Andre Dubus: Selected Stories by Andre Dubus Page B

remember them long enough to understand the story, I work out. If it’s my off day from weights, I run or go to the Y and swim. Then the hangover is gone. Even the sick ones: some days I’ve thought I’d either blow my lunch on the bench or get myself squared away and, for the first few sets, as I pushed the bar up from my chest, the booze tried to come up too, with whatever I’d eaten during the night, and I’d swallow and push the iron all the way up and bring it down again, and some of my sweat was cool. Then I’d do it again and again, and add some weights, and do it again till I got a pump, and the blood rushed through my muscles and flushed out the lactic acid, and sweat soaked my shorts and tank shirt, the bench under my back was slick, and all the poison was gone from my body. From my head too, and for the rest of the day, unless something really bothered me, like having to file my tax return, or car trouble, I was as peaceful as I can ever be. Because I get along with people, and they don’t treat me the way they treat some; in this world it helps to be big. That’s not why I work out, but it’s not a bad reason, and one that little guys should think about. The weather doesn’t harass me either. New Englanders are always bitching about one thing or another. Once Alex said: I think they just like to bitch, because when you get down to it, the truth is the Celtics and Patriots and Red Sox and Bruins are all good to watch, and we’re lucky they’re here, and we’ve got the ocean and pretty country to hunt and fish and ski in, and you don’t have to be rich to get there . He’s right. But I don’t bitch about the weather: I like rain and snow and heat and cold, and the only effect they have on me is what I wear to go out in them. The weather up here is female, and goes from one mood to another, and I love her for that.
    So as long as I’m working out, I have good days, except for those things that happen to you like dead batteries and forms to fill out. If I skip my workouts I start feeling confused and distracted, then I get tense, and drinking and talking aren’t good, they just make it worse, then I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. I’ve had days like that, when I might not have got up at all if finally I didn’t have to piss. An hour with the iron and everything is back in place again, and I don’t know what was troubling me or why in the first place I went those eight or twelve or however many days without lifting. But it doesn’t matter. Because it’s over, and I can write my name on a check or say it out loud again without feeling like a liar. This is Raymond Yarborough, I say into the phone, and I feel my words, my name, go out over the wire, and he says the car is ready and it’ll be seventy-eight dollars and sixty-five cents. I tell him I’ll come get it now, and I walk out into the world I’d left for a while and it feels like mine again. I like stepping on it and breathing it. I walk to the bank first and cash a check because the garage won’t take one unless you have a major credit card, which I don’t because I don’t believe in buying something, even gas, that I don’t have the money for. I always have enough money because I don’t buy anything I can’t eat or drink. Or almost anything. At the bank window I write a check to Cash and sign both sides and talk to the girl. I tell her she’s looking good and I like her sweater and the new way she’s got her hair done. I’m not making a move; I feel good and I want to see her smiling.
    But for a week or two now, up here at Alex’s place in New Hampshire, the iron hasn’t worked for me. While I’m pumping I forget Polly, or at least I feel like I have, but in the shower she’s back again. I got to her once, back in June: she was scared like a wild animal, a small one without any natural weapons, like a wounded rabbit, the way they quiver in your hand and look at you when you pick them up to knock their heads