Read Online Return to Oakpine by Ron Carlson - Free Book Online

room with some pride. He sat on the edge of the bed. There was only the faint smell of paint, almost pleasant. She turned on the lamp and showed him his bureau and the table where a television would go. She turned the light in the bathroom on and off, and she showed him the bathroom. He was burning with the day now, his body glowing with pain. It hurt to cry, so he sat still while his mother helped him with his shoes. Her hands at his feet sent him back to some ancient morning, and he thought he heard her say, “Now the other foot.” The ghostly sound pushed Jimmy over, and he lay back and was asleep.
    His dreams were like no other, not even the cinematic nightmares he’d toured when his partner Daniel had died. He was gathering everything he owned and putting it back in the basement of this, his childhood home. There were his baby toys and the two framed movie posters he and Daniel had had on their apartment wall in SoHo. It was an unending inventory, and no one was helping him. He saw some friends he didn’t recognize at the house, and he saw his parents upstairs. They were young. But when he’d return with more stuff, these people weren’t helping. Some of the things he’d brought back were gone again. It was hard work, and as he wandered through the dream, everything he saw was something of his, his responsibility. He marveled that he could carry such huge loads. His high school chemistry book, the bicycles, a tassel from the rearview mirror of his first car, an oatmeal box full of watches, a shell necklace, folded shirts, his guitar, his cowboy boots, a large glass stein from Germany, his journals, a wooden cigarette box, a ceramic clock from his kitchen in New York, and a fabulous kitsch rooster that Daniel had given him to remind him of his ranch-town home. Gathering the items was a kind of pleasure, but leaving them was worry. Every time he returned, more were missing. Maybe someone was taking them, but there was a chance they were just floating away.
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    The September rain moved steadily into Oakpine. It rained all week on and off, not all unpleasant, the stoic little town sensing the first real shift in the weather. The football team practiced in the old gym, running patterns in tennis shoes. These were always goofy sessions in the strange tight space under the yellow lights, the footballs careening off the walls, and the hours seemed rehearsals for some bombastic drama. Coach Nunley put in a new series of parallel passes that were aimed at his son Wade, who had showed he could move and catch the ball. Wade was to start downfield and, after five yards, cut parallel to the line of scrimmage as the other receivers streamed long.
    At the museum, Marci had her hands full with the wet weather. In refurbishing the old station, they had never fixed an adequate loading dock. They used it only a dozen times a year, but on rainy days they had to move the crated paintings briskly into the building or cover them first. She had to be there every minute with a towel over each shoulder.
    Downtown Frank Gunderson used the rain to find the two leaks in the Antlers roof he’d ignored all summer. They’d been too busy getting the little brewery on line. The one leak was easy in the front bar, dripping down the old light fixture, but the other that sent a rivulet of water wandering down the side wall was trickier. He stood on the roof of the old building in the rain in his old black cowboy hat holding a yellow crayon. He’d already swept the gravel off the one spot and circled the tear in the tarpaper. But along the side he swept but couldn’t find it. He swept again, his shirt already soaked. He hadn’t planned on being up here that long. Nothing. When he circled the three seams, he found the one that wasn’t sealed and put an X in that circle. When he stood, he felt the old hot ache where he’d broken his leg, and he looked out over the