The captain is smoking a cancer stick, thinking about how clean the air is out here. His travel garb covers him head to toe. His big beard occludes not just his expression but part of his posture, his neck muscles silent, steering his trunk like a terrible dreadnought that rolls and lurches across the waves.
He has grown unbelievably sick this year. Justifying the cigarette is an old, odd habit that makes no sense for a dying man. His pockets are empty except for his wallet, but his wallet is empty except for the hundred he got for his truck. He should have something to leave Aria, beautiful Aria, conceived in D.C. in the long snowstorm, so he will apply for a credit card, be rejected automatically by a brand spangled letter on brand stationery that will come in the mail. It really doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to spend; he is just looking for a CARD. He walks in to Brockton from his pine tree hills (where the wind makes the teenagers whine when they walk home, hands stuffed into their hoodies for warmth) and applies for a savings account, and gets one. The savings account comes with a debit card. He puts it into his wallet.
The captain’s lined face and soft hands find every loose screw in his shoddy home. If only he owed rent payments - just a $450 rent payment - then he’d be forced to get hired at the coffee shop, serving the high school students lattes for their lunch money, and then he’d call Aria right away. He’d tell her the news and that he knows that she quit school, and it’s okay. But he owns his home, and nothing is on his calendar, and no one calls him on the telephone (do they even use phones like this anymore?), and with all the time in the world to spend, he can’t find the time to make the call. He’s going to get around to it later.
It is pretty here among the pines, the tall, snow-covered, leaning pines, and shouldn’t the end of his life suit him? But it would suit him better to make the call. He walks to his calendar, just a piece of paper decorated as if by hand, with simple drawings and glitter by the dentist’s office where he used to go, and finds his marker on his desk, and circles October 25th. He’ll call her the week of Halloween.
He pours a double bourbon onto two rocks and snow falls while the captain works on his art. His oils from before he enlisted have lost no luster. He’s drawing a lion that he dreamed as a child, of an infinite mane, and red eyes burning in the desert.
The cell phone rings at the worst time; he has to hunt for it, or it won’t stop ringing. He searches his coat, his desk, his chair. That’s almost all the things in his house… Then he remembers, and in his inner coat pocket he finds the thing. Missed call from his sister. He calls her back. In his family, one calls one’s sister back. She calls him by his Christian name - she’s practically already yelling - my God, he thinks, what an embarrassment this messy house is, with its secret bourbons, and its half-assed paintings, and his come-stained bathrobe hanging on the door (so it can’t be closed) all are. He’ll hang the bathrobe up. No, into the laundry. Christine is still talking. He missed something important. He drinks and they fight over the phone. They do this until twelve o’clock, as they have done in the past again and again. Where did Christine’s beautiful voice come from, her trumpet voice from the cellular waves? He can’t tell whether she’s angry or not.
There’s an exposed wire in his kitchen. He hopes it isn’t live, but has no real reason to think that it isn’t. A live wire, he knows, carries enough current to stop a man’s heart. An accident could happen here. What’s the matter with him? A simple repair is all it is, not even requiring money, as Ted - taller than he is, and grayer too - the electrician is friendly with him. It’s a shame not to be able to pay for things, but the captain has lived like this since the army. Not penniless - just always unstable, his bank account swaying on its feet in a predictable and public way. Aria suggested he get a job with the government and this makes perfect sense to him. Oh well. He tenderly touches the wire that hangs from the ceiling, not the exposed metal, but the plastic coating, batting at it like a cat while waiting for his turn to talk. Christine is tearing into the Democrats and the captain is going to stand up for them. He hasn’t been following politics, but the Democrats are his kind of folk and he hasn’t said anything for a while. She takes a breath, and he seizes his chance.
His voice oscillates like a rocking chair, mostly monotone, but with peaks and valleys.
In fact, he feels like he is made of wood, like a rocking chair. He respects wood. It is all around him, glowing and warming him in his veins, like a redwood, or a monstrous oak. He bats again at the hanging wire, and this time something brushes -
- and with his metal tongue the Devil speaks -