August

by Callan Wink

  “You’re going to deep-fry a turkey? Seriously?”

  “Sure. I did it once. Might have been before you were born or too young to remember it. Turned out real good. You have to do it outside, though. Maybe we’ll do it in the garage. Or we could just do it in the yard and make a fire and throw a ball around a little, if it’s not too cold. Okay, I guess those cows aren’t going to milk themselves. About time to head to the barn. I’ll be talking to you.”

  His mother and Julie continued their evening talks on the back porch, often wrapped in blankets now because the nights were cold. He kept his window closed and didn’t listen as much anymore, but on one particular night Julie came over with two bottles of champagne. He was in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes when she swooped in. She was flushed, laughing, and she gave him a wet kiss on the cheek as she went by. He made a show of grimacing and wiping it away, but when she’d waltzed out to the porch he was still rubbing his fingers together, her saliva there slick and warm.

  He finished putting the dishes away and went upstairs to do some anatomy and physiology homework. By the end of the term he needed to have all the bones in the human body memorized. At his desk he opened the window, the cold air coming in sharp; he flipped idly through his flash cards, paying more attention to what Julie was saying.

  “I can hardly believe it,” she said. “Africa! I’m going to be in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and then probably a smaller village at some point. Two years! Maybe it’s naïve of me, but I could really make a small bit of difference in some people’s lives. Botswana is just devastated by AIDS. And the Peace Corps looks good on a résumé, no matter what I end up doing after that. I’m so excited, and nervous. So nervous.”

  “Cheers to you,” August’s mother said. “I’m so proud of you. I’d considered the Peace Corps myself a long, long time ago. I know what a demanding process it is. They don’t just accept anyone that applies. And of course you’re nervous. I’m a bit nervous for you. Botswana. It really doesn’t get more foreign. But so beautiful, too. You’re going to come back a different person. It makes an old woman jealous, looking at you, about to just shoot out into the world and discover yourself. I’m being sentimental.” August heard a rustling sound as the women scooted their chairs together and hugged.

  August wondered if the Peace Corps idea was something Julie had dreamed up while soaking in the claw-foot tub, and what sort of regrets Ethan might be feeling. Ethan’s house only had that one bathroom, and when Julie was gone, Ethan would no doubt be reminded of her every morning, stepping up over the high side, soaping up, watching the water swirl down the drain. That damn thing must have weighed five hundred pounds.

  * * *

  —

  Julie didn’t leave for her assignment for almost six months, but, as far as August could tell, she and Ethan lasted only a few weeks after she’d received the news. For a while she was on the back porch frequently. Tears and wine, endless looping conversations. Eventually she moved back in with her mother, and her visits became less frequent, but before she left, she came over for dinner, and August eavesdropped for a while afterward. “We never had much to talk about,” she said. “Do you know that one John Prine song—‘Angel from Montgomery’? How the hell can a person go to work in the morning and come home in the evening and have nothing to say? That’s Ethan. My heart is ripping out. I wish I was just gone. This in-between time is killing me.”

  “You need someone emotionally and intellectually compatible with you. Trust me, I learned the hard way. The man that makes your womb glow is not necessarily the one you should end up with in the long run. Our biological impulses sometimes lead us off the cliff. Two years of delirious passion followed by thirteen years of annoyance and frustrations that eventually blossomed into full-blown disgust—that’s what I had with Augie’s father. Flee to Africa and fulfill your potential and find some wild-eyed Peace Corps poet that makes both your womb and your mind glow, and then write me lots of letters telling me all about it. Deal?”

  Julie sniffed loudly. She gave a weak laugh. “Deal,” she said.

  August flipped his flash cards without reading them. He wasn’t entirely sure how one went about making a woman’s womb glow. Anyway, the fact that this ability alone would not be enough to satisfy a woman such as Julie—or his mother, for that matter—was rather terrifying.

