by Brian Hart
Roy, hydroponically stoned, had trouble formulating a response, so he busied himself gathering the various brass from the bench and where it had fallen on the ground and dropped the casings in the small black sack they’d brought with them. Roy owned his stepdad at two hundred yards with the M77 but Steve was unbeatable at twenty yards with his Springfield .40. Firearms were their only shared interest. Fathers and sons have had less, stepfathers and stepsons, much less.
Range is hot.
Steve held up a hand in the affirmative and made eye contact with their only neighbor: gray beard, 82nd Airborne baseball hat, tattooed hands, surgical long gun nestled into sandbags, synthetic stock with suppressor, topped with a Swarovski. Call me tack driver. American hero. He’d set his target at eight hundred yards, couldn’t even see it without a scope or binocs. Roy watched his finger slide inside the guard and cover the trigger.
“Best cover your ears,” hero said, without turning.
“I’m good,” Roy said. “Go for it.”
Now. The air pressure pulsed and dust kicked up in front of the shooting bench. The sound receded. Hero opened the bolt, palmed his brass and reloaded. Roy had cotton mouth. He’d like to shoot that rifle. There was lust. When he turned, Steve had his hands pressing his ear protection against his head, a gritted-teeth grin. The twerp. Roy held the bag of brass by the drawstring and let the blast from the next shot roll over him. He was sixteen and pretty sure he’d be dead before hearing loss was an issue. Three more shots and Airborne opened the bolt and moved around the table to his spotting scope.
Range is cold.
“You’re talking about my mom,” Roy said.
“I’m talking about women, and you better listen.”
“Don’t talk about my mom.”
“Fine. Let’s get outta here. I gotta be in Carlsbad by four thirty. I’ll drop you at home.”
Now look at Steve—rolling around on the plush carpet of his megachurch with his golden yarn ball of cat-toy enlightenment, thinking women are designed by the Lord Jesus to serve him. No, Stevie-dog, without women—without my mom—you wouldn’t have accomplished dick all: no real estate license, no cushy church post, no home ownership. The truth, Steve? You can’t (pan)handle the truth.
Always trouble finding the hood latch. Put your finger in the hole. Not that hole. He pushed the catch to the side and the hood opened. He’d need to unlatch the doghouse inside if he wanted to get to anything important. Metaphorically me all over the place. He hunched down so Karen couldn’t see him. Self-awareness is a leaking tent, the more you touch it, the more it drips. He pulled on the wires he could reach, but they seemed fine, connected at least. He tapped the radiator cap, tugged on the belt. What did he actually know? Gasoline burned and made little explosions, oil lubricated, antifreeze cooled and kept parts from freezing, killed puppies.
Roy stepped back and looked around. The van was snow-crusted and listing toward the bank like maybe he’d wrecked instead of broken down. He imagined the black shadow of the state trooper that would slap the fluorescent green sticker on the glass marking it as abandoned. Last time the wrecking yard dinged him for three hundred bucks and he had to use a razor blade to get the sticker off, not that there weren’t hundreds of stickers plastered all over the van already, but something about the cop sticker made him remove it. Official failure, was how it looked to Roy. Date, time, and location would be noted, unwanted and likely unaffordable services would be rendered. Brace yourself, help is on the way.
Hands shoved into his pockets, he blindly counted his change with his fingers, organized it: quarters, nickels, dimes, flicked a solitary penny with the wind and it peened away with a space-shuttle slingshot bend into the bottomless snow on the other side of the bank. The mechanics of going home again were as much against Karen as the staged sentiment had always promised, but Roy had never wanted home. So Cal, born and raised, and he didn’t care if he ever went back. He wanted adventure, wildlands and death rides, the authenticity of poverty minus the discomfort, a fruit-tramp lifestyle minus the work, minus the bugs.
Karen climbed out, pulling on her hat and gloves. “Can you fix it?”
“I don’t even know what’s wrong, so, no, I can’t fix it. I don’t have any tools anyway except for a skate key and a pocketknife. I don’t have shit. Get back in there. Don’t give me that look, I’m coming with you.”
The heat was already gone inside but the protection from the wind was a welcome relief. Roy could see his breath. The windshield was quickly going from condensation to frost, skimmed in snow.
“There’s no one we can call, huh? Even if we did have a signal.” He was fishing for a specific response. He wanted to hear her say his name.
“A tow truck,” Karen offered. “We could call a tow truck.”
“Maybe if Mace had a phone,” Roy said. “We could call Mace.”
Karen glanced at Roy, then looked out the passenger window. “He doesn’t. You know he doesn’t.”
“I just want to make sure we both understand that we’re on our own now,” he said, and slapped the back of his hand into his open palm as if he were in charge of NASA ground command. “This is it.”
“Because we were with the angels or something before?” She leaned over and kissed his neck, yanked the hair on the back of his head.
He kissed her on the mouth, tasted her lipstick. Then he asked her if she remembered that guy they’d seen on the news. He’d been with his family, they were Koreans. They died when their car broke down.
“I don’t remember that,” she said.
