Early Autumn Part 15

"Okay," I said. "Good. Good. Now push it up. Breathe in, now blow out and shove the bar up, shove, blow, shove." I did some cheerleading.

Paul arched his back and struggled. His arms shook more. I put a little pressure under the bar and helped him. He got it extended.

"Now onto the rack," I said. I helped him guide it over and set it in its place. His face was very red.

"Good," I said. "Next time we'll do two."

"I can't even do it," he said.

"Sure you can. You just did it"

"You helped me."

"Just a bit. One of the things about weights is you make progress fast at first It's encouraging."

"I can't even lift it without the weights," he said.

"In a couple of months you'll be pressing more than your own weight," I said. "Come on. We'll do another one."

He tried again. This time I had to help him more.

"I'm getting worse," he said.

"Naturally, you're getting tired. The third try will be even harder. That's the point. You work the muscle when it's tired and it breaks down faster and new muscle builds up quicker." I was beginning to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Paul lay red-faced and silent on the bench. There were fine blue veins under the near-translucent skin of his chest. The collarbone, the ribs, and the sternum were all clearly defined against the tight skin. He didn't weigh a hundred pounds.

"Last try," I said. He took the bar off its rest and this time I had to keep it from dropping on him. "Up now," I said, "blow it up. This is the one that counts most. Come on, come on, up, up, up. Good. Good."

We set the bar back on the bench. Paul sat up. His arms were still trembling slightly.

"You do some," he said.

I nodded. I put two fifty-pound plates on each end of the bar and lay on the bench. I lifted the weight off the cradle and brought it to my chest.

"Watch which muscles move," I said to Paul, "that way you learn which exercise does what for you." I pressed the bar up, let it down, pressed it up. I breathed out each time. I did ten repet.i.tions and set the bar back on the rack. A faint sweat had started on my forehead. Above us in the maple tree a grosbeak with a rose-colored breast fluttered in and sat I did another set. The sweat began to film on my chest. The mild breeze cooled it.

Paul said, "How much can you lift?"

I said, "I don't know exactly. It's sort of a good idea not to worry about that. You do better to exercise with what you can handle and not be looking to see who can lift more and who can't and how much you can lift. I can lift more than this."

"How much is that?"

"Two hundred forty-five pounds."

"Does Hawk lift weights?"

"Some."

"Can he lift as much as you?"

"Probably."

I did a third set. When I got through I was puffing a little, and the sweat was trickling down my chest.

"Now we do some curls," I said. I showed him how. We couldn't find a dumbbell light enough for him to curl with one hand, so he used both hands on one dumbbell.

After two hours Paul sat on the weight bench with his head hanging, forearms on his thighs, puffing as if he'd run a long way. I sat beside him. We had finished the weights. I handed Paul the canteen. He drank a little and handed it back to me. I drank and hung it back up.

"How you feel?" I said.

Paul just shook his head without looking up.

"That good, huh? Well, you'll be stiff tomorrow. Come on. We'll play with the bags a little."

"I don't want to do any more."

"I know, but another half hour and you'll have done it all. This will be fun. We won't have to work hard."

"Why don't you just let me alone?"

I sat back down beside him. "Because everybody has left you alone all your life and you are, now, as a result, in a mess. I'm going to get you out of it."

"Whaddya mean?"

"I mean you don't have anything to care about. You don't have anything to be proud of. You don't have anything to know. You are almost completely neutral because n.o.body took the time to teach you or show you and because what you saw of the people who brought you up didn't offer anything you wanted to copy."

"It's not my fault."

"No, not yet. But if you lay back and let oblivion roll over you, it will be your fault. You're old enough now to start becoming a person. And you're old enough now so that you'll have to start taking some kind of responsibility for your life. And I'm going to help you."

"What's lifting weights got to do with that stuff?"

"What you're good at is less important than being good at something. You got nothing. You care about nothing. So I'm going to have you be strong, be in shape, be able to run ten miles, and be able to lift more than you weigh and be able to box. I'm going to have you know how to build and cook and to work hard and to push yourself and control yourself. Maybe we can get to reading and looking at art and listening to something besides situation comedies later on. But right now I'm working on your body because it's easier to start there."

"So what," Paul said. "In a little while I'm going back. What difference does it make?"

I looked at him, white and narrow and cramped, almost birdlike, with his shoulders hunched and his head down. He needed a haircut. He had hangnails. What an unlovely little b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"That's probably so," I said. "And that's why, kid, before you go back, you are going to have to get autonomous."

"Huh?"

"Autonomous. Dependent on yourself. Not influenced unduly by things outside yourself. You're not old enough. It's too early to ask a kid like you to be autonomous. But you got no choice. Your parents are no help to you. If anything, they hurt. You can't depend on them. They got you to where you are. They won't get better. You have to."

