August

by Callan Wink

  August shrugged. “Sure.”

  “What did you guys talk about?”

  “What do you mean? We talked about fishing.”

  “Oh geez. That old line. Your grandpa, I wish you could have met him, he was always a big fisherman. When your father and I started dating, my dad took him fishing. My dad had a boat at the time, a Boston Whaler, and they went after lake trout out of Grand Traverse. I remember being so nervous that morning.”

  “Why were you nervous?” The trout were sputtering in the pan now. She had a piece of paper towel on a screen to keep the grease from popping all over the stove. Her cigarillo had gone out, but the stub of it was still perched between her lips, and when she laughed the ash fell and drifted on her sweatshirt. She wiped at it, frowning slightly. “I was nervous for your father. My dad was…formidable. Your father was a kid still, really. All day on the boat together, just the two of them. I didn’t sleep a wink the night before, just picturing them out there. What would they talk about? I couldn’t even imagine. I thought they might talk about me. And that made me mad, too. I was nervous and mad at the same time. Do you want some toast with this? I could make toast, and I have some cream cheese.”

  “Sure. Why were you mad?”

  “They could have asked me to go fishing.”

  “Do you even like fishing?”

  “Not really, but that’s not the point. I was pregnant with you at the time. Just barely. Your father didn’t even know yet. I was sick in the morning. I sat home all day and they were on the lake, and when they got home I watched them cleaning the fish on the back porch. They got a few, I remember. Your father caught the biggest one and he was happy about that, trying not to show it. When I finally got him alone, I asked him, I was dying to know: What did you guys talk about out there, just the two of you together all day? Your dad looked at me; he was picking at some of the trout scales stuck to his fingers. We talked about fishing, he said. Well, guess what? I said. We’re pregnant. That gave him a jolt, that’s for sure. Anyway, here you go. Do you want some tea?” She slid a plate in front of him. Three brook trout, the skin browned crisp, heads and tails still on, the eyes crusted over black. Two pieces of wheat toast spread thick with cream cheese.

  “No tea,” he said. “Thanks. This looks good.”

  She sat across from him and relit her cigarillo. “You and that Bob are getting to be good friends, aren’t you?”

  “I guess.” He spread one of the trout open with his fork and peeled out the backbone. The delicate rib cage came clean, leaving just the pink flesh there, flattened on the plate. He put the bones aside and flaked some of the fish onto a piece of toast before crunching it down.

  “What does his mother do?”

  “Works at the bank, I think.”

  “He doesn’t have a relationship with his father?”

  “He told me he never met him.”

  “That must be hard for him.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “How’s the fish?”

  “Really good. You want some?”

  She shook her head, took a drag, and then stubbed the small butt out in the big chipped seashell she’d used as an ashtray for as long as he could remember. “Would you consider Bob to be your best friend?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I just hope that you’re making the sort of friendships that will last a lifetime, that’s all.”

  “How am I supposed to know what friendships are going to last a lifetime?”

  “Fair enough. But so much of who we are, and what we become, is dictated by those we surround ourselves with, Augie. We all want to believe we’re individuals, but the forces of peer-group persuasion are insidious. For example, when I was twenty, two of my closest friends were already pregnant and engaged to be married.”

  August wiped his fingers on a paper towel and pushed his empty plate away. “So?” he said.

  “I’m just telling you, your life can take a lot of different directions if you let it. But friends are sometimes like hedges. Their presence is comforting, sheltering, but at the same time they’re blocking your view of the outside world.”

  “Bob’s not a hedge, Mom.”

  “I’m not saying he is, necessarily. I’m just rambling. Do you want dessert?”

