by Callan Wink
He snorted and shook his head—the exact way his father did it, on purpose—and then he rode his bike toward the river, the wind flapping his shirt so that he could still smell the sweetgrass smoke. The mountains were a stern, steady presence above town, and he found that they helped him get his bearings. In Michigan the trees obscured everything, but here the town was laid bare. He could ride his bike for ten minutes to the top of the water tower hill, and the whole place was spread out before him: the train yard, the massive ornate depot, the incinerator stack, the false fronts and neon and faded murals of Main Street. He didn’t know a single person here other than his mother, and she was already happily communing with ghost prostitutes. He rode down to the river and ditched his bike. He scrambled down the bank, tried unsuccessfully to throw rocks to the other side, and felt quietly, desperately sorry for himself.
* * *
—
Most days his mother came home from the library happy, rushing to tell him about her day or something she’d read. Even her feelings toward the current president, formerly a reliable source of outrage, had shifted into mostly a laughing matter. She was on an email list that sent her a new Bush-ism in the mail every day. “Listen to this one, Augie,” she’d say, adopting her version of a Texas drawl. “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning. You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, God, here’s another one. Can you believe it? Our dear leader actually said this recently, these words really came out of his mouth: I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right.”
She hummed in the mornings while making her coffee before heading to the library. She hung flowers in planters on the back porch and she sat there in the evenings, smoking and reading. The options for takeout were sparse, and so she was cooking again, listening to NPR in the kitchen while she did her best to re-create their favorites from the Grand Rapids days. “The produce lady just looked at me like I had three heads when I asked for lemongrass,” she said once after returning from the town’s only grocery store. “It’s funny the things you miss when you move to the hinterlands.” Still, her smile seemed impenetrable, and the few times he tried to puncture her mood to bring her down to his level, he found it impossible.
August took up riding his bike aimlessly, for hours. The roads out of town were lined with sunflowers just past their peak. He pedaled past legions of them, their heavy heads hanging from drying stalks, yellow but starting to fade to brown, petals gone here and there, giving them the look of gap-toothed mouths.
One afternoon he saw kids jumping from the railroad trestle bridge into the river—mostly boys around his age, in cut-off jean shorts, skinny and tan. There was one girl, though, in a yellow one-piece swimsuit. While August watched, she did a front flip and, just before hitting the water, heels first, back perfectly straight, she plugged her nose with her hand—a precise, almost delicate movement. She entered with barely a splash and then bobbed up a short way downstream, arms flashing as she stroked against the current to shore. When she climbed the rocks to get back up to the bridge, her suit bunched in the rear, the pale flesh her suit normally covered bright in the sun. When she gained the trestle platform she removed the offending wedgie with a heart-stopping reach-and-pull-and-wiggle that spread the suit back out. She was short, with blond hair in a wet braid down her back. One of the boys said something to her that August couldn’t make out, and then she pushed him off the trestle, laughing, before jumping again herself.
August had ridden for miles in the late-summer sun. His shirt was stuck to his back with sweat, and he knew a different, better, version of himself would go and climb the trestle, introduce himself to the other guys, nod casually at the girl, strip off his shirt, and do a full gainer into a new life where he made friends easily. Instead, he kept riding.
There was a pinch where the mountains on either side of the valley came down close to the river. He’d already noticed that the wind always blew here, the air funneled down and constricted by the ridges. He ducked his head and pedaled hard, airborne grit peppering his cheeks, until he came through and the valley opened before him: Open expanses of pastureland, and hayfields still green from late-summer irrigation water pulled from the river. Not a dairy cow to be seen anywhere. It was all Red or Black Angus here, standing dumb, heads lowered to the grass, sometimes coming to the fence but bolting back walleyed when his bike came too close.
This sort of operation had a certain degree of dignity not found in the milking parlor. These cattle had never felt a stanchion around their necks, had never stood immobile and shitting while a machine sucked away at their teats. They lived a life, short though it may be, out in the elements, free to range, largely unharassed, until, of course, the moment arrived at which they were loaded up in trucks, bound for slaughter. A long monotonous life full of swollen udders and indignity, or a shorter life of relative freedom, albeit one with a certain amount of inevitable terror and confusion preceding death. It was something to think about.
Cows weren’t people, of course, but August knew that a guy like Bob, he’d be jumping from that trestle right now instead of sitting out here alone straddling his bike watching a field full of stupid cattle. He’d have met the yellow-swimsuit girl. He’d have fought once or twice, and then the rest of the guys would be his friends. The thing that made him stab Brandt Gidley and got him sent away was the same thing that garnered him respect and fear and friendship in quantities much greater than August had ever enjoyed. August was trying to figure out whether this quality, whatever it was exactly, was something a person was born with, or something one developed. One thing he knew without a doubt was that a Holstein cow was born a Holstein cow and would remain a Holstein cow forever.
He went to the trestle every day for the next week, but he never saw her there again. Just the boys, yelling and egging one another on into dives and cannonballs and gainers, frantic with energy, as if they could already smell the decay on summer’s breath and wanted to get in just one more jump, as if summer couldn’t die as long as somewhere, someplace, there was a kid flying out from a trestle, rotating heels overhead, back arced to meet the river.