  * * *

  —

  For two weekends August helped Ethan strip old wooden siding from the exterior of his house. His plan, once the old siding was removed, was to put up Tyvek and then new vinyl siding. “The house will be much more energy efficient after that,” Ethan said. “This place is so old and drafty. Right now, I’m pretty much paying money to heat the outside. I’m going to get this exterior wrapped up while it’s not too cold and then spend the rest of the winter finishing the inside, and then I’m going to flip it. Possibly buy another one and do the same thing. Now that she’s gone I’ll have more time to work. I’ll get things done faster.”

  August nodded. “Having to wait till noon to get to work every day probably really slowed you down,” he said.

  Ethan laughed and shook his head. “Actually, now that she’s gone I find myself spinning out more easily. Kind of like, what’s the point? You know? I’m doing all this work, trying to make all this money, and for what? Money or working hard doesn’t get you a woman like her.”

  “What gets you a woman like her?”

  “Very good question. Luck, maybe. And now I feel like mine’s run out. Before her I dated a bank teller, a nurse, a dental hygienist, and a single mom whose ex-husband was wealthy enough that she didn’t need to get a job. None of these women made me feel lucky or unlucky. After her I can hardly remember what their faces looked like.”

  They were working on the back wall, a tarp spread along the foundation to catch the pulled nails and strips of splintered hardwood siding. “Damn, but she could be difficult,” Ethan said. “She cried a lot. None of those other girls I dated cried, unless we were drunk and got in a fight about something and then in the morning it was usually all forgotten. Most of those girls I felt comfortable with. I never felt comfortable with Julie. Maybe I should have recognized that was a problem. I introduced her to my dad once. He told me that she reminded him of a female English setter he had one time. A real expensive bird dog, fancy lineage and all of that. Beautiful dog. Great hunter, too. Except that one day the dog started licking her front leg. And didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. She licked through her fur, her skin. There was a big wound, and the dog just kept licking. He’d bandage it and she’d chew the bandage off. In the field he’d lose her. She wouldn’t come to his whistle, and when he finally tracked her down she’d just be on the ground licking like crazy, whining because it hurt, but she was unable to quit for some reason. She licked her leg all the way down to the bone.” Ethan stopped, shook his head, and took a big sniff of air. Someone was burning leaves, a gray day in November, a low ceiling of clouds. “Well, it is what it is,” he said. “I’m going to stop bitching and moaning. Let’s get back at it, or else I’ll be out here trying to put the new siding on in a goddamn blizzard.”

  August worked his pry bar under a piece of siding and hammered on the other end to get it to pop, nails coming loose with a satisfying shriek. “What did your dad end up doing with that dog?” he said.

  Ethan was scooping up fallen siding, tossing it into the wheelbarrow for a trip to the dumpster. “He took her out to the woods behind the house and shot her. Buried her deep and put a pile of rocks on her grave. Always said that she was the very best dog he’d ever owned, until she wasn’t. And then she was the very worst. My dad can be a real bastard.”

  August was called up to varsity for the final game of the season. It was in Bozeman, and it snowed so hard they had to shovel the lines on the field at the end of each quarter. August saw limited action and they lost the game, although toward the end, when
it was obviously hopeless, the coach sent him and a few of the other young guys in to give them a taste of what it was like at the next level. August nearly got to the quarterback once and then did get there another time, but a split second too late, driving the Bozeman backup quarterback to the ground just as he completed handing off the ball. That was it, and soon they were on the bus for the slow drive over the whiteout pass to home. For the seniors it was the last game of the season and the final of their life. A few of them wiped at tears as they slumped on the bus. The end of the game. It meant something that the thought of impending graduation didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  August flew back to Michigan for Thanksgiving. It was his first time on an airplane, and even though he tried to be nonchalant about it, he held his breath during takeoff and let it out loud enough after they were finally airborne that his seatmate looked at him sidelong. His father met him at the airport in Grand Rapids. He shook August’s hand and threw his bag in the back of his truck, and they started the drive north.

