Monthly Story (October, '23): A Private Wilderness

Fiction

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The doctors removed what they could of the mass from Ethan’s brain on Thursday. His brother Whit, attending to paperwork and catching up on emails in his tiny office, couldn’t properly think of anything else all that morning. In the afternoon, when the actual surgery was scheduled, he pasted on a smile through a string of portrait sittings: a cranky toddler, a nice Vietnamese family celebrating making it in America with a studio portrait for the living room, a 50^th wedding anniversary portrait paid for by a pushy daughter.

He knew no one would make a special call to tell him how the surgery had gone, and he knew better than to call and ask. Then, checking Facebook at home that evening, he found the generic message. All, presumably, had gone well. They wouldn’t get the biopsy results, his sister-in-law wrote in sure and cheerful tones, until after the weekend. In the meantime, “Ethan welcomes the diversion of visitors starting Friday afternoon!” A-huh.  

So Friday afternoon Whit left the studio in the care of his young assistant and drove to the hospital. Somehow he found the parking ramp and, through asking directions and guessing which empty corridor to walk down, found himself standing outside Ethan’s closed hospital room. He didn’t knock because he heard low voices inside and thought better of interrupting someone else’s visit. He leaned against the wall opposite the door and waited his turn, smiling back at a young woman in green scrubs who bounced past on the balls of her pink running shoes. Her shiny ponytail whipped side to side as she turned her head to grin at him.

The muffled tone of the voices behind the door struck Whit as odd, though. You’d expect laughing, maybe a boisterous outburst, the old uncomfortable lifting of the spirits. But since having his tonsils out as a little kid Whit had never been in one of these places, had barely ever had a cold, couldn’t even remember visiting a hospitalized friend. So what did he know? He wondered that maybe he should go back and wait in the lounge he’d come through. It had comfortable chairs and a wall of windows looking out over the open farm country between the hospital and the town. He remembered seeing horses. Maybe he should go look at the horses. He liked looking at horses.      

 Just then the cute girl in the scrubs came back and stopped right in front of him. Whit smiled down at her again. If he’d ever married and had kids, she could be his grandchild.      

“Are you waiting to go in there?” she asked, motioning toward Ethan’s door.   

“I am,” he answered with a shy, courtly bow.                                                                            

She had already reached across the hall and knocked on the door, then—without waiting for an answer—opened it. Whit saw Pat, his sister-in-law, turn in surprise with a young man holding a chart.                                                                                                                                            

“Who’s there?” came Ethan’s voice from behind the curtain.                                                  

Whit recognized the voice’s layers: fear and tears held off with anger. Pat had risen to see who was in the hallway. “It’s Whit,” she said into the room. “Whit has come.” This last with a kind of falling resignation.                                                                                                        

Ethan made a troubling noise Whit could not recognize as Pat closed the door. She led Whit through the double doors to the lounge with that wall of windows. They sat down and she delivered the bad news. The results had come back right away and there could be no doubt. It was bad. As bad as it could get. A glioblastoma. Star shaped. They took out as much as they could, but without aggressive treatment, Ethan had maybe two months. With it, he might have two years. They had just gotten the news. The surgeon was in there explaining it all now.

Pat stood up and straightened her skirt over wide hips, pulled herself to full height, braced herself. “I’m sure you understand why your brother can’t see you right now.”

Whit got to his feet. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course.”                                                                    

She tilted her head back in a tight-lipped smile, glared up into his eyes. Tears streamed in two silver lines down her cheeks. She crumpled a tissue in her right hand and then dabbed it at her nose.                                            

“If there is anything I can. . .” he ventured, but let it trail off, embarrassed that he had chosen such a terrible moment to visit, then angry that her Facebook post had set him up for this.

She was sobbing now. He lifted his arms to embrace her, but then hesitantly patted her shoulder instead, again embarrassed and confused. He couldn’t help thinking that she had gotten heavy and old, and he felt a difficult compassion.

“I will call you,” he said, “to see how you are doing, to see what you need.”                

Her sobbing stopped. The tears dried up. “It’s a little late to start being family now, don’t you think?” she said.                                                                                                                         

It had been a long while indeed since he’d fallen into the trap of trying to answer questions like that, and he didn’t fall this time either. “I’ll call to see how you are doing,” he repeated and turned to go.

He did call, too. Pat’s Facebook post said Ethan went home that very next day, Saturday, and so Whit called Sunday. They weren’t answering. He kept his message brief: “It’s Whit. I don’t know what to say. I love you and I’ll call again.”

