Kickdown

by Rebecca Clarren

  But no. Later in the day, as she is lying on her back in the grass to change the oil in the 8N, a job that’s needed doing for weeks, she is still thinking about Tim and wishing she wasn’t, wishing for things to be different. It has been sixteen years to the day since her mom died. For the first time in her life, her dad’s voice, her sense of him, has gone radio silent. Lying on her back in the grass, in the muck under the tractor, only a thin slip of sky is visible. She leans all her weight into the crescent wrench and pushes against the bolt. It won’t give. She tries again, harder.

  The bolt still won’t give and she is just about to get the correct open-end wrench, the one she should have grabbed in the first place, when she gives it one last push and it gives, oil dumping into an old glass spaghetti sauce bottle. But she’d forgotten how big the plug is, and oil spills over the sides onto the ground. Worse, the oil isn’t black. It’s clear. Ray must’ve just changed it.

  “Dammit.” She gets out from under the tractor and throws her wrench at the ground. Inefficiency is akin to sin. She kicks the Ford tire with her sneaker. The day hasn’t been worth its weight in air. She kicks the dirt. A cloud of dust spits in her face. Her body is sore, still not as strong as it was before the cow trampling. She yells at the flat gray disinterested sky.

  To have Ray up here working for them, to care if Tim has called or not called, to rely on any man, this is not the person her dad raised, this is not who she wants to be. Her jean shorts streaked with oil, she marches across the wet field. There is only the sound of wind through the poplars and the screech of a far-off pump jack. She finds Ray oiling the head gate, brown water running quick through the ditch.

  “Almost done here.” He doesn’t pause, set to the task.

  “Ray.” Out of breath, she puts her hands on her hips to open her diaphragm. “You have your own life, Camila, your kids. I can’t let you keep working up here for free.”

  “I like working here.” Ray stops working and straightens, pushes the brim of his hat up to look Jackie straight on.

  “But we’re not your family. You don’t owe us anything.”

  “Well shit, Jackie. I ain’t here because I owe you.”

  “We’re taking advantage of you. My dad would hate it that you’re still up here when I’m well enough.”

  He stares out over the mesa, up at the sky. Finally, he asks, “Sue want it this way too?” He cradles the sound of her name.

  Jackie pauses. An eddy swirls in the ditch below the head gate, so much water running counter to the main. Susan would see a metaphor.

  “Susan’s not looking for another problem.”

  “All right then.” Ray spits at the dirt. He pulls a small notebook from his T-shirt pocket and hands it to her. Inside are pages of lists. Who he’s vaccinated and who’s been snipped. When he tagged. He won’t make eye contact. His brow a plank. “There’s a stretch of fence up top that needs mending. And a few calves don’t have their tags yet.”

  She is a complete shithead. She feels like crying. She would give anything to go back to the Kum and Go and erase the entire afternoon.

  “You’ve been so good to us, Ray. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Right.” He squints, his face hard. He puts the dirty rag in her hand. “I guess I’ll go then.”

  If she were a better person, she would call out to him, tell him to stop. Then she would call Tim and apologize. She is far too much like the stubborn rancher who raised her. If she had known her mom for longer, maybe she would know how to find a soft place inside herself and live there. Instead, she keeps her mouth shut and oils the metallic corkscrew on the head gate until it shines, until the scattered, awful feeling in her mind gets in line.

  26

  THE GREEN LIGHT ON the old Dell blinks at Susan. The cursor is impatient. It asks: What else? Why?

  “Let me think a minute,” she whispers to herself, to the screen, to the empty house.

  Over the past few days, again and again, she has reread her notes. Again, she called Benny Fisk about the samples he took from the creek; again she was told he is away on vacation. If the data is right then she has it wrong, and she can’t get anyone to parse the data. She paces the hall, the kitchen, the living room. Her ship has had too many hits. It’s sinking. This isn’t even a good metaphor, not like a real writer could think up.

