by Callan Wink
August nailed his three tails onto a long pine board and propped it up in the corner of the barn where it wouldn’t get knocked over by cows milling in and out. He passed Lisa on his way out. She was leaning on a shovel and spitting sunflower seeds into the dirt. She had on blue overalls and muck boots, and her frizzy blond hair was tamed into a ponytail that burst through the hole in the rear of her Seedco cap.
“Hi, August,” she said. “You didn’t come up to the house for lunch.”
“Yeah. I ate at the old house with my mom.”
“Oh, okay. I’m going to stick around tonight. I think I’ll make some tacos for you guys for dinner. Sound good?”
August looked at her face, her round, constantly red cheeks. She called it rosacea, a skin condition. It made her seem to exist in a state of perpetual embarrassment. He wondered if she’d been teased about it at school.
She was only seven years older than he was and had graduated from the high school the previous May. In her senior year August’s father had hired her to help him with the milking. She’d worked before school and after school and on weekends. August’s father had said that she worked harder than any hired man he’d ever had. Now that she was done with school, she put in full days. She could drive a tractor with a harrow, she could muck out the barn, she could give the antibiotic shots to the cows, and when the calving season came she could plunge her hands in up to her wrists to help a difficult calf come bawling into the world.
“Crunchy shells or soft shells?” August said, knocking at the toes of his boots with the wrench.
“Soft?”
“I like crunchy.”
“Well, I’ll see what you guys have in the cupboards, but I bought some soft ones already.”
“Flour or corn?”
“Flour, I think.”
“I like corn.” August spat at his feet, but his mouth was dry so the spit trailed out on his chin. He wiped at it with the back of his sleeve.
“I asked your dad what kind he wanted and he said it didn’t matter.”
“He likes the crunchy shells, too. Trust me. Do you make them with beans or without?”
Lisa hesitated for a moment and tugged at the brim of her cap. “Which do you prefer?” she said.
“Well, that depends.”
“I bought some black beans. I usually put some of those in. But I don’t have to.”
“I like beans. But I don’t eat black beans. I think they look like rabbit turds. My dad thinks that, too.”
“Okay, I’ll leave those out, then. Sound good?” The red on Lisa’s cheeks had spread. A crimson blush was leaching down her neck all the way to the collar of her barn overalls. August didn’t say anything. “All right, August, see you at dinner. Your dad’s probably wondering where I got off to.” Lisa headed into the barn, and August wandered out to the back pasture, swinging his wrench at stalks of burdock and thistle, stepping around the thick plots of fresh manure.
* * *
—
He climbed the low hill before the tree line on the property boundary and sat next to the pile of rocks that marked Skyler’s grave. Skyler had been his birth dog. His father had brought the tiny six-week-old pup home when August had been out of the hospital less than a week. It was something that August’s father had said his own father had done for him. He thought it was good for a boy to have a dog to grow up with. Against August’s mother’s objections, he put the soft, pug-faced shepherd mix in the crib with August—“to get acquainted,” he said. “A boy with a dog is healthier, more active, less inclined to allergy and listlessness.” And it seemed true. August had been a particularly healthy baby, a bright, energetic boy with a tongue-lolling, good-natured four-legged shadow.
At twelve, Skyler had been in remarkably good shape, a little stiff in the mornings but by noon harassing the barn cats like a dog half his age. Then, one day after school, August didn’t see him anywhere in the barn or yard. He went to the equipment shed and found Skyler, stretched out on his side with a greenish-blue froth discoloring his grayed muzzle. He’d chewed through a gallon jug of antifreeze that August’s father had stored under the workbench.
August and his father had carted the body up to the hill and taken turns with the pickax and shovel. When they’d finished they stood and regarded the cairn of rocks they’d stacked over the raw earth to keep the skunks out.
“I guess twelve is as good an age as any,” his father had said. At the time, August thought he’d been talking about the dog. Later, he thought that maybe his father had meant that twelve was as good an age as any for a boy to lose a thing he loved for the first time.
* * *
—
August watched the sky in the west become washed in dusky, pink-tinged clouds. The turning sky made him think, unbidden, of Lisa, the crimson in her cheeks that spread like a hot infection down her neck and shoulders and back and arms, all the way to her legs. This wasn’t mere supposition. He’d seen it.
It had been an early dismissal day last fall. August, off the bus and out of his school clothes, eating a piece of cake from the new house, wandered down to the barn, the air sharp with the acrid tang of the oak leaves his father had been burning in the front yard. The pile smoldered; there was no one around. Skyler slept in the shade of a stock tank. The cows were yoked up in their stanchions. The whole barn was full of the low rumble of suction, the automatic milkers chugging away.
And then, through the open doorway of the grain room, there was his father, muck boots on, thrusting behind Lisa, who was bent over a hay bale, her cheek and forearms pressed down into the cut ends of the hay. Their overalls were around their legs like shed exoskeletons, their conjoined bodies larval, soft and pale. August saw the flush of Lisa then, the creeping red that extended all the way down her back to her thick thighs and her spread calves. She had her underwear pulled down, and their brilliant lacy pinkness was a glaring insult to the flyspecked gray and manure brown of the barn.