When he got off, his mind started reminding him of what he should have said, what would have been more appropriate, helpful, intelligent. But these thoughts irritated him. What did they expect of him? Realizing he was blaming Ethan and Pat for his own thoughts, his paranoid thoughts, he poured some food into the dog’s dish and ran water in the sink to wash his breakfast dishes. He’d never bought a dishwasher or even a simple microwave. He smiled at the thought. Cheap. Or stupid. But he always told himself he enjoyed washing dishes, messing around in the water.

He plugged the sink and squirted in some Palmolive. The suds rose like cumulous clouds. He rolled his sleeves up and set to work as his Basset hound trundled into the room on his bum leg. “Just look at yourself,” he complained to the dog. “Everybody around me is getting old. Try to look a little more lively.”                                                                                           

The dog twisted his thick neck to face him, not fully committed to wagging his tail.      

Whit scowled.  He rinsed a cereal bowl and placed it in the drainer.                                                                                                                     

After that he ran the vacuum, cleaned the bathroom sink and toilet upstairs, dusted a bit, and generally straightened the place. The forsythia buds had opened just that afternoon, so he knew it wouldn’t be long now. Green shoots from the bulbs in the gardens already showed around the foundation of the house. The red bud trees wouldn’t be long now either. And the fiddleheads. The forsythia signaled it all, though after they bloomed their pearly yellow flowers, they hung around like skinny green spinsters overstaying their welcome. Life would have burst past them, and he’d leave the dining room window open to welcome in the lilac fragrance.

He and the dog made a tour of the yard, and then he remembered and unlocked the storage shed and brought out a fresh salt lick. His property ran up to a rocky creek bordering state game lands. The salt lick invited deer and raccoons and the occasional porcupine into his yard. As far as Whit was concerned, the more the better, even if the deer ate most of what little vegetable garden he planted. He figured they and the rabbits got the greater share each year.

Back inside, he picked his cell phone off the bookcase and checked for messages, but Pat hadn’t returned his call. Not surprising. Ethan had to settle back into being at home. Even if the hospital stay had only been a couple of days, it must feel like coming back from. . . Whit didn’t know what it must be like coming back from. Ethan had plenty to process. That was it.

He poured himself a glass of wine and sat down at the computer in the back bedroom upstairs and went online. The dog curled up on the upholstered reading chair by the window. “Let me know if you see any deer come across the creek, Mudman,” Whit told him, then he clicked onto Facebook and messaged Pat. It wouldn’t do any good to try Ethan. “Please give me a call,” he wrote. “I’m very concerned.” He took a breath and deleted that second sentence and replaced it with, “Thinking of both of you.” He let it go at that.

Monday morning he sat in that damned closet of an office they gave him and reviewed the new deals on the updated corporate website, then forwarded the information to his contacts in the school district. Dandy new packages for the usual group pictures of classes in the elementary schools, combined with the usual individual head shots—all at even more economical prices for next fall! Yee-ha. Weary of it, he opened the file of notes he had taken with his financial planner. He didn’t have to be there in the fall. The young hotshot clicking passport photos in the basement studio could just as well squeeze off pictures of mobs of kids herded into a gymnasium. Whit could maybe finally get around to taking real photos, maybe even work up a show someplace eventually.

He surfed over to Facebook. “Ethan is happily resting at home,” Pat wrote, “enjoying a cup of hot chocolate and wrapped in his favorite comforter. The cats are delighted to have him back to snuggle with.” So, no mention yet of the glioblastoma and his prognosis. How would you break news like that to the world?

He picked up his cell phone and called. No answer. In the days before Caller ID, they would pick up. He didn’t bother leaving a message. Work to be done.  

He didn’t bother checking his email or Facebook for a response from Pat at the end of the work day either. Time was short. He needed to stop by the house to let the dog out a bit, get cleaned up, and change his clothes, then head out to a dinner party with friends. Whit enjoyed driving too fast on the two-lane farm road his gravel lane spurred off of. Turning into the lane, though, he always slowed to a crawl, hoping for the pleasure of watching deer edge out of the woods as he came over the hill to his place. He’d bought five acres of woodland surrounded on the near side of the creek by working farms and state lands on the far side. He’d added over the years to what had originally been a simple cabin.                                              

The dog squeezed past him when he opened the front door, shooting into the yard like a puppy. Catching himself as Whit eyed him lifting his leg to a tree, he limped off with his tail down. Not the same leg he suffered from the day before.