  She had stayed up all night rereading articles about activists in Alberta, in Alaska, in Peru, about people who do something. At breakfast, she’d told Jackie that with her deadline only a few days away, she needed the day to work. This is not technically a lie. People set their own deadlines all the time.

  In the mirror above her desk, she sees the bags under her eyes. Her hair is limp from bottled-water showers in the sink. She smells like baby wipes. She tries lying. You look pretty, she tells herself. She smiles. She read about it in a magazine. Even if you don’t believe it, it creates an air of confidence.

  Ha.

  She writes something. She deletes it. All she has are fragments.

  Deep underground, beneath town and the interstate highway and the Colorado River, beneath the new Holiday Inn and the cattle guards and the hundreds of new roads, the ground gives way to hundreds of vertical faults. Ancient rock formations, like pancakes stacked sideways, extend into water and sand and a kind of gas called methane.

  She was always good at finding a story. Whether she can pull off the writing, the reporting, the thinking is not a given. Her keyboard is sticky from the orange she ate two days ago; an ant crawls from the f to the r. Her notebook, receipts scrawled with ideas, crumbs from corn bread, and three coffee mugs clutter her desk. The AP Stylebook, outdated, sits in her lap. She tries again.

  No one can comment on the connection between the fireballs over Amick’s place—the kick, they have settled into calling it—and the fracking and the bubbles in the creek. Carson said the frack fluid escaped from Johnson’s, but he couldn’t say where it went. She needs an expert. She needs an editor. She needs a goddamn guidance counselor. Her outline has so many points it looks like a Christmas tree. She should be better than this. She’s wasted everyone’s time. Do yourself a favor, kid. Don’t write about anything you care about. No one is going to publish this. That asshole in Wyoming could’ve told her that.

  The toe of her rubber boot tap tap taps the concrete step. Hurry, Ray. The cup of coffee in her hands is getting cold. Black, just the way he likes it. She needs him to get here, to get back from the fields and give her that half-smile. The irrigation spigots spray long spinning arms of water. Getgoinggetgoinggetgoinggetgoing, they whisper.

  Again she checks her watch. He always comes in for the day around twilight. It’s almost dark.

  When you start to feel anxious, whistle. That’s what the meditation lady on one of those tapes says. The air leaves her teeth. The roadrunner drops down the canyon. You’ll get her figured. You’ve got time. Ray’s going to tell her that.

  Tap tap tap.

  But it is Jackie who comes down the dirt road.

  “You seen Ray around?” Susan asks.

  “He went home a while ago.” Jackie scratches the skin below her right ear. It’s always been her tell. She’s never been a good liar.

  “Why?”

  “I told him to stop bothering with us.” Jackie’s words fall like gunshot around her. “We’re fine. It’s enough already.”

  Susan holds the coffee cup in front of her chest, the tiniest armor ever made.

  “Why would you do that? We need him.”

  “We don’t. I’m not sure I’m going back to medical school. So there’s that.”

  It has been a thing she has longed to hear for so long but now that it’s there, she feels the heaviness of Jackie’s words settle across her shoulders. She stands up as if to let her sister’s baggage slide off her back.

  “Jackie. He likes to be here.”

  “He’s married.”

  “I know that.” She is walking to the truck. “I’ve always known that.”
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  When Susan finds Ray slumped on a barstool at the Skyline, he doesn’t smile. He doesn’t stand. Jonny St. Clair is playing blues and the bar is thick with bodies, men in tight jeans, women in dresses that leave little to the imagination and a lot to be desired. Delores nods hello from behind the bar, where she’s filling a tray of tequila shots.

  His sad eyes say, come sit with me. Come make it better. You aren’t the only one who needs saving in this disappointing world. She takes a seat beside him, her arm touching his arm.

  He might say, this is perfect. He might say, only people like us who have truly suffered can appreciate a quiet moment shared. He might say, how did you know what I’ve always wanted?

  Except Ray doesn’t talk like that.

  “Don’t stop working our cows.” She touches his empty glass.

  “Your sis is right. You all don’t need me in the way up there. I mean, shit. I’m not good for shit these days.” His voice is a little loud, forced. “Delores, will you get me another? And something for my partner here?”

