I drove onward to my appointment with the painting boys, toward—I don’t know. Freedom, money, the American dream. A giraffe and a broken song and a van full of ice cream. Carter had called me “old man.” If I was old, how old was he? Where did he come from? Anyone could hide behind that mask. And maybe a kid with spunk like his would’ve left Bob the insurance salesman’s home and struck out on his own. Maybe he’d hit the open road, seeking to feel the hot blood of freedom pumping through his rebellious veins, that blood now dripping through blades of hospital sod.
I turned back toward the hospital, left the painting boys wearing their hair long. They’d keep building houses, keep moving, find their own needs. When I got back to the parking lot, no one had found Carter yet. It was me or nobody. I parked, left the engine running, stepped toward the crumpled body in the grass. He was still moaning but quieter now, a guttural lullaby. He didn’t swear at me when my body cast a shadow over him. I knelt, slid my arm under his neck. He was all Carter from the neck up, but through the rubber eyeholes, brown—like millions of others’ eyes but like mine, too. I slipped my fingers under Carter’s chin, felt the tight skin of a young man underneath. The sandpaper of two days of stubble, a man who didn’t care about being clean shaven, about strangling himself with a tie in a cubicle. I pulled back the rubber mask to his lips and then stopped. I would see this man’s face soon, after I took him inside, paid his hospital bill with Roger and Frida’s savings account. And then I’d know. This young man could sit in the passenger seat, learn the true meaning of freedom, see a man run his own business. He could follow my path to freedom, a path that didn’t need a past, only a will to drive down any new road, still soft with fresh blacktop, the tires sticking at first but then pulling free.
We Ride Back
Our van swerves the subdivision curves, in and out of cul-de-sacs. The moon blares, white and shiny as our van. We are invisible in this gleaming box. We look like workers. Workers look like us. We can sneak in and steal all we deserve.
The back has no seats. Ribs and Lizzy bounce and bobble across the cold metal floor. Ribs stands, braces, pressing his palms against the walls. His long arms stretched, he looks like a skeleton Jesus, thin layer of skin and T-shirt over those jutting ribs. So many damn ribs. Lizzy’s balled in the back corner. Trying to stay so small she can’t fall.
Cal aims us square at a mailbox but pulls left just in time. Tires squeal. Van lurches. Ribs and Lizzy thud against the right wall. Cal can’t keep his big horse teeth in his mouth, laughing it up while we risk blowing cover. What the hell’s the point of finding a white van as invisible as a workingman’s van, then? Why the hell go begging Lizzy’s ex-stepdad to ask his new brother-in-law, Stew, to borrow one off his used-as-shit bad-loan lot? And Lizzy had to act all cute, leaning over his desk and flashing down her low-cut shirt and talking baby voice. That used to be her dad in a way, and that’s something just not right. But a stepdad ain’t a dad-dad—our stepkids never let us forget that.
We slap Cal’s head for wasting Lizzy’s cleavage. Time to drive straight and be hidden and aim for the houses in the back that are getting built. Ones where no people live. No families yet.
Not like that one with the light glaring upstairs and a shadow of a kid staring through lacy curtains. That kid looks like he’s looking at us. We don’t want that. We want scabbed siding, gravel lawns, garage doors like gaping black mouths. Houses where people work instead of live. Houses like where we used to work before they stopped making families to make houses to make work.
Cal parks the van. We tumble out. Ribs hurls. Lizzy laughs. Cal pisses in the moonlight. We scope out this back cul-de-sac. Four half-finished houses. We each pick one and split.
In the dark, alone, wearing all black, we wait for our eyes to adjust. Our bodies feel like nothing. Lighter than Ribs’s rail-thin frame. We cough or clear our throats or giggle or tap our teeth just to be sure we haven’t turned shadow. We rub our thighs, pinch our necks. When we’re certain we’re here, no fooling, we hunt.
We hunt closets. We hunt basements. We hunt cabinets and garages and behind the furnace. We hunt alone, but there’s Lizzy’s flashlight sparking up the basement window next door, or maybe that’s Cal’s house. Neighbors of the absent. Not so much alone as apart. Not so much apart as departmentalized, delegated, defined by what we don’t do anymore, defined by what we find. And we find lots.