He let the dog go and nipped inside for his pipe. Packing and poking the tobacco with his pipe tool, he followed the dog into the back yard and down to the creek. He’d set an Adirondack chair on a mossy knoll in a grove of hemlocks and now sat down and lit his pipe, blowing fragrant puffs of vanilla smoke that drifted across the stream. Ethan was never far from his thoughts, even in that private little world he had made for himself. That safe little world. Well, could anyone justly fault him for having been a good steward of a small inheritance?                                  

He puffed away. The dog splashed into the water, lapping up a good drink. “That’s the way, faker. Now you can leave the toilet water where it is.”                                                       

The pipe went out. He lit a match and held it close over the bowl and sucked in and blew out bursts until it caught, then shook the match out with a quick flick of his wrist and set it on the wide arm of the Adirondack. The dog came back and flopped at his feet. “Worn out already, huh?” Whit said between puffs. “What good are ya, anyway?”

He stayed a little longer than planned to let the dog rest, then took his time leading the old guy back into the house, where he went straight to his basket next to the fireplace. “Maybe I’ll make a fire later,” Whit told him as he headed upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes.

Pat phoned almost two weeks later, on a Friday. She couldn’t talk. Could she see him? “May I please come over?” she asked.                                            

“I don’t see any reason we can’t meet for coffee in town,” he answered. “I have to be at the studio tomorrow. I can take some time off. We’ll just schedule a time in.”

Silence. Then, pronouncing every syllable with great care, “Actually, Whit, this is really important. I had hoped you’d understand that and let me come out there this evening. I have to be away from the house on business of my own, so Ethan will be none the wiser. It will be better for him if he doesn’t know I’m discussing this with you, better for a positive outcome, I mean. You do want to help your brother, don’t you? I take you at your word.”                                            

“Well, actually, I have some people here,” he lied, “so it just won’t work right now. Sorry. But, let’s meet in town tomorrow. Come to the diner at two and you can fill me in. I really am sorry. That’s the best I can do.”

He imagined he heard her sigh. “Well, that’s as it is, I guess,” she did sigh. “You go ahead with your social life. We know how important it is to you.”                                            

She started to say something else, but he talked over it. “Okay, so we’ll talk at the diner tomorrow? As I told you, I’ll do whatever I can.”                                                                 

She snarled something he missed and hung up. Whit turned the radio in the kitchen on and took an onion out of the lower cabinet drawer. He set it on the cutting board and sliced a quarter of it away, chopped that up into the salad he’d left unfinished to answer the phone, and poured himself a glass of red wine. NPR was doing a story on the recent Venezuelan election. He was about to have a peaceful, quiet evening.                                                                             

Thirty minutes later, he washed the dishes and put them away. He took a second glass of wine out to the living room and placed it on the mantelpiece. “Yes,” he gently told the dog, who had stirred in his basket to raise his head. “I’m going to make us a fire.” He balled up sheets of newsprint and stuffed them into the iron grillwork, then remembered and opened the flue. As he laid the kindling on the paper, he changed his mind about the radio and got up and switched it off, slipped in a CD of Appalachian Spring instead.                                                                 

Once the fire blazed up to his satisfaction, he loaded, tamped, poked, and lit the pipe. He had to slow himself down on a second glass of wine, so he took the Antarctica photo book down from the top shelf. Photos of giant wind-sculpted chunks of ice and snow. Amazing stuff. He lingered over the pages, daydreaming about being this Klipper guy, doing that kind of photography. This might be the last fire of the season.

He never heard the car, but you couldn’t miss the insistent rapping on the door. A quick glance out the window announced it all. The rusty van with “Happy Valley Food Shelf” stenciled on the side and a faded “Save Tibet” bumper sticker told the story.

He opened the door.

“So much for your ‘guests,’” Pat smirked.                                                                  

“They just left,” he said right into her face.                                                                 

“Right. I passed them in the lane.”                                                                            

“Won’t you come in?” he offered and held the door for her. “May I take your coat?”  

But she’d already draped it over the back of a chair. She inventoried the room, as he imagined she did every time she entered his space, tallying up her imagined loss.               

“Have a seat, Pat. Can I get you anything?” He busied himself by picking up her coat and carefully hanging it on the coat stand he’d rescued at an estate sale. “A cup of tea maybe?” He knew she hadn’t missed his glass of wine.                         

She took a seat on the couch, perching unsteadily on the cushion’s edge. “That would be nice. Thank you.”                                                                                                                        

Whit felt relieved to retreat to the kitchen, if only for minutes. He filled the kettle at the sink and set it on the burner. “Do you still drink Orange Zinger?” he called into the living room.

