Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,71
Webster turns away.
No kiss good-bye. No hug. No chance to tell his daughter she looks beautiful.
Webster waits fifteen minutes and then climbs into his cruiser. He has an hour before he has to be at Rescue.
Webster drives away from town and up a long ridge. The moon will be .95 tonight, full tomorrow. He opens all the windows and lets the warm air blow through the car. If he had the radio on, and if he were twenty years younger, he’d sing. He hasn’t been to the top of the ridge in nearly two decades. He’s had calls halfway up, but he’s never gone back to the place he once considered his life’s dream.
He parks the cruiser at the edge of the road and slips out. The mountains are purple, green, and rust-colored, depending on the light and the high clouds. He wades into the tall grasses. He’s amazed that whoever owns the land hasn’t sold it to a developer or built on it himself. The previous owner passed away.
What were his dreams all those years ago? What did he hope for?
A house with a window.
Now his hopes are so much more complicated.
The grasses move. Part of what used to be the owner’s house has caved in, creating an oyster shell of a roof.
Would he have had a sheep or two? Dogs? A vegetable garden worthy of the name? A house he’d built, over time, having done much of the work himself?
Webster gazes in the direction of the high school, but he can’t see it. Below him somewhere is the town he’s lived in all his life. Will he die here, too? Will Rowan live nearby or will she move away with a family, the husband needing to live closer to a city? Webster can’t imagine the future. For the first time since he was a boy, he feels alone.
Somewhere nearby is the place where Sheila and he conceived Rowan.
The what-ifs are dizzying.
Webster doesn’t want to end the year on a sour note. He doesn’t want his time with his daughter to come to such an ugly close. He’s heard of teens who walked out the door without so much as a wave and went their own way, never to be heard from again.
He checks his watch. He has twelve minutes to get to Rescue. He can do it in five.
He decides that when Rowan leaves Hartstone, he will too. Maybe move closer to a city, see what that’s all about. Maybe leave Vermont altogether. He wonders if he could hack being a medic in Manhattan, say, or in the Bronx. Shit, they’d toss him out the door. Emergency medicine is geography-specific. He remembers the “jumper down” call, how odd that was in Vermont. On the other hand, he guesses the medics in the Bronx have never seen a leg mangled by a tractor and baler.
There’s something in the landscape, and he can’t catch it. He wants it. Inside him, there’s a powerful longing to hold on—a feeling both new to him and old.
He cuffs the high grasses.
What are you doing here?” Koenig asks.
“Switched my schedule so I’d have graduation free,” Webster answers, pumping for his coffee. “What are you doing here?”
“They pulled in extra crew. Fireworks on Turnip Hill and the…” Koenig stops, catching himself.
“Senior dance,” Webster finishes for him. “Yeah, I know.”
“Rowan there?”
“She is,” Webster says. “But she’s with a good, responsible kid. More responsible than she is, truth be told.”
“So you’re not going to pace all over like you did last year the night of the junior prom?” Koenig makes a whirligig motion with his finger above his head.
“No,” Webster says, taking a hot sip. What he really wants is an iced tea. “I’m worn out from worrying. Seriously, Koenig, how did you survive Annabelle’s teenage years? What a ride.”
“And Rowan’s a good kid,” Koenig reminds him.
Webster waves his hand back and forth. “We’re not doing so well right now,” he confesses.
“What’s up?” Koenig asks.
“She caught me reading her diary,” Webster says.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You’ve stepped in it now.”
“Don’t I know it,” Webster says. “She’s not speaking to me.”
“How the hell did you let that happen?” Koenig asks, shaking his head.
“Long story. It fell off a ledge, and I picked it up, and…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Who you riding with tonight?” Webster asks. Koenig now has the lead position on the number one ambulance. Webster has the new rig.
“Dunstan. Transfer from Bennington. Wife moved up here for a teaching job. Teaching jobs are harder to get these days than medic