by Callan Wink
“What?”
“The box of cartridges on the table at home. No bullets. Gun empty.” He shrugged.
August was stiff from sitting on the cold ground. He reached for the gun and then stood, lining up the iron sights, the buck slowing as it sensed something was not right. “Bang,” August said. And then the buck bounded away, the white flag of its tail receding through the brush. His father laughed and reached out his hand, and August helped him to his feet. He stretched and shook his legs out. “My fault,” he said. “Rookie move.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Easier this way. Probably I’d have missed anyway.”
“I guess now we’ll never know. Hell of a nice deer, though. What do you say? Brunch?”
* * *
—
When they got back they kicked off their boots and hung up their jackets in the entryway. Lisa was in the kitchen, her blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore a Detroit Lions sweatshirt and men’s Carhartt pants. She gave August a hug. She smelled like flour and cinnamon, and also of the barn.
“It’s great to see you, August. Do you like eggs Benedict?” she said.
August settled into a chair. The TV was on, NFL pregame. In several hours the Lions would start the inevitable process of losing to the Bears. It was Thanksgiving. “Sure,” he said. “I like eggs Benedict just fine.”
After eating, August did the dishes, and Lisa and his father went to the living room. He could hear them talking but couldn’t make out the words, just the cadence, a measured give-and-take. Lisa would say something and then his father would respond, followed by periods of quiet in which neither said anything. He had no way of knowing what they were saying, but it sounded like the conversation of two people in perfect agreement. Or, just as likely, two people engaged in a tired disagreement. Before leaving for her parents’ house, Lisa gave August another hug. “You used to be just about my height,” she said. “Now here I am, craning my head looking up at you. Don’t let your dad eat all those cinnamon rolls. I made those for you.”
After Lisa left, August took the garbage out to the bin and kept walking down to the barn. He tried to put himself in his father’s shoes; he tried to imagine seeing Lisa, and then his mother, through his father’s eyes. He could get a fair picture of Lisa this way, how his father might see her strong, chapped hands, her Carhartts stretched over her thick thighs, an early riser, red-faced and pleasant. His mother, though, she shifted, a husky voice and a wry smile, a specter, mostly obscured by a cloud of smoke. He hadn’t put a coat on and his arms goose-fleshed in the cold. In the barn it was warmer but empty and quiet, the cows all out to pasture. He wandered past the rows of stanchions, letting a hand trail along them, the inner wooden yokes varnished smooth by the rub and push of countless bovine necks dumbly enduring the suck of the milker, reaching out for feed.
Out of habit, on his way toward the haymow ladder, he flicked the radio on. It was the same old fly-specked Sony with the antenna extension his father had fashioned from a coat hanger. After an ad for Marvel Quality Used Cars, Paul Harvey’s voice came on.
On Thanksgiving Day it seems especially important to honor the good folks that help this great land produce her bounty. Here’s a tribute to all the farmers out there.
August climbed the ladder and stuck his head up into the haymow. Shafts of light found their way through the knotholes and gaps between the barn boards. Dust and chaff swirled in these bands of light, and he sat with his feet dangling down. There was a soft rustling in the loose hay at August’s back and then a gray cat stepped into view. It was large, a tom from the looks of it, one of his ears torn from fighting. August clucked his tongue and the cat came sidling up, arching its back, rubbing against August’s boot.
Paul Harvey was reading his “So God Made a Farmer” speech. August had heard it years before, and he could remember feeling something then—a “Star-Spangled-Banner”-before-kickoff sort of upwelling. A farmer, Paul Harvey was saying, is someone strong enough to clear trees. Who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark.
August snorted. “A meadowlark’s broken leg, my ass,” he said. The cat tensed at August’s voice, crouching slightly. When August reached out his hand, the cat sprang away, hay skittering out from under his scrambling paws. August climbed back down to the milking floor and, before he switched off the radio, stood, arms crossed over his chest, listening to Harvey finish.
August tried to imagine what his mother would say about this homey little soliloquy. He tried to envision his mother and Paul Harvey engaging in a discussion. His mother’s eyes narrowing to slits, a soft cough and an exhale of smoke before she eviscerated him. He could picture Paul Harvey’s rheumy old-man eyes clouding over in confusion and then outright fear. It wouldn’t be fair.
On his way out, August flicked off the light and closed the big swinging double doors behind him. He walked back up to the house. In the mudroom, while removing his boots, he reached in the pocket of his father’s neon orange hunting vest. There were a half dozen long-nosed brass cartridges there, cool and heavy in his hand. They’d been there the whole time. August had thought he’d heard them, clinking softly as his father walked.
