by Drew Perry
“What does that mean?”
She looks up. “It means I’ve got a class at ten-thirty, and twenty papers coming in about Modernism.” She plays with a seam on the sofa. “Eight pages apiece. So, you know, other than that, I’m not much of anything. That’s all that means.”
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine?”
“How the hell do I know?” he says. “I don’t really know what’s happening here.”
She doesn’t say anything back. The ceiling feels low. There are snapshots of Canavan and Rena running along the mantel, pictures of Rena standing in front of national monuments, on hills over Mediterranean cities. One shot of the two of them with a very large bird, an emu, maybe, or an ostrich. Canavan and Rena in a restaurant. Canavan and Rena on a lake. Canavan and Rena next to a huge riverboat named, in red cursive lettering, The General Beauregard. This is all awfully fucked up. If it’d been him, Jack thinks, he might have put the pictures away. There’s an empty bottle of wine on the coffee table in front of Beth, two glasses. Jack says, “I still can’t believe it’s you and Canavan.”
“It’s not ‘you and Canavan.’ ”
“You know what he’s doing right now?”
“No,” she says.
“Running trees with Hen in the front seat of the dump truck.”
“What do you want him to be doing? Ignoring him? Letting him play in the road?”
Jack looks out the window. Hen’s explaining something to Canavan, and Canavan’s listening hard, asking follow-up questions. “I could use him acting like a little bit more of an asshole out there,” he says.
“It’s not his fault.”
“It’s his fault,” Jack says. “Some.”
“It’s everybody’s fault,” Beth says.
It’s been like this at lunch, too. She’ll come by to get Hen and it’s short like this, a kind of half-assed truce interrupted by these exploratory cannon rounds fired at each other. Feeling each other out. It’s all wrong. Everything’s wrong. They should be yelling at each other. He should be dragging her out of here by her hair. He should be hitting Canavan in the face. “Do you want toast?” he asks her. “I want some toast.”
“No,” she says. “Thanks.”
He goes into the kitchen, finds the bread, shoves a couple of slices into the toaster. He opens up a few of Canavan’s kitchen drawers, looks in at the knives and forks and spoons. They look like anybody else’s knives and forks and spoons. “I read in the paper that they found a stand of chestnut in Georgia that had survived the blight,” he tells her. The toaster’s not working. He bangs it on the counter a couple of times.
She comes in and leans on the counter. “It’s the switch there, on the wall,” she says, pointing. He flicks it, and the toaster comes right on. “What blight?” she asks.
“The chestnut blight,” says Jack. Why’s he telling her this? “There used to be ten million trees. Or ten billion. I can’t remember. It was in the article.”
“And then the blight.”
“And then the blight,” he says. “In the nineteen-hundreds. Early, like the thirties and forties. I think it was million. Ten million. Anyway. They found some in Georgia. This old stand of trees.”
“Wow,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. He’s got nothing more for her on the famous chestnut blight. She’s standing there, waiting for him to do something else. The shirt she’s wearing is too big for her, and he realizes it has to be Canavan’s. Perfect. He looks at the tendons in her neck, her thin collarbone, the freckles on her skin. “You look good, you know,” he says. “You look good to me.”
“You look good to me, too, Jackie,” says Beth, rubbing at her forehead. “Even if you do look like shit.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Well, it’s true. Are you sleeping?”
“Some,” he says. He stares in at his toast. His face feels hot. “I’m not asking you to come back home here,” he tells her again. “You decided to leave, you decide to come back home.”
“I know that,” she says.
“I don’t want this to be over,” he says.
“It’s not over. And I don’t either.”
“You and Canavan,” he says.
“It isn’t like that.”
“How is it not like that?”
She flicks something off the countertop. She says, “You know what? I don’t have any idea what it’s like.”
“How long are you going to stay here?” he asks her.
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, what’s your plan?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“The dog misses you. He can’t figure out what the hell’s going on.”
She says, “Did you call the vet about getting his summer shave?”
