The Man Who Married the Wind

The Man Who Married The Wind

The man lived alone in a tight little whiskey-riven house on county road 1407, the edge of town. A house neither town nor country, neither distinctively young nor impressively old. The man knew how to do all manner of things. Brake jobs. Reshape fenders. Spot-weld. Loosen rusted nuts. Saw lumber. Hammer, screw, and nail. Machine cold steel and figure how electrical devices and mechanical gadgets work. But he rarely did these things, save at Bernie’s Garage out on route 17, where he worked some days—whenever Bernie called him.

The man had all the modern conveniences. A phone. Next door, in the Murphysville Methodist parsonage, where the pastor’s wife—what was her name?—would take the call, rouse her husband, send him to knock on the man’s door whenever Bernie called to get the man to come in to work, or the man’s sister would call from Evansburg to say her husband, Ervin, had “gone missing” again. 

He had a front-loading Maytag washer. A dryer bearing the brand name Huebsch, the word commercial underneath. They sat side-by-side in the open door of the smaller of the man’s two outdoor sheds, the washer needing a new motor, the dryer wanting a new tub, new belt, new bearing, and, most especially, a new lint filter, the old one now laden with trouble far less touchable than lint. 

A television. RCA Victor console, American beech, a relic of the time owning a television meant you’d occasionally have to call a guy out, beg him to come tonight—Please—and you’d watch him nervously as he crouched, grunting. You praying he wouldn’t say, Sorry, bud, she’s gotta go in the shop. 

Furniture in varied styles, modern to neo-colonial (a term the man never used, though a woman once had) to what the man called ‘kinda country.’ Nothing down, ninety days no pay, all this furniture datable in two broad periods of acquisition—the earlier period, marked by duct tape over torn vinyl, the later by the absence of troubling to repair torn vinyl with duct tape. 

These two periods corresponded, respectively, to the presence and later absence of a woman named Mamie, whom the man had met at Lu-Ann’s diner down the street from Bernie’s Garage, where Mamie had long served him pancakes, morning after morning, when he worked. Melmac plates, Melmac cup. More coffee, sugar? She’d say, and, when he’d laid down three dollars and a quarter down, Have a good day, hon.  

Mamie served him again and again, rolling her eyes, smiling at his jokes, until it occurred to her that the man’s daily remark Why don’t you make me pancakes regular-like? wasn’t a joke. Having nowhere better to go, she moved into the man’s little house. And promptly out again, when she grasped that the torn patch of linoleum, the stains in the tub, the rattle and warp of the screen door, the peeling wallpaper, were never, ever going to be fixed.

So, the man lived alone in the house again, without a woman, what seemed a very long time.

One day at the diner, the woman who replaced the woman who’d replaced the woman who’d replaced Mamie said he should put an advertisement in the newspaper. The city paper, she told him. Convenient, she said—they even had a little office right here in town. A counter, really, inside Weatherall’s Hardware—and they’d take his advertisement right there. 

The man tried to word his ad, sitting well past breakfast, into the early lunch crowd at LuAnn’s. Hours, using much of a little lined pad he’d found in Bernie’s desk drawer. His best attempt he read one day over lunch to Arnold Wedman, the Allstate agent, who simply said No, grabbed the pad and pencil, asked the man what he really wanted, and took notes.

A woman, the man said. A woman who’d been places, seen things, could bring him things from far away, blow some fresh air through his life. A pretty smile and lipstick and fingernail polish. One who smelled nice. A woman who had…things spread across the bathroom counter—creams and sprays, pretty bottles, tubes and compacts with powder. A girl girl, the man said. But one, he said, who could change a tire, who didn’t stand at doors waiting for them to be opened. A woman who could drive a stick, climb in the back of a pickup with the tailgate up, use a ratchet wrench without asking how to hold it. One who could swing a hammer, a hatchet, an axe. A woman who wouldn’t shrink from scraping hard-flaked paint in the hot sun. Or shriek at seeing a mouse, but would set the trap herself, and empty it, too. A smart girl. A practical girl. Oh. And would make him pancakes.

Age? asked Arnold Wedman, who posed this and other questions of the sort insurance fellows ask: height, weight, education, hair, eyes. Questions you find on application forms. 

It don’t matter, said the man.

Anything else?

Don’t want to be too particular, said the man.

Best tkeep an open mind, Arnold Wedman agreed, eyeing the man.

The man moved to speak, but Arnold Wedman held up a finger and began to print, tiny letters in a neat square, center-page:

Gentleman seeks woman who knows how to treat a man, wants to be treated like a lady.

Then Arnold Wedman added No triflers, please. That and the man’s post office box number, a number Arnold knew by heart from having insured the man’s truck so many years.

The man assembled a crumple of bills and walked into the tiny office of the Bugle to place his ad in the paper. There it appeared the very next week, last in a column headed Personals, just above a misplaced classified selling a stroller, a crib, and a chainsaw. The man scissored out his ad and posted it on the fridge—under a magnet from a company selling portable steel buildings. 

