The Times Are Never So Bad Read Online Free Page B

can’t even think about death, at least not your own; or about any of the other petty crap you have to deal with just to have a good day; you end up with two or three minutes of cold water, and by the time you’re drying off, the pump is easing down into a relaxed state that almost feels like muscle fatigue but it isn’t: it’s what you lifted all that iron for, and it’ll take you like a stream does a trout, cool and easy the rest of the day.
    I’ve lost that now: in the shower I see Polly walking around town smiling at people, talking to them on this warm dry August day. I don’t let myself think anymore about her under or on top of or whatever and however with Vinnie DeLuca. I went through that place already, and I’m not going back there again. I can forget the past. Mom still grieves for Kingsley, but I don’t. Instead of remembering him the way he was all those years, I think of him now, like he’s forever twenty years old out there in the pines around the lake, out there on the water, and in it; Alex and I took all his stuff out of here and gave it to his wife and Mom. What I can’t forget is right now. I can’t forget that Polly’s walking around happy, breathing today into her body. And not thinking about me. Or, if she does, she’s still happy, she’s still got her day, and she’s draining mine like the water running out of the tub. So lately after my workout I stand in the shower and change the pictures; then I take a sandwich and the beer cooler out to the wharf and look at the pictures some more; I do this into the night, and I’ve stopped fishing or whatever I was doing in the boat. Instead of looking at pictures of Polly happy, I’ve been looking at Polly scared shitless, Polly fucked up, Polly paying. It’s rime to do some more terrorizing.
    So today when the sun is going down I phone Alex. The lake is in a good-sized woods, and the trees are old and tall; the sun is behind them long before the sky loses its light and color, and turns the lake black. The house faces west and, from that shore, shadows are coming out onto the water. But the rest of it is blue, and so is the sky above the trees. I drink a beer at the phone and look out the screen window at the lake.
    â€˜Is she still living with Steve?’ I say to Alex. A month ago he came out here for a few beers and told me he heard she’d moved out of her folks’ house, into Steve Buckland’s place.
    â€˜Far as I know,’ Alex says.
    â€˜So when’s he heading north?’
    Steve is the biggest man I know, and he has never worked out; he’s also the strongest man I know, and it’s lucky for a lot of people he is also the most laid back and cheerful man I know, even when he’s managed to put away enough booze to get drunk, which is a lot for a man his size. I’ve never seen him in a fight, and if he ever was in one, I know I would’ve heard about it, because guys would talk about that for a long time; but I’ve seen him break up a few when he’s tending bar down to Timmy’s, and I’ve seen him come out from the bar at closing time when a lot of the guys are cocked and don’t want to leave, and he herds them right out the door like sheep. He has a huge belly that doesn’t fool anybody into throwing a punch at him, and he moves fast. Also, we’re not good friends, I only know him from the bar, but I like him, he’s a good man, and I do not want to fuck over his life with my problem; besides, the word is that Polly is just staying with him till he goes north, but they’re not fucking, then she’ll sublet his place (he lives on a lake too; Alex is right about New England) while he stays in a cabin he and some guys have in New Hampshire, and after hunting season he’ll ski, and he won’t come back till late spring. Alex says he’s leaving after Labor Day weekend. I have nothing against Steve,