Love and Country

by Christina Adam

  “Come on,” his dad said. He hitched his makeshift pack up higher on his shoulder blades and moved toward the sound. They jumped a creek where the water ran clear over a bed of smooth amber stones and struggled up an embankment. Below, the grass had been chewed down in a natural, round clearing surrounded by young pines. At the edge of the trees, Kenny saw the elk.

  They were two buff-colored shapes, just lighter than the dry grass and the tree trunks, until one of the elk stepped into the clearing. The young bull raised his long, curved neck toward the sky. He lowered his head to feed, the white of his rump turned toward the trees.

  His dad signaled for quiet, and the second elk, a lighter-colored animal with a rack of massive horns, moved into the clearing. He angled around to face the young bull. Slowly he lowered his head, and the two bulls crashed together. Three separate times they lowered their racks and—moving like women with huge, heavy baskets balanced on their heads—swung up until one rack of antlers struck a hollow glancing blow against the other. Then they stopped. The young elk drifted a few steps away. The older one went back to feeding.

  Kenny waited in the silence, watching. Slowly the elk approached again. The huge racks cracked together. Then, again, they stopped. Kenny was surprised, and disappointed, by the elk. They didn’t seem to care if they finished the fight or not.

  Something else kept his eyes on the clearing. Not the fighting, but the sound. Each time the massive horns collided, the hollow, rackety blow echoed off the mountain—like a battle fought with bamboo poles. There were no other sounds—no birds and no wind. The sound of the cracking antlers was so pure and ringing it seemed to suck up all the air, like lightning.

  All the way back to the horses they could hear the fighting. The sound seemed to grow louder as the mountains darkened; like a radio signal, it had more power in the night. It made Kenny feel clear-eyed and alert. As if his blood had been replaced with icy water.

  By the time they found the horses and rode back to camp, it was pitch dark. His dad took care of the horses, and Kenny searched the ground for wood, following the sound of the creek. He dragged two long, dry branches back to camp and built a fire. When it was hot, he opened two cans of chili and set them in the flames. His dad wrapped the goat’s head and the hide in pieces of canvas, and went to lock them in the truck. When he came back he was limping like a man with one leg shorter than the other. He sat down hard on the ground, and Kenny used a pair of pliers to lift a can of chili from the fire and pass it over to him. When he ate his own chili, it was bubbling at the edges and congealed in the center. He thought it tasted better than anything he’d ever eaten.

  His dad picked up the empty cans and the rest of their food and locked it all in the truck cab. He said he hadn’t seen any sign of bears, but there was no sense taking chances. As soon as he came back, they unlaced their boots and crawled inside their sleeping bags beside the fire.

  Kenny ached in every muscle, and his legs twitched with sudden itches, as if his sleeping bag was full of sand. The wind had burned the skin on his face and pulled it tight across his cheekbones. If he held his palm above his eyes, he thought he might feel heat waves radiating off his forehead.

  He was exhausted, but he wasn’t sleepy. He was worried about his mother. She didn’t know where he was. The note said they’d be back tonight. It was Sunday, and he had school in the morning. He’d thought they would at least drive down the mountain to a place where he could call.

  He lay very still, listening to the creek talking, murmuring and rushing over rocks, sometimes loud and sometimes softer. He imagined he heard actual words. Then a twig snapped somewhere in the underbrush, and his heart collided with itself. He tried to stay calm, but he was wide awake.

  “Kenny?” He heard his dad call, and thought it must have been the noise that woke him up. But his dad didn’t mention the noise.

  “There’s something I need to ask you about,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wanted to talk last night, but you fell asleep.”

  “What is it?”

  “How would you feel . . .” His dad’s voice disappeared in a cough. He cleared his throat and started again. “How would you feel if I got married again?”

  “To who?”

  “It doesn’t matter who. I just want to know how you feel about it. In general.”

  “But who?” Kenny said. “You never told me. You never said anything.”

  “A lady. A lady I met in Florida.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Louise.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Never asked her.”

  “About how old?”

  “She has a kid. A little girl.” His dad was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “Corey. Her daughter’s name is Corey.”

  “When are you getting married?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  “Okay with me.”

  “You can come to the wedding. I’ll send you a ticket.”

  “Okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure.”

  Kenny closed his eyes and listened to the creek. It made him think of the day his dad showed up, his parents in the kitchen talking. Their voices rose and fell in the night, and upstairs in his bed he’d tried to make out the words. His parents’ arguing had made him feel afraid. He knew there was something going on. He’d been waiting for two days to find out what.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she divorced, Louise?”

  “No. She was married to a pilot.”

  His dad didn’t say her husband was dead, but Kenny knew that was what he meant. Of all the things he’d said, this one thing made Kenny want to cry. Louise wasn’t divorced like his mother. But he didn’t cry. For the first time, his dad was speaking to him like an equal, as if Kenny might be more than ten years old.

  “Does this mean,” he asked, “you won’t be my dad?”

  “No,” his dad said, suddenly angry. “I never want to hear you say a thing like that again. I’ll always be your dad. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kenny said.