“If you have it,” she answered.                                                           

He plopped a bag of Orange Zinger into a cup and waited for the kettle’s whistle, conscious of hiding from her. He noisily opened and closed cabinet doors and drawers—taking down plates and clattering them onto the counter, rooting through a cupboard for a box of cookies, loudly ripping the box open and then the wrapping inside. The kettle started leaking steam and then launched into a panicked whistle.             

“Oh, my,” Pat sat up straighter, going all formal, as he returned to the living room, “tea and cookies. On a tray. Even a napkin. My goodness.”

He set the tray on the marble coffee table in front of her and retreated to the mantelpiece and his wine. “Only a paper napkin,” he said.                                                                             

She tasted the tea and nodded.                                                                                  

“There’s a spoon,” he said. “You can put the teabag on the tray when it’s strong enough.”

She looked away and took a sip. “Ethan,” she began, “is refusing chemo.”

“I thought. . .”                                                                                    

“No, he changed his mind. We took him in for his first treatment, but he changed his mind right then and there. You know how he is. He put his foot down.”                                

“I can’t believe. . .Why? Did he give a reason?” Something about the mulishness of this didn’t surprise Whit. Who would do this but his brother? And he didn’t know what to feel or think, except that he knew he was being pulled away from himself and toward them again.

“He says he doesn’t want to spend his last days losing his hair and vomiting into a bucket. His words.”                                                                                                                    

Whit almost smiled. Vivid and original Ethan. Always.                                   

“You have to talk to him, Whit.” Her eyes were too full of pain and fear for him to do more than glance past them. “You have to talk him into doing the treatment.”

Whit picked up his pipe and tobacco, but his hands didn’t know what to do, where to direct themselves. He dropped the leather tobacco pouch on the floor and couldn’t decide whether to pick it up or have a sip of wine first.  He stooped to get the pouch, but then left it on the floor instead. “What makes you think he’ll listen to me?”                                               

She gave him a look that asked how he could be so thick. “You are his older brother; he looks up to you. He won’t listen to me. I’ve tried.”                                                                  

Older brother? Looks up to anyone? Whit stooped again and retrieved the pouch this time. He placed it next to the pipe on the mantelpiece and took a sip of the wine. “What on earth are you talking about?”                                                                                      

“We can’t allow him to commit suicide, can we?” She was close to tears. “How would we live with ourselves? We have to do everything we can. Everything. We can’t let him die, Whit.”                                                                                                                                         

Once again, as on the day he’d come to the hospital, he felt a wave of compassion for Pat. He’d known her now for most of his life, and yet had never known her. What was with her moral certitude, her life of crusading good works? The hair twisted into a single braid almost to her waist grew grey now, not the shiny black it had been on the lithe girl in the Guatemalan peasant dress Ethan brought around to meet the family. Whit moved across the room looking at her from different angles. Was that lithe girl he had liked so much still in there? Who was this stout old woman with the sad eyes demanding that he save her husband’s life? And for how long? Didn’t they say that with treatment he had maybe two years?

“Maybe Ethan thinks there is more dignity if he doesn’t hang on to a lost cause. You know, and put everybody through all that. And himself.”                          

Pat stood up. Hands on hips. Looking him straight in the eye. “Don’t talk nonsense, Whit. We are all ready and willing to go through this or anything else with him.” She paused and regarded him strangely. “That’s what families do.”                                                              

“Maybe Ethan isn’t ready and willing. Have you actually even listened to what he wants?” But he knew he could take this too far.

“I always listen. I make a particular point of listening. Yes, of course I listen. You can rest your mind on that score, but I know Ethan much, much better than you do, and I know how he gets a whim and digs his heels in.”

It was easier for Whit to concede whatever her point was. There was already too much emotion between them.                                             

“Won’t you at least go and see him, Whit? He’s your brother and you haven’t even been to see him. Talk to him. Reason with him. He’ll listen to you.”                                                   

“Of course I’ll go and see him.” Whit tried to mask his exasperation. “I wanted to from the start. You know that. I was there. . .” But he let it go. “I’ll talk to him about his plans. About his thinking.”

She locked eyes with him and started around the coffee table. Whit reached for his pipe and matches. Puffs of smoke would keep her at bay. He worked fast. But then she changed course, admiring an orchid on the table by the window.

“Still growing orchids,” she said.

“Friends give them to me. I don’t grow them.”

“You’ll talk to him then?”

“I said I would. Tell me when to come by and I’ll be there.”

“It will be better if I leave when you come. Can you bring him lunch tomorrow?”

Whit said he had to be at the studio in the morning. Saturday was often a busy day with families. He could come around mid-day.

“Can you bring him, maybe, a sub? I’ll prepare him.”