* * *
—
He’d left Montana when it was late fall and when he returned, less than a week later, it appeared that full-on winter had set in. There’d been a storm. The town was coated in a thick layer of white, with gray chimney smoke hanging in a low inversion cloud. August went back to school, just about fell into a rhythm, and then it was Christmas break and his days were empty again. His mother got him a pair of cross-country skis, and as the snow continued to pile up he started taking them on silent tours through town. He’d set out in the evening, already dark at five P.M., the streetlights glowing orange, snow blowing through like TV static. He liked making fresh tracks right down the middle of the road like he owned the place, like he was the sole occupant of a universe where cars no longer had the right-of-way.
Ethan had managed to get only half of his house sided before the storms hit. The lights were rarely on, and August almost never saw Ethan himself. Sometime in late February a FOR SALE sign appeared in the dirty snow pile in Ethan’s front yard. The wind had started up by then, picking away at the unfinished siding, loosening the strips so they bent and sagged and eventually broke away, toppling the FOR SALE sign, which was never righted.
On one occasion the highway patrol closed the highway and routed traffic through town after a semi tipped over and smashed a car. August had no idea a place as windy as this could exist or, maybe more accurately, that people could exist in a place as windy as this.
* * *
—
Eventually spring did set in, an extended mud season when people tromped around in muck boots and turned their faces gratefully to the sun when it showed. School let out in late May, and not long afterward August flew back to spend the summer with his father on the farm.
The first morning, August came downstairs to the smell of coffee, the sound of bacon popping, and his father, hands flour-white to the wrist, kneading biscuit dough. The TV was on with the sound off, and the weather lady was moving across the screen, gesturing in a muted meteorological dance. After eating egg, cheese, and bacon sandwiches, August thought they’d head to the barn for chores and was surprised when his father made another full pot of coffee and settled back down in his chair. “How’s it feel to be home?” his father said.
August wiped crumbs from the tablecloth into his cupped hand and emptied them onto his plate. He shrugged. “Good. I never knew you could make biscuits like that.”
His father laughed. “Did I ever tell you about my first job? No? I was about your age, maybe a little younger. My uncle had that logging camp up by Kalkaska, and I was too small to really go out in the woods and work, but I helped the cook. Wayne was his name. Only guy I’ve ever seen that had hairs
growing on his nose. Not out of his nostrils. I mean right here, on the bridge of his nose. He was that hairy. A Sicilian guy, I think. A vodka-and-orange-juice-for-breakfast kind of guy. But he made the best biscuits I’ve ever had, and he showed me the trick.”
“What’s the trick?”
“Cold butter. Chunk it up small and don’t overmix. Butter has to be real cold. That’s how you get that nice flaky texture. Ol’ Wayne. Haven’t thought about him in a long time. My uncle had to close the camp. I wanted to log more than anything when I was your age, but it all just kind of ran out of steam before my time. Speaking of jobs, I’ve got a proposition to run by you. You’re of an age now where you could use some income. Gas and hamburger money. I want to hire you for the summer. I’ll pay you hourly, six-fifty cash. That’s a buck over minimum wage and you won’t have to report it to Uncle Sam. What do you think?”
“Gas money?” August said. “I don’t even have a car.”
His father finished his coffee and put the mug in the sink. He had his back to August but August could tell he was smiling, trying to hide it. “We’ll go get the chores done and then hammer out the particulars later.”
* * *
—
When the cows had been milked and kicked back out to pasture, the milking parlor floor scraped clean of shit and swept, August’s father said, “Let’s go up to the shed and take a look at something.” He slid open the big double doors and flicked on the overhead lights, then stood to the side and swept his arms open. “Surprise,” he said. “She’s not a thing of beauty, but the engine’s rebuilt and she runs strong.”
It was a small pickup truck, a Ford Ranger, at least ten years old, white but pintoed with brown rust spots. “New tires, too,” his father said. “It had some pretty bad baloney skins before, but I coughed up for some new rubber. What do you think?”
“Seriously?” August said. “It’s mine?”
“All yours. I insured it under my name because that will be cheaper than you trying to do it yourself. I got the first six months covered. I’ll let you know what the rest of the year comes to and you can just pay me. Your mom told me you did driver’s ed this spring. A guy your age needs wheels for the summer, no way around it. I figured I was either going to have to let you borrow my truck, or I could get you something of your own and save us both a bit of hassle.”
* * *
—
Early July with windows down, the washboard rumble riding up the old truck’s blown shocks. Fields of corn, the plants knee high and spreading, the damp moisture-hogging smell of them in the evening air. August, done with chores, took the back roads to town. His father liked him to stay for dinner, but on the weekends he begged off and he figured his father understood. “A pocketful of cash and some wheels,” he said. “Those were the days. Get out of here and be safe.”
