by Ron Carlson
“I’m going to cook this chicken in olive oil,” he told her. She sat on a milk crate behind him. “They must make it out of olives.” He was speaking, saying words, because of a new nervousness that had come upon him. “Somebody picks a bucket of olives and then they smash the olives and then put the oil in this bottle.” He adjusted the flames on the stove and kept talking. “They use an olive oil funnel to pour the olive oil…” Now Traci stood quickly and hugged him from the back, her head on his shoulder. “Oh Ronnie.”
He was stilled by the action and put the pan on the burner and his head hung on his chest for a moment. He had not kissed her, and now he knew he was going to. Her hands on his chest ran chills there. “No, really,” he finally whispered, “it’s a perfect funnel and they do not spill one drop.” The plateau was yellow-gold now, the shadows thrown double by the last sun, which was closed between the razored horizon and a train of distant clouds. With his hands he took her hands and he moved around so her face was against his face.
A moment later he said, “You know I built this table.”
They ate and talked and Ronnie did not tell her about his year as a thief, and it was odd to him: he wanted to. She told him that her town wasn’t a place where you hoped for much, and she did not know what was going to happen to her, and she was amazed by that and fearful. Most girls married the locals, guys were wild for two or three years and rough, but then they settled down and life went on. Ronnie had let her go into the tent first and change and get into her sleeping bag. Later, she said quietly across to him: “I’m glad I came out here. The river sounds nice.”
He whispered back from where he lay in Arthur’s cot, “I told you I wasn’t going to try anything,” but all he heard in return was her sleeping breath.
In the deep night with the temperature inside the worksite tent forty degrees, Ronnie Panelli opened his eyes. It took him half a minute in the sure dark to place himself, and he felt a smile rise on his face. His dreams now were fainter than even a month ago. Something had filled the hollow place where a kind of terror had burned briefly every time he woke up. Now he smelled the canvas shelter almost happy, and he heard a noise, a small concussion, and he listened hard until he heard it again. It was odd; he perceived it as a tap deep in the scar on his shoulder. Ronnie quietly turned his head toward the opposite cot where Traci slept. Her breath was an exhausted whisper. He could hear the river also, a white friction tonight, and he could hear his heartbeat as he swung his feet onto the floor and sat up. The sound came again. There was something else too, and he held his breath until he ascertained that across the site someone was walking back and forth. In the tick of a second he was awake, every part of him, the way he felt in the old days, last year, when he was breaking and entering, sometimes in the room with people sleeping while he opened their dresser drawers, his mouth always the shape of an O as he breathed shallowly, silently in and out.
His old two-iron was under his cot, but he left it and stepped barefoot to the lodge flap, and delicately pulling the heavy fabric open near the bottom, he knelt and peered out. The first thing he saw was the far field of stars like some trick of vertigo, pulling him off balance until the yard focused, and in the shimmering night Ronnie witnessed the two men hauling lumber to their truck. There was no moon. They were joined by their load, four two-by-sixes, and one of the men walked backward. At the truck, they paused, adjusted their grips and silently coordinated the last lift onto the stacked lumber there. They were being quiet, but not overly so, and Ronnie Panelli understood that they thought the plateau was abandoned. Darwin’s jeep was gone. They might have seen it go through town. He looked at his watch, one-thirty. The big guy he remembered from the Antlers.
Ronnie dressed and found and tied on his old Nikes, shoes he hadn’t worn in almost a month. Now he grabbed the two-iron and knelt by Traci’s cot. In the small light she smiled at him sleepily, her face an unreasonable joy in his heart. “Was I snoring?” she whispered, and he put his finger against her lips.
“There are some guys here,” he told her. “Do you know them?” He helped her out of the sleeping bag and they crept to the opening.
After a half minute, she came back and whispered against his ear, “It’s Buster Jensen and his dad.”
“From town?”
“From Concept. They ranch out there.” Traci pointed at the older man. “LaDonna—from the bank, the teller—is his ex.”
“What’s his name?”
“Don. They call him Big Don.”
