“Wait.” After all these years, he wasn’t about to let her go. “Can you tell him Anthony asked about him? You know, if you talk to him.”
“I probably won’t. But yeah, sure.”
“And keep me posted, okay? Like I said, he’s my best friend. I can give you my number.”
“That’s all right,” she said quickly. “I can just stop by the store. You’re here every day?”
“Tuesday through Saturday,” Anthony said. “Till two p.m.”
“Okay, then. I’ll see you around.”
It wasn’t exactly a date. But he would see her again, and next time she’d remember him. Gratitude filled him. He was sad for Tim, but mainly he was grateful. Tim, his best friend, had given them something to talk about.
ONCE AGAIN, VICTOR PRINE WAS ON THE ROAD.
On Saturday afternoons, his stepbrother drove him to Luther’s house—thanks to its sturdy wooden ramp, the one place in Saxon County he could navigate on his own. In Luther’s driveway he hoisted himself out of the passenger seat, waited patiently as Randy took the walker from the trunk. He clomped up the wooden ramp, knocked and waited. After some while, Luther rolled to the door.
They sat in the kitchen listening to the ball game on the radio, each nursing a single beer. On Saturday afternoons only, Victor allowed himself this small pleasure. He never drank more than one, for the simple fact that beer made him piss like a racehorse. In old age, at long last, he had learned to drink moderately. He could imagine no stronger deterrent than the fear of wetting his pants.
On Saturday afternoons he drank and listened to Luther. For the moment anyway, the Ebola virus had been contained. Luther, naturally, had theories. He talked about the mutability of the virus, the shadowy malfeasance of international corporations, the inscrutable motives of the Deep State. Victor did not agree or disagree. He was happy to defer to Luther, who had made a lifelong study of these matters.
At five o’clock, Randy came to get him. Slowly, painfully, he made his way down the ramp. He lowered himself gingerly into Randy’s souped-up PT Cruiser. After a lifetime of driving big rigs, it was disconcerting to ride in a passenger car. The road raced beneath them like a conveyor belt, so fast, so close. Victor looked out at the world and read the signs.
TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST. TOUGH PEOPLE DO.
Back at the log house he sank into the living room couch, as exhausted as if he had run many miles, and turned on the TV.
THE DETAILS OF THE ACCIDENT WERE VAGUE TO HIM, THEY LIVED in the realm of rumor and conjecture. The car he rear-ended in Massachusetts—a Toyota Prius—was totaled, though the driver was not hurt. He’d been distressed to learn, later, that she was pregnant. Though he had to wonder: What sort of female would put herself in such a situation, driving alone across the Berkshires in her condition? A pregnant female ought to take better care of herself.
The first time he came to, the EMTs were pulling him from the wreckage of the pickup. The second time, he was lying on a gurney behind a plastic curtain printed with tiny seashells. Victor verified his name and birth date and religious preference, and gave them a phone number to call.
My stepbrother, he said. We’re not blood-related.
Eventually he was moved to a different room, surrounded by a different plastic curtain—putty-colored, printed with moons and stars. On either side of the curtain, male voices made phone calls. The voice to his left was possibly Mexican. Victor recognized a few words of Spanish: mucho, hombre, gracias, nada. The voice to his right spoke a singsong language that seemed wordless, an undifferentiated torrent of sound.
When he woke from the surgery he heard a female voice. The sound was achingly beautiful, recognizable American English. Gratitude filled him. After what seemed like months of solitary confinement, he was not alone.
He heard the voice several times before he saw its source, a heavyset Black female with a round smiling face. Ernestine was his age exactly, he learned later, though at the time he wouldn’t have guessed it. The age of Black people was a mystery to him.