Filling a Hole by Jeffrey N. Johnson (originally published in Potomac Review) |
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Tinnie Payne sat on his only surviving kitchen chair, a mission style relic, whittling a piece of maple into a stone-lined hole in the ground where his house once stood. His spotted hands worked the knife unconsciously, shucking little curls of wood toward the stone chimney ruin on the other side of the hole. With the help of a new cane, he rose and squinted down the hill. A pickup truck cast a plume of dust as it pulled onto the property. He felt the pockets of his overalls for his watch, fingering nails, pieces of wire, and other oddments ready for unexpected jobs that might require such things. The truck bounced up the hill, shaking its driver like a pea in a can, and came to a rest by Tinnie’s weed-smothered sidewalk. Tinnie walked over, thumping his cane on the ground with one hand and waving his pocket knife up and down in the other. “I tell you to go slow, an’ I tell you, an’ I tell you. God dammit. That’s why it’s so rutted, is you gunnin’ your damn truck up it like a loose bull.” “Sorry, Mr. Payne,” the young driver said. “I’ll keep it down next time.” “You’ll keep it down or you’ll keep it off. I’m too old to be digging up my driveway. You’re late. Get on up around here. Woods waiting for you.” Tinnie guided the truck with hollers and hands waving, around the old house foundation and up the hill to where leaning trees looked over the ridge. “Back her up, now. Back her up,” he called, using his cane to guide. “Whoa! I said, whoa, God dammit!” With a rip of the emergency brake the driver jumped out of the cab and pulled on his gloves. “Only got time for a half cord today, Mr. Payne. I’ll be back next week for the other half.” “Now, maybe I just won’t be here next week. Maybe I got other things I got to get done.” “You’re here every day,” he said, heaving the first split piece of oak into the bed with a hollow metal clang. The wood was well seasoned, split and abandoned on the ridge three years before. “I’m here every day of my own choosing, but I don’t give no guarantees I’ll be here the next time. You won’t be getting no wood with my gate locked up, now will you?” “Well, I guess not. I’ll tell you what. You tell me when you’ll be here and I’ll accommodate you.” Tinnie was ready to argue, but pondered the man’s concession. He removed his hat and thought hard, scratching behind his ear as though he had found a small lump of clay. “A week from today. I’ll be here a week from today.” “Great, so will I.” “Now hold on, I didn’t say what time. You said you’d accommodate me.” After a pause, Tinnie decreed, “Noon. You be here at noon, and I’m not waiting next time.” “That’ll be fine.” The man started chucking firewood into the truck bed like spent artillery shells. Tinnie supervised for a time, then pivoted on his cane and turned his sunken eyes to the bulk of his estate. Beyond, he could see the entire valley being slowly consumed. Houses mushroomed on the south end, where his neighbor’s cattle once grazed. To the east the forest had been clear-cut for timber and replaced by bands of asphalt awaiting driveways. The west was still virgin and worried. He reached for his tin and plucked a wad for his cheek. That’ll be fine indeed, Tinnie thought. If he were my son, I’d a raised him better. He don’t understand none at all. He just don’t get the things that’s got to get done. Got fence that needs mending. Get that fence mended and I can get down to the auction. Black Angus’ll look good out there next winter. Gotta shovel out the barn stalls; get them ready. That loading ramp is looking to need work too. Tinnie reviewed his checklist twice as the truck filled behind him. The hollow foundation in the center of his property was like a black hole, sucking in his ideas. The young man topped off his truck, then handed Tinnie a sweat tipped check for the cord. “You sure have a nice spread here, Mr. Payne. If you ever think of selling part of it, I’d be interested.” For a moment, Tinnie thought he could still see the outline of his house. “No. No, I’m not lookin’ to sell. Now why would I want to sell? I already got enough of them hot shots in their shiny cars makin’ offers.” “Well, I just thought I’d ask. I’m not pushing. You’re not looking to rebuild your house, are you?” “I just might,” he imagined aloud. “I just might at that.” “Well, if you decide otherwise I’d appreciate it if you’d look me up. Remember, I’m not looking to plant a bunch of houses in your field.” The man started back to his truck. “Next week at noon, right?” “Yes, that’s right,” Tinnie responded impatiently. “Next week at noon.” “Give my regards to Mrs. Payne for me,” he said as he opened the cab door. “How’s she doing these days?” “Nurses almost got her out of bed once this week,” Tinnie’s voice cracked. “Joints are just all crippled up.” “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Payne. I really am.” “She’ll walk again soon enough. You’ll see. They got them some new sort of therapy they’s fixin’ to do.” “With all that going on I’m surprised you still make it out here every day. You been doing okay yourself now, haven’t you?” “I’m doing just fine, and I don’t need no damn nurses. They’re there for Millie. They take care of her just fine, and they leave me alone, which is also just fine. They’s just a nuisance to me, and I’m no help to them,” he said, with a finger in his mouth rearranging his chew. “Too much for me to do here, anyhow,” he added. “Well, some of us in town worry about you.” “You just mind yourselves. There’s already enough worry to go around.” The man climbed into his truck and idled down the hill. “Don’t be late next time,” Tinnie called to him. “And you pay care to my driveway.” Tinnie stepped down the familiar trail from the woodpile to the remains of his house, and found himself back in his kitchen chair, pondering a new piece of wood he didn’t remember picking up. Could try getting that old International Harvester running, he considered. South fields prime. Damn baler is probably rusted. Never did sell the last bales anyhow. He began slicing little ribbons of wood into his hole and eyed the bales of hay, abandoned three years now, half exposed in a warped lean-to shed. Still winded from the walk, he wiped the sweat from his face. Too hot anyhow, he thought. Best do it in the morning, when it’s cool. The shadow of the house cast a darkness over Tinnie. Millie and her pain were fresh on his mind, thanks to the well intentioned man who bought his