“Yes,” he says, lying, trying to make a note to himself to actually remember to do that. “Next Wednesday.”
“What about the bug guys?”
“You come home, you can worry about bugs in the house.”
“I don’t like bugs.”
“Houses have bugs,” he says.
“Not this one.”
“Ours does,” he says.
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
He’d like very much for his toast to catch on fire in the toaster, give him some minor emergency he can take care of. Anything. Stand back, ma’am. “So you’re fucking him, then?” He hasn’t asked her this at the lunches.
“I really don’t feel like we need to talk about that right now.”
“In front of all their pictures of all their fabulous vacations? Their whole lives right here in eight by ten? Are you fucking him in here on his big blue sofa? Or just in the bedroom?”
“I said, Jack, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Does Rena know about this? Have you told her?”
“Have I told her? When would I do that?”
“At school,” Jack says. “You’d tell her at school.”
“She’s not teaching summer classes.”
“How about when you go over there to see her? Are you going over there to see her?”
“No,” she says. “Not right now.”
“Isn’t she going to wonder where you are?”
“Probably,” Beth says. “She probably is.”
“This just gets better,” he says. “Doesn’t it?” His toast does not catch fire. It pops up, and Jack eats it dry, like always. All he can hear is his own chewing. He needs to get out of here, get away from the sofa, from Beth in Canavan’s kitchen. He’s got to go to work. He refills his mug, picks up his other piece of toast. “I have to go,” he says. “I’m taking this mug with me.”
She looks at him like she feels sorry for him, and says, “Fine.”
“And I’m not fucking asking you to come home.”
“Fine,” she says.
“You stay over here for six fucking years if you want to,” he says.
“I’m not staying six years.”
“This isn’t right,” he tells her. He wipes toast crumbs off his face. “This is not right.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “But it has to be. For now, it has to be.” She looks at the floor. “I know it’s not fair, Jackie, but I don’t know what else to tell you.”
He could do things right here. He could club her over the head with a lamp, carry her unconscious body to the truck, drive her home and chain her to a tree in the back yard. Or he could beg her for something. He could make her some promises. He could lie and tell her he’s finished the tile floor. Instead, he steals the coffee mug, goes out the door without saying anything else to Beth, walks to the truck and climbs up into the driver’s seat and waits for Canavan to get out of the cab. Doesn’t say anything to him, doesn’t look at him. Just waits. This hasn’t quite been the victory lap he had in mind. Somewhere back there he fucked this up, he’s pretty sure. Somewhere back there he may have made things worse. Canavan gets down, and Jack starts the truck, drops it in gear a littl
e too quickly, lurches down the driveway. Canavan watches him go. Jack looks dead ahead. Hen looks dead ahead. He doesn’t open or close anything at all.
At PM&T, there is chaos. The line of cars is out to the highway, and there’s a little crowd of people standing at the office shed. Waiting to pay, probably, but it’s hard to tell. Jack parks the truck in front of the pile of crushed gravel and it’s only after he gets the brake kicked in that he sees what the problem is, why nobody’s doing much of anything: Butner and Ernesto have managed to roll one of the skid loaders over on its side. Full bucket, of course, so there’s half a yard of red-dyed pine washed out across the middle of the lot. Also, the loader looks like it’s leaking fuel. Butner and a kid who can’t be much out of high school are standing next to it, pointing at it and then back at what seems to be the kid’s truck, a Nissan pickup jacked about five feet up off the ground. Ernesto is tying lengths of chain off to the front bumper of the pickup, looping the other ends around the loader’s roof, around the bucket. Jack gets out and jogs over there.
“Jefe,” says Butner. He’s proud of picking up Spanish from Ernesto. Slow days on the yard, Butner will sit there with him asking what individual words are, one by one. Ernesto, what’s “help”? What’s “dump truck”? What’s “pussy”?
“Just tell me you didn’t hit anybody on the way down,” Jack says.
“It was Ernesto, actually.”
“Damnit, Butner, he’s not even on the insurance—”
“I know. But you weren’t here yet, and things started getting crazy.”
