Robert Reed - The Sleeping Woman

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2024-11-23 0 0 31.73KB 11 页 5.9玖币

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ROBERT REED

THE SLEEPING WOMAN

YOU BRING PEOPLE BY. YOU invite family, friends. Whoever you can rope in. The

two-dollar tour begins by admitting that there's an enormous amount of work to

be done, and then you skate right into your plans for the place. For the

future. This is where you'll pour the foundation, up here on this high ground.

With hand gestures and lines cut "in the dirt, you position your front door

and kitchen, and over here, on the downhill side, your bedroom windows will

stand better than thirty feet above what's now brown brome and wind-beaten

cedars. You've got a view up here; everyone can see that much for themselves.

This is a quarter section of old pasture laid out along the river bottoms. You

bought these bluffs for next to nothing. With the bank's help, of course.

Because you have to work for a living, these tours usually happen after

nightfall. Your guests have to trust you when you describe the machine shed

and long graveled drive and the perennial beds planted with tough natives that

won't quit on you with the first hundred and five degree day. You talk about

the dream house that you've just about sewn up -- a hundred-year-old farmhouse

twelve miles south of your future front door -- and all it's going to take is

a truck and trailer of suitable size, and a hired specialist to lug the house

along some twenty miles of back roads, plus the assorted governmental

clearances and the lifting of a couple or three power lines. But all that's

nothing. That's just the easiest part of the work. Because your dream house

needs a new roof and plumbing, and wiring, and replastering and paint, and

more paint, and probably new windows and insulation and whatever else the two

of you haven't had the courage to imagine yet.

You are two people, but you've been a functioning unit for what feels like

forever. You went to the same one-room schoolhouse as five-year-olds. You grew

up playing hide-and-seek and dodge ball together. You first fell in love at

the consolidated school, in eighth grade. Then came that ten-month stretch in

high school where love failed, and the only compelling emotion that you shared

was a deep, perfect hatred for each other. Looking back, you can't remember

what the fight was about, or even if there was a genuine fight. What matters

is the day when she got stood up by her bitch- mother. It was after school,

after band practice, and he saw her standing in the parking lot, her face

quiet and tight and a little too focused to notice him. He drove off, down the

highway and into the Gas 'N Shop, telling himself that he was dry and needed a

Mountain Dew. But he didn't park. He watched himself turn around and head back

up to the school. Winnie was easy to see, what with the cars all gone. What

with her standing in the middle of the new white concrete, looking betrayed.

Her mother was a drunk, and worse, and Jake knew more stories than anyone.

Maybe that was why he drove back. He knew Winnie too well to abandon her,

however much she pissed him off. But would she take a ride from him? He pulled

up slowly, and he made sure to give her a warm strong look. No smile, and

nothing that could be confused for pity. Then with a flat voice, he said, "Get

in," and reached across the front seat, popping open the passenger door. She

came around and shoved her clarinet case into the back seat, and then she was

inside, closing the door hard, breathing hard and sitting with her hands in

her lap and her face tight and sad, and he said, "Where do you want to go?"

They were sixteen. He couldn't remember when he'd last spoken to her. "I'll

take you home," he offered. But then she gave him a long look, and quietly,

Winnie said, "No." She looked straight ahead, saying, "Let's just go for a

drive."

They're in their mid-thirties now. They were married ten days after graduating

from high school, and their twentieth anniversary is bearing down on them.

It's been a durable, wild business, this marriage. No children, and there

can't be any. But there's talk about adopting once they get their house up and

running. Jake has gotten a little heavy in the middle and in his face. But

Winnie still has her looks. Rust-colored hair and smooth clear skin that never

tans and eyes too green to seem real. She has the kind of face and figure that

would make the most trusting husband crazy, watching other men watch her. But

Jake isn't that tolerant, and he's had his troubles. Out and out wars. There's

a tidy scar over his right eye, but the asshole that gave it to him has got at

least four of his own. Worse, Jake has fought with Winnie over her wardrobe.

Her walk. Everything. She likes being pretty, and she says it's for him, but

somehow that doesn't feel like enough of a reason, since she's already got him

sewn up and helpless. Why does a person need black underwear to buy groceries?

That's what their last fight was about. Her black bra and panties. In the

middle of the fight, she yanked off the offending bra and then drove to the

store that way. Then she came home laughing, telling Jake how she couldn't get

up the courage to climb out of the truck and jiggle her way down the aisles,

every old woman and sixteen-year-old boy giving her their best stare.

They're two absolutely different people, except for what's the same. Winnie

thinks about kitchen gardens and kitchen countertops and the fine shades of

house paint. Where Jake thinks about the big things -- the foundation and the

house moving and who he knows who will dig them a new well at a fair price. He

has his own business moving earth and driving dump trucks, and ever since she

quit her nine-to-five at the bank, Winnie's worked for him. With him. Jake

knows machinery better than she does, but not much better. And better than

anyone else alive, he can judge volumes and weights. How many loads will it

take to do the job? He can tell his customers exactly, without a calculator or

even pencil and paper. How he does the trick is a mystery. Jake doesn't easily

see what happens inside his own head. Sometimes it's Winnie who tells him,

"You're worried about bills." Or whatever is wrong. She almost sees his

thoughts, telling him, "You're pissed at your dad, aren't you?" And sure

enough, he is. It's almost as if he can't plumb his own feelings until she

points the way. Which used to be strange. And then it was halfway reassuring.

And now, after thirty years of being wrapped up with each other, it's

something that he accepts without second thoughts. That's Winnie. She's knows

his mind like Jake knows earth-moving, and in those rare moments of

self-reflection, he realizes that most couples never reach that sense of

belonging.

The quarter section and dream house are everything to them. Six days of work

means that there's Sunday and seven nights where they can do what they want,

provided that they can stay awake. To save travel time, they live on their new

land. Jake brought in a third-hand trailer, setting it up in a little valley

near a long-abandoned farmstead. The original house was burned up ages ago,

but there's a shallow well and a working hand pump, and up the slope is a root

cellar where they can store their overflow possessions -- things that belong

in damp, dark basements. It's a clear March day when Jake takes off early from

a job, driving up to the county seat to see about the latest batch permits.

It's paperwork and bullshit, and he wishes that he didn't have to go. But

Winnie, home nursing a cold, promises him dinner, and she's a fine cook.

Better than Jake by miles. And things go pretty well in town. The first person

that he talks to actually knows things, and by the third person, everything's

been taken care of. It's all set. He drops by the Gas 'N Shop for a cold Dew,

and he gets Winnie her Diet Coke, and then he's back on the road, driving just

a hair over the legal limit until he's off the highway, then taking the

graveled roads too fast. The pickup's rear end gets a little crazy, and he

makes himself slow down. He drives nice and easy, thinking about nothing

consciously, then realizing that he's thinking about work again. They've had a

dry, warm winter, which means there's been no shortage of paying work. It's

put them behind schedule on the acreage, but there's plenty of money in the

bank. Which is different. Which is fine. He smiles as he turns down the long

rutted road, bouncing past the tall No Trespassing sign that marks the start

of their land, and now he's thinking that he needs a half-day to dump gravel

and flatten their driveway to where it can hold up a huge old house riding on

a long trailer.

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Robert Reed - The Sleeping Woman

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