by Drew Perry
“Suit yourself,” Butner says, and takes it, takes her seat. He puts his left foot up on one arm of the chair, steadies the gun across his raised leg. He waits. He says, “Tell us more about the Eastern gray squirrel, little man.”
Hen says, “Eastern gray squirrels are the most frequently seen mammal in our area. They are members of the rodent family, and spend most of their lives in trees.”
“That kid’s like a computer or something,” Randy says.
“That was nothing,” Butner tells him. Ernesto says Bueno, hombre, and Jack reaches out to touch Hen, make sure he’s still real. The fruit is, of course, the acorn.
“You should tell them about your giant catfish,” Rena says to Jack.
“Your giant what?” asks Butner.
“Tell them,” she says.
“I bought a catfish,” Jack says. “I’m going to. Tomorrow. We found this putt-putt with all the animals for sale. So I’m buying them.”
“You are?” Butner asks.
“I am.”
“What the hell for?” Butner says.
“Is a catfish an animal?” Randy wants to know.
“A catfish is a fish,” Hen says.
“I’m pretty sure a catfish is an animal,” says Randy. Hendrick doesn’t say anything back to that.
“What are you planning on?” asks Butner. “Building him a putt-putt?”
“I don’t think so,” Jack says, waiting for whatever’s going to come out of Hen’s mouth next. “That seems like a lot.”
“You could put it here in the parking lot, man,” says Butner, looking around. “That would be sweet. A whole putt-putt. Give us something to do.”
“We have something to do,” Ernesto says.
“I don’t want to build a putt-putt,” says Jack.
“Why not?”
“That’s what went out of business in the first place.”
Butner sights the rifle back into the tomatoes. “You got me there, I guess,” he says.
Randy rolls up one sleeve, flexes his bicep, looks at it a while. He’s got a new-looking tattoo, the skin red around its edges. It’s a footprint. Butner holds one hand up for everybody to be quiet, goes very still. “I got one,” he whispers. He takes a long breath, lets it out. Hen puts his hands over his ears. This is either more or less crazy than anything else. Less, maybe. Butner fires, works the bolt, reloads, fires again. He makes a kind of whoop, gets up, lays the gun across the arms of the lawn chair and walks into the tomato patch, his feet crunching gravel down into the wet mud. Jack notices for the first time that they’ve used the skid steer to dig a shallow moat around the garden, pull some of the water away from it. It looks to be working pretty well. Butner leans over into the vines, then stands back up, holding what looks like a huge mouse. “Shit,” he says. “It’s a baby possum.” And then it comes back to life, and Butner jumps back, screams, drops it, and starts stomping it, his leg and foot hidden by the tomatoes. It had just been stunned. Or wounded. “Gross,” says Rena.
Randy and Ernesto are laughing, and Hen laughs too, along with them, but it’s a forced laugh. This is probably not the kind of thing Jack should let him watch, but he’s not sure what to do. There’s no way he’ll let him cover his eyes. Butner leans down into the vines again, picks up the possum, finds his way out of the tomatoes. He tosses the body into the Dumpster on his way back. He’s got his hand wrapped into his shirt, and he’s squeezing it. “Motherfucker fucking bit me,” he says, sitting back down.
“Gross,” Rena says again.
“It was a possum?” Jack asks, because somehow the taxonomy seems to matter.
“Yeah, I mean, I feel bad, but they’re no better, right?”
“They get big,” Randy says. “My brother says the problem with your average baby possum is that it grows up into a possum possum.” He leans over, looks at Butner’s hand. “You up on your shots?” he asks.
“They give dogs rabies shots,” Butner says. “Not people.”
“What do they give people?” asks Randy.
“Shots,” Ernesto says. “In the stomach.”
“You think that thing had rabies?” Butner asks. He squeezes his hand harder, then looks at it. “I’m fine,” he says. He picks up his beer, drinks it down in a few swallows, crushes the can and tosses it on the ground. “I’m still gonna be fine for playing putt-putt,” he says. “List me as day-to-day.”
“I’m not building a putt-putt,” Jack says.
“I think it’d work,” says Randy.