“He just goes around pissed off.”
“Yeah, he does,” Traci whispered back.
“Okay,” Ronnie pulled her back and they knelt together on the plank tent floor. “You just stay right here. I’ve got to run them off.”
“What are you going to do?” His hands circled her wrists and she held his forearms.
“Don’t worry. Stay right here. I’m going to ask them to leave.” He started to rise and she tightened her grip, bumping his face with hers until the kiss took.
Outside now the cold air falling from space stilled him. He crouched in the shadow of the tent until the men pushed the lumber onto the truck, which was almost half loaded, and turned to walk back to the stack. Then he ran quietly across open ground swinging way wide and coming up in front of the intruders’ vehicle, a GMC three-quarter-ton pickup. Two of Darwin’s big toolboxes were on the hood along with Art’s tool belt as well as his own and a short keg of screws and their drill motor. Both doors of the truck were open, and Ronnie slipped into the driver’s side and lay on the seat on his back. The plastic dome light was broken, he saw, and there was a rifle of some kind hung on the back-window gun rack. The cab smelled powerfully of years of tobacco and fresh spilled beer. Now his heartbeat eclipsed all other sound until he heard the men approaching and a couple of sharp breaths before he felt the planks jostle the truck and slide into place. This was his prime game, hiding at close quarters, and his breathing stilled. He waited for a count of five, lifting the fingers before his face, and then he sat up and saw the backs of the men walking away. The world was ten shades of gray, but he could see everything plainly.
Ronnie pulled the truck keys from the ignition and stuffed them into his pocket. He extracted the rifle from the rack and took it with him again to the front of the truck. He made a broad quiet circle in the sage, keeping the truck and then the tent between himself and the men as they marched carrying the new boards. He worked back to the yawning gorge and the river’s roar multiplied in the night. The tiny silver slip of the water below him flickered in its length indifferently. No matter what was about to happen here, it would continue through the aeons. He’d never thought this way before, and it made him uneasy. He was becoming someone else. He laid the rifle in the dirt and stepped toward the men.
“Boys!” he called and shined his big flashlight at them. They were back at the diminished stack of lumber, and they stopped sharp and turned to the light.
It was the worst moment, the surprise. Once it all began, he’d be fine, but now Ronnie was uncertain of everything. Nothing felt solid. He walked toward them anyway. “Listen,” he continued. “You’re going to want to put all this lumber back.”
“Say what?” the older man said. “Who is that?”
Ronnie Panelli didn’t know what to say, but he heard his voice: “Security.” The word sounded like four broken pieces. “Take a minute and put it all back. Now.”
“Lift that, goddamn it,” the man said now to his companion. The two began to stack four boards for another trip.
“Stop it, Big Don,” Ronnie said.
At his name, the man dropped his end and the boards splayed into the sandy soil of the mesa.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the guy who works here and who knows who you are. I’m going to let you put it all back and go home.”
Both men, still in the flashlight beam, stepped toward him.
“We thought this was some kind of surplus deal,” Big Don said
. “They said to help ourselves, to clear it out.”
“You need to put it back.”
“We’ll take what we’ve got and go,” Big Don said.
“Look, Buster. Tell the old man that he needs to help you stack all these boards back in the stack and set the tools in the lean-to.”
The two men spoke briefly, quietly, and then they moved to their truck. Ronnie could just see them load everything on the hood onto the wood already in the bed, and he heard both doors shut. He turned off his light and moved across to the canyon rim exactly where the ramp would be built. He sat in the sage.
A truck door opened and he heard Buster say, “Where’s the keys?”
Ronnie waited.
The other door opened and Big Don yelled, “Let’s have those keys, my man, before I kick your ass.”
Ronnie waited until the older man swore a moment later, and then he answered them. “I’ve got your keys.” He could see them searching for him. “I’ve got your rifle.” Now they were talking again. Buster opened his door again and checked inside. He saw Big Don go behind the vehicle and begin to pull the bright new two-by-sixes and throw them onto the ground.
