by Callan Wink
“You’re not driving like an idiot, are you?”
“I’m not driving like an idiot. What have you been up to?” There was silence on the line for a moment, and then his mother laughed. “The weather has been so nice here,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to plant some flowers in that little raised bed next to the house. Coffee on the porch has been pleasant. I played five games of solitaire this morning and made a deal with myself—if I won a single game without cheating it would mean that I probably wouldn’t die alone.”
August twisted the cord and looked out the kitchen window. He could see his truck parked in the driveway. The keys were in the cup holder. He could drive into town and get a big fountain soda and take it to Brockway Lake, swim out to the floating dock, and lie on the boards till he was hot and dry before swimming back. “Did you win?” he said.
“I won three games. But I cheated a little every time. I’m looking forward to your return, Augie.”
* * *
—
In early August, Lisa finished her coursework and was around more during the week. She spent most nights, and in the morning would pad around flat-footed in the kitchen wearing cutoffs and one of his father’s white T-shirts. Sometimes in the afternoons she would lie out on the back deck in her bikini with a bottle of baby oil, the radio on. She’d never struck him as a woman who’d be in possession of a bikini. But there she was, stretched out on a towel, flipping a magazine, glistening with oil, her pale skin the sort that never tanned properly, her breasts large, blue-veined, pooling heavily off to her sides.
August started sleeping at the old house. He told his father it was cooler at night and that he slept better. His father looked at him with his eyebrows raised. “There’s air-conditioning in the new house,” he said. “How can you tell me that old dump is cooler?”
August shrugged. “Seems like it is.”
His father looked off over August’s shoulder toward the old house, and his eyes were flat. “Some winter after we get a new snow I’m going to burn that place down,” he said. “I’ll call the fire department to get a permit. Kerosene on the carpet. Kerosene on the curtains. One nice little match. When it’s done I’ll rent a bulldozer and plow the foundation over, and I’ll plant some corn for silage right on top of the ashes.”
* * *
—
Solitary coffee in the early-morning gray before chores. August found he enjoyed this time. At the new house, his father, a naturally early riser, tended to be jocular and loud first thing. Teasing Lisa, making cracks at August before he was even awake enough to respond. At the old house, August eased into the day, made his breakfast the way he liked it, yolks firm, toast not too crispy. He usually had the radio on, NPR from Grand Rapids, Morning Edition. He didn’t pay much attention to the news itself, but the dull murmur of voices was companionable. He did his dishes right away after eating. Wiped down the counters. Turned off the coffee maker. This way of living, having a whole house to himself, it felt like something he’d been wanting all his life and just hadn’t known it. He couldn’t imagine why his mother would spend a single moment worrying about being alone. Breakfast just the way he liked it and not having to speak a word to anyone until he was good and ready. Adulthood meant he wouldn’t have to suffer anyone else’s company unless he chose to. He could see it coming and he was ready.
* * *
—
A steady progression of long summer days. Soon, football practices would be starting, and his return flight was rapidly approaching. One night, after dinner, he got up to do the dishes. “I was thinking, I might just drive the truck back to Montana,” he said. His father was at the table, his checkbook out, paying bills. He tapped his pen on the table a few times and shook his head. “Probably not,” he said. “We bought you a round-trip ticket. It’s too long of a haul for that old thing anyway.”
August was rinsing plates, stacking them in the drying rack. “The engine’s rebuilt. It runs strong. New tires. You said it yourself.”
“It’s too far. It’s a drive-around-the-county sort of truck. Not a drive-across-the-country sort of truck. You’ll fly. The truck stays here.”
August drained the water. He wiped his hands on the towel. “What’s the use of giving me a truck if I can’t drive it where I want to go?”
“Well, son, I hate to say it, but if you were living here you could drive it to your heart’s content.”
August hung the towel carefully on the hook above the sink. He slammed the door on the way out as hard as he could. He could hear his father shout something, but he was already striding toward the old house, barefoot, through the dew-wet grass.
