Swap and Shop
As he did every Saturday morning from October to April, Stan listened to Swap and Shop while he chopped wood for the week. He kept the old radio in a corner of the woodshed near the chopping block and ran an extension cord to an outside outlet on the log cabin. Priest Lake was nestled up at the top of the Idaho panhandle against the Canadian border, and the radio station in Coeur d’Alene was ninety miles away, so the reception was sometimes a little scratchy. While he listened, he quartered rounds from dead tamaracks he’d found and felled during the summer along one of the fire roads in the surrounding mountains; it took him about an hour to chop enough wood for the following seven days. He liked the steadiness of the exercise, the peaceful lap of the lake on the pebbly shore a dozen yards away, the satisfying accumulation of v-shaped logs, the symmetry of the growing stack in the spreading morning light, and the varied descriptions of things people wanted to buy, sell, or trade on the radio. He looked forward to it all week.
Stan always chopped slowly. He was alone there—his wife had left him five years before—and he was in no hurry to finish. He often chuckled over the exchanges on the radio. Stan liked the way the host never passed any judgment over what the callers had to say, however ludicrous or bizarre. With his easy demeanor, the host simply repeated their essential words, then emphasized the digits of their telephone numbers twice in conclusion. As he did, Stan pictured him writing the information down on a legal pad under his suspended microphone. He liked the folksy tenor of the host’s voice, its drawl hinting somehow of Southern roots. He pictured the host to be about his own age, early sixties, with short salt-and-pepper hair like his own and a similar affection for untucked flannel shirts, jeans, and worn ball caps. But the truth was he’d never met or seen a photo of the host, so that visual notion of him was born entirely, Stan supposed, of some vague inner wish. The host sounded like someone Stan would have liked to have as a friend. He didn’t have any of those there; they were all back in San Diego.
Stan had been at the cabin full-time for three years, since retiring early from a career teaching elementary school. His ex-wife had agreed to let him have the cabin in the divorce, even though it had been in her family for several generations and she was the last of the lot. The truth was, she agreed to just about anything he asked for during their lawyers’ negotiations; she was already living with her lover on the other side of the country and just wanted things over and done with. His ex-wife had also been a teacher, and she and Stan had spent most of every summer together at the cabin before she left. But he’d always been fonder of it than she was, something they’d both long recognized, and they had no children she could have passed it on to.
That Saturday, the first of December, was one of cold, white light. As Stan chopped, his breath came in short cloud blasts. The rounds he placed on the chopping block that morning were only about a foot in diameter and came from an impossibly tall tam he’d come across during one of his scouting rides on the four-wheeler in June. He thought back to spotting its tip above the other trees thirty or so yards off the dirt road near the Horton Ridge lookout. He’d gone back to the cabin immediately, returned in the truck with his chain saw and other gear, and set it down perfectly through a gap in the trees that paralleled the road. Then he’d cut the rounds and hauled them out and into the truck’s bed. It took two trips up and back from the cabin to get them all. The wood was tight and hard, splitting cleanly with his sharpened axe, the perfume-like scent from it wafting in the clean air after each swing.
That morning’s radio callers were a typically varied group. Most were selling things: vehicles, farm equipment, furniture, pets, property. Some were hoping to find work like caregiving or babysitting, or looking to buy mostly odd items: a forklift, a Wurlitzer spinet piano, Pekin ducks, a gas-powered leaf blower, fresh brown eggs. Fewer were hoping to swap things: an entertainment center for a bicycle with at least three speeds, a collection of arrowheads for a 10-horse outboard motor. Stan chopped deliberately without interruption while he listened until he stopped abruptly when a woman said she had a hospital bed she wanted off her hands.
“A hospital bed,” the host repeated.
“That’s right. Don’t need it anymore with my husband passing on.”
A moment of soft static followed. Then the host said, “I’m sorry.”
Stan heard the woman blow out a long breath on her side of the line. Another moment went by before she said, “Yeah.”
“All right,” the host said. “Any special details about the bed?”
“It works real well; didn’t use it very long. Sides click up and down. Motorized, so you can incline the head. On wheels.”
