Free After This by Alice McDermott

and clear away trees. He’d always
thought that if he was ever going to get any kind of sideline going, he
wanted it to be something that got him out in the fresh air. Listening
to the wind on the night of the hurricane, he’d heard the crack and
snap of a falling tree and it had brought the whole thing back to him,
the fields he’d cleared, the forests hauled away. One thing led to
another, he said. A new chain saw, a buddy with a truck. A place in
Commack where he could dump the wood. The vestibule was identical
to the one in his own house, although his wife was dark-eyed and
thin-faced, younger than Mrs. Keane but well finished with
childbearing. Twenty dollars wasn’t a lot to ask but she, like the other
women who were not so friendly, said she would have to check with
her husband first.
     
She followed him out to the front step. It was a beautiful day, the
kind that always followed such a storm. The September sky a perfect
blue and the odor of dried rain still in the air. The green odor of the
fallen tree as well. Mrs. Keane and Mr. Persichetti both looked toward
it. The grass had been torn by the exposed roots, but the tree itself
seemed beautiful in repose. They could see through the branches the
children who played there, some brightly colored, others mere
shadows amid the leaves. Her boys and the Persichetti boy and a
dozen neighborhood children among them.
     
“It will be a shame to take it away,” Mrs. Keane said, as if she’d
already agreed to let him do the job. “We’re the most popular place in
the neighborhood.” She put her hand under her belly, the way
pregnant women do, holding up the weight. Mr. Persichetti watched
his son slide along the downed trunk of the tree, his silver cowboy
pistol drawn. There were strings of willow leaves, still strung on their
wiry branches, wrapped around his helmet.
     
Impulsively, Mr. Persichetti called out his son’s name, foiling an
ambush (at the sound of the man’s voice, Michael Keane’s head
appeared on the other side of the upended roots). He said it was time
to go. The response was all in the boy’s shoulders and arms—a slow
sinking. Two more boys, also in helmets, emerged from the leaves,
their indignation at being called from the game tempered only by the
sight of Tony’s father on the steps in his work pants and T-shirt. He
was a broad, short man with muscular arms. “It’s early,” his son called
back, squinting. And it was the squinting, the openmouthed squinting
and the hint of contradiction in his son’s voice that turned what had
been mere impulse on his father’s part into command. It was early,
another two hours before dinner, and there was certainly no need for
him to drive Tony home—he hadn’t driven him here—but still he said,
“Get in the truck,” and bent his powerful arm. He was a night nurse at
Creedmoor, the state hospital, and what he had seen there, the
patients he had hauled and handled—the vibration of mad voices he
had felt through bodies pressed into his arms, held against his cheek
and his chest—made him quick to raise his hand to his own lucky
child, smart as a whip and perfectly formed.
     
Tony bent his head to remove the borrowed helmet. Mournfully,
he handed the helmet and the pistol to Jacob. His father went down
the steps and joined him at the curb. He guided Tony to the truck with
his hand on the back of his son’s neck.
     
(“Shoot him in the foot,” Mr. Persichetti would tell Mr. Keane,
years later, when Tony had already returned from the war and Jacob
had drawn a bad number. “Break his legs before you let him go.”)
The truck turned and headed down the street. The boys shook off
the disruption and went back to their game. Mary Keane, returning to
the house, her hand under her heavy belly, the baby, as far as she could
tell, sound asleep within, wondered why it was that the Persichettis
had only the two, Tony and little Susan, who was
     
Annie’s age.