Whit put his pipe and matches away. “Just tell me what to do. I don’t expect he’ll hear a word I say.”

She hooked him with those sad, tired eyes. “He’ll listen to you.”

They decided the details and she left, and he gulped down that second glass of wine, rocking back on his heels with the impact. He marched straight to the kitchen and poured himself a third. His limit was two at most. It went fast, so he poured out the rest of the bottle and drank it while he changed into his pajamas and set the alarm clock. Falling asleep after so much wine came easily, but he woke several times in the wee hours with a sudden, urgent need to urinate.

In the morning he woke to the six a.m. alarm, like any day. He stood in the mirror naked, brushing and flossing. Showered. Shaved. The usual. Dressed for the job. Always business casual, an almost collegiate look. Button-down collar and v-neck sweater, khakis, and tassled loafers. Downstairs for toast, cottage cheese, a glass of O.J. Should eat, then brush and floss. What would retirement be like? It would break this routine, that’s for sure.

The morning stock report played as he ate. The dog ambled in. Where had he been all night? Whit filled the dish for him, changed his water, but the dog threw himself onto the braided rug, apparently uninterested. Odd.

He washed the dishes, then left the house at seven sharp. That damned Pat. He speeded in to town increasingly annoyed with himself, tearing out of his lane and bouncing dangerously over the farm road until he got to the highway. She knew, had always known, how to get under his skin. Ethan wanted out quickly. Shouldn’t they respect that?  Ethan. Always the brave one. Always the one to face the elephant in the room. Well, he’d promised to talk to Ethan, and he would. He’d try to find out how deep this refusal went.

Whit did his job now by rote. He smiled and greeted. Posed them and shot them. The cliché families wanted the cliché portraits. Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, bar mitzvahs, blended families creating shared histories. He considered it nonsense for the most part. He hadn’t always felt this way and knew he shouldn’t now either. He watched the clock and at eleven-thirty excused himself.

“Get used to it,” he told Ted, his assistant. “You are about to get a promotion.”

“Are you. . .?”

Whit nodded. “Very soon,” he answered. “I’m about ready to let them know.”

He drove to the sub shop and stood in line. Ethan took vegetarian. For the occasion, Whit did, too. They’d have something to drink at the house. Juice probably.

Ethan and Pat rented a house in a predominately student neighborhood a mile from the university. A neighborhood of apartment buildings and houses vivisected into rabbit hutches bursting with undergraduates, a neighborhood of loud music and Saturday night keggers. Whit pulled into the narrow driveway between their house and a block of apartments. He had no idea what he would, or could, say. Pat told him not to bother ringing. “Just let yourself in,” she said.

Ethan met him as he came through the kitchen door. He wore plaid pajama bottoms and a university sweatshirt three sizes too big for him. On his feet he had heavy woolen socks. They eyed each other over the cracked linoleum. Whit tried to smile warmly as he searched his brother’s face for signs of how this would go. Ethan didn’t look any more tired than he had for the last fifteen years.

“Come on into the room,” were his first words and Whit followed as Ethan led the way unsteadily to the dining table.

Whit handed him the sandwich. Ethan weighed it in his open palm and set it on the table. Whit, as if to communicate what one did with these strange things he had brought, began to unwrap his. Ethan watched but left his own sub untouched.

“Vegetarian. Mine, too.”

Ethan nodded. “You don’t ring doorbells anymore?”

“I came to see you in the hospital. But I guess I picked a bad time.”

Ethan nodded again. “Yeah.” Then, as if realizing a mistake, “Not your fault.”

“I’ve kept up with Pat’s Facebook. She seems like she’s really on top of things.”

“Sure. Like always. No surprise there.” He was nodding rhythmically, his eyes on the wrapped sub as if it held the answer to some unasked question. “You know that as well as I do,” he said.

Whit tried not to read this. He tamped down his rising anger. “I’m glad she is here for you, Ethan. I really am.”

Ethan readjusted his seat and looked away. “Yeah. Me, too. Everything has an upside.”

“So when do you start the chemo? Do they start that kind of thing right away?”

Ethan slid his sandwich six inches over on the table and then back. Playing hockey with it. “I’m sure Pat told you,” he said. “They were going to start last week, but I decided not to.” He shot the sandwich between his hands a couple more times, then leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, studying Whit’s face for a reaction. “I’m pretty sure she would have told you that, too.”

Whit’s face surrendered. “You got me there, brother.” He smiled sincerely. “You always were the truth-teller.”

“And you always played the angles.”

What difference did it make? He had always been the one playing the angles. Still was. He couldn’t look at his brother. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered.

