August

by Callan Wink

  “Never been back here before. Ancient told me Dry Creek would pop you out in town. Just decided to go for a drive.”

  “Probably he told you to come check out crazy Duncan’s place, didn’t he?”

  August shook his head. “He didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tim looked off. “I was thinking. You and me should get dogs. Pups. Raise them up. It’s nice to have a dog around. If we got them at the same time they’d grow up together and learn things from each other, and maybe we could get a two-for-one kind of deal from a breeder. Something smart and trainable, like an Aussie. Maybe a heeler, but then heelers are always so standoffish and weird. I’ve been bit by three dogs, and they’ve all been heelers. What do you think?”

  “About getting a dog? I’d have to think about it. Not sure that it’s the right time.”

  “Hell, the timing is never exactly right to get a dog. You just have to get one and then arrange your life accordingly. That’s the point of it. Having a dog makes you act more responsibly.”

  “I’ll consider it. I like dogs.”

  “Of course you do. If you didn’t they’d have stopped you at the border.”

  “What border?”

  “It’s just a turn of phrase. I’m just bullshitting you.”

  “How about the other night? About your brother. Was that bullshit?”

  “No bullshit, man. Sorry about all the stuff at the end there. Things are a bit fuzzy, to tell the truth. I’d been putting them back pretty steady all day. I sometimes turn to black. I should never have had the whiskey at the Mint. That’s what did it. If I just stick to beer, I’m fine. Get me on the whiskey, though, I turn right into ol’ black Tim. It’s a known fact about myself, and I apologize.” Tim reached out his window, his hand in a fist. “We cool?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, then, don’t leave me hanging. Give me a bump, pal.”

  August reached out and knocked his fist against Tim’s.

  “Good man,” Tim said. “Don’t forget about the dog.” Then he drove off, tires spinning, leaving August there with his arm outstretched.

  August kept on toward town. The signs continued for a half mile. A NATION BEGET BY SIN WILL REAP ITS OWN DISASTER! A MAN SHALL NOT LAY WITH ANOTHER MAN, IT IS AN ABOMINATION! A MAN SHALL RETAIN THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS! 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! SHEEPLE WAKE UP!

  August got a pot of canned chicken noodle going on the hot plate. When it was bubbling he didn’t bother with a bowl, just crushed a handful of saltines in and started spooning it out. He was finishing when his father called.

  “How’d calving go?”

  “Pretty good. We lost one, but other than that it went all right. Not a lot of sleep for a while, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, that’s calving for you. Always hard when one doesn’t pull through.”

  “It was that. For sure.”

  “I was looking at your weather. Looks like you’ve been getting a little warm-up the last few days.”

  “It’s been decent. Super windy, though. Ancient calls it the Chinook wind. Comes down from Canada this time of year. Melting the snow in a hurry.”

  “From Canada?”

  “Supposedly.”

  “Seems like if it came from Canada this time of year, it would be a colder wind. Wouldn’t it?”

  “I’m not totally sure. That’s just what he said.”

  “Well, I’m sure he knows the weather in his neck of the woods. I don’t doubt him. Just seems a little counterintuitive.”

  “I think the mountains have something to do with it. They stall the weather patterns out in certain ways.”

  “That could be. I’ve never seen the Rocky Mountains. I guess I’m probably getting too old for it to make much difference. It seems like it’s a young man’s country out there.”

  “I don’t really see how you could be too old to see the mountains. You just look at them, and there they are.”

  “I don’t mean I’m too old to look at them. What I mean is, I’m too old to see them, you know what I mean? I could drive through the Yellowstone National Park and look at Old Faithful or whatever, but the time for me to tackle the landscape head-on has come and gone.”

  “Well, you could still come and visit sometime.”

  “Yeah, I’ll just punch the autopilot button on the place here and take off for vacation.”

  “I was just saying.”

  “I know what you were saying, but some of us have to work and can’t just take off whenever the mood strikes.”

  “Never mind. Has it been starting to warm up there at all?”

  “Not a tremendous amount. We had a decent little stretch last month, but I didn’t put the long johns away. Had a bad ice storm last week. All the kids around here got school off for a few days. We didn’t have power until yesterday.”

  “Good thing you’ve got generators.”

  “Lisa was making candlelit dinners every night anyway. She’s a hard worker, but damned if she isn’t still a woman all the way through.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If she wasn’t all woman, she’d just be your hired hand still. Right?”

  There was a soft laugh. “She sometimes seems to forget that she was my hired hand at all. Anyway. You don’t really get ice storms out there in Montana, do you?”

  “I’ve never seen one. Too cold, I think. It just snows and blows and drifts.”

  “I’d take some drifts over an ice storm any day. With an ice storm you almost always lose power.”

  “I used to like ice storms when I was little. That was the best sledding. Remember that metal saucer we had, and how you sprayed it down with silicone, and I made it from the hill all the way to the road before I stopped?”

  “I remember. That was a hell of a storm. That ice was about an inch thick over everything. You were just a little shit then, and you could just walk right on top of the snow. I, of course, broke through the ice crust with every step. Wore my ass out carting you up that hill.”

