American Masculine

by Shann Ray

  Men borrowed the will to forget their wives.

  Men wandered and fantasized, they glazed their eyes with found porn.

  They spoke to other women, they slept with them.

  SEATTLE, THE SUN hidden. John hadn’t slept much.

  He was in his office at 7:40 a.m. when he raised the receiver.

  “Can we meet?”

  “Sure.”

  When he greeted her he kissed her cheek and she smiled. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, tapestry skirt, light lavender blouse, her trim upper body forward some, her hands in her lap.

  He looked out the window and breathed and tried to calm himself. He thought of pearl button shirts, three of them in a plastic container among the battlewares he’d carried on the road, the big canvas bag, the halter and halter strap, flank strap, buck rein, dulled spurs with rolling rowels, padded leather riding vest, bronc saddle in the floor space of the passenger side (lightweight, no horn), immaculate Stetson (black, felt) atop his head and beside him on the bench a simple straw cowboy hat, black-banded, twelve bucks at Kmart, no helmet, never liked helmets.

  Her face looked pained.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she replied.

  Something’s wrong, he thought.

  He tried to look at her without looking away. “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Fine,” she said.

  She touched his arm.

  Her hand light as a swift or mountain swallow.

  He took her fingers in his. His hand started sweating. He tried to let go but she held on and looked into his eyes.

  “Are you scared?” she said.

  “Down to my boots,” he said.

  IN NOVEMBER he met her mother at their home on Mercer and by January he set a surprise trip and drove Samantha to Spokane, where they boarded the Amtrak Empire Builder and went by train north deep into Montana along the Hi-Line. He’d been dreaming of rodeo, big horses, sorrels and grays, blacks, massive crossbred pintos, paints, big roughstock from Texas, and him hat in hand and arm flying as he countered the archkicks and cut the leans. When they arrived at the station it was after sundown and cold. His mother and father greeted them, laughing, embracing them both, and they rode together into the fields for miles until they came upon a house, spare, with two outbuildings, and beyond it the long flat that bordered the Rocky Mountain front.

  Three months earlier, John had called and asked if he could borrow Grandpa’s two-person open carriage and at that request his father had brushed it up and set it with runners for winter. John’s mother was more direct; she adorned the sleigh with ribbons and bows and small delicate bells, silvery, starlike.

  In the dark of morning his father drew the carriage to the front door of the ranch house leading a large gray workhorse named Felicity, a family favorite, utterly gentle. John was in the old twin bed, the night black and formless around his face. Samantha was in the guest room, a room set west toward broad fields of snow and the expanse of range John’s father owned, and farther on, the sheer uplift of mountains. John hadn’t heard his dad go out, it was the familiar sounds that woke him: the tamp of hooves on fresh snow, the easy breath of the horse. He heard the glide of the runners on new wax, a slight shimmer of bells. They had coffee and cinnamon rolls with Mom and Dad in the kitchen. Samantha was effervescent, and unaware. John bundled her himself and she said, “How nice of you,” and, “Thank you.”

  To her delight he lifted her in his arms and carried her out the front door to the sleigh. When she saw it she gasped, and looked at John, and buried her face in his coat. Her tears quieted him, and he drove her two miles in the half-dark to Deer Creek, cold air crisp and high in their lungs, snow covering the land to the east on a blue-white arc to the end of it all. From a rise of land they watched the sun emerge and fire the world and John held her hand and asked her to marry him.

  WHAT MEN BORROWED varied based on income, based on instant gratification or inflated need, based on how all-consuming their habits might be. In addition to the money to pay for homes, appliances, landscaping, toys like boats, motorcycles, ATVs, they borrowed things they wished they hadn’t. From the dull look in their fathers’ eyes they borrowed the pain that resided there.

  IN SEATTLE, for Elias Pretty Horse days became nights, and nights seemed void of light. Past midnight in Bozeman he’d stood on the edge of a canyon in the Spanish Peaks and raised his hands to the sky and shouted with all his gusto—the stars burned like candles, vast, uncountable, a glittering field that whirled overhead and made him feel small and great at once, a fancy dance, he thought. The embers of a lunar fire bright gold in the darkness. He’d won an important race that day. He felt he belonged. So he yelled the only blessing he knew, the Sioux word for thank you: Pee-la-mah-yah-yea! Pee-la-mah-yah-yea! He’d fallen to his knees then and said again, Thank you. It is good. You are very good. He didn’t know if he was speaking of mother or father or spirit. He spoke to the sky. All my relations, he thought. I love you.