“Actually, I was thinking of building a racetrack,” Jack says. “For Hendrick.” He hasn’t been thinking that at all. It just comes out of his mouth.
“A what?” Butner asks.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something like a loop, maybe, for Big Wheels. Or bicycles. That kind of thing.”
“Oh,” Butner says. “Sure. I can see that.” He squats down next to Hendrick. “You think you’d like that, little man?”
Hen pops his lips together once, twice. He says, “I do not know if I would like that or not.”
“That’s fair,” Butner says. He looks at Jack. “Kid’s thinking it over,” he says. “He’s working shit out.”
“Working shit out,” says Hendrick.
“There you go, man,” Butner says. “There you go.”
Ernesto says, “Where would you build it?”
“In my yard,” Jack says. It’s coming to him all at once, like a kind of vision. It could be a sidewalk. He could pour Hen a sidewalk in the back yard, set in all the undersea creatures around that. There’s room back there. What kid wouldn’t like something like that?
“Your front yard?” Ernesto asks.
“No,” says Jack. “The back.”
“Yeah,” Randy says. “Front yard would be crazy.”
Butner picks the rifle up, clicks the safety on, sets it back down. He pulls on his chin. “Are we talking about like some kind of asphalt situation?”
Jack says, “What about concrete? Like a sidewalk?”
“Cool,” Butner says. “I know a guy we can call. Concrete guy. I’ll call him in the morning.”
“Hang on,” Jack says. “I didn’t say I was going to do it. All I said was I was thinking about it.”
“No man, you gotta do it,” Butner says. “It’s done. You gotta do it.”
“I like it,” Rena says.
“When are you going to get them?” Butner asks. “The putt-putt things?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll definitely call my buddy, then.”
“Just don’t commit to anything,” Jack says. “I need to think about this.”
“What’s there to think about?” Butner wants to know. “We could cut it in with the skid. In and out. Bang.”
“What’s that?” Randy asks, pointing into the tomato vines, and they all look. Ernesto takes the rifle. It’s his turn. Hen sits down on the ground in front of the pickup, and Yul Brynner slides out, puts his chin in Hen’s lap. Hendrick lays both his hands on the dog’s head. Jack goes and sits, too. The ground is wet. A few clouds are coming across the sky south to north, and the light seems half-finished, like there’s something not entirely right with it. Rena brings Jack a beer, brings a lawn chair over. Ernesto mutters something else, sights down the rifle, but then leans back, relaxes. Butner holds his bitten hand in his shirt. Rena says, under her breath, “A racetrack? Really?”
“Why not?” Jack says.
“No reason,” she says.
Butner points out into the garden, and Ernesto sights again, then shakes his head, rests the gun across his knees. Randy flexes his tattoo until Ernesto gives in and asks him about it. Randy gets all excited, rolls his sleeve up further, says, It’s my baby girl. Her footprint, from the hospital, you know? From the birth certificate? Randy seems nowhere near old enough to have a girl of any age. Jack works on what a sidewalk racetrack might look like, how it might operate. Bicycles, Big Wheels, tricycles. He’s going to need some tricycles. Red ones. A
catfish with an eye patch. Ernesto leans in to get a closer look at the footprint, says, When did you get it done?
Last week, the kid says. It was her second birthday. It hurt like hell, too. Ernesto picks the gun back up, aims once more into the tomatoes. They wait. They all wait.
FREE TRIP TO HEAVEN. DETAILS INSIDE. That’s what the sign says this morning out front of the Holy Redeemer, and Jack gives the metal building a half-salute as he drives by. Rena’s gone back to the condo to take care of one or two things. She stayed last night, but they slept in their clothes. Something’s lighter between them. She snored. Jack doesn’t even remember dreaming. He rolls his window down further and reaches around Hen, scratches Yul Brynner between the ears. The dog’s along for the ride. Seemed right to bring him.
Butner’s called him already, said the concrete guys could drop in the sidewalk in a day. In an afternoon, really, he said, man. One afternoon. Those guys are some fucking pros, I’ll tell you that.
How much? Jack wanted to know.
Guy owes me a favor. We’ll deal with the fine print later.
