by Josh Weil
I sat up. What about the buildings? I said.
What do you mean?
If there was so many houses and whatnot there must still be buildings there.
Well, it was a long time ago.
Couldn’t be more than thirty years.
Well I imagine there’s still something there.
You ever seen it?
No. It’s way on up the valley other side of Narrows, you know. Over opposite way from Ripplemead.
Where? I said.
Well I don’t know exact.
What’s the nearest road?
I don’t want you going out there, Geoffrey, she told me. Anything that was out there’d be all rotted and falling in, waiting to kill someone who stepped on it.
Well, I said.
I mean it, she said.
Forty two goes out that way, I said.
She give me her look what meant we was done.
Before I got down I said, So it’s true what I don’t got no family?
Plum Head, she said, You got all of us right here.
I’d just put a leg over my bike when she called to me. I asked her, What?
She jumped down and come over. Last night, she said, you was talking about a grown man.
Yes ma’am.
I just told you straight. Now I’m gonna ask you straight. Have you made love with this girl?
No ma’am.
Okay. Good. There’s a lot of boys out there think what makes a man is having their way with a woman. You don’t think that do you?
I didn’t say nothing. Truth is, I wasn’t sure.
I’m gonna tell you something. A while back I had two little plums what was sent to me. A little girl just twelve and a little boy who was eleven. It wasn’t a month before I found the little boy was doing it to the little girl. Now the little boy was as sweet a little diminished plum as you ever seen, and a lot more slow than you, and he was only eleven years old when I had to send him away cause of what he done. This eleven year old little slow boy. You think what he done made him a man?
No ma’am.
No indeed. Now what does? That’s the question you should have asked. Go on get back on your bike. You got a long ride ahead. While you’re going I want you to think about that, okay? You love your Ma Blevins?
Yes ma’am.
Give me a hug, she said.
I braced myself for it.
Thursday of July
I am sure there is times you wondered about how it happened and why I done it. I am sure you thought on how I even knowed what you worked at the home seller’s house in the first. About if I come by that morning or the night before, and why I would have slipped you that note. Why I put that note in the slot for the mail. But most off, you must’ve wondered why I writ you about me and Linda. Why I writ you about our date. Why I wanted you to come and find us and see us and face it. Well, now you know.
I wonder if when you come into work that morning and found the note and read it, if you felt like I felt when I writ it. I thought on what Ma B asked for the whole ride back and I writ it all roadside before I come into town, sitting in the grass with the sun getting hot. Once I got back on my bike it was strange what I felt scared but at the same time easeful, like I had got a weight off my gut. Did you feel like that when you seen I told you the time and place? When you knowed we was gonna finally have it out? There is times I almost hope I find you with Linda just so’s I can hear what you think. We could talk back and forth. Maybe you writ me something. I believe we could know each other pretty deep.
The truth is, even if you do not know it yet, we already do. I been thinking on how if you writ me a letter would I want you to keep some secret part hid? Now what you is out and Linda is riding with you in the truck again might be she already told you what was in the letter she writ me in New Castle Memorial. Might be she didn’t. But if she writ something to you about me I believe I’d want to know. If you writ me something and kept her letter out I don’t know I’d believe you was telling me the truth on all the rest. Mister Podawalski, I am telling you the truth.
What Linda Writ Me In New Castle Memorial
Geoffrey, I am going to be blunt. Because what you asked about is not just something I did but what happened to me in my life that brought me to do it and who I am that allowed me to when others probably would not have. And how do you explain all that?
Maybe if I told you before I was with Waker, when I was fifteen or so, I used to sit in the back of the bus and give blow jobs to the boys I liked. I was famous for it. It was high school, nobody questioned it. Once I did it with a teacher. He must have been fifty. Not a blow job. He went down on me. Funny, but I don’t think I thought it strange that he wanted to. I don’t think other people would think it strange either.
Other people are so often wrong. Like about what I just wrote. They would think aha when they read that. But I don’t think you would. That’s what I like about you, Geoffrey.
So I’ll try to help you understand who I am, how I could have done what you met me doing. This is the best I can do. I think it’s got more of all this in it than anything else. See, Waker loved cats but he hated dogs. So we all thought it strange, his brother, everybody, when he insisted on taking Dad Podawalski’s. This was when Waker’s dad died. Dad Podawalski hated dogs too. But he had a husky, or something, and he trained that dog from a pup to keep other dogs off his yard. If he saw a dog on the street, Dad Podawalski would carry the little thing out there and growl himself to show how it was done, until he got the pup going, too. After that he kept it in his yard without a chain or a fence or anything. Whenever it chased a dog off, he would bring it a treat. And all that time it never once bit a dog or even tried.
