Shame-9

Crutches

I don’t know why we protest when doctors tell us what to do. If we make the mistake of entrusting our well-being to them, what can we expect but advice? I suppose it makes us feel better to complain; it doesn’t seem to accomplish anything else. I left my doctor’s office on crutches. It was a bad sprain, I should get plenty of rest, I should stay off it completely for at least five days, and it could take months before it felt completely trustworthy again. This was more answer than I wanted.

“But I’ve got to coach basketball,” I protested. “I’ve got to go out and feed cattle. I’ve got to play point guard after Christmas.”

“You’ve got to stay off that ankle,” he ordered me, and rightfully so. After I removed my shoe on Sunday night I was in the worst agony of my entire life. My ankle was about the size of a softball—a red, throbbing softball. The pain was so overwhelming it made me sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t stop myself from groaning. Michelle couldn’t sleep with me lying there mooing, and anything that disturbed her sleep had to be momentous indeed. Then on Monday morning when I tried to get out of bed to feed the cattle, stepping on it was like setting off a three-alarm fire from my knee down.

Michelle ran in from wherever she had been when she heard my plaintive noises and found me on the floor. She took me to the doctor in Watonga, with the results I have already described. This was a solution to my pain, but still left the cattle hungry. B. W., Michelle, and Lauren fed them Monday and Tuesday—Lauren under protest—but it was apparent to me that with their busy lives and anticattle convictions, I couldn’t count on them to do it daily. I would have to come up with another idea.

Meanwhile, I asked Carla to help with basketball practice when on Monday it became evident that I couldn’t stay on top of things from the bleachers.

“Glad to,” she said. And I was glad too; we could learn things from her.

When I went out for practice Tuesday afternoon, I seated myself gingerly in the fourth row, my ankle propped on the seat in front of me. I figured I would be safe there from errant passes and out-of-control bodies. Shortly before the kids started to arrive, the outside door opened and Phillip walked in, wearing a jean jacket and a T-shirt with Joe Camel on it. His hair was clean and gathered in a ponytail; he was wearing his tennis shoes.

“Hey,” he said, and walked across the court to sit next to me. He looked down at my bare foot and swollen ankle. “That looks awful.”

“That’s how it feels,” I said. I sniffed discreetly and couldn’t pick up any trace of alcohol, which was heartening. “I’ve got some Percodan. Helps some.”

“Be careful with that stuff,” he said solemnly. “It gets a hold of you and doesn’t let go.” He shrugged off his jacket to reveal Joe Camel in his full glory.

“You own any clothes that don’t advertise cigarettes?”

He smiled a little. “Ralph Lauren and them guys don’t hang out in my neighborhood.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I just don’t want the kids getting the message that smoking’s okay for them. What brings you up here?”

“You do. My grandmother heard you were bad off. I thought you might need some help with practice.”

“Your grandmother?”

He shrugged. “She has her sources.”

I was thinking mystic spirit guides, maybe animal totems. I raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Someone told her at the beauty shop,” he said.

“Well,” I said. “Thanks. I’m glad you came. Carla Briggs—the girls’ coach—is going to help out today, but you’re welcome to stay if you want to.”

He shifted uncomfortably and shot a glance at the door. “That lady coach? The one who was up here that Sunday?”

“That’s the one.”

He fidgeted some more, raised his first two fingers and thumb to his lips and tapped for a minute, then decided. “Well, I guess I better get going.”

“Why?” I started to ask, but that’s when a voice came from the gym doors.

“Hey, boys,” Carla called. “I left my class watching a film so I could come over early.” She crossed the court with her ground-eating stride, and I pushed myself slowly to my feet, not because I always rise in the presence of women, but because Phillip seemed to be towering over me, and I guessed that Carla would too.

“Carla, you remember Phillip One Horse,” I said. “My old teammate. Phillip, Carla Briggs.”

She held out her hand, and his rose from his side to take it. “Good to see you again,” she said.

“Ma’am,” he said, nodding. When his hand dropped back to his side, it patted his leg a few times. Then he nodded again and said, “Well, I’ll let you two get to work.”

“Phillip came up to see if I needed any help with practice.”

