The Infinite Tides (18 page)

“Yes,” he said.

“USAF?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s this guy’s story?”

“Long night.”

“I can see that. What’s the plan then?”

“Plan is to get him home.”

“How are we gonna do that?”

“Still working on it.” He looked up at Campbell. The old man’s eyes were wide, his cane held in his grip more like a weapon than a walking aid.

The woman who had entered Starbucks earlier with her children now poked her head out of the door. “Excuse me,” she said.

“Just one moment,” the second barista said.

“How much longer?” the woman said.

“One moment, ma’am,” Audrey said.

The other barista rolled her eyes and the woman disappeared back through the door.

“Go inside,” Keith said.

The second barista looked at him as if to confirm the order was meant for her and then exhaled loudly. “I don’t see why
I
have to,” she said.

Keith continued to look at her and a moment later she turned and did as he had asked.

It was quiet then, the three of them surrounding Peter on the sidewalk in the ever-increasing heat of the morning. “I’m going to need to bring my car closer,” Keith said and both Audrey and George Campbell nodded in unison.

He stepped out to the parking lot and slid behind the wheel of the rental car. Through the windshield the three of them were a comical group: George Campbell and Audrey looking expectant under the green awning and flanking the slumbering Ukrainian as if unlikely bodyguards. He put the car in reverse and backed up to the sidewalk so that the passenger door opened directly in front of Peter’s slumbering form. Then he exited the car again and returned to stand beside the inert body.

“Think you can give me a hand with this?” Keith said.

“I may be old but I’m not crippled,” Campbell said. “What say I lift some and you pull?”

“He’s heavy,” Keith said.

“I have no doubt of that,” Campbell said. He moved behind Peter’s chair and hooked the cane handle around an adjacent chair and slung his hands under Peter’s arms. “It didn’t occur to me this morning that by oh-eight-hundred I’d have my hands shoved into another man’s armpits,” Campbell said.

Audrey giggled. More customers had begun to arrive, each eyeing them as they passed, but Audrey remained where she was on the sidewalk in front of the store.

Campbell strained briefly against Peter’s armpits and then quit. “OK, so that didn’t work so well.”

“Grab an arm,” Keith said. “We’ll pull him up.” Then, more loudly: “Peter, we’re going to put you in the car.” Then, quietly again: “Give him a push, Audrey,” and Audrey put her hands on Peter’s shoulders and the three of them managed to push and pull him at least partially to his feet, a tottering configuration of muscle and bone, his head lolling about in a kind of bewilderment, eyes half open and then drifting closed again. He mumbled something that might have been a question, his voice a slur of vowels and elongated consonants: English or Ukrainian or some other language entirely.

A short journey punctuated by a dozen declarations of shit and whoa and hold on and finally they tipped him into the small passenger seat of the rental car. Not a car made for such a situation as this but they managed to fold and press him into it as if stuffing a series of springs into a box slightly too small to hold them all.

“Now how are you gonna get him out of there?” Campbell said.

“I’m not sure. He lives over by me. Maybe some of the neighbors will help.”

“I’d better follow you in my truck,” Campbell said.

Keith nearly told him that this further act of kindness was not necessary, but then he also knew that he could not get Peter to his front door in this state, not by himself. “OK,” he said. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Damn right it is. I’m a busy man. I have the whole day scheduled
to sit here on my bony ass and listen to Frank Poole bullshit about the good old days. Let’s get out of here before that old windbag shows up.”

“I thought you two were best friends,” Audrey said.

“Friends of necessity, sweetheart. We’re the two oldest people alive. We’re like ancient moths both trying to fly toward the light at the same time and we got tangled up in each other’s bullshit on the way.”

“You’re so funny,” Audrey said.

“Don’t I know it. I’m a regular comedian,” Campbell said. “Let’s get out of here, Corcoran.”

