Kickdown

by Rebecca Clarren

  “Right.” Ray steps backward and runs into one of the new trucks, its black hot on his elbow. “Cool. No big deal.”

  To enter in front, something he hasn’t done in eight years, Ray cuts across the grass, getting hit across the chest by sprinklers. He keeps his head down. No one should see him like this. He buzzes for Judy to let him in and pretends to read the anti-meth posters plastered on the wall, the Plexiglas wall, bulletproof, meant to keep out the unwanted.

  “Vacation looks good on you.” Sheriff waves Ray into a seat on the other side of a big wood desk that’s stacked with paperwork in leaning piles. “Coffee? Judy,” he yells out the door, “get our man some coffee.” His secretary hustles in with a Styrofoam cup and two cream, one sugar, just the way Ray likes it.

  “Thanks for this.” Ray nods at Judy. “It’s good to be back.”

  The sheriff shifts his bulk in his wooden chair, a simply-made thing he insists on keeping to prove some point about discomfort and longevity. He watches Ray drink his coffee, as if to have a sip is not the correct thing to do. Sheriff has always been able to do this, to knock Ray slightly off balance.

  “I hear those Dunbar girls aren’t going to lease their mineral rights.”

  Ray shakes his head. “This town is amazing.”

  “What’ll they do if they get force-pooled?”

  “I can’t say, sir. That’s not my business.”

  “Stark, we’re getting some pressure from the county commissioners, all three of them.” Sheriff slowly unwraps a piece of gum, rolls it up, and starts chewing. It’s an old trick. A mask of the unconcerned public servant. “No one appreciated your attitude at the meeting the other night.”

  Ray feels himself go cold, go quiet.

  “It’s our job to protect the citizenry.” Ray is almost whispering. “I believe I was helping to do that.”

  “Just like you helped people that night at the derrick?” The sheriff moves three inches of paper from one pile to another. Sheriff squints when he’s concealing something, and he’s squinting at the stack until finally he looks up and meets Ray’s eyes. Ray holds his gaze.

  “What are you saying, Sheriff? Do you want me to quit?”

  “Don’t be an ass. Before you left for Iraq, you were one of our best. I think you still have it in you. We just need you to get in line.”

  “What’s that mean? Get in line?”

  “Oh you know. Go have lunch with the gas people and the commissioners. Tell them you appreciate our new fleet of trucks. That you intend to keep their wells and infrastructure safe in this county.”

  Ray’s chest caves. All the lines he’s stepped behind, kept behind, circled, for years, forever. It is another way to be stuck, to be scared, to not live a day for himself. He didn’t move away from his sweet girls just to follow orders from someone else.

  Life never just happened to his grandpa. The days never stacked up on his chest. He started out without more than a thin dime and tamed his land into a steady, rich parcel. He made something good.

  Out the very small window cut from the old brick is the blue sky. A good day for haying. A good day for moving cows to the high country. He knocks twice with his knuckles against the desk.

  “No thanks, sir.”

  The sheriff looks amused. He pops his gum. “What’s that, Ray?”

  “I’m done. I can’t work for a political organization. I can’t work here.”

  “That don’t sound like you, Stark.”

  “No offense, sir, but I think it does.”

  He gets out of the building quick, unsighted. In the parking lot, he throws his cup of coffee at one of the new Tacomas. The coffee splatters across the windshield almost, but not quite, like blood.

  That night, Ray and Susan lie naked in Susan’s small bed, the lamplight shining on their heaving chests; he pulls back the sheet so he can better see her body. Unmarked by childbirth, her belly and breasts are firm. There is more strength in those skinny arms than he would’ve thought. That life can still be a surprise, that it can still make him happy, fills Ray with wonder.

  “How you feeling now?” she asks, shyly.

  “Better.” He tucks a single strand of hair behind Susan’s ear.

  “You regret quitting?”

  “Nah, not really. I’ll figure something out.”

  “You will.”

  “What’s happening with that article of yours?”