  “I don’t remember that. I thought I walked myself. I guess all I really remember is flying down the hill.”

  “Isn’t that the way of it? For every child’s fond sledding memories there’s the forgotten parent who lugs him up the hill. It’s all right, though. Probably in order to be your own man you have to forget certain things about the one that made you.”

  “I’m not trying to forget anything.”

  “No, I know. Well I’m about cashed in. Talk to you later.”

  A cup of coffee down before it was even light, the second cup as the gray dawn solidified into golden morning. August toasted two pieces of white bread. He slathered them with butter and then sliced bananas, carefully arranging them like pale coins. He drizzled a precise zigzag of honey over the bananas and he ate, sitting on his small porch, his hood up against the chill, inhaling the steam coming off his mug. From where he sat he could see the light on in Ancient Virostok’s kitchen. Occasionally Ancient was visible, alone, moving across the window, filling the coffee carafe with water, rinsing out a travel mug, washing his hands after peeling strips of bacon into the skillet. August finished his whole pot of coffee before Ancient emerged from his house. When he did finally step outside, he stood on the porch and stretched and yawned.

  “What a morning,” he yelled. He gave August a little salute. “You coffee’d up?” he said. “Let’s go deal with that son of a bitch of a tree.”

  With Ancient driving they headed out the rutted drive and turned east, toward the river. The radio was on low; August could just make out the song, Doc Watson doing “Tennessee Stud.” Ancient was thumping his thumbs on the steering wheel in time, and the truck smelled of coffee and mouthwash covering last night’s alcohol.

  “Billings,�
�� he said, shaking his head. “What a shithole. You spent much time there?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, good for you. I’ll be happy to not step foot in that cesspool for a while. They got the reservation right there and that’s always been bad enough, but now they got the oil fields and that’s even worse. Only thing worse than a drunk Indian is a drunk roughneck with a paycheck burning a hole in his pocket. You told me you did a stint down in Wyoming, right?”

  “I don’t claim it. Just a couple months. Long enough to figure out it wasn’t for me.”

  “Good money, though, I bet.”

  “Paid out most of it in rent.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Nowhere to live. I also heard prostitutes from Vegas fly in and out every weekend. Absolutely raking it in.”

  “Maybe. I have no idea.”

  “I’ve never paid for it, myself. I have nothing morally against it. But it doesn’t do it for me, knowing that the woman, no matter how hot she may be, is just at work, probably thinking about what she’s going to have for dinner later or something. She could care less about you, and if that’s the case then what’s the point? Might as well save some money and jack it. Same with titty bars. Never saw the logic of spending a bunch of money to sit next to other dudes drooling over bored single mothers who fundamentally hate you.”

  “They do this thing on the rigs. We worked really long hours. Some of the guys would buy a bunch of those energy drinks and open them up and let them sit overnight so the carbonation goes flat. They’d use it to brew the coffee with. One morning I got up and drank a cup of that. I was going to lace up my boots, and I was leaning over and I just threw it all up. I vomited on my boots. I couldn’t get all the puke out of the laces and I could smell it all morning when I was working, and so when I took lunch break I just went to where I was staying and packed up my things. Left my boots there. Drove away barefoot. Some people can stand the smell of puke. I can’t.”

  “My God. What that must do to your guts,” Ancient said. “You were smart to get out of that. My old man might have been right about some things. Poverty on a ranch is still better than a lot of situations. Like living in Billings, for example. Jesus. The women aren’t even good-looking down there. Big hair. Thick ankles.”

  “Did you see Kim?”

  With the flat of his palm, Ancient rubbed his chin. Unshaven, it scratched against his chapped hand. “Yeah, I saw her. People always run their mouths about out-of-towners that move here. Good-looking girl like Kim takes up with Ancient, and then everyone starts their sniping.”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “I suppose not. People know that you and I work close so whatever comes to you will come to me eventually. And you’re not from around here either, so there’s that.”

  “Maybe people are talking about me,” August said.

  Ancient looked at him and took a sip of coffee. He shook his head. “No one is talking about you, cowboy. Hate to burst your bubble.”

  * * *

  —

  Ancient and August stood on the bank of the Musselshell and regarded the problem. A giant cottonwood had fallen and come to rest directly against the headgate that fed the irrigation ditch that watered the hayfield. The cottonwood’s massive trunk was wedged in such a way that raising or lowering the steel gate was impossible. It was stuck closed, and until they were able to get it open, no water was going to find its way out to the thirsty alfalfa.

  The river was up, flowing brown and cold. The pressure of the water was forcing the tree hard against the gate. Ancient’s plan was to get a rope around one of the tree’s upper limbs and use the truck on the bank to pull it up and away. To facilitate this process he had come to the conclusion that they ought to cut away as many of the tree’s thick branches as possible, streamlining the whole mess and making it more likely to come free under the force of the truck.