  When Vaughn had a heart attack and died, a year after that fishing trip, Bob inherited his car. He’d been held back in first grade, so he was older than most of the kids in their class. At the time of his grandpa’s passing, he’d applied for a hardship permit and taken driver’s education. Not quite fifteen yet and he was driving himself to school, picking August up on the way most days. August “helped” Bob with his math homework, and Bob saved him from the various indignities of the school bus. It was a fair trade, and both parties were satisfied. They were planning a trip up north for the trout opener to hit all the spots Vaughn had showed them. Bob had kept everything exactly how it had been in the Cadillac. The snake-head lickin’ stick was there. The green Stanley thermos remained in the cup holder, unwashed. And, as Bob showed August, reaching way back under the seat, there was a nearly full bottle of Dr. McGillicuddy’s peppermint schnapps. “I haven’t touched it,” he said solemnly. “Not till the opener.”

  This was also the year of the Four Mile fights. In the halls during the day, pushing and shoving matches were common. Hormones were released in unstable doses. Grievances were aired by voices that consistently threatened to crack. After Darren Reid and Andy Johnson engaged in ten minutes of epic combat in the hallway between the band room and the gymnasium—leaving the floor tiles splattered with blood and the throngs of student onlookers unable to focus for the rest of the day—the administration cracked down. Any displays of aggression on school grounds, including threats, would result in immediate expulsion. Thus, the settling of scores moved off campus. Four Mile was a narrow gravel road that dead-ended a half a mile from school. There was a turnaround at the road’s terminus and a thick screen of poplar and brush. If an argument sprung up in the lunchroom, simply saying the words Let’s go to Four Mile, then, asshole immediately set the room abuzz with the knowledge of incipient violence. When school let out, some would walk or ride their bikes, and those with cars would load up to maximum capacity, windows down, voices straining to be heard over the music, everyone making their predictions, whipping themselves into a lather.

  August had never been in a fight himself. He was vaguely aware that some members of his circle were suspicious of this fact, seeing it as evidence of a certain lack of character on his part. However, he was with Bob more often than not, and Bob got in enough fights that August was generally deemed to be okay, by association. Bob approached fighting the way some guys went at kicking field goals or shooting foul shots. He was methodical, measured. His grandpa had done some amateur boxing and taught him a few things. He kept his hands up and moved in slowly. If a guy rushed him, he’d sidestep and jab at his face. But if a guy tried to play at the same game, Bob would drop his hands and shoot for the takedown, get him straddled and then rain down the punches. In junior high, Bob was unequivocally the toughest kid. That had been settled long ago, and Bob only had to take on the occasional challenger, or, more often, instigate a reluctant would-be challenger, just to keep his hand in.

  Fighting other kids in junior high was one thing; fighting high schoolers was quite another. The situation between Bob and Brandt Gidley got its start over a basketball. A few of the guys had gotten in the habit of eating their lunch quickly and then going to the gym to shoot hoops for the rest of the break. They mostly played HORSE, or sometimes twenty-one, not exerting themselves much because no one wanted to go back to class too sweaty. Girls were not into excess perspiration. That was something they’d recently learned. This particular day, Bob and August and a few of the other guys had gotten to the gym early. There were a few good leather basketballs on the rack, amid the ranks of
lumpy, worn-out rubber. The leather balls were always in high demand, and, generally, if upperclassmen were present, they claimed them for themselves. On the day of the fight, Brandt came in, found the rack devoid of leather, and tried to make Bob give his up. The game halted. Bob told Brandt to go fuck himself. A tussle ensued in which Brandt threw a ball at Bob’s face, prompting Bob to issue the Four Mile challenge.

  Brandt Gidley was a huge dude. Captain of the wrestling squad. August thought Bob was out of his mind. No matter how tough you are in seventh grade, a high school junior is a completely different animal. After classes let out, half the school was at Four Mile, it seemed, a ring of people yelling and screaming, and Bob got one good shot in before Brandt wrapped him up and took him down. It was over that fast. One minute Bob was on his feet looking to jab; the next he was flat on his back, his arms twisted up in some kind of agonizing hold, his face contorted with pain.

  August was standing right there. He could see Bob’s shoulder starting to pull out of its socket, the unnatural hump of it through the thin material of his T-shirt. Brandt had a small, twisted smile on his face, and he lowered his lips to Bob’s ear. He spoke quietly, and probably not many people could hear, but August did.

