by Brian Hart
“We have this much blood in us?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“The baby in Mama’s belly has a heart and blood but no fur or hooves.”
“I hope not.”
“That would be so funny if the baby had fur and hooves.”
“That would be funny. Can you drink some water now? I can tell you’re thirsty. Your lips are chapped. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
He watches the child drink from the CamelBak and they split a goat-cheese-and-tomato sandwich on sourdough that he baked. They get deer blood on the bread but neither of them cares. Turkey vultures, three of them, are riding the updrafts, clocking the gut pile.
“Can I carry the heart?”
He has four bone-in quarters, organ meat, and tongue bagged on his back, strapped to his pack frame. He stripped the meat from the ribs and he’s leaving them behind with the hooves and hide. The weight is bordering on unbearable and stupid. Once he makes the ridge, it’s all downhill from there. He has the hide and the head stashed under a dead ponderosa. He can come back tomorrow. Dark clouds are crowding the valley and they don’t have much daylight left. The kid is looking up at him, waiting for an answer. He thought he might be able to ignore his way out of answering her.
“You’ll have to carry the liver and the kidneys, the tongue.”
“OK.”
He wants to dissuade her so he won’t have to take off his pack. “It’s going to be heavy.”
“Not too heavy. I can carry it.”
Like a power lifter he lowers himself down, then drops to his side, onto the pack, and wriggles out of shoulder straps. He unhitches the small canvas bag with the organs from the frame and ties it like a messenger bag over the child’s shoulder. After he inserts himself once again into the shoulder harnesses and buckles the belt, he rolls to his hands and knees and like the slowest sprinter in the world coming out of the blocks gets back to his feet. The child goes first and he follows. Calculating their relative weight, length of stride, and muscle mass, he figures they’re on more or less equal ground.
But at the top he’s breathing hard and his legs are shaking, while the kid is doing her little hop-and-skip thing on the flat dirt of the ridge. He forgot to factor in youth. He considers leaving a quarter here and coming back. If I’m going to leave one, I might as well leave two and make it easier. I can come back, grab the quarters, hide, and head. There’s a plan. He’s about to shrug off his pack frame and split the loads when the little girl starts down the way they’d come, following their tracks through the dust and rocks toward the truck. He has no choice but to follow her. If he stops her, he might have a hard time getting her going again. She’s inertia-driven and as he makes his way down with his pack, he is too. The blood is leaking onto her back from the organ bag and staining her coat and he’s going to get it for that. Or maybe not. Maybe he did right today. The snow starts before they get to the truck and doesn’t stop.
[10]
R<25
CA 96118
Roy pressed his cold hand against his colder nose. Minus the wind, walking wouldn’t be bad. He almost whined to Karen but decided against it. Then a big gust hit, quartering away off his shoulder, and almost knocked him down. He considered letting it, giving the fuck up. Perhaps sensing this, Karen put her arm around his waist and they walked in stride.
He heard a sound like fabric tearing behind him. They turned together and watched as an apparition—twinned headlights framed in a boxy grill—appeared in the notch on the horizon. They moved to the side of the road and Roy pushed Karen out in front so whoever was driving would see that they were at least half-fem and therefore half-threatening, with his pink hat, seven-sixteenths threatening.
It was a white, bobtailed cargo truck and its tires broke loose when the driver braked too hard and it went sliding cockeyed, recklessly, right by them and came to stop blocking both lanes. They ran and then walked a little to catch it. The passenger door swung open as they came around. The driver was wearing Buddy Hollys and a Kings stocking hat and he waved them inside. “C’mon up,” he said, and took off his right glove and offered his hand.
Karen stopped mid-step as if she were afraid. “I know you,” she said. “From high school.” She took his hand and smiled. “Karen Oronski.”
“Shit. Howdy. Hi. How you been?” He pulled her up onto the seat.
“It’s Aaron, right?”
“Yeah, Aaron Simmonds.”
“Aaron Simmonds, this is my boyfriend, Roy Bingham.”