“Stack them where they were, and I’ll give you your keys.” Buster stood to one side, waiting to see what his father was going to do. Big Don folded his arms and dropped his head to his chest.
“I think you’re the little asshole who was sniffing after Traci last week.”
“Stack them and put the tools on top.”
There was one more minute while the men searched through the cab of the truck, and then without a word, they began hauling the wood back to the supply stack. When they turned after the second trip back to the truck, Ronnie circled low through the sage way behind all the materials, taking his time and finally striking the dirt road a hundred yards from the gate. He continued for the next twenty minutes, moving as their backs were to him, until he was able to gain the front of their truck again, crouch there and place the keys on the front driver side tire. The truck bumped softly as he knelt in the dirt and he could hear Big Don and Buster breathing as they worked. As he let go of the keys, he realized it was the first time he had ever put something back. It was thrilling to steal things, to take a wallet from a pair of pants on a chair while you watched and listened for any movement in the strange house, but he knew now, kneeling by the front of the truck, that he had hated it. Even the thrill, he saw, was part of how sad it all was. He hated it. It was like a cage, always, in the cage and then gone. There was no upside. You put yourself into trouble and then got out, back to zero, never ahead. Now he shook his head at the thought: he had hated it.
He backed away from the truck again in his larger circle, staying low. When he reached the canyon rim again, he could see the truck was empty and he heard the tools jostling and the noise of them being placed on the mass of wood.
Big Don walked back to the truck and got in the driver’s seat. Buster stood behind the truck, waiting. “Okay,” he called. “Okay, let’s have the keys.”
“On the tire,” Ronnie called. He saw the young man move around the vehicle, checking, and then hand them to his father through the window. The truck started and the sharp red disks of taillights lit the area.
“The rifle,” Big Don yelled.
“It will be in the Antlers in a week.”
“You asshole,” Big Don said into the dark. Ronnie smiled where he sat in the brush. And then he heard the truck drop into gear and bump out of the yard. It slowed through the gate and then hit it hard on the gravel road north to Mercy. He could hear it well after the lights disappeared, and he listened for two minutes after that as he went and chained the gate, locking it this time. He was scared now for the first time and his heart was at him sickeningly.
“All clear,” he called to the tent.
Traci stepped out of the tent, and he shined the flashlight in his own face for a beat and then at the ground so she could come to him and climb in his arm. “They put it all back,” she said. “I saw them.”
Ronnie crouched and let his heart beat. It was true; they had put it all back.
“I thought you were going to shoot the gun.”
“So did they,” Ronnie answered.
They walked over to the gorge and after a little search with the light he found the rifle. When he retrieved it, he saw that she was standing looking into the canyon.
“I’ve never been here at night,” she said. He stood with her, his arm now around her in the chill. The river shivered in the rocky dark and light rolled in a narrow cord. “My god.”
“That river doesn’t care what happens,” Ronnie said.
“Yes it does,” Traci said. Her head was against his chest. “That river cares about us.”
“What are you talking about?” Ronnie again felt dislocated and strange with the woman against him and the rifle in the crook of his other arm.
“That river knows about you and it knows about me.” She was speaking quietly. “It knows we’re up here. It knows about me, that I’m back in the world. It knows that you came to get me in town and that we’re up here alone and your friends won’t be back until noon tomorrow.” Traci moved in front of Ronnie, her hands on his hips. He could see her face. “That river knows about us.” She stood on her toes and kissed him, a kiss that lasted long enough that Ronnie Panelli lost track.
The two young people went back toward the tent, the air cold as they moved through it, and now the sound of the river faint and in the tent fainter.
EIGHT
WHEN ARTHUR KEY DROVE the camp jeep into the outskirts of Idaho Falls, Darwin sat up in the passenger seat and put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur had been talking all day, and his story was complete, the parts he could say. The touch startled him and he said, “What?” They could see the farm lane ahead in the afternoon shadow was crowded with pickup trucks. “That’s his place, isn’t it?” Arthur slowed. Pickup trucks of all kinds lined the long dirt road up toward the house, which was in fact a yurt.