The man waited. Two days later went to the post office and asked. Came the next day, the next and the next. They’d be sure to put any answer in his box, the clerk said. Where formerly he had come but once a week, finding the box jammed with bills and bowhunting magazines, he came daily, now. Many days: nothing. Some days, a notice from the county about this or that infraction—unmowed grass, discarded barrels in a ditch, a fallen fence. Gradually, the man drifted back to weekly visits, finding in his box invitations to subscribe, sign up, buy, join, invest, collect, and take advantage of the coming monetary crisis. Flyers selling amazing tiny radios, gadgets to remove hair, tonics to grow it, gain weight, lose weight, purchase anointed handkerchiefs, commemorative pillows, booklets to teach you how to grow giant mushrooms in your cellar and how to bring batteries back from corrosion and death, even gen-you-wine spirit-blessed Navajo silver bracelets that could save your life. But nothing that came in the kind of envelope he’d been hoping for.

Yet, so many days later that the man had stopped going altogether, the letter came. He didn’t know till the postmaster told him. Been there some little while, the postmaster told him in the line at the Rexall. Best you come get it.

He did. The postmaster handed him a pale blue envelope. Small, the sort once used for what the man’s mother had called “social correspondence.” The man sniffed the envelope. Closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply. Smiled. The letter, the return address told him, came from The Wind. The Wind, she’d written in the upper left corner, a capital ‘T’ and ‘W’ in a hand strong yet feminine, given to round, confident curls. The man used his pocketknife to open the envelope—the smaller, sharper blade, lest he make the edge ragged or damage what awaited inside.

His fingers trembled as he opened the folds. So light, so delicate. The man closed his eyes again, opened, read. The Wind said she would come and stay, try it a while, so long as the man were decent, so long as he was, she said, a good Christian man. The Wind underlined that—a good Christian man. She signned it…”Yours respectfully…The Wind.” 

The letter came from an apartment address in Madison City, The Wind saying she was currently “staying there”—The Wind’s words—with a sister who needed some sort of aid. He was to pick her up two Saturday mornings hence at the Trailways Bus Station—not so much a station as a sign, a bench, and a hut outside Lu-Ann’s diner.

Come that Saturday, the man rose early. Shaved. Twice. Fresh blade each time. New khaki pants he’d bought at Kransky’s Workwear, the crease still stiff. A new checked shirt, short sleeves, buttoned to the neck. Sporty, Mrs. Kransky had said. The man waited among others he knew vaguely. A good ten minutes before bus time, he got out of his truck, began absently scuffing his work boots in the gravel till he remembered the time he’d spent applying black sole dressing to the welts. He stood, holding a single cello-wrapped rose he’d bought for a dollar. 

The man listened for the diesel roar and, when the bus rounded the corner and stopped with a hydraulic squeal and a gassy release, watched as a gangly young man in an olive uniform got out and kissed a girl. A matronly woman in a cloth coat boarded, clutching a well-worn purse and a carpetbag, watched as the driver unloaded the young man’s duffel, waited while the driver got coffee, waited as the driver sat, door open. Waited, indeed, till the driver looked at his watch, cantilevered the door shut, roared the diesel engine and drove off, tires crunching gravel.

The man looked about. Looked inside the diner, saw no one save the cook, scraping the griddle top. He sat in the truck alone till there was nothing left but to drive back home. He reached to roll the window down, shake out the dust and sadness inside the pickup’s cab. Presently—he was not sure precisely when—The Wind entered via the window, sat beside him on the truck’s bench seat and said…Thank you. The voice of The Wind surprised him. The voice of The Wind was low, husky, yet all woman, like the voices of those women you’re told make real good money recording public address messages for airports, train stations, and phone companies.

The Wind sat with him all the way to the house. Bumpy, The Wind said, though she sounded as if she were smiling. The Wind brought cool. The Wind rustled papers on the dashboard. The Wind blew gently down his neck. The Wind caressed his face.

The Wind brought no luggage, but whispered she had with her all she needed.

The man enquired, hesitant, You’ll want…your own room…

Oh, yes, The Wind insisted. There is a time and place…The Wind said. All in due…The Wind spoke like that, he learned, a half-phrase here and a half-…then would simply blow away.

The Wind wanted the house clean. We all have our own…standards…she said. The voice felt friendly enough, and she did seem to smile a lot—far as he could tell, for she wasn’t exactly visible. But he’d heard the spin she put on the word standards, and knew The Wind meant business. He spent a week, day and night, grunting under loads of trash, hauling bags of clothes to the laundromat and back, and taking many away to Goodwill, as The Wind directed. Bought new curtains at Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, stores still clinging to life along the town’s remaindered Main Street. 