Ethan began sliding his sandwich back and forth again. “Neither do I,” he said.

“So you are just going to. . .”

“Let nature take its course? Yes, I am.”

A huge lump filled Whit’s throat. Tears began pooling in the corners of his eyes. He rocked back and forth almost imperceptibly as he stared down at his uneaten sub. “May I ask why?”

Ethan tilted his head, thinking. “I’m going to die,” he said. He spoke calmly. “I can have maybe a little time to do some things around here I haven’t gotten to, maybe do a little hiking to a favorite place or two. Not be sick from chemo. A little good time before I fall apart, and then. . .Who knows?”

They sat there looking at each other without speaking until Whit pointed to Ethan’s sub and said, “Well, you better eat up then. Keep up your strength.” He was hungry. They ate their subs in silence.

About the time he needed to think seriously of getting back to the studio, Whit remembered to ask how they had discovered the problem in the first place.

“I started losing my balance,” Ethan answered. He performed a little dizzy dance in his seat for emphasis. “Then I fell down the stairs.” He laughed darkly, waving the incident away. “But I didn’t fall very far. It didn’t amount to a pile of fly shit, but Pat was right there.” He gave another short, spasmodic laugh. “I fell right at her feet. She knew right away it was the dizziness, wouldn’t take no for an answer. We drove straight to the ER.”

Whit knew Ethan— the fire eater—Ethan would answer any question about his illness. If Whit hadn’t gotten so drunk the night before, he might have had the brights to go on line and research this cancer. Then he might have had a clue of what to ask about the expected course of the disease. He felt an odd sense of shame. He wasn’t sure about what. “So how do you feel now?” he asked.

“Now? They say my headaches will get worse. The balance thing, too.”

Whit preferred not to think about any of that. “Good lord,” he whispered as if to himself. Then, “What are you going to do?” He wished he hadn’t asked. He’d only said it for something to say. Silence would be awful. But he knew Ethan would have an answer, and he knew Ethan would be delighted to gleefully spell out all the horrors that awaited him, happy in the knowledge that every detail would be torture to Whit.

“What will I do?” he smiled and sat up straighter. “Probably fall down the stairs some more. Lose my marbles and become an even more pathetic blithering idiot than those other blithering idiots I’ve been making fun of all these years. Shit my pants. Suck my thumb. Wet the bed. What the fuck do you think I’ll do?” He was just getting started.

“But you could avoid all that, right? Get the treatment. Fight it, right?”

“They gave me a death sentence, Whittels. Today, tomorrow, ten months from now, this thing will eat my brain and kill me. What’s the point?” He shook his head in disgust. “People come around here to talk me into doing the whole rigmarole. Pat sends them, I’m pretty sure. You, too. She’s gotten to you, too. They say, ‘Your family, all your friends, we all want you around just as long as we can have you.’ They think it sounds so nice, like I should do this for them—stick around because they want me to, like I should do it for them and be grateful. Well, frankly, I’m not so sure it’s not really about their fears, like they are afraid if they don’t urge me to hope for a miracle they might feel guilty later after I’m dead. Ron Sheffler had this very same cancer, remember? I know you weren’t close to him, but you remember. He had this very same cancer and he fought it. Did the whole damned thing and lasted all of one year, miserable the whole time. And what did people say? ‘He was a fighter. He was such a fighter!’ Is that why I’m supposed to do this, so people can say, ‘That Ethan Woolsey sure was a fighter’? Yeah, and he left his wife with a medical bill she’ll never be able to pay off because of our wonderful health care system! And these same idiots think Obama's plans are going to ruin that best of all possible health care systems. Oh, me; oh, my! Socialism! We can't have that! The fucking nitwits.”

Ethan’s angry, suspicious reasoning always irritated and bewildered Whit, but this last thought touched him. He did remember Ron Sheffler and his bankrupt widow. His mind shifted to his own retirement. He could sell his property. Would that even cover the medical bills? And Ethan would die anyway. Pat would still have nothing, and they couldn’t very well sell a rented house. He figured it was about time to leave. He stood up like an opening accordion, both hands flat on the table, a half-committed standing.

“Well,” he said. “I hope you keep an open mind.” He was about to say it hadn’t been so long since the diagnosis, that some of the shock would likely wear off, but Ethan cut him off before he could start.

“Open mind, my left tit!” He stood, too, wobbly but fully committed to the act. “In no time at all I won’t have a mind! Don’t talk puke. Pretty sounding puke!”

Whit nodded that he got it.