We hug armloads of hand tools, shiny and Stanley. Ribs drags a compressor heavy enough to rip his sparrow bones. Cal says he’s got the motherfucking mother lode back in his master bedroom walk-in. Lizzy says screw that. She found a score under the drops in her garage. This sub has never been hit, we realize. This sub is full of trust. Workers who never had to rebuy their tools from the pawnshop. Workers who never hit famine, only feast.
Tile saw, table saw, miter saw, nailers, and two hundred squares of oak tongue and groove from Lizzy. Three cordless radios and a Honda generator from Cal. Ribs thinks he doesn’t have nothing worth taking. Ribs says his stuff is too dirty and beat-up, but we know better. Ribs found himself a painters’ stash: Graco gas-powered sprayer, HVLP with two guns, buckets of brushes, enough extensions poles and ladders to extend across the sub. All of it paint speckled to hell. But Lizzy isn’t afraid of dirty. She spent three years painting for her stepdad’s best friend, Big Dave. But she got tired of him snapping her bra and peeking up her shirt when she was way up the ladder. So one day, she kicked out his ladder legs.
We pack up the van as fast as we can, because Cal is getting twitchy. He keeps scratching his neck, grinding his teeth, saying how he sure as shit won’t get popped on parole. We let him worry. Worry makes him fast, even though he loads like an angry-drunk garbageman. Crash goes a nailer. Fuck you, claw hammer. What are you looking at, Sawzall? We want to hush him, but we don’t. We know about his four hungry babies at home. About his twenty years swinging hammer and then fired and nothing. No 401(k)s for us. No pension. Not a damn thing on paper. So, yeah, fuck those bosses and these bosses and everyone who can afford these tools.
The van fills too fast, and we’ll have to ditch the oak tongue and groove. Cal heaves a last bucket of hand tools into the van, lets whatever can fit crash in the nooks, and the rest clinks to the concrete. Down the street, five houses blaze up. Families waking. Families getting wise, knowing no workers work this late. Cal slams the back doors, and when they don’t shut, he rams with his shoulder. He slides into the driver’s side door, hollers, Hurry the fuck up.
Just one seat left on the passenger side. Even the space between the front bucket seats is crammed with drill cases. A good haul. Too good. No room for us. Not all of us gonna ride tonight, Cal says. Sorry, Ribs, Cal decides. I mean, just tough luck for now is all, Cal hums. Cal’s logic: Ribs can risk. Ribs has no priors, and he can walk, and we’ll pay him when we meet up again, in Lizzy’s parking lot. Right? Cal says. I mean, right?
Ribs balls his fists, eyes wide, whites glowing in the moon. Sirens in the distance. Maybe those sirens sing for us, maybe not.
True, Ribs has no priors. But Ribs is so skinny. Ribs is gypsum dust blowing away in the breeze. Ribs is a baby, not even twenty, and so full of poke marks and purple blotches. Too much.
Lizzy climbs in. Her van. Her spot guaranteed. Cal is revving the engine, pointing. Right? he repeats. Right? Just one spot left. I push Ribs inside, close the door. They skid off, and I hightail it through the yard. I’ve got priors. I’ve screwed up many times. But I don’t shoot up. I don’t have any habit anymore but a ten-year-old named Lucinda. I don’t have a job, but I run every day, three miles, five miles. Sometimes I just run and run around my block until my legs melt. It feels like work, something like what I used to do. And now all that running means something. I sprint into the next yard, weave saplings, hurdle bushes, hop fences. Lights flick on, but I disappear just as fast. Into another yard and another, chasing darkness.
Those sirens are for me for sure now. Coming and coming. I’m so close, nearing th
e edge of the houses, the road ahead. I roll into a ditch, duck, wait while the sirens pour into the sub. Ribs and Lizzy and Cal are long gone. And no one will find me. Because I left the work of stealing work. I’m here, crouched, hiding, spying my way out. Above me, that still-lighted window watches. That shadow kid gazes out of lace curtains, peeking out of his warm room and trying to imagine a world outside. And I hope that kid takes forever to figure out that what’s outside is empty, is invisible in the night, is me.
