August

by Callan Wink

  August shrugged. “I’ve got a freezer full of beef at home.”

  “You and everyone else. The question is, do you have someone at home to turn that beef into a hamburger while you sit and drink a beer? I thought not. And that’s why this place has a crew of regulars. The food has nothing to do with it.”

  “Is Tim Duncan a regular?”

  Cale flicked his rag at something on the bar. “Oh, sure, all the Duncans used to come in a lot. Tim’s brother Weston was my best friend. Big Tim used to be in here damn near every night just to talk to Theresa. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  “I’ve been running around with Tim a little bit,” August said. “He seems like a good enough guy.” August took a bit of pizza, strings of melting cheese stretching out long on his chin. “But I guess I’m actually not one hundred percent on that.”

  Cale drained his beer and threw it in the trash. It broke against the bottles already in there, loud enough that one of the ladies playing keno said “Goddamn” and turned to look, her glasses low on her nose. Cale opened more beer for both of them. “Timmy can be a bit of a wild card,” he said. “No way to deny it. Avoid giving him hard liquor. I learned that lesson. Get some of the high octane in him and he goes off the rails.”

  “I did notice that.”

  “I think his heart is in the right place. But Wes was a beautiful person, and I don’t care who hears me say. Loved him like a brother. I’m getting married in a few months. Supposed to be a real big happy day in my life. I’ve got my drunk uncle Dwight as my best man. Should be Wes. He never met Noelle. She moved here right after he left for school, and that’s a weird thing. I’ve got this woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, and she never met the person that meant the most to me. Almost doesn’t seem right somehow, but that’s not something a woman wants to hear about.” Cale sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand.

  August finished his last slice of pizza and pushed the plate away. “So, this may sound weird,” he said. “But when you said your name I actually kind of knew who you were, because Tim told me a crazy story the other night and you were in it.”

  Cale crossed his arms over his chest and laughed. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “It was mostly about his brother, something you and Wes did down at the Hutterite colony.”

  Cale frowned, shook his head. “What did we do at the Hutterite colony? I’ve only been down there once or twice to get turkeys for my mom around the holidays.”

  “I figured it was a bullshit story. Tim was drunk. Never mind.”

  “No, what did he say? I’m curious.”

  “That you got a VD check and then took Wes down there to the colony to be, like, studs, because the Hutterites were looking to get some of their women pregnant. Tim said his brother told him about it.”

  Cale shook his head. “Fucking Wes. Still messing with me from the grave, I swear to God. First off, I’m not the one that was banging a Hoot. Second, stud service? That’s just a myth dudes are always talking about up here. Never happened.” Cale stopped. Twirled his beer bottle a few times on the bar. “I maybe shouldn’t say anymore, but fuck it. It’s not like Wes is going to get pissed at me. It’s a hell of a story, way better than that stud nonsense. You like fishing?”

  “It’s all right. I used to do more of it when I was a kid.”

  “Wes loved it. Hardly anyone fishes the Musselshell, but he had some spots where he pulled out huge brown trout. Seriously, some of them were as long as your leg.”

  “People are always saying that. I’ve never seen a trout as long as my leg.”

  “I’m telling you. He didn’t catch a lot of them, but when he did, they were giant. Believe me or not, I don’t care. The size of the fish isn’t the point. One of the spots Weston would go to was in the middle of the Hoot colony. He’d hop in at the bridge in Two Dot and just wade downstream for miles. The Hoots don’t give a shit about fishing as far as I know, so the trout are just hanging out there, dying of old age.

  “That summer before Wes left for college he was going fishing, like, every day. He’d get done with his chores and he’d be fishing. Early morning. Sometimes staying out past dark. I was hardly seeing the guy, and he wasn’t showing me pictures of the trout he’d been catching either. I finally pinned him down about it. He was like, Don’t laugh, but I’ve been spending a lot of time with Sarah Jane. And I’m like, Who the hell is Sarah Jane—is that, like, a euphemism for something? Are you doing meth, brother? But no. Sarah Jane was a Hoot girl. I, of course, started giving him a ton of shit about this but he didn’t laugh. He said that he’d been fishing on the river way down there in Hoot land, a nice warm day in spring, and he came around the bend and there was a girl laid out on a rock, reading, blond and butt-ass naked. He surprised her and she got embarrassed and covered herself up, but they started talking and I guess you can figure out the rest. That was Sarah Jane. She was only sixteen, and she somehow turned Wes into an idiot.”

