Coop_ A Year Of Poultry, Pigs, And Parenting Part 5

"If I'm at four centimeters, I don't even want to know," says Anneliese, wrapping herself in a towel and walking into the house.

I kneel beside Anneliese, holding her hand as Leah performs the examination. Leah's eyebrows shoot up and her eyes widen. I'm startled, thinking something is wrong. "You're at six or seven," says Leah. "Looks like you're on your way!" Anneliese beams, and yet at the same time I see an edge of determination set in, as if she is saying, OK-let's go here.

I call Mills. He's puttering in his wood shop. Looks like this is it, I tell him. "I'm on my way," he says.

After that, I go into what can most charitably be described as a cotton-headed sleepwalk. The feeling in the pit of my stomach is like unrisen bread dough. Not dread, exactly, but reality reality. I see Mom's car in the driveway. Perhaps as a means of avoidance, I become obsessed with preparing the birthing tub. I remove the cover and stow it. Return to check the water temperature. Decide the level is a little low and go down to get a bucket of water from the laundry room. With the midwife and my mother at her elbow, Anneliese moves upstairs.

Mills arrives. He is is wearing camo pants, black Crocs, and a ball cap. It's a relief to see a scruffy male. And it doesn't hurt to think of those six babies he's delivered under all conditions. He has a batch of newspapers and several copies of the Tradin' Post Tradin' Post under one arm and his Big Gulp mug of water in hand. "Go ahead and hang out in the office," I tell him. "If I there's trouble, I'll shoot off a flare." I'm hoping my bravado doesn't sound as tinny to him as it does to me. under one arm and his Big Gulp mug of water in hand. "Go ahead and hang out in the office," I tell him. "If I there's trouble, I'll shoot off a flare." I'm hoping my bravado doesn't sound as tinny to him as it does to me.

Back in the house I join Amy in the bedroom beside Anneliese. My mother is at the foot of the bed and Donna is across the room at the window. Now the contractions have become painful. Anneliese is quiet, but her face contorts with focus as she breathes through them. It helps when I press against her lower back just like the nice lady taught us downstairs in the living room the day we got the giggles. Between contractions Anneliese smiles at Amy and speaks soothingly. Amy smiles bravely, but I sense she is ready to crumple and run.

When the water breaks right at the peak of the next contraction, it catches Anneliese off guard. "Oh!" she exclaims. Frightened by the rush of fluid and the pitch of her mother's voice, Amy begins to cry. Donna scoops her up and takes her downstairs. I follow, and taking Amy out on the deck, I hold her in my arms and explain what has happened. I tell her what it means that the water broke, and remind her of the times we talked about it before, and that it is good that it has happened. I tell her that it is very hard for Mommy to give birth, but that Mommy is very happy. She rubs at her eyes, and nods, and hugs my neck, and I tell her it's OK if she would rather do something else for a while. She nods again, and when I am back upstairs I hear the clang of the empty steel trailer bouncing behind the four-wheeler as Donna takes Amy out to gather firewood.

I check back with Anneliese, then take the bucket back downstairs into the laundry room and begin filling it again. I'm running the water over my hand, adjusting the temperature, when the apprentice pokes her head through the door. "I really think you need to get up there," she says. I follow obediently with my pail of water.

Anneliese has gotten more uncomfortable and has decided to move to the tub. Leah and I help her in. A terrific contraction catches her with one foot in and one foot out, and we're hung up for a while. "I don't think I can make it in," Anneliese says, and I get panicky visions of the baby dropping out right there. Then the contraction wanes and she settles into the tub. I scoot (I have now cranked it up a notch) into the closet to change into swimming trunks in case I have to crawl in the tub. Then I come out and position myself behind Anneliese to ma.s.sage her shoulders and let her rest her head against my chest between contractions, which are growing in strength and frequency. Leah is coaching calmly, Mom is watching from the landing of the stairs, and the apprentice is standing by.

"Why don't you come around front now, Mike," says Leah. Mom takes my place at Anneliese's shoulders. I'm feeling relatively calm, and thinking clearly enough to actually recall something from one of the books Anneliese had me read: OK, yes, this is the part where it is important for me to maintain eye contact with Anneliese, to pay attention to her breathing, and I should... OK, yes, this is the part where it is important for me to maintain eye contact with Anneliese, to pay attention to her breathing, and I should...

"Would you like to hold the baby's head?"

Fhuzawhaaa?!?!

But yes! There it is, the head crowning already. Leah's hands are strong and steady as she guides mine down to the slimy little skullcap that fits perfectly to my palm. Leah is coaching Anneliese to push between contractions, but the coaching doesn't last for long, because the head is rapidly emerging, and what I will remember forever is the fierceness fierceness of my beautiful wife as she made that final push, her teeth set, her animal cry and her blue, blue eyes locked dead onto mine and suddenly the baby was out and in my hands beneath the water. of my beautiful wife as she made that final push, her teeth set, her animal cry and her blue, blue eyes locked dead onto mine and suddenly the baby was out and in my hands beneath the water.

