by Martin Moran
“Rise and shine,” came a voice.
Boom!
A deep voice, trespassing, rattling around in the furnace, rattling in my dream. . . .
“Let’s rustle up some breakfast.”
Like mosquitoes, the words buzzed, needled their way into my ear.
“Guys . . .?”
I opened my eyes. Pale light spilled through a small window. Daybreak. There was an insistent thudding. I realized it wasn’t from the world but my own heartbeat. I shut my eyes again. Sleep, sleep. Back to the basement. . . .
A large thump startled my eyes open.
“Chow and chores. Let’s go.”
The air was cold and full of the smell of cedar, of the jumble of what was me and what wasn’t. A lump to my left was snoring and I turned to see George’s red nose poking out of his bag and then it all came to me. Landed on my chest. I was in the loft of the A-frame cabin. On Bright Raven Ranch. His ranch, near Estes Park.
Another thump.
“C’mon, guys.”
And that was him, down the ladder, down below. He was . . . moving furniture? Stacking firewood, maybe? Whatever it was it banged against the wall, shook the floor.
George stirred and spoke.
“Too early. Shit . . . too cold.”
“Guys awake?”
“We’re coming,” George grumbled.
“I’ll be out front,” said the voice from below.
The cabin door opened, then closed, squeaking like the hinges of a haunted house.
“Fuck,” George said, sitting up. “Maybe he’s got French toast.” I kept still and watched puffs of his breath float and evaporate toward the ceiling. “Why so fucking early?” He pulled his red sweater over his head. Clumps of his blond hair stuck straight up as if in protest, or shock. “I hope he’s got something good.” Then he stood, yawning, and rubbed his eyes with tight, pink fists. “C’mon, Martian.” He pulled on his long johns and pants, his two pair of socks, and disappeared down the creaking ladder. I listened as he fumbled for his coat, stepped out, and closed the door.
Not a bird. Not a peep. One Martian on Mars. Even the wind was holding its breath; everything hushed as on a holy day.
I wiggled my toes, then slowly sat up. The smell of pine and smoke—scout trips trapped in the feathers—rose from my bag. My stomach wasn’t right, nauseous, and the skin of it was pinched and sticky. I looked toward my navel for reasons.
I found evidence.
Touched it.
Flaky glue, dried-up seeds.
I was naked, and in a panic scrambled to find my underwear, cover my tracks. I felt a wild wave of dread, thinking that if I didn’t find them, someone else would or already had, and there’d be no end to the questions. My arms dug, searched crazily until suddenly I saw them balled up next to his pillow. I couldn’t imagine why, but his silver Brietling was wrapped around them, like a joke, like a ribbon around a gift. I snatched up my briefs, letting the watch drop, and hurriedly slid them on.
I sat still to stare at the time, at the fat, stupid watch on the filthy floor. The sliver of silver ticked off the seconds, jerking its way around the blue face, number to number. It seemed odd somehow that it worked, beat, independent of him. The new date was there. Things had gone right ahead and flipped to the 8th of April. Strange he’d left it behind like that, like this. He guarded it with his life, so he said, because it’d given him luck in the jungle. He’d come home alive. I lifted it up for a moment. It was surprisingly hefty, thick, like him.
I looked around at the rust-stained mattress, the battered dresser, the splintered ceiling. What was snug looked ugly now, and unreal, as if I’d woken into someone’s movie, into the scene set in the attic, the scene of the crime.
I dropped the watch, slid out of my bag, and slowly got into my long johns and bell-bottom jeans, buttoned up my favorite blue flannel shirt. I stood but was dizzy, had to keep stooping, stopping for air.
I went for my socks, all scrunched up and burr-filled on the floor. I shook them out, started to put one on, and there was my pink foot hovering over it—his precious watch. I raised my knee. I raised it to smash the fucking thing. But instead, my body bent and I scooped it into my pocket. I took a breath and imagined him reaching toward me as I handed it over. I could see his green eyes lit with gratitude, his hand tousling my hair. I could hear his warmest voice saying: “Thanks, kiddo.”
