by Drew Perry
The TV was on, Beth says. She frowns, looks around the lot, watches Butner toss bales of pine straw into a truck. I guess I better get back, she says. Be careful, OK?
We always are, Jack says, and she drives away before either of them can say anything that matters. Midafternoon, a landscaper who comes in two or three times a month to do business specifically with Ernesto buys every rose they’ve got, twenty-two plants. Four hundred dollars right there. A couple buys a boulder that’s been out front for a year and a half. Somebody even buys the lighthouse he and Butner had a bet about. Five feet tall, wooden, black and white barber pole stripes, electric lights inside. Meant to go in your front yard. Jack doesn’t know why. An old German guy from McLeansville showed up one day asking them if they’d buy it for $75. Jack said no, but told him if he left it on the lot he’d try to get $100 for it. Like a consignment. He felt bad for him. Butner laughed and laughed. A hundred dollars, he said, over and over. A hundred goddamn dollars. That motherfucker will be sitting right there when you die. And it was a young guy, standing in front of it toward the end of the day, frowning, looking a little desperate: Well, he said, I guess this is what she was talking about, and bought it. A hundred, cash. Butner stood in the shed and stared. Ernesto hit the cash register bell several times after the guy was off the lot and down the highway, the lighthouse sticking out the back of his trunk like the head of some dead animal.
Hendrick’s been happy all afternoon, easy, even, spending his time running between the rows of plants and shrubs, arms outstretched like a plane. He doesn’t look sick at all, Ernesto said. Hen rode with Ernesto on a couple of late-day deliveries. Jack stood on the lot, watched the truck pull out onto 70, Ernesto’s left arm hanging out the driver’s side, Hen’s arm poking out the other window, tiny, pale. Then they’d come back, Ernesto grinning away and Hendrick serious, concentrating on riding, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
Six o’clock. Jack flips the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. Hen gets up immediately from the sofa and flips it back, then takes it down and starts playing with the WILL BE BACK AT clock arms on the CLOSED side, spinning them around and around. Butner drives both loaders to the back of the yard, parks them up against the mulch piles, walks over to the Shell station. Jack gets a cottage cheese from the fridge for Hendrick, locks the shed, and he takes Hen, his catalog and the OPEN CLOSED sign in hand, back to the greenhouse. They keep a few lawn chairs back there. Jack’s got nowhere to be, feels like sitting a while. Hen eats his cottage cheese in a hurry, carries the container and the plastic spoon over to a trash can, carefully drops everything in. When Butner comes back, he’s got a six-pack with him. He tosses a beer to Jack and another to Ernesto, who’s coiling up the hose against the side of the greenhouse. Ernesto pitches his back. “I can’t,” he says. “I need to go home.”
“You sure?”
“I am,” he says. He turns to Jack. “Nine o’clock tomorrow?”
“Good enough,” Jack says.
“I’m sorry about the loader. It won’t happen again.”
“No problemo,” Jack says, careful not to use any accent. Ernesto thinks the way he massacres Spanish is hilarious. He walks away, smiling, calling them gringos.
“Same to you, Paco,” Butner calls, and from his car, a little silver Toyota, Ernesto flicks them both off, then waves, the bandage on his arm a white flag.
“Don’t let him drive the skid any more,” Jack says to Butner, once he’s gone.
“Yeah.”
“I mean, something happens, nobody would ever insure us again.” Butner nods. Jack knows he’s not telling him anything he doesn’t know. “At least get him out here some Sunday and teach him not to turn it around with the bucket up,” he says. “Do that, and I’ll add him to the insurance.”
“OK,” says Butner. “Will do.”
A helicopter flies over, low, headed in the direction of the interstate. “Big day,” Jack says, once it passes and it’s quiet again. “We lit the lot on fire.”
“Only for a second,” Butner says. “And anyway, we had to clean it up somehow.” He scratches his arm. “I’m not gonna kill us, boss man,” he says. “Or anybody else. Don’t worry.”
“Fair enough,” says Jack. “I’ll try not to.”
