I received a letter in the mail from Buzzen. The inscription was brief. Come see me, it read—that was all.
The next day, I went down to the Flyaway Motel where Buzzen lived. A near-abandoned place made out of logs without a full roof. It had been a while since we had seen one another. The last time we met was on Pickerel Pond where the frogs preach into the dark of night. We sat on the edge of a dock looking out at the quiet water, shared a pack of cigarettes, talked under the moon. I don’t recall anything that we said to one another that night. We fell asleep on the dock. When I awoke, it having been July and a warm morning, Buzzen was gone.
He sat there in the cabin surrounded by blankets, small statues of pirates with peg legs. His beard hung down to his chest, a wool hat on his head, his green coat buttoned to his neck. It was winter. The middle of January. There was a light fade of snow over the ground. Early morning light and dust shone through a hole where the chimney once was.
“What happened to the chimney,” I said.
Buzzen told me that he knocked the chimney down with a sledge-hammer two years ago when a dead raccoon got caught between the bricks. He said that raccoons still haunt the area, rampant amidst trash and debris. “I hate to shoot em,” he said, “If I don’t shoot em’ the damn things eat my cereal.”
I saw his boxes of cereal, which he kept on top of a collection of sturdy books. Buzzen was once famous for stealing books from the library.
I stood near him in the ruined motel, my clean shoe touching a pile of yellowed newspapers.
“The next time you send me a letter make sure I can read the darn thing,” I said.
“I thought you’d like it,” said Buzzen.
“I brought a steak,” I said, holding a plastic bag of frozen ribeye.
“Sit down.”
He sat on the stump of a log, his arms wrapped in socks for warmth, the ends smudged with soot.
“Smoke,” I said, handing him a cigarette and a lighter from my pocket.
He took both.
“You look cleaner than a bar of soap,” said Buzzen.
“I shave,” I said.
I sat on the floor and looked at him—his face a mess of lines, his teeth rotted out.
“They told me I’m dying.”
“What are you dying of.”
“I don’t need to know how I’m dying. I’m just dying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not worth talking about. My life was good,” said Buzzen.
“Alright,” I said.
There was a bottle of whiskey beside him. He picked it up and drank.
“You are off the radar in this place.”
“Always off the radar,” he said.
I stood and went through the motel room, ruffled through a few of Buzzen’s items, found a photograph in a cardboard box of the two of us taken back in the eighties when we were still young. We were standing on a bridge, our arms wrapped around one another’s shoulders with the entire town laid out behind us. The harbor a blur of gray in the background. A vast stretch of pine trees. A few houses visible in the hills, Buzzen’s face soft and healthy.
I slipped the photo into my back pocket, kept searching through the place until I found a few pieces of wood, enough to make a fire on the bricks. I found two glasses, smeared with dirt, rubbed them clean with my cotton shirt.
“Let’s cook this steak,” I said.
He passed me the bottle and I took a swig.
I prepared the wood. Used my lighter to get the flames going.
“Hey, tell me about the time you stole those three ponies off of Great Woods Road. How you went down to Italiano’s Eatery. How you drank a bottle of French wine and skipped out on the bill after having the best meal of your life,” I said.
“You already know that one. Let me tell you about the time I rode my motorcycle through a field of deer going ninety miles per hour up in Maine.”
The fire warmed the room. Light drifts of smoke filtered up through the holes in the ceiling, heading toward the sky. I saw clouds above me. Snow fell on us here and there. I placed the steak on the hot bricks. The scent of the meat lingered. Smoke rose.
“I’m too tired to tell a story. Let’s eat. I haven’t had a steak in years,” said Buzzen.
I took the steak off of the hot bricks and put it on a piece of wood between us. We ate with our hands. When we were finished I wiped the wood down with a rag. The fire slowed. Buzzen looked pale and his eyes were purple beneath. He leaned back and rested his shoulders on the wall.
“Remember the time when an eagle followed your motorcycle up the highway. It swooped down with wings like blankets. We all saw it happen. Watched the eagle lead you to the edge of that cliff where the entire eastern seaboard was laid out like a watery map with the moon aglow above.”
“Oh yes, that ship went by with two lovers,” he said.
“The most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.”
“Not a bad way to go out,” said Buzzen, and then he leaned back even further and turned his head toward the light where snow fell through the withered ceiling.
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