Read Online Ernie's Ark by Monica Wood - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Monica Wood
Tags: United States, Fiction, Literary, General, Travel, Short Stories, Short Stories (Single Author), Northeast, new england, Community Life, Abbott Falls, Social Interaction
Ads: Link
turning, no other arms they could bear but each other’s, and they made themselves right again, they did, just the two of them.
“Hold me, Ernie,” she says now, lifting her arms just as she did then. He does. He holds her.
The Temperature of Desire
Dan Little, electrician
On the afternoon in question, we had been on strike for nine months and counting. It was around four-thirty, snow in the air. I was on my way to get a burger with my dog, Junie, feeling dull and thickened, burdened by what my little brother and I had come to. Under the darkening sky, the mill looked like a ruined picnic, a sorry brick blanket at the deep center of the valley. Main Street showed signs of wear: a missing letter at Dave’s Diner, and at Showers of Flowers, which is owned by my cheerful ex-wife, the storefront featured nothing but a few carnations headed for the top of some lucky bastard’s cut-rate casket. Beyond that was the long green arch of Porter Bridge, the river running low beneath it. I was seized by an urge to stop the car, pitch my clothes, and hurl myself over the guardrail.
Why not? I asked myself. I’m a divorced man with no kids; my ex-wife is married to an eggheaded cadaver who welds scrap metal into giant pretzels and calls it art; my little brother who once adored me hates my guts. The rocks are bare this time of year, I’ll be dead before I know I’m drowning, my sister will take care of the dog.
You get this way. You get to thinking God’s got a sticker next to your name. But it’s strange, the things that hold us to theearth. Just as I was thinking I could really do it, the water churned up what looked like a lost plank, painted red, maybe six inches wide and about a foot long—part of a front step, maybe, or a kid’s wagon. And I thought of this guy I’d met, a pipefitter who’d gone a little over the bend. He was building an ark next to his house over on Randall. An ark. As in Noah. The flood. Animals two by two.
Ernie Whitten, his name was. Ernie was a story I’d come upon by accident, a story I thought Timmy might help me figure out. So I turned left instead of right at the bridge, praying that my little brother hadn’t already left for good.
We used to be a close family. Barbecues and birthday parties, lots of bad jokes and belly-laughing, everybody’s kids marching in and out of all the kitchens. Excepting Timmy’s place on West Main, you could pitch a penny from any one of our doorsteps to another. Then Timmy crossed the picket line, and we went all odd and squirrelly. Elaine and her husband, Bing, wouldn’t let him near the kids. Our aunt Lucy fed him a couple nights a week but sent him home early. Sonny lit candles at St. Anne’s. Roy, the oldest, who busted his hump in the wood room for twenty-five years, don’t even ask. And our dad: let’s just say he was probably seizing in his coffin.
Timmy crossed about four months into it, after people had gotten fierce and unpredictable. By then the networks had descended with their lights-camera-action, panning across each shift change, where an army of so-called replacement workers streamed in and out with a police escort like they were visiting royalty and not the mercenary soul-crushing scabs from Georgia that they actually were. Local 20, our union, and the UPIU, thenational union, had a lawsuit pending, but you wouldn’t catch any of us holding our breath. There’d been some long, violent, failed paper strikes back in the eighties that were supposed to teach us once and for all who we were messing with. But we weren’t taking clues this time, we were giving them out.
CNN sent this Barbie doll in a khaki jacket who kept referring to us as America’s backbone, which actually flattered certain people, like Roy and Bing for example, who stood next to her in these brand-new denim workshirts. Roy and Bing tend to dress like schoolteachers when they’re not working, cotton shirts and chinos, and Roy usually looks kind of hapless, big
“Hold me, Ernie,” she says now, lifting her arms just as she did then. He does. He holds her.
The Temperature of Desire
Dan Little, electrician
On the afternoon in question, we had been on strike for nine months and counting. It was around four-thirty, snow in the air. I was on my way to get a burger with my dog, Junie, feeling dull and thickened, burdened by what my little brother and I had come to. Under the darkening sky, the mill looked like a ruined picnic, a sorry brick blanket at the deep center of the valley. Main Street showed signs of wear: a missing letter at Dave’s Diner, and at Showers of Flowers, which is owned by my cheerful ex-wife, the storefront featured nothing but a few carnations headed for the top of some lucky bastard’s cut-rate casket. Beyond that was the long green arch of Porter Bridge, the river running low beneath it. I was seized by an urge to stop the car, pitch my clothes, and hurl myself over the guardrail.
Why not? I asked myself. I’m a divorced man with no kids; my ex-wife is married to an eggheaded cadaver who welds scrap metal into giant pretzels and calls it art; my little brother who once adored me hates my guts. The rocks are bare this time of year, I’ll be dead before I know I’m drowning, my sister will take care of the dog.
You get this way. You get to thinking God’s got a sticker next to your name. But it’s strange, the things that hold us to theearth. Just as I was thinking I could really do it, the water churned up what looked like a lost plank, painted red, maybe six inches wide and about a foot long—part of a front step, maybe, or a kid’s wagon. And I thought of this guy I’d met, a pipefitter who’d gone a little over the bend. He was building an ark next to his house over on Randall. An ark. As in Noah. The flood. Animals two by two.
Ernie Whitten, his name was. Ernie was a story I’d come upon by accident, a story I thought Timmy might help me figure out. So I turned left instead of right at the bridge, praying that my little brother hadn’t already left for good.
We used to be a close family. Barbecues and birthday parties, lots of bad jokes and belly-laughing, everybody’s kids marching in and out of all the kitchens. Excepting Timmy’s place on West Main, you could pitch a penny from any one of our doorsteps to another. Then Timmy crossed the picket line, and we went all odd and squirrelly. Elaine and her husband, Bing, wouldn’t let him near the kids. Our aunt Lucy fed him a couple nights a week but sent him home early. Sonny lit candles at St. Anne’s. Roy, the oldest, who busted his hump in the wood room for twenty-five years, don’t even ask. And our dad: let’s just say he was probably seizing in his coffin.
Timmy crossed about four months into it, after people had gotten fierce and unpredictable. By then the networks had descended with their lights-camera-action, panning across each shift change, where an army of so-called replacement workers streamed in and out with a police escort like they were visiting royalty and not the mercenary soul-crushing scabs from Georgia that they actually were. Local 20, our union, and the UPIU, thenational union, had a lawsuit pending, but you wouldn’t catch any of us holding our breath. There’d been some long, violent, failed paper strikes back in the eighties that were supposed to teach us once and for all who we were messing with. But we weren’t taking clues this time, we were giving them out.
CNN sent this Barbie doll in a khaki jacket who kept referring to us as America’s backbone, which actually flattered certain people, like Roy and Bing for example, who stood next to her in these brand-new denim workshirts. Roy and Bing tend to dress like schoolteachers when they’re not working, cotton shirts and chinos, and Roy usually looks kind of hapless, big
Similar Books