  “I’ve been thinking about writing an editorial about what it’s like to live surrounded by gas wells, sending it in to the Post. Seems more honest somehow than trying to report as if I don’t care.”

  “I can see that.”

  Susan settles down under the covers and tangles her legs with his.

  “Why don’t you tell me a story this time?” She traces the lines next to his eyes and smiles at him, unafraid and curious. “You never talk about Iraq, about what it was like there.”

  “Lots of people go to war. I’m sure you’ve heard enough war stories.”

  “You aren’t lots of people. What happened to you?”

  “I don’t have a good story about that place.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it, but I’d like to be a friend to you. I’d like to listen if you’d let me. I think it helps to be heard.”

  Susan narrows her eyes at him. Her stare knows about loss, about defeat and hopelessness. And she kisses him hard, her mouth a life raft, and for the moment he dives into her and when they pull apart, he thinks, maybe she’s right.

  So he talks.

  “It was September 7th and I was late for guard duty. I’d gotten dealt a month of night watch for telling my commanding officer what I thought about Iraq. He didn’t care to know. But that night, I’d stayed too long on Skype with Camila and the kids—Monica had this song she wanted to sing me, and then Lilly kept trying to kiss the screen—and I just didn’t get out of there when I should’ve.” He gulps at the air with loud effort. Susan touches his shoulder but he pulls back. “I fucked up. Because I was late, Marcus, my friend Marcus Wilson from Columbus, Ohio, he had to stay and so it was him, instead of me, like it should’ve been, who got hit. A bomb.” Marcus had loved books about presidents and talking shit and basketball. His skin had been the color of rich soil. He wanted to be a teacher. He was a sweet kid. “There was nothing left of him but pieces of tissue on the wall.”

  He stares at the ceiling. His chest hurts and his eyes fill with water and everything blurs and he shouldn’t cry, she doesn’t deserve that, this is his burden to hold, so he holds his hands to his eye sockets, but it doesn’t help.

  “I killed my friend. I killed other people too, innocent civilians, people who did nothing wrong except be in the wrong place.”

  “It’s what happens in war, Ray. You didn’t make that bomb explode.” Susan touches his face and the hair at his temples, over and over. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He shakes his head at the pillow but she turns his wet face toward her body and holds his head against her breasts, and she wraps her top leg over his back and after a while, his breathing steadies. A worn out, cleaned out feeling takes hold of him. Susan moves the talk to the ranch, asking him what it is he dreams of doing. And that is kind of her; it helps him. By the time Susan falls asleep, they’ve made a plan for moving cattle to range, for haying, for a new shed on the backside. Ray stares at the ceiling for a long time, wondering how it is he can feel better, grateful to Sue beside him, and how that feeling can make him also feel worse.

  He can’t remember the sound of Lilly’s breathing. Monica will learn to roll her eyes at him. The loss of seeing them every day is like the loss of a limb. Memories of their laughter, the way they call Daddy across the house, the smell of their hair after a bath, follow him like phantom pains. He was never going to be the dad that wasn’t around. He was never going to miss out on their lives.

  He gets out of bed, throws on Susan’s short pink robe, and walks to the kitchen to dial the number on the old rotary phone.
r />   “What’s wrong?” Camila’s voice is breathy like it always is when she’s half-awake. “Did something happen?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “What do you want, Ray?”

  “How are the girls? Did Monica pass her science test?”

  “Ray, I have to sleep. I have to wake up with the girls in the morning and get them off to school and then I have to go to work.” She takes a sharp inhale and he can picture her sitting up in bed, her hair wild, her eyes flashing. “I don’t have time for some bullshit father-of-the-year routine.”

  Ray shifts from one foot to the next in the dark kitchen. Again, he feels as if he and Camila were traveling the same road but in opposite directions. He wonders: if he is honest with her about everything, from this point on, if they can find some peace between them in this new place they’re headed.

  “I quit my job.”

  “I heard. Child support is not cheap, Ray.”

  “Could you please take the phone to the girls’ room so I can listen to their breathing?”

  “You miss them?”

  “All the time.”