“Keep going,” Darwin said.
“Okay,” Arthur said. “And why is that? We’ve had a bit of a drive not to park this thing and have a beer with your son.”
“Just drive,” Darwin said. “We can get a saw in town.”
“We want to get your saw,” Arthur said. He pulled over in the turnout by the one-lane bridge over a narrow surplus canal. He turned and looked back at where the barbecue haze drifted up in Roberto’s dooryard. They could smell it. Darwin stepped out of the jeep and stretched by joining his hands behind his back.
“I’m not sure,” he said. He looked at Arthur Key. “I’m not.”
“We’re here,” Key said. “Let’s just step into it and see what happens. It’s your family.”
Darwin walked to the edge of the swollen waterway and stood arms folded. The man alone against the canal and the hedgerows beyond in the late day was the loneliest thing Arthur had ever seen. Then Darwin put his head down and stood. Arthur regretted telling Darwin his story, the shitty history anyway. The voices from the party came in threads and the birds now were moving in the sky. He should have gone over to the man, but he sat in the jeep like a coarse bag of stones. After a minute, Darwin dropped his arms and turned and then small-stepped over and climbed into the vehicle.
“I’ll take that as a let’s go see.” Arthur hauled the vehicle around and entered Roberto’s lane. The trucks parked along the ditch were all festooned with mud, weeks on end, and full of equipment, ladders and pumpers and gas containers and dogs. It was a long corridor of work. The dogs stood two legs on the truck sides as Arthur and Darwin crept in the jeep toward the dooryard. “They started without us,” Arthur said. Smoke lay tiered above the dozens of men and women at the open-air celebration. Darwin pointed and Arthur drove forward. “I guess we should have parked at the turnoff.”
“No,” Darwin said. “Give the keys to this guy.” A strong young man about forty with a jet-black crewcut came up and said, “Perfect right here, Dad. We
’ve got a valet for you.” Roberto pulled Darwin from the passenger seat into an embrace, and a teenage girl in Levi’s and a Utah sweatshirt came to the driver’s side and waited for Key to climb out. “I’m Cory,” she told the big man. “I’ll take it from here.” She smiled getting in. “I’m not going to steal my grandpa’s jeep. The beer’s right over there, follow my dad.”
In the early twilight Darwin and Arthur Key stood in the large yard of Darwin’s son’s place five miles south of Idaho Falls, drinking cold beer from cans. They stepped foot to foot like men happy to be on the ground after the long road trip. Roberto had filled the yellow scoopbucket of his newly paid off John Deere frontloader with cases of cold beer under mounds of ice, and the freshly washed machine sat in a web of glowing Christmas lights to one side of the party. Three men worked a steaming pit across the yard; they were roasting a goat. Arthur Key had met Roberto’s wife, Yvonne, and their daughter, Cory, a sophomore at the University of Utah, who had parked the jeep when the men arrived. Yvonne had been back to Darwin twice asking if he wanted a chair. There was a three-table buffet near the back door with one platform of pans of enchiladas and a make-your-own-taco spread, as well as great piles of potato salad and fried chicken and pea salad and platters of shrimp and cheeses and pickles and olives in dishes and a tub of coleslaw. There were two salmon and a bushel of breads. There was a three-tier cake with a little tractor on the top and there was an avalanche of brownies and seven pies, all of them missing a piece or two.
“Shall I get you a plate, Darwin?” Yvonne asked her father-in-law.
“Get this man a plate,” Darwin told her. “You can see he’s starving.”
“Don’t mind him,” Arthur told the woman. “He’s cranky because I talked his ear off in the car.”
The beer was good in Arthur’s throat; he’d been talking most of the day in the open jeep as Darwin motored them north at fifty miles an hour on the unrepaired springtime two-lanes. Arthur had started his story when they crossed the river bridge on the other side of Mercy, and he began it with the sentence “My brother came to Los Angeles and wanted to be in the film business, and I should have stopped him, but I made some mistakes and I did not stop him.”