His shoulders started to shake.

"You have to, kid," I said.

He was crying.

"We can do that. You can get some pride, some things you like about yourself. I can help you. We can."

He cried with his head down and his shoulders hunched and the slight sweat drying on his k.n.o.bby shoulders. I sat beside him without anything else to say. I didn't touch him. "Crying's okay," I said. "I do it sometimes."

In about five minutes he stopped crying. I stood up. There were two pairs of speed gloves on top of the light bag strike board. I picked them up and offered one pair to Paul.

"Come on," I said. "Time to hit the bag."

He kept his head down.

"Come on, kid," I said. "You only got up to go. Let me show you how to punch."

Without looking up he took the gloves.

CHAPTER 18.

We were digging the last hole for the foundation tubes. It was hot, the going was slow through rocks and the usual root web. I was working with a mattock and Paul had a shovel. We also had use for an ax, a crowbar, and a long-handled branch cutter, which we used on some of the roots.

Paul was dressed like I was: jeans and work boots. Mine were bigger. The sweat shone on his thin body as he dug at the dirt I loosened.

"What are these holes for again?" he said.

"See the big round cardboard tubes over there? We put them in these holes and get them level and fill them with reinforced concrete. Then we put a sill on them and the cabin rests on them. It's easier than digging a cellar hole, though a cellar's better."

"Why?" He dug the shovel blade into the dirt and picked it up. He was holding the shovel too far up the handle and the dirt flipped as he pried it up and most of it fell back in the hole.

"Cellar gives you place for a furnace, makes the floors warmer, gives you storage. This way the house sits above ground. Colder in the winter. But a lot less trouble."

Paul s.h.i.+fted his grip a little on the shovel and took another stab at the dirt. He got most of it this time. "Don't they have machines to do this?"

"Yes." I swung the mattock again. It bit into the soil pleasingly. We were getting down a layer, where the roots and rocks weren't a problem. "But there's no satisfaction in it. Get a gasoline post-hole digger and rattle away at this like a guy making radiators. Gas fumes, noise. No sense that you're doing it."

"I should think it would be easier."

"Maybe you're right," I said. I swung the mattock again, the wide blade buried in the earth to the haft. I levered it forward and the earth spilled loose. Paul shoveled it out. He still held the shovel too high on the handle and he still moved too tentatively. But he cleared the hole.

"We'll use some power tools later on. Circular saws, that sort of stuff. But I wanted to start with our backs."

Paul looked at me as if I were strange and made a silent gesture with his mouth.

"It's not crazy," I said. "We're not doing this just to get it done."

He shrugged, leaning on the shovel.

"We do it to get the pleasure of making something. Otherwise we could hire someone. That would be the easiest way of all."

"But this is cheaper," Paul said.

"Yeah, we save money. But that's just a point that keeps it from being a hobby, like making s.h.i.+ps in a bottle. Only when love and need are one, you know?"

"What's that mean?" he said.

"It's a poem, I'll let you read it after supper."

We finished the last hole and set the last tube into it. We drove reinforcing rods into the ground in each tube and then backfilled the holes around the tubes. I went around with a mason's level and got each tube upright and Paul then shoveled the earth in around it while I kept adjusting it to level. It took us the rest of the afternoon. When the last one was leveled and packed I said, "Okay, time to quit"

It was still warm and the sun was still well up in the western sky when I get a beer from the refrigerator and a c.o.ke for Paul.

"Can I have a beer?" he said.

"Sure." I put the c.o.ke back and got a beer.

We sat in the camp chairs with the sweat drying on our backs in the warm breeze. When the sun went down it would get cold, but now it was still the yellow-green spring of the almost deserted forest, and no human sounds but the ones we made.

"In the summer," I said, "it's much noisier. The other cabins open up and there's always people sounds."

"You like it up here?"

"Not really," I said. "Not for long. I like cities. I like to look at people and buildings."

"Aren't trees and stuff prettier?"

"I don't know. I like artifacts, things people make. I like architecture. When I go to Chicago I like to look at the buildings. It's like a history of American architecture."

Paul shrugged.

"You ever seen the Chrysler Building in New York?" I said. "Or the Woolworth Building downtown?"

"I never been to New York."

"Well, we'll go sometime," I said.

One squirrel chased another up one side of a tree and down the other and across a patch of open ground and up another tree.

"Red squirrel," I said. "Usually you see gray ones."

"What's the difference?" Paul said.

"Aside from color, gray ones are bigger," I said.

Paul was silent. Somewhere on the lake a fish broke. A monarch b.u.t.terfly bobbed toward us and settled on the barrel of the shotgun that leaned against the steps to the cabin.

Paul said, "I been thinking of that stuff you said that time, about being, ah, you know, about not depending on other people."