The Shepherd’s Work
When Ren told Maggie he’d triple mortgaged their hovel to buy twenty acres of bluestem grass for his fourteen sheep, she hacked off her curly blonde ponytail and threw it in his porridge. “Might as well take this, too,” she said. He should’ve started by telling her how his life had changed, how he’d become a better businessman, hence a better all-around man, hence a better potential father, and all for the price of admission to the weekend shepherding seminar, Baba in the Black. The host, Tommy Two Bags of Wool, had swooped his purple robe like a magician upon entering the stage. He’d told the audience, “It’s not just your sheep that are your sheep—though your sheep are your primary sheep. You must dream big, guide the arms of your loved ones—who are your secondary, metaphorical sheep—into the extra-large sweater sleeves of a better, woollier future.”
Maggie turned her face to the front door, and Ren plucked her ponytail from his breakfast and sucked the strands clean. He snuck her hair into the robe pocket nearest his heart. Her newly bobbed hair quivered as she pulled her oversweater over her undersweater and then disappeared out the door. He liked Maggie’s hair short. It reminded him of the second week after shearing season, when they had coin to spend and budding curls replaced naked, scabbed sheep flesh. But the extra coin always ran out quickly.
Ren had staked his land, his right to a better, woollier future. It wasn’t just for him but for Maggie, for the family they’d been trying to make for years. Ren would fill their pockets with coin and make them rich and happy, and Maggie’s belly would balloon. Their perfect future sprang easy as dandelions from his newer, better grass.
Ren grabbed his staff and headed to the sheep pen and led his fourteen sheep the three miles to his new rolling hills of green. Green like Maggie’s eyes, which shimmered most in the electricity of twilight, as on the days when he used to return from shepherding and she’d be waiting, her naked thighs leaning against the glowing threshold of their home. Her thighs never awaited him now that she part-timed at her brother’s flute shop. That could change soon.
The new field dipped into a basin guarded by gray slate walls that blocked the western wind. A stream trickled from the east, and it sounded like diamonds tinkling into a woolen sack. Ren guessed that’s what it sounded like. He’d never actually heard diamonds tinkling, nor had he seen a diamond. He had seen sheep molars. And now he listened to them grinding, grass turning to mush, sliding down throats. The song of profit. The whisper of coat growth only a fifth-generation shepherd could decipher.
Shepherding was in his blood. Thanks, Papa Ander. Thanks, Grandpa Nork. Their inept philosophy of sitting and twiddling thumbs and waiting for the flock to flourish to that impossible goal of twenty sheep had led to this moment of perfect evolution, this moment when Ren would realize their failed dreams. Now that he had the land, the lambs would come. Winona, his head ewe, chewed steadily.
Ren plopped onto a boulder, took a deep breath of his sweet new future, and thought about Maggie. Soon she’d be rolling naked through seas of fresh wool. Her fingers would be smooth again, freed from the calluses of flute carving, and she’d run them over his chin, down his sternum, past his waist, curl his red pubic hair. Ren pulled the side of his robe over his erection. But he was alone in the vast basin. He threw back his robe and allowed his erection to jettison upward, the same direction his business would grow.
Ren gazed over his basin, imagined wobbling newborn lambs, could almost hear the tinny jingle of their bells. The jingle grew into a clanging. The lambs stumbled out of his dream. Over the crags of the basin, a man waved a stubby sword. He wore a rusty breastplate, chain mail gauntlets, was barefooted and mud smeared. Their eyes met, and the shoddy soldier sprinted toward him. Ren reclosed his robe.
“Did I miss it?” the soldier asked. Ren studied the man’s mud-kissed chubby cheeks, dopey eyes, blond fuzz over his lip. He was nothing but a child of a man. “Am I late for battle? Fighting for the honor of Finneus the Third’s land, slayer of giant salamanders.”
“I think you’ve lost your way, son,” Ren said.
“Thank the fifteen and a half gods above, then. I’m on time. Fuck’s sake, I’d say I’m early.” He sheathed his sword.
“This is grazing land.” Ren leaned sagely against his staff. “There’s no battle to worry about. You can run along.”
“Nope.” The soldier pushed his fists into his back and swung his hips, stretching. “This has always been the place.”
More clanging rang from the basin lip. Another man emerged, waving a halberd.
“Time for me to die a glorious death, pops.” The young soldier rushed toward the other man. Their weapons crashed just past Ren’s sheep Franklin. Franklin bleated at the men, trotted back and forth. Ren rushed toward the squabble but stopped when an arrow hissed into the earth in front of his sandals. Along the basin lip, a dozen archers drew their bows, let arrows sail. There were only two men with Ren in the basin. Wasted feathers and flint and wood. Tommy Two Bags of Wool would have had a good laugh at their foolish budgeting of resources.