They sit and drink and slow their clocks back down and the beer tastes good, cheap and cold. Jack works on enjoying himself, on relaxing. It feels like forever ago that he was in Canavan’s driveway. Like it might not have happened, even. Like he might just wake up out of this and find Beth at home, complaining about the kitchen wall. Hendrick’s doing something with the black plastic pots Jack’s been saving to start a few seeds and saplings in. He’s got them lined up in a long half-circle, keeps going back to adjust the middle ones. It’s a calendar, maybe, or a way to make contact with aliens. “I was surprised the loader still ran,” Jack says. “Once we got it back up, I mean.”
“Yeah, but it was running rougher. Something’s probably knocked loose. I’ll tear it apart some time next week and make sure all the hoses and wires are still good.”
“When you do the bumper,” Jack says. It’s leaning against the office now.
“When I do the bumper,” Butner says. “Sorry again, man.”
“It’s OK.” Jack eyes the dump truck. They were too busy to get a chance to fix it, but he’s actually starting to like the look of it like that.
“I’ll get it fixed,” Butner says. “I’ll get it back on there.”
“No problemo,” Jack says again, flicking the pop tab on his beer can.
Butner runs an auto body on the side, nothing official, just cash under the table from his friends and their friends. He’s been saying he wants to do the dump truck, front to back, if Jack will let him. Says he wants to hammer all the dents out, repaint it. Jack’s not convinced, not sure he doesn’t like all the bangs and scratches, which is why the missing bumper’s been growing on him. He’s always liked that the doors are rusting out at the bottoms. Thinks it gives everything an air of authenticity. Beth says that’s because he likes pretending he’s some kind of cowboy, rolls her eyes at him, drives off to work or to the store in the wagon, safe and sound in all weathers.
A huge tractor pulls up to the diesel pump at the Shell. Jack and Butner raise their beers and the farmer waves, gets down, runs the pump hose into the top of the engine. “We ought to get ourselves something like that,” says Butner. “We could take out all these pines back here and disk in an acre of tomatoes.”
“We need something else to do,” Jack says.
“I bet that thing cost a hundred grand.”
“You think?”
“Easy.”
Hen looks up from his pots—he loves trucks, trains, bulldozers, anything big and motorized—and watches while the guy fills up. When the tractor pulls back out again, flashers behind the driver’s seat blinking away and the big engine rumbling, Hen goes back to his project.
“Hey, Hen,” Butner says. “Hendrick.” Hen looks up. “What’s that you’re up to over there?”
Hen says, clear as anything, “It’s buckets.”
“Oh,” Butner says.
“It’s buckets,” he says again, and then starts working his way through the tags for each of the radio stations he knows. B 98.3, the Triad’s Oldies Station. 100.7 The Jackal, with Rob and Red in the Morning. Country 104, Your Home for Today’s Best Country Hits. Be caller one-oh-four and you’re on your way to see Faith Hill at the sold-out Philips Amphitheater.
Butner pretends to dial the station on his open palm, but Hendrick keeps right on going. 105.5, The Hammer. “Damn,” Butner says. “I never win those things.”
Hen gets up, picks up a piece of a pole from what will be the second greenhouse whenever Jack can get the time to build the thing, and starts walking the back wooden wall of the mulch bays, hitting each post a set number of times. A lot of times. Seventeen, eighteen. Butner watches him go. “He never stops, does he?” he says.
The sun’s dropped behind t
he trees across the street, and it’s coming through the branches like glass. “Not really,” Jack says.
Butner shifts in his chair, opens a new beer for each of them. “You know,” he says, after a while, “I guess I don’t care what she told you. For my money, there’s not enough excuses in the world for her to have moved in with Fucknut.” Fucknut’s what he’s been calling Canavan since Jack told him.
“I know,” Jack says.
“Do you?”
“I went over there this morning,” he tells him.
“What in hell for?”
“I was going to drop Hen off with her for the day. I figured we’d be so busy over here. But I changed my mind.”
“Hell yeah, you did. Fuck busy, man. You bring him here every goddamn day for the rest of your life if you want to.”
Jack’s not sure he needs Butner’s permission, but he appreciates it anyway. “Thanks,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” Butner leans forward. “Now. How about we finish this beer and go sugar that motherfucker’s tanks? Make you feel better.”