So there it is. His plan. Undersea creatures and a backyard sidewalk tricycle racetrack. For his son, who, if Jack’s going to be honest about all this, may never actually set foot on the thing. Bethany gave him a Batman Big Wheel for Christmas two years ago and all he ever did was move the adjustable seat up and back. Then again, it’s possible Hendrick might sketch out tensile strength schematics for the sidewalk on the back of a receipt by the time they get out to see Zel. Or just engage in some casual cocktail party conversation. No way of telling how it all might go.
At the lot, three orange NCDOT dump trucks are in line by the topsoil pile. One’s towing a huge bulldozer. Butner’s leaning against the fender of the lead truck, and Ernesto’s standing next to him. Four or five NCDOT guys are out there, standing around, tan NCDOT shirts stretched over their bellies, orange NCDOT baseball caps. Everything looks like it’s on the verge of being very official.
Butner waves Jack over. He’s looking a little less official, wearing a black T-shirt that says CHEVROGODDAMNLET. There’s a cartoon of an old Camaro giving a toothy snarl underneath the lettering. Maybe Jack ought to order them some PM&T shirts. That would look pretty sharp. American flags and an embroidered pile of pine bark. A tomato. A half-dead stomped baby possum. Butner says, “This is Jack Lang, our COO. Jack, these gentlemen would like to purchase some of our topsoil. I told them we could probably make them a deal.”
Ernesto takes Hendrick over to show him the big dozer, lifts him up into the cab. One of the NCDOT guys, a little skinnier than the others, holds his hand out, says, “Kenny Trimble. We’d like to take about forty yards.”
“Have we got forty yards?” Jack asks.
Butner doesn’t even look at the pile. “I said we’d give him what’s sitting here, see if we could take delivery off the farm this afternoon, and finish him up that way.”
Jack says, “Doesn’t the state normally—”
“They’re working off the clock today,” says Butner, cutting him off.
Kenny Trimble looks embarrassed. “We’re adding a turn lane back at 100,” he says. “And we’re a little stalled, waiting on more equipment. Road digger, paint guys, that sort of thing. They’re held up.” He nods back up the road. “But the Reverend down at the church there said if we’d scrape his property and put topsoil down, he’d pay five grand.”
“What, at the Redeemer?” Jack says. “We’d have done it for that.”
“They’ve got the heavy machinery,” Butner says, meaning the bulldozer. Hendrick looks tiny up there in the huge seat, surrounded by yellow caging and levers. The bulldozer’s blade gleams along the edge where it’s been cut clean of paint. It’s at least five times as big as either of their skid steers, makes them look like toys sitting there by the mulch. “I went on and quoted them fifty a yard,” Butner says, letting a little smile show.
“Fifty?” Jack looks over at the office door. Butner’s taken down the sign advertising their per-yard prices. They charge twenty-four for topsoil.
“They’re willing to pay a premium for our discretion.”
“We’d ask you to keep it fairly quiet,” Kenny says. “Not sure the home office would understand. But we’d just be sitting idle all morning otherwise.”
“It’s kind of a win-win,” Butner says.
Jack squints at the Holy Redeemer. The lot out front is nothing but scrub, clay showing through the weeds in spots. It would take him days to do it with their little skid. It’ll take these guys a morning. He does some quick math. Twenty-six extra dollars per yard times forty yards is right at a thousand over and above what they’d normally get. A mortgage payment. The cost of the undersea creatures. He looks a while at the bulldozer trailer. He says, “Would that trailer hook up to our truck?”
Kenny eyes the hitch on Jack’s bumper. “It’d hook on,” he says. “You need it?”
“How about I give you forty yards at forty-five, and borrow your trailer for the morning? After you get the bulldozer off it down at the church?”
Kenny looks at the rest of the NCDOT guys, and there’s a round of shrugging. Butner says, “We were fine at fifty, I think, boss man.”
“I need the trailer,” Jack tells him.
“What for?”
“For the undersea creatures,” Hendrick says, from the cab of the bulldozer. Jack looks up there, at his son, who’s cataloguing the world.
“Oh, shit,” Butner says. “I got a trailer for that.”
