[thekremlin]

II. Willard’s Road

From the sidewalk to the roof, there are cracks. The concrete’s cracks betray sprouts of crabgrass, the concrete faded from sunlight, rain, snow, Indiana’s years worth of weather. The house’s vinyl siding, originally canary yellow, now simply looks jaundiced. The windows bear either permanent streaks or irremovable dust fog. But the roof is strong. It has held off the snows and the long rains, has leaked but been repaired, has seen care and industry applied to it. The roof betrays that there was once a man in this house.

Not anymore. Inside, resting her feet on an ottoman and all the rest of her weight in an upholstered chair, Cheryl Mueller is listening for sounds from above. She’s pretending not to, pretending to mind her own business, but the wall’s photographs and the coffee table’s doilies would attest that around two o’clock in the afternoon, on any other day, the television’s volume would be considerably higher. Today, though, widow Mueller is not alone in the house on Willard’s Road.

Upstairs, Dual Lakes High School’s new band teacher is unpacking. It is not as orderly a process as he had imagined it. It’s a small room, and it doesn’t handle the new clutter of all his worldly possessions very well. Nor does it handle him very well. Not that it’s a small room; though not large, he had certainly seen smaller. But it seems to be a room not prepared for movement. The dust on the wooden dresser is thick enough to be tangible, the cobwebs in the corners must have been sewn by unmoving spiders. The window would not open, just refused to. As he moved through the room, unpacking his belongings, it seemed as if the air itself protested at his moving through it. A stale warmth settled around his shoulders. He tried to imagine eating in this room, conversing in this room, and it was impossible. The only thing he could imagine doing in this room was sleeping.

The bed had disappeared under a pile of his clothes: two pairs of jeans, three pairs of slacks, a black belt with a silver buckle (given to him for his own high school graduation,) five pastel-colored collared shirts, two stiff white collared shirts, a polo, blue, a dozen t-shirts, and an incoherent assortment of socks and boxer shorts, some newer, some he’d had for five years, which had accumulated holes, tears, and yellowing. The clothes had been dumped from a trashbag. There was no suitcase in the room, the suitcase had been sold before he’d left Nevada, for gas money. Everything he owned was in a trashbag, or recently poured from one, except for one possession, set in its case at the foot of the single bed.

If he were to take a moment for contemplation, there is no doubt he would push the clothes aside and place the case on the bed. Would open the silver hinges and draw the cover off. Would look, before touching, at the brass French horn, sitting in comfortable velvet. It had dents, but he would see the sunlight from the room’s sole window glint off the horn, the valves, the silver mouthpiece that had been given to him years before. He would pick the instrument up and hold it to his chest, let his fingers settle over the valves, press a few down, feel the easy moving pieces of an instrument well-maintained. He might take the time to empty the spit-valves, to lubricate it with oil and wipe it with the cloth always kept in the case. He might sit on the bed and hold the instrument, blowing into the mouthpiece but without tightening his lips, so that air moved through the instrument but no sound came out. He might soundlessly play “Duke’s Place” or, appropriately, Basie’s “Indiana.” But afterwards he would absolutely put the instrument back on the velvet holder, and close the case, throwing back the silver latches. He would not lift the velvet up and look beneath, so he would not see the clutter of envelopes hidden beneath. The letters from Dina which he would not read anymore, but could not throw away.