Jack likes the thought of Canavan’s three or four green trucks sitting dead on his lot. “Let’s set them on fire,” he says.
“Arson’ll put you in jail too long,” Butner says. “That’s an actual crime. Vandalism’s better.”
“Useless anyway,” says Jack. “While I was standing there this morning he bid out a job that’ll give us fifty yards of pine.”
“You’re not gonna cut him loose?” Hendrick comes back down the row of bays, moving faster, hitting the posts fewer times. One two three four five.
“He’s not even mine to cut loose any more, is he? Half of the log splitter’s his, and half the chipper. He brings in too much business.” People call in and ask if Jack can do a job, limb a tree back, and he says no, that’s not what he does. But I’ve got a guy who can, he tells them, farms the jobs back out through his regular commercial customers. Ten percent cut. Everybody happy all the time.
“I still think we ought to do some damage,” Butner says.
Jack watches Hendrick, who’s added a few taps on his own knee-cap to his routine. “She looked good this morning,” he says. “Over there, in his house. And today, when she came to get him.”
“I always did think you’d done well for yourself there.”
“Oh, yeah. Just perfect.”
“She’ll be back, boss man. And you know what? If she doesn’t come back, then just fuck all the bitches.”
Jack looks at him. “That’s your philosophy?”
“That,” he says, taking a deep breath, “is my philosophy.” He nods, agreeing with himself, it looks like. “Listen,” he says. “Rachel’s making pork chops tonight. Y’all are both welcome if you’d like. I can just call ahead and tell her to make more.”
Jack thinks about that, considers becoming a refugee in Butner’s house for the evening. Thinks about sitting out in his garage with him after dinner while he sands down the fiberglass fenders on whatever he’s working on now, Hendrick asleep across the dump truck’s bench seat. Butner could tell his stories about all the pussy I got in high school, and Jack could sit there and imagine a younger, skinnier Butner choosing which of the girls he would backseat that weekend. But it’s a little too much for him, the idea of having to make conversation with Butner and Rachel and the kids at the supper table, the three little Butners knocking their sodas over into their food all night. “Thanks,” he says, “but I should probably just get Hen home, get him fed, get him to sleep.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” Jack says. “But thanks.”
“Offer’s good any time,” Butner says.
Jack goes to corral Hen. “I’ll just see you tomorrow,” he says.
“Not if I don’t see your ass first.” Butner drains off most of the rest of his beer, folds up both chairs, leans them against the greenhouse, and they walk back around to the front of the yard. There’s a couple standing next to a Lincoln, looking at the compost. Jack didn’t hear them come in. “We’ll be open tomorrow morning,” Butner tells them.
The woman says, “How much for your dirt?”
“Thirty-eight a yard,” Butner says. “Best you’ll find. We compost it ourselves. Nightcrawlers all through it. You could make a stick grow in that shit.” It’s thirty a yard, not thirty-eight, but Jack doesn’t say anything. “How much you need?” Butner asks. “How many yards?”
“Do you guys deliver?” asks the man, older, gray at the temples.
“We absolutely do,” Butner says. “Forty dollar fee.” It’s twenty-five. Jack gets Hen squared away in the truck, belts him in, starts it up, taps the horn, pulls out onto the highway, and stops at the light. In the rearview mirror, he watches Butner lead the couple from one pile of mulch to the next, and then over toward the plants, closing down another deal. The light changes and Jack heads for home, to check to see if the suitcases are still in the closet.
He’s been thinking about being the kind of person who owns two houses. Because what he is now is a card-carrying member of the aristocracy. He explains this to Hendrick, who says Aristophanes, Aristophanes. No, Jack tells him. Go back a few entries. Evenings, he’ll stand on his front porch, look out over his yard, at his house across the street. That it’s his doesn’t really feel real. He keeps waiting for someone to move in over there, U-haul half in the driveway and half on the lawn, rugs and lamps going in through the front door. Instead, it just sits there. His. He’s owned it seven weeks and done nothing to it except to empty it some, to bring the dump truck home a couple weekends, fill it with shit from the garage or the attic, take it all away. Everything that didn’t get auctioned got left behind. Yours to keep, the auction people told him. Like it was a prize. He finds himself now the owner of the world’s worst yard sale and ammunition dump. He’s still turning up shotgun shells everywhere.