Later, August put the truck keys on the kitchen counter in the new house and didn’t touch them for the last few days of his stay. At the airport, on the morning of his flight, they shook hands wordlessly. August shouldered his bag and headed into the terminal.
The waning days of summer. The hillsides a parched brown, only a few scraps of snow clinging to the shaded couloirs on the Beartooths. They had a week of no-contact conditioning practice—endless laps around the baseball diamond, stretching and drills in the rock-strewn practice field, Coach Zwicky blowing his whistle with random outrage. Just when August thought he couldn’t take it anymore, they donned the pads and had their first full-contact practice, and for the next week August hit so hard he could feel the echoes of it in his sleep. He had lumps on his forearms from bashing against face masks. His face broke out in painful blackheads where his helmet’s chinstrap rubbed. Then school started and he was tired all the time, moving slowly from class to class, gingerly easing in and out of the desks.
The girls had all turned beautiful somehow, seemingly all at once. Summer tan, pushing the dress code to its very outer limits. They’d walk together in the halls, perfumed and laughing, hair tossing. August went to class, went to practice, did his homework. Every night he showered, long and hot, leaning with his back against the tile, and all the girls from school passing like a procession behind his closed eyes. Lisa was there sometimes. Julie. Faceless women he’d never met, too. What swirled down the shower drain started to look a lot like despair. Before getting out he ran the water as cold as it would go and stood there for as long as he could bear.
His mother bought him a used Subaru wagon, and while he was grateful for the car he missed his truck, rust spots and all. There were bonfires on logging roads after the games; kids got beer from older siblings or from raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets. The cops sometimes showed up, and everyone scattered like quail.
At the homecoming game against Townsend, August took a shot from their cannonball-shaped fullback that made him leave his body for a moment, a helmet-to-helmet collision that turned things black around the edges, something within him rising up so he could see himself on hands and knees, slack-jawed after the whistle, his mouth guard lying on the grass, a line of spit trailing down to it, trying to stand but falling on rubber legs. A couple of the guys helped him to the sideline, and he eventually went back in to play the final quarter. Apparently he recorded a few tackles, one for a loss, but he couldn’t recall much of it. Everything was hazy until the bus ride back home, when he started to come out of the fog.
* * *
—
They made the playoffs that year, but lost in the first round to Browning—Blackfeet boys, some with tattoos already, some with long black hair streaming from under their helmets. After the second snap August realized that while everyone was ostensibly playing the same game, the Browning team was playing for some other set of stakes that he couldn’t quite fathom. Down in the pile, elbows flew, fingers jabbed through face masks poking for eyes; shoving matches after every down. They had a rangy halfback who torched the field for over a hundred yards. When it was done, both coaches, fearing blood, decided to forgo the customary end-of-game team handshake.
And then the season was over and August d
idn’t mind. He’d been getting headaches. Dull, throbbing pain behind his eyes. He didn’t tell his mother, and as winter set in they receded and he felt fine.
On Christmas Day, August called his father.
“Merry Christmas, Dad,” he said. “Thanks for the card and the check. I appreciate it.”
“Oh, sure. I figured you could find some use for it.”
“I’m going to use part of it to get a new windshield for my truck. I was behind a plow the other day and a rock kicked up. I’ve got a huge crack.”
“Truck? What happened to the Subaru?”
“I sold it. There was a guy down the street selling an F-150. So I sold the Subaru and bought the truck and still had some left over.”
“How’d your mom feel about that?”
“She told me that she’d given me the Subaru, and I could do what I wanted with it. I mean, she wasn’t exactly happy, but she told me it was my decision to make.”
“I see.”
“The truck’s a little newer than the Ranger you got me. No rust, either. They don’t use salt on the roads out here, just sand. That’s why all the older cars in Michigan are so rusty, all the salt. Out here, an old car can sometimes still be in pretty good shape.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know that. I wish you could have made it back home for the holidays. We missed out on hunting this year.”