“Why don’t you hang around?” Carla asked. “Three heads are better than two.”

“Nah, I’m in training,” he said, and he looked down at his shirt and smiled. “Down to a pack a day. Next stop, the Atlanta Olympics.”

“Wait a sec,” I said. “Carla, will you get the balls? I’ve got a little business to talk over with Phillip.”

She went off toward our offices, and Phillip and I sat back down for a moment. “What do you need?” Phillip asked, watching Carla disappear into the hallway before he turned his full attention back to me.

“I’ve got a bunch of calves I can’t feed because of this thing,” I said, grimacing at my ankle. “Could you come out morning and evening and give me a hand for a week or two? I can’t pay much, but I could give you a couple head of cattle when we’re done. And I heard you talking to B. W. about your Chevy the other day. I can’t walk, but I’m still good with a wrench. Maybe I could help you get that thing running.”

“Okay,” he said. “But you know, John, you don’t have to pay me. I’d help you for nothing.”

I patted his shoulder. “Well, you’re worth more to me than nothing. Do you still have a driver’s license?”

“For all the good it does me.”

I pulled my keys out of my pocket. “Why don’t you take my truck. I’ll catch a ride with Michelle. Until I’m up and around, you drive out in the morning, move the cattle around, fill the feed troughs. I’ll show you what needs to be done. When the weather’s good, I’ll come home with you and we’ll work on the Chevy. Then in the evening we’ll feed cattle again, and you take the truck home.”

I held out the keys in my upturned palm. He stood looking at them. “Go on,” I said. “I’ll see you about six or seven. Stay for dinner if you like.”

He nodded, as much to himself as to me, and placed his palm under mine. I turned my hand and transferred the keys in a sort of handshake.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there.” He looked around quickly, turned, and, by the time Carla tugged the cart of basketballs to the side of the court, had vanished.

“Phillip has a kind face,” Carla said when she was seated by me again. “Was he really in prison?”

“A long time ago,” I said. “He’s trying to put his life back together now.”

“And you’re trying to help.”

I looked over at her. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”

“That’s nice,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Now let’s talk about the agony I’m going to inflict on your kids today.”

And thus was set my routine for the next few weeks: Phillip arrived early in the morning, and after he’d fed the calves per my instructions, we spent the day troubleshooting beneath the hood of his old pickup—I was convinced it needed a new carburetor, Phillip insisted it needed at the least a valve job—then Phillip would take me up to basketball practice, loiter a few minutes to say hello to Carla, and go on out to the farm to do my evening chores. He worked hard and did the job right. With a minimum of effort, he moved the unweaned calves in and out of the pens where the milk cows were tethered, talking softly to both cows and calves to keep them calm. Before he left at night, he filled buckets of feed so he could go immediately to work in the morning.

“I may fire you and keep Phillip,” Michelle said one Wednesday night after he’d taken supper with us and headed home.

“I may fire myself,” I said from the kitchen table, where I remained while dishes were taken up.

We went into the living room to work. Michelle had papers to grade and I wanted to get off a few letters, but before we had a chance to get too involved with either, Lauren called us to the phone.

“It’s the police,” she said, whispering the last word emphatically and handing the phone to Michelle, who naturally reached the kitchen more quickly than I did.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “This is Michelle Tilden.” Then I saw her jaw clench, her lip curl.

“Let him out,” she said. “Now. Every word he told you is true.” She listened for a moment and then yanked the phone away from her ear and thrust it at me. “Talk to this fascist,” she said.

“Hello,” I said. “This is John Tilden. What’s wrong?”

“Like I was telling your wife,” the voice of some Watonga good ol’ boy said, “we got Phillip One Horse down here at the jail. Pulled him over driving your truck. He said you loaned the truck to him. That he was working for you. Any of that true?”

“My wife just told you it was,” I said. I was headed rapidly toward teeth clenching. “Why did you pull him over?”

“Tail light was out,” he said. “So we should let him go?” He seemed disappointed.

“No,” I said. “You should apologize to him and then let him go.” I hung up forcefully and looked across at Michelle. “Pigs.”

“Fascists.”