wood. Well, he thought, I took care of it, that I did. She won’t be breaking no more bones on my account. No more creaking floors to worry about. With tired hands, he folded up his knife and briefly admired his stick before tossing it into the cellar. He hobbled to his rust brown ’63 Galaxy, rolled it gently down the driveway, and motored a half hour to the assisted living home, a brick shoe box with windows. He and Millie and her bad joints lived there with a hundred other variously ailing elderly. “You get much done today?” Millie slurred, groggy from her daily pain killers. “Yes, I did. Sold two cords of wood today,” he said, emptying his pockets into a tray on the dresser. “You still swingin’ that ax at your age. Lordy me.” Millie’s bed was bent into a shallow “v”, and she asked to be straightened out. She had lost her control. “I’ll get it. I’ll get it. Where would you be if I wasn’t here to get you out of these fixes? You been folded in half all day?” “I don’t remember. No. Not all day. I don’t know.” Tinnie found the control, fumbled with the buttons and the bed hummed itself flat. Millie phased in and out and seemed to be in another place. “You get much done today?” she asked. “Yes, Millie, I got plenty done today.” After several minutes Millie broke the silence. “You ever get them steps fixed? I won’t go back in that house until you get them steps fixed.” “I’m taking care of them. That’s not for you to worry about.” “You get them steps fixed, Tinnie, why, we can go on home again. It can be like it was. It’s been so long.” Tinnie sat on the edge of his bed, facing away from her into the antiseptic walls. “Yes, it has been.” His hands, not knowing what to do, rubbed themselves, plowing furrows of loose skin back and forth. “I’ll work on them tomorrow.” The next morning was too hot to get the old tractor started. Tinnie planted himself back in his chair, pulled out his knife and began slicing strips of bark off a shaft of dried poplar. He stared into the old foundation as though staring at a ghost. The steps that had needed fixing weighed on his mind. All her good cooking, he rationalized. She was gaining so much weight back then, that was part of the problem. He had visions of Millie through the years in all her shapes and sizes, but he couldn’t be trusted to remember how big she was at the time of her accident. Three years prior she was actually thinning and growing frail, but her plump version best suited Tinnie’s reasoning. Millie’s violent fall cast the first shadow over Tinnie. The worst part was that she had warned him. He had even felt the spring in the stair himself, but figured if he hadn’t broken it then it wasn’t to be worried about. Besides, he thought, I had more pressing jobs to get done, and no end to her list of things to do. Her always hounding me, always having to fix this or that. I can only do so much, he would argue. If she’d borne me a child things might have been different. But I’m just one man. Can’t very well be at the barn and the house at the same time, now can I? Tinnie had been on the sunny side of the house, standing on a kitchen chair, slopping on a coat of whitewash. Recently split wood was scattered on the hill waiting to be stacked, and the smell of fresh cut hay tickled the air. Then came the entangled crash and scream. Tinnie thought he could see the house shudder under his paintbrush. Millie had gone straight through the stairway, a load of laundry in her arms, and landed in a heap in the cellar. With both ankles broken, her right knee cap shattered and hip dislocated, she lay motionless and breathing heavily. Blood flowed from dirty cuts torn by nails and splinters of wood. The doctors offered little promise. The surgeon who performed the operations explained the extent of the damage and made delicate references to her advanced age. A second doctor told him Millie would probably never walk again. They passed him off to a kindly nurse who gave him shiny pamphlets, referring him to several nursing homes and state support programs. Tinnie Payne went home that day and stood in front of his worn house, its white washed clapboards peeling away. Built with his own hands over a half a century before, it held his life and memories, and it all seemed over. He went to his shed and found the heavy chain he used on uncooperative trees. The old Harvester backfired to a start. He drove to the corner of the house that had already been leaning for a decade and pushed. It went easy, with an impressive crack and several windows shattering. A push from the second corner slid the first floor joists off the foundation, and a portion of the house crashed into the cellar. Tinnie brought his ladder and chained the top of the chimney. On the third pull the cap of the stonework smashed through the roof, taking out the ridge and imploding the house. The remaining side walls leaned inward and buckled. The Harvester slid each off the foundation into the enclosing stone walls of the cellar. The little two story farmhouse was reduced to a one story pyre. Over and over, echoing in his mind, “God damn you!” He marched to his lean-to, grabbed a gas can, tossing the funnel aside, and shook fluid over the fallen walls, all the way around the wreckage. It trickled over glass shards and jagged boards, flowed around bits of the past, and finally dripped into the cellar. He didn’t remember lighting the match. He found himself kneeling on his cold stone sidewalk, his hat thrown to one side near the overturned kitchen chair. Pamphlets scattered on the ground near his car. Tinnie beat his land with his giant fists as small things fell out of his pockets into the grass. From the valley floor several new neighbors saw the familiar little white frame house tumble into itself. After several seconds the sound reached them like a prolonged shotgun blast, like a life falling in on itself. “He must have finally sold out,” one woman commented, as flames engulfed the ruin. “Developers don’t waste any time, do they?” Tinnie whittled his day away, his cane by his side, thinking of all the work that needed to be done. His ancient stone sidewalk needed weeding, and he figured he should do something about getting rid of those old bales of hay, with the south field coming along as it was. But he couldn’t bring himself to move from his throne. Little shards of wood went flying free and settled in the ash and weed of the burnt-out cellar. With tight deep eyes no one could see, he kept watch over his vanishing kingdom, ruling by necessity, slowly filling his hole, chip by chip. |