From my reading about water births, I know there is no rush, but looking down through the water at the creature in my hands, instinct takes over and I try to lift it to air. Anneliese's eyes pop wide. "Hey, that's still attached attached," she says. The baby is still submerged. I hear Leah's voice, calmer, gentler: "It's fine, it'll be OK, just wait," and she presses my hands back down.

I'm only half OK with this. I trust Leah and her apprentice, and I know Anneliese is at ease, but there is a mighty strong part of me that wants that baby above the waves and drawing oxygen. When Leah finally nods, I hand the baby-more carefully this time, with an eye to the cord-up to Anneliese, and she takes it to her breast with an ineffable motherly oh! oh! and then the slimy blue bundle cuts loose with a wail in the outraged key of life and I feel a flush of relief. and then the slimy blue bundle cuts loose with a wail in the outraged key of life and I feel a flush of relief.

Donna brought Amy up the stairs just as the baby cleared the water. Now Anneliese turns the infant to verify what she has felt, and yes, we have a little girl. "You've got a little sister, Amy," she says, and any trace of trepidation washes away in the wide smile that breaks across Amy's face. I'm tickled about this. For months Amy has been saying she wants a sister, and then very dutifully tacking on, "but a brother would be good too." So it is wonderful to give her the gift of a sister.

I move back around behind Anneliese and now we are all gathered: Leah kneeling beside the tub in her scrub top and gloved hands, the apprentice also in gloves and wearing her Midwifery Today Midwifery Today T-s.h.i.+rt, my mom standing smiling in her long skirt, Donna and Jaci in the stairwell leaning over the rail, Amy still in her wood-gathering sweats.h.i.+rt with one arm around me, and there at the center of it all, Anneliese holding the baby to her breast. Sunlight is streaming through the window, unimaginably bright to the baby I suppose, even behind her squeezed-tight eyes. T-s.h.i.+rt, my mom standing smiling in her long skirt, Donna and Jaci in the stairwell leaning over the rail, Amy still in her wood-gathering sweats.h.i.+rt with one arm around me, and there at the center of it all, Anneliese holding the baby to her breast. Sunlight is streaming through the window, unimaginably bright to the baby I suppose, even behind her squeezed-tight eyes.

We linger around the tub. Donna kneels beside me and greets her new granddaughter. Mom tells the story of how when I was born I scuffed my nose during pa.s.sage, and when the nurse-a battles.h.i.+p matron-dangled me for all to see, Mom took one look at my abraded schnozz, laughed, and said, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!" at which point the matron drew me back protectively and gave Mom a stern talking-to.

I palpate the strong pulse of the cord. Jaci circles the tub taking photographs. In this digital age we get to check them out right away, and I am surprised to see Anneliese and I both have flushed, rosy red cheeks. Amy watches closely as the baby tries to suckle, and I am happily flabbergasted at the sight of the infant's lips twisting reflexively toward the target. In time Leah clamps the cord, and I am surprised at the tough feel of it when the shears cut through.

When Anneliese is ready, we move to the bedroom. It is a walk of maybe ten feet. The midwife's apprentice has the baby wrapped in a cloth and dangling from a spring scale. She's squinting at the markings and trying to get a reading. "Eight pounds? Or eight pounds one ounce?" I jump right in: "Make it eight!" Round numbers, you see. Easier to remember. Anneliese's sister Kira has arrived, and joins my mother, Donna, and Jaci in the room. Amy is sprawled on the bed, head propped, watching the midwife rewrap the baby. I wonder what Amy will take from this moment, cupped as she is in a strong half circle of women observing new life.

I hike out to update Mills. He's in the saggy green chair nursing his Big Gulp, reading the papers grandpa-style, each section neatly folded and stacked beside the chair as it's finished. I suppose he can tell just from my face that things have gone fine, but I have to say so anyway.

"Everything's 102," I announce. Old-school emergency radio code. We learned it together twenty years ago. "102" means everyone's safe and everything's OK.

If Mills had grinned any bigger he'd have sprained his ears. He stood up, grabbed my hand, and shook it good.

He walks to the house with me. Climbs the stairs, says a quick, gentle h.e.l.lo to Anneliese, peeks at the baby, and takes his leave. At the top of the stairs, he stops. "Need anything?" "Nope," I say. And away he goes. Among the bedrock gifts of time are friends.h.i.+ps expressible in five syllables or less.

When Anneliese gave birth to Amy, there were no afterglow moments-torn and hemorrhaging, she went straight to surgery. Today she has a small tear but instead of surgery another local midwife drives out to the house and sews her up right there on our own blankets. As I hold Anneliese's hand while the sutures are placed, I am grateful that we have been allowed this gentler transition. When the repair is complete, there is brief happy chatter. Then someone hands the baby back to Anneliese. Amy snuggles in between us, and we-we four four-are left in quiet.

