Why the Tree Loves the Axe. Jim Lewis

time to tally my debts, first I’ll owe her a hundred thousand miles, and then I’ll owe her twenty years. So this is Bonnie.

      The Friday before I started at Eden View I went back to the hospital for one last visit. Just a checkup, the doctor had said on the phone. Take the stitches out. Just another two hundred dollars, I thought, but I went. When I got to the waiting room there was a woman sitting in a chair against the wall, leaning forward with one leg tucked up under her while the other swung above the floor. She was rocking back and forth and humming a little bit, and when I sat down she looked right at me, rocking still; but she stopped humming and colored slightly, and after a moment she unfolded her leg and lowered it to the floor. Sorry, she said. I always do that when I’m nervous.

      That’s all right; I play with my hair, I said, and to reassure her I reached up and tucked a strand behind my ear.

      She had a high forehead and hazel eyes, and her hair was about the same shade of blond as mine was; she was short-nosed and round-faced, and in the chemical light of the windowless room her skin was almost blue and her lips were almost purple. It had been raining on and off all day, and a pair of glossy yellow calf-high galoshes with the top buckles undone were dangling loosely from her dangling feet. I watched and waited for one of them to drop, and I was going to say something to her about it, but just as I started to speak the door opened and an attendant came out. Ms. Harrison? she said, and handed me a brown clipboard with some forms on it. The woman on the couch said, Got mine all done, and turned them over to the attendant, who took them without speaking and disappeared through the door again.

      When she was gone, the other woman said, God, I hate this. She smiled. I’m Bonnie Moore. She held out her hand from across the room and waved it a little when she realized that we’d never meet that way.

      Caroline Harrison, I said.

      What are you doing here?

      I just, this is my last time back. I was in a car accident and they’re following up on it all.

      Car crash? Oh, how glamorous. Nothing like that ever happens to me. I just get women’s things. This time it was an ectopic pregnancy, the egg caught up there. Here. She rested her fingers on her abdomen. So they had to go up and get it out. She frowned and played with her hair for a second. Now they want to make sure it’s all gone, which they didn’t tell me in the first place it might not be.

      The attendant reemerged from behind the door, swiftly at first; then she hesitated, looked at me, made a gesture, and looked at Bonnie. You, she said to me, are Ms. Moore?—No. She changed her mind just before I shook my head. I’m sorry, you. She glanced at Bonnie again. You can come in now. Bonnie got up and made a here-we-go expression with her eyes, and then just as she passed through the door she turned to look at me again. We were both thinking the same thing, and knew it; it was a charming, comely moment in conspiracy against the attendant: What was that about? Did we look alike? We didn’t, really. Maybe. A little, it didn’t amount to very much. Funny. And then she was gone.

      Another ten minutes went by before the door opened again, and the attendant stuck her head out. Harrison? she said. Will you come this way?

      There was a doctor waiting in a tiny examining room; I’d never seen him before, but I could tell right away that he enjoyed his job and was good at it. He had the air of a man who had long ago come to love everything that he could understand, and to admire everything he still found mysterious. Hi, how are you feeling? he asked as he felt in the breast pocket of his lab coat for his penlight. You can just hop up on the table. All right? He touched his cool, clean hands to my face. Look right here, he said, and held one finger up. His breath was shallow as he bent forward to stare into my eyes, moving the light from one to the other and then back again. I could feel my pupils helplessly constricting and dilating, I could hear my own blood. Good, he said. Good. Everything looks fine … He backed away and nodded. They told me what happened to your car. He smiled slightly. Maybe you were blessed, he murmured, half to himself … Blessed be Caroline, who will survive her tribulations …

      I was tempted to believe him because he was a doctor, and anyway, it was what I wanted to hear. But was he allowed to say that kind of thing? The license on his wall didn’t give him permission to prophesy.

      You have the number here, he said brightly. I nodded. If something goes wrong, you can call, or just come on in. But I think you’re O.K.

      I can go?

      You can go, he agreed.

      

      The parking lot was scattered with black puddles and the weather weighed a ton. As I walked across the asphalt I saw Bonnie standing beside a car some distance away, the lower part of her legs reflected in a mirror of water at her feet; she was unlocking the door and she didn’t see me, but when it was open she hesitated as if she’d been struck by an uncanny thought, and then looked directly my way. I waved. Hey! she shouted, and motioned me toward her. Caroline, right? I’m going to guess that you don’t have a car, she said when I was close enough. I can give you a ride. Where are you going? Well, wherever you’re going, I can give you a ride.

      Home to Old Station.

      Do you have to? she said. I mean, is there something you have to do there? We could go get lunch or a drink or something, instead.

      I looked at her; it would have taken a dozen doctors to get down to the source of her soreness, but I figured a companion could find it alone. Who was I to turn her down? So I went with her.

      The car rolled out of the lot like a caravan leaving the last city; there was that silence at the start as we settled in. At last she said, Ha. I’m all right, it turns out. Are you all right?

      As far as I can tell, I said. The doctor just told me I was—blessed, I think, was what he said.

      She took her eyes off the road to look me up and down; she wanted to know if I really thought like that, and as soon as she saw that I might, she said, I’ll bet he’s right. But with me, it’s the opposite, my insides are all tangled up. There’s always something wrong in there. I’m telling you, I mean. Always always. The eggs are always either bubbling up and going everywhere, or else they aren’t there at all, or else I’m cramping. I looked over at her; she was peering through her windshield as she carefully steered down the street, wearing a look of mild surprise on her face, as if she’d never gotten used to the fact that her car moved forward at such an even rate, and changed direction when she turned the wheel. She saw me looking at her and made a gesture that I didn’t understand; she could tell that I hadn’t understood it, but she let it lie.

      In time we came to a brown building with a neon sign outside that said Ollie’s Lounge. Inside there was a dark bar with a kitchen in the back and a few tables covered with plastic-coated gingham tablecloths; overhead, the grey-brown blades of a greasy ceiling fan slowly turned. Bonnie ordered a baked potato and a glass of iced tea, and then said, Um, um, and absentmindedly tapped her knife on her napkin. When she finally spoke, it was in a tone of voice that suggested that nothing mattered much, but her eyes were wide and she sat slightly forward and bent over in her seat, as if she wanted to protect herself by protecting the table.

      You just moved here, yeah and I know what you’re going through, I think, she said. I came down here on a bus from Oklahoma City, about six months after my mom died, that was a couple of years ago. My father was long gone, like twenty years, and there wasn’t anyone else.—She reached across and drew a packet of sugar out of the holder in the middle of the table, tore off the top, and casually emptied the contents into her mouth. The truth is, though, is that I was following a man who wanted to marry me, and he got a job down here with the phone company. Then we split up and he moved away, somewhere, and I was just too lazy to go anywhere else, so. She thought for a moment about the day he moved. I don’t know. That was my crash, I’m still here, this is my city.

      Through the plate-glass window at the front of the bar I could see people hurrying to and fro in the sunlight, such busy fish, such a bright fishbowl. Do you like it here?

      Sugartown? she replied. Sure. She nodded, I love it here, I wish I’d grown up here. It’s where nice buildings go when they die. You’ll love it here, too, I