Keith closed the passenger door and swung around to the driver’s seat and they pulled out of the parking lot. Peter snored loudly from the passenger seat, his knee partially blocking the gearshift so that Keith had to push it out of the way every time a gear change was necessary. He realized that he had not even managed to get a cup of coffee. Nonetheless, the activity had cleared his head and the sense of immediate purpose had driven away the brooding guilt of his morning. In the rearview mirror was Campbell’s blue pickup truck, the U.S. Navy Retired cap upon the old man’s head and a look of purpose and determination on his face.

They turned into the housing development and Keith pulled the driver’s license out of his shirt pocket and looked at it and then compared it to the nearest home that passed. Kovalenko. He looked at the card again. Kovalenko. There were no trees or shrubs tall enough to obscure the home numbers, each one a black sign moving by in even increments on nearly identical earth-toned homes: 3438, 3440, 3442, and finally 3444. He pulled his car to a stop at the curb and then changed his mind and backed up a few feet and pulled into the driveway. Campbell’s truck stopped in front of the house, the door swinging open and Campbell himself emerging, the cane clicking on the concrete, his movements as quick and fluid as a teenager’s.

“Let’s see if anyone’s home,” Keith said.

Campbell nodded and Keith approached the front door. It opened before he was able to knock. “Mrs. Kovalenko?” he said.

She was about his age, perhaps slightly younger, with skin the color of paper and black hair curling in at her shoulders as if to frame her pale shining face and dark almond-shaped eyes. “Yes?” she said.

“I have Peter in the car,” he said.

She looked at him, confused.

“He’s pretty drunk. He was passed out and I brought him back here.” His own head remained fuzzy and in this moment between exertions he felt weak and exhausted.

“Oh,” she said. It was more an involuntary sound than a statement or question. She looked confused and for a moment Keith wondered if she understood English. Then she stepped outside. Behind her, a child’s voice said, “Mama?” and she said something in Ukrainian in the tone of a mother trying to quiet a worried child.

She moved past him to the car, her eyes on the window. When she passed Campbell he said, “Good morning, ma’am,” and she looked at him briefly and without expression and then went to the passenger door and opened it carefully. Peter lolled back against the seat. “Petruso,” she said. She leaned in close to him and touched his face. “Petruso,” she said again. Peter mumbled something incomprehensible in response, his head rolling back and forth until she lay her hand upon his sweating brow and stilled it and then stood there for a long while, staring at him, and even from where he stood Keith could hear her softly whispering: “Shhh.”

When her husband had calmed she stepped back from the car to where Keith stood at the edge of the concrete walkway. “Thank you from bringing him home,” she said. As soon as the last syllable had been spoken she turned toward her husband again.

“It’s not a problem,” he said. He waited for her to say something else but there were tears in her dark-lashed eyes and no further words came. “We should bring him in,” he said at last.

She leaned toward her husband. “Petruso,” she said again. She paused and then said something in Ukrainian, a whisper.

Peter did not move at all. The only sign that he was alive was the sound of breath rushing into and out of his body.

“We’ll get him,” Keith said.

“Best clear a path for us,” Campbell said from his station by the truck. “He’s as heavy as a load of bricks.”

Peter’s wife stepped away from them. She had closed the front door to the house when she had stepped outside but now it was open again and two children peered out from the shadows. She said something that Keith could not understand and both children disappeared into the house and she walked to the doorway and then turned toward Keith again. She looked like a war bride awaiting news of her returning husband, something from an old black-and-white film, beautiful and fragile and somehow resigned to the situation, a thin, elegant woman who stared out at them with her eyes curved slightly into a kind of desperate sadness. Keith wondered if Petruso Kovalenko often appeared in this condition and if she had grown accustomed to her husband’s wrecked body being dumped back into her home.

“Let’s do this,” he said.

He grasped Peter by the arms and together he and Campbell heaved the man onto his feet. Peter seemed somewhat more awake, for when they tipped him forward his legs actually took some of the weight, feet moving in jerking, stumbling steps even though his eyes remained closed and his head rolled back and forth against his chest.

They managed to get him through the doorway and into the house as far as the sofa, where they lowered him as gently as his weight would allow. All the while, Peter’s wife stood nearby with her fingers against trembling lips. Peter himself did not stir. Keith stood over the body. “Well, that’s it then,” Campbell said. “Safely home.”