“Cool,” Lauren breathed. “My parents are radicals.”

I apologized to Phillip—more than once—when I saw him the next morning. He just shrugged, as though he had gotten used to such things. But when he had finished with the chores, as I hobbled up to the back porch, preparatory to heading out to Phillip’s, he said, “Let’s not work on the truck today. It’s too cold.”

“It’s not any colder than it was yesterday.” I looked closely at him but I couldn’t read him. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.” After he’d driven off and I’d bummed Michelle’s car to get up to practice—I thanked God again for B. W, who agreed to take his mom and little sister to school—I settled back to do some reading. I was just finishing up the last pages of A River Runs Through It when I heard the back door open and slam shut.

Maybe Phillip, I thought. Maybe he changed his mind. I started down the hallway to see.

The door to Michael’s room was open, and I could hear the noise of wire hangers jangling in the closet. I crutched my way silently to the doorway and inside to see my eldest standing in front of his closet, looking down at the Watonga letter jacket in his hands. It was my old jacket from high school, but when he’d been a kid, he asked me for it, and wore it until he quit basketball.

“Hi,” I said, pleased that my voice didn’t fail me.

Michael jumped, but didn’t turn around. “You’re supposed to be in town guzzling coffee with your buddies. The truck was gone.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that. I hurt my ankle playing basketball. The guy who’s helping me has the truck.”

He pulled on the letter jacket. “Maybe you should take up something more suited to your age. Bingo or something.” He threw a few more things in a duffel bag and then brushed past me, stepping around my crutches.

I followed him out into the hall. “I hear you’re going to be a father.”

His back went straight, and he stopped short of the door. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you disapprove. I guess you think we’re messing up our lives the same way you did.” He spat out the last words as though they were bitter, then hoisted his duffel and threw the door open.

“No, Michael, I’m happy for you. Really.”

He paused for a moment on the threshold, and his head turned the fraction it needed to allow his eyes to shift back toward me. He stood there for a moment, met my eyes, and then shook his head and pulled the door shut behind him.

I watched as he got into his truck and drove away. He did not look up again. I turned and went into Lauren’s room, sat down on the edge of her bed, set my crutches down on the floor, and stared at her wallpaper, a pattern of lavender ponies.

She had outgrown ponies.

Kids outgrow everything.

After awhile, I reached down to get my crutches and snagged one of Lauren’s magazines from under the bed in the process. Cosmopolitan. One of those bodacious supermodels was on the cover with most of her breasts exposed.

Well, I’m only human. I looked.

And then I glanced over the rest of the cover, read the promised contents of the magazine.

Are you having your best sex?

How to have an affair with an older man.

Living and loving for the next century.

“God help us,” I said. I slid the magazine back where I’d found it.

Michelle and I would have to talk to Lauren, all right, starting with why she was reading magazines like this.

The last football game of the season was the next night, and I hadn’t planned to go because of my ankle, but when Phillip asked about it Friday morning, I told him I might, just to be encouraging. He had also asked if Carla went to football games, which I allowed she generally did. The chill I’d detected the day before was gone; in fact, he apologized for being so touchy. “I’m used to the Watonga cops being suspicious of me,” he explained. “I was just afraid I might have embarrassed you. I wouldn’t want that.”

“We weren’t embarrassed,” I said. “Michelle and I were furious that they treated you that way.”

“Tell her thanks,” he said. “She’s a good woman.” He climbed into the truck—which was cleaner, by the way, than I ever kept it myself—and said, “Want to come out and give me a hand this afternoon?”

“Let me grab my coat,” I said.

That afternoon we agreed that the problem with the truck wasn’t carburetor or valves.

“Gas line,” he said.

“Gasket,” I offered.

Ellen Smallfeet fixed lunch for us. It was simple and good: fried fish, canned green beans, fresh-baked bread—and she sat and visited with us for a bit before cleaning up.

“I saw your son at the Pizza Hut the other night,” Phillip said, watching for my reaction. “Your older son. He brought us our food.”

I nodded, and then when the silence became tangible, I asked, “How did he look?”

“A little tired,” Phillip said. “Like he’s not sleeping so good. But he made a couple jokes. Us Indians love a good sense of humor, you know.”

