All the Lasting Things by David Hopson Read Free Book Online Page A

stairs to her bedroom, and cried some more. She was no longer a religious woman, but even when she had been, in her casual, noncommittal way, it never would have occurred to her to bring beads into it. Still, she clutched her hands and moved her fingers as if worrying an invisible rosary. He wouldn’t do that, she repeated. No, no, never. He would never do that. Again and again, like a prayer. Until it no longer sounded true.

I know what they’re going to say before I open the door. They’re going to say they found her. They’re going to say she’s dead. That’s what men in uniforms with faces like that come to say. Sir, do you know a Jane Mueller? I’m sorry to have to say this, sir. But Ms. Mueller. I invite them in. Evelyn offers to make coffee like the church deacons have come for a visit. I don’t blame her: some part of her, some part she may not even recognize, must feel like serving cake. When the cops say no thank you, ma’am, she picks up Claudia and the baby, hugging them tight, and carries them into the other room. They ask me the questions they need to ask. How long has it been since you’ve seen her? Two years. Almost two years. Were you married? No. One gunshot wound, they say, apparently self-inflicted. Does that surprise you? they ask. No. Was it her gun? It was mine. Did you know she’d taken your gun? Isn’t that in your report? It is, sir. Wouldn’t you know if someone had taken your gun? They listen to what I say, but listen closer to what I don’t. Maybe there, in the silence somewhere, is my hand in it. Do they expect me to cry? I could tell them I’ve cried all I can. I could tell them about the way the world works, but I suspect they of all people already know. A man can cry himself to dust if he lets himself. And then the dust carries on.

3.
    Y ou’re one lucky guy. The chattier nurses reminded him of this on a regular basis, prompted to point out the small daily wonders of life to a man who had so recently tried bringing his own to an end. He’d nearly bitten off the tip of his tongue, had fractured an elbow, broken a leg, and sustained a serious scrape along his left cheek, but these were no worse than the damages done by people falling from stepladders or tripping down stairs. His roommate, a retired, emphysemic schoolteacher recuperating unsociably on the opposite side of the partition, had done as much when he spilled a bucket of patching tar and tumbled off his son’s roof. The more the nurses warmed to Benji, the more they looked to fate or karma or good, blind luck to explain the miracle of his relatively minor injuries. Zelda, the night nurse who woke him at two each morning with the benediction of Percocet, asked the name of his guardian angel, but the real reason he’d been spared the cracked pelvis and pierced organs everyone expected to find had a more earthly origin.
    The doctor who reminded him of this was a young black man named Malek with a perfectly bald head, a square face, and an overall stiffness that would have served him well in saluting. Accusingly, he’d asked if Benji knew the best defense in a car accident. “Better than a seat belt. Better than an air bag. Give up? Being drunk. It never fails. Drunk driver runs into Mom in her minivan. Who walks away? Not Mom. She sees it coming. She tenses up. That’s when bones break. But the drunk guy, he’s relaxed. He’s a rag doll. Did you ever try to break a rag doll? You know where he ends up? Sitting on the curb scratching his head. Give the jerk a Band-Aid and call it a night.”
    But once this sour exchange was over, Benji’s prospects turned unexpectedly sweet. He clearly saw that the drunken state in which he’d been found might easily be read as the final flourish of a desperate man, and there were perks to being a desperate man, undeniable and welcome perks that, perkless as his life had been lately, he had no intention of surrendering so soon. His perceived psychological trauma required a longer