There was nothing much to do. August had been gone three years, long enough to recognize that he was no longer a part of it in any meaningful way. He’d left right before childhood friendships forged into lasting relationships. He saw people around, kids he’d gone to school with. Oh, hey, Augie, they’d say. Back visiting for a while? Where are you living now, Colorado? Having left—having seen the mountains, having seen the bears ambling through town and the wind-driven snow piling to the eaves—August felt a certain superiority. People here talked as if their noses were plugged, a nasal drone—his father, even. Now, when he listened to his father speak, the sound of it was strange, hokey. The trees crowded in and the dark green of the woods choked the road edges. There was a deep-seated flatness here, and people weren’t raised to crave any sort of vantage point. August realized that a landscape could shape your hopes and expectations for what life might possibly have to offer. There were trailer houses dotting the unkempt fields along the back roads, driveways choked with weeds, plastic swimming pools, trampolines broken down and fading under the sun. August saw them all as if for the first time.
* * *
—
On Fridays and Saturdays he’d generally go to the Moe-Z-Inn and get a burger and a Coke and sit on the back deck overlooking the Morley Pond. It was a stagnant, dammed section of the Little Muskegon River, and in early summer it was already choked with algal bloom. As a minor, August could stay until eight o’clock. He usually lingered right up until the place shifted from restaurant to bar and a different crowd started rolling in, guys he vaguely recognized as being a few years ahead of him at school. Construction workers mostly, still in their boots and jeans, sleeveless shirts, and sunglasses pushed back on the tops of their heads. They crowded around the bar and talked loudly, got the jukebox going with Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe. Eventually the girlfriends filtered in—sundresses and teased hair, crop tops and pierced navels, tribal tattoos scrawled across lower backs. August sat in the shadows on the deck, nursing his Coke, picking at his french fries. Sometimes he thought he could probably get away with staying past eight—no one ever made a move to kick him out—but he never tried. When the time came, he’d put his money down and walk back through the bar, swing into his truck, and drive the back roads slowly to the farm, not ready yet to go home but with no other idea for something else he might do.
* * *
—
Lisa was around only on weekends. She was taking summer classes at Central Michigan, studying to be a vet tech. She’d show up on Friday evening with grocery bags and a backpack full of textbooks. August thought she looked older. Her face less round. Once he went into his father’s bathroom looking for toothpaste and saw a dripping line of her just-washed bras and panties hanging from the shower stall, like tropical fruit. Occasionally, on the weekends, midday after chores were done, the door to their bedroom would close and the house would take on a heavy silence. August never heard a single thing. Not one thing. And in this absence of sound, it was too easy to imagine it all with a burning clarity, until he had to leave, slam the door behind him, take the truck out to Brockway Lake, jump from the dock, and sink past the thermocline to the cold mud bottom, holding his breath until his lungs were screaming.
* * *
—
During the week it was just him and his father. The repetitive cycle of chores. The cows as shit-covered and dumb as ever. They got a load of hay delivered, and his father sent the bales up the conveyor while August stacked them. It was hot in the haymow, chaff sticking to the sweat on his face, his bare arms prickly from hay-scratch. It took most of the afternoon, and when they finally quit, the bales were stacked to the rafters. They ate fried chicken from the Town and Country deli counter and drank sun tea with lemon wedges on the porch as the evening finally cooled. His father turned on the radio for the game. Fireflies rose, blinking, from the lawn in the darkness, strange constellations of them shifting and reforming.
“Don’t have those in Montana,” August said. “I’ve never seen them, anyway.”
“Really?” His father said. “That’s too bad. Wouldn’t seem like summer to me without fireflies. And baseball. No pro teams in Montana, right? I guess you could find some college ball, or something. Speaking of, wish I could have seen you play this season. It’ll be varsity next year, eh?”
August nodded.
His father whistled through his teeth. “I was always more of a baseball guy, but I can still appreciate football.”
August rubbed the insides of his arms. The sting of hay rash still hadn’t gone away after a cold shower. “I’d love to see you play,” his father said. “I’m going to try to get out there for a game next year. Your mom seems surprised at the way you took to it. I guess she has some ideas about how you are, and football doesn’t necessarily jibe with those ideas.”
“She came to every game. Even when we played Havre. That was like a six-hour drive.”
“Your mom has it in her to be supportive. Although I sometimes think she just likes to pretend interest so she can pass judgment in a more infor
med manner.”
“She bought overalls. I think she likes it.”
His father laughed and rocked back in his chair. “It’s possible,” he said. “I guess that could be. Varsity,” he said, whistling again, shaking his head. “Be careful they don’t elect you homecoming king. You don’t want to peak too early.”
* * *
—
Sometimes his mother called him. The jangle of the old kitchen phone, the cord stretched so he could sit at the table. “I sort of feel like I’m a teenager again,” she said.
“Why is that?”
“Trying to screw up the nerve to call a boy that may or may not even want to talk to me. You could call your mother sometimes, you know? I shouldn’t have to feel like I’m courting my own son.”
“That’s weird, Mom. I’ve just been busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“Nothing that interesting. Chores. Hay. Listening to some baseball with dad. Driving around.”