“Tired, huh? He used to sleep all day long.”

“He told me he took a day job at some welding place. Working in a big tin building without any heat.”

“Well,” I said. “That explains the letter jacket. It’s the warmest coat he’s got.”

“What explains what?” he asked, so I told him about the day before.

“Sorry,” he said, his dark eyes solemn. “You miss him?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I wish I could do it all over. Everything. I said some things to him that I really shouldn’t have.”

“Words are like arrows,” Ellen Smallfeet called from the sink without turning around. “Once sent they cannot be called back.”

“That advice doesn’t help me much now, Mrs. Smallfeet,” I said, in what I hoped was a proper tone of deference.

She turned around and covered her mouth with her fingers, looking for all the world like a wrinkled, giggling three-year-old. “Sorry,” she said. “When one reaches my age, it is sometimes difficult to turn off the wisdom.”

“I forgive you,” I said. “Thanks for lunch.”

“We’ll take you into town in a bit, Grandmother,” Phillip said. “We’ve got to go to the parts store and order a new fuel filter.”

“Head gasket,” I said.

“I’ll be ready,” she said, settling into one of Phillip’s chairs, her hands crossed primly in her lap. “Whenever you are.”

We dropped her off and then stopped by the parts place. We ordered both parts.

Phillip took me back to my house, where I faced a more challenging task. Michelle and I sat down with Lauren as she was reading for school. Michelle looked at me and cleared her throat.

“Ah,” I began, raising my eyes to take in the hairless pectorals of one of Lauren’s poster boys. “Your mother and I were thinking it might be a good time to talk to you about, ah, boys. And girls.” I could feel a warm flush creeping up my neck. “Sex. You know. Would you, ah, like to talk about that?”

“Uh, no,” Lauren said, not looking up from her science book.

“Just checking,” Michelle said, although she said it with substantial relief. “You sure you don’t have any questions you want to ask us?”

Lauren gave a little exhalation of exasperation, tilted her head slightly to one side, and rolled her eyes. “If we talk about sex, you’re just going to get embarrassed,” she said, and looking up at me said, “Especially you, Dad. And besides, I know everything I need to know.” She met our gaze. “Secondhand, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Well,” Michelle said. “I’m glad we had this little talk. Aren’t you, John?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Very glad.”

“Me, too,” Lauren said, turning the page. “Could I finish doing my homework now?”

“Sure,” Michelle said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

Back in the hallway, we exchanged relieved high fives, and I hopped back to the kitchen table. “Hey,” I said, shuffling through the afternoon mail. “Would it be okay if we invite Phillip for Thanksgiving dinner? Indians do celebrate Thanksgiving, right?”

“Well, if Phillip’s going to be here, why don’t we invite Carla?”

Her tone was innocent enough, but I asked anyway. “What are you thinking?”

She looked away as she talked, and her voice took on a nonchalant tone. “I was just thinking that since Carla and I have talked once or twice about Phillip, and you said Phillip had asked about Carla, that maybe we should give them a chance to get to know each other better.”

I shook my head. “He’s not ready for something like that,” I said. “You’ll embarrass him.”

“Not at all.” She raised her hand—I swear on this Bible. “I know how sensitive he is. We’ll invite some other folks so it won’t be so obvious.”

It didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll ask him tonight.”

Shortly thereafter Phillip finished chores and knocked on the back door, and Michelle invited him into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. When she had him comfortable, she asked him, “Do Indians celebrate Thanksgiving?”

“Sure,” he said, taking a sip. “We’re a thankful people. It’s Columbus Day Indians are not so crazy about.”

“I thought maybe because of the Pilgrims …” Michelle began, and shrugged.

Phillip smiled. “I think there are worse things than remembering that Indians are necessary for people’s survival.”

“Good point,” I said. “You want to come for Thanksgiving dinner? We’re having some other folks out. You wouldn’t be any burden at all.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What kind of people?”

“Well,” I said, “some people from school. Michelle’s parents. The Graywolfs. Not a big group. And they’re nice.”

He sipped his coffee thoughtfully.