On his way out, August had turned the barn radio up as loud as it would go. Golf, Paul Harvey was saying, is a game where you yell “Fore,” score six, and write down five.
* * *
—
At the dinner table, Lisa and August’s father each had a beer. Lisa cut a lime wedge and jammed it down the neck of her bottle, and August’s father said, what the hell, he might try it like that, too. They smiled at each other and clinked their bottles together and drank, and August watched the lime wedges bobbing in their bottles like floats in a level. When they’d finished eating, August’s father leaned back in his chair and belched mightily, his rough, callused fingers shredding the paper napkin as he wiped taco juice from his hands.
“Best meal I’ve had in a while. Thanks, Lisa.”
Lisa grinned and said, “You’re welcome, Darwin. I’m glad you liked it.”
“I got three cats today,” August said to break up their stupid smiling competition. “I did it with a wrench. Right in the head. They never knew what happened.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Lisa wrinkle her nose slightly.
His father finished his beer and piled his fork and knife and napkin onto his plate. He was a large man; all his joints seemed too big—hard, knobby wrists and knuckles, his hands darkened from the sun up to the point where his shirt cuffs lay. He was almost forty years old and still had all of his hair, dark brown, just starting to gray at the temples. In the cold months, he liked to wear a bright silk cowboy scarf knotted up around his neck. He smiled at women often, and women often smiled back. His mother used to say that for a guy with manure on his boots he could be fairly charming.
“Come on now, Augie. I gave you a job and I appreciate you getting right down to it. But there’s barn talk and there’s house talk. I’m sure Lisa wouldn’t mind a little house talk now. How about you clear the table and clean up the dishes. And thank Lisa for making that delicious meal. S
he worked all day and then came up to do that for us.”
“Thanks,” August said and scooted his chair back loudly. He stacked the dishes into a precarious pile and carried them off to the kitchen. He ran the water until steam rose and squirted in soap until the bubbles grew in great tumorous mounds, and then he did the dishes. Clanking plate against plate, banging pot against pot, running the water unnecessarily, making as much noise as possible to cover the low murmur of Lisa and his father talking in the next room.
Through the kitchen window he could see the murky green cast of the yard light, the hulking form of the barn, and, farther out, the squat shape of the old house, completely dark. When his father came in to get two more beers, August didn’t turn around to look at him. He stood next to August at the sink and took the tops off the bottles. He nudged August with an elbow, and August scrubbed at a pan, ignoring him.
“How’s your mother?”
August shrugged.
“I’m not going to run her down, Augie, but she’s not a woman that will ever give you her true mind. You know what I mean?”
August shrugged.
“She’s been disappointed her whole life, probably came out of the womb that way. You don’t disappoint her, I know that, but everything else does—me included, always have, always will. She never learned to hold herself accountable. That’s the way her parents allowed her to grow up. She’s very smart and she thinks she sees things I don’t see, but she’s wrong, I’ll tell you that. I see plenty. You hear me?”
August swirled a cup in the dishwater and didn’t say anything. His father slapped him on the back of the head.
“I said, you hear me?”
“Yeah. I hear you.” August looked straight ahead out the window.
“Okay then.” He reached into the dishwater, came up with a handful of suds, and smeared them on August’s cheek. “You’re all right,” he said. “When you think it’s time, you let me know and we’ll go find you a pup.”
* * *
—
In the morning, the smells of toast and coffee and bacon pulled August from his bed before the sun had even hit the east-facing window. He clumped down the stairs into the kitchen and sat at the table rubbing his eyes. Lisa stood at the stove making eggs. Her feet were bare and she had on the gray long underwear she wore under her barn overalls. They were made for men and tight around her hips, and when she bent over to get the butter out of the refrigerator August could see the faint lines of her panties curving across her full rear.
“Would you like coffee, August?” August nodded, and she put a steaming mug in front of him. “I figure you like it black, like your dad?”
“Sure,” he said, taking a sip, trying not to grimace. “Black and strong.”
His mother mixed his coffee with hot whole milk, dumping in heaping spoonfuls of sugar. She told him that was how she learned to make it when she’d studied in New Orleans, in another lifetime, before she married his father. August knew that Lisa would never go to New Orleans in a million lifetimes.
His father came from the bedroom. He had a dab of shaving foam under one earlobe. He put his hand on Lisa’s waist as he got a coffee mug from the cupboard, and she turned and wiped off the shaving foam with her sleeve.
“How long before the eggs are done?” August asked, tapping his fingers on the tabletop.
“A few minutes. The bacon is almost ready.”
August sighed, downed his coffee, and took a piece of toast from the plate on the counter. “Well,” he said, “some of us can’t sit around. I have to get to work.”
He got his wrench from the mudroom and slid on his boots, leaving them unlaced, and walked across the lawn with his boot tongues flapping like dogs breathing in the heat. The cows were milling in the pasture, gathered up close to the gate. They rolled their dumb, baleful eyes at him and lowed, their udders straining and heavy with milk.