I zipped up my jacket and stepped outside. There was a frail mist over the meadow. The sun hadn’t appeared but was sending the idea of light, blue and unreal. Instead of standing in an actual place, in real time, it seemed as though I’d entered into a hallucination of a Saturday morning somewhere. The air was mountain-immaculate and rushed, frigid, into my lungs. I sank to the porch to tie my boots.
Patches of old snow dotted the clearing and glowed in the dim light. George was kicking at one, sending shaves of muddy ice every which way.
“My fingers are freezing,” he muttered. I saw he was missing a glove.
Bob or whoever or whatever he might be, for at that moment he was registering as some strange mammal in Levis and red jacket, was bent over the tractor working with a wrench, yanking at wires. Occasionally he—it—cupped a hand to his mouth to blow on fingers.
“The fucking thing won’t start,” George informed me, rolling his eyes.
I fiddled with my boots and kept glancing toward the man in the jeans on the tractor, wondering when, if, he’d look my way. Wondering if his eyes would tell me that I was actual, there, or if this was a dream and I was as unreal to him as he was to me. I pulled at my red laces until I had two perfect bows.
“Let’s just walk to the dining hall,” George growled.
“Nah . . . this should do it,” declared the figure in the faded jeans. He smiled—why this grin?—as he tossed his wrench into a toolbox. “All fixed.” There was a clatter of metal as the wrench landed, a pealing clank across the valley, and just then, almost as if Bob planned it, cued it; a slice of light peeked over Twin Sisters—the peaks to our east. The meadow caught fire and everything, except for the pointed shadows of the conifer trees, turned golden. The rays were like trumpets, pure and glad. Glad, I thought, because the day was new and didn’t yet know. Once the sun climbed high enough to see, surely there’d be thunder.
Bob jumped into the driver’s seat, the only seat, and, after a few tries, the engine came to life.
“C’mon, fellas.”
I stood unsteadily and took one step toward the tractor. The smell of diesel cut across the thin air. Acrid. A wave of nausea. I stopped like a stone, feet stuck in the dirt, fear gripping my ribs.
“Earth to Martian,” said George. I looked into his pink, pudgy face, wondering what he could know of any of this. He’d never let himself be the girl.
“Come on,” said the guy on the tractor.
There was an empty, crumpled can of Coke near my foot. His trash. My eyes were stuck on the red and white, on the twisted cursive of Coca-Cola. It reminded me of the world: McDonald’s—Saturday with dad, cheeseburgers and grass clippings in the back of the Plymouth. Field Day, when Father Jack provided soda pop. I could still run the three-legged with Mark Groshek . . . couldn’t I?
“Hey, are you coming?”
My feet obeyed, jumped onto the axle of the tractor and found balance next to George. I stood not five inches behind our counselor, staring at the frayed rubber band that dug its way around the back of his skull. This, God knows why, remains the sharpest image from the fog of that morning: standing on the red tractor, staring at the back of his head. At strands of his fine, filthy hair tangled into the band, which was attached over his ears, holding his nerdy glasses in place. Hair that trembled on account of the engine. I studied his bald patch, the flaky skin on the crown of his head, as if I could see inside, find the answer to the question repeating in my own brain: Who is he? Who is he?
His long legs worked the pedals, his right arm struggled with the gearshift as George and I perched between t
he giant tires. My eyes drifted to the bulging black tread, fantastically large tires, taller than I was. “Shit!” George cried, as off we went and there was nothing, not a thing to do but grab tight to Bob. Hold him fast to keep from falling.
George’s face was pinched and yellow under the fluorescent light of the kitchen. I watched as he took his tongue, piled high with oatmeal, and stuck it out toward Bob, who turned from the stove just in time to see George spit the goop back into his bowl.
“Yuck.”
Bob said nothing, but I saw how the muscle of his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth, how his hand tightened around the wooden spoon. I felt my own jaw move as, little liar without a morsel in my mouth, I chewed with the primness of the teacher’s pet. I felt it, cursed it—this eternal wish to please, the habit of Catholic school courtesy creeping right up, straightening my spine. Even now. Even this morning. George looked brilliant to me across the table, with his slumped shoulders and his mean tongue. I looked down into my bowl of mush, wishing for some of what he had. Whatever it was.