  Everything seemed drab; August noticed that right away. The bare trees, the sky a cement sort of gray. Drab and flat. “No snow yet,” he said.

  His father shook his head. “Nah. Some in the forecast for next week, maybe. Lots of rain, though. Looks like you’ve grown three damn inches since I’ve seen you last, kid.”

  August shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I think I’m still about the same height.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  August watched his father out of the corner of his eye as he drove. He tried to assess whether he seemed different in any way, older, skinnier, fatter, happier—but it was impossible to tell. Anyway, he’d been gone for only a few months. There was no reason for anyone to have changed that much at all.

  “Saw that buck again yesterday morning. I’m surprised the Amish haven’t gotten him yet. You know how they are—if it’s brown it’s down.”

  “When’s the last time we went hunting?”

  “Oh man, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I was never too caught up in it. I mostly like sitting out there and seeing what there is to see. I guess you’re the same way.”

  August nodded.

  “The great thing about hunting is getting up early and then watching it get light from the blind. Waiting for something to show up, drinking coffee, being quiet, all of that. What I don’t like about hunting is what comes after you actually shoot something. Field dressing it, dragging it out, hanging it up, processing it—that starts to look a lot like working on your day off, if you ask me. And these people that are really into hunting, I don’t get it. If you were hungry, then that’s a different deal. But all these fat Texans decked out with fancy gear on these hunting shows? I just want to say, Look at yourself, man, killing something from half a mile away with a high-powered rifle doesn’t make you an alpha predator. Your mother’s father was that way. Quite the sportsman.”

  “I remember we went, maybe four years ago, for opening day. We never saw a single deer. I think that was the last time we did it.”

  “You might be right about that. That definitely seems right.”

  * * *

  —

  Since August had been gone, his father had put a small TV on the kitchen table. It was on now, low volume, a local channel doing the weather. August knew that his father had always liked to drink his coffee and eat his eggs watching the news. His mother said that a TV in the kitchen or dining room was barbaric, and so for as long as August could remember, his father had eaten breakfast on the couch in the living room, hunched awkwardly over the coffee table, trying not to spill coffee or drop eggs on the carpet. Now he had the little TV right there and he no doubt ate comfortably in the mornings, the coffeepot within easy reach, happily watching the weather girl move across her green screen. To August it pointed to a reality he hadn’t much considered—no doubt there were elements of this new childless, wifeless life that his father preferred.

  There was something else. Something about the interior of the house seemed different. He couldn’t place it for the first day he was there. It wasn’t anything tangible. Other than the new TV, the furniture was mostly the same, his father’s barn clothes still hung on the hooks in the mudroom, the dining room was still painted pale yellow, the living room walls were still rough-textured plaster. It was the next morning, still dark, half-asleep in the kitchen, his father pouring coffee for them both, that he realized what it was. The smell. Even after she’d moved to the new house there had always been a certain odor, his mother’s sweet cigarillos gone slightly stale, the linen bags of lavender she scattered around to cover it up. Now his mother’s smoke was gone. The house just smelled of freshly wiped-clean surfaces or whatever was being cooked. Right now it was his father’s standard—over-easy eggs, a stack of heavily buttered white toast, bacon popping in the cast iron. His father was already dressed for hunting, long underwear under his camouflage overalls. He normally shaved before heading to the barn for chores, but this morning his face was rough with stubble, more gray than black, August realized.

  August had his head propped on his hand at the table. The coffee was hot and he couldn’t drink it as fast as he’d like; his father, though, slurped it down like it was lukewarm.

  “I see you’re on the hard stuff now,” his father said.

  “Huh?” August had started to doze sitting up, and his father’s words jolted him back.

  “I said, you’re taking it black these days,” his father pointed his bacon fork at August’s coffee. He shook his head. “Go away for a little while and he comes back six inches taller and drinking coffee like a man.”

  August shook his head and sat up a little straighter. “I’m not six inches taller.” He took a sip and tried not to make a face as it scalded his mouth. “It smells different in here,” he said. “Better, actually.”