When they’d moved in, the house next to theirs had a FOR SALE sign on the front lawn. Just a few days later the sign had SOLD taped over it, and a large metal dumpster appeared on the street. Their new neighbor was a single man, in his late twenties. He drove a newish Ford F-350 with a toolbox in the bed. The truck was always gone early, before August was up, and didn’t return until sometime just before dark. At that point all the lights would come on in the house, and because the man didn’t have any curtains or shades and the houses were close, it was easy enough to see in. He was giving the place a complete remodel. All the carpet had been ripped up and put in the dumpster, one of the walls in the living room was down to the bare studs, the electrical lines exposed, a light socket hanging, the bare bulb throwing harsh light so that August could see the long, spidery shadow of the man bent over his tools. He worked late into the night, often with the windows open so August could hear classic rock coming from his radio, the snarl of a saw or the whine of a drill.
One night the lights were on as usual, but the classic rock had been replaced with something different: piano, a voice singing in a foreign language, French maybe, no saws, no drills. August could hear a woman’s laughter. The man’s truck was gone, as usual, by the time August awoke. But as he was pouring himself a bowl of cereal, he saw a woman come out of the front door with a mug. She held it in both hands, the way a child might, and sat cross-legged on the small concrete stoop. She wore a man’s flannel shirt, several sizes too big with the sleeves rolled up, and her legs were bare. August ate his cereal, standing at the kitchen sink, watching her. She was in the sun, leaning back against the side of the house with her eyes closed, steam rising from her mug, her hair piled on top of her head in a wild mass. She had a small gold hoop through her left nostril.
She didn’t move for a long time. Was she asleep? Meditating? There was something interesting about her face at rest, a slackness to her mouth and cheeks that you simply couldn’t observe in a person unless they didn’t know you were watching. He was so absorbed that, when she suddenly opened her eyes and turned her head to look in his direction, he nearly spilled his cereal milk in his haste to vacate the window.
* * *
—
One day August came home and the woman from next door was sitting in the living room with his mother, drinking tea. Her name was Julie, and she’d recently finished college on the East Coast. Her mother lived in town, so she’d come home for the summer while she tried to figure out her next step.
“Your mom looks just like my aunt Samantha,” Julie said. “That’s how we met. I ran into her at the grocery store, and I had to do a double take. And then to find out that we’re neighbors! I invited myself over for tea to show her the photo.” Julie picked up a photograph from the table and held it out. A woman was astride a horse, with a small fluffy dog riding in her lap behind the pommel. She was squinting into the sun.
August had to admit there were some similarities. The same cheeks, the hair at about the right length. He handed the photo back. “Pretty close,” he said. “I see it.”
He went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, but he could still hear the two of them talking. “Ethan thinks I’m crazy,” Julie said. “He doesn’t care one way or the other about what happened in these houses. He told me about how his grandpa used to catch whitefish out of the river and then ride his bike down here to sell them to the prostitutes for a nickel apiece. He thought they were eating the fish, but they were actually giving them to their cats. I guess they had cats roaming around everywhere. And I personally have seen this one particular cat, like, five times now, that Ethan hasn’t seen once. It’s a calico. It kind of mews at me and then bolts.”
August could hear the click of his mother’s lighter. The small noises she made when she was in agreement with something somebody said. “Right off the bat, my first night here, I had the wildest dreams. Women of all kinds, and they were touching me. I mean, these are not the types of dreams I usually have. Maybe a crew of burly fireman, or something like that, but not a bunch of writhing ladies. Burn some sweetgrass. That’s my advice. I did that and there’s been nothing out of the ordinary since.”
“Okay,” Julie said. “I’ll try it. Can I bum one of those from you? I usually don’t smoke, but this is fun. I don’t really have any girlfriends around here anymore. And Ethan is, well, I love the guy, but a brilliant conversationalist he ain’t.” The lighter clicked, a soft cough from Julie. “Whew, I’m out of practice. So, enough talk about ghosts. I want to hear more about these firemen.” Peals of laughter. August made haste for his bedroom.
* * *
—
Julie started coming around almost every evening. She and his mother would drink wine and smoke on the back porch. The window to his room overlooked the backyard, and with it opened, he could hear most of what the two women said. He was bored, so he listened, and most of what they talked about only bored him further. They spent a lot of time on the current political situation. “I feel like somehow we’ve become the laughingstock of the world,” Julie said. “The guy is so incompetent. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.”
His mother and Julie also spent a lot of time discussing Ethan.
“He’s very handsome,” August’s mother said. “So tall. What is he, six foot three, something like that?”
“At least. Maybe even a little taller,” Julie said. “Maybe this makes me shallow, but I just could never get with a guy that was my height, or, God forbid, shorter. I mean, I’m five nine, and I’m no waif. Ethan makes me feel small, petite almost. It’s nice to not feel like a damn giantess all the time.”