  “She was a Hutterite? And she was sunbathing naked?”

  “I know. I never really met her, but apparently she was not your average Hoot gal. She had this spot down there where no one from the colony would ever see her, a cliff that she scrambled around somehow. The only way anyone could come up on her was from the river.”

  “I’ve never come across anything that interesting while fishing.”

  “Yeah, me neither. Weston was always lucky that way. Until he wasn’t. For a while, though, he was head over heels. Before he left for Austin, he and I were drinking some beers one night and he told me he was thinking about saying fuck it and not going. Said he and Sarah Jane might just take off somewhere for a little while and see how it all panned out. I remember exactly what I told him. I said, Wes, look at me. That is a horrible idea. You’re thinking with your dick. You’re going to college. There’s going to be a million girls in Austin, and all of this will seem ridiculous. And after a while he said, You’re right. I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Of course I’m going to go. And then he went. And look what happened.”

  Cale had been polishing a glass, but now the rag in his hand had stopped and he was looking over August’s shoulder at the door as if expecting someone to come in.

  “Everyone you meet, their lives can hinge on the words that come out of your mouth. You ever consider that? You can just say a few sentences and then your best friend dies. We just walk around all day putting words on people, sowing the seeds of disaster. He could be set up right now, a little place of his own with Sarah Jane, helping run the cattle on his family place. Happy and in love. That’s the alternate universe that occurs if I don’t open my mouth.”

  August turned to see what Cale was looking at, but there was no one at the door. They were silent for a few moments, and then August drained his beer. “You look at the extended forecast lately?” he said. “Is it supposed to stay mild like this for a while?”

  Cale cleared August’s dishes and brought him his change from the twenty he’d put down. “I’m not sure. But you know what they always say about Montana weather: If you don’t like it, just wait ten minutes and it will change.”

  “They say that about the weather everywhere.”

  “I heard about a place in Africa where it hasn’t rained in one hundred years.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I bet they don’t say that about the weather there.”

  “I guess you got me. See you around.”

  As August was making his way out the door, one of the keno machines went off, lights flashing. The gray-haired lady in front of it had her arms raised over her head, fists clenched in victory. “Sadie, you lucky bitch,” her friend said. “You’ve hit twice this week. Why does God hate me?”

  After picking up several gallon jugs of weed spray at the Feed-n-Need, August swung by the Martinsdale Carnegie Library and signed up for a library card. T
he librarian wrote down his information from his driver’s license on a small green piece of paper that she then ran through a laminating machine. She trimmed the plastic edges and slid it over the counter at him, her nose wrinkling slightly. He’d been helping Ancient all morning with his old baler. It had been spewing hydraulic fuel, and haying season was right around the corner. Mostly, Ancient was doing the work and August was getting him the tools he asked for, holding things, shining the flashlight on grease-coated fittings in the dim interior of the shed. Ancient had one CD in the old stereo in the shop. It was Jimmy Buffett, and it was on constant repeat. Although he wasn’t under the machine, wrenching, August still managed to get himself coated with grease and fluid. His jeans had long black smears, and even after multiple washings with GOJO in the shop sink his hands were still stained, dark crescents under each fingernail. Worst of all, he had Buffett stuck in his head. Jangly steel drums.

  After some browsing August selected a large tome from the “Regional Interest” section entitled The Hutterites: A People’s History. Before leaving the library he sat down at one of the public computers and connected to the Internet. He found the Montana sex offender registry website, typed in the Virostok Ranch’s address, and in less than a minute was looking at a picture of Kim Meyers. Deep purple bags under her eyes, her hair shorter and dyed peroxide blond. Below the picture was a short list of information.

