” He touched the fixator, which formed a series of metal rings around a leg so black with bruising it hurt just to look at it. “I was told by the doctor who attached it early this morning that devices like this were invented by the Russians during the Battle of Stalingrad.” Now he touched one of the thin steel rods, just above the bloody gasket. “The Russkies made these stabilizing rods out of bicycle spokes.”
“How long do you have to wear it?”
“Six weeks if I’m lucky and heal well. Three months if I’m not so lucky. They gave me some fancy hardware, I believe titanium was involved, but by the time the fixator comes off, my leg will have frozen solid. Physical therapy will supposedly thaw it, but I’m told said therapy ‘will involve considerable discomfort.’ As someone who knows who Nietzsche was, you might be able to translate that.”
“I think it means it’ll hurt like hell.”
I was hoping for another laugh—a chuckle, at least—but he only produced a wan smile and gave the dope-delivering gadget a double click with his thumb. “I believe you’re exactly right. If I’d been fortunate enough to shuffle off this mortal coil during the operation, I could have spared myself that considerable discomfort.”
“You don’t mean that.”
His eyebrows—gray and bushy—drew together. “Don’t tell me what I mean. It belittles me and makes you sound stupid. I know what I’m facing.” Then, almost grudgingly: “I’m grateful to you for coming to see me. How is Radar?”
“Good.” I showed him the new pictures I’d taken. He lingered over the one of Radar sitting with her monkey in her mouth. At last he handed my phone back.
“Would you like me to print one out for you, since you don’t have a phone I can send it to?”
“I would indeed like that. Thank you for feeding her. And for showing her affection. I’m sure she appreciates it. I do, too.”
“I like her. Mr. Bowditch—”
“Howard.”
“Howard, right. I’d like to cut your grass, if that’s okay. Is there a mower in that shed?”
His eyes turned wary and he put the pain controller down on the bed. “No. There’s nothing in that shed. Of use, that is.”
Then why is it locked? was a question I knew enough not to ask.
“Well, I’ll bring ours up. We live just down the street.”
He sighed as if this was too much trouble for him to deal with. Given the day he’d put in, it probably was. “Why would you do that? For pay? Are you looking for a job?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t exactly want to talk about it. I bet there are things you don’t want to talk about, am I right?” The flour cannister for one. The shed for another.
He didn’t chuckle, but his lips quirked. “Too right. Is it the Chinese thing? Save a man’s life and you’re responsible for him thereafter?”
“No.” It was my father’s life I was thinking about. “Can we not go there? I’ll cut your grass, and maybe I’ll fix the fence out front, too. If you want.”
He looked at me a long time. Then, with an insight that startled me a little: “If I say yes, will I be doing you a favor?”
I smiled. “Actually you would be.”
“All right, fine. But a mower would take one chomp of that mess and die. There are a few tools in the cellar. Most of them are for shit, but there’s a scythe that might cut it down to mow-able size if you took the rust off and sharpened the blade. There might even be a whetstone on the workbench. Don’t let Radar go down the stairs. They’re steep and she might fall.”
“Okay. What about the ladder? What should I do with that?”
“It goes under the back porch. I wish I’d left it there, then I wouldn’t be here. Goddam doctors with their goddam bad news. Anything else?”
“Well… a reporter from The Weekly Sun wants to write a story about me.”