I pretend to be appalled. “The Daily Sit has my full attention.”
I’m sort of famous for two things: unfinished projects and gifting ridiculous unfinished items. I once gave Woods a television made entirely of book covers. He has it hanging on the wall in his room. We watch it sometimes as if it’s real. I like it better than cable.
“Maybe you should gift the couch to Davey,” she says.
“Maybe I will.”
There’s still dust on her chest, over her heart. She swipes at it and says, “You know, you two would make a cute couple,” without lifting her eyes.
I turn on the saw.
Five minutes later Davey turns up in my garage looking useful in his beat-up jeans and Waylan Academy Lacrosse T-shirt. There’s faint purple eyeliner making his eyes pop and sparkle. The temperature is in a truly Kentucky mood, which means I grab a sweatshirt, just in case. It’s morning, but he lies on the concrete floor, spread-eagle, and says, “We’re never going to be done serving the old people.” I nod, but he gives me an exasperated snarl. “What do you know? You’re the Energizer Bunny. Do you ever get tired? No. You’ve probably been up working on that dang couch since midnight.”
“It’s true,” Janie Lee agrees. “You are a bunny.”
“See?”
His voice sounds Middle Tennessee today. More southern and long, instead of raw and slow. He’s interesting. I wonder at the difference between interest and attraction. And if that’s what’s really going on with Janie Lee and Woods. Between me and Woods.
“I probably should get up at midnight if I ever want to finish this stupid couch,” I say.
Even though I have to leave the Daily Sit to go do another service project, I’m excited to get out of the garage. Throwing tree limbs and mulch sounds therapeutic after thinking about Woods and Janie Lee dancing at the Harvest Festival. The last Harvest Festival probably, because there has been zero time to execute the plan written on Einstein.
Today’s fire retribution is Wilma Frist, a pear-shaped woman who drives a light-pink Town Car that plays Christmas music year around. She’s just the kind of woman I don’t want to be when I grow up, but she’s charming all the same. When we arrive, she’s bubbling with the delight of someone who overprepares. Fifteen pair of gloves, shovels, hacksaws, and maps are spread out on her picnic table. (There are only six of us working.) Near the woods, there’s a Dodge Ram full of mulch. (“My son Tony brought it over this morning.”) She’s filled a pitcher with yellow Gatorade. She explains what she wants done and ends her speech with “Make sure you hydrate,” before retreating inside to observe us from the kitchen window.
No one is shocked when Woods offers additional instructions. Davey and I are to walk the trail and remove or saw the larger obstacles. Mash and Fifty will wheelbarrow and dump mulch at various places along the trail. Woods and Janie Lee will rake the smaller debris to the sides. Everyone spreads mulch at the end. This trail is a half mile in length. If we even get to mulch this morning, I’m going to be impressed.
“I have thirteen grandchildren, and I want this trail safe.” Fifty uses his worst old-woman voice, and then his own. “If she has thirteen grandchildren, why aren’t they doing this?”
“Because her thirteen grandchildren didn’t set a church on fire,” I remind him.
Woods and Janie Lee leave us, and Janie Lee gives me a discreet two-thumbs-up, as if I’ve planned these pairings. Their two forms, as seen from the back, are in the same flowing line I notice when they’re playing music. Jealousy might be a shallow well, but I bend my face to it all the same and take a drink.
“You’re stuck with me, McCaffrey,” Davey says.
“More like Mash is stuck with Fifty.” I tug Davey to the other trailhead. This is a forest of poplars, oaks, and pines. Trunks are long; branches are high, each competing for sunlight at around one hundred feet. At eye level, everything is gray and brown, with the occasional splash of bright-green moss or deep-green pine. Every half mile or so, a forest like this lurks along the highway, planted by God and used by hunters. But Davey walks into an ambitious ray of sunshine and twirls circles like a princess in Disney World.
“You don’t have parks in Nashville?” I ask.
“Nashville is relatively green. Waylan had a forest like this on campus. It”—he closes his eyes and breathes—“smells so good out here. I like this air.”
I wrap my arm around a nearby tree, inhaling the sweetness of its bark, feeling thankful it does its CO2 thing without me even noticing or asking. Below my feet are fallen leaves. Earth. I wonder: Does the soil on his old campus look this brown or is it tinted slightly red? I wonder: Is he someone who notices details? I wonder: Do we have other things in common?
“Are you going to keep hugging that tree?” he asks. “Or are we going to work?”
We’ve cleared four fallen trees and sawn through a fifth when Davey removes his long-sleeved T-shirt and hangs it on a branch. The Waylan jersey he’s wearing beneath the sweatshirt looks old and lovely.
Across the woods, I make out the pink of Janie Lee’s cap, hear her voice and Woods’s making music. No doubt she’s kicking leaves in those damn UGGs and having a perfect time. I am staring at them, thinking complicated thoughts, when Davey says, “What was your question just then? The one you didn’t ask.”
I’d wanted to know if he played basketball at Waylan. Instead, I said, “Are you happy here?”
He affectionately pats a tree. “Wilma has nice woods. And this trail, when it’s finished, will be—”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
He sinks the saw teeth into a standing and healthy tree, works the flimsy blade back and forth until it’s stuck.
“You can say.”
“No,” he argues.
“Why?”
He turns away from the tree, leaving the saw buried in oak. “Because this is your dreamland.”
“And this is your what . . . punishment?” I ask.
When he doesn’t answer, I poke. The words come out of me unplanned. “Is being mysterious and unknowable some sort of weird triumph for you?”
“I am not mysterious and unknowable.”
I call foul. “You forget. I’ve seen you with your people. I know what you’re like when you’re not holding back. Come on. It’s me. If you hate Otters Holt, you can say it.”
The saw resists when he tries to jerk it from the tree. “I don’t hate Otters Holt.”
“But you miss Thom?”
“Of course. The same way you miss Janie Lee and Woods when they’re not tied to your side. Except they’re right over there, and Thom is a decent drive away.”
I walk over, bump him out of the way. “See. Now we’re getting somewhere.” He sidesteps my bravado, but the saw doesn’t obey me any more than it obeyed him.
He taps me on the shoulder, formally, as if he’d like a dance. He says, “I’d like to tell you something.”