Jim had been transferred to the Decker Quality Foods plant here a month ago, with a big wave of new crewmembers. The assignment was lucrative, but temporary. Just this afternoon, another new batch of transplants had arrived. Friendly chaps from the Midwest. It had all put Jim in a really foul mood. These guys weren’t like him. These guys were saving up to put a kid through college, and arrived with a wallet full of photographs. These were the kind of guys who found that airport greeter charming. These guys couldn’t wait for the assignment to end so they could get back home. Jim didn’t have a clue what he’d do when his contract ran out. He’d burned all his bridges prior to landing this job, didn’t even know of a single couch he could crash on if it came to that.
The welcome dinner, a catered event in the basement cafeteria of the Decker Quality Foods plant, was served on plastic beneath fluorescent lights. The open bar was beer and wine only. The General Manager talked about teamwork and punctuality and he did a demonstration with the new safety goggles, showed how to adjust the grip to your head size.
Following the dinner, Jim found himself at the High Horse with a few whiskeys boiling in his stomach and another one on the bar before him. The rest of the Decker Food guys typically went out drinking to The Crystal, where they served all the local beers on draft. This is where the nursing students tended to hang out, where they did salsa nights, and karaoke on Thursdays.
Jim preferred the High Horse, a dark little haunt that smelled like grease and damp wood and poor plumbing. There were seldom more than half a dozen guys at the High Horse, and they all drank liquor, straight. Also, Jim was the only one who ever expressed a preference for the television channel, so he got to watch his hometown Buffalo Bills whenever there was a game. The bartender was a guy with a wolfish face and gray beard, and he didn’t care to exchange any more words with the patrons than what was absolutely necessary for the transaction.
Jim was scowling at a commercial on TV advertising “no money down” for a brand-new Toyota Camry at the local dealership, when a guy leaned over the stool next to him, resting his elbows on it, and said, “You mind?”
Jim nodded toward the seat. “All yours.”
Jim recognized the guy—they’d met earlier in the evening, at the welcome dinner. This guy had said that he was another transplant from the Dunkirk plant in New York, although Jim couldn’t recall that they had ever crossed paths back there. The guy was tall and barrel-chested, seemed shy and pleasant enough, had a deep, earthy voice, and wore a handsome red flannel buttoned high. Long ponytail beneath a black, gambler-style cowboy hat. His face was weathered but handsome—strong angles, dark complexion, eyes that were either all iris or all pupil, and Jim guessed that he was Native American.
Earlier at the welcome dinner, they had stood next to one another at the bar. The guy had ordered an O’Doul’s, and Jim had commented on it—said that he ought to be doing the same.
Now the guy settled into the stool next to Jim’s, reached across the bar for a laminated menu stuck into the side of the condiment compartment tray, and stared at it. He put the menu back in its sleeve and tapped his right index finger slowly on the bar. When the bartender came over, the guy ordered coffee and a chicken-fried steak.
Jim said, “Didn’t get enough slop at that company gig?”
“Didn’t care too much for it.”
“Me either,” Jim said. “I’ll be curious to know what you think of that chicken-fried steak. You know, I been in this town a month and have yet to get a decent meal. You believe they used to call this town the ‘richest hill on earth’?”
The guy raised his eyebrows noncommittally Jim shoved his empty whiskey glass back toward the bar. “This is for sleepin’ purposes,” he explained to the guy, after ordering another.
The guy’s coffee arrived and he opened a creamer into it, stirred slowly with the sharp end of a butter knife.
Jim was drunk and feeling uncharacteristically chatty. He liked this guy. He said, “You got family?”
The guy shook his head. “You?”
“Not particularly,” said Jim. “Although . . .” He held his fresh whiskey in front of his eyes, tipped it back and forth and examined the oil-like patterns of gold swirling up and down the side of the glass, the slow disintegration of the ice, the subtle change in the drink’s color. Two rocks, that’s how he liked it, and they seldom melted in the time it took him to finish a drink. “I’ve got a kid.”
They watched the TV in silence for a while.