“Have you been seeing any nice ones?”
“Not really. I think the Amish must have gotten that eight-point. No sign of it since last year. There’s a bunch of does and a few scrub bucks. I haven’t really had time to sit in the blind. Anyway, too bad I didn’t make it out there to see you play. Sounds like you had a great season. All-conference first team, eh? That’s great.”
“It was okay. We lost bad to Browning, and they went on to take state. They blew us out of the water. What are you up to today? Is there snow on the ground?”
“There was, but then it all melted. It’s a brown Christmas this year. I’m just loafing around. Lisa will be over this evening, and we’ll have some dinner. Nothing too exciting. Maybe I’ll look at plane tickets for you soon. You’re still planning on coming out for the summer, aren’t you? I could use your help. I figure I can pony up a raise for you. Seven-fifty. Does that work?”
It had started to spit snow. August was lying on the couch, and he could see two jays sparring over the suet in the feeder. His mother was in the kitchen, whistling off-key along with a Mannheim Steamroller album. “Yeah,” August said, finally. “I’ll be coming back. Seven-fifty works for me.”
“That’s great. I’m looking forward to having you around. I changed the oil in your truck the other day. Took it for a little spin. She’s running like a top.”
That spring, August took the SAT and did well enough. It wasn’t long before the college brochures started flooding the mailbox. He didn’t give them much more than a glance, but one morning he came downstairs before school and found his mother flipping through the pile, drinking her coffee. “Oh, look at this one, St. Lawrence University, in upstate New York; it looks beautiful. Or how about the University of California, in Santa Cruz? Right in the redwoods, maybe you could learn how to surf. Oh, hey, here’s Dartmouth, that’s flattering, I mean, Ivy League, Augie, wouldn’t that be something?”
“Just because they sent me a brochure doesn’t mean they would actually let me in. Surfing,” he shook his head. “I don’t see it.”
“This summer we need to visit a school or two, at the very least. It’s hard to get a feel for these places unless you walk the campus, see the lay of the land, meet some students. I think it will be fun.”
August was at the sink pouring cereal into a bowl. “I told Dad I’d come work for him again this summer,” he said. He went to the fridge for the milk, not looking at his mother. She was silent, and he didn’t have to look at her to know her face: jaw set, eyes narrowed. He started to eat, still standing with his back to her, feeling her stare.
“What?” he said. “I told him I’d come back to work, and he’s counting on it. I can’t change my mind at the last second.”
His mother rose and walked over to stand next to him. She put her mug in the sink, and he could smell the coffee on her breath, smoke from her morning cigarillo in her hair. “Your father doesn’t need your help in that goddamn barn,” she said. “He needs you around so he can feel like his life hasn’t been a complete waste. I’m going to work now, but we’re not done discussing this.”
* * *
—
There were many more discussions. Fights. Long spells where he and his mother barely exchanged words. And, in the end, there was one more humid green Michigan summer. A summer tallied in fountain Cokes and the slow accumulation of $7.50 hours. Cicadas droning in the poplars, sticky nights with the windows open, the heat lightning crackling the black eggshell of sky. All the girls in town and none of them his. The stink of manure, hay itch, the sharp line of tanned skin right at the point his short sleeves stopped. Baseball and sun tea. His father and Lisa argued occasionally now, some new threshold in their relationship reached. She sometimes made dinner with her mouth pressed in a tight line, pans slamming on the cooktop. There were no college visits.
At the airport, the day of his departure, his father shook his hand and heaved his bag out of the back of the truck. “Thanks for all the help this summer,” he said. “Couldn’t have done it without you. Senior year,” he said, giving a low whistle. “Hard to imagine. Enjoy it. Next summer we’ll talk about bringing you on board on a more permanent basis. No more hourly wage. I was thinking more of a partnership, a profit-sharing kind of deal—what do you think?”