  But after only two years in Seattle his wife seemed distant and he thought she might have already had three affairs, two with Muckleshoot men they’d met at the casino, the last with a Coeur D’Alene she came across at the farmers’ market in Ballard. For his part Elias had lied to her more times than he cared to count, breaking every promise he’d made in their quiet Catholic wedding. A simple unfortunate progression—(a) lie and tell her you’re going to get some milk, (b) slip into the black overhang of one hip white joint or another, (c) talk sweet and get a white girl drunk, (d) get drunk yourself and follow her home.

  MEN WORKED ON borrowed time.

  Little in the way of wisdom.

  JOHN HOPED the best for people.

  He and Samantha spoke tentatively, of life and the future, and likely because they weren’t having any, they avoided talk of sex.

  John was degrading himself to her image, using fantasy, trying to think only of Samantha. When he felt unable to resist he used porn, in which case he could not think of Samantha, or he could only think of her head on someone else’s body.

  WITHOUT FORETHOUGHT men borrowed things that might put them in good stead with women. They borrowed their father’s gait, his manner of walking, the tones he used when he wanted his wife, the readiness. They borrowed his cool facial expression, the way he sat with one leg crossed over the other, forming a triangle between his legs, or kicked back, hands interlocked behind the head, legs crossed at the ankles. They also borrowed his rigid brow and manic intention, the speed at which he could do harm.

  IN YEAR THREE the wife of Elias Pretty Horse left him. He was half-awake in the dark of their bed when Josefine kissed his cheek and said, “I’m going back to Wolf Point.”

  WHEN MEN GOT HOME from work, all of them borrowed, when supplies were low, against their wives’ patience, their favorite foods, the last of the brownies, the final cookie, the last drink of milk, the remnant of cereal in the box, and each of them, when he was lazy or couldn’t find his own, borrowed his wife’s toothbrush, and when she was in the bathroom vocalizing, criticizing, he took her pillow to spite her, he took her side of the bed. Marriage was made of perception and defense, apathy, absence, contempt.

  SEAN BADEN BORROWED money from his father three times in four years to help with hospital costs for the three daughters born to him and Sarah: Ruth, Hagar, Tamar. The Campus Crusade ministry at the University of Washington was filled with Holy Spirit fire. Sean’s voice, throaty and bold, drew in close to one thousand students every Friday night. After one such Friday night he borrowed twenty dollars from his director, thinking he’d use it to take a couple of new converts for a burger and a coke. Except for relieving himself with porn, he’d been clean for some time. When the students said they couldn’t go, Sean drove to the city center, parked his car, and went walking. He turned toward the white light of an open door, entered an adult bookstore, and watched a peep show for five dollars. Outside, a block farther on he spoke to a prostitute, walked with he
r into an alley, and paid her fifteen dollars to give him a blow job.

  TO INCREASE their livelihood, to better their future, men borrowed whatever they could.

  At night in the subtle glow from the dashlights, John remembered their faces and quirky mannerisms, their strange ways and enigmatic lives. He was getting better at defining them, not so rose colored. Men too neat, too tidy, or the dirty ones, unkempt, careless. These, and all the variations in between. He remembered their eyes, subsumed in small houses of flesh and bone, men who needed so much, some with hard mouths and slate faces eyeing their wives with menace or loathing, haughtiness, horror, and hate—and on the other side of the divide the ones he hoped to emulate. Considerate, quick to listen. Again he checked himself, he didn’t understand anything about anyone. Even trying to understand himself seemed absurd.