“Shut up, you idiots,” August said. He picked up a small handful of pebbles and continued to walk, pelting any cow within reach.
* * *
—
Until last year, August had helped with the milking every morning before school and every evening after school, and then his mother forbade it and his father had been forced to hire Lisa full-time.
“Do you like helping your father with the milking?” his mother had asked one evening as they cleaned up the dinner dishes. His father was on the porch listening to a baseball game, and the sound of the play-by-play came through the screen door, garbled and frantic. A hard line drive, he’s going, he’s going, he’s going.
“I don’t mind it too much,” August said, wiping a plate dry. “Most of the time I like it.”
“Huh, well, that’s a problem,” his mother said. She had a cigarette tucked into the corner of her mouth, and ash drifted into the dishwater as she spoke. “You’ll be in high school soon, you know. And then there’ll be girls. They’re going to find you so handsome. And then there’ll be college, and then there’ll be any life you want after that. This is just a small piece, Augie, and if you hate it then you should know that soon you’ll be making your own way.”
“But I said I don’t hate it, Mom.”
“Jesus. I really hope you don’t mean that. Getting up early, the shitty cows, the dullness?”
“What about it?”
“My God, Augie, look at me and tell me you don’t hate it.” She turned to him and held his chin with her soapy hand and her cigarette trembled, and August couldn’t tell if she was serious and about to cry, or joking and about to laugh.
“I don’t hate anything. It’s fine. I like everything fine.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m disappointed in you,” she said, exhaling smoke forcefully through her nose and turning back to the dishes. “But I suppose it’s my fault, for letting it go on. I’m going to talk to your father. Your barn days are coming to an end. I’ll finish up here. Go listen to the game.”
Out on the porch, his father was on the rocker, his legs stretched out long in front of him. He nodded at August as he sat on the step.
We’re going into extra innings. Hang on as we pause for station identification. You’re not going to want to miss this. The radio crackled and an ad for a used-car lot came on. Bats flew from the eaves, and August threw pebbles to make them dive, and then the game came back on and the Twins’ bats got hot and they beat the Tigers by two. August looked at his father. He was slumped in the chair with his eyes closed and his hands clasped together over his chest.
“Night,” August said, getting up to go inside.
His father yawned and stretched. “Night,” he said.
Later, his parents’ arguing had kept him awake, and the next morning his father didn’t roust him for the morning milking, and soon after that Lisa was always around, and not long after that his mother had started spending time at the old house. At first, just a few nights a week, and then one morning she didn’t come back to make breakfast, and his father burned the toast and slammed the door on his way to the barn.
* * *
—
August tied his boots. He climbed up to the haymow and surprised two cats that had been intently pawing at a dead sparrow on the hay-littered floor. He broke one’s back with a quick chop of the wrench and stunned the other one with a jab to the head. The cats were indistinct as they writhed, blurry in the gloom. August silenced their yowling, each with a sharp blow from the wrench, and then gave chase to a few more slinking forms that eluded him by leaping to join their spitting clan in the rafters.
August didn’t curse much. His father always said that no one took a man who cursed too much seriously and it was better to be the type of man who, when he did curse, made everyone else sit up and take notice.
Now, however, in the dark barn with the hay dander swirling around his fa
ce and the cats out of reach above him, he cursed.
“Motherfucker,” he said. “Motherfucking, cocksucking, shit-faced goddamn fucking cats.”
It was the most curse words he’d ever strung together, and he hoped the cats were sitting up to take notice, trembling in fear at the reign of fire that was about to be visited down upon their mangy heads.
* * *
—
At the old house, his mother had the blinds drawn. She had a large quilt wrapped around her, and the ends dragged over the floor when she got up to let him in. With the shades drawn it was dark, and she had lit an old kerosene lamp. The flame guttered, sending up tendrils of black smoke. She had been playing solitaire. There was a fried pork chop steaming in a pan on the table.
“You want some lunch?” she said, after she had settled herself down in her chair, smoothing the quilt down under her and over her bare legs. “I’m finished. You can have the rest.” She slid the pork chop over to August. It hadn’t been touched.
He took a bite. It was seared crispy on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside, quick-fried in butter and finished in the oven. That’s how she always made pork chops. Lisa wouldn’t know how to do this, he thought. His father would get so fed up with Lisa’s tough, dried-out pork chops that he’d send her away, and his mother would come back to the new house and he’d start helping his dad with the barn chores again.
“Are you still not eating?” He picked up the pork chop to gnaw at the bone, where the best-tasting meat always lived.
“Augie, that’s a common misconception about us breatharians. I eat. Good lord, I eat all the time. Here, actually, let me have one more bite of that.” She leaned over and wafted her hand around his pork chop, bringing the smell toward herself, and then took a quick hiccupping little breath and smiled and leaned back in her seat. “Meat from an animal you know always has the best flavor,” she said, lighting one of her little cigars. “That’s something city people probably don’t understand. You remember taking kitchen scraps out to that hog every night after dinner? You fed that animal, and now it feeds you. That lends a certain something to the savor—I’m sure there’s a word for it in another language.”