“Almost new,” the host repeated. “Adjustable side rails, motorized incline, wheels. And what price are you asking for it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re not sure.”
“I’d just as soon give it away to someone who needs it.”
The host paused again. Stan had lowered the axe to his side. He felt himself blinking. A flock of late-migrating geese called overhead as they flew south toward Spokane.
Finally, the host said, “All right. Cost: free.”
Stan pictured each of them on their side of the call: the host with his headset and microphone, his pen poised over his legal pad, the woman standing, perhaps, in her yellow kitchen using an old wall phone with a coiled cord, the same dusty white light Stan was staring at streaming through her muslin curtains, the empty house cavernous around her. Like the host, she sounded about his age.
“Can I have your number, please?” the host asked. “Give it to me slowly.”
She did. The host repeated it twice, then brought the call to a close the way he always did. “And this item will be up on our station’s website for one month or until sold.”
“Thank you,” the woman said.
“You’re very welcome,” the host told her.
Stan heard the click on her end of the line. The host took another call right away, but Stan wasn’t listening. He sat down on the chopping block, the partial round there falling softly into the sawdust. The image of the woman caller had suddenly been replaced by one of his ex-wife the evening she’d left. She’d been perched in her coat on the edge of their couch when he came through the front door, her suitcase at her feet. She told him that she didn’t love him anymore, that she’d met someone else, that she was leaving. He felt like he’d been hit by a tank; he’d never suspected a thing. When he reached to embrace her as she stood, she ducked under his arms with her suitcase and was gone. That was the last time he ever saw her.
The flock of geese called again further away, but he didn’t notice that, either.
* * *
Stan waited until after lunch to check the radio station’s website on his laptop. He found the posting about the hospital bed quickly. It included a black-and-white photo of the bed in what appeared to be a wood-paneled room. Its head was inclined and the near set of side rails was lowered. Some sort of framed painting hung centered above it on the wall. There were no blankets or pillows on it, just the bare mattress in a clear plastic sleeve. And at the head of the bed, looking into the camera with a blank gaze, was the woman he assumed was the caller. She was younger than Stan had imagined, fiftyish, attractive, a little heavy-set with shoulder-length hair and eyes that were tender but weary. He recognized the weariness in those eyes. He touched her face on the screen.
The other information the host had summarized was recorded, too. Stan moved his cursor over the phone number and watched it blink there for several minutes as he felt his heart and breathing quicken. Finally, he picked up his phone and dialed the number.
The same woman’s voice answered: “Hello?”
Stan steadied himself, then said, “I’m calling about the item you listed on Swap and Shop this morning.” He paused. “The hospital bed.”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if it’s still available.”
“It is. It’s yours if you want it.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have a truck?”
“I do, yes.”
“Good. Where are you coming from?”
“Priest Lake.”
“Pretty place.” She paused, too. “My husband and I used to drive up and fish there sometimes. At the outlet of the Dickensheet.”
“That’s a nice spot.”
“It was.” A long moment passed with only static on the line until she said, “I live just outside Coeur d’Alene. When can you come and get it?”
“Now, if it’s convenient.”
“That would be great. I really can’t stand to look at it anymore.”
After she gave him directions, Stan said, “I should be there in a couple hours.”
“I’m Marge, by the way.”
“Stan.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Marge. See you soon.”
* * *
Before he left, Stan tucked in his flannel shirt under his fleece-lined denim jacket, wet and smoothed his hair, and left his cap on the kitchen counter. There weren’t any other vehicles on East Shore Road as Stan drove along it; most of the other lake cabins were only used during the summer or warm-weather holidays. The few deciduous trees on both sides of the road stood bare among the jumble of pines and firs and tams. Sundance Peak was still lit with sun to his left, but by the time he reached the T at the gas station/restaurant in Coolin, it had already begun its descent across the lake toward the Selkirk Range. He started down Route 57, which was like a tunnel among the trees in the descending light, crossed the Dickensheet, and drove another thirty minutes before the brown stubbled fields began north of the hamlet of Priest River, interrupted only by an occasional big spool of forgotten hay or strand of rolling irrigation pipes. The stretch south on Route 41 was more of the same, except the farms were larger and most of those long, wide fields were still black from the late summer burn-off. The light fell further as he drove, and heavy-bellied clouds had begun gathering to the northeast. Somewhere near the halfway mark to the interstate, he found himself practicing ways to invite Marge to the lake to go fishing, but then chased those thoughts away. He put on a CD of classical music and tried instead not to think about anything.
