“Mothballs,” the man said. He rubbed a cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe. “Shove them down the tunnels and wait.”
Nelson shook his head. “No poison. Dogs might dig it up.”
The man scratched his head, looked at his cold cigarette butt. “Flooding them out can work, kind of a Noah's Ark trick. Or this.” He walked over to a display and lifted a pair of bright plastic daisies, pinwheels made to spin on wire posts. “You stick âem in the ground and the wind makes them turn. Supposed to drive the moles crazy. Doesn't look to me like it'd work worth a damn. Some things are just hard to kill.”
Nelson nodded, picked up one of the daisies, and turned it with his finger. The salesman left for a minute then returned, handed Nelson a plastic-wrapped package.
“Here's the latest thing,” he said. “Snake.” He opened the package and unfurled a six-foot section of vinyl, one end with a plastic valve like a beach ball. The snake was brown and gold, patterned to look like a copperhead. The salesman blew, red-faced, inflating the snake to a puffy
S
.
He closed the valve and handed the snake to Nelson. “If we can't drive them crazy, we'll give them heart attacks.”
Nelson turned it over in his hands. It smelled like a shower curtain. “This works?”
“I don't know if it works. Snakes are natural enemies of most rodents, most birds. Couldn't hurt, I figure.”
Nelson left the store with half a dozen of the daisies and the snake, the air let out of it. He drove to Mary Alice's house, placed the windmills around the weedy yard, and with loops of baling wire from the truck anchored the snake to the packed dirt beneath the tree. With every other step the earth caved in and he fell ankle deep into the mole tunnels. He finished his work, looked at the strange sproutings around him, the bright, over-large flowers motionless without a breeze. The Chihuahuas edged up to the snake and sniffed it, ran in a circle then sniffed some more.
“You mutts better watch out,” he said to them. “You're dealing with a natural enemy.” He edged under the oak and looked up at the dark patches of mistletoe, the tiny white berries. His hand smoothed along the trunk and slid up the first branch. He gripped it, pulled until his arms began to shake. It had been too long since he'd tried to climb trees. But he could get it. One way or another he could bring the mistletoe down and hold it in his hands and carry with him all its poison and promise of quick death. A parasite, feeding off the fear of a disease named for some long-dead baseball player. The whole thing was strange, this chain of connections that wound somehow around and through Nelson. He looked up, tossed a rock at the mistletoe, watched it bounce in the parking lot of the car wash next door. What he would give Myra for her party, he decided, was the refusal to help her die. To hold in his hands the leaves and white berries and to
not
give it, make a show of not giving it, of not poisoning her, of not letting her take herself from this life.
He stepped onto the porch and knocked on the door.
“Ma'am?” he shouted through the door. “I think I took care of your moles.” He bent to peer inside. “Mary Alice?” He saw only her shadow moving along the kitchen wall, sliding up it dark and liquid, heard the squeak and bang of kitchen cabinets, the rasp of her shuffle, the thin clang of stove pans.
After lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and descriptions of a vacuum extender and a full-page magnifier, he drove to the Laundromat. There he found Myra sitting in a plastic chair next to a magazine rack and crying. Around her scattered everywhere on the floor were dimes and quarters, change for the machines which she'd spilled from her apron pocket. Nelson bent to help pick them up, along with a woman in a sweatsuit and gold bracelets, and Earl, the small boy with the doll. Earl kept filling his hands, dumping the money back into Myra's apron.
“Look at these,” Myra said to Nelson, flexing her hands. “Just useless.” They quivered as she tried to bunch them into fists. Her short hair shifted color in the light. Nelson found the last of her dimes and gave it to Earl. The Laundromat was decorated for tomorrow's party, which she had decided to have there instead of her tiny apartment. This had always been more her home anyway, she said. The walls rippled with hanging strips of crepe paper, the ceiling fans with plastic champagne glasses suspended from fish line. Along the back wall a large banner read BON VOYAGEin bright red letters surrounded by drawings of confetti and noise makers. Two of Myra's friends stood on step ladders, hanging a poster:
25 REASONS TO EMBRACE YOUR JOY OF BLESSING.
They smiled at each other as they worked, spoke in quiet voices under the hum of washers and dryers. Reason six was, “The Earth Is Your Path to Expanding Illumination.”