When Dad Podawalski died Waker took the dog and put it in a cage in the garage where it wouldn’t be able to see other dogs and go crazy at them. Sometimes Waker would have a friend bring his dog around on a leash and they’d stand in the garage watching Dad Podawalski’s dog run itself in circles wanting to get out. He was untraining it, Waker said. And it was true, after a year of that when Waker’s buddies would come by with their dogs the husky didn’t do anything but stare.
All that time Waker wouldn’t let anyone but him feed it and he gave it better than he gave himself. I spied on him sometimes and saw him patting the dog through the bars and talking to it and I swear sometimes he cried to it and tried to hug its head. But he wouldn’t take it out. Ever. Not in the three years. One night after he and I had fought I went out and opened the garage door and opened the cage. That dog ran right out and into the neighbor’s yard and killed the first dog it found. It went right down the street, yard by yard, going after dog after dog, on chains and in doghouses and everything. By the time the cops came and shot it there were six dogs torn to death and the whole neighborhood was up in arms. Everyone thought the dog was rabid. Until they cut it open and tested it and then the whole neighborhood, and Waker too, just thought it was crazy. I never thought so. It was after that that Waker started confiding in me the way he did.
That is all what Linda writ. I ain’t leaving out the end. She never put it. Or writ her name at the botton neither. I guess most like the nurse come in just then and she quit. I hope seeing this ain’t hurt you even more than what I hurt you already. But even if it did it had to be. Now you know all what I know. We are on the up and up. If you understand what she meant for me to understand I wish you’d tell me. Might be sometime after I brung this to you we will sit together side by side and learn each other whole and I bet we can talk it over then. I believe together we could figure it out, me and you.
Sunday of July
There ain’t no doubt now. You is out. And you ain’t hiding it. I’m gonna put this down here just so you can look at it later, when maybe you stepped back enough what you can see yourself and groan. I’m putting this down here to shame you. When I been all this time writing to you how I done, and looking hard at what is, and laying it out best I can to own up to what I got to own up to, and yo
u go and act how you done today, I want to ask you Mister Podawalski Who is the child now? Who is acting unadult? Who? I want you to think on that while I give you back here every bit of your own.
It was just this morning what I brung my breakfast and got there early and I was there when you pulled up in your truck, even if you didn’t see me. If Linda’d been with you I would have come up right then. After you opened the house door and gone inside I watched the truck to try to see if she was somewhere in the cab. It didn’t look it. You gone about putting up the shades, turning on the lights. When I seen you come back out I almost got up and come over to stop you if you was getting back in the truck, but you just walked over to the neighbor’s house and done the same there. Then you come out and get a magazine out your truck and lean on the hood and drink your coffee like it was anything normal. Well, it wasn’t normal for me, Mister Podawalski. After all this time, there you was. In your suit jacket and your slacks and your leather shoes. You growed back your beard. I watched you shake your head at something what you read. If you seen me, you sure did a good job hiding it.
When the first ones drived up, you put your magazine away and met them with loud talk and smiles and shaking hands and I watched you take them in the house, in the same house where it had come down between you and me, the same one where it had happened between me and Linda, too. From then on out, there was cars pulling up and you meeting people in the door and taking them around and I could hear you said the same things to each one, and give them all your ugly smile. Didn’t none of them act surprised to see you out of jail. It set me wondering as to how long you been out.
It was after I falled asleep what you come over. I don’t mind saying it seems to me a coward way to do it. You musta woke me cause when I looked up you was standing there.
What are you doing here? you said.
I’m Geoffrey Sarver, I said. I been—
I asked you what you’re doing here.
Waiting for Linda.
She’s not coming. Get outta here.
You stood there with the magazine rolled up in your hand. I had not counted on the way seeing you again up close like that would put the scare in me. I tried to lean against the fence like I was just leaning.
You deaf? you said. You come out of it deaf too now?
I ain’t deaf, I said.
Then get out of here. Do I have to say it simpler?
I been writing to you, I said. I had almost forgot that look what you had give me before and give me again now. I said, I been trying to explain. I figure we could—
Can’t you leave it? you said. Can’t you drop it?
I just thought—
Drop it. Drop it okay? For your own good drop it and let it be. Do you understand? For your own good.
I want to see Linda, I said.
You can’t.
I—
She doesn’t want to see you. Are you really that thick? How is it possible to be that goddamn thick? I’ll tell you what, I don’t think you are that thick. I think you’re just being an asshole. Now get outta here. I got work to do.
But I didn’t get outta there and now you knowed I was there watching. Every time you come out I’d try and catch your eyes, and usually did, too. She didn’t come. I guess maybe you called her and told her something what wasn’t true. That’s what I was thinking when I seen you come out the final time, closing the lights and locking the door. That’s what I was thinking when I got up and gone for your truck.
Don’t you work? you said.
It’s Sunday, I said.