  But marriage, he thought. Marriage! He could hardly keep from shouting out loud. The truck wheels humming, he pictured himself walking with her in the high mountains, snowshoeing over an opaque world where trees stood flocked in white and the sky was a window on heaven, robin’s egg blue and cloudless. They’d make their way to his grandfather’s cabin, a well-appointed A-frame, and work together making things ready. John would clear a space on the tin roof to the cellar and put quarters out like his grandfather taught him. They’d build a fire in the woodstove and fill the kettle for tea, and while the house warmed they’d gather the quarters hot from the sun to warm their hands. He’d touch her face then and he would not be afraid.

  The house would come alive with heat and they’d stand side by side and look out through the picture window that faced south where the blanketed land became incandescent at dusk and the sky’s velvet was shattered by stars. Their children would sleep soundly, he thought, and wake fearless in the world. In the night he’d find her pressing her face to his, speaking kindness and goodwill, and there on the threshold of sleep he’d say, I believe in you, and from his lips would rise tender words in the darkness: You will be clothed with joy and brought forth with peace.

  MEN BORROWED DIGNITY or they borrowed shame.

  Sean Baden locked himself in his bathroom for three days after he’d had sex twice in one night with two different prostitutes for forty dollars apiece, cold bodies, slack faces. His wife knew nothing and spent most of that time crying outside the bathroom door as she tried to call him out. She didn’t tell the Crusade director or the director’s wife. She didn’t tell anyone. Their two oldest were with her parents for the week. She had Tamar with her. Sean lay on the bathroom floor on his side of the door, cheekbone to cold tile, wishing he could become that hard, like stone, unknowing, unknowable, unable to hurt or do hurt, unable to harm.

  Opening the door and stepping over her, he left the bathroom for one hour and bought a ten-foot coil of rope from True Value Hardware in the U District. As he reentered the house he hid the purchase under his polo dress shirt and returned to the bathroom and closed and locked the door again. He felt capable of nothing. The rope was half-inch nylon boating rope, smooth and flexible. He didn’t acknowledge Sarah anymore, or her pleas. She’d made a bed for herself and Tamar and he heard them breathing, the sounds subtle as soft harmonies. They didn’t need him. They needed each other. He’d have the water running hard a good while before he did it. Past midnight he heard a loud knock on the door. Please, his wife said, talk to Tommy. Tommy Vigil was a youth pastor in Dallas, Texas. Sean and Tommy had taken the first two summers of Crusade courses together. Miles away, Sean thought. He cracked the door; he didn’t look at Sarah. She placed the phone in on the bathroom floor. He pulled the door shut. On the other side she was seated cross-legged, listening. The child slept in her arms. She prayed.

  The first sentence Tommy spoke was, “You’re having sex with prostitutes again, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sean said, and his chin quivered.

  He opened the door and sat down next to Sarah and the child. His tongue felt thick. He handed her the phone. “Sean has something to tell you,” Tommy said. She put the receiver faceup on the carpet between them. Crying, he told her everything.

  This time they went further, taking six years to gain back what they’d lost. Him working odd jobs, carpentry, road work, sand and gravel. Inpatient. Outpatient. Six years of counseling, mentoring, sponsors, recovery, self-reflection, vulnerability, responsibility; seeking to be pure, hoping to be. In year seven there was a public laying on of hands when he was reinstated as worship leader at the University of Washington. Same Crusade director, new flights of students, Sean was afraid and praying for courage. At night in his study working out the chord progression to a song called “I Will Sing of Your Love Forever,” he paused, thinking. From the kitchen he overheard his wife on the phone talking to a friend. He’s beautiful, his wife said. He’s beautiful now. And Sean felt beautiful, and believed he might be beautiful forever.

  DAILY, JOHN WATCHED men walk through the door and borrow against the future.

  Borrowing from unseen places, from family and friends, from loved ones or strangers, they borrowed and were broken. They were broken; they were healed.

  Many men fail, John thought, but some succeed.

  BY YEAR FOUR in Seattle, Elias Pretty Horse was heading steadily downhill. He hadn’t run for two years. He didn’t sing anymore. And when once in the corner of his closet he found an empty jewel case of his Seattle drum group he decided not to return to work. He gained weight. Called himself pig. Lost his job. He needed to get on his feet. He hocked his dad’s drum mallet, his grandmother’s coin purse. He spent the money on fumes. He lay in bed morning to night for three months, but on a day in December under winter rain and bleak skies he rose from his stupor, stood outside on the balcony of the master bedroom in his townhouse, and called his dad. Elias asked his father if he could borrow some money. His father wired him the necessary amount and they met the next day at the airport in Great Falls.

