The Hungry Season by T. Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page B

with him.
    He gets to the McInnes camp. Gussy McInnes used to be a fixture here, sitting on the sunporch watching the world go by. Today the Athenaeum Bookmobile is parked in the driveway; he seems to remember someone telling him that her granddaughter lives there now. That she works for the library.
    Old Magoo still lives in the next camp over. His boat-sized Cadillac is in the driveway. He’ll have a mower.
    “Sammy Mason!” Magoo says, opening the door after Sam has almost given up. “How are you?”
    This simple question, this nicety mumbled a hundred times a day, is still excruciating.
    Sam nods and smiles. “We’re up for the summer again, but the yard’s a wreck.You wouldn’t have a mower I could borrow, would you?”
    “Oh sure,” he says. “It’ll give you a workout though. Still using the old reel mower.”
    Magoo motions for Sam to follow him to the shed and gives Sam the manual mower. It looks like some medieval torture device.
    “Thanks,” Sam says, shaking Magoo’s hand. “I figure I should be done in a month or so.” He smiles.
    “Hey, Sam,” he says, his face softening. “I just wanted to let you know I heard about your little girl. And I’m real sorry.”
    Sam nods again, says nothing. He appreciates the apologies, but they make him cringe. It makes it sound like it was someone’s fault.
    Back at the cottage, he starts to mow, pushing the mower through the weeds and grass. His arms tremble after the first hour, but something about this hard work feels good. His father always used to say the best way to work out a problem was to go chop some wood. Better for your back to hurt than your heart. The sun is hot on his neck. By the time Mena pulls up, he is drenched in sweat, and only a quarter of the front yard has been trimmed.
    “I’ll make some iced tea,” she says. “Come inside?”
    “I’ve still got the side yard to do,” he says. He’s on a roll now, he doesn’t want to stop.
    “Sure?” she asks.
    “Yeah,” he says. He wipes his arm across his forehead, sweat stinging his eyes. “I’ll be in soon.”
    He doesn’t know why he can’t give her what she wants. What she needs. Not even the simplest things. And he hates himself for it.

A s Mena unloads the groceries, she watches Sam through the window, the smooth muscles of his arms as he hacks through the jungle of goldenrod and ragweed. His last haircut has grown out, and his hair is falling in his eyes. He is so thin. He looks up, sees her in the window, but turns back to his work just as she raises her hand to wave.
    She knew she loved him before she even met him.
    Her teacher at CalArts (what was it, twenty years ago now?), Jim, at a party when he was drunk and she was not, handed her the galley of Sam’s first novel. “You have to read this,” he had said, his speech blurry, his breath licorice sweet with scotch in her ear. She was standing outside the bathroom door, waiting. He pushed the book into her hands. “ Tara. The girl. We’re making a film, and you’d be perfect. It’s going to be huge.”
    She’d taken the galley home with her that night, home to that awful apartment in Venice she was sharing with three other people (the one with the roaches and the broken dead bolt), and thumbed through the ratty paperback as she tried to fall asleep. She’d never heard of Samuel Mason before. Some kid from Vermont, Jim said. The next Styron. The next Kesey.
    She didn’t put the book down until she’d read through to the very last page.
    She remembers feeling light-headed, almost like she’d had too much wine. Or not enough food. He’d written her life. It was as if she were some sort of butterfly he’d captured and pinned between the pages of the book. It made her feel scared, and it made her feel safe all at once.
    When she finally met him, it barely mattered that he was so sweet and kind. So beautiful and unassuming. He understood her, and he hadn’t even spoken to her yet.
    After shooting that day,