Another Excerpt from RIGHT HERE

© Peter Grudin

The next morning he slept right through the dawn. He opened his eyes to a sun well up in the south, just to the left of the big mountain. He took an apprehensive inventory of what was likely to hurt the most before he gathered the courage to sit up, his back aching, and to swing his legs over the side of the bed. It was hard to raise his right arm above the shoulder but the pain there was quickly upstaged by the pain in his knees as he began to put weight on them.

Through the window he saw the lawn spread out beneath him, just recovering from winter. Then he identified what it was that has waked him. It was the sound of a motor. A rusty lawn tractor emerged from behind the copse of birch. The engine coughed and wheezed, coughed and then caught again, and the mower hawked a clump of clippings from its side. Atop the rickety machine slouched a portly figure, his red hair thinning, his skin freckled by the sun. He wore sunglasses, a torn flannel shirt, patched jeans, and bright yellow rubber boots. Hector pulled on his own jeans and boots, and a moth-eaten sweater, and hurried down the stairs and through the house and out the back door.

“Kean!” The machine and its occupant, so alike in their states of rust and dirt and baldness and general ramshackleness as to seem one, struck Hector as a kind of mechanized centaur.

Kean dismounted from the machine. He squinted in the sun and then ambled cautiously towards Hector, his jeans frozen in a snapshot of precipitous plunge, maintaining a precarious but somehow adequate purchase on the middle of where his hips should have been. Looking at him for the first time in so long, Hector was momentarily denied the filter of the customary and had to marvel at this vision.

“Is it you?” sobbed Kean. The old man could not elude his bearlike embrace, the short thick arms reaching up to wrap around his neck. He reeked of cigarettes and vodka. His voice broke with emotion and drunkenness.

But the old man was not repelled, and sentiment took possession of him too if only for a moment. “I never thought I’d see this place again. They had me locked up down there, and I figured I was as good as dead.” he allowed himself to say this just as he has allowed the embrace and he patted the other man’s back. Then, recovering, the old man backed up and freed himself, with the result that the other, surprised, and so suddenly bereft of support, toppled face-down on the muddy earth.

“I am happy to see you!” he mumbled into the dirt. Then delayed in realizing his posture he pulled himself up “Can I have a bath? I swear I haven’t been in the house once since you are gone. I tried to keep the grounds up. I put that padlock on the barn for ya. Have the key here somewhere.” and he began to rummage in his various pockets.

It was like a clown at a circus. Out of one pocket came a crushed and partially decayed sandwich of some sort, some loose change, a bandana. Out of the other, to Kean’s surprise as he stared at them as much as to Hector’s, a handful of foil-wrapped condoms, spawn of some unusually optimistic hour, no doubt. But no keys.

“Wait,” said Kean. He stumbled back toward the barn, pulled an old metal step-ladder off a hook on the wall, opened it, and climbed up until he was at the very top of the swaying rusted thing, with Hector moving forward protectively but with little hope of breaking his fall.

“There!” he yelled, reaching to the top of the door frame, and then tossing down a keychain. He swayed triumphantly, his arm almost gracefully extended above his head, before losing his balance. But he somehow translated the plunge into a nimble descent by the happy grab at the crossbeam of the door.

“Let’s see if the truck will start,” shouted Kean as he careened towards the driver’s side door.

“I’ll drive.” said Hector.