By dusk everyone has cleared out and left us alone in our old house. A local man who came here turkey hunting once told me his grandfather was born between these walls, and I try to imagine the birth scene then. No blue tub, I think, as I unspool the garden hose and siphon the water down the laundry room drain. Amy helps me break the tub down and scrub it clean while Anneliese and the baby rest. Donna has made food for supper and several prepared meals for the days ahead, and in the fridge I see food containers left by my mom. Leah stayed to do several rounds of vital signs and a.s.sessments of Anneliese and the baby, and set us up with a bedside checklist of our own, including a sheet of paper listing every imaginable perinatal complication broken down in two categories: "Yellow Flags" and "Red Flags." I dared not read it, but I kept it close. Before she departed, Leah left a large jar of homemade bran m.u.f.fin batter in the refrigerator. Donna baked a batch, and I thought it was a fine thing to be given the gift of a house filled with the smell of fresh baking.

Being in our own home on this, the first night of our child's life, is comforting, but without the official interruption of a hospital trip I am left with a formless sense of unreality-up the stairs we came without a baby, and now looky here looky here. It's a soft-focus Shazam! Shazam! Naturally, mingled with the glow in our hearts there is some trepidation, but at 10:45 p.m. the child p.o.o.ps. I take this as an affirmation of life. Naturally, mingled with the glow in our hearts there is some trepidation, but at 10:45 p.m. the child p.o.o.ps. I take this as an affirmation of life.

At midnight, she p.o.o.ps again.

In the morning there is snow on the ground.

Leah and her apprentice return the following day to perform the newborn screen, and when they make the foot imprints to accompany the birth certificate, we get a taste of exactly what we have unleashed in this world. Unhappy with being dangled feetfirst in the air, the baby skips past crying and rockets straight to the furthest purple fringe of outrage. Such blaring blaring. Not howling, not wailing, but a full-on sustained bra.s.s note fit to raise a regiment. Golly. It sounds like a blowout in the bugle factory. Today when Leah leaves, she reinforces something she has been telling us since we first met with her: Keep the week following the birth for yourself. Let the mother rest. No outside visitors. Not even well-wishers. It seems extreme, but we soon learn what precious advice it is. Donna stays to make meals the first couple of days, then she and Amy leave to visit relatives. Anneliese and I spend every day together. Nothing but us and the little one, for a week. We don't answer the phone. I stay out of the office and don't check e-mail. We learn the rhythms of the baby. Change diapers. Celebrate the glorious day of transition when the baby's p.o.o.p changes from black to yellow.

It isn't a vacation by any stretch. There are some concerns early on-the baby is a shade jaundiced (Donna fixes that by sunning her in a chair beside the window), she has trouble with sucking (failing to establish, as I come to learn, a proper "latch"-what an apt application of the term!), and I am on the phone to Leah more than once this week with concerns about the comfort of both baby and mom.

There is also the matter of naming the child. We've been waffling for months. While Anneliese does her best to invest the decision with spirituality and ancestral reverence, I am largely concerned with scansion and a.s.sonance and the potential for naughty playground rhymes. Furthermore, it has always seemed to me that a child's name should be reducible to one crisp syllable for what I call the "freeze-factor," to be used when you wish to arrest the progress of the child in a precipitous manner, like when he is about to stick his fingers in the fan or she is sneaking out the bedroom window, in which case you want a name you can crack like a whip. "Pollyanna!" for instance, has no freeze factor. It got to be a bedtime game, the name list: Anneliese would read her latest choices, and one by one I would bat them down. Then she would do the same for me. There were some doozies, but I will not reveal the list of rejected monikers, because somewhere out there is someone else who dreams of naming a child Ezekiel Storm. Zeke! Zeke! (I practiced.) On day five or six of our young child's life it becomes a matter of some embarra.s.sment, and so we take the form the government provides, and-in honor of a family member-write "Jane." Then I try it out: " (I practiced.) On day five or six of our young child's life it becomes a matter of some embarra.s.sment, and so we take the form the government provides, and-in honor of a family member-write "Jane." Then I try it out: "Jane!" The kid doesn't flinch.

Within the hour of Jane's birth, I snapped a photo of Amy holding her newborn sister. It wasn't posed or arranged, I just pushed the b.u.t.ton. When I looked at it later, it took my breath away. Without realizing it, I had captured Amy just as she inclined her head to kiss her sister's brow. Her arms encircled the baby, her eyes were closed, and her lips were just brus.h.i.+ng the crown of Jane's head. For her part, Jane is asleep in a nest of blankets, her chin resting on the curled knuckles of her left hand. I stare and stare at the photograph, my eyes wet. I am feeling blessed, blessed. But I think too of how so much of this world is the equivalent of busted concrete and twisted rebar, and I am jolted at what parents are charged with, and how limited our powers may be. Thankfully, Amy has a way of perforating my direst pretensions and lightening my worldview through the application of humor, intentional or not. Shortly after the beatific image was taken, she phoned her father Dan in Colorado, and fairly busting with pride, announced, "Well, you're a dad again!"