  36-year-old female. Level 1 offender. Registering offense (Idaho): Sexual acts with a minor. Victim: 15-year-old female. Vehicle: 1999 Subaru Forester.

  Further down the pages was a definition list.

  Note: 46-23-509 MCA provides for sex offenders to be designated a level 1, 2 or 3. Under this law, the following definitions apply to sex offender designations:

  Level 1—The risk of a repeat sexual offense is low.

  Level 2—The risk of a repeat sexual offense is moderate.

  Level 3—The risk of a repeat sexual offense is high, there is a threat to public safety, and the sexual offender evaluator believes that the offender is a sexually violent predator.

  August scrolled through the list of all the offenders in Meagher County, Kim the only woman among a sad lineup of twisted gray beards, slumped shoulders, gaping jaws. One guy was near August’s age. Shaved head, glasses making his eyes look as if they were disembodied and swimming.

  Desmond Swandel. 21-year-old male. Level 2 offender. Registering offense (Montana, Yellowstone County): Sexual acts with a minor. Victim: 8-year-old male. Vehicle: None.

  August looked at Desmond Swandel long enough to notice that he’d shaved badly before the photo was taken. A patch of reddish stubble was visible on his lower chin. He closed the browser, checked out his book, thanked the librarian for her time, and drove home on the river road. He had the window down to erase the public-library smell from his nose, and he could hear the prehistoric sounds of sandhill cranes, paired up for mating, calling out from the greening fields.

  The phone in the bunkhouse rang, and August let it go for a while before he picked it up.

  “Catch you at a bad time?” his father said.

  “No, not really. Just thinking about making some dinner.”

  “Seems like I’m always calling you at mealtime.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What are you having?”

  “Ramen.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m putting some vegetables and shrimp in it.”

  “Well, that’s a little better than just plain. But I guess you inherited my culinary skills.”

  “I fenced all day. I really don’t care what it is.”

  “Don’t have to explain it to me. I hear you loud and clear. If it weren’t for Lisa, I’d probably be asking you for your recipe. She made beef Stroganoff the other night. When’s the last time you had that? That’s a meal you forget about, but when you have it you’re always reminded how good it is.”

  “Never cared for it much myself.”

  “Really? How not?”

  “It’s gray. I don’t like gray food.”

  “Huh. Lisa’s is actually more of a light brown. I bet you’d like it.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well. I saw one of your mom’s daffodils poking up next to the house last week. Then last night we got two inches of snow. Typical March weather. You know what they say—in like a lion, out like a lamb.”

  “Seems like it doesn’t finally start going out like a lamb until sometime around June here.”

  “Everything’s bigger and badder out there, eh? Speaking of June, though. You haven’t mentioned your gal friend recently. What’s up with that?”

  “She’s out on the East Coast for school. She’s coming back for spring break, though. We talk on the phone all the time.”

  “That long-distance thing, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. In my opinion, as a young buck, you should play the field. Makes things a little easier if you decide to settle down later. A little easier. I don’t think it’s ever actually easy, as long as you still got blood pumping in your veins. The struggle of modern man.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Settling down.”

  “Last I checked it’s a free world. No one is making you do anything.”

  “Maybe not. We’re on the edge of a new humanity. I feel that way. I do. Pretty soon society is going to be run by women, and I don’t know that it’s necessarily a bad thing, just that you and I are going to be obsolete.”

  “How so?”

  “We’re entering the age of cooperation. The age of teamwork. The age of feelings and equality. The only reason they’re still allowing boys to be born is because there’s other nations out there not advanced enough to look down their nose at war. As long as you got people being born into dirt-floor huts wanting something they haven’t got, you’re going to need boys to hold guns. From hero, to necessary evil, to relic of our barbarian past—that’s the fate of man in the arc of time.”

  “You told me once that a good woman is man’s only hope for salvation on earth.”

  “That doesn’t sound like me.”

  “Pretty sure you did. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Let me put it real simple: Men will ruin the world. Women can save the world, but they’ll ruin men in the process. Get me?”