  “Does that hurt? If you’re done, I’ll let you go. All you gotta do is say My mom’s a nigger lover. Those are the magic words.”

  “Fuck you.” Bob’s face was pressed to the gravel, and his voice came through clenched teeth. The one eye August could see was wide and roving; it settled on August for a split second, and later August realized that was when he should have done something. If the tables had been turned, if for some reason it was August getting his arm twisted out of its socket, Bob would have tackled the guy. August knew that, but in the moment he froze. Then Bob tried to buck Brandt off, but Brandt held him down, putting on more pressure until August was certain that something was going to break, but then it seemed that Bob somehow got real calm. He stopped struggling.

  “My mom’s a nigger lover,” Bob said.

  “Louder, so everyone can hear.”

  Bob’s eyes were closed now, and he shouted it. The crowd went quiet, and Brandt used Bob’s prone body to push himself to his feet. He brushed his jeans clean and turned to a group of his friends, high-fiving. Bob rolled over onto his back. He lay there for a moment, staring straight up, and August started to walk toward him, but then Bob stood suddenly, pushing August aside as he ran to his car. August expected Bob to get behind the wheel and tear away, but instead he was hunched over, digging around under the front seat, and then he was out of the car, striding toward Brandt, who was standing with his back turned, reenacting the move he’d used on Bob with one of his friends, both of them laughing their heads off. Bob had something in his hands, and by the time August realized that it was the snake-head lickin’ stick it was too late, because Bob had reached Brandt. In one quick move he unsheathed the long, thin dagger that was hidden in the cane and rammed it into Brandt’s back.

  There was a noise that came before Brandt’s screams. August would remember it for a long time—a hollow, ripping thud as the blade entered. The dagger must have been dull. As a kid he’d carved pumpkins for Halloween with his mom, and the safety knife she gave him made a sound just like that when he sunk it in. Brandt went down, a carnation of red on the back of his white shirt, the blade still there, dangling at a precarious angle while he writhed. Kids were scattering and Bob was gone, his car throwing gravel as he peeled away. August ran.

  * * *

  —

  The fight was all anyone talked about for weeks. The school brought in counselors. There was a police officer on duty now in the lunchroom. When his mother asked, August told her that he wasn’t there, that he’d stayed after school to play basketball with some of the guys. He knew she didn’t totally buy this, but he also knew her thoughts were elsewhere. His father had submitted the paperwork for a divorce. One afternoon a furniture truck showed up at the new house and unloaded a brand-new Select Comfort Sleep Number mattress. King-sized. While this was happening, August was in the old house with his mother. Through the blinds they watched the deliverymen unload the base and carry it up the front steps with Lisa holding the door for them. His mother’s back was turned to him so he couldn’t see her face, but the very next day August returned home from school and there were suitcases on the porch of the old house. His mother was sitting on the front step, smoking, dressed in real clothes—jeans and a flannel shirt.

  “You’ll not be stepping foot on that particular school bus again,” she said, stubbing the cigarillo and standing with a certain crisp, decisive air he’d forgotten she possessed. “Let’s get you packed. I’ve had about enough of this bullshit.”

  Brandt Gidley nearly died. He had two surgeries in which several feet of his intestine had to be removed, and he missed the rest of the school year. Bob was sent to a facility downstate, and August never saw him again. He’d failed Bob in some essential way, and this was knowledge he felt to the core. He should have stepped in, gotten an arm crooked around Brandt’s neck, and squeezed with everything he had.

  They were down in Grand Rapids for nearly two years. His mother took online classes to finally finish her degree, and he attended eighth and ninth grade at a large school in which he managed to successfully lose himself. For lack of a better idea, he applied himself to his schoolwork. He and his mother would study together in the living room, silently reading, his mother rising every so often to reheat her tea or smoke a cigarillo on the back porch. They rented a small duplex close to downtown, and for the first time in his life he heard traffic noises at night. His mother rarely went out, and the house often seemed stifling and close.