“I’d hardly call you a giantess. You do have good posture, though, regal almost. I imagine many men are intimidated by that.”
“Not Ethan. That’s something I noticed right away and liked about him. He’s got a natural intelligence, too. I think he could do whatever in the world he wanted to do. Never went to college, but he’s much better at math than me. If we go out to eat he can figure out the tip in his head down to the last cent.”
“And handy, too, from the looks of it.”
“He’s always working. He works for a builder up in Big Sky. Gets up at an ungodly hour, drives all the way up there, works all day, drives back, then works on his house. I don’t know how he has the energy. When he gets the floors done, I’ll have you come over to check it out. Get this, when he pulled the carpets up, in every room, there were these gouges in the wood. We realized each gouge was where the corner of a metal bed frame dug into the wood during—you know.” She gave a small laugh. “What would you call that exactly—the point at which prostitution actually happens? Intercourse? Sex? Fucking? These don’t seem like exactly what is going on.”
“I think I’d call it a transaction,” August’s mother said.
“Okay, well, a lot of transactions happened in those rooms, apparently, and they all left their mark, and for some reason it affected me strongly. And then Ethan and I got into our very first fight about it.”
“What happened? More wine?”
“Yes. Thank you, Bonnie. Basically, he was going to just fill the gouges with wood putty or something, and sand them down so you couldn’t even tell that they’d been there. This really bothered me, and I told him that maybe some things you shouldn’t just cover up and pretend they didn’t happen, and he said, If I’m going to all the trouble of refinishing the floors, why would I leave these huge divots? And of course I understand his point of view, but still. Am I crazy? Would you leave them if it were your house?”
“No, you’re not crazy. So what happened? Did he sand them out?”
“In the end I persuaded him not to. I guess it really wasn’t much of a fight. We don’t ever actually fight. I’m getting slightly worried about that, to tell you the truth. The things I want to fight about he just acquiesces to me on. It’s not fair.”
* * *
—
August started working for Ethan after helping him out one Saturday. He’d been mowing the front lawn, and although he hated mowing the lawn back in Michigan, this one wasn’t too bad. It was so small he could take his time with it, make it immaculate, give it that baseball-diamond look. Anyway, it was something to do. He was just finishing up when Ethan came to his front porch and waved him over. Ethan was a large human. Coarse black stubble, baseball cap with a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear. He wore a ratty old Kenyon Noble Lumber T-shirt, and his biceps strained against the sleeves.
“Hey, bud,” he said. “You look strong. Want to make a quick twenty bucks?”
August disliked when people called him bud or guy or pal. It implied a familiarity that wasn’t there. He did, however, want to make a quick twenty bucks. Ethan led him behind the house where he’d pulled his truck across the yard, right up to the back door. There was a large white enameled claw-foot bathtub in the bed, secured with ratchet straps.
“This thing is a beast,” Ethan said. “I was going to try to just muscle it in with a dolly, but chances are I’d wreck my back or the kitchen floor coming through. You grab that end there and we’ll slide it off. Okay, here we go.”
The thing really was absurdly heavy. As August shuffle-walked, holding his end, he could feel his arms stretching out of their sockets. They stopped for a rest and a re-grip in the living room and August windmilled his arms, and then they grunted and heaved it to its final resting place in the bathroom. The tile work was all recent, with new stainless fixtures ready to be hooked up. Ethan stretched and shook his head, clapping his hands against his stained jeans, and then dug in his back pocket for his wallet. “The things we do for our ladies, eh? You ever take baths?”
August shook his h
ead. “Nope.”
“Me either. Julie loves a bath, though, and so, while she’s away this weekend, I’m getting this all set up as a surprise. Anyway, here’s your cash. Hey, what are you doing the next couple afternoons? Want to make a little more?”
“I’ve got nothing going on.”
“All right then, come on back here with me. This room here is kind of useless as it is, but I’m going to open up this doorway to make an extension to the kitchen. I’m going to put a bar right here, some stools. You ever see this? It’s what they used before Sheetrock. Lath strips with plaster coating. I need it all out of here so I can redo some electrical and put in insulation and then Sheetrock. It’s going to be a bit messy. You up for it?”
“I don’t really have anything else to do.”
“Perfect. Probably the easiest way will be to just smash it up with that sledge. There’s a big flat chisel, too. It’s nailed in at the studs, so you’ll have to pull those out with the hammer. You’re a smart guy; I have no doubt you’ll figure out the best system. Fill that wheelbarrow and empty it in the dumpster out front. Two hundred bucks? Probably take you two afternoons, but you get the two hundred even if you finish it early. How does that sound?”
“Sounds okay to me.”
“All right then, start tomorrow. And, probably best if you didn’t come over until sometime around noon. Julie is a late sleeper.” He shook his head. “I mean, do what you want, but don’t say you weren’t warned.”
* * *
—
The next afternoon, August let himself in the back door of Ethan’s house and got to work. Ethan had left him a note on top of a dust mask. Wear this or you’ll get the black lung and it won’t be my fault.