The bartender appeared with the guy’s chicken-fried steak and set it in front of him. Then, he handed him a bottle of ketchup and a steak knife wrapped in a paper napkin. The guy put the paper napkin on his knee and sawed into the steak. The steak was reddish and roughly textured, like a chunk off the planet Mars, and beside it were home fries that gleamed with grease and were speckled with dried herbs and black char.
“My kid’s thirteen now,” Jim offered. “Almost a man. Been raised by some other guy, a real piece of work, this guy.” Jim shook his head. “Thing is, I can’t even blame this other guy too much. I messed it all up before he even hit the scene—messed it up with his mom first, and then after we split, with my kid too.”
Jim blinked, feeling this betrayal fresh and achy, like unexpected pressure on a deep bruise.
He watched the guy saw into the steak.
“Anyway,” Jim said. “Kids don’t forget some stuff.”
Jim thought back to the last camping trip that he and his son had attempted, to Cattaraugus Creek on Labor Day weekend, following Jim and Laura’s recent separation.
Jim and Charlie had arrived midmorning, pitched the tent, and fished for several hours. Jim explained to his son that Cattaraugus meant “foul-smelling river,” and it was given the name because of the natural gases it oozed, but, he said, the smell wasn’t too bad this time of year. Charlie disagreed. He said it smelled like a skunk’s butt. After lunch and a nap, Charlie was ready to go home, but Jim informed him that this was not in the plans. Jim had already made all the arrangements to spend two days and two nights on the river. He had packed enough food and bait, a few games and a stack of books for Charlie, some special sugary snacks.
They fished for another hour or two in the afternoon, then fought before dinner, as Jim started to make preparations for the night. Charlie was sunburned and had a patch of poison oak on his wrist. He asked Jim to take him home rather than camp out for the night, and when Jim dismissed this suggestion, Charlie whined like a toddler. He said he wished he was back home with his mother and Kevin, didn’t understand why he had to be on this vacation with his father rather than playing video games on Kevin’s entertainment center. Jim became very angry. He threw a shoe into the ground so it bounced like a ball, and cursed through his lips.
Then he calmed down a bit and told Charlie to go rinse off his feet and entertain himself by the creek while he prepared the fire to roast their hotdogs and fashioned a clothing line for their swim trunks.
When it was time to go to bed, Charlie once again begged his father to take him home, claiming that he was afraid of the dark. He told Jim that, at home, he slept with the overhead light on. He said he hadn’t wanted to confess earlier, because he didn’t want his father to think him a coward, but the dark did something to him, he explained. Monsters in his head.
Jim had quickly pulled out both flashlights and propped them up in the corners of the tent so that it was very light inside. “No more dark,” he said to Charlie. “Capiche?”
Charlie shook his head and pointed his thumb in the direction of the tent opening. “I know it’s still out there,” he said.
“What?” His father said, with exasperation. “What now, Charlie? And out where?”
Charlie said, “It’s dark out there.”
Jim became angry once again, certain that Charlie was not in fact afraid of the dark but simply inventing an excuse to go home early, even as Charlie continued to insist that this wasn’t the case.
“I don’t bel
ieve you,” Jim said. “I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth.”
Charlie was inconsolable.
Furiously, Jim collapsed their tent, packed their things, and drove Charlie home.
Laura married Kevin the following summer, when Charlie was seven.
Laura didn’t like how much Jim was drinking, and she took that up with the court. Weekends with Charlie became Friday nights only, then just a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. Their time together was so short and so weird that Jim often felt even more disconnected from his son after a visit than he had before. It killed him to hear Charlie talk about his new home at Kevin’s; all the things he did there, all the things he had. Kevin could give Charlie anything, it seemed.