“There’s still no way you should have let him drive.”
“It wasn’t so much ‘let,’ ” says Butner, “as me talking him into it. We were pinched. I’m sorry.” He shrugs. “Anyway, this is Randy, my buddy’s little brother. He brought over the chain.” The kid reaches out his hand, and Jack shakes it.
“Thanks,” Jack says.
“No problem,” Randy says.
“How’s Ernesto?” Jack asks. “Is he OK?”
“Cut his arm some,” says Butner. “Cherry came out and patched him up.” Cherry works behind the counter at the Shell most days. “He went over real slow. And I had him strapped in there pretty good. I made sure. He couldn’t have done any real damage.”
“Other than crashing the skid,” Jack says.
“Yeah,” says Butner. “But we’ll have it back up in a second.” Randy drops his cigarette on the ground, grinds it out with his toe, then lights another one. He’s got what looks like a tattoo of a litter of kittens on his arm. Butner says, “Once we’ve got it all rigged up, Randy’ll just back up real slow until the thing sits up on its own. Shouldn’t be much.”
Ernesto finishes with the chain, comes over to stand with them. “I’m sorry about all of this, Jack,” he says. With his accent, it comes out Chack. Sometimes Jack wishes he had an accent, too.
“It’s Butner’s fault for putting you in there,” Jack says. “How’s your arm?”
Ernesto holds it out, some gauze and tape wrapped around it, a little blood seeping through in a couple of places. “It’s fine,” he says. “It really is.”
“You don’t need to get it looked at?”
“I think that would probably be a little much.”
From the line, someone honks a few times, and Butner waves at whoever it is. He always seems to know. He points at the overturned skid loader, holds up his hand. Five minutes. The guy honks again, two little taps. OK. Butner turns to Jack. “We should probably go on and do this,” he says. “You OK with that?”
“I guess so,” says Jack.
“Well, let’s try this thing,” he says, and then they’re all moving, Ernesto toward the office and Butner toward the chains and Randy up into his pickup, gunning the motor. Butner checks everything, gives him the thumbs-up. Jack backs up a few steps and the kid’s already going, easing the truck back, foot by foot, until he gets some tension in the chains. This is the kind of thing Hen would want to see up close, Jack’s pretty sure. He should bring him over here. “Hang on,” he says, and Butner holds his arm up in the air. Randy stops, holds where he is, waiting. Jack goes to get Hen.
“Good idea,” Butner yells to him.
“What?”
“Good idea,” Butner says, coming toward the dump truck.
Jack has no idea what he means. “Hendrick?”
“No, man, drive the truck over here. We’ll tie off to it on the other end. Keep the skid from flipping over the other way.”
“Oh,” says Jack. “Good.”
“Yeah. That’ll work, I think.” Butner sticks his hand in through the window to Hendrick, palm out, wanting a high five. “How’s the brains behind the operation?” he asks him. Hen doesn’t move. “No?” Still nothing. Butner rubs him on the head. “That’s OK,” he says.
“Hello,” Hendrick says.
“Hello,” Butner says.
“Hello and welcome to another edition of This Week in Baseball,” Hendrick says.
“Awesome,” says Butner. Then, to Jack, he says, “Come on, man, let’s get this show on the road. You got customers waiting.”
Jack drives the dump truck over near where the skid’s lying on the ground, puts it in gear and shuts it off. Butner ties one more length of chain from the skid to the dump truck, pulls on it to make sure it’s right, gives his sign, and Jack’s only barely able to get Hen out of the cab before Randy starts back again. He hangs onto Hendrick, and the skid drags along on its side a little bit before the chains start to pull it up, but pretty quickly it’s leaning up into the air, and Butner’s right next to it, checking everything, giving more hand signals, telling Randy to stop, stop or try a little more. The kid gasses the truck back in little leaps. Finally Butner tells him go, go, and the Nissan jerks back and the loader lifts up off the ground the rest of the way all at once, rocks upright, holds at the top of its arc for a second or two, and then starts heading over the other way. Hendrick reaches out into the air like he might be able to catch it. The chain running to the dump truck does it fine, though, like Butner said it would, goes taut as a wire, and then it snaps the bumper right off the front of the truck, a huge shearing bang. But it does stop the skid. It stays up on its wheels. The kid shuts off the Nissan, and the crowd over by the office claps. Hendrick covers his ears, squirms free of Jack, marches in place.