“The whole family died. All of them.” Actually, he thought maybe the family had lived and the guy had died when he’d wandered off into a blizzard looking for help. The Korean angle might have been wrong too.
Karen looked at him but didn’t speak. She lifted her phone close to her face, and with a pointy finger, very carefully, turned it off. If he called her shrewd, he would mean she looked like a shrew. She nodded at the jingle of her phone shutting down. “No stick, no ant pile,” she said. “Monkey starve.”
He turned away, looked out the window. “I guess we should walk. We can’t just sit here.”
“Why not?”
“Do you want me to go get help and you can stay here?”
“And you leave me behind? Great idea.”
“It’s up to you. We can’t get stuck out here in the dark. We’ll freeze to death. Let’s just go. Do you need anything out of the van?”
“What does that even mean? What we have in the van is what we need. That’s why it’s in the van.” She waited for Roy to reply but he wasn’t saying anything.
“I think we should wait for someone to come by,” she said. “We have our sleeping bags and food. I don’t remember this road and I grew up around here. I don’t think we should just head out, you know. Stay with your vehicle is the advice I remember. Stay put. The snowplow has to come by at some point.”
“I made a decision and now you’re undermining it.”
“What are you talking about? We can get it on. Nice and sweet, and later, after we screw, somebody will come by and find us and give us a ride. It’ll be fun. Let’s just stay. It’s not like we’re in a hurry.” She tried to kiss him and he backed off. “Be nice to me,” she said, with hurt in her eyes. “If I told you that you have a disgusting, smelly body, would you hold it against me?” she said.
“No.”
“That’s too bad because I’d rather have sex than pretend I’m Jack London with my one fucking match.”
They’d already had sex that morning in a rest stop parking lot. Roy wasn’t interested in another round. To Roy, all of this: the van, the road, the sex, everything, used to be better. He didn’t know what this was, but it felt like someone was twisting the dimmer switch, bringing the darkness.
[1]
M>35
CA 96118
The child is in the living room playing with a deck of cards. Go Fish cross-pollinated with Crazy Eights. He can see her f
rom the kitchen. She’s safe. He’s been left in charge. If he shows any fear or doubt or even fucks up a little, the child’s mother will for good reason take this all away. He’ll regress, the evolution of man in reverse. From the mud to the trees to the cities, space travel, back to the mud. Go fish.
The woman loves him, she’s said it before, but she won’t marry him now or say the words again. Not yet. She’s a widow and the house will never be his house and the child is not his. If the little girl’s father is dead, does that mean he can be her father now? Is that possible?
She has a makeup bag on the floor, emptying the contents and smearing whatever she finds on her arms and her face.
“I don’t think your mom would like you doing that,” he says.
She appraises him, judges his information, forms an opinion. “It’s OK,” she says.
“It’s just that you’re kind of making a mess and I don’t know for sure but I think that stuff is expensive.”
The little girl begins twisting the lids onto the small opaque glass containers and plugging the caps back onto the lipstick tubes and carefully placing them inside the green-and-gold satin makeup bag. He hadn’t seen her go and get the bag or leave the living room at all. The child is fast and moves silently at times but is also capable of stone-heeled, window-rattling chaos if she’s in the mood. “When’s mama getting home? I want mama.” And she’s a mind reader.
“I think, I think she said an hour and it’s only been about twenty minutes. Seems longer, huh? But she said an hour and that’s not too long, right? Do you want to draw? She said we could draw. Remember, I’m pretty good at sharpening pencils.” A reference to last week. He’s establishing routine. He’s going to be here. He’s here to stay.
“No,” the child says, not meanly but firm.
Drawings of rainbow-colored unicorn-type things are displayed on every wall, held there by strips of blue masking tape. The blue masking tape is something the child’s mother has specifically talked to him about.
“Do you want to go outside instead?” he asks.
“Yes! Let’s go see the bunnies!”
“OK, but you have to put on your coat and your boots.”
“It’s not cold.”
“No, it’s not too cold but your mom told me that if we go outside you have to wear your coat and your boots.”
“I’m not sick anymore.”
“No, you’re all better now. Should I get your coat? Do you need help?”
“No.”
He goes to the kitchen and comes back and tosses her a hand towel and with hand signals indicates that she should clean up and to his surprise she unscrews the cap on the cold cream and wipes some on the towel and scrubs her face. She uses a compact mirror from the makeup bag to double-check that she hasn’t missed any spots. She is thorough and after she’s finished her skin is red and puffy. She returns the towel to where it’d been on the counter next to the cutting board and puts away the cold cream and the mirror.
“Is it dark?” she says.
He points to the living room windows, at the obvious daylight, and immediately feels like an asshole. He is an asshole. He’d never fully realized what a prick he was until he’d started spending time with the child. Acceptable behavior has always been low on his list and this late in the day it’s proving difficult to master.
“We still have another couple hours until the sun goes down,” he says. “Plenty of time.”
“Then I don’t have to wear my coat.”
“You do. Your mom told me you do,” he says. “I don’t care one way or another.”