The two men shook hands. Roy could tell that Karen didn’t like being in the middle, being reached over. She leaned all the way back against the seat and tucked in her chin to be out of the way. Well, isn’t this something, Roy thought, looking at her. Isn’t this just peachy. Roy crammed their packs awkwardly at his feet.
“You wanna put those in the back?” Aaron asked.
“No,” Roy said, “they’re fine.”
“I passed a van.” He had a jagged scar that went from his right nostril, over his lips, to his chin. “Yours?”
“Yep,” Roy said.
“What’s wrong with it?” Aaron asked.
“No power,” Roy said. “All the lights just quit. Alternator, maybe.”
Aaron cleared his throat and put the truck in gear and, with a little jockeying to get straightened out, drove on. “I got tools. You wanna go back and see if we can get it running? I can turn around up here a little ways.”
“I think we’ll just have it towed,” Karen said. “Our insurance should cover it. We don’t have service out here or we’d have called.”
Aaron took off his glasses and wiped them clean with a blue chamois he snagged from the dashboard. “You aren’t here for the funeral, are you?”
“No,” Karen said. “Who died?”
“Simian Wattesly.”
“Oh no,” Karen said. “I was in the chess club with him. It was Simon, right? Everybody just called him Simian?”
“Yeah, he had those ears, milk jug ears, monkey ears.”
“What happened?” Karen said. “Didn’t he get elected mayor? My mom said something about that before—”
“Yeah,” Aaron said, pausing for too long. “Then he fell headfirst into a pump station, landed upside down. There’s water in the bottom, not much, but enough to drown in.”
“Why was he in a pump station?” Karen said. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s like a big culvert on end that goes down into the ground,” Aaron said. “It has a ladder in it and at the bottom there’s a big pump and pipes going either way. The pump moves water from the treatment facility to people’s houses.” He glanced at Karen. “I’m guessing here that that’s how it works. I’ve never been in one myself. It’s kind of an educated, uneducated guess, I guess.”
“OK,” Karen said, seeming pleased with the explanation. Roy never explained anything to her anymore. Explanations were for young love, not for the veterans. If you don’t know everything I know by now, he thought, you never will.
Aaron continued. “Simian was still working for the water company while he was mayor, drawing two paychecks, but I don’t think the mayor really makes any money. It’s a status thing mostly, as far as that goes. Some people pissed and moaned about a conflict of interest after the election, but who gives a fuck, right?” Aaron let go of the wheel for a moment, held his hands up.
Karen and Roy both intimated with their body language that they didn’t give a fuck.
“He was all right,” Karen said. “Kind of a Guy Smiley, but he was all right. I made him my bitch at chess.”
Aaron smiled a closed-lip smile. “So you still have people here?”
“Not really,” Karen said.
Roy almost said, yeah she does, her mom’s place is still here and some kind of twice-removed half a stepdad named Mace is probably lurking in it, but he didn’t want to get into the whos and whys and hows of Mace if by some chance Aaron didn’t know who he was.
“Hey, I was sorry to hear about your mom,” Aaron said. “It was in the paper.”
“Thanks. We came back for the funeral but left right after.”
“What about now? Another visit?”
“Pretty much,” Roy said. “Road trip, journey.”
“We might move here,” Karen said, smiled at Roy. “See what’s up. I’m tired of apartments and cities and traffic and yuppies. I want room to spread out for once. I want a garden. I want to grow some shit, know what I mean?”
“I do,” Aaron said. “Feels good to get your hands in the dirt. My zucchini went crazy last summer. I couldn’t give ’em away. We made bread and pancakes and marinara but after a while you just get sick of it. I’d carve notes in them, like in the skin, and leave them in the back of people’s pickups in town to mess with them.”
Already bored, but thawing out, Roy imagined himself as a Cartesian deep-sea diver toy he’d seen at the amigo flea market as a kid. Push here it goes that way, push there the other. He wondered, Is that what delivered me into this truck? Ease v. freeze?
“What’s in the back?” Karen asked Aaron. “Zucchini?”
