Here comes J, patron saint of idleness who beat back cancer last October just to watch his missus fade, hauling a pot of soup down from his second-floor apartment.

I'm across the street clipping my nails on the steps of the boarding house and listening as the neighborhood sheds rainwater from a week-long summer storm. Last night was so savage I tore up my junk mail to block the cracks in the air conditioner as it fought the thunderous heat. Water rushed through in hurried rivulets. Now the storm is gone and my lungs feel clear and yes, the town sewer begs for mercy through its iron bar lips, and at the far end of the street, someone's car won't start and probably never will. But today I can open my mouth and breathe the muggy salvation.

J smiles at me. I stand, pocket my clippers, and duck inside to collect bowls, napkins, and spoons. I'm part of his ceremony now, the weekly gathering, the ritual of soup. A goddamned local beauty and I'm a minor priest, one step nearer than most to the ragged mystery, the altar of soup. It's okay to be excited about things, I tell myself. To feel good about being involved.

I help J unfold his long metal table and tell J that the soup smells like his best work. I hope so, he says. J's hand shakes as he raises the lid. Broth-steam eels against his beard. Thick noodles lurk, serpents amid islands of carrot and chicken, flecked by chive and onion curls. J tells me about the woman who needed help as she reached for pasta at the store. It felt so right to be of service, he said, so close to the end.

P and D arrive. The Other D, not the D who gave out free smokes because he hated smoking alone, who was carried off by an ambulance two weeks before, who we've heard nothing from since that night.

J gives P a soup bowl ladled to the brim, then offers one to Other D. Other D waves it away and touches his stomach.

Did you hear the one about Michelangelo? Other D asks. He says Michelangelo's name with a fake Italian accent.

No, says P.

He wouldn't let his wife paint his nails, says Other D.

J hands me a bowl of soup. Weeks after his wife died J and I sat alone together in his side yard eating soup, a half-dozen bowls apiece. After we ate, we sagged in our chairs and let the sun wash us in an empty-minded haze. Then J sat up, stirred the air-cooled contents of the pot, and told me that not all things are ugly or scary when they die. Some things, he said, are beautiful when they die.

Zack, you didn't get my joke? Other D asks me.

I think I'm lost, I say.

The ones who get it will get it, Other D says. He winks at me.

B comes up behind me and squeezes my shoulders with his big hands. We're cousins and he's drunk and he wants me to join him. All drunks crave equality. I last saw him when our family buried his father in Holyoke, but we text each other often.

B tells me, You said you'd come to the band concert with me. The rain date, remember?

I remember B telling me about this woman who plays clarinet. How, two weeks ago, he went home with her from the bar. He showed me the texts he's sent her since, dozens, an unanswered stream of questions.

Have you heard the one about the guy with five penises? Other D asks B.

No, I haven't, says B as J ladles himself a bowl.

Other D clears his throat, then says, This guy, with five penises, he goes to the doctor. Guy tells him, Doc, I got these five penises. Doctor asks, how the hell do your pants fit? Then the guy says, like a glove!

P laughs and I laugh, too. Other D laughs the hardest. J smiles and sips some broth.

Come on, B says to me.

We walk up into town. Everything is still wet from the rain and the shops are empty. The record store owner locks his door as we pass. A battered sedan struggles through a dark puddle. Stop lights flash yellow above the street. B drinks noisily from his flask as we walk. We pass some teens standing beneath the awning of a storefront. Smartphone in each hand. One kid nudges another and holds out a wireless earbud.

At the town green, a small crowd has gathered before a wooden bandshell. Mostly old people in rickety chairs or motorized scooters who've wandered over from their sidestreet redoubts. A few families. Twenty musicians squirm in folding chairs.

There she is, says B, and he points, but I can't tell where he's looking.

The conductor kneels and reties her shoes. Then she talks about the community band and how much rain they've waited through to play. I clap with the others as she turns her back and raises a baton.

The band fumbles through a numbingly patriotic jingle. The song reminds me of childhood, July 4th, the troops and their instruments, marching during a time when inspiration came easily.

I recognize the next one. Shenandoah. One my grandmother taught me. Sung by trappers. Men of the canal. Deep-vein America. I sit down and chew the grass with my hands. I'm bound away and my bones are water and for a few minutes, I'm not one of the countless men of Massachusetts who never find or want to find a reason to leave, who surrender to cheap bottles or shit food or the warm law of the syringe. Someone's calling me. I am bound away.

B steps on my hand and I jolt awake. He's on his feet. America the Beautiful on his lips. A patriotic bellows with a firebrand flask in his hand. The band gawks in our direction. I stand and grab his arm as sea to shining sea staggers from his mouth and we scrape up the small hill of the green toward town. A police officer smokes a cigarette across Main Street.

We stop at the edge of the river. Gray and swollen from the storms. The high and holy buzz of water. The band's brass instruments bleat like distant geese. Pain squats in my ankles and knees.

For now, the world has moved on from what we've done, and as my body begins to relax my eyes trace the arc of the bridge above the falls. I admire the bridge, its Art Deco knuckles, and the way its skeletal reflection quivers on the water.

Then I say, Heard a story once about that bridge.

What about it?

Something about this older couple. Lived over in Gill but always crossed the river into town. To eat. Drink. See people. One night there's a storm. They decide they wanna get back home before closing time. People at the bar, they see 'em leave. Only the guy leaves his keys behind, right? Half an hour later he shows up. Somebody gets a close look at him. He's aged. Deeper lines in the face. Grayer hair. Grayer skin. He gets the keys, leaves. Only he drops his wallet. A while later his wife comes. She's gone full white now. Fingers stretched down to the bone. Lost all the baby weight from that baby they couldn't keep. Bartender says, they're out there, getting sick. Takes his break, follows 'em out. They make it to the bridge. But they didn't get across. Skeletons at the height of the curve. Hair and clothes flapping in the breeze. Dust blown away, out over the water, gone and gone.

B says nothing and I think about asking for his flask. Then B says, I never crossed to the other side.

That can't be true, I say.

I mean swim. Swim across, I mean.

You aren't allowed to swim in this part of the river. Too dangerous.

A lot of things are too dangerous.

B pulls his shirt off and unbuckles his belt, drops his pants. I do the same. We ease into the water and pull ourselves along a thick cord threading a line of buoys. To keep boats away from the falls. We climb onto a dead tree, caught on the line. Branches rush by and disappear beyond the falls. People watch us from the riverbank. Someone yells into their phone. I tell B we need to swim back.

I sure could use some soup, he says.

We breathe for a while. This feels like an ending, though I don't know what sort of ending I'd come to expect.

Then, an alabaster spotlight delivers a command. A voice calls out across the gray and restless water. We're coming. Don't move. We're on our way.