Nights he spent in what passed for a back yard, burning rubbish from the house, the porch, the sheds, from what had been a garage (and would be again, he’d sworn to The Wind), poking with a stick and watching sparks ascend to the stars. Days, he lay back under the kitchen sink, twisting wrenches. Scraped black from the bottoms of baseboards. Scrubbed the plastic shower stall. Sprayed fluids from bottles she’d told him to buy, on furniture, inside air ducts and around the toilet, on which he’d spent a morning scraping, scrubbing, gouging, till the toilet emerged as white as ever could be. 

Rooms began to smell of bleach, pine, peach, and sharp, stinging scents that said: clean at last. At The Wind’s insistence, he opened the windows, every last one, even the ones nailed shut, painted shut for years. The Wind blew in and out, laughing, fluttering the new curtains.

He painted the mailbox and the leaning lines of picket fence, mowed what was left of the lawn. Pulled out, replaced, and painted the broken porch step. Purchased and twisted a gigantic iron eyelet into the underside of the porch rafter, rehung the chain that held up the fallen end of the porch swing. Replaced and painted the one missing ball finial on the porch railing—bought it at Weatherall’s (though he told The Wind he’d turned the finial himself on the old lathe out back).

The Wind smiled. The Wind said, It’s lovely. The Wind said to the man, You’ve made me feel welcome. You’ve made this place feel, The Wind said, pausing, as if it were my own.

The man made dinner for The Wind. The Wind oohed and aahed—too much, he knew, for dinner had come from the newly defrosted freezer of the fridge she’d asked him to clean, had merely been warmed in the newly cleaned oven—three cans of Easy-Off and as many hours, this had cost him—while he waited to serve her. Still, The Wind seemed to appreciate all he’d done. After he’d washed and dried the dishes in the sink—Do them first, The Wind said. I can wait—The Wind joined him on the porch swing, lay her head upon his chest, caressed him as they listened to the last of the summer’s cicadas and frogs, the subtle rattle of the first of autumn’s brittle leaves, and the squeal of the porch swing’s chain in the hook overhead.

The Wind fell asleep in his arms. 

The man began spending less time at home. The Wind said she didn’t mind, really. She smiled, in an I-know-what-you’re-up-to way, and the man smiled back. The man asked Bernie for extra work. Anything. Bernie caught up paperwork while the man installed brake pads, broke down tires, balanced wheels, even drove out to open a car or two for travelers who’d locked their keys inside, slipping a slim jim down inside doorframes. Those things done, the man cleaned Bernie’s garage as he had his own house, till every tool hung righteous on pegboards, till concrete floors came cleaner than the day they were laid.

That Saturday, the man didn’t even have to ask. The Wind simply knew, in that way The Wind always did. The Wind floated downstairs in a dress just on the creamy side of white, filmy and gauzy as air. Smiled. The man wore a dark checked jacket, not quite fitting but freshly pressed, and a necktie of quality, hard-wearing polyester.

The man took the hand of The Wind, led her out across the lawn—lately re-sodded, newly mowed—and into the woods. He had sanded the path for the sake of her shoes. He halted, pointed at a fawn in the foliage. The fawn looked, considered, remained, and the man took this as a sign. He had laid a broad board across the little rivulet that ran there, hidden in the grass, and into the tiny glade where he’d hewn a bench from birch logs. The Wind smiled expectantly. The man knelt, after placing upon the packed earth a handkerchief so as not to wet the knee of his new dress pants. He produced from a pocket a little box, hinged, blue faux velvet, bearing the name Sears Roebuck. The Wind, wide-eyed, let him slip the humble ring on her finger. The Wind riffled, wide-eyed, sighed. The man and The Wind held hands in the glade.

Weeks later, the crack of dawn, a time The Wind usually slept, The Wind slipped outside and snapped a branch into the kitchen window and cracked the glass. The man awakened, stumbled downstairs in his night clothes, unshaven, clipped and caught himself, cut his heel on a shard of glass on the kitchen floor. Winced. His hand felt his foot, moved to his mouth. His tongue tasted blood. 

Sit, The Wind said. She breathed. Deliberately, weightily. Look at this place! the Wind shrieked. You told me you’d…Yet you’ve done absolutely…Just look at— The Wind continued to speak in her broken sentences, though the man knew well what they meant. And then, The Wind said, there’s your drinking...I had anticipated a decline, she said. Some degree of restraint. But you—

When she was finished, The Wind was gone, having screamed up the stairs as if for her luggage, then remembering she had none, rushed out onto the porch and down the path, past the newly painted fence and beyond sight, down county road 1407. The screen door, still warped, still on his list of things to do, swung a little on its hinges, then stopped. 

Nights, now, the man sits on the porch. Warm sun or stinging sleet, he sits. Sometimes on a hard, old chair, sometimes on the cushions he’d bought and set on the porch swing. He’ll sit or swing for hours. Nights he’s had enough whiskey, if you happen to be on that part of the county road, you can hear him talking, half to himself, half not. If he’s had even more, you might hear him shouting. You’ll not make out the words, quite, but on the stillest of nights, you’ll hear well enough. He’ll call out rage. He’ll call out love. Sometimes, he’ll call out private things, to which not even the bugs or the birds in the air will listen.

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