“No, it’s empty. I dropped off a bike for some guy in Redding earlier. I’m taking the scenic route home.”
Karen’s face was flushed and there were droplets of water in her hair where it had frozen while they were walking. She smiled at Roy again and he remembered he was wearing her pink hat and took it off and dropped it in her lap.
“A bike, huh?” Karen asked. “Are you like one of those chopper dudes on TV? Lost City Choppers or whatever?” She said choppers with an emphasis on the last syllable, chop-hers, and it made Roy smile.
“Mechanic slash builder, not a chopper guy, more café and canyon racer, street fighter. Not that I have anything against that chopper shit, some of it’s cool. I like the ratty shit that folks do, you know, old Easy Rider magazine, David Mann shit, springers, suicides, big beard and a death wish, Frisco shit—that shit’s pretty killer. Nobody can say it isn’t, but I fuckin’ hate the theme bikes folks are building, powder coat everything or worse, chrome everything. Flashy paint. Total clown shit, you know. I don’t dig it.” He removed his stocking hat and mussed his thinning hair, tussled his forelock. “Functionality is where it’s at, low and fast, credible. Anyway, yeah, I have a shop in back of my house, right next to the garden, under a few feet of snow at the moment.” He smiled at Karen. “April, my wife, she helps me with billing and taxes and stuff. We keep it simple, old Jap bikes mostly. I’ve sweated through every version of Honda’s inline four motor, through the ’70s and ’80s at least, but I’m partial to twins, so I work on Triumphs and Beemers, too, but we don’t see them as often.”
The road ahead was beginning to drift over and Roy could feel a tap in the floorboards when Aaron punched through a big one.
Aaron turned to face Karen. “I was in the sheriff’s department for a while, before this. I mean, I’ve always been messing with bikes, but before I opened the shop, I was a cop.”
Karen and Roy both nodded, OK.
“You heard what happened? Maybe somebody told you when you came back before?”
“No, I haven’t heard,” Karen said. “Why’d you quit?”
Fired, Roy thought, you probably got fired. Big fucking meat pie got canned. Sexual harasser. Blackmailer. Perp assaulter.
“I didn’t quit, not really,” he said. “I crashed my squad car.” He touched the scars on his face. “My partner got killed and a few other people were hurt. Hurt bad.”
“I’m so sorry,” Karen said.
“They said I might be able to transfer to another department, Truckee was an option. But I live here, you know? This is home.”
“Well, I’m glad you stuck around or we’d still be walking,” Karen said.
“I guess so,” Aaron said, smiling. “Lucky you. Lucky me.”
“I remember your letterman’s jacket jingling when you walked down the hall,” Karen said. “Like all your medals from wrestling and track or whatever that you pinned to it, clanking and rattling while you walked. That’s weird you did that. It’s a weird thing to do.”
“It is, right?” Aaron patted his jacket as if the medals might still be there. “Some of my friends ran track but not me. I stuck to twisting arms and butting heads, wrestling and football.”
“Your friends were assholes,” Karen said. The words hung there and Roy sat forward in his seat and turned to see how Aaron was taking it.
“High school kids are all assholes,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, but they were special,” Karen said.
“Maybe,” Aaron said. “Seems like they’re all Realtors now. What kind of uselessness is that?”
“I don’t know,” Karen said. “What’s three percent of a total douchebag?”
Aaron laughed heartily and transitioned it into a big feline yawn and reached to turn the heater down and Roy could see that he had gold crowns on all of his back teeth, top and bottom, on the right side.
“You moved before you graduated, right?” Aaron said.
“Yeah, I went to Portland,” she said.
“But your mom never moved away though,” Aaron said. “Did you live with your dad or something?”
“No,” Karen said. “I went on my own. One of my sister’s friends was going to school at Reed and working as a nanny. She found me a nanny job at the house next door to the one where she worked.”
“She lived in the pool house,” Roy said. “They gave her a car.”
“They gave me a car to use,” Karen said. “Portland was like the big, big city for me, you know. Coming from here. It was a good gig.” Karen leaned away from Roy enough to get a hand up and on top of his head to muss his hair. “Then Roy and his friends drained and skated their pool and I got fired.”