August shouldered his bag, watched a jet taxiing down the runway behind his father’s shoulder.
“Sure,” he said. “Yeah, maybe. We’ll see what happens.”
* * *
—
When he returned to Montana he told his mother he’d apply to Montana State in Bozeman for next year. He’d thought about it over the summer. He knew he could get a good scholarship, and he didn’t want to accumulate debt. She told him that she respected his decision. “MSU is not a bad school at all, and you’ll be close, so that will be nice. I kind of like having you around.”
Gaskill’s dad had a raft, and on the last weekend before school started a few of the guys planned an overnight float on the river. Originally it was going to be Ramsay, Gaskill, Veldtkamp, and Richards, but then Richards’s grandmother died in a car accident in Gallatin Canyon and he had to go to the funeral. With Richards out, August got the invite.
They launched in the early afternoon below the railroad bridge east of town. It was a hot day, and before they set off they all climbed the trestle to jump into the river. Halfway up the embankment, Veldtkamp turned around and ran back to the raft. When he returned, his hands were full of Coors Light cans. They stood side by side, bare feet on the tracks on the edge of the rusted iron bridge. Veldtkamp punched holes in the cans with his pocket knife, the beer spraying a fine golden mist on their arms and chests. He handed the beers around and then raised his toward Ramsay. “Here’s to Private First Class Ramsay. Here’s to Mon-fucking-tana. And here’s to honor. Get on her. Stay on her. If you can’t cum in her, cum on her. Cheers, boys.” They tilted their heads and popped the tabs to shotgun their beers, then released a chorus of belches and launched themselves from the trestle, hitting the river in a ragged line, coming up splashing and hooting. They swam to the raft, kicked it away, and they were off.
The river was wide here, slow, midsummer low with mats of electric-green algae furring the rocks. They turned lazy circles in the middle of the current; occasionally one of them would pick up a paddle and make a few strokes to keep them away from the bank. They drank beer, hanging off the sides of the raft, trailing limbs in the water to cool down.
“Too bad ol’ Richards couldn’t make it,” Veldtkam
p said. “I mean, I’m glad to have you along, Augie, but that Richards is such a funny bastard. He could do stand-up.”
“Too bad about his grandma,” Ramsay said. He was fair skinned, hair so blond it was almost white. He’d slathered zinc sunscreen across his cheeks in thick splotches. He was older than the rest of them, and after graduating last year he’d joined the National Guard. He was back from Fort Benning for a visit, and in less than a week he was going to be deployed.
“I heard it was a drunk driver that ran her off the road,” Gaskill said.
“Nah,” Ramsay said. “I heard from Richards himself. His grandma was epileptic and had a seizure while driving. At least they think that’s what it was.” He was silent for a moment, and then he cleared his throat. “I wish that would happen to my grandma sometime.”
“Oh, Christ,” Veldtkamp said, rolling his eyes.
Gaskill was conspicuously looking away, rubbing the back of his neck.
“What?” Ramsay said, his eyes moving back and forth between them. “What? My grandma is a raging cunt, and she deserves to die. She’s the main reason my mom is so fucked up, and anyone that did what she did to me and my brothers should be locked away.”
“We know, dude. Milky. We’ve heard this. Many, many times,” Veldtkamp said.
“What are you guys talking about?” August said. “What’s milky?”
Ramsay shifted on his perch in the raft to face him. He took a long drink of beer and belched. “I never told you about Milky?” he said.
Veldtkamp sighed and dunked his hat in the river so that when he put it back on, water drained across his face and chest. “I’m really missing Richards right now. He would’ve nipped this right in the butt.”
Ramsay leaned over and tried to kick river water at Veldtkamp. “I bet you’d like it if Richards nipped you in the butt. It’s supposed to be bud. I’ve heard you say nipped in the butt for years and let it slide, but you’re pissing me off now.”