At Post Falls, he got on the interstate going east. The off ramp that led to Marge’s place came up not long afterward. Stan followed the series of turns she had explained through a neighborhood of older pre-fab homes that differed from one another only in color. Her house stood on a little rise at the end of a cul-de-sac. Stan pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition, and climbed out of the cab.
An auburn-haired woman came out of the front door onto the landing at the top of three steps and raised a hand to him. “You must be Stan,” she said. “I’m Marge.”
Stan came up to her and they shook hands, a warmth spreading through him as they did. Marge wore a mauve turtleneck sweater, black leggings, and moccasins. She gave him a small smile that folded the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her green eyes, and something fell inside him.
“Come on in,” she said. “I’ll show you the bed.”
She led him through a living room, past a kitchen, and down a hallway into a small room with the cheap wood paneling he recognized from the photo on the website. The bed stood in its spot against the wall under a painting he could now distinguish as an original of Lake Coeur d’Alene near where it met the Spokane River. It was well done.
Marge walked up to the bed and placed a palm on the plastic-covered bare mattress. The side rail had been raised and the head of the bed was flat. Stan came up beside her, nodding. He lifted the control dangling on a cord from the side rail.
“That works fine,” Marge said. “Want me to plug it in so you can see?”
“No,” Stan said. “I trust you.” He returned the control to the rail, looked at the painting, and said, “Nice picture.”
She regarded it briefly, then said, “My husband painted it.”
Stan nodded some more. “So, you said on the radio that he’d used this bed.”
She lowered her eyes to the mattress and he watched her lips purse. “He did.”
“Sorry for your loss. How long ago?”
She looked at him evenly. “Four months. He had stomach cancer that wasn’t diagnosed until it was late stage. He went pretty quickly.”
“That’s tough.”
She nodded. “I’m a nurse, so I could take care of him until the end. Didn’t need hospice.”
They looked more at each other. It was warm in the room. Stan was vaguely aware of a radio playing softly in the kitchen: a news report. He imagined Marge and himself in his skiff with their lines in the water off one of the islands, Kalispell or maybe Eight Mile. Standing there together, he thought about saying, “I know something about loss, too.” But he didn’t.
“Well.” Her eyebrows raised. “We could disassemble it or try bringing it out to your truck the way it is. Save some time if we could.”
“Sure,” Stan said. “Worth a try.”
“My boyfriend can help. He just got home from work.”
Stan felt his own eyebrows raise, a slow chill crawling up his spine as he watched her turn her head and call, “Gary, can you give us a hand?”
A big man appeared in the doorway. He had a short brown beard and was dressed in a khaki National Forest uniform. He smiled at Stan, his eyes downturned at the outside edges, gentle and kind. He said, “Sure thing.”
“The mattress is light,” Marge told them. “I’ll take that out. If you each take an end of the frame, I think you can turn it on its side and walk it around the door frames.”
Their choreography went exactly as planned, though Stan moved in a kind of numb fog. They set the frame on top of the mattress in his truck bed, legs up, then tied a tarp Stan had brought over it, tossing a rope back and forth to cinch it securely.
Stan found his way to the driver’s side door and said, “Can I pay you something for it?”
Marge shook her head. “No, just put it good use.”
Stan felt himself nodding and stared at the two of them standing side by side a few feet away at the edge of the driveway. He got in the truck and backed out into the street. When he glanced back at them, they had their arms around each other’s waists. Marge raised a hand to him the way she had when he’d arrived. He did his best to return the gesture, then drove away.
It began to snow before he reached Post Falls: fat, crazy flakes that danced in his headlights against the gloaming. Stan didn’t play any music on the way back, but he kept the heater on high. Somewhere near where Route 41 met the 57, he pounded the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and howled. He did it twice more before Priest River, but was silent afterward.