  “Ray, honey, I’m cutting you off.” Delores pats his hand, her wide red face a landing pad of sympathy. “I promised Camila not to serve you more than four.”

  “I thought you were on my side, D.” He slurs, his words loose and heavy.

  “Come on, Ray. Let’s go.” Susan stands up. She tells Delores she’ll get him home. A hundred eyes—their neighbors, their ex-classmates, old friends of her dad’s—watch them leave the bar together.

  They take her truck to the liquor store, his idea, and buy a bottle of whiskey, her idea, and drive out to the shoulder near the new hotel beside the Colorado River, also his idea. It’s a cloudy night, the moon tucked away, and the river running dark before them.

  They trade the bottle back and forth for a while. There’s an old Mexican blanket covering the cracked seats of the truck, her dad’s old truck, and it’s not so different than the old thing Ray used to drive in high school. Their arms are inches apart.

  “Sky’s threatening,” Ray says at last. His voice has a quiet to match his whole self. He stares out the window toward Grass Mesa. She follows his chin toward the fishing holes he likes, that Dad used to like. The wind bothers the sagebrush and the river, and if she can notice every single thing just how Ray might see it, she’ll know the right thing to say that will fill the space between them.

  A car passes on the road. A train hollers from the other side of the valley.

  “It’ll be awful up there without you,” she says finally.

  “You’re sweet. So pretty.” The rough of his hand brushes her cheek. “Always have been.”

  Her eyes drag his face like a net, collecting every feature, old acne scars, stubble. His eyes are deep pools in a windswept face. The liquor makes her bones soft, her will strong. She leans over and gives him a wet kiss, and it feels like falling. He kisses the skin under her temples, at her collarbone. He smells like wood smoke and whiskey. He tastes like a different life.

  She is straddling his lap, both of them half naked, when another car passes, this one seeming to slow, letting the fullness of its high beams settle on their bodies. Spinning red lights follow, the wail of a siren, chasing. Ray pulls back. Terror in his face.

  “Ray, it’s OK. They’re gone.”

  “What are we doing.”

  It isn’t a question. Cold air fills the gap between their bodies.

  “I’ve always wanted this.” She cups his face with her hands. “You’re the best person I know.”

  “I’m not this guy.” He lifts her off his lap. Sets her aside. “Shit. We can’t do this. I fucked up.”

  Susan pulls her shirt from the floor and holds it to her chest. Ray thrashes around, yanking on clothes. Twice he says sorry. He puts his shirt on backward. She stays very still.

  “I’ll see you around.” Ray squeezes her leg and opens the door.

  Susan concentrates on the AM/FM dial, the one that hasn’t worked for years. Mama was tuning a dial in their old Honda at the moment of impact. This moment, Ray stumbling away on the other side of the window toward town, her bra in a ball beside an ancient pack of cigarettes and an empty Coke bottle, this isn’t as bad as life can get. She picks up the pack and lights one, letting the stale tobacco burn her lungs. Through the smoke, she watches Ray start to run. In no time, he recedes into the darkness. She is alone. She will not cry. She smokes the stale cigarettes. She pukes by the riverbank. She drives home to her cold bed.

  27

  THE NEXT MORNING, A Saturday, Ray tells Camila to sleep in. He watches his kids eat corn flakes in their pajamas. He shuts off the radio and opens the curtains onto a sunny day. Life can be simplicity, boiled down. If he works hard enough, it will be that way again.

  In the basement he finds a box and he moves through the house, filling it with bottles and cans.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?” Monica asks from the kitchen table.

  “Cleaning up.”

  The girls watch cartoons on the little TV in the kitchen, and Ray takes the box outside into the too-bright morning. Dandelions pop all over the yard. The chain link is thick with wild peas. There hasn’t been anything in the beds since he hitched out. Three green plastic chairs, left outside all winter and spring, lie facedown in the long grass.