“John does most of the cooking, so the food is good,” Michelle added. “He bastes a mean turkey.”

“All right,” he said, setting his cup down. “Thanks.”

“Our first games are next weekend,” I said. “You can help keep me calm.”

“Good luck,” Michelle said, bending to pull the meat loaf out of the oven. “He’s been tossing and turning for weeks.” She smiled sweetly at me. “I’m sure it’s because of basketball.”

The smile I gave in return was somewhere between sickly and ghastly. It was true that I had lost a lot of sleep. With my bad ankle, it was almost impossible to get comfortable; I was forever kicking something and yelping with pain, and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even tolerate the weight of a sheet on my foot.

But it was also true that I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Samantha, wondering what she was doing, where our talk might lead. I couldn’t stop imagining her, also alone in bed, also, maybe, thinking about me.

“Things should calm down when I establish some kind of pattern,” I said, shaking those images out of my head.

“Do you need any help with the varsity this week?” Phillip asked. “I can come up if you need me. I think we’ve gotten as far with the car as we can without that new gas line.”

“Head gasket,” I said. “You’re always welcome,” I said. “Carla and I could probably use you. We’re getting ready for that tournament in Calumet.”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” he said, and Michelle and I exchanged a quick confirming glance as he left.

After Watonga had lost its final football game in the same dismal fashion in which it had lost most of the others, Michelle, Lauren, and I stopped in at the Four Corners convenience store to return Black Beauty and maybe check out something romantic. “Something with sinuous bodies coiled around each other,” Michelle whispered in my ear, her arm around my waist while I hopped, crutchless, toward the store. Maybe she was hoping to revive my libido; I had not showed much interest in her lately. Or maybe she wanted to live vicariously. I didn’t ask.

“What are you talking about?” Lauren asked, holding the door open for us.

“Nothing,” I said. “Go away.”

Gloria was behind the counter, so while Michelle sifted through what videos remained late on a Friday night, I went over to talk. “How are you feeling?”

She looked a little pale, but her smile in return was genuine. “Awful,” she said. “Is being pregnant like this for everyone?”

“Well, I don’t know about everyone,” I said, leaning on the counter and inclining my head toward Michelle, who was holding a video in each hand as though she were weighing them, “but she was sick as a dog every time.”

“Michael says—” she began and then broke off, her smile dying at something in my face. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled for something on the counter before looking back up at me. “He said he ran into you the other day.”

“I don’t think he expected to,” I said, my voice even.

“No. He didn’t.”

“If he’d known I was going to be there, he wouldn’t have come.” Now it was less even.

She hesitated, then repeated, “No. I don’t think he would have.”

I sighed. “Please tell him to take care of himself,” I said. “Make sure he gets some rest. He’s not going to be much good to you or the baby if he doesn’t.”

She put her fingers gently on my forearm—fingernails still dabbed with black—and nodded. “I know. He’s trying to save money for the hospital. For the baby. I tell him not to work so hard.”

“Is this the sexiest thing you’ve got left?” Michelle asked, holding up a cover where somebody was kissing Meg Ryan.

“I think so,” Gloria said. “Everything else has been picked through. There was a carload of Millers from down Greenfield way, and those Carson brothers from north of town. Between them, they pretty much cleaned us out of naked bodies.”

“You must learn a lot more about people than you’d care to,” Michelle said, offering the tape and a five.

She considered for a moment as she rang it up. “No,” she decided. “I don’t think I’ll ever know enough about people.” She handed the tape back across the counter with our change. “Have a good time. I’ll tell Michael you asked after him.”

After we got Lauren into bed, Michelle plugged the tape into the player in our bedroom and she got into bed and snuggled close. I lay stiffly, my leg hanging off the bed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked about halfway through, turning off the sound with the remote.

“Nothing,” I said, and patted her reassuringly on the hip. It was one of those body-switching stories, which might have been interesting if I cared about any of the bodies. It was hard to feign interest in the far-fetched problems of Meg Ryan and Alec Baldwin when I had so many real-life worries.

We watched a little longer. It wasn’t happening. At last she turned off the movie and said, “Do you know what I think, John?”

“What?”

