In Reach by Pamela Carter Joern Read Free Book Online

musty, old body smell. On a set of built-in shelves, she sees he has a picture of the farm, Rosalee and her family.
    “Remember when we picked raspberries?” he says.
    “Of course, Leland.”
    “And feeding the horses over the fence.”
    She nods, though shame creeps through her, remembering how she thought of Leland coaxing her like those horses. Her throat feels full, and she’s afraid if she tries to speak, she’ll embarrass both of them.
    “And the creek.” He waggles his eyebrows a bit. She’s relieved to see his rakish humor intact.
    She rises and leans over to kiss his weathered and whiskery cheek. Low and in his ear, she says, “We had a wonderful summer.”
    He grabs at her arm, his grasp surprisingly strong. His jaw trembles. “Janet, I don’t want to live like this.”
    “Shhh.” She pats him on the back.
    “I want to go home.”
    “I know you do.”
    “They won’t let me out of here.”
    She struggles to quiet him, pats his back, but he grows only more distressed. She sits on the edge of the bed, puts her arm around his shoulders, tries to draw his head to her breast. He’s stiff and heavy, so she swings her legs up on the bed, and soon she’s lying with him, cradling him as best she can. He quiets, except for the tears soaking into her blouse front. “Now, now,” she says, and he’s calm as long as she doesn’t try to move away from him, which she has no intention of doing. She’s thinking it’s too bad that he didn’t die when he had the chance. He’s trapped now. He knows it, and she knows it, too.
    Eventually, the pastor will come to collect her for the ride home or a nurse will want to take Leland to physical therapy, and they’ll find her in this undignified pose, lying like a schoolgirl on the edge of a man’s bed, her clothes twisted awry from the awkwardness of it. She will have to stand in front of them and say good-bye. Likely, she’ll note pity and condescension in their eyes, that special combo reserved for the very old, but what does any of that matter now? Might as well stop the clocks, turn off the telephones. What’s done is done, and she braces herself for all that may be required of her.
    Waiting for the pastor, she strokes Leland’s cheek. “Oh, my dear,” she says. “My poor dear.”

Fire on His Mind
    Afterward, Tom bought smoke alarms and put them in every room of the house. He staged fire drills day and night, especially night, when he stood with a stopwatch and timed Helen and his boys, Alex and Trent, while they tumbled out of beds and groped their way to the yard. Once he bolted the door from the outside to see if they would figure out what to do. When they didn’t emerge from the house, he was furious.
    “What the hell are you thinking?” he stormed. They were gathered in the living room. Helen, eyes heavy with sleep, slumped on the tattered couch in a thin yellow tank top and drawstring cotton shorts. She’d thrown on a flowered robe to hide her nipples from the boys. That action alone cost precious seconds. He tipped the reading lamp to shine in their faces. Helen squinted and lifted a hand, but the boys, seven and nine, looked at him wide-eyed. Scared, and well they should be. They could have burned to death.
    “Dad, what did you want us to do?” Alex asked.
    “Break a window.” He heard himself shouting. “Pick up any goddamn chair and throw it through the glass.”
    “But Dad, when I broke a window throwing a football, you got mad,” Trent said.
    He shook his head, unable to believe they could not comprehend the seriousness of this. His wife, too. Nodding away there.
    “When there’s fire . . . ,” he began.
    “But it wasn’t a fire,” Alex said. “It was you blowing your whistle. Like last time.”
    He knelt in front of them. He took each of his boys by the arm. Sitting there in their skivvies with knobby knees and scrawny chests, they looked like baby birds. “When you hear this whistle, I want you to see fire. I want you