Read Online Problems with People by David Guterson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Guterson
Ads: Link
“Go on, get out of here. Vamoose!”
For a half-second he gleaned, in the boy’s face, disappointment. But then, this kid was going to get over it quickly. He was obviously indefatigable, irrepressible, and intrepid; he was young, optimistic, and a budding entrepreneur who’d recover his confidence and equilibrium. A wonderfully handsome kid, in his way, with skin as perfect as his hair; he had the whole package, he was going places, at least by Nepal’s standards. But right now, transparently, he was covering a wound, trying to conceal it from an American who could, for his part, tell what the kid was thinking. He was thinking he didn’t deserve this dismissal. He was thinking this American was angry with him. But the American in question wasn’t angry at all; it was more that he no longer had patience for the shoe-box insistence. He had things to do; he had to get moving. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not buying you a shoe box.” Then he dug out his wallet and showed the boy a thousand rupees. “But here’s a start,” he added.
Without waiting for a response, he put the money in the boy’s hand, then wheeled away quickly and, without looking back, went on toward the hospital.
His ex-wife was watching the strike on television—on the television he’d rented for her, the day he’d arrived, without asking her or saying a word about it: a television as his unspokengift—and sweating beneath a large ceiling fan. She looked better than she had the afternoon before—less peaked, yellow, black-and-blue, but not less glazed by pain meds. Despite everything—the green hospital gown, the swollen cheeks, the greasy hair, and the gauze taped over one ear—she still looked good to him, and he was still attracted to her style and manner: to her attitude, he supposed was how to put it, or to her ambience, maybe. To the feeling she communicated. To whatever it was that had brought him to her in the first place, when they were both just twenty-three. Here she was in her ravaged condition, trashed and battered, bruised, stitched, and trussed, and he still felt the same tone and tenor of attraction. Soon after they’d met, they’d become caretakers on a tree farm; mornings, there was frost on the inside of their cabin windows, and as a result, they’d alternated—one morning, he would get the fire going in the woodstove before jumping back in bed to wait with her for the temperature to rise, and the next morning, it was her turn to light the fire. It hadn’t mattered, to him, whose morning it was, and he still felt the same at Patan Hospital.
His ex-wife had been thrown from a car—had passed through its windshield as the engine was crushed—but fortunately she’d been hurtling upward when she’d hit the bus; otherwise, she’d told him, she’d be dead. Not that she remembered her fortuitous angle—it was, rather, that a doctor had explained all this to her, as a conjecture based on the nature of her injuries. The same doctor who’d put twenty screws through her pelvis after she’d been airlifted to Patan from the east, where she’d gone to cover the Maoist insurgency out ofjournalistic curiosity. Did people in the east support the Maoists, or were they just intimidated enough to go along with the comprehensive strikes, called by Maoists, that so regularly brought this country to a halt? How did they feel there? What was their take on things? A strike had been called for—the one that was on now—and she’d been trying to get ahead of it with reporting from remote locations. Then—bam.
What did the Maoists want? he asked her. Why were they striking? And, while they were on this subject, wasn’t the term “Maoist” anachronistic? His ex-wife said that the Maoists would operate under a different name if the response of the West was important to them, but the response of the West was not important. What their leaders wanted was for the prime minister to step down, because he’d failed to call a vote
For a half-second he gleaned, in the boy’s face, disappointment. But then, this kid was going to get over it quickly. He was obviously indefatigable, irrepressible, and intrepid; he was young, optimistic, and a budding entrepreneur who’d recover his confidence and equilibrium. A wonderfully handsome kid, in his way, with skin as perfect as his hair; he had the whole package, he was going places, at least by Nepal’s standards. But right now, transparently, he was covering a wound, trying to conceal it from an American who could, for his part, tell what the kid was thinking. He was thinking he didn’t deserve this dismissal. He was thinking this American was angry with him. But the American in question wasn’t angry at all; it was more that he no longer had patience for the shoe-box insistence. He had things to do; he had to get moving. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not buying you a shoe box.” Then he dug out his wallet and showed the boy a thousand rupees. “But here’s a start,” he added.
Without waiting for a response, he put the money in the boy’s hand, then wheeled away quickly and, without looking back, went on toward the hospital.
His ex-wife was watching the strike on television—on the television he’d rented for her, the day he’d arrived, without asking her or saying a word about it: a television as his unspokengift—and sweating beneath a large ceiling fan. She looked better than she had the afternoon before—less peaked, yellow, black-and-blue, but not less glazed by pain meds. Despite everything—the green hospital gown, the swollen cheeks, the greasy hair, and the gauze taped over one ear—she still looked good to him, and he was still attracted to her style and manner: to her attitude, he supposed was how to put it, or to her ambience, maybe. To the feeling she communicated. To whatever it was that had brought him to her in the first place, when they were both just twenty-three. Here she was in her ravaged condition, trashed and battered, bruised, stitched, and trussed, and he still felt the same tone and tenor of attraction. Soon after they’d met, they’d become caretakers on a tree farm; mornings, there was frost on the inside of their cabin windows, and as a result, they’d alternated—one morning, he would get the fire going in the woodstove before jumping back in bed to wait with her for the temperature to rise, and the next morning, it was her turn to light the fire. It hadn’t mattered, to him, whose morning it was, and he still felt the same at Patan Hospital.
His ex-wife had been thrown from a car—had passed through its windshield as the engine was crushed—but fortunately she’d been hurtling upward when she’d hit the bus; otherwise, she’d told him, she’d be dead. Not that she remembered her fortuitous angle—it was, rather, that a doctor had explained all this to her, as a conjecture based on the nature of her injuries. The same doctor who’d put twenty screws through her pelvis after she’d been airlifted to Patan from the east, where she’d gone to cover the Maoist insurgency out ofjournalistic curiosity. Did people in the east support the Maoists, or were they just intimidated enough to go along with the comprehensive strikes, called by Maoists, that so regularly brought this country to a halt? How did they feel there? What was their take on things? A strike had been called for—the one that was on now—and she’d been trying to get ahead of it with reporting from remote locations. Then—bam.
What did the Maoists want? he asked her. Why were they striking? And, while they were on this subject, wasn’t the term “Maoist” anachronistic? His ex-wife said that the Maoists would operate under a different name if the response of the West was important to them, but the response of the West was not important. What their leaders wanted was for the prime minister to step down, because he’d failed to call a vote
Similar Books
