The Nail Knot
Page 23
We set up lawn chairs and looked down on the meandering creek dressed in the sunset’s pinkish golds. Even Lake Bud looked okay from up here. For about a half-hour more, Jet Skis ripped around the wide, flat surface, sounding like angry hornets that had been bottled up by the week’s postponement. Then thankfully the event ended, and everybody went home. Soon enough, Einar Johnsrud was closing down the cheese factory. Sundvig’s cows were wandering back to the barn for milking. In town, the street lights were just coming on, and the softball diamond had already staked its gemlike claim amidst the gathering darkness. Ting! went bat on ball, and someone screamed, “I got it!”
“So anyway,” Junior said, “I really can’t go on like this.”
I nodded falsely. I had no idea what she meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“About three hours of sleep a night,” she said, “by the time I leave you and then get up for milking.” She took my hand. “Don’t get me wrong.”
“I’m not getting you wrong,” I said.
“It’s only going to get harder. I’ve got another round of hay to put up in a week or so. Then I cut corn. Then Jake convinced me to put in winter rye to keep the soil down until spring planting, so I’m going to be sure to do that, in his memory.”
It was one of those evenings when the dust over Kansas, or somewhere, filters the sun down to a precise red ball and that ball sinks at a shocking rate. I worried that Junior was asking me to help out on the farm. And I worried that she wasn’t.
“Anyway,” said Junior, squeezing my hand, “it’s boring in Black Earth. And you wouldn’t believe the winter. Not a damn thing to do here in winter except milk and feed twice a day and gossip at the Lunch Bucket.” She added, “Oh yeah, and get drunk playing euchre at night.”
“Snows a lot, I guess?”
“Snows a lot. And cold. Twenty below down at the bottom of the coulee.”
“Well, gee,” I said. “Thanks for the invite.”
The sun slipped, slipped, half gone, then three-quarters.
“You too,” said Junior finally.
She had startled me. “What do you mean?” I said. “You mean you wanted to go with me?” She didn’t answer. She stared off over Lake Bud. Ting! went bat on ball.
“I can’t go anywhere,” she told me finally.
We were silent a while.
“Well,” I said. “My goddamn tax guy—he skimped on insurance. He kind of trapped me here until I can get the Cruise Master fixed.”
No more words for another good long time. The sky got orange, then high-pink, then blue-dark. I thought I’d have to call Harvey for inspiration again. Junior’s dad had brought his fishing pole, and he was soaking it real good in the thin air over the side of the bluff but not getting anything.
“Well,” said Junior at last, “there’s always the summer kitchen.”
“I’d be in your way.”
“It’s on blocks,” Junior said. “I was going to move it.” “I’d need land to put it on.”
She laughed. “I’ve got land. I mean, that’s all I’ve got. You want land? Take some, please.”
Her father made a loud rumble. We both looked at him. It was his land, properly. Melvin O’Malley looked back at us. He reeled up and hitched his hook to the cork on his rod butt. For a bizarre moment it looked like he was going to scold us, going turn and speak in coherent paragraphs, tell us not to be stupid, tell us we had no business trying to work all this out. But it turns out he was simply responding to the fact that the sun had now officially gone down. It was now night time.
“Ice cream,” said the old man. “Poppins.”
Junior sighed. She leaned out to stroke his big sprawling leg. “Okay, Daddy. Okay.”
She took his rod away, freed the hook, and cast again. The red-and-white bobber tumbled out over the view of Black Earth and crashed into the brush somewhere below.
“One more time, okay Daddy? A little night fishing, like you and White used to do.”
We sat another while.
“I am going to fix the Cruise Master,” I said finally.
“And I am going to cut hay and corn and plant rye and look after Daddy,” Junior said back.
“So,” I said, “I really can’t be sure …” “Nobody asked you to be sure.”
I thought a minute. When, I asked myself, had the Dog ever been sure of anything? I mean, really sure? And far could sureness ever be trusted?
“I was hoping to fish the Big-Two Hearted before fall.”
“Sounds nice.”
Junior took my hand.
“Move that summer kitchen where you want it. Use it when you want it.”
“Or—” I said.
“Or not,” Junior said.
I let out a huge breath out. “You know,” I said, “about your idea … that everything happens for a reason …”
“Yeah?”
“It’s nice to believe. It seems true once in a while. I guess. But I just don’t know.”
She was silent, still as a rock.
“But about getting over things … about letting go …” She took my hand. “Yeah?”
“I guess you could say I’m started on that. Finally.” “Yeah,” she said. She sighed. “Me too.”
Then Junior stood and pulled my hand and led me around behind her pickup. My posture must have been stiff, my following uncertain, because she tugged at me and gave me one last squinchy grin. “Come on,” she whispered. “I think we just got through something. Something just broke down. I think we need to celebrate.”
We moved surely on the tailgate of the pickup—not slow or fast, but just like lovers who knew how to touch each other and still felt the thrill. Junior had shaved her arm pits. She wore new underpants with little blue forget-me-nots on them. When I was inside her, she whispered hotly, “Go, Dog, go!”
I was laughing. I was going. And then, a moment later, I heard a boom that sounded like heavy fireworks. Softball party, I figured. Junior, squirming and shoving under me, gasped, “The earth moved!”
I murmured, “Already?”
“No! I’m telling you! I heard an explosion, and then I felt the earth move!”
She pushed me over, jumped into her pants, and led the way back to the bluff edge. Her dad was standing, howling, pointing and shaking like he was speaking in tongues. Below us, Lake Bud had belched upstream in a giant wave that peaked and then washed forward over the campground, sweeping up the twisted tables, scattering the neon Jet Ski buoys. Then the dam collapsed. The whole lake heaved out over crumbling concrete and dike mud and spilled out over Sundvig’s pasture, filling it like a mud puddle and spreading onto the county highway. The roof and frame of Shelly Milkerson’s blasted pop-up floated toward separate corners of the pasture, as though tossed from the epicenter of the explosion. As we watched, Dickie Pee’s blue van raced down County K toward the Village of Black Earth, spraying a triumphal plume of water behind like a giant Jet Ski.
I don’t know how long Junior and I and her dad stood there swapping our various grunts of astonishment. But it wasn’t all that long before the stream itself calmed us. The stream knew what to do. The stream knew right where to go. And in no time at all, Lake Bud was history, and Black Earth Creek was slipping back toward its banks, carving, seeking, finding its groove again, flowing.
Published in Electronic Format by
TYRUS BOOKS
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Copyright © 2003 by John Galligan
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction.
Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ePub I
SBN 10: 1-4405-3241-9
ePub ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3241-2
PDF ISBN 10: 1-4405-3242-7
PDF ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3242-9
This work has been previously published in print format by:
Bleak House Books
Print ISBN: 978-1932557114
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Time to get the hell out of Black Earth
In the cave of the Cruise Master
A woman called Junior
The yellow sallies hatch at eight
She had implicated me in her crime
Be sure now, fella
This man is here to help us
Everything is going to work out
The way of the Dog
Things might not work out
All possibilities remained open
The guy who got him killed
Jake’s yellow sallies
A little more faith would be appreciated
At the Pêche Tôt
Dickie Pee
What Ingrid Jacobs meant
Back on the leash
Hey, trout guy
Show me how it’s done
Leap of faith
The time was now
Jake’s wake
A man who could take you down
A twenty eight inch brown
When the going gets tough
Poor, ruined father
Jesus at the cheese factory
Go ahead, ask me anything
You’re not going to believe it
A perfect nail knot
A friend of the Dog
Something was amiss
Some trouble now
Evidence of what exactly?
The dog had put two and two together
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Copyright