The two Holsteins stood at the ready. One stamped a hoof; the other let out a fart as we put Vaseline on our hands. Bob set the pails and stools for George and me and showed us again how to squeeze the teats. I sat and reached for the contraption, the pink, dangling nipples. The udder looked like an overblown rubber glove, about to burst.
“Start right at the top and slide down,” he said. “Just like you did last evening. You know how it works.” He was hovering over my left shoulder, his voice greasy as the teats. He still hadn’t looked at me.
Squirts of milk ricocheted and bubbled up inside our buckets. The sweet smell cut clean through the dank odors of the barn. It was amazing to see, to smell, the source. Amazing to me that this massive mother, this wall of big bones and smooth hide, allowed me to sit by and pinch milk from her. I expected her to kick me, to ask for someone older or more experienced, but there was no protest, except for the gentle sway of her tail, which caught me a few times in the face.
“Rest your head against her haunch,” Bob said. “Her tail won’t get you there.”
I pressed the side of my face to her rump and kept squeezing as gently and firmly as I could. I felt calmer, glad for the work, for the results. Glad for her animal patience. Now and then her muscles twitched against my cheek. I wanted to sink right into her, mother cow, and thank her just for being. For accepting.
Bob took over when our hands wore out and then we poured the milk into tall, silver canisters. “We’ll have cream with our lunch,” he said, easily lifting the heavy cans into a cooler.
The few chickens and two horses were noisy and glad at the sight of us, with our pellets and hay. We spread their fodder and watched as they squawked and whinnied and chewed. I leaned on the fence and looked up past the main house to where the clearing ended and the peaks began. The warm light was bathing everything—the yellow grass, the red storybook barn. The bright sunshine reflected off the granite faces of the mountains and off the high glaciers of snow. I looked around at the cloudless, cheerful sky and felt astonished. Astonished, I think, that everything was simply going on. Impossibly beautiful and ordinary. I scanned the edge of the woods, waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure. I had this feeling that our secret must have seeped into the trees, into the air, and at any moment a terrible storm or a squad of men in blue uniforms or black cassocks would emerge to arrest him, us, time. But nothing. The trees stood there as if they were in the same trance as I, swaying slightly in the breeze. The sun climbed and the snow melted and the animals ate and pissed and I felt relieved. And betrayed.
George was sent off to paint the dining tables and Bob asked me to help him mend a section of fence next to the barn. He handed me a pair of work gloves made for a ranch hand like his, like him. Three times my size. I had to make a fist to keep them from sliding off.
“Stretch this around the post over there.” He handed me two strands of wire, then raised his gloved hand, pointed. “Pull tight.”
I dragged and stretched the barbed wire around the wooden pole and yanked it. I was glad for a next move, a duty. I watched him place nails in his mouth, wrapping his lips around them so the sharp ends were out, like silver fangs. He looped the wire through a metal bracket and I wondered if this was when we might see each other. Now that we were alone. If this was when he might say something about it. But he didn’t look up, wouldn’t look over. It was as if he was concealed under a dark cloud, or we both were. He threw off his jacket, then raised his hand and took one fang out. His eyes were crystal green, glued to the task. His combat boots sloshed and sank into the midday mud as he picked up his hammer and placed the nail where he wanted it. His arm began to swing, his muscles trembling with each blow. The nail went in, and then another, and another, the smack of it echoing across the ranch. Sweat glistened on his forehead; his glasses slid down the bridge of his nose.
“Let it go,” he suddenly commanded as he slumped against the fence post to catch his breath. I dropped the wires and watched his eyes go toward the patch of aspen tucked beside the barn. I gazed there, too, at the close-knit grove of trees, slim and smooth and elegant, just beginning to bud.
“What does your father do?” he asked.
“He’s a writer. For the News.” My voice sounded weak, my words slow across the vapor.
“Oh . . . a writer,” Bob sang, as though impressed.