She paused for a moment, then just came right out and said it. “I think nobody ever gets the life they want. Not completely. Not you. Not me. Not the kids. Not our parents. They get the life they’re dealt. And the test is what we do with it.” She looked to see if I was hearing her. I was. “And we’ve done something good, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. “We have.” And that should have been enough.

So why wasn’t it?

Later that night, I was still awake thinking, and I rolled silently from the bed and limped to the door.

“J. J.?” she groaned.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m just going to get something to eat.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I could see her stretch and then settle back into the pillow, nestling in the sheets and quilts. “Okay. I love you.”

“I know,” I said.

I closed the door behind me and hobbled off to write a few letters. They wouldn’t come, though. Instead, I jotted down some random things: the names of people in my life, past and present; my plans for the future, which written down seemed a scanty set of things to keep me occupied in the second half of my life; the phrase, underlined twice, “What am I going to do?”

I crumpled up all my pages, threw them into the fireplace, where they blazed and died, dropped my head to the desk, and let it rest there, my forehead against the cool, smooth surface. I thought about praying for guidance or help or some such thing, but if prayer is indeed answered, then the only response I’ve ever gotten has for twenty years been, “Hang in there.”

I thought a touch more about prayer in church that Sunday morning. I generally do a heap of thinking during the sermon, since our young pastor, Tommy Heiliger, never has an original thing to say, and thus I can pretty much tune him out and not worry about missing anything I haven’t been hearing since I was seven years old. I don’t mean to be critical—he’s a good kid, and it takes a special kind of person to pastor a church full of farmers.

We sang a hymn—

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand.
All other ground is sinking sand.
All other ground is sinking sand—

And then his sermon was about how we Christians must associate only with right thoughts and right-thinking people, which was to say other Baptists, preferably the ones sitting to our left and right.

“To pull somebody up out of the quicksand, you’ve got to stand on solid ground,” Tommy was saying, to which a couple of people said “Amen.” “You can’t help somebody to safety if you get down in the quicksand with ’em. That just guarantees you’re going to sink too.”

It seemed to me like he was advocating a return into the ark—close up the doors, I’m safe, who cares about the world outside—although admittedly I am not much of an expert on theology. There were things I believed and rituals I practiced, but as the years rolled by I seemed to be absolutely sure about less and less. And as I sat there with the sermon buzzing about my ears, it began to seem to me that maybe on top of everything else, I was suffering a full-scale crisis of belief.

At last the organ began to play softly, which meant the sermon was winding down and we were launching into the invitation, so I checked the program and turned to the invitation hymn. We stood up and started into “I Surrender All,” and after two verses, we stopped singing, the choir continued humming softly, and Brother Tommy began to talk.

“There’s someone out there today who’s unhappy. Who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. Who needs to just surrender himself and his problems and let God take over. Who needs to come forward this morning and publicly confess Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, or rededicate his life to his Lord.” And for a moment I was tempted to step out from my pew and come forward, really I was, although I didn’t think I was lost.

I just didn’t feel found.

But I didn’t leave the pew. Tommy’s call was not for me. My life was living proof that everything was not as it was meant to be. I could never believe what he wanted me to believe. Maybe I lacked faith, maybe I lacked understanding, but ultimately, one thing was even more important: I lacked peace.

And no matter how ardently I had asked for it and no matter who I had asked for it, I had never gotten it. I’d also asked for strength, and I was just about out of that. I was at the end of my frayed rope, and God, whoever and wherever He was, wasn’t going to magically change my life and make me happy just for taking a stroll down the aisle on Sunday morning. He wasn’t going to heal my broken spirit just because I walked into His office and asked for it. I was starting to wonder, in fact, if I had any use for a Physician who prescribed nothing but twenty years of “Hang in there.” But what else was I going to do? Take up Buddhism? Worship flying saucers?

I was in Oklahoma, after all.

He had me good, and He knew it, and I knew He knew it.

So I stayed right where I was, and after church, I ate roast beef at my in-laws’ house and listened to them praise that very same sermon, and after lunch, I went outside and walked and walked in circles around the block.

The only place I could go after that was home, and that is where I went, no wiser, and even less peaceful.