“You don’t have to come around here trying to make me feel better.” Shorter than Whit, Ethan pulled himself to full height, his chest out as he yanked on his pajama's waist band. “I can do this. I know what I will eventually have to do.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I know what it’s going to take.”

Whit felt his shoulders start to slump and fought the impulse. This wasn’t the time for Ethan to be proving his manhood yet again. “You’ll have help,” was all he said.

Ethan laughed at that and they said goodbye with a nod. “Stop by again,” Ethan called from the open door, “if you’re ever in the neighborhood.”

Once he’d turned the first corner, Whit pulled to the curb and took out his cell phone. He let the studio know he wouldn’t be coming back in. They knew about Ethan’s diagnosis and he let them draw whatever conclusion they liked. He drove home and went straight upstairs. In the walk-in closet, he undressed and put on jeans and a worn flannel shirt. The air outside had turned to a chilly drizzle, so he slipped into a fleece pullover. He intended to go ahead with how he wanted to spend his afternoon.

Downstairs, he put on a baseball cap and his heavy walking shoes. “Come on, Mudman,” he mumbled to the dog and headed out the back door. They crossed the creek on the 1-by-8 plank he’d dropped across the narrow, rocky spot below the Adirondack. The state land rose gradually through some nice older growth. He took the incline at a diagonal, enjoying shuffling through the crunchy leaves. He didn’t mind stopping now and again for the dog, who had always been kind of pokey anyway. They climbed until they reached the fire road, probably cut there by the CCC in the Thirties, and then followed that to the short path over the top of the ridge to the rock outcropping on the other side. Whit loved looking out over the miles and miles of state forest from there. A wide valley spread out below him to the southeast. He’d hiked into that valley since he was a boy and still didn’t know it. No cabins there. Few trails. From the rock he sat on, he could make out the blueberry bog. This first valley climbed to the next ridge. Behind that, seven more ridges faded to blue.

“We are two lucky old dogs,” he said.  Fortunate in his calling, too, though it had never been the life of an artist he once imagined it would be. Just pose ‘em, point, and click. It’s what people wanted. Recordings of important family moments, but meeting their demands did much more than pay the bills, bought him this life so close to what he had always loved. In fact, made him more than well off, given his bachelorhood and the important fact that he had been an excellent steward of his share of the small inheritance his parents left their two sons. He couldn’t have had this, he felt sure, if he’d had a family. Was there anything more selfish than a confirmed bachelor?

But put that thought aside. He sat with his back against a boulder, rubbing the dog’s neck. What about Ethan’s kids, scattered now all over the country? Were they involved? He shouldn’t judge them.

A chicken hawk circled far below. Maybe he’d take up camera hunting. Do the whole stakeout thing. Possibly even film. Nothing commercial. Just do it for himself. Retirement could be a beautiful time. Once again Ethan’s situation peeked around the corner of his consciousness. Actually, he probably had enough money to make a difference for his brother. Selling all this—because Whit always considered that these state lands somehow belonged to or were an extension of his property—selling all this would not be necessary. He had substantial investments. He’d gotten out before the dot com bubble burst and then let compound interest do its work. The most powerful force in the universe, Einstein called it. He could help his brother enjoy however much time they could give him. And there were programs. Research programs. Grants. All that stuff had to be out there.

Maybe then Ethan and Pat would see the good in how he had lived, in the choices he made, that it wasn’t all selfishness. Well, the old saying came back to him: Lucky in money, unlucky in love; lucky in love, unlucky in money. That about described it.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He leaned sideways and dug it out. The face lit up with Pat’s name. An expected call.

“I can tell you didn’t make much effort,” she began instead of saying hello. “What did you do, just eat your subs and talk about football?”

“I told you I’d go and listen to what he had to say. That’s what I did.”

The chicken hawk circling below had been joined by two of its friends.

“I wish you cared a little more, Whit.”

“But I do.” He felt for her. She loved Ethan and anybody who loved Ethan with the intensity she did also had to believe in miracles. And lost causes: The poor would be justly treated some day; Ethan would some day see more light than darkness. Whit guided the dog’s head to his lap and stroked his belly with his free hand. “He seems especially concerned with money, Pat. He can’t bear the thought of leaving you with a mountain of debt. I think he figures if he dies quickly, it’ll have less impact financially.”

She whispered into the phone. “You really do have to love that man.”

Whit’s throat closed. “Yeah,” he finally managed to croak. He swallowed, not exactly sure how to say what he wanted to say. “I can definitely help you in that department. If you’ll allow me.”