“What’s it for?” Kenny wants to know.
“Oversized animals,” Jack says. “Fiberglass. Big.”
“How big?” Butner asks.
“Big,” Jack says. “Like that trailer big. They’re like putt-putt elephants, only they’re fish. There’s an octopus, too. And a shrimp. I bought them yesterday,” he tells Kenny. “Or I agreed to, anyway.”
“OK,” Kenny says, looking at him like he might need medication.
“You really think we need a trailer this big?” Butner asks.
“I’m gonna put them in my back yard,” Jack tells Kenny. “Around a racetrack. A sidewalk. For my son.” He points up at Hen in the bulldozer. As he explains this to Kenny Trimble of the NCDOT, he starts to get an idea of what it’ll be like to explain it to Beth. Or anybody who’s not Butner or Ernesto. Or Rena.
“I got it,” Kenny Trimble says. “You want a putt-putt in your yard.”
“Kind of,” Jack says.
“That’s cool,” says Kenny. “I got a daughter. I bet she’d like something like that.”
“Bring her by,” Jack says, feeling friendly. “You guys going to be out here tomorrow?”
“She lives in Wilmington. With her mom.”
“Oh,” he says. “Well, if she’s ever in town—”
Butner pulls them back toward the deal. “OK, fellas. Forty-five and the trailer and we’re all good, right? We’re agreed?”
Kenny nods, picks at his palm. “If we take it back up to fifty,” he says, “could we use one of your small skids to get into the corners, up around the building, places like that?”
“Absolutely,” Butner says. He’s got his deal back.
Jack says, “Let me call my guy before we go too much further. We might be able to get you forty yards dropped down there this morning. That way you could get the whole thing at once.”
“Sounds good,” Kenny says.
“Great.” Jack walks over to the office, and Butner follows him. The NCDOT guys huddle around the front of their dump truck. Ernesto gets Hen down out of the bulldozer and they head for the office, too.
“Is all this above-board?” Jack asks Butner, once they’re inside.
“Sure, man. They pocket three grand and we get one. They’d just be sitting on their asses all morning otherwise. Everybody wins.”
“But you’re sure it’s not illegal?”
“I mean, it’s probably not legal. But I wouldn’t call it illegal. They do a job, they get pa
id. And we get paid. Your tax dollars at work for you. Think of it like a refund.”
“A refund,” Jack says.
“Yeah,” Butner says. He tosses the phone to Ernesto, so he can call the soil guy. “See if he can bring us a full truck,” he tells him. “That way he can dump forty down there for the government, and fill us up here while he’s at it.” Ernesto starts punching numbers in, steps outside to make the call. Butner opens the fridge, gets himself a beer. “You want one?” he asks Jack.
“It’s nine in the morning.”
“Five o’clock somewhere. You want one?”
“No,” Jack says. Then he says, “Sure.” Why the hell not: This has got to be the day for it.
Butner grins, hands his over, gets himself another. He makes a little show out of sitting up on the desk and popping it open. “So,” he says.
“So.”
“What is it that’s going on in your life, boss man, where you’ve ended up with a giant mini-golf catfish?”
“Nothing,” he tells him. “We were just at this putt-putt yesterday—”
“You and Fucknut’s girlfriend.”
“Fucknut,” Hen says.
“—and I saw them, and I liked them.”
Butner takes a long swallow, says, “You belong on TV or something, don’t you?”
“Probably,” Jack says. He drinks his beer. It tastes like he’s drinking beer at nine in the morning.
“I’m impressed.”
“Thanks.”
“This racetrack, though,” Butner says. “That’s good. That’s the best of all of it.”
Jack says, “You’re going to help, right?”
“I’m your fucking project manager, my man. I called my guy. He’ll be ready about noon. We’ll go get your figurines, come back and pick up the other skid to carve the sidewalk in with, close up shop for the afternoon, and we’ll have the whole thing in by tonight.”
“Really?”
“Really. These guys drop in sidewalks in their sleep.”
“OK,” Jack says.
“Just make sure you really do want to do it before we do it. Easier to put a sidewalk in than take one out. Those fuckers get heavy.”