  “I guess.” They fell silent for a moment and then August said, “They clocked the wind at seventy-one miles per hour at the little airstrip up here last week. An RV heading down 89 flipped and rolled twice, but I guess no one died. Seventy-one is almost hurricane strength.”

  “Doesn’t it have to be sustained to be considered hurricane strength—not just a gust? I mean, that’s still a strong wind, of course.”

  “Not sure on that. Maybe. They said that on the news, about the hurricane strength. It wasn’t just something I made up.”

  “No, of course not. I don’t doubt it. I was just not totally sure about what exactly constitutes hurricane strength, you know? Shrimp, you said? Never would have thought it to put that in ramen myself. You getting it frozen, I take it?”

  “Yeah, frozen.”

  “Already cooked, though, right?”

  “They’re cooked.”

  “Peeled?”

  “The tail is still on there.”

  “So, do you thaw them out and then take the tail off and then put them in the ramen, or do you just put them in frozen?”

  “I usually just get the water boiling and then put in the broccoli and carrots or whatever and that’s when I put the shrimp in. Frozen. It works fine. You just take the tails off as you eat them.”

  “Well, that sounds pretty easy. Healthy, too, I imagine. Maybe I’ll try it some night when I’m baching it. Okay. I’ll let you get to it. You’re probably hungry. Nice talking to you.”

  Late June, with the
shadows of the clouds making calico patterns on the hills. August rode shotgun in Tim’s truck on their way down to Wilsall for the first rodeo of the year. Tim tossed August a shooter of Beam and handed him a can of Bud. “Put them down fast, pal,” he said. August downed the Beam and sipped from the beer. He looked over at Tim. He was dolled up. Clean summer Stetson. Pale pink pearl-snap tucked into freshly ironed Wranglers. His boots were wet-looking, devoid of mud and manure. “You’re not drinking?” August said.

  “Oh, I will. Plenty. I’m not the one that needs to get loosened up, though.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. Get loose.”

  “Why? What are you talking about?”

  Tim laughed, pulled his truck off the road, drove into a flat rocky pasture, and parked. He fiddled with his CD player and Johnny Cash doing “Cocaine Blues” came on. He turned it up. “Here we go,” he said hopping out. “The Tim Duncan five-minute crash dance course. Let’s get to it.”

  “I’m not dancing. Let it rest.”

  Tim hooked his fingers in his belt loops and rocked back on his heels. “You can just start walking from right here, then. You go to the rodeo with me and you’re going to dance. Bottom line. I’ve got a reputation to uphold. I’ve got a gal coming from Bozeman with a friend, and I told her I’d have a tall, good-looking cowboy with me that would be happy to twirl her girlfriend around. If you’re the tool standing there against the wall, it makes me look bad, understand? Relax, you’re not going to be out there doing the fox-trot or the tango or whatever. A girl just wants to be spun a little.” Tim tapped his boot on the ground and whistled along out of tune. “Don’t be nervous. It’s easy.”

  “I’m not nervous. This is ridiculous.”

  August stood in front of Tim, and Tim grabbed his hand and pulled him close. “Okay. I’m going to be you. Meaning, I’m going to lead. As a man, you lead. It doesn’t really matter too much what you do, as long as you do it with conviction. This is your basic western swing, or jitterbug, or whatever you want to call it. Works better with the faster songs, it’s kind of flashy, you get the lady twirling, which is what they all want. The basic spin is here. Twirl, dumbass. Okay, you see how I kept my right hand on your sexy midsection while you spun? That’s key. Dancing is foreplay, pal. No other way around it; that’s why it hasn’t gone out of fashion and never will. I leave my hand on your hip right there and as you spin it travels around, stomach, to lower back and that’s where it rests. Enough pressure so that she can feel it, not enough to be the creepy guy copping a feel. After the spin you’re in close. Two-stepping. The footwork can be a little tricky but it’s short, short, looong. So, two shorts left, one long right. Yep, like that. If you’re in doubt, just shuffle a little. See, I’m a good leader so it just comes natural for you to follow like that. If you can do it like I’m doing it, the girl kind of naturally falls into step.