Jim eventually lost his job at Kia. He wasn’t sleeping, and seldom made it in by nine o’clock, when technically his shift started at eight. Not like it mattered that much, anyway, he thought. He was no good at sales, so they had already demoted him to inventory and maintenance. Twice, they caught him drinking. They gave him warnings; HR knew he was going through some tough times and they extended an extra measure of compassion, but he pushed them too far. Still, they all agreed that Jim was not a bad guy, and they wished him well. They offered him a good reference, and helped out with his paperwork so he was able to collect unemployment for a few months. Like clockwork, Jim took his unemployment money to the liquor store and then to the Seneca Casino on the very day he received it. He’d spend it all by midnight. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to wake in the morning without a crippling hangover. The grace period for unemployment ran out, and he was looking at bankruptcy. He started filling out applications for everything from plumbing to a Subway sandwich artist. A buddy got Jim a job in maintenance for Decker Quality Foods, out of nearby Dunkirk, New York. He did this for a few years before they transferred him to Butte, Montana, where they were opening a new plant. Jim left willingly, signing a one-year contract. It was more money, and he barely saw Charlie anyway. He needed a change of scene.
Jim drummed his fingers briskly on the bar in this new town, this new scene. “I try not to think on it too much,” he said to the stranger. “That’s where this comes in.” He tapped his finger on his whiskey glass. “Can’t sleep without turning it all off, then I wake up thirsty for the next one.”
The guy sipped his coffee and went back to his steak. He was hacking at the thing like it was a leather jacket.
“How is it?” Jim said.
“Steak’s shit,” the guy said, “But the potatoes aren’t half bad.”
“How long you been sober?” Jim said, and he added, “If you don’t mind.”
“Not long enough.”
“It gets easier, does it?” Jim said. “You quit waking up thirsty for the next one?”
“Nah,” said the guy. He set down his silverware, wiped his face, and sipped his coffee. “You never quit being thirsty for it, you just get used to the thirst.”
“Well,” Jim said. “That’s a sad state of affairs.” He dug a thumbnail into a knot on the wooden bar. Scratched at its black center. “Pickin’ up out there,” Jim added, nodding toward the window behind the bar, where raindrops exploded against the glass.
Reminded of his divorce, Jim’s thoughts now turned to the woman responsible for it. In the moment when they met, the feeling of an unfamiliar hand on his leg seemed like the most impressive thing that had happened to him in years. The Bills game was on the bar television, and she’d said her granddad used to play in the NFL. Jim had never heard of the guy, but he was impressed with her knowledge of the team. Her eyes were the color of black coffee. There was something soft and vulnerable but also brave and dangerous about how easily, how quickly and carelessly, she revealed herself. Like she hadn’t been taught to do otherwise, like she didn’t know that the world was mean. Or maybe she’d just come to terms with it. She didn’t seem upset when Jim had called to inform her that Laura had found out and that he wouldn’t be calling again. She didn’t seem very surprised. Her TV was on in the background.
Jim swallowed some whiskey. He was very drunk now. He’d have to walk home in the rain, leave his car in the company lot. Might as well have one more. He polished off the small, slippery pills of ice remaining in his glass and the last of the watered-down whiskey.
“Whattya reckon’s worse . . .” Jim said, turning to face the guy. “Telling a lie, or not believing a truth?”
The guy didn’t respond right away. He emptied another creamer into his coffee.
“I’m guilty of both, of course,” Jim offered quickly.
“Suppose . . .” the guy finally spoke but then paused for another moment, a forkful of steak suspended in midair, near his lips. “Suppose that depends on who you’re lying to, and what you’re choosing not to believe.”
“There you are,” Jim said. He didn’t dislike that answer, but he felt intensely empty and pessimistic.
“You know what I’d give just about anything for?” Jim said.
“Hm?” The guy speared another large bite of steak, dipped it in ketchup, lifted it to his mouth. Rain struck the window behind the bar in a gusty burst.
Jim tapped his empty glass when the bartender passed, indicating that he’d like another. “I’d give just about anything to wake up one day into a whole different life,” he said.
The guy chewed his steak, deposited a fatty bit into his napkin, and swallowed. “Then I guess you gotta die, brother.”
CASH FOR GOLD
Marty had an oily brown bag full of donuts from the truck that sat outside the IGA on Saturday mornings, and a tall black coffee from his friend Randall Bear’s EZ Mart. It was very cold outside, and very warm in his sunny car. He was heading north.