  He thought about what his dad had said, up on the mountain, about paying if Kenny had a wreck. His mother tried to keep it secret, but Kenny knew his dad didn’t always send the checks he was supposed to. Besides, his mom would never take what wasn’t due her. It made him sad all of a sudden that his father didn’t understand. He felt sad and hopeless. His parents were never getting back together. He hadn’t even realized, until this moment, that he thought they would. After a while, he heard his father snoring. But the sky was a soft, muffled gray above the trees before he fell asleep.

  On the drive back his dad said only a few words. They were both tired and sunburned. His father didn’t ask if he wanted to drive, and Kenny didn’t bring it up until he saw his dad brace a hand on his hip to rest his leg. They traded places, and Kenny drove for an hour, but his father wouldn’t let him drive over the pass.

  So his dad was driving when they pulled in behind the house in the late afternoon. His mother appeared at the back door and was at the window of the truck before Kenny could climb out. Her hair was twisted up in some new way, and she wore a full pink dress he’d never seen before. She looked pretty, he thought, but different. A strand of hair had come loose from the pins, and Kenny knew she must have stayed home all day worrying.

  He was so tired and dirty he hated the feeling of his body moving in his clothes, but he told his mother how they shot the mountain goat, talking fast, as if his excitement could wash right over her concern. She stood in the yard and listened, but her hand kept moving to her face to push the strand of hair behind her ear. She kept looking down, and he could never catch her eye.

  “Dad gets the head,” he told her, “for a trophy. But he’s going to get a rug made from the hide. For me.”

  His dad stood at the truck working the knots that tied the goat’s head, still wrapped in gray canvas, to the bars of the st
ock rack. Kenny could feel excitement coming back. His legs felt longer and seemed to want to move all on their own. He could hardly stand still while his father laid the heavy package on the grass and jerked the ropes away. Kenny brought his mother over and knelt to lift off the stiff wrapping. As he picked up the last flap, he could hear the sizzle of flies trapped underneath, and when he flipped it back, a swarm of green-black flies shot out, blind, into his face. He threw his hand up and his mother backed away.

  The goat’s head lay on the canvas, the fleece gone tallowy yellow and the face mashed cold and flat along one side. The black, shining eye had caved in, dull and pitted with specks of grit, like a lump of dirty asphalt. It stared away at nothing, with no more feeling than a fish eye. Kenny looked up for his dad.

  His father wasn’t there. He’d started for the truck to unload the horses. His mom came up and slipped an arm around his waist. He caught a quick smell of shampoo.

  “Don’t,” he said, twisting away. “I’m dirty.”

  She dropped her arm and stood beside him. He could hear her breath go in and out. They watched his dad limp around the truck.

  “You better go,” his mother said. “Go help your dad.”

  She walked back to the house, and the kitchen light came on, casting a square of yellow on the grass. The sun was almost down, watery and round behind gray clouds. He looked at the goat, its whiteness glowing in the sudden dark. His nose was running and his long fingers were cold. They ached inside, along the narrow bones.

  9

  Though she couldn’t see them, Cynthia Dustin could feel the high windows in the back of the prep room darkening. She squeezed between the wooden shelves, gluing new labels on specimen jars, curled and floating fetal pigs, nearly colorless, suspended in murky formaldehyde. Rusty lids sealed the old jars tight, but she still smelled formaldehyde, almost felt how it stung her nostrils and puckered the skin of her fingers. The white fluorescent lights in Mr. Everts’s office cast dark shadows behind the shelves. She could sense the building emptying around her. If Mr. Everts didn’t come back soon, she’d miss her bus.

  His gray desk filled most of the office part of the room, its surface so vast and flat she thought of aircraft carriers. She sat down in his chair and studied the yellowing periodic table on the wall behind it.

  At first, she had hated working in the science lab at lunch and on free periods while other seniors drove home or walked downtown. But last year she’d dished up food behind the line in the cafeteria, a net over her hair. No matter how many times she ran them through the wash, her jeans and sweaters never lost the sticking smell of rancid grease.

  It was a thing her dad insisted on. If she wanted piano lessons, she had to pay for them. He acted as if she played the piano to get out of chores, as if she were shirking.

  She shoved at the floor with her shoe and spun the chair in a circle, raising a breeze that lifted her hair. When she heard the door, she braked to a stop and watched Mr. Everts come in. He could hardly see over a stack of notebooks in his arms. He dumped the folders in a carton on the floor and brushed his hands together.

  “Cynthia,” he said, announcing her name as if he’d forgotten he’d asked her to wait for him.

  She moved to give him his chair, but he waved her to stay and slid open the top drawer of a filing cabinet. Black stubble shadowed his jaw, and his shirttail had bunched up and come loose from behind.

  “Where are you going to school?” He spoke with his back to her.

  “What do you call this?”

  “Penance,” he said.

  He turned and hitched himself up on the corner of the desk, a fat manila folder in both hands.

  “This comes up every year,” he said and handed her a pink printed page. “I’ve got a brochure someplace.” He held the file high on his chest and riffled through the papers.

