Jesus Out to Sea

“Are the kids by themselves?”

“They went with her.”

“I see. Well,” he said, veiling his eyes, “let me turn off the stove and we’ll get that generator started.”

“We don’t have to. He’ll be back pretty soon. I can just wait here, can’t I?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, he won’t be long.”

“Don’t worry about it. Come on upstairs and have some soup with me.”

Her rear was tight against her blue jeans when she walked up the steps ahead of him. She took off her sheep-lined coat and hung it on a hook by the wood-burning stove that Roger had made out of an oil drum. Her breasts rose up high against her sweater, and Roger had to look away from her.

“Waldo told his American lit class that Ronald Reagan will probably one day be considered a near-great president,” she said.

Roger was silent.

“Some of them put it in their exam papers,” she said.

“Ignore it.”

“What do you think, I mean about Reagan being near great?”

“I’m retired, Gretchen. I try not to think anymore about what Waldo has to say. Let me get you some soup.”

“No, I can do it. I’ll fix it for both of us. I’ll make coffee, too, if that’s all right.”

He watched her at the stove, the way her sweater tightened against her back, the thickness of her hair against her neck, her large farm-girl hands.

“What’s a P-38?” she asked.

“A World War Two airplane.”

“No. Waldo’s little boy said his daddy wore a P-38 on a chain around his neck.”

“It’s a GI can opener.”

“Was he in the war or something?” she said.

“No, and neither was Ronald Reagan. Listen, Gretchen, this is important to understand. These kinds of men vicariously revise their lives through the suffering of others. Look, I don’t want to tell you what to think or whom you should listen to…” He stopped and looked down at the backs of his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t like him because he hunts animals, do you? At least that’s what he thinks.”

“What do you say we eat?”

Her eyes roamed over his face. He felt himself swallow. She widened her eyes and the blue in them intensified, and for just a moment his vanity almost allowed him to believe he was still attractive to a beautiful young woman and his heart raced in his chest in a way that it should not have.

Then he saw her cheeks color and her hand falter on the coffeepot. “What is it?” he asked.

Her gaze reached out the window, out over the short pines and the frozen creek toward Waldo’s house. “He said he pulled a muscle carrying firewood. He said it throbbed all night and he couldn’t sleep. He was standing behind me in the study while I was grading papers, and he had a tube of Ben-Gay in his hand.”

Roger looked away from her face and the shine in her

eyes.

“He took off his shirt and sat down next to me. He said, ‘You won’t mind putting just a little bit across my shoulders, will you?’”