By the time Stan reached the cabin, it had long since gone completely dark. The snow had stopped. He stored the mattress up against the far wall of the woodshed, slid the frame onto the ground on its wheels, and rolled it to the same spot. He tipped it on its side against the mattress, then covered both with the tarp and went into the cabin. He didn’t turn on any lights. It was pitch-black, cold. There were enough glowing embers left in the woodstove to get a new fire going quickly. He took the whiskey bottle out of the cupboard, opened it, and took a long pull. Then he sat down on the floorboards against the foot of the couch, watched the fire burn in the darkness, and drank.
* * *
A real blizzard blew up during the night that lasted well into the following week. When it finally broke, Stan went snowshoeing or cross-country skiing most days down the path along the lake as far as Hunt Creek and back. Once, he came upon a depression in the needles on the leeward side of a hollowed tam where a deer had bedded down and left scat. It wasn’t cold enough yet for the lake’s shallows to freeze over, so most mornings he still saw the pile driver from Cavanaugh Bay motor by slowly a hundred or so yards out, heading to someone or other’s dock for repairs, and then motor back again in dwindling light about four o’clock.
Stan tried to find things to do to keep busy in the cabin. He took apart and oiled his chain saw. He attempted to read. He did a couple of jigsaw puzzles. He watched DVDs of old musicals that he and his ex-wife had accumulated over the years. Often, he found himself staring out the window across the lake at the opposite shore a half-mile away, the tiny buildings of Hills Resort just visible, closed up for the winter, as still and barren as he felt inside. Most days, he was able to avoid reaching for the whiskey bottle until the wan winter sun had descended completely behind the Selkirk Range, the towering mountains there deepening from dark green to charcoal gray to black as they grew more distant. At night, sleep was even harder to come by than usual.
Stan still chopped wood and listened to Swap and Shop each Saturday morning. He looked forward more than ever to hearing the host’s quiet, thoughtful interactions with callers, and found himself pausing sometimes as the host concluded a call to swallow over a hardness in his throat. He waited until the Saturday before Christmas, when he’d finished the week’s wood chopping, to call the show. He only had to wait on hold a few minutes before he heard the host’s familiar voice say, “Hello, you’re on Swap and Shop. What would you like to buy, sell, or trade?”
Stan was sitting at his dining table gazing out at the flat lake, the dark mountains, the cold gray sky. He said, “I have a hospital bed.”
“A hospital bed?”
“Yes.”
“To sell or trade?”
“To give away to anyone who needs it.”
The host paused. “You know we had another one of those not too long ago.”
Stan didn’t respond. He watched a float plane pass low in the sky on the far side of the lake, heading north. It was too far away to hear. Wisps of snow blew sideways.
“Caller?” the host said. “Are you still there?”
Stan cleared his throat and said, “I am, yes.”
“Any special details you want to share about the bed?”
Stan gave him the same basic information Marge had, but added, “The mattress has a plastic cover.”
The host summarized those elements and asked for Stan’s phone number. He repeated it slowly twice and told listeners that the item would be on the station’s website for one month or until sold. Then he asked Stan, “Anything else?”
“I’m wondering,” Stan said slowly. “Do you have a name?”
Another pause followed before the host said, “It’s Paul, actually.”
“Paul,” Stan repeated. “You sound like a nice guy, Paul. I like the friendly way you deal with callers. I like the sound of your voice. I think a lot of listeners do.”
“Well,” Paul said, “thanks, I guess.”
“You’re welcome,” Stan told him. His own voice caught. “Take care.”
He hung up. The float plane had advanced further up the lake toward Chimney Rock. Stan wondered where it was heading in that weather. Maybe to the upper lake, though it seemed too cold for a picnic or camping. Maybe just out for a ride, looking things over before returning somewhere warm. A place where someone else was waiting. Who knew? People did things, went places for any number of reasons, many of which were never completely clear.
WILLIAM CASS
William Cass has had more than 250 short stories appear in a variety of literary magazines, such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. He has received one Best Small Fictions and three Pushcart nominations, and his short story collection Something Like Hope & Other Stories was recently released by Wising Up Press. He lives in San Diego, California.