by Jones, Nath
In the morning I’d clean up an incredible mess. There'd be the skillet with eggs, tomatoes, cheese, even chocolate chips cooked up and stuck to my Teflon.
Sometimes, instead of saying anything to my husband in our bedroom, I’d try to get to my son first. I’d get up and make a motion to go down before Dan so I could talk to Jason alone, make a little peace, maybe sedate him some. But I never made it farther than the landing. I guess it was a father-son time. Really those nights were about the only time those two were ever in the same room together. Jason avoided his father. Dan just seemed oblivious to his older son a lot of the time. He gets along better with Daniel. I try not to notice. Dan tries not to have it be true.
I wish I wouldn’t have been so apprehensive those nights. I could have marched down the stairs like Cleopatra and told them both to go straight to hell or at least suggest they see some kind of psychologist. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't know how to help. Guess it was the guilt, the shame. And just not believing that three weeks in a life matters much at all. If it would have been anyone else’s kid, I would have had all the answers. You can see it better. Know what might help. But I acted like an idiot with my own son. I flashed him sappy smiles or reached out to touch him as he jerked away. I don't know. I used to think he favored me. But I don’t know now. Maybe in some ways he didn't respect me as much as he did his father. That’s probably why I never told him. He would have hated me, judged me, judged himself.
But he should have known his story. And there were times, dark times, lonely times, boring times in my life when just looking at my son gave me so much joy. Because he was a reminder of those three amazing weeks. He had the same shape head as his real father. And sometimes when I’d sit in my chair next to Dan, watching the news or a movie in the evening with the kids, I’d just look at the shape of Jason’s head and be transported to a place that made me smile. I couldn’t live without Dan. But that child was a true blessing to me his whole life.
Still. I don’t know if he respected anything. I guess he liked that job delivering milk and ice cream. He knew every one of the restaurant, convenience store, and gas station owners and managers in a forty-mile radius. Liked his boss. Liked training the new guys. Ran two routes a day when someone was out sick or if one of the guys’ wives was having a baby.
I fell into a habit of doing things for him that I remembered he liked when he was little. Stupid, I know. I baked cookies and left him little notes on the kitchen table like I used to. I hope it comforted him a bit. He was having such a rough time in those years. With cancer patients—my mother died of cancer—at least you can dope them up on painkillers. You know they’re suffering and there’s something you can do for them. But there is so little you can do for someone like my Jason. It was just as chronic. I remember thinking that I was glad he drank because maybe it would numb some of that pain in his little lover-shaped head. I never said that to Dan. It's absurd to even think drinking’s the answer. Most people would call me crazy. I think I was right, though.
But then I was just holding him there in the street. I knew I should have told him everything, should have defended my son to Dan, to the world.
I never could.
I remember how I heard the screech and how the transformer popped right before the electricity went out. Dan was on a business trip. I ran through the garden in my robe. I remember it felt like I was wearing a bedsheet. The cotton was too crisp and wouldn't move fast enough.
The car was smashed in on the passenger’s side and the pole he hit had fallen. Electric lines hung slack and one was broken. Its two limp sinister ends swung slowly. I couldn't find him at first. Had to be careful of those live wires. I looked in the car, but he wasn't there. Usually Victoria’s security light floods three acres. But Jason hit whatever pole controlled that. I knew she’d make a call so I just kept running, looking everywhere.
There was a moon. It was that slack moon that always makes me uneasy, wishing for the beauty of phases that are more or less full. But thank God for the light of that slumped thing in the sky or I never would have found him.
He was thrown across the road. Almost into a ditch on the other side. He was so blue-white in that light. It made him look dead the minute I saw him. It was odd. You imagine a body just lying nice and flat, but he was all crumpled up. His right arm stuck straight out, falling down the slope of the new spring grass. His left arm must have broken because it just sank where something should have been bone. His left foot was on the road, but his right foot was way up under his chest.