  He stares out the kitchen window at the moon, lost behind the poplars. He closes his eyes and listens to Camila breathing in his ear. He could identify the quiet rasp of air leaving her throat in a crowd.

  When she speaks again, her voice is tired, worn out. “Our life wasn’t perfect but it was good, good enough. Now it’s wrecked.”

  “Mila. There’s a lot of ways for life to look that can be OK. Even if we’re not married.”

  “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  He starts to say that he’s sorry, but she hangs up on him. Outside, a coyote howls to his pack. Somewhere the elk are grazing together, bedding down in a clump. He holds the dead receiver in Bill Dunbar’s kitchen. His feet are cold against the floor.

  “Nice robe.” Jackie stands in the doorway, her T-shirt and cotton shorts wrinkled with recent sleep, and stares at the sheer pink lace on the edge of Susan’s robe. It just covers the hem of his boxers. “I thought you were sleeping in the tent.”

  Ray hangs up the phone awkwardly. They had not thought to tell Jackie that Ray would sleep inside that night. They had not considered her at all. He shifts uneasily.

  “Sorry if I woke you.” He puts the phone back in place and picks up a few dishes from the counter and moves them to the sink and wipes his hands on his boxers, trying to avoid looking at Jackie. “You want some tea or anything?”

  “I wouldn’t peg you a tea drinker, Ray.”

  “I’m not.” What he leaves hanging there in the cool air is the fact that he has spent half a life making tea for his wife. “Go ahead and sit down. It’ll help you sleep.”

  He fills the kettle with water and lights the stove and opens the cupboard to search for a tea bag, aware that Jackie is watching him, seeing right through his lacy robe, worrying about her sister.

  “There’s some in the very back. I think it’s old.”

  “I don’t plan to hurt her, Jackie.” Ray looks into the dark, nearly empty cupboard.

  “You said that before. I know that’s not your intention.”

  The kettle hisses at him. He turns to see that there is a quiet searching in her stare. Jackie leans against the wall, running her fingernail under the faded cherry wallpaper, coaxing the paper back into place where it has started to peel. “And you’re saying I can’t control all the variables.” He waits a while for her answer.

  “You all right, Ray?” Jackie looks at the phone, at the mug he’s pulled from the shelf.

  “I look that bad?”

  “I think the robe is a good look for you.” She smiles and he laughs. Her kindness is a surprise. The water boils and he fills the mug with hot water and hands it to her.

  “I don’t know, Jackie. Could be worse.” He thinks of Susan in the next room. Of Marcus Wilson’s family. Of his mom dying in a place that smelled like piss and bleach.

  “People always say that time helps with hard things, but that never helps me.” She blows at the hot tea and takes a sip. “Why would you feel better to know that someday you won’t care anymore about the things that you care about now? I’m sorry it’s hard. That’s all people should ever say.”

  “That’s true. Thanks.”

  “Thanks for the tea.” She nods and disappears into the hallway.

  He stares out the kitchen window. He can picture the cows in the lower field. They’ll be facing north, all piled together, their rear ends toward the wind.

  At the crest of the hill, the land, growing out for hay, looks silvery. The afternoon rain that fell, and left just as quick as it started, has freshened the hay. The breeze makes it shimmy, like a woman dancing. The question Ray asks himself without thinking is, will it be enough. Will it give enough of itself to keep things going through winter. It’s the training of his grandfather, to look at a field in pasture and think nine months away.

  Out of sight, at the crest of the hill, high grass and clover become an aspen grove. He can picture where the pond smells of damp, the cool it gives the breeze, the fields that need extra irrigating in the summer. In the afternoons, light hits the creek and sparkles. Betty’s diamonds. Ray pictures where the elk cross in December, where the coyotes den, where to sight barn owls. The pale green of spring, the brown of summer, the yellow of fall, and the white of winter. Every season offers its own kind of hardship and reward.

  For a long time, he stands leaning against the counter, watching the stars through the window; the trees shift in the wind and he waits for the moon to slide into view.