One lives in the glow of the miracle of new life and then rather harshly discovers that the electric bill is due again. We had our wonderful coc.o.o.ned week, and even in the wake of that I was able to skirt deadlines and remain mostly home, but now real life presses back in. I have a raft of backlogged writing deadlines, volumes of unanswered e-mails, the usual stack of bills to pay, and I am returning to the road soon. I have always loved the road, and am still eager to feel the wheels beneath me, but nowadays my heart turns homeward sooner than in the past.

We plan to get the pigs when I return from this next round of travel, so I'm trying to finish up the pen. I've got it mostly enclosed with panels, but my brother Jed has recommended that I run a strand of electric fence all around the perimeter about six inches off the ground. The panels will hold the pigs fine, he says, but they are capable of generating great upward force with their snoot and shoulders, and if they get to rooting around the base, they'll boost the panels, posts and all. He grins when he tells me this, and you can pretty much picture him chasing pigs.

First I have to clear the way. I put most of the panels up when everything was still winter-dead. Now the nettles and burdock are knee-high. I don't own a scythe or a gra.s.s whip, so I have at them with a hoe, which is not pretty but gets the job done. I'm slas.h.i.+ng away like a gra.s.s-stained Sweeney Todd when Amy ambles down. "Oooh, nettles!" she says. "Yum!" She watched Anneliese drink nettle tea throughout the pregnancy, and the two of them regularly collect nettles and bake them in our lasagna. This is all a reflection of our friend Lori the wild foods expert. Lori has taken her daughters and Amy on several foraging expeditions, and as a result Amy is forever eating dandelions straight from the yard or bringing me fistfuls of wood sorrel. The wood sorrel is evocative (as a kid I plucked it from a damp patch out where the sump pump drained) but a little too sour for my taste. The back of my hands and forearms are sweaty and tingling with nettle-sting, so it's nice to have Amy remind me of its happier attributes.

Once I've cleared away the foliage, I begin placing insulators. To save money on posts, I planned to secure the insulators directly to the panels, but first thing I discover is there is no way to do this without seriously modifying each insulator. I do a quick calculation of time and gas money versus the price of a bag of plastic insulators and decide to forge ahead. The required modifications involve profound misuse of a tree pruner, but it works (if necessity is the mother of invention, I am its ham-fisted stepchild), and before long I am placing the insulators while Amy follows along behind, happily hand-tightening each threaded retainer ring. During this time our old friend Mister Big Shot reappears, squawking and flapping around the perimeter. Amy rolls her eyes. I quietly hope she will learn to recognize similar chest-puffing inanity in the males of her own species and react with the same disdain. It's a long sail from six years old to safe harbor.

By the time we get all the wire strung and snug, it's nigh on suppertime and I decide I'll hook the power up another day. Returning the tools and fencing equipment to the shed, I see my beloved International pickup sitting over in the corner. The carburetor is leaking. I need to fix it. Another day Another day. I notice the lawn needs mowing. Another day Another day. I'd like to fence off a big chunk of the yard and get sheep. Another day Another day. Through the screen, I can hear Jane blaring.

We've been slowly emerging back into the world as a family. Relatives begin stopping by, and for the first time Anneliese's grandmother holds the baby. Grandma Scherer is ninety-four years old and has only recently traded world travel for the Internet. A preacher's wife who raised five children while holding down a teaching job after her husband died young, Grandma is one of those women who makes you feel sluggardly. When I leave the room to get the camera, I return to find Grandma rocking Jane and singing a lullaby in the original German.

Nearly once a day now someone will hold up Jane, look at me, and say, "So-what do you think of the baby?" and what I want to say and sometimes do is how above all the arrival of this tot has only expanded the love I feel for my wife. The vision of her pus.h.i.+ng fiercely, then the sound that rose from her when first she held that baby close-there is something of an eye-opening ear-tweak in there for a man. I remember thinking, lioness lioness.

Now, however, she is drawn and pale. After months of pregnancy-induced insomnia, she had been longing to sleep. And indeed, she has been able to sleep at night when the baby isn't waking her, but during the day, during those times when she is desperate for a catch-up nap, she simply can't doze off. Other mothers are giving her plenty of advice, and at one point she says, "If one more woman tells me to 'sleep when baby sleeps'..."

Sometimes to keep the house quiet during the day when Anneliese is trying yet again to sleep I strap Jane into a red quilted baby sling Anneliese's mother used to hold her babies. I checked the label and it was made in the 1970s. It has clunky stainless steel clips. But it works great, and I am able to write for long stretches with the baby asleep against my chest. Recent research has cast some doubt on the benefits of playing cla.s.sical music for unconscious infants, but I have my own ideas, and today while she snoozes, we are edifying ourselves with a rotating mix of Dwight Yoakam, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Mark Chesnutt, Greg Brown, Loretta Lynn (for spirit), and Iris DeMent (for unvarnished holiness). And in the interest of imbuing more ineffable feminist sensibilities, I pulled Cinderella's Long Cold Winter Long Cold Winter and replaced it with Shawn Colvin's and replaced it with Shawn Colvin's A Few Small Repairs A Few Small Repairs. Jane sleeps peacefully, rousing only to move her lips and make a noise somewhere between snoring and drooling best described as snurgling.