“I am sorry,” Mrs. Kovalenko said. It was the voice not of an angry wife but of a frightened child. “He does not … he has never …”

“It’s no problem,” Keith said.

“Where you found him?” she said. She moved to the sofa and sat
on the arm and leaned over to stroke her husband’s forehead with her fingertips.

Keith paused before answering. “He was at the coffeeshop up the street. His car is still there.”

“You are his friend?” she said.

“Neighbor,” he said. “I live right over there.” He gestured over his shoulder in the general direction of the cul-de-sac.

“Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth. “You are astronaut.”

Keith smiled uneasily and waited for her to continue and when she did not he said, simply: “Yes.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Then she said, “Thank you both from bringing him home.”

“For, you mean,” Campbell said. “
For
bringing him home.”

“Yes,
for
bringing him home. Thank you,” she said. “My English is not so good as Peter’s.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“You are good friend to him,” she said.

Keith did not say anything in response to this, instead looking up at Campbell and nodding. The two of them turned toward the door in unison. On the stairs, the children peered at them as they passed, their eyes wide and emotionless. When he and Campbell reached the door, Keith could hear them scurry into the living room, their mother’s voice attempting to quiet their questions in hushed syllables. Then the door closed.

Audrey confirmed what they already knew: that Peter’s car was the filthy sedan parked at a diagonal in front of Starbucks. They found the keys in the ignition and took a second trip to the house, an activity that was at the behest of Campbell, who considered the job incomplete without the delivery of the car. Keith was not opposed to the “mission,” as Campbell had deemed it, but he wondered how far they would go to help this man that Keith knew only in passing and
Campbell knew not at all. Still, it appeared that neither he nor the old man had any other more pressing plans and the task gave them both a sense of purpose and accomplishment. The world had been askew and so they had endeavored to set it aright once more.

Keith drove Peter’s car, a vehicle incongruously clean and tidy in its interior and which knocked and banged when the engine was running and emitted clouds of black smoke whenever he pressed the gas pedal. Peter’s telescope was on the floor of the passenger side, leaning up against the edge of the seat pad and extending almost to the backrest. He had only seen it slung over Peter’s shoulder in the darkness but now he saw that it was a scuffed and dented white tube with silver duct tape wrapped around its midsection as if it had split open at some point and no better solution could be found for its repair.

Campbell drove him back to the coffeeshop in the blue pickup truck and talked incessantly about his time in the U.S. Navy, a topic that Campbell seemed to feel was something they shared even though Keith’s time in the service was forgettable. It had been a stepping-stone to NASA and he had spent his time there in an engineering office working on projects involving weapons systems and power usage and he could think of no way to make this a topic of conversation Campbell would understand or be interested in and so he said nothing. His daughter had been a beautiful little girl there. Once they had gone for ice cream together. Her tiny hand enveloped in his own. That was what Ohio was for him now.

When they reached the Starbucks parking lot again he thanked the old man, half expecting him to salute in response, and then entered and asked Audrey for a cup of water and a coffee. He drank the water greedily. The activity of returning Peter to his home had dissipated much of his nausea and indeed his head had begun to feel clear and awake again, although he was incredibly thirsty. Audrey asked him various questions about their delivery of Peter and he answered them but there was not much to say. Yes, he had gotten home safely. Yes, all would be well again. The excitement was over.

He thought about driving home but then wondered what he would do in that empty shell and so he drove across the parking lot to the first of many megastores and there selected a small dining room table that came in a cardboard box, and a chair, similarly in pieces, managing to fit both boxes in the trunk. When he arrived home he brought them into the silent, plastic-wrapped kitchen and sat on the floor and assembled the parts with the disposable tools that came packaged within. It was likely that his own tools were outside in the garage but he still had not crossed into that space. Maybe he would sell the house without ever having opened that door. A collection of screws and bolts on the kitchen floor, the shapes vicious and curved like miniature weapons.