  41

  JACKIE FIDGETS IN HER wrinkled blouse. It’s seventy-eight degrees outside, but she’s freezing. The air conditioning blasts from the vent without regard for cost. Across the wide mahogany desk, Larry Batjer, Esq., reads through the paperwork Susan has spent the past week assembling. His ruby pinky ring glints as he flips to another page. He hums. Something that sounds like “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel. Wiry and small, his head shaved, Mr. Batjer doesn’t look threatening enough to take on the oil and gas industry.

  Beside her in overstuffed leather chairs are Ray, who only agreed to come after she and Susan had asked repeatedly, and Susan. Ray scowls at Mr. Batjer’s yellow bow tie. Susan tucks her hands under her skirt. Jackie would bet money that her sister’s fingers are crossed.

  “You can see that the level of benzene in our creek is sixty times higher than the state’s safe drinking water threshold.” Jackie slides to the edge of her chair. It shouldn’t take a professional this long.

  Mr. Batjer nods his bald head slightly. “That level looks like an outlier. I’m sure they’d argue for retesting, but yes, I see it’s interesting.” Mr. Batjer talks with intensity, his accent almost Midwestern, his words so full of air that they slow and stand still. He keeps humming.

  Ray and Jackie exchange a long look. Susan had been sure that Mr. Batjer could help them. He had won several major cases on behalf of citizens against gas companies. He knows what he is doing. So she had said.

  Jackie looks down at her polyester blouse with the peach blossom print, at her suede skirt and heels. Not one to usually pay attention to clothes, she dressed that morning with care, hoping for an outfit that would inspire this man to care about them, to take action where they could not.

  The bull must be brought in soon; the cattle must be moved to range. The gate needs mending. Jackie has another thirty scientific articles about purkinje cells to review before she can complete her proposal. All three of them are too busy to sit around a stuffy office in Junction and listen to the humming of someone with the body of a pro ping-pong player.

  “Just a few weeks before the creek started bubbling, our neighbor’s well exploded. And there were several frack jobs conducted in the area within a mile of the creek. Did you see all that there?” Jackie asks. She taps her heel against the chair leg.

  “Honey, give him a second.” Susan pinches Jackie’s leg.

  Mr. Batj
er clears his throat. “There’s no doubt you’ve been robbed.” He smiles for the first time, wrinkles making fists of his creased cheekbones. Jackie pays attention to that, to the sign that he is not a young man, that he has done this before. She leans forward as he goes on.

  “Because you own your mineral rights, if a gas company, through any misconduct, enabled gas to escape to the surface without capture, that’s a loss of revenue that the gas company owes you. We can try and do something about that.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Batjer.” Susan, unselfconsciously, clasps her hands together at her chest. Jackie would’ve expected her to use her reporter smile, the low voice that Susan uses when she wants someone’s attention. But instead Susan is transparent, her eyes cavities of longing and fear. “We want our creek cleaned up. That’s why we’re here. We want them to fix what they’ve done.”

  “It’s more than plausible that one of the new companies fracked a well nearby and that some of that chemical content didn’t make it back up the well bore and ended up coming up through your creek. But proving causality, proving who is responsible, that’s another matter.”

  He uses some legalese, his bow tie bouncing up and down, to explain the challenges of proving corporate poisoning of the environment. He points out that there are three different companies punching holes in the area, and many more now-defunct companies that once did business here. Any one of them could be culpable. Any one of them could blame the oil service company that fracked the wells.

  Jackie has the feeling of falling. She grabs hold of the armrests and tries to sit up straight.

  Money has a finite value, and it diminishes over time. No dollar amount can match the value of spring water or fresh hay or the cool of the riparian zone. The future prosperity of the land can’t ever be distilled. Jackie stares out the slats in the blinds to the parking lot of the beige strip mall. There’s a ripped awning on the sandwich shop across the way; there are weeds in the cracks of the cement. This place was once a sea of grasses as high as a horse’s flank. There was nothing between the river and the mountains but open space. What an embarrassment to be human, to lead every time with hubris.