More breastplates and muddy faces and swords and maces crested the lip. They shouted as they loped down the hills, hurdling Ren’s sheep. The sheep stared with slack jaws, black lips curled and raised from the grass. They couldn’t concentrate, thus couldn’t eat, thus wouldn’t reach lamb-conceiving romance.
Arrows split the earth around Ren. His sheep remained frozen, watching the men, transfixed, orange eyes glazed. He prodded Whitey’s yellowed rear, jabbed his staff between Franklin’s eyes. Nothing. Ren’s stomach twisted. The breeze blew cold beneath his frock.
His fingers twitched around his staff. He thought about the clowder of flame-red bobcats that had eaten two of his ewes three years ago. He remembered the drop in his groin when he’d stumbled on to the ewe carcasses, bellies torn open and emptied. Maggie had wanted him to quit. But Ren fought back. The next time the clowder lurked into his herd, he’d pounced in front of them. He became huge and loud, a big show of screaming and flailing, a bigger show than even Tommy Two Bags could perform. The bobcats ran away as easy as that, at the mere show of danger.
He channeled that bobcat battle now. He screamed and growled, spit frothing over his lips. He twirled the staff over his head, swung blindly at the wind. His throat burned, and his ears buzzed. He charged at the man-boy soldier, who lay on the ground, bracing his sword against halberd strikes from a larger warrior. The man-boy winced toward Ren, eyebrows raised, a slice in his cheek leaking a trickle of red. The man-boy looked tired, older, transformed into an ancient visage of scowling fear.
A sliver of pity wormed into Ren’s chest. He latched his crook around the halberd and yanked it to the grass. The larger warrior ran away. The archers screeched like a murder of magpies and disappeared over the hill. Ren’s land became all green again except for a few glints of blade and arrowhead. The shoddy man-boy raised himself onto his elbows and curled his lips into a yellow-toothed smile.
“Hell if you ain’t the savior of the giant salamander–slayer clan, mister.” The man-boy reached his bloody palm toward Ren. “My ancestor’s would bless you, if they weren’t all dead and rotted.”
Ren offered the man-boy his crook and pulled him to his feet. “I don’t need your blessings.”
“My children’s runts will sing your praise.”
“And I don’t need any songs. Just peace and quiet for my sheep so they can make lambs.”
“That how it’s done? Just leave ’em alone? The wenches in town wou
ld be pleased as shit to hear that.” The man-boy laughed, clapped Ren’s shoulder. “Whatever you want, friend. You’re a piece of my freaking heart now. All will know who won back the land of my father’s father, slayer of Mighty Francis the Stump Plucker.”
“This isn’t your father’s land. I bought it.”
“Sure, Shepherd. We’ve won. You can graze here until the cows come home.”
“Sheep.”
“Sheep or cows or anteaters. Whatever you want, brother.” The man-boy pounded his chest and then slapped Ren’s. The man-boy departed toward the basin lip. At the slate crest, he hollered, “See you tomorrow.”
Before Ren could protest, the man-boy soldier was gone. He tried not to think about what tomorrow could mean while he wandered through the field, plucking arrow shafts. Across the basin, he noticed Franklin’s head dipped to the ground, still eating, and Ren was glad. At least one sheep would grow strong, would father fine lambs. When he neared, he saw that Franklin was licking a puddle of blood, his muzzle streaked pink, pink darkening to brown. He imagined lambs covered in tainted brown wool, stupid and dirty and worthless.
For just one moment, he allowed himself to miss his old half-acre plot, the sprouts of crab grass and pocks of dandelions. Maggie used to bring him lunch there. Her hair long and full of tangles from sleep, she’d recline in his lap, and he’d work a brush through her hair. They’d watch the sheep forage, and it was good. But that wasn’t production.
Maggie needed to know that her brother wasn’t the only success. Ren couldn’t just sit around combing hair, waiting for wool to grow. He fingered Maggie’s hacked-off ponytail coiled at the bottom of his pocket. It would sustain him until things took off and she could quit the flute business and join him on the new land with his giant herd. One day in the future, he’d gift this chopped lock back to her, and she’d laugh and her face would redden. He’d tell her about these men playing war, and she’d laugh at that too, one day.
One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist Page 10