You had a pile of papers under your arm and you said, Get outta my way Geoffrey.
You can name me Mister Sarver, I told you. I been all this while naming you polite, you can—
Geoffrey, you said, get the fuck out of my way.
I want to see Linda, I said.
We’ve been over that.
Nuhuh, Waker—
You gave me that look. I take it back, you said. You are that fucking thick.
That was when you reached out and shoved me.
I’m warning you, you said, and opened the truck door and got in.
You thought you was gonna drive off, didn’t you? You thought I was just gonna back up and watch you go. Well, you know better now, don’t you? I was in the truck bed by the time you turned the key. And boy you come out mad.
Oh for fuck’s sake, you said. Get the fuck off of there. You reached in and tried to grab me and I jerked my arm away.
I said, I got a right to see her.
Oh for fuck, you said. Stop acting like a child. Don’t you get it? Haven’t you figured it out?
I’m more than thirty, I said.
Then act like it. You retard. Take it like a fucking man.
I told you, You got a ugly smile. She said so.
I don’t know how you got up in the truck bed so quick or how you throwed me out so I couldn’t land my feet. You musta climbed down while I was pushing up off the street cause you was already opening the driver’s door when you pointed at me and said, Don’t fucking move.
I got up.
You said, You better watch that jaw. Then you was in and shut the door. Before you drived off you said out the window, And my name’s Brian, you retard. Try and get that in your tiny fucking brain, okay?
Dad Kreager used to say fighting is just another word for how we get along. Ma B thinks different. She says you don’t realize how strong a rope is till you try to snap it. I will admit I was mad at you when I sat down to write this. But now I’ve finished telling about today I can see you don’t got any idea how I’ve writ to you. So, after all, how can I expect you to carry me in the same respect as I do you? You don’t know what has rised between us. You just know your half of the story. And I know the same is true for me. There is parts what I don’t know. Even me with my tiny brain, as you say, I can see that. I know your name is Brian cause of the home seller’s sign. And I know your middle name is Waker cause of what Linda called you. So I ain’t so stupid as you make me out. But I ain’t prideful, neither. I ain’t too proud to admit there’s things what I don’t understand. Like why you is out. And where Linda is. And why she ain’t come to visit. But there is always been things I don’t understand. This is where you estimate me too small. I have grown used to it. I know how to work around it. I will think on it and I will think on it and I will think on it, and you watch.
There’s them coons again. They still coming to the house at night, more and more of them. It’s like they can’t get it in their heads what I ain’t gonna put out the trash. I gone to the door and told them, Coons I can’t do it. All you critters got to go back to the woods. Find some other yards. I can’t let you in. They go quiet while I tell them, but then a minute later they’s back to scratching at the walls.
Tuesday of July
Well I have thought it through how I said I would. And I ain’t done it by myself, neither. I got help for it. I will tell you right off what I can’t say I understand it any better. If there is any truth, I know it’s what I understand it worse.
Yesterday when I come home from work there wasn’t nobody in the house. Not Jackie or Roy or even the baby. There was just the beagle what come over like usual and try to make me pat him on the head. I got me a can of tomato soup and put in crackers and waited till they was soft enough what I could chew them, and the whole time there was no sign of no one, and I got done and gone through Roy’s Office to My Hall. It was once I shut the door what I heard them. Heard the baby. Then Roy. They was in His Bahamas. I gone over, give the door a knock.
That you Geoffrey? Jackie said.
Yuhuh, I said.
Come on in, Roy said and, Shut the door, almost before I had it open.
Don’t let out the frogs, Jackie said.
I looked for them but they don’t glow in the day. It was late sun. Under all that glass it was hot. Roy was in his shorts sitting half in the Lagoon playing with the baby. It was in a floater. Jackie was laid out on one of them flat chairs in h
er swim trunks what’s like two part of underwears. They was both drinking beers. I wished I brung one from the fridge.
We’re celebrating, Roy said.
Okay, I said.
What do you think? he said.
Sounds nice, I said.
No, he said. What do you think about the Bahamas?
Looks good, I said.
It’s done, he said.
All right.
One hundred percent, he said.
Well okay, I said. Maybe I oughta go get a beer.
You bet, he said.
Jackie said, Bring a couple.
When I come back I was careful to open and shut the door quick. I give Roy one and give Jackie one and sit down next to her in the sand where there was good sun. I took off my shirt and shoes and dug in my toes. We all drank. The baby was quiet.
After a while Jackie said, Roy? Come lotion up my back will you?
I’m busy, Hon, he said.
Bring the baby over here, Jackie told him.
Have the boy do it, he said.
Don’t call him that, she said. You know he don’t like it.
Then have your brother do it, he said.
He’s not my brother, she said.
He give me a look like Jackie was crazy. Hey, he said to me, Make it easy on me will ya?