  In the back corner of the yard, away from the swing set, near a pile of broken chairs, old paint cans, and rotting leaves, he sets the box down. First bottle to go is the JD. He tips it sideways and it waters the ground. Then the full cans of beer, the box of wine, all of it.

  He smells like rot gut, like a dead rat. He slept on the couch, and his neck has got too small for his head. The headache feels right, feels like penance.

  In his pocket is Bill Dunbar’s knife. He pulls it out and taps it against his wedding band. I’ve always wanted this. For a while when they had been kissing, he had felt like she was a part of him, like they were both part of the river, the moon, and the dirt, and it was OK what they were doing, even beautiful, to be so connected to another person. Her body had fit against his like they were parts of a motor. It had been a wonder.

  All these years she’d never been more than a friend. But sometime in the past weeks, somewhere in the fields, the sweat and ease they shared, something had broken open. He felt alive around Sue, like life was still full of possibility. It wasn’t anything he’d wanted or looked for. He throws a full bottle of Bud at the ground. It doesn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking. It bounces.

  He stares at the pink curtains inside the girls’ bedroom window. Camila made those. They had hung Monica’s baby picture in the hall and found a couch at the thrift store that looked to them like it belonged in a Denver apartment. The first night they moved in, they sat on the floor, eating enchiladas and drinking beer, Monica chattering between them. Camila had held his hand. She had said she was happy.

  He can shut down this feeling for Sue. Work will help. It’s the only thing that ever does.

  A while later, after he’s mowed and swept and worked up a sweat, the back door opens and Camila steps through it, wearing the purple bathrobe he bought her for Christmas. In her hands is a plate of pancakes, an orange slice on the side. His thinking and movements get wooden.

  “I invited my parents for dinner,” she says, offering the plate.

  “Sounds great, honey. Whatever you want.”

  His back is too straight. His eyes give him away. He tries to smile.

  “What’re you doing back here?” She leans around his body and sees the stack of bottles in the grass. “Ray.” She inhales sharply. “I’ve prayed to God a thousand times that this will happen.”

  “I thought I’d try to cut down. It’s been too much.”

  “Oh, Ray.” Tears fill her eyes. She looks at him like she looks at the kids when she watches them sleeping. She touches his cheek. He touched Susan’s cheek in this same way. He looks away.

  “It’s not that big a deal, Mila.”

  “It’s a good start.” Her face serio
us. “The neighbors will be happy about the yard.”

  “I called your brother this morning, told him I’d be in Monday to wash dishes.”

  “What about Susan and Jackie?” She folds her arms across her chest.

  “They’ve got things under control.”

  Camila pauses, searches his face. Grenades hit his heart.

  “Do you want some help? I’ll just go change.”

  “No. I got this.” He swallows sand. “It’s all right.”

  “Eat, before it gets cold.” She kisses his cheek.

  After that, there isn’t much more to say. Camila goes inside to see about the girls. Ray stays outside for the rest of the morning. He throws Roundup on the weeds and tills up the old bed and sets things in order.

  28

  AT DINNERTIME, JACKIE TRIES again. “You need to eat something,” she says to Susan’s locked bedroom door. The hallway is cold and dark, full of dusty pictures of dead people. Her sister hasn’t left her room since she got home late the night before. “We should’ve branded today. I fed out and moved handline.” Jackie leans her forehead against the cheap wood paneling. Susan knows from a lifetime of practice that the worst thing to do to Jackie is ignore her. Jackie tries again. “Fine. I’ll call Ray. I’ll tell him to come back.”

  At that, the door opens. A hard edge of light bisects Susan’s face.

  “Don’t call Ray,” she whispers. She leans against the door in her sock feet, her hair in braids, wearing only underpants and a T-shirt.

  “Are you all right?” Jackie asks, staring at the floor behind Susan, a mass graveyard of books, newspapers, dirty underwear, and coffee cups. White papers and old newspapers are scattered across the desk, the bed, the chair. “Where’d you go last night?”

  “I went to the Skyline.” Susan bites her lip. “St. Clair was playing.”

  “You went to see Ray?” Jackie keeps her tone casual, her face neutral.