Ten days earlier, Marty had received the awaited phone call from his doctor. Marty was sitting in his La-Z-Boy when he took this call, and he could tell from the tone of his doctor’s voice that he’d better sit back and make himself as comfortable as possible for the news that was to come. He yanked on the wooden handle at his right side to elevate the footrest of his chair, and reclined back. Staring upward, Marty watched a stinkbug as it traveled very slowly in the direction of the ceiling light fixture. He kicked his slippers off his feet.
The cancer had spread, Dr. Vann announced. The growth in his stomach was now the size of a fist, and there were new spots on Marty’s liver. None of the attempted treatments had slowed the spread of the cancer, and they had run out of options, even experimental ones. Dr. Vann carefully explained that his recommendation, therefore, was to forego further treatments, so that Marty could live out his remaining months free of the discomfort, inconvenience, and side effects of the chemo. “So you can be free,” Dr. Vann said, using this word a second time.
Marty felt almost nothing at this, except for his own exhale. The slow and peaceful emptying of his lungs. The sweet numbness that does not accompany denial so much as the confirmation of a long-held suspicion. Marty realized in this moment how ready he was for this news; how perfectly prepared for this knowledge, as though he’d just opened the front door of his house to a guest whose company he didn’t particularly enjoy, but whose visit was long overdue.
Marty agreed that he too thought it best to discontinue his treatments, and Dr. Vann expressed his relief at this decision.
Marty hung up the phone and stared at the ceiling above him as it pulsed and rippled with patterns like the surface of water, as though he and everything else in the room was underwater, swaying in neat rhythms, releasing bubbles in slow motion. The stinkbug lifted its legs one at a time but didn’t seem to be heading in any particular direction.
As Marty allowed this strange, new truth to settle into his old bones, he started to formulate thoughts. But these thoughts were not about the cancer in his stomach or in his blood; how it had gotten there and why it couldn’t be contained. He didn’t think about the time and money spent on worthless treatments, or the possibility that one of those homeopathic methods Randa
ll’s wife Denise Bear was always emailing about could have been more successful. He didn’t think about a funeral or how he would go about delivering this news to Randall.
What he thought about was the Mouse in her tiny yellow swimsuit on that first day at the beach when she bounded out into the big lake, unable to swim, hollering and splashing out under that white sun, oblivious to the dangers of this earth. He wondered if, in the many years since that summer, anyone had taught her how to swim, or if to this day she remained a starfish.
Poor Tracy. Poor Tracy. Tears suddenly heated Marty’s cheeks and he rocked himself painfully in his La-Z-Boy. His heart ached for her, both in sorrow and sympathy, and also, suddenly, intensely, for her company. Poor Tracy had never chosen to be a starfish. Not any more, Marty reckoned, than Tracy’s mother had ever chosen to be whatever she was, nor Marty, whatever he was.
Later that same night, Marty started to pack up his house with a fresh, purposeful energy. He organized some bags for the dump, some bags for the thrift store, some stuff to offer to Randall before junking it. He flushed his medications down the toilet. He bought a plane ticket to Buffalo, booked a room at the Budget Inn. He considered where he might take Tracy fishing, if that would interest her, if she was able to get any time off work, and what they’d likely catch in Lake Erie at this time of year. He watched an episode of Monsters and Mysteries of Alaska on the National Geographic Channel. He busied himself until practically midnight, and that night he slept very soundly, even through the violent clunking of walnuts as they fell to his roof from their skinny black limbs.
Today, he was heading north in order to do his business at the cash-for-gold place in Arcadia before flying down to Buffalo. He had all his fishing lures with him and aimed to remove the gold and gemstones he’d carefully woven into each piece, in order to exchange them for cash. It was something he’d done for years, hand-crafting these little lures and jigs using trinkets he dug up on the beach. It was an odd hobby, he knew, especially for someone who didn’t even do all that much fishing anymore, but it was something to do. Something to make.
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