nsageek.blogg.se

That was how she learned about the mouse in the first place. They were much nicer than the work gloves Wade usually wore, and seemed to be brand new except for the odor of something burned. But the mouse—­the mouse is still very much alive in his memory.Ī few years after Ann and Wade married, Ann found a pair of deerskin gloves in a toolbox high on a shelf in a closet. She thinks of how strange it is that Wade probably remembers that mouse, remembers the sound of it skittering under the hood, and yet he's forgotten his first wife's name. Nine years ago, when Wade was still married to Jenny and both of his daughters were still alive, a mouse had crawled along the top of the truck's exhaust pipe into the engine compartment, and built its nest on the manifold. The picture reminds her of a mouse, or at least a child's drawing of a mouse, with a triangle face and a long, curlicued tail. She touches the wet spots with her fingertip, connecting them with lines in her mind to make a picture on her thigh. She pulls the seatbelt across her body, then rolls the window down so that several droplets splatter on her lap. Ann gets into the driver's seat and shuts the door quietly. Hanging from a long larch limb are two thick ropes that sway opposite each other now, but look as if they might have once been connected by a flat board—­a child's swing. Spindles of mangled wire lean against the trees. In front of the woodshed, around the truck, a few loose bricks lie here and there in the grass and snow. The truck is parked on a rare space of flat land, an unlikely shelf carved into the mountainside. She feels like she is trespassing, like none of this is hers to see. The woodshed isn't far from the house, but it's hidden from view by a stand of ponderosa pines. Today, she comes here under the pretense of getting firewood, dragging a blue sled over the mud and grass and patches of snow. She waits until Wade is busy, so that he won't notice that she's gone.

That was the way it was when Wade was married to Jenny, and that's the way it is now that he is married to Ann.Īnn goes up there sometimes to sit in the truck. It was parked just up the hill in front of the woodshed, where it collected rain in the deep dents on the hood and mosquito larvae in the rainwater.

They never drove the truck, except once or twice a year to get firewood.