Читать книгу Standpipe - David Hardin - Страница 21

THIRTEEN

I knock for a minute or two, listen, knock again. Long minutes later, I hear muffled stirring upstairs. A large woman finally appears, flushed from the effort of having descended the stairs, instantly rendering petulant my impatience. She says she’s recovering from hip surgery and hasn’t had a delivery in over a week. She needs ten cases. We stack them down the hallway, leaving only a narrow pathway disappearing into gloom at the back of the house. Water-frescoed plaster sags overhead. She’s eager to talk now that she’s made the effort of answering the door. Two adult sons are asleep upstairs, one autistic, the other debilitated by head injury. I listen, frown, nod my concern. Having spent thirty years as a special educator, I’m familiar enough with the challenges she must face day in and day out that I’m rendered speechless. A sense of helplessness washes over me.

What will become of this woman and her sons? How will they manage, I wonder? Climbing back up the stairs will require fortitude, if not outright physical assistance. I find myself hanging, toes a hairbreadth off the ground, on the horns of a moral dilemma. Who to blame, goddammit. Men in power, the clockworks of the universe? If there’s a God in heaven … and so forth.

On the way out, I wish her luck, remind her to have a nice day. It would be impossible to feel more ineffectual; a sense of fecklessness pooling about me as if my pants had suddenly dropped to the floor to the tune of “Stardust.” I step into soft morning light caressed by a gentle breeze, endless blue sky overhead. A hallelujah chorus of forsythia erupts, yellow and shameless, serenading me loudly, mercilessly, as I slink back to the ERV.