  His father loaded a piece of toast with eggs and crunched it down. “Is your mom still chain-smoking those nasty things?”

  “Not as many, maybe. Still doing it, though. She mostly goes out to the back porch to smoke these days.”

  “Well, that’s good. Lisa and I both just kind of got sick of the smell and so we took a whole day, rented a steam cleaner for the carpet, took down all the curtains, bleached the walls, everything. Made a big difference. You get enough food? Okay then, let me fill up a thermos and we’ll head out.”

  “Chores?”

  “Lisa is coming over this morning to get them done. Day off for me. She said she’d make us some brunch, too, when we’re back from the woods, before she heads to her folks’ house.”

  “Brunch?”

  “I know. I’m not exactly sure what that entails, either. I’ll probably just be ready for a ham sandwich by that point, but whatever. We humor them, August. That’s something you realize as you get older. A woman can use brunch like a wrecking ball.”

  They were on the porch, slipping on their boots in the dark, their breath coming out in blooming white clouds. “I know a guy whose girlfriend really liked taking baths but his house only had a shower, so while she was gone one weekend he put in a big old claw-foot tub. I helped him carry it in. It was really nice and then maybe only a couple months after this, his girlfriend got accepted into the Peace Corps, broke up with him, and left for Africa. I mean, he didn’t care about baths. He just takes showers like a normal person.”

  August’s father laughed softly and rubbed his face with one hand, his palm making a coarse sandpapery sound against the stubble. “I bet that was a learning experience for the guy, for sure. Of course, you can’t go through life without making any gestures at all—that’s no way to live—but you need to be real careful who you reveal yourself to. You make a gesture, open yourself up like that to a woman, and then she knows right away that she’s got you, hook, line, and sinker. How’d you meet this guy? Mr. Claw-Foot Tub?”

  �
�He’s our neighbor. His girlfriend—ex-girlfriend, I guess—is real good friends with Mom. They sit outside and smoke and drink wine all the time.”

  “Well, that makes sense. Poor fucker.”

  * * *

  —

  They walked out through the back pasture, the dead grass silvered with frost. Then through the row of white pines, grown tight together so they had to push branches away from their faces, fingers sticky with pitch, up a small rise into the hardwood stand, impossible to walk quietly now, dead leaves crunching underfoot.

  The blind was on top of the hill, a shallow dugout area around which August’s father had arranged logs and cut branches for concealment. They sat with their backs against sugar maples and watched the woods around them awaken with dawn. August’s father had only one gun. It was old, a Japanese 7.7 mm Arisaka with open sights, and a chrysanthemum stamped on the receiver. August’s grandfather, a marine, had brought it back with him from the South Pacific. He had died when August was young, and August had no memories of him. As the day gained strength around them, August watched his father’s eyes droop, then close completely. He had the gun cradled in his lap and gave a small, halting snore. August’s father had never been a marine. For most of Vietnam, he was just slightly too young, and then when he turned eighteen his number had never been called. August looked at him now and was simultaneously glad and disappointed to not be the son of a soldier.

  August was starting to doze off himself when the rustle of leaves brought him back. He moved his head slowly, trying to see where the noise was coming from. He thought it might be a squirrel running back to its acorn stash under an oak, but then his eyes registered a larger brown shape moving just within his periphery. He shifted slowly to get a better look and he saw it, a buck, no doubt the one his father had mentioned. It was a big-bodied animal, neck thick and swollen with the rut. A good set of antlers, heavy and brown at the base, gleaming ivory at the tips, polished from rubbing on trees and sparring with other males. August reached his leg out and prodded his father with his boot. His father’s eyes opened quickly and August nodded to his left. The deer was sixty yards away, moving steadily, its head down, probably following the scent of doe in estrus. They watched the deer coming, disappearing and reappearing between the trunks of beech and oak and maple. His father was whispering something that August couldn’t make out, so he leaned closer. It sounded a lot like “I forgot to load the gun.”