“Well, fuck me twice,” says Butner, looking at the bumper. “Tied the chain wrong. I did worry about that.”
“You did?” Jack asks.
“Yeah. I let it pop too hard. Should have stopped it right at the top. I thought we’d be OK.” He nudges the bent chrome bumper with his toe. “Shit.”
“Why didn’t you say something? What else broke? Do you think anything else broke?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Butner says, squatting down to inspect the damage. He sticks his head in underneath. “Minor. Cosmetic. This thing’s straight as an arrow otherwise. I’ll fix it this afternoon.” He picks up the bumper, sets it on the hood of the truck. “At least we’re back up and running.”
“I guess so,” says Jack. He’s not so sure.
“Seriously,” Butner says. “Good as new. This afternoon.” He points at something under one of the headlights. “Just need to weld a couple new bolts on there.” Randy gets down out of his pickup and Butner tries to give him some money, peeling tens off a reel of cash he pulls out of his pocket, but the kid shakes his head, laughs, starts unhooking the chains. Butner shrugs, gets in the dump truck, backs it out of the way. He tries the loader next, which, amazingly, cranks right up, and he drives that over to the side of the lot. A woman in a huge red duelie starts toward the pine bark, but Butner waves her off, holding up both hands. Wait, he mouths at her. He pulls a book of matches out of his pocket, gives Jack a quick grin to let him know what’s coming. Jack wraps his arms around Hen again, pulls him back. Butner strikes the match, tosses it into the puddle of fuel from the loader, and there’s fire five feet tall. Jack can feel the air being sucked
into it. Hen shrinks into him, away from the heat. They watch it flame out, smolder a little. Some of the spilled mulch is on fire. This all just dangerous as hell. If Beth had been here to see this, she’d have beaten him to death with the broken bumper. Hen’s talking into Jack’s arm, saying, It’s gonna be a scorcher, folks. He’s saying, Your local forecast is next. Weather on the ones. Butner starts waving to the woman in the red truck now, saying come on, come on, come on, and while she backs up against the mulch pile, he gets the loader going again, sending the bucket deep into the bark, coming back out with a full load, turning, tumbling it into the truck bed. It’s choreography. It’s air traffic control. It’s everything all at once.
Jack walks Hendrick over to the office and gets him set up—they’ve got a couch in there, a little mini-fridge, a radio Hen likes to play with. Ernesto’s ringing people up. Fifteen dollars. Fifty. Thirty-two. “Thank you so much,” he’s saying. “Please come and see us again tomorrow.” Hen watches him key in the prices, enthralled. He loves the register. Jack stands in the doorway, just out of the sun. Randy drives away, taps the horn on his way out. The lot smells like fire, like cedar, like fuel. Jack thinks about Canavan up in some tree, about Beth over there rinsing out her cereal bowl, her coffee mug. He wonders whether they’re taking showers together or one at a time. Out on the lot, Butner’s gotten hold of a guy in white slacks, is showing him the three kinds of compost they have. Jack turns to make sure Hen’s still watching Ernesto run the register, tries to clear his head, heads out onto the yard to help whoever’s next.
They go like hell all day. They’re selling everything on the lot. After her class, Beth takes Hen to lunch, drops him back off again. Where’d you eat? Jack asks her.
We just went to Mike’s, she says. We had sandwiches. He had most of a PB&J. He’ll need something later.
How was it? Jack asks Hen.
Right now, Hendrick says, a forty-year-old nonsmoker qualifies for a $500,000 life insurance policy from Colonial Penn for just $19 a month.