  When it became too much he’d set off with a sandwich in his backpack and walk along the Grand River. In town its banks were straightened, poured concrete—more of a canal than a real river. It ran brown and slow, with the faint odor of sewage. Still, people fished. Below the Sixth Street dam, men in waders drifted salmon roe for steelhead, the huge glass-and-steel Amway skyscraper a strangely alpine urban backdrop. Occasionally there would be fly fishermen wielding large two-handed spey rods, loops of fluorescent line uncoiling, hissing out over the current with a spray of water. Flashy but not very effective. From his observations, August figured the bait fisherman out-caught the fly fisherman three to one. The guys throwing bait tended to be unshaven and camo-clad. They fished with cigarettes dangling from their lips, one hand holding the rod, one hand jammed in a coat pocket, eye on their orange stick bobbers.

  * * *

  —

  August walked everywhere in the city, and he never felt comfortable. There was too much potential, too many options. Twenty restaurants on a single block. A constant stream of faces. He started fishing because at least there, on the artificial banks of a nearly dead river, the ceaseless drone of humanity seemed to recede slightly.

  He didn’t have waders, so he couldn’t get to the best runs. From the concrete wall he pitched small chartreuse jigs tipped with wax worms, and often he’d go days without catching anything. Sometimes he’d catch redhorse suckers. They fought like worn-out tube socks, their slime turning to glue on his hands. He caught only a few steelhead, and he could remember each one, from the moment the bobber dipped to the moment of their release. They were cold and hard, like polished metal cut to the shape of fish.

  The biggest was a twelve-pound male, on a miserable rainy day in late March. The steelhead made one tremendous jump and several long runs, and when August was finally able to get the fish near his feet to grab its tail, his hands were shaking at the size of it. He unhooked it, raised its long chrome bulk from the water for a moment to get it more firmly planted in his mind, then released it, watching it until it was just a dark shape finning near the bottom, then gone. He looked around and it was only him there. Usually there were people walking the river path, joggers, other fisherman, bums rifling the garbage cans, but t
oday, nobody. Already the catching of the fish was taking on a dreamlike haze. A metro area of over a million goddamn people, humans stacked on top of humans so that you could hardly get away from the throngs, and yet, today, at this moment, the one time he might have liked an audience to something spectacular, he was all alone. It figured. He’d have kept the fish, but no one in their right mind would eat anything that swam in the Grand.

  * * *

  —

  Having left the farm, it seemed that his mother had decided she was no longer going to cook. They ate takeout most nights, and the leftover cartons piled up in the fridge. Foods he’d never had before but his mother seemed to remember fondly from a different life: massaman curry and basil stir-fried beef, pho, laab, gyros and kebabs. In Grand Rapids, a person could get Ethiopian wat and injera delivered at ten o’clock at night and not think twice about it. August didn’t mind the strange food. Some of it he liked quite a bit. He also appreciated the fact that it came in disposable containers because, in addition to not cooking, his mother had stopped doing the dishes. Or the laundry. Or tidying the house in any way. Things piled up. It was as if, having moved them to this place, she’d used up all her forward momentum, and now she’d stalled. Eventually, August was forced to do the dishes. He vacuumed; he did his laundry as well as hers. He loaded heaps of clothes in the washing machine, burning with indignation.

  The situation in Grand Rapids never seemed permanent, and this was what made it bearable. August slept on an air mattress. They never even got around to fully unpacking. The spare bedroom was full of unopened moving boxes. There was a sense that this was an interim period, a gathering of breath before life would resume. He spent most weekends up at the farm helping his father around the place, wandering the hardwood stands, kicking up grouse and the occasional woodcock, lying in bed in the new house with the sound of the TV coming up the stairs, the dull murmur of his father and Lisa laughing at something Jay Leno had said. He had relinquished the hope that things might go back to how they had been before. He sensed that a new reality was going to emerge, and he walked around most days with a feeling of low-level apprehension, half dreading, half-anxious for whatever was to come.