Not so long ago I stepped through the front door to find Amy in the middle of the kitchen unrolling a flag-sized poster of me. It was from a book tour stop somewhere back along the line. My visage was full-color and big as a cheese platter. Amy held the poster unfurled before her, and I admit I savored the moment right up until she turned and laid it faceup on the bottom of the guinea pig cage. I am well aware that on a scale of one to Britney, I peg the fame meter roughly three notches below the lieutenant governor of Maine, but even so this was a severe calibration. "WHAAAAT?!?!" I said, theatrically feigning great dismay. Amy giggled and scattered wood chips over my gap-toothed mug.

Now it's another cage-cleaning day. When Amy finishes, I help her place the guinea pig back inside with his bowls and purple plastic igloo. After securing the lid we return the cage to its customary spot in a corner of the living room and go outside to check the progress of the seeds we planted in the cold frame. The radishes and lettuce came up two days ago, and today we find the spinach sprouted. We're in a run of cool breezy days but the sun is out and condensation has formed on the gla.s.s, so I prop it open to let it breathe. Amy and I meander across the yard and down a slight slope to a lane formed between a dense row of spruce trees and the south-side wall of the pole barn. The spruce block the breeze, allowing the steel to gather heat from the sun. We press our shoulder blades against flat spots between the vertical corrugations and slide down to sit and soak up the warmth. The buffer zone of spruce m.u.f.fles the rest of the world. "There was a place like this out behind Grandpa's barn," I tell Amy, thinking of a nook between the silos where I loved to hunker as a child. There were weeds and a patch of sand. I liked to sift the sand through my fingers, the flowing tan grains speckled with bits of bright green s.h.i.+ngle grit dislodged from the barn roof by generations of rain. I tell Amy I sought the silo spot on early spring or late fall days when you need a windbreak if you want to feel the sun.

"This could be your place like that," I say.

"Yes," she says, plucking at a weed stem. Even as she answers, I know I'm pus.h.i.+ng a rope. She'll have to find her own places. I mustn't a.s.sign memories. We sit and visit, and as invariably happens I find myself stowing the moment for all the road time to come. The scaredy-cat part of me wonders if she will do the same. And if so, will the memory warm her or simply sharpen my absence? When we walk back up to the yard, there is a bluebird in the maple tree beside the corncrib. I point it out to Amy and she locates it easily. When pursuing the heat of the sun I must never forget it exists also to illuminate blue birds in brown branches.

Later in the afternoon I find the gla.s.s lid of the cold frame smashed. I suspect Fritz the Dog. He was nosing around earlier. Fortunately I have a fair collection of old storm windows, so I gather the broken gla.s.s, install a replacement and prop it open again. When I see him lurking in the same spot again later, this time with a chewy dog treat in his jaws, I holler at him and shoo him away. But when the day cools and I go to lower the lid, all the dirt and most of the seedlings have been sc.r.a.ped into a mound in one corner. I realize now he's been looking for a soft patch of dirt to bury his treasures-I'll lay odds there's a dog treat under that mound of dirt. The dog is nowhere to be found, so I can do him no harm, but I am ashamed to say I storm into the house and slam the door and say something very loud and forbidden. I can't defend my rage, but it is tied to the fact that in the midst of all that has been going on, and all my absences, that little plot of dirt with its sprouts was a tangible manifestation of some careful moments spent with Amy. I don't care about the stupid plants, but I care about what it meant to kneel down there with my daughter. Later, when I have cooled down some, I go back out and notice the dog missed about six radish sprouts. I lower the lid and figure maybe they've got a shot. Then I go for a cool-down walk. Along the south side of the granary, the rhubarb is up. The last time our family gathered, my brother John-a big bearded fellow who spends a lot of time on a bulldozer-said he eats an entire rhubarb stalk every spring just for the involuntary face-scrunch that transports him back to his preschool days. He also reminded me that having heard rhubarb leaves were poisonous, we would feed them to the chickens and then hang around to see what happened, but nothing ever did.

The baby has cried us awake. Fumbling in the dark to fetch her, I note the eastern horizon is a faint charcoal gray.

Early to bed, early to rise has never been my deal. Half of everything I've ever written was likely typed past midnight. Not so any longer. Age plays a part, but mostly I think it is a sequela of parenthood. Even before the baby, when it was just Amy, I had begun easing toward the early s.h.i.+ft. Writing after supper, I'd take a break to read books with her at bedtime, and find it near impossible to go from that quiet moment back to the desk.

