But sometimes I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop myself from smoothing his eyebrow. I watched his tiny tucked-in face, his nose pressed on, the way that his nostrils curled in like parentheses, small gleams of oil in the corners, eyelashes rising and falling on his cheeks, crease of eyelids folding back toward his temples. I put my hand to his heart. I felt that steady unlikely rhythm. If I couldn’t believe in its reliability, then I couldn’t believe in anything.
“Rudy,” I said. “Can we borrow one of your shirts?”
Rudy stepped forward, red-faced and puffed up with generosity.
“This is a very good decision you’re making,” he said. He peeled off his T-shirt, and his wiry hair sprang forth. The shirt he handed me had possibly once been white. It gave off a smell of yeast, onions, pine needles, sawdust, beer, and sap. I draped it over my shoulder. “I’ve been waiting for this moment,” Rudy said, scratching his furry belly. “A boy needs a father. I’ve said it all along.”
“You’re not his father,” I said.
“A father figure, then,” he said.
“You’re not his father figure,” I said.
“I’m happy to do it,” he said. He leaned down into Perley’s face. “You and me, kid,” he said. “You and your old uncle Rudy. We’re going to be good pals. I’ll teach you how to use a chain saw. I’ll teach you how to drink.”
“He’s not your uncle,” I told Perley.
Perley said, “Ah!” and punched Rudy hard in the nose, sending him off-balance.
“Motherfucker!” Rudy said, holding his nose.
“No hitting, Perley,” I said.
Lily said, “But did you see that? My Velvet Piglet is incredibly strong!”
“You little scamp,” Rudy said to Perley, still holding his nose. “You think you’re stronger than your old uncle Rudy. But someday we’ll have a real fistfight, and then you’ll see.”
“Can we switch this shirt out for a fresh one next week?” Helen asked. “I mean a fresh dirty one?”
“Babysitting, diaper changing,” Rudy said. “Anything I can do, just let me know.”
“Let’s see this woodstove,” Mike said.
We all, even the children, even the ducks, went up the path to the head of the driveway, where the woodstove lay in wait next to the scrap metal pile. We approached it as if it were a wild animal. We were cautious yet firm. I shifted Perley into the crook of my arm, used my free hand to yank off the tarp. The stove looked like the portal to hell, its double door a gaping maw, its clanking dials extending on iron antennae that cranked open and closed, its small windows flashing darkness.
Helen brought the dolly. “You kids get out of the way,” Frank said. The children chased the ducks back toward their shed, and everyone pressed forward. The women from the Land Trust quietly but firmly shouldered their way in past Rudy and Mike, the mill operator rolled up her sleeves, her handsome young boyfriend took off his shirt and stuffed it in his back pocket, the hardware store manager counted off, and they heaved. Frank pushed the thing too fast from below so that the rest of the group called out in protest. They rested. They swore. Then Frank’s wife took Perley, and I got in there, too, shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors. Mike counted off again, and this time we levered the woodstove onto the dolly, and then we walked that thing down the uneven gravel path, past the duck shed and the elderberry bushes and the spring, careful not to tip it into the ditch. We dodged the folding table, and stopped to rest at the campfire, just up the bank from the new house. Frank’s daughters cleared a path across the porch, moving the beer bottles and empty guacamole bowl out of the way.
“What next?” asked Lily.
“What next? We put it in the house, is what next,” Rudy said.
“Will it fit in the door?” she asked.
“We’ll make it fit,” Frank said. Then Janice rose up and gave one of her lectures about feminist lifting techniques, and Rudy responded with a passionate speech about manning up. Then there was no talking but a lot of grunting as we walked the thing down one sandstone step and then another, inched it across the porch, upended it to get it through the door, and finally the woodstove was inside, taking up a third of the kitchen.
Frank’s wife handed Perley back over to me, and he gummed Rudy’s T-shirt while Lily refilled the guacamole and brought out another