He didn’t expect her to exactly jump at the suggestion before accepting it, but her silence went on much longer than he thought necessary. A beat or two out of politeness. A longer pause might have conveyed shock, as she gathered her thoughts and assembled them into sentences, but this pause-plus-pause, with the tasting, swallowing noises in the background, was something different.  “After everything,” she began, “you are suddenly offering money? Wow. Salving a guilty conscience, atoning for your many sins. Has the news of our family’s tragedy inspired you to prepare your soul—such as it is—for Heaven?”

Guilty conscience? For what? He used to eat buckets of this sort of bait. “Ethan seemed worried about the financial end of this. I am perfectly ready and willing to supplement your insurance or any aid you manage to arrange.” He tried to end with a light step in his voice. “It’s very simple actually.”

“You mean that you have so much and we have so little.”

Keep the touch light. “It means Ethan is my brother and I have always cared what happened to him.”

Pat harrumphed.

Her bitterness belonged to her. He didn’t know where it really came from. This would have been a fine time for her to put it aside. “The last thing we need is to be indebted to you, Whit.”

“You wouldn’t be. It would be a gift. Freely given. Nobody would owe me a penny.” When the time came, she’d take the money. Ethan might be another matter. Ethan, the stubborn, the unpredictable. “We don’t have to even talk about it,” Whit said into the phone as if speaking to himself. “Just know it’s there when you need it.” He looked out over the miles of state forest. The buzzards circled below. He imagined himself lost in that forest, wandering in circles searching for someone. Even the dog had caught some of the ugliness and moved away. Whit searched his mind for a way out of this call.

“I’ll talk to Ethan about it,” she said, the whole affair settled in her voice. “I’ll bring him around.” He knew she had already begun flicking the beads of her mental abacus.

After they’d hung up, he sat with restless enervation against the rock. Atonement? He couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t trust his sincerity, which is why she’d taken the we’re-sealing-the-deal tone at the end. Maybe she’d been after an offer just like this from the start and couldn’t believe her luck. She chose to see the worst in him and was peeved when he proved her wrong. And not for the first time, either.

But these thoughts didn’t belong in this place. He’d once told friends he wanted his ashes scattered here. How could he re-purify the place so it wasn’t haunted by this?

“Well, Dr. Mudd,” he turned to the dog as he got to his feet, “you and I should take the long way home and then consider our options.”

Which options he didn’t say, or think even. Retirement? Family philanthropy? Dinner? Solitude? Sobriety? No. Probably not sobriety. Not yet. He had the book group later, where he always drank a whiskey. He could unfreeze a steak for dinner, maybe invite Josie Johnson over to help him eat it after the discussion. Like any smart single person, he took care to plan social time. The refuge of home could quickly become solitary confinement if he didn’t.

He led the dog along the crest trail until it began dropping toward the high fields of the farm to the north of his place. Mudflap seemed rejuvenated and trotted ahead, no sign of a limp today. Some of this was not state land but belonged to his neighbor, who Whit felt certain had torn down the boundary signs to blur his property line into the state’s. Whit ambled along behind the dog until they reached the plowed field. From there they turned toward home. The ground was soft with spring thaw and his feet sank and slipped in places. But this was the life he had always loved, the life of their boyhoods. Other men might want a retirement of golfing Vegas or Myrtle Beach courses—or beach umbrellas and margaritas—but why would he ever leave his place? He didn’t need much, never had. That was the irony really. He had so much because he had always needed so little.

They followed the creek from where it came off the mountain. A hundred yards on into the woods, he stopped and drank at a spring that fed into a little swamp before draining into the creek. A rock enclosure defined the spring. A plaque honoring the Civilian Conservation Corps gave the year, 1938. The late afternoon light slanted through the trees. He cupped his hands and sipped the cold water, then splashed his face in the pool. He figured, making the choices he had made, that he would likely die alone. The mudman would be long gone by then. Would it be selfish to start with a new dog? Who could be trusted to look after it after he was gone?

But this had become morbid. Retirement needn’t mean death. Poor Ethan never even got to retire. Some would say, “From what?” Well, Whit understood that not everybody succeeds.

The house was in sight.

 The spring peepers in the swamp lit up the silence. “There is no such thing as silence,” he said out loud as he crossed the creek to his property.

He climbed the bank and sat in the Adirondack, knees hugged to chin, listening, as a slight wind caressed his cheek. It wouldn’t be long now. He’d skip book club. Spring would come, already had begun, indifferent to our personal seasons. Things would change with Ethan, either for the worse or, temporarily, the better. Whit would retire, then, eventually, it would be his turn. We all get one. The air cooled with the lengthening shadows. He listened to the creek fold itself over the rocks.