His beautiful face got crushed half-slack just like that sorry moon. His head was twisted, his neck obviously broken, his mouth open with the top row of teeth sunk into the gravel and mud on the shoulder of the road. His tongue was hanging down in it. God. I sat there with his head in my lap for maybe fifteen minutes. Probably shorter than that, really. It was pitch black except for the moon and the stars.
Those so-called sweet birdies chuck their young out of the nest and if they can't fly—oh well. Can those parents possibly know? Do they have an instinct about when their chick is ready to fly? We didn’t. Not really. We just figured by the time he was as old as he was he should be able to hack it.
Oh I knew everything for a moment. Everything about teaching responsibility and self-respect and obligation and fear. Sitting in that gravel, trying to lift his whole weight onto my lap, unable, and then with his crushed skull in my hands, like I could fix it, maybe, but no, as soon as he wasn’t so vividly alive, I had answers. I gave myself pompous advice, came up with solutions about what to do with truth and lies. Dan goes to church a lot now I've noticed, but it doesn't help me much.
TANDEM
Going back in time and forward too, they drove across the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone and lost an hour. A carol recording played too loudly into the landscape at a Christmas tree farm in 2006. It was almost dark. The scent of hot spiced cider and gingerbread cookies came down from the barn where two matronly Midwesterners sat on folding chairs selling wreaths and centerpieces.
In the parking lot the Watsons’ dog Squally ran ahead into the rows of evergreen trees, rummaging with her snout, discovering everything she could about the farm’s firs and pines as the temperature continued to drop. A frozen crust of what hadn’t melted during the warm part of the week covered rutted rows. Dan stopped at the edge of the lane and leaned against a post. “Damn.” One boot sole was separating from the leather.
Marie moved on with her head bent down into the wind, following Squally’s caprices. She had told him not to wear the boots. She stopped again and folded her arms across her chest. Her red turtleneck sweater and down vest weren’t quite warm enough. She should have worn another layer. “Come on, honey.” And she really wished she had a hat.
“But the boots. What about Dad’s boots?” Catching up to her, whistling sharply for Squally to come back and stay closer, Dan fished through the pockets of his canvas coat and found an old black stocking hat. He handed it to his wife. “They’re falling apart.”
She did not think to thank him for the hat but held a bright-colored nylon leash, dingy from a year of use, in her hand and decided not to use it. She watched Squally bound off into the trees with pricked ears.
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Didn’t you hear me?”
Dan held a handsaw at arm’s length and swung it in wide arcs almost like the pendulum dips of an amusement park’s Viking ship ride which swings back and forth, up and down, hesitating at the heights before plunging down, releasing joyous screams of terror.
Marie looked at her husband who was walking awkwardly, trying to prevent more mud from getting inside his sock. “Those boots are probably forty years old! You’re surprised they’re falling apart?” She pulled the hat over the tops of her ears and looked at her own boots. Three hundred muddy dollars.
They got away from the tinny carol.
It was the eighth year of their marriage. Five years before Dan might have said, �
��Why didn’t you put Squally on the leash? They don’t want our dog running wild out here.” But he just kept walking between the trees, swinging the handsaw and whistling fweeeet! when Squally got too far away.
The smell of gingerbread was gone.
Dan could not resist. “The kids should be here.”
“They’re too little and they’re both sick, Dan. Why make sick kids ride three hours back in the car, cold, dirty, and wet?”
“Don’t you believe in tradition?”
She shook her head. “It was a tradition for your family, Dan. Not mine.”
Christmas trees ran in different-sized rows in all directions.
He whistled for Squally again and grabbed the leash out of Marie’s gloved hand. He knew what she was probably thinking—that an artificial tree like her mom’s would be fine. But her mother’s tree looked like a department store display. It was an eyesore of enormous bows, doves, angels. “Shake that self-righteous head all you want, Marie. But there will be no fake trees in my house. Ever.”
She watched him clip Squally’s collar and wrap most of the length around his hand. “Fine. But who was seven months pregnant last Christmas on the floor with the watering can getting needles in my eyes trying to keep that twelve-foot monstrosity alive, Dan? That thing drank a gallon of water a day. It filled two vacuum bags with needles in the first week. And was it you under that tree trying to keep it alive for six weeks? No, it was not.”