Myra kept quietly crying, hands held in her lap as if someone had dropped them there. Nelson knelt and took her hands in his. Earl stood beside her chair, patting her on the shoulder.
“Do you see now that you have to let the doctors help you?” Nelson said. “They have medicine to make you feel better. The interferon treatment. They said they can stabilize the disease.”
She shook her head. “Just listen to yourself, Nelson.
Stabilize
my disease. My dis-ease. No thanks.” She stood, wiped her face, smoothed her slacks out along her thighs, jingled the coins in her apron. She looked around at the decorations. “Are you coming to my party tomorrow?”
“Yes, I am.”
Her face, suddenly alive, turned up at him. “And my mistletoe?”
“Are you really going to use that, when the time comes?” This was their phrase, the way they had of talking around it. At first, Myra had always referred to it as her “rebirth,” and made jokes about becoming a born again, or about coming back as one of her own double-load machines. Finally Nelson had asked her to stop making jokes.
“My midwife thinks it's a good choice. We're still negotiating this. I don't want any method that anyone is going to have to clean up.”
“For godsakes, Myra.” Nelson shook his head, looked away from her. The women were hanging a big photo of a sunset beside the 25 Reasons poster. Reason seventeen was, “You Are the Master of Your Own Ascension.”
“Get me the mistletoe, Nelson, and maybe I won't strike you from the will.” She put her hand on the back of his wrist, tiny tremors carried inside her fingers. “It would mean something to me. I don't plan on falling into a lot of weepy sentiment about this. I don't have the energy, or the time. But you should know, it will mean something to me.”
“You want my blessing. You want me to just let you take yourself out when you might have years left. When you could be stabilized.” Behind the Coke machine was a small door to the basement incinerator, long unused. He saw himself opening the door, tossing the clump of mistletoe down the dark chute as the women stood watching him, silent, champagne glasses in their hands. He felt for a moment the weight of meanness in what he would do, along with the twin weight of seriousness. Let them know that death is not a party, that loss is not an occasion for fun, that the heft of life could not be contained in some goddamn feel-good poster. He was doing them all a favor.
“Okay,” he said. “I will get it. If Earl here is any good at climbing trees.”
Earl looked up at him, the pink doll in his hand, the Rusty's Liquors key chain still looped around its neck. “I can,” he said. “Just let me up that tree.”
“Let's go, then,” Nelson said. He touched Earl on the shoulder.
“Nelson, it's getting dark out, and he needs to ask his grandma anyway.” Brenda was at the front of the store, working the counter.
“Well, ask her, then, and we'll go first thing tomorrow, soon as you open up here.” Earl nodded and ran off to ask. Myra let a handful of coins rain through her fingers and into her pocket, a nervous habit she'd never let go, a souvenir of her old life.
“Party starts at one,” she said. “And you wear something bright. You show up wearing some old dark suit and a black armband, I won't let you in the door.”
“I'll wear a Hawaiian shirt, Myra. I'll wave bye-bye if it makes you happy.”
By early the next morning, Myra had filled the sorting table at the back of the store with her own old stuff, boxed and gift wrapped. Roxie was there already, too, had left that morning wearing a bright sundress. She'd brought with her salsa and guacamole, and was busying herself in the back, setting out paper cups and napkins. Nelson pulled Earl away from the smells of champagne punch and cake, toward his truck in the parking lot. Right away, Earl began asking every question he could think of, wondering if he could try driving, if the truck could do a wheelie, what it was that Nelson had stacked in the back of the truck.
“I know something you'd like,” Nelson said. He jumped up into the bed and patted his hand against one of the tanks of helium he had to deliver to Pizza Palace, the top of the tank painted to look like a clown. Nelson turned the nozzle and let the cold gas blow inside his mouth, sucking down mouthfuls of it.
“Rady to climb that tree, Earl?” Nelson said in a high, Donald Duck voice. Earl only looked at Nelson and blinked.
“How did you do that?” He looked a little bit afraid.
“Helium,” Nelson said, his voice normal again.” It's an old trick.”
