Where I'm Calling From

How’s Catherine?
    She’s fine now. I don’t know what was the matter with her earlier. I changed her again after you left, and then she was fine. She was just fine and she went right off to sleep. I don’t know what it was. Don’t be mad with us.
    The boy laughed. I’m not mad with you. Don’t be silly, he said. Here, let me do something with this pan.
    You sit down, the girl said. I’ll fix this breakfast. How does a waffle sound with this bacon?
    Sounds great, he said. I’m starved.
    She took the bacon out of the pan and then she made waffle batter. He sat at the table, relaxed now, and watched her move around the kitchen.
    She left to close their bedroom door. In the living room she put on a record that they both liked.
    We don’t want to wake that one up again, the girl said.
    That’s for sure, the boy said and laughed.
    She put a plate in front of him with bacon, a fried egg, and a waffle. She put another plate on the table for herself. It’s ready, she said.
    It looks swell, he said. He spread butter and poured syrup over the waffle. But as he started to cut into the waffle, he turned the plate into his lap.
    I don’t believe it, he said, jumping up from the table.
    The girl looked at him and then at the expression on his face. She began to laugh.
    If you could see yourself in the mirror, she said. She kept laughing.
    He looked down at the syrup that covered the front of his woolen underwear, at the pieces of waffle, bacon, and egg that clung to the syrup. He began to laugh.
    I was starved, he said, shaking his head.
    You were starved, she said, laughing.
    He peeled off the woolen underwear and threw it at the bathroom door. Then he opened his arms and she moved into them.
    We won’t fight any more, she said. It’s not worth it, is it?
    That’s right, he said.
    We won’t fight any more, she said.
    The boy said, We won’t. Then he kissed her.
    He gets up from his chair and refills their glasses.
    That’s it, he says. End of story. I admit it’s not much of one.
    I was interested, she says. It was very interesting if you want to know. But what happened? she says. I mean later.
    He shrugs and carries his drink over to the window. It’s dark now but still snowing.
    Things change, he says. I don’t know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.
    Yes, that’s true, only—but she does not finish what she started.
    She drops the subject then. In the window’s reflection he sees her study her nails. Then she raises her head. Speaking brightly, she asks if he is going to show her the city, after all.
    He says, Put your boots on and let’s go.
    But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he’d go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.

The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off

    I’ll tell you what did my father in. The third thing was Dummy, that Dummy died. The first thing was Pearl Harbor. And the second thing was moving to my grandfather’s farm near Wenatchee. That’s where my father finished out his days, except they were probably finished before that.
    My father blamed Dummy’s death on Dummy’s wife. Then he blamed it on the fish. And finally he blamed himself—because he was the one that showed Dummy the ad in the back of Field and Stream for live black bass shipped anywhere in the U.S.
    It was after he got the fish that Dummy started acting peculiar. The fish changed Dummy’s whole personality. That’s what my father said.
    I never knew Dummy’s real name. If anyone did, I never heard it. Dummy it was then, and it’s Dummy I remember him by now. He was a little wrinkled man, bald-headed, short but very powerful in the arms and legs. If he grinned, which was seldom, his lips folded back over brown, broken teeth. It gave him a crafty expression. His watery eyes stayed fastened on your mouth when you were talking—and if you weren’t, they’d go to someplace queer on your body.
    I don’t think he was really deaf. At least not as deaf as he made out. But he sure couldn’t talk. That was for certain.
    Deaf or no, Dummy’d been on as a common laborer out at the sawmill since the 1920s. This was the Cascade Lumber Company in Yakima, Washington. The years I knew him, Dummy was working as a cleanup man. And all those years I never saw him with anything different on. Meaning a felt hat, a khaki workshirt, a denim