  “You interested?” he said.

  “Don’t know.” Cynthia tried to read the pink paper, but she couldn’t quite figure it out. “I’m going to be late,” she said. “What is it?”

  “You have plans for college?”

  Looming above her, he suddenly seemed too close. His smell of dust and chemicals and sweat was too strong. She shifted back in her chair, but she was afraid to move away, afraid she might embarrass him.

  “I’ll miss my bus,” she said.

  “Go ahead, then.” He located a black-and-white brochure and handed it to her. “Read through this material. Let me know.”

  She gave him a smile and gathered up her coat and books. “See you tomorrow,” she said and pushed out the door using her shoulder.

  Outside, the sun was down behind the mountains, and the yellow curb where the buses should have been was vacant. She tried to open the door and go back in, but the steel doors had locked from inside. She’d have to walk to town and call her mother. A tingling sensation crept up her neck—Mr. Everts might be watching. Feeling truant—guilty but free—she hurried across the parking lot, laughing to herself, as if the quick turning of her back rendered her invisible and he wouldn’t notice she’d missed the last bus.

  At the hotel, she took a booth at the back of the café. While she waited for the waitress, she watched two dairymen come in. Their down vests and plaid shirts were smeared with grease, and their boot soles encased in dried mud and manure. They sat down on stools and hunched over the counter.

  When the waitress approached her, Cynthia ordered coffee, and the plump, tired-looking woman gave her a look. As if she were too young to order coffee.

  “Black,” she said.

  She flattened the pink sheet on the Formica table. Across the top, it said “Scholarship” in capital letters, and it went on in official-sounding words. The language scared her. The paragraphs looked more like a test, a punishment, than an award. She couldn’t see what it had to do with her. She’d never fit all the rules and regulations.

  The school counselor had made college appointments for her, but she hadn’t gone. Her mother assumed she would go to music school, somewhere in the East. But no one at home had brought it up, said where the money would come from, or how she’d get to an audition.

  When the waitress returned with a cup and a stainless steel pot of coffee, Cynthia hid the sheet in her notebook.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She reached in her pocket and placed all her change on the table. Three quarters and a dime. She needed to phone her mother. But she might get her dad. He wouldn’t even ask her why. He’d say something to her mother like, “Girl’s managed to miss her bus.”

  Her coffee was too hot to sip. If she left it and started walking now, she wouldn’t be that late getting home. Out the plate glass window in front of the café, a streetlight flickered. A car passed with its headlights on, and all the parking spots had emptied. What if she never went home? What would they think then? When she thought of doing her homework, waiting in her room for dinner, her head felt too heavy for her neck.

  She watched each car that passed, hoping someone she knew would stop and come in. She wished Roddy Moyers would walk in now. She’d take that ride. His voice came back to her exactly. “Some other time,” he’d said.

  Even from the back of the café, she heard the low throb of a motorcycle echo in the street. The bike coasted to a stop, and Harold Cray climbed off. He glanced at her as he came in the door but didn’t wave. He took a seat in the front, slid back in the corner of the booth, and unfolded a newspaper. She watched him tip his head at a slight angle.

  Harold Cray ran the tack and saddle shop, in an old stone building with cowboy-pajama paper left over from the forties on the walls. He lived in a shack outside of town, not far from her place. Harold could give her a ride, but she wasn’t sure she could ask him.

  Harold seldom spoke to anyone. He’d come back from Vietnam with one eye injured, but from what she’d heard, he hadn’t been much different before he went away. She knew him from church. Officially, he was a baritone, but his range was so wide and his voice so steady and
clear that it always shocked her when he started a song. Other members of the choir, especially the old women, had voices so reedy and uncertain they made her tense; she never knew if they would hit the notes or not. People thought Harold was dumb, maybe even retarded, but in music he was always there ahead of her.

  Even so, she’d never said more than hello to him. He looked strange, his head shaved and one eye always looking slightly the wrong way. The waitress served him a Coke in a bottle, but he didn’t look up from his paper.

  She worked up her nerve, left her coffee and books, and walked down to stand at the end of his table. When he noticed her, she wasn’t sure which eye to focus on.

  “Harold?”

  “Hello.”

  Her eyes wanted to shift, to slide away from his face, but she forced herself to look at him with no expression. She started to explain how she’d missed the bus.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she was sorry. She wanted to retreat back to her table.

  Harold cleared his throat. “What do you want?” His voice was so flat and forthright, almost angry, she knew she had to ask straight out.

  “I need a ride home.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why not?”

  “Eating,” he said.

  “I’ll wait.”

  Harold looked back at his newspaper. He lifted a hand and motioned for her to sit down. She went back for her books and coffee cup and slid in the booth across from him. The waitress brought a heavy plate of meatloaf and potatoes, and Harold washed the meal down with Coke. She kept thinking maybe she should open her notebook and start working math problems, but that seemed rude. It was getting late. She’d have to explain at home where she’d been all this time.

  Harold cleaned his plate with a piece of bread, folded his newspaper, and went to pay the check. He left a dollar on the table and nodded for her to follow.