“C’mon,” Roy said. “I didn’t think you’d get canned. You weren’t even there.”
“I was at the coast,” Karen said. “Me and the kids went to the aquarium while the parents took surf lessons.”
“I don’t get it,” Aaron said. “Why’d you get fired if you weren’t there?”
“The cops caught them. The family had met Roy before. He wasn’t supposed to have a key. They didn’t press charges, but—the kids used to call me when the new nanny made them mad.”
“Why didn’t you wait until you graduated before you left?” Aaron said. “You had to be close, right?”
A nervous smile crept over her face. “I got my equivalency in Portland.”
“Family stuff?” Aaron said.
“No, not really,” Karen said. “I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
“I had a bad reputation.”
Aaron grinned, then cleared his throat, not sure if Karen was joking or not. “I never heard anyone say anything about you. I woulda punched ’em in the mouth.” He showed Karen his hairy, purple-knuckled fist.
“I’m not positive, and I really don’t care anymore,” Karen said. “But I think they might’ve been your friends, the track stars.”
“Are you serious?” Aaron said. He eased off the accelerator and the big truck slowed.
“You never did anything to me, or said anything.” Karen pointed at the road so Aaron would keep driving, then touched Roy on the knee and gave him her it’s-OK look. “We don’t have to talk about it. It’s all another lifetime now.”
They continued in silence for a minute or more until Aaron smacked the wheel and startled Roy and Karen both. “Listen,” he said. “I feel shitty about this. I’m sorry. I hung out with a bunch of dickheads when I was a kid and if they fucked with you somehow I should’ve done something.”
“Ultra dickheads,” Karen said. She wasn’t going teary-eyed. She was stating a fact.
“Ultra dickheads,” Aaron repeated. “Ultra douchebag fucking dickheads. Realtors.”
“Amen, brother,” Karen said.
They rounded a corner and in a cleft in a rock face Roy saw a colu
mn of ice rising into the storm and disappearing into the low clouds. He pointed and Karen nodded. Roy had been hoping to see people climbing the frozen waterfall, blue and red coats, yellow ropes, crampons and axes, fucking Yvon Chouinard, but there was no one there.
Roy’s thoughts skittered through rotten sexual scenarios with high school Karen that would’ve resulted in her eventual abortion.
“How about you, Roy?” Aaron said. “What’s your deal?”
“My deal?”
“I’m assuming you’re not a Realtor and you’re a bit inky for straight work.” He traced his finger around his neck to demonstrate where Roy’s tattoos were visible. “When I was on the job we used to call those—the neck tattoos—please-don’t-hire-mes and the ones on your hands, we called those job blockers. Over the radio we’d say, white male, has full sleeves, job blockers, and a please-don’t-hire-me on the left side, white T-shirt, black pants, red shoes, whatever.”
Roy laughed a little. “I have some red Chucks back in the van, maybe I’m your perp.”
“Nah, you’re OK if you’re with her.” Aaron nudged Karen. “Even if you did get her fired.”
“That was a long time ago,” Roy said. Aaron smiled crookedly.
“He has, or had, some skateboarding sponsors,” Karen said. “He’s played in some bands.” Karen rubbed her hand vigorously between his shoulder blades the way he liked.
“I’m a deadbeat,” Roy said.
“You’re not a deadbeat,” Karen said. “You’ve chosen to live an exciting and nonlinear life. I love you for that. One reason of many.”
Roy may’ve blushed. He felt better and his defensiveness drained away. She knew that he never planned on her getting fired for them skating the Ekariuses’ pool. He’d only done it because she had an alibi. The cops had simply appeared, no warning. It was his run and when he slammed, he was slow picking himself up, remembered thinking: Why is it so quiet? No heckling. No oohs, no aahs. His friends were gone. By the time he hauled himself out of the shallow end, everyone was facedown on the deck beside the hot tub. A cop took his board. Another one pushed him down. Do any of you assholes actually live here? His girlfriend does—