In the noon light, the bark of the aspen had the color and texture of human skin.
“Are you close?”
I glanced over and saw that he was still staring toward the trees. The shadows were there under his glasses, under his eyes. Like smudges of misery. There was something wrong with him, I thought, and he knew it. Knew there were people who’d kill him if they saw what he was.
“I dunno . . . guess so,” I said, tapping the fence post with my boot.
“George said you’re top of your class at Christ the King.”
“No. My friend Mark Groshek is.”
“But you’re close to the top.”
I shrugged.
“I’ll bet you can do anything you set your mind to. I can tell. You’re a champ.”
I felt my face heat up. His praise was like food I didn’t know how to refuse.
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re special.”
We were quiet a long while, listening to nothing, to everything. I studied the black scars on the aspen where branches had broken away or where someone had taken a knife and carved initials. On one trunk, right under the gouged shape of a heart, I thought I saw RC + JC. I wondered if that could be him, Robert C—. Him and . . . Jesus?
“With some work, this’ll be a great place,” Bob said, looking out toward the meadow’s end. “One great boys’ camp.” He lifted a hand and pointed. “The archery range is going to be just over there.”
I took off my gloves and draped them over the post. I put my hand in my front pocket and walked toward him. He didn’t move or look at me. My nose came even with his bottom rib, not far above his brown leather belt. He’d missed a loop. I gazed up at his ear, at the lobe of flesh, the ridges of pink circling in toward his brain. It looked like something belonging to an animal, something you’d study at the zoo. I wanted to say something that would go in there. I had no idea what.
I was standing close enough to hear him breathe, but he seemed so far away. In a movie, in a dream. I couldn’t put together that he was the same person who’d held me the night before. He was naked, wasn’t he? Head to toe. And I was, too. He’d left sperm on me. And now we were standing out in broad day and he was over there and I was here. There are his whiskers. A shadow. Thicker today than before, when they scratched the back of my neck. That happened. It happened.
He was pretending, it seemed, to study something out there in the meadow. Making plans for his ranch, maybe?—Bright Raven Summer Camp. I reached out and, though I didn’t mean to, I made a sound like a scratch of the throat and he looked, not at me but at my outstretched hand. He staye
d quiet, gazing at the contents of my cupped palm.
“Oh,” he finally uttered, like a little kid coming to. He removed one glove and carefully lifted the watch. He put it to his ear for a moment, then onto his wrist, and picked up his hammer.
I stepped back to my post and slid on the giant gloves and a voice came to me from the dark. It came to me from some part of my mind I’d never met, and it said: It’s OK. This is how it is.
“Hey, buddy, pull the third line there around the middle,” he said. “Yank tight.”
And I did. I followed instructions and pulled as tight as I could and the chores and the day proceeded. I helped rake the stalls of the barn and clear a path from behind the dining hall toward the archery range. He gave us peanut butter sandwiches and fresh milk and we worked and worked until the sun slid behind the mountain and never once did the voice leave me. It came from inside like a stab but I understood that it was here to help. There was something good in this, I thought. Good that I learn the truth of how it is.
And the day grew cold and the stars came out and the man in the Levis pointed again at the heavens, at the Milky Way and the Big Dipper and the guiding North Star. At all the fiery constellations. And this time George found Pegasus and that made him so happy he laughed. The man’s voice was sweet and tired from all our work. The moon was just rising above the mountain as we walked the trail along the creek to the porch of the cabin, took off our boots, climbed up the creaking ladder. All the same as before but all different for knowing.
There was the undressing, the keys out of the pocket and placed with the can of Coke on the beat-up bureau. There was a fart from George and a joke from Bob and the crawling into bags. Me in the center again. There was the taking off of the watch, the swapping of pillows, the wait for George’s sleeping, the wait to find out if the man would dare. If I would.
The lantern went out.
George’s dumb, innocent snore began and there came the reach of a hand, the touch of his fingers, out from behind the dark cloud. Warm and ready to talk. And the voice inside whispered: Go, if you want. You can’t help it. It’s the way it is. . . .