“You always exaggerate.” Dan kept Squally close, swung the old oiled saw absentmindedly from his other hand, and walked into one of the rows of blue spruce. “That was not a twelve-foot tree. We don’t even have twelve-foot ceilings.”
Marie waited in the lane until Dan was a good twenty feet ahead. She watched the distance increasing between them.
Squally barked, calling Marie forward into the row. It was that familiar friendly yip, the same sweet, clipped bark Squally used to announce that the baby’s bottle had fallen out of the stroller, clattery plastic on concrete, rolling down the sidewalk. Still irritated with her husband, Marie picked her steps carefully in his footprints, keeping her boots as clean as possible.
They moved silently between the trees.
Marie could stop, scream, demand the keys, cry, insist on leaving, go sit in the car, take the dog off the leash again. But she didn’t. She caught up to him. “Well, it was nine feet anyway. A nine-foot freaking monstrosity that put me into debt just to decorate.” She pulled Squally’s leash back into her possession.
The dog meandered along the full demonstrable generosity of leash length.
Dan’s left foot was soaked inside the boot. He lifted his toes to protect them from the worst. This compensation added complexity to his gait. “Well, nobody died and made you Martha Stewart, Marie. You could have just spread out the decorations we had instead of drenching every single branch and then filling up the whole storage space with that overpriced tacky-ass shit.”
“It’s not tacky. It’s Radko.” She kept following Dan, giving Squally a tug. “Isn’t there a Christmas tree farm closer to Chicago, Dan? Driving three hours is ridiculous.”
“Every tree my whole life has come from this farm. I don’t care if I have to drive ten hours; every year, every tree, as long as I can manage it, will come from this tree farm.”
“And I’m self-righteous?” She tried not to think permanently-disabling thoughts about her husband. Why did they go through this every year? For what? For a Christmas tree? It was fine before the kids were born, kind of quaint, but now? They worked overtime all week. They still had a ton of shopping to finish, mostly to keep from hearing some litany of dissatisfaction from his mother. The old boots? The traditional tree farm? He was unbearable when he got like this—a nostalgic romantic who just would not let things go.
Marie unclipped Squally and watched the dog’s silky coat ripple as she ran full force after a cardinal. “All this back-to-your-roots stuff gets old. There is no reason for us to drive all the way down here every year when the trees they sell right by us come from a bunch of farms just like this one. Your hick-ass, Puritanical bullshit only goes so far, Dan.”
Dan shouted toward the sunset. “Squally!”
The dog disappeared into the darkening evening.
Marie pulled off a glove and felt the nearest branches.
An old man in insulated coveralls walked up to them from an adjacent row. “Finding everything, folks?” He kept a straight face and noticed Marie touching the trees. He forgave her unconsciously.
She winced and did not look at him. “You have any that don’t drop needles?” It was caustic but not quite rude.
He ignored the tone. “We sure do. Scotch pine will do pretty good that way. I salvaged a few during the blight. Care if we drive out to the rows? It’s too far for me to walk anymore.”
Dan nodded his interest in the man’s suggestion and ostentatiously took his wife by the hand.
They followed the old man to his truck, which was parked at an angle on a nearby rise.
He turned to Dan. “My eyes aren’t so great with the light this low. Mind if I ride and you drive? It’s a four-on-the-floor.” He was not asking. He had already walked around to the passenger side and was helping Marie up into the truck. He closed the passenger side door and settled himself against it.
“It’s been a while since I drove a stick.” Dan put the saw in the bed of the truck, lowered the tailgate, and whistled.
“This old beast has had more clutches than I’ve had chicken dinners. Don’t worry about grinding the gears. She can take it.”
Squally came running and jumped up into the bed of the truck, an old pro at a new trick. She settled down to drowse on a tarp between the spare tire and the saw. Dan got into the driver’s seat.