The mortgage payments will add up soon enough. He knows he ought to be more worried about that. He can go a few months, but the math isn’t complicated. This is not money they have. He’s got to get that thing on the market. Get it cleaned up, get a sign in the yard, get it sold, show her the thirty thousand. It’s still a good bet. It’s still easy money. Even if he does nothing to it, he can get what he paid for it, probably more. But for right now, anyway, more than a little part of him is starting to like having two front porches to choose from. He likes the mirror image across the street. Likes surveying his lands. Beth, of course, does not like it, does not like that he likes it, has decided to survey Canavan’s house, has decided to survey Canavan.
Nights: Jack works on getting pissed off, which he can manage easily enough, but then he gets lonely, which only pisses him off in new ways. He feeds Hen, works his way through the evening routines. He tries to get everything right, tries to leave Hen’s bedroom door open the requisite five inches, tries to leave the radio on at the exact correct sanctioned volume, drives to three separate stores to find the right shape of bulb to replace the burned-out nightlight. Without Bethany’s help, it’s three times the work. Once Jack does get him down, once they’ve taken one last lap through the house, Hen knocking twice on the top of every faucet with his toothbrush—including the water shutoffs under each sink and toilet, and the emergency hot water runoff in the closet by the water heater, each recently discovered and thus toothbrush-knockable—after all that, once he’s got him down and sleeping, that’s when it’s been getting worse. That’s when he looks out the window. That’s when the house goes dead damn quiet.
He’s been sneaking out the front door and going across the street to stand in the dust and wallpaper and shotgun shells and look at the empty rooms. Or he’ll stand in the garage, depot for everything left over, staring at open boxes of wire shelving and kicking at the pedals on a broken exercise bike. Or he’ll sit on the front steps over there and watch his own front door back across the street, waiting for it to open up, waiting for Hen to stand in it, screaming. Or silent. He’ll crack a beer open—he’s keeping bee
r in an ancient fridge he moved from the garage into the kitchen—and tell himself one more time that she’ll be back soon enough, that she’ll be the one apologizing.
School’s been out two weeks, which means he’s been sitting out there and listening to the high school girls down the street giggle in the dark in their tiny jean shorts and call each other endlessly on their cell phones and their cell phone walkie-talkies. Their friends pull up in their parents’ minivans and play music until someone from inside the house tells them to turn it down, shut it off. Then they all talk on their phones about how this is bullshit, this is complete shit, and they pile into the van and head for someone else’s house, somewhere they can play their music as loud as they want. Jack tends to go back across the street after that, turn the 10:30 ball game on, and make himself a drink, maybe two, watch the thing on mute. He loves a game he doesn’t have to care about, loves watching the Royals at the Mariners, San Diego at Arizona. Pull for whoever’s behind. And then it’s 12:30, 1:00, and he’s a little soft around the edges from the booze, and he goes to bed because he’s got to be up by 7:30, because that’s when Hen wakes up. If it’s not anything else, he thinks, lying in bed in the white wash and roar of the attic fan, it’s a routine.
When he was four, what Hendrick loved above all else were the Dodge Truckville commercials. It’s better in Truckville. Grab Life by the Horns. When one came on, he’d stand directly in front of the set, touching the screen, singing along with every note of the jingle. Jack and Beth made it a game, invented a whole other life for themselves out there in Truckville. An alternate existence. Jack spent his days loading I-beams into the back of his one-ton, baling hay, calving, standing around at sunset in a flannel shirt and pointing out sections of the fenceline they’d have to mend tomorrow. Beth, in her half of the dream, drove the kids to wherever Truckville kids went in their new Dodge Yeti, leather seats and leather cupholders and a full-size movie screen that rolled out of the ceiling. Then she’d come back home to chink the cracks of the log cabin they built themselves from trees they cut down with a saw they blacksmithed in the shop out back.