The new sleep pattern has been reinforced by the baby crying at night. After twenty years of going from slumber to blastoff at the first micro-beep of an ambulance or fire pager, I tend to spasm straight up and out of bed at Jane's least whimper. Anneliese is bemused at the gymnastics, which is to say that while she appreciates my willingness to help (it's less about helpfulness than doggish conditioning) she could do with more arising arising and less blastoff. Furthermore, in most cases the baby is looking for the drink I cannot provide, so although I wake to retrieve her, by the time she is nursing I've returned to unconsciousness. She howled at 2:00 a.m. and now she's howling again. I consider the dim seep of light and decide I might as well begin the day. By 10:00 a.m. I'll be nodding off above the coffee cup, but for now I want to get going. and less blastoff. Furthermore, in most cases the baby is looking for the drink I cannot provide, so although I wake to retrieve her, by the time she is nursing I've returned to unconsciousness. She howled at 2:00 a.m. and now she's howling again. I consider the dim seep of light and decide I might as well begin the day. By 10:00 a.m. I'll be nodding off above the coffee cup, but for now I want to get going.

In soft lamplight I place Jane at her mother's breast and lean down to kiss them both on the brow. Jane's cheeks are fattening, and when her eyes open I look for recognition but I still don't quite see the person in there. I wonder if it's just me or if mothers attach from the first instant while the man flounders around and waits for the fun stuff, like diaper farts and jibber-jabber. I poke my head in Amy's room and in the glow of her night-light see her wrapped in a sleeping bag on the floor beside her made bed. She has taken to doing this since the baby came. Still impaired by a developmental psych cla.s.s I was required to take in college, I momentarily worry that the change may be portentous; then I decide it's possible the kid just wants to sleep on the floor.

Downstairs, and out the door. Eastward the gray band is lightening, but the sun remains well sunk. Drawing the cool breath of morning into my lungs I think of my father, whom I do not believe has missed a sunrise in some forty years and would be startled to find me up and about at this hour. I still love the dark heart of night when it is possible to believe you have the world to yourself, but I can understand why Dad loves to watch the day come in. And I find I am a little less breathless working from this end of the cycle than I am trying to fight my way through to some sort of bleary-eyed finish at 3:00 a.m. There is the idea that you have a head start.

When I get to my desk I power up the computer and open my e-mail. As the new messages roll in, a simple subject line catches my eye: "Tim."

The e-mail is from the sister-in-law of a dear friend in England. I double-click it.

Hi Mike,Some time ago Tim was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and was told that he hadn't got long to live. He chose not to tell you as he wanted you to remember him as he was.Tim pa.s.sed away on 20th April at 3.am, he died as he wanted to without any fuss.We weren't sure how to contact you as you are often on the road and thought this was possibly the best way.Don't know what else to add at this point, we are sorry we know this will come as a shock Mike, but I know we will talk very soon.Claire Amy Sylvia and Ronnie.

Aw, Tim Tim, I think. I raise my eyes to the wall directly across from the desk: Tim, in an old photograph framed and hung from a nail. Twenty-three years we were friends. Last time I saw him he was fine. I check the date in the e-mail again. Six hours' time difference-he would have died last night while I was frittering at the end of day.

When my mother was a child, she had a pa.s.sel of international pen pals. Over the years the correspondence waned, but she and an English girl named Pat kept in touch into adulthood. In 1984, fresh off my first year of college, I traveled to England and my first stop was at Pat's house. Pat had two daughters. One of them was dating Tim. We met the night I arrived, went to the local pub together the following evening, and got on like well-worn pals from that time forward.

His given Christian name was Timothy Swift. I always thought this an eminently toff English moniker, but you wouldn't peg him to it if you saw him in the pub. There was nothing Jeevesy about the boy. He was a resident of Cannock, England, a Midlands lad, born near enough the environs of Birmingham that he carried the working-cla.s.s Brummie accent (think Ozzie Osbourne with a cold), although how much of his accent was geographical cottonmouth and how much was just Tim is hard to know. Even his friends and relatives frequently found him indecipherably mumbly. I spent enough time in his company over the years that I grew to understand him relatively well, and during his visits to the States I happily served as translator. My advantage lay in the fact that the night we first met, Tim was convalescing from having his four upper front teeth knocked out in a pub parking lot the night previous. From my perspective, his locution only improved thereafter.

We called him Swiftie. He stood maybe five-four, favored Motor-head T-s.h.i.+rts and black socks with his tennie trainers, and wore a rose tattoo on his forearm. The rose was smudgy and p.r.o.ne to bubbling in the sun. The year we met he had just completed the English equivalent of technical college and was working at a factory, building motorcycle frames. This was a great relief to his mother, as a few short years previous he had been a greasy-haired headbanger with no evident prospects of a legal or supportable sort. In the one photograph I ever saw of him from that earlier era, he was devil-eyed and grinning around a remarkably misaligned cl.u.s.ter of incisors. In fact, he once confided that although he might have preferred a more professional procedure, having his teeth head-b.u.t.ted to the tarmac was actually a bit of a windfall, as the court instructed the other fellow to purchase Tim a new set that in the end were implants of model quality.