The girl retrieves her dead father’s baseball hat from the hook by the front door. The hat says KC on the front and Go Royals in small cursive letters on the back. It has been adjusted all the way down but is still too big. She has long dark hair like her mother and she pulls it off her shoulders and does a half-ass job feeding it through the back of the baseball hat in a kind of ponytail. Her mom does the same but better.
“You’re kind of half-assing that whole thing,” he says before he can catch himself. “Let me help.”
“What’s half-assing?” There is no hurt in her face, no pain.
“It’s nothing. Hey, do you want a hair tie or a barrette instead?”
“No.” Now she’s getting angry. She can smell his lies, his weakness and fear. Blood in the water. “What’s half-assing?” She holds her hands out in a dramatic way that also favors her mother. “Tell me!”
“Looks good.” He attempts a happy smile but feels like he might be sneering.
“It means it looks good?”
“Sure,” he says. “You ready to get your boots on?”
“You’re lying. And I’m not wearing my boots.” She points to her bare feet. “My feet are half-assing, OK? So no boots.”
“OK, let’s go,” he says, doing a weird flourish with his hand, a stranger unto himself. “We’re half-assing our way right out the door.”
She runs to the door and he opens it for her, Gentleman Jim, and they step onto the porch. He’s snagged her boots when she wasn’t looking though, and he holds them out for her and she unbelievably takes them. She pulls them on the wrong feet but he figures good enough even though the wrongness bothers him. He suspects she knows they’re on the wrong feet and that bothers him too. But he follows her across the driveway and lets her open the temporary corral gate because they’d built it together, along with her mom, and she knows how to lift and pull at the same time to get the gate open, because he’d screwed it up a little and it took some finessing. She takes forever with the gate, not getting it open, and he has to fight the urge to take over. Let her do things. Let her be her own person.
The rabbits are separated into three different cages and when he switches on the single bulb in the barn they all turn broadside. They are white and the plan is to use them for food. The little girl seems to be fine with this. She opens the nearest hutch and reaches inside and pets the rabbit’s ears. That’s the only nice rabbit, right to left they get meaner. He isn’t going to let the child open the last cage where the buck is kept because he’s a monster, a Watership Downer with a ragged ear from rabbit fighting or a dog maybe. The man doubts if he can stop the child from opening the last cage without making her cry.
“When my papa shot Fargo did she bleed?” she says.
“I don’t know. Who was Fargo?” The child has his full attention.
“Silly, it was our dog. We had Norton and Fargo was the one that Papa shot cuz she was dying. She’s dead now.”
He doesn’t like it when she calls him silly, but again, that’s his problem. “Where’s Norton?”
“With Aunt Ape but he’s old too and Uncle Ape says he might not make it through the winter.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. The response is inadequate. She waits for him to improve his position. “If he shot Fargo, Fargo would’ve bled.”
“Like a lot?”
“I’ve never shot a dog. I’ve never shot anything but a paper target.”
“She would’ve bled like a lot?”
“I don’t know. It would be really hard to shoot your own dog. They’re part of the family.” Now he’s gone too far. This is cliché is what this is. This is dishonest and here goes some more blood in the water. I didn’t know your dog. I can’t speak to your grief. He cocks his head and listens, hoping the girl’s mother is pulling into the driveway, but she isn’t. He considers lying to the child and telling her she is so he can get out of this.
“Papa cried at the table after we buried Fargo and said goodbye.”
“Do you remember when that happened?” he says.
“Yes, but Mama told me the parts I forgot like with Papa.” She shuts the first hutch and latches it. He’s grateful that the rabbit didn’t escape again. They’re hell to catch. What was that line about nothing as foolish as a man chasing his hat? Haven’t seen me charge into the blackberries after a bunny. He’d taken damage, new scars on top of the old ones.
T
he child opens the second hutch and reaches in. The rabbit cowers and turns. The girl reaches in further and when she touches the rabbit’s fur it strikes the child quick as a snake with its forepaw. When the girl sees the blood on her hand she begins to cry.
He moves quickly to shut the hutch and latch it. The rabbit leans against its hutch wall in the corner, the ball-bearing-actuated drip waterer leaking against her back leg. Her nostrils move in a way that doesn’t seem mammalian. You could drop that nose in the bottom of the ocean next to an anemone and it’d fit right in.
He doesn’t know if he should pick the child up. She’s really crying and looking up at him as if she needs him. So he plucks her from the ground and she wraps herself around him. He hugs her back and tells her it’s OK. He catches her arm and wipes the little berries of blood from the scratch with his thumb.
They walk out of the barn like that and in the sunlight she stops crying. She lifts her head from the wet spot on his shoulder and pushes herself out of his arms without looking at him. After he sets her down she runs to the corral fence and climbs up until her arms are hooked over the top rail like a cowboy. He stands beside her, surprised that she’s already forgotten about the scratch.
“Where’re the goats?” he says. The art of distraction.
“Down there in the shade. Under the stinky tree.” She lifts herself up higher.
“What’s that?” He points to the field.
“Sandhill.” She makes a decent chuckling crane call and the two big birds pivot like lawn sprinklers and look at her. “You try,” she says.
He does and the birds run a few steps in the short grass and work their big wings and take flight. “I don’t think they liked mine as much as yours.”