In the cab of the truck, Earl opened the glove compartment and pushed his doll inside, dug around under the seats for bottle caps and spare change, and would not stop asking questions. Soon enough they pulled up in front of Mary Alice's house and Nelson set the brake.
“This is the place, and that's the tree,” Nelson said. “Think you can handle it?”
“I climbed bigger trees when I was a baby.” He pulled his doll from the glove box and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. Nelson headed to the front door to tell Mary Alice that they would be climbing her tree. Across the yard his boots broke through into the tunnels, the weeds caving with each step. Stapled to the door was a second notice to condemn, this one bigger, the names and dates all filled in with ink. He knocked, heard her movements inside, cupped his hands against the glass. He saw nothing but stacks of newspapers, a box of grocery store fire logs. Behind him, he heard crying.
Earl had climbed up about twelve feet and gotten stuck in the lower branches of the oak, afraid to move up or jump down. Nelson walked toward him, stepping into holes, turning his ankles. The Chihuahuas lay sleeping at the base of the tree. Beside them was the vinyl snake, flattened and full of tiny bite marks. It was late morning, the sun high above them, the shadow of the tree narrow and dark green. The plastic daisies slowly turned in a faint breeze. The party would start in an hour, and he imagined them already opening their presents, smiling and kissing Myra as she gave away little bits of her life. Earl sat on one branch, clutching the other above him, his doll on the ground, in the roots of the tree where he had dropped it. The first cluster of mistletoe was at least forty feet above him, impossible to reach.
“Come down out of there,” Nelson said.
“I can't,” he said. His glasses had slid down his nose, and he let go just long enough to push them up.
“Sure, and I'll catch you. We'll see about your doll.”
Nelson heard the screen door squeak and turned to see Mary Alice step onto the porch. She grabbed the bottom of the condemn notice and pulled on it, leaning back and shaking until the cardboard tore loose of the staples. She wore a man's suit-coat over her dress, and held the condemn notice to her chest like a girl carrying schoolbooks.
“You get that boy out of that tree,” she yelled, her voice watery. “Before he breaks his neck.”
“I think she means it, son,” Nelson said.
Without another word, Earl turned and slid backward out of the tree, and Nelson caught him under the arms. Nelson told him to wait in the truck, then walked over to Mary Alice.
“Did you come about those moles?” she asked him. “My daughter-in-law hates me.”
For godsake
, Nelson thought, and closed his eyes a moment. This is what it came to. You live your life the best way you can, and this is what's waiting for you at the end.
“Ma'am? I have to tell you, I think those moles are here to stay.”
Her mouth worked noiselessly, as if searching out words. Nelson turned to leave. He didn't know what else to do. As he moved across the yard, the dirt gave way again and he stumbled, tore his pants and his knee on the rocky ground.
“God
dammit
,” he said. He walked around the back of the house, found a pile of rusting tools next to the water meter, and dug through until he found a shovel with a broken handle. He carried it to the front, jabbed the blade in the ground, and levered his weight against it, spading up the tunnels. His hands shook as he dug, his breath escaping in wet bursts. Again and again, he stuck the shovel into the dirt until he unearthed a nest of moles, white and shrunken, writhing on the blade. He stopped, his breath ragged. They were no larger than his thumb, hairless, their eyes tiny slits. He watched them move, blind and so narrowly alive. He dumped them onto the hard ground, put the blade against the first one, and severed it in two. He killed another, then another, as a tiny pool spread across the dirt.
“You gonna mash âem all?” Earl spoke, standing suddenly in front of Nelson, watching him. Nelson leaned on the shovel and looked across the wide expanse of yard, the network of tunnels. There would be hundreds of them, thousands, more. Tiny and white and blind, filling the ground under Mary Alice's house. He looked around. Mary Alice ignored them now, and sat on the porch bench tearing strips off the condemn notice and stuffing them into her ruined shoes.
He let his breathing settle down. “I guess I'm not,” he said. He lifted the remaining moles, watched as they tried to burrow into the blade, then turned his wrist so that they fell back into the hole. Just as he began scooping dirt back into the hole, Earl dropped his doll down the tunnel.