  Ancient was messing with the chainsaw, and August could smell gas. The sound of the river was a constant dull hum; the chainsaw was chugging but wouldn’t start. “Goddamn this thing,” Ancient said. He was dropping the saw with his left hand and pulling the cord in his right with everything he had, over and over, grunting with every stroke, the old grease-coated Stihl growling a little but stubbornly refusing to fire.

  August stood on the edge of the concrete that held the headgate and looked over at the tree, sticking like a knife in the cold meat of the current. The only way to reach the limbs that needed to be cut was to climb out onto the tree itself. Water was cresting on the lower end of the trunk, and the deep furrows of the cottonwood bark were black and slick looking. There was a chug and a cough and then a snarl as Ancient finally brought the saw to life. He revved the motor a few times and brought the chain to a high whine before backing off and letting it idle.

  “All right, she’s purring like a kitty now,” he said. “Hop on out there and I’ll hand it to you.”

  August looked at the saw, looked back at the cottonwood bucking in the current. “Maybe we should just give it a shot with the truck first,” he said.

  Ancient gave the saw a goose and shook his head. “Won’t work,” he said. “That limb there and that limb there have got to go. If we pull on it like it is we’re just going to be wedging it further up in there. That or maybe we’ll fuck the gate up beyond all repair. Come on. We’ll just have you hop out there and then I’ll hand you the saw and zip-zip you’re done.”

  “Right,” August said. “Zip-zip.” He stepped off the concrete wall to the cottonwood trunk, gingerly finding purchase, his boots squelching on the wet bark. He could feel the river under his feet. August steadied himself with one hand on a limb, and Ancient stretched out with the saw until August could grab it. The heavy saw unbalanced August. He knelt and went to work on the first limb. The chain flung chunks of bark and then hummed into the pulpwood, sending out a rooster tail of white, sappy, wet sawdust. The first limb went easily. The saw was sharp and the cottonwood was soft. In a few moments, August kicked the limb away and it bobbed off downstream, turning slowly in the roiling water. He changed positions and started on the second limb. This one was trickier; the river was pushing on it in such a way that the saw kept binding. Finally, as it neared the center of the limb, as big around as his thigh, the saw ran to a stop completely. He tried to jerk it clear but the bar was wedged, the current pushing the limb back on itself as if trying to heal the cut.

  “Is it stuck?” Ancient said.

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  “Can you wiggle it out?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Maybe if you step out on the limb and push it down that will release that pressure?”

  “Jesus Christ.” August slid one foot around the stuck saw so that he could put his weight on the stubborn branch. He gave a hop, and when his weight fell on the limb he pulled on the saw and he felt it budge slightly. He repeated the hop-and-pull maneuver and was able to get the saw free.

  “You’re going to have to try to cut it from the other side,” Ancient said. “It’s just going to bind again if you go at it the same way.”

  “I know,” August said.

  “Okay, just pointing out things as I see them here from mission control.”

  August changed angles and started the saw on the upstream side of the limb. Now the current was pushing the branch away from the saw, and the wood ripped eagerly under the chain. Too eagerly. Before August was ready there was a sharp crack and the limb broke free. Swinging up and over the cottonwood trunk, the butt of the limb knocked into the bar of the Stihl so quickly that August still had the saw running wide-open when it bit into his boot with a whine. Leather and rubber vaporized instantly. In the shock of it, he dropped the saw, slipped from the log, and met the water with his back.

  He was fully submerged. For a second he could hear the saw running underwater and then tha
t was gone. He couldn’t feel pain yet, but he was certain that in the split second the saw had smashed into his boot it had chewed all the way through. He struggled toward shore, his jeans and denim jacket weighing him down. Ancient yelling, cursing, running down the bank.

  August got a hold of an overhanging Russian olive and pulled himself out of the water, gasping. His foot still didn’t hurt, but he was scared to look. He wrestled himself into a sitting position, expecting to see blood and gore. As it turned out, the saw had cut through the leather of his boot upper so that a stripe of his white sock was visible, but that was it. He’d been a sock’s thickness away from having the chain tear into him. He collapsed onto his back and listened to Ancient crashing through the brush toward him.

  They eventually looped a length of rope around the top of the tree and, with the truck, were able to shift it enough that the current washed it out downstream. Then Ancient cranked up the steel gate and sent a tongue of tea-colored water probing down the dry irrigation channel.

  Driving back to the house, Ancient said, “I had that saw for damn near twenty years. Not your fault, obviously, but I’ll miss it. Never gave me any problems. Stihl makes a good product.”

  “Too bad,” August said. His clothes were still soaked, and he had to force away a shiver.

  “I should have had you tie a rope to the handle. That was my fault.”

  “That probably would have been the smart thing.”

  “But don’t worry about it. Could have happened to anyone. I just want you to know that I don’t blame you for dropping the saw like you did.”

  “I could have cut my foot off,” August said.

  “Oh, come on. Five white monkeys could have flown out of my ass, too. Neither of those things happened, though, so it doesn’t make much sense to worry about it.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re pissed at me.”

  “The whole thing was stupid. There could have been some better way to go about it.”