by Megan Kruse
He felt better almost immediately, in the dark, walking. In Portland he’d walked everywhere. Hungover or high or straight sober, he would walk those streets at night and feel like he could go anywhere because this was his body, these were his own two legs. The road was always stretching out in front of him, the bridges knitting across the river, one way, back the other. He could hear the soft lap of the lake water now, and he sat down near the slope to the water. The cold earth soaked his pants and he felt better.
In another month, the lake would be full. The old river had been washing the town out slowly, one ruinous winter at a time. Silver was full of sand and gravel deposits, holes where the river had eaten away the topsoil, streets where the concrete was crumbling. According to Leary and the rest of the crew, the river was a loss. Channelizing it would save what was left of that watery dump, and then the lake, instead of being a marshy sprawl with no clear borders, would instead be a carved-out bowl, perfect and shimmering, and the water would spill out of a narrow channel at one end and head