The old man watched Marie struggling to get comfortable between the two men and with the gearshift rising out of the floor of the truck. He said, “Now, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Marie.”
Slowly, emphasizing every single word, the old man said, “Okay. Now, Marie. I realize that this may not be the way you are used to riding. But I will tell you that most hick-ass women are not as Puritanical as you might think.”
Marie flushed. “Excuse me?”
“There’s not a one of them that doesn’t know how to ride in the middle of a pickup.”
Marie was nervous but trusted the laugh lines rooted deep at the edge of the old man’s eyes. “I don’t understand.”
The old man looked out to the horizon and gave his instructions casually to the window. Letting his words make fog on the glass, he said, “Well, and I mean this with the utmost respect, dear. But you have got to straddle that thing and lean up against your husband so he can get to that shifter.”
Marie’s head snapped. She looked at Dan with wide eyes.
Dan shrugged, mouthing the words, “I don’t know. It’s his truck.”
Marie managed to convince her designer jeans and her yes-I’ve-had-two-babies legs to straddle the gearshift. She let her left thigh rest against Dan’s. She kept her right thigh from ever touching the old man’s coveralls.
“Good. Now, Dan—wasn’t it Dan?—just ease her back off this little embankment and take us up this lane about two hundred yards.”
Dan put his hand over Marie’s, who tried to hold onto his fingers with her gloves. He squeezed and let go. In the bed of the truck, Squally stood up, turned around twice, and lay back down again, contented by the truck’s motion.
The old man looked at Marie and said, “You got any kids, Marie?”
Of course she had kids. Who doesn’t have kids? She pressed her thigh against Dan’s, encouraging him to relax and stop grinding the gears. “Two. The oldest is twenty-seven months. And the baby was born at the end of February.”
“Good thing you didn’t bring them. They’d catch their death out here today at those ages.”
Marie leaped to the defensive. “Well, it was a tradition in Dan’s family. So we
would have brought them if we lived any closer.”
“Bring them in a few years after they know all about Santie Claus. Then they’ll never forget it.” The old man nodded, agreeing with himself. “Go ahead and put it in third, Dan. Nothing to worry about out here. If you hit a deer, you won’t even feel it. Truck’s high-gauge steel. A regular tank. Drive as fast as you want. Hell. Open her up. We’ll come back for the tree. Take us up to my property line at that strip of oaks.”
Dan pressed his forearm against Marie’s thigh while dropping the truck down into third and then fourth.
They passed well-maintained signage: Norway Spruce, Serbian Spruce, Concolor Fir, West Coast Noble Fir. The old man wasn’t looking at the signs that marked the rows. He scrutinized the fence line as they bumped past it. Then all three—and Squally probably, too—watched the rushing fence posts. Keeping a keen eye out for any having fallen.
The old man turned back to Marie. “What tradition?”
Marie looked to Dan for approval to tell his story. Dan nodded, paying attention to the drive, loving the speed, loving the sound of frozen grasses shattering under the chassis.
“Dan used to come here, to your farm, every year when he was little. With his dad.”
“Wasn’t my farm then. I got this place five years ago in a foreclosure settlement.”
Dan looked over. “Foreclosure? I thought you worked for the Loftons.”
“Nope. At the worst of the blight this place just about got bulldozed for a housing development. Instead the Loftons held on as long as they could. Let the developers fish someone else’s place over on 114. By the time they’d fought that fight they were so overextended that they couldn’t make the property taxes. I got the place real cheap from the bank.”
“But you always farmed around here?”
“No, ma’am. Not me. I was in real estate in Dayton for thirty-four years. I was married right after I got back from Korea. We had three kids: one smart one who can’t keep a job for all his politics; one dumb one who can’t keep her mouth shut but to say yes to any man dumber than her who comes along; and one who drives an old school bus from one art fair to another every summer and somehow manages to make a living painting hearts, flowers, and smiley faces on tiny wooden beads. Could have been a god-damned surgeon with steady hands like that—but nope, has to paint blessed beads.”