At the desk, still staring at the e-mail, I'm going back, in film-strips and flashes: Tim and I walking home in the dark after the pubs closed, stopping at the bright-lit chippie off Longford Road. Undoing the tight-wrapped packet and eating the sodden fish and potatoes straight from the paper while watching The Young Ones The Young Ones in a room smelling of hot grease and vinegar. In 1989 we wore garbage bags and stood in the rain for hours before finagling our way into Centre Court of Wimbledon under creative pretenses. One moment we were sodden proles, the next we were seated within full view of a d.u.c.h.ess. Tim got the better seat, but sadly he was spotted and bounced almost immediately. As the guards escorted him past me, we studiously avoided eye contact as previously agreed and I subsequently enjoyed the entire match. Edberg versus Mayotte, if my memory brackets are accurate. On the way home from Wimbledon well after midnight, Tim's car broke down on the motorway. A late-arriving tow truck took us deep into the countryside and pulled inside a barn, at which point the furtive mechanic pinpointed a problem with the clutch and named a ransom for repair. With the same easy mumble he would use to request his fifth lager, Tim told the guy to b.u.g.g.e.r off and drove us home clutchless, his trucker-s.h.i.+fting not impeccable but serviceable, and hours later we lurched through the final traffic circle and herky-jerked to a stop in the driveway at dawn. Another of my visits coincided with the rise of electronic trivia games in the pubs, and our combination of wit-Tim's in science, engineering, English sport, and culture and mine in fluffy minutiae-did not make us rich, but did regularly enable us to pay for lunch. How solid the pound coins sounded when the machine chugged them into the tray. We road-tripped to Wales and the Lake District, hiking for miles in the rain, sleeping in a damp tent, and stopping to eat in pubs where the patrons switched to Welsh upon our entry. Tim was a serial hobbyist-one year darts, another year winemaking, next year the curry club-with a tendency to immerse himself headlong (learn all the lingo, get all the gear) before abruptly moving on. During his compet.i.tive fis.h.i.+ng phase I accompanied him to a ca.n.a.l-side tourney where he diddled at the water with an absurdly long pole and used a slingshot to launch maggot cl.u.s.ters across the channel as chum. Another time he joined a sporting clays club and took me on a round, reveling in our rare good shots by adopting the Queen's English: "Jolly hockeysticks! Bag another grouse, Jeeves!" Oddly enough, when mimicking the Queen, Tim was quite understandable. in a room smelling of hot grease and vinegar. In 1989 we wore garbage bags and stood in the rain for hours before finagling our way into Centre Court of Wimbledon under creative pretenses. One moment we were sodden proles, the next we were seated within full view of a d.u.c.h.ess. Tim got the better seat, but sadly he was spotted and bounced almost immediately. As the guards escorted him past me, we studiously avoided eye contact as previously agreed and I subsequently enjoyed the entire match. Edberg versus Mayotte, if my memory brackets are accurate. On the way home from Wimbledon well after midnight, Tim's car broke down on the motorway. A late-arriving tow truck took us deep into the countryside and pulled inside a barn, at which point the furtive mechanic pinpointed a problem with the clutch and named a ransom for repair. With the same easy mumble he would use to request his fifth lager, Tim told the guy to b.u.g.g.e.r off and drove us home clutchless, his trucker-s.h.i.+fting not impeccable but serviceable, and hours later we lurched through the final traffic circle and herky-jerked to a stop in the driveway at dawn. Another of my visits coincided with the rise of electronic trivia games in the pubs, and our combination of wit-Tim's in science, engineering, English sport, and culture and mine in fluffy minutiae-did not make us rich, but did regularly enable us to pay for lunch. How solid the pound coins sounded when the machine chugged them into the tray. We road-tripped to Wales and the Lake District, hiking for miles in the rain, sleeping in a damp tent, and stopping to eat in pubs where the patrons switched to Welsh upon our entry. Tim was a serial hobbyist-one year darts, another year winemaking, next year the curry club-with a tendency to immerse himself headlong (learn all the lingo, get all the gear) before abruptly moving on. During his compet.i.tive fis.h.i.+ng phase I accompanied him to a ca.n.a.l-side tourney where he diddled at the water with an absurdly long pole and used a slingshot to launch maggot cl.u.s.ters across the channel as chum. Another time he joined a sporting clays club and took me on a round, reveling in our rare good shots by adopting the Queen's English: "Jolly hockeysticks! Bag another grouse, Jeeves!" Oddly enough, when mimicking the Queen, Tim was quite understandable.