  By early evening Elias was home.

  His mother prayed over him, he slept eleven hours, woke at dawn and started running again.

  The next day he saw Josefine outside the Boys and Girls Club. He parked his father’s truck and got out and when he approached she walked directly to him, held his hands, and said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I need to get right,” he said. “I’m all wrong.”

  “You’re here,” she said, touching his face. “You’re here now,” and when she brought him close and kissed his forehead he sobbed in her arms.

  AT NOON on a bright day in the city, a Saturday, John drove his truck to the modern cathedral in Edmonds. He glanced in the rearview mirror at his dad in the off-white Chevy Monte Carlo, his mom next to his dad on the bench seat, Dad’s arm around Mom.

  What we borrow who can repay? John thought.

  He entered the wide wood doors of the church on the corner of Olympic and Pearl. He wore his grandfather’s wingtips polished bright black. Next to his heart in the silk-lined pocket of the tuxedo, he kept the ring in its velvet box. He’d be giving it to Samantha’s nephew, receiving it back in front of five hundred witnesses, and placing it on her finger.

  Samantha heard him come in. She cracked the dressing room door. He hadn’t seen her. She watched him move across the foyer into the sanctuary. At the head of the aisle he turned and looked back. He faced her directly. He still hadn’t seen her. She loved his face, strong man looking out at the world. The skin was brazen, broken nose, pale eyes.

  He turned and walked resolutely down the aisle.

  With all his faith he’d say it to her out loud in front of everyone.

  Say it with all his tenderness, all his love.

  I do, I will.

  PUBLICATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The stories in this collection appeared in the following magazines: “How We Fall” in Montana Quarterly (Spring 2009), nominated for Best American Short Stories by editor Megan Ault Regnerus, winner of the Pacific Northwest Inlander Award for Fiction, and selected as a notable story in Best America
n Nonrequired Reading (2010); “The Great Divide” in McSweeney’s (issue 12, lead story 2003), nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Dave Eggers and Eli Horowitz, nominated for Best New American Voices by faculty of the Inland Northwest Center for Writers MFA program at Eastern Washington University, and selected for the best of McSweeney’s anthology The Better of McSweeney’s, vol. 2 (Spring 2010); “Three from Montana” in Big Sky Journal (Winter 2005); “Rodin’s The Hand of God,” winner of the Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize (Summer 2009); “When We Rise” in Aethlon (Fall 2005); “Mrs. Secrest” in Narrative (Winter 2005); “In the Half-Light” in Talking River Review (Winter 2005); “The Dark between Them” in StoryQuarterly (issue 41, 2004); “The Way Home” in South Dakota Review (Fall 2001); “The Miracles of Vincent van Gogh,” selected by David James Duncan as the winner of the Ruminate Short Story Prize (issue 15, Spring 2010), and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by editor Brianna Van Dyke.

  To the editors, thank you: Megan Ault Regnerus, Kerry Banazek, Brian Bedard, Michael Bowen, Claire Davis, Carol Edgarian, Nick Ehli, Dave Eggers, Eli Horowitz, Tom Jenks, Brian Kaufman, Amy Lowe, Joanna Manning, Jesse Nathan, Scott Peterson, M. M. M. Hayes, Kelli Russell Agodon, Annette Spaulding-Convy, and Brianna Van Dyke. You ask the great questions of life, and help us find our way.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To those who burn like torches, I give love: to Jennifer, you are my beloved, you are my friend, you are the one my soul loves; to my wife’s father, Fred Crowell, for your joy for life and God; to my dear friend Jonathan Johnson for your devotion to wilderness and truth; to James Welch for Fools Crow; to A. B. Guthrie Jr. for The Big Sky; to Mary Oliver for Thirst; and to Sherman Alexie for War Dances. Viktor Frankl said what is to give light must endure burning. Thank you for taking me into the fire.