Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Brox's first book, Here and Nowhere Else, won the 1996 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. She is also the author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, Clearing Land: Legacies of the American Farm, and Five Thousand Days Like This One. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, and has been represented in Best American Essays. Visit her online at www.janebrox.com.

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Five Thousand Days Like This One

Beacon Press

Chapter One

Afterwards

IT HAD BEEN A DROUGHTY SUMMER. THE ORCHARDgrasses turned sere by late June, the brook beds shrunkto dried mud, and the apples reached no more than half theirbest size. The worst of them?ones marked up with codlingmoth scars or scab?weren't even worth hauling to the applecellar. Strange to see bushel after bushel of Cortland, McIntosh,and Northern Spies in heaps under the trees. Evenstranger was the way the sweet smell of those fermentingapples drew the deer out of the woods?more deer than anyonein living memory had ever seen here. They'd foragethrough the fallen leaves under the bare crowns of the trees,coming more and more frequently as the apples frosted andthawed by turns down the shortening autumn days until theyfroze through at last and were covered with an early Decembersnow.

    Through the first quiet winter storms, the deer stayed inthe part of the orchard that bordered the woods, nosing thesnow near the apple bark, raising their heads every now andagain, wary, listening. But as the snow deepened they camefurther into the orchard, and I could trace their tracks fromtree to tree. They came at all hours?nine of them once?filingalong the edge of the pines at eleven in the morning on acloudless day. Even my father, who'd seen them all his life,remarked: "Look at that. In broad daylight."

    We talked about them every day as I stopped by my parents'house in the late afternoon, my mother in the kitchen,my father at his desk going over the farm year on paper:

    "I saw three under the Cortland trees, one couldn't havebeen more than a yearling."

    "Is that so? They must be finding apples still. I hope theydon't start grazing on the branches."

    "Oh, you think?"

    As long as the deer kept to the fallen apples, they stoodclear of any concern of ours. Just beautiful things even for thehunters in our family?my father and uncles?all of whomwere too old now for the hunt, though seeing those deerbrought up the old stories about ones tracked years ago here,or in Maine, or Nova Scotia.

    Our talk about the deer kept on, even when my father tooksick. In the hospital he couldn't say much because his breathingwas rapid and shallow. I sat by his bed?it was far intoDecember by then?and his room, with its beeping monitorsand hissing oxygen, was louder than anything outdoors.There were no real words, it felt late, but I was hoping he'dstill want to know about the small things, so I told him I'dseen the deer that morning, that they were coming farther upinto the orchard all the time. All he could do was blink hiseyes, and I couldn't figure out if he knew what I was saying orif he had a question, but a little later, when I asked him if hewanted anything, he smiled as much as he could?I saw hischeek wrinkle?and whispered, "venison." One word thatlet through his dry wit, since he knew I wasn't much for hunting.One word that comforted me more than all the times he'danswered the usual questions we asked to make sure he stilldwelled in time: Did he know where he was? Did he knowthe day? Or the questions he'd ask us when he could: What'sthe matter with me? Where's the blood coming from? Haveyou gone home?

    A few mornings later, I was the first in the family to arriveat the hospital and I had to wait outside the room while thenurse finished her care. I knew something was wrong becauseshe wasn't talking to him?always before I could hear thenurse asking my father how he felt, was he comfortable, tellinghim she was going to draw some blood. She beckoned mein this time and told me he had come down with pneumoniain the night. His hands were cold. It was louder in the room.They'd turned up the oxygen and had given him a larger maskthrough which to breathe. I could tell right away he was havingtrouble keeping up. When I said, "Hello," all he coulddo was raise his eyebrows. That was his last gesture to me inthis life, and it's what I keep remembering, wishing for more,thinking of all his years of reserve and, in that last week, allhis efforts to say the merest thing.

    My mother, my brothers, my sister?all faces fell as theyentered the room that morning. And no one dared step out forcoffee or to make a phone call. We'd come a diligent way on anarrow trail since the gray early light of Christmas Eve daywhen I stood in the doorframe of my parents' house, andfaced the road, listening in the still of the year for the ambulanceto come. Now we gathered bewildered around his bedas his breathing grew quieter and quieter. He took his lastbreath, then his mouth closed. My mother whispered, "no,"as the heart monitor slowed to a scribed outline like the loweroded hills, and each reading ended in a question mark.

    When the doctor came he listened for my father's heart andhis lungs, and then put a thumb to the lid of my father's blindeye and opened it, not knowing it had stopped gathering lightyears before, though my father always said he could still seethe shadow of his own hand. Now, the coin for the journey.

    Afterwards?in the days following?I sat at his desk andtried to carry on the workings of his home and farm: changingeverything over to my mother's name alone, working out thepayroll taxes, the quarterly taxes, all the January paperwork.I was half grateful for the dry figuring of accounts, of the farmyear drawn to an abstraction of costs and balances. But suchsoldierly work couldn't keep grief at bay for long. As I backtrackedover the check stubs, I saw how his handwriting hadgrown shakier down through the year. Like his voice, I'dstart to think, becoming gravelly as his lungs weakened.Then I'd notice how quiet the house felt?and he was a quietman. How did my mother stand it? How would she getthrough the days, the meals, the evenings? No answeringwords. Only months later beginning to understand: neveragain.

    As I worked I'd uncover keepsakes of his in the drawersof the desk or tucked away among his ledgers and files. Hisoriginal birth certificate, the death notices of his close friendswho had gone before him, his own father's timepiece with itsetched copper backing worn fine and the crystal cloudedover?mute things that had lost the one who could best speakfor them. From now on they'll only be partially understood,same as the stories I can no longer verify that were mostly hisalone. "No one believes me," I remember him saying, "but Istood by the Bay of Fundy on the eve of the war and sawapples coming in on the tide. The bay was full of apples. Theships had dumped their cargoes to take on supplies for thewar." That's all I know. And no matter how much, I want toknow more.

    Prayer cards and letters of sympathy came through the mailas news of his death traveled out of the valley. My aunts hadbeen tearing obituaries out of the local papers and sendingthem to the relatives in Syracuse and Delaware. Friends of farfriends wrote and called. I phoned my parents' closest friendsin Florida?people I'd never called before?who knewsomething was wrong the moment they heard my voice. Aftertheir weak greeting, a questioning silence into which Ipoured, "I wanted to tell you my father passed away."

    I know their true grief is beyond the...