One very late night after everyone had been drinking with the exception of square, teetotaling me, I chauffeured Tim's girlfriend home while Tim trailed behind on a moped he had resurrected from a junk heap. (Whether it is more dangerous to allow a sober-but-right-lane-imprinted Wisconsin rube to navigate the narrow roads and traffic circles of suburban Britain while attempting to s.h.i.+ft a dodgy left-handed manual transmission with his nondominant hand at 2:00 a.m. or to yield the wheel to a tipsy native is a conundrum to be pa.r.s.ed another time-we were young and predictably senseless.) Tim had got through some lager, so I kept checking his one wobbly headlight in the rearview mirror. A kilometer from home, I looked up, and the light had disappeared. We circled back. Shortly our own headlights illuminated Tim, placidly pus.h.i.+ng the moped along the dark street. As we drew nearer, I could see the bike was bent and badly scratched.

"What happened?" I asked.

Tim looked at me, a little blurry, but wholly unperturbed.

"I f'got t'balance," he slurred. And then he pushed off into the night.

We circled again, caught up, drove slow beside him, and saw him safely into the house. When we left he was staring into the open fridge, contemplating a sandwich.

The sun is fully up and bright. It is early afternoon in Cannock by now, so I call Tim's mother Sylvia. It was very hard, she says. He wouldn't let us contact you because he knew it was going to be bad, and it was. He suffered terribly, she says. Sylvia and I talk a little longer. Then I hang up and try to work. Anneliese's mother is visiting, and has made breakfast. As she often does when I work mornings, Anneliese comes to my office with a plate. I thank her, and take the food. She looks at me and senses something.

"You OK?"

"I got some bad news...," I say, and then the choke in my throat turns to tears. When Anneliese and I were married, Swiftie made the trip. Flew transatlantic cattle rate just to land on Thursday and leave on Sunday. The day he arrived, we spent the night in a tiny shack in the middle of forty acres near my beloved New Auburn. The next day we copiloted my old International pickup down here to Fall Creek to prepare for the wedding. The morning of the outdoor ceremony Swiftie helped my father-in-law Grant and me set up the chairs and then take them all down and reset them in the tent when the weather turned to rain. After we finished I headed to the house for a shower, and, looking back, I saw Tim at the edge of the lawn beneath the tent, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and looking out across the sweep of the valley below. His free hand was in his pocket, and he was rocking one knee, the way he always did when he was relaxed and taking something in. How many times I had seen him in that stance, raising and dragging at the cigarette without hurry. He'd keep the knee going and bend at the waist a little, like he was working up a bow, but then in the end he'd just muster a faint smile, his lower lip slightly pouted, his eyes squinting as he raised the cigarette again. This morning when I read that e-mail, the first image that flashed-even before I looked to the photo on the wall-was of Tim on the hill there, quiet, alone, content.

I wonder if he knew.

Experts say the honeybees are disappearing, so it's nice to see them busy at the bush beside my office door in the early afternoon. I cannot identify the bush-it verges on shrubbery-but on this the day of my friend's death it is in bloom, the modest yellow blossoms waxy in the sun. Noon has pa.s.sed, lending the light just enough postmeridian slant so when the bees buzz by, their minuscule shadows trace across the window screen like silhouette radar. It's a gentle sight, enhancing the sun and easy breeze. The bad news from England has had the immediate effect of compressing the world and time. I've kept at my work, but am continually drawn down memory's kaleidoscope wormhole. Feeling the need to walk in open s.p.a.ces, I leave the desk and head for the ridge.

Sylvia said Tim came back to his boyhood bedroom to die. I know the room. I can go there in my head. I bunked in the bed there sometimes. I suppose he did it to spare his young daughter Amy and wife Claire. I don't know. His Amy was a toddler last I saw her. I'm walking and walking, farther and farther back on the property, into a valley not visible from the house. The air is warm. Deep in the trees, the air smells of duff and thaw. I wish he had called me.

He wanted you to remember him as he was, it said in the e-mail. When I spoke with Sylvia this morning, her words were exactly the same: He wanted you to remember him as he was He wanted you to remember him as he was. I think of him in the yard with that cigarette and how much I could read from just the jiggle in his knee, and yet our span of two decades was built on less than a hundred days spent in common company: there are implicit questions of depth. By the end he had become successful in his field, managing international projects for one of the largest engineering firms in the world, but only once did I see him at work; I was caught off guard by the man in the tie and white hard hat. He oversaw a tunneling project beneath the English Channel, and ramrodded another in which slurry was pumped at extremely high pressure into miles and miles of abandoned underground coal mines. Once the pipeline blew and took off a man's arm. Tim hit the kill switch and grabbed the arm. Another time he got a frantic call from the manager of a high-end car dealers.h.i.+p screaming that his slurry was blasting through a hole in the middle of the showroom floor. Tim loved telling that one, but eventually he was promoted to the point where his job amounted to serving as shock absorber between middle management and the uppermost tiers, and it wore on him. The better the pay, he said, the worse the pressure. He spent most of his days on the phone, translating vituperation. The last time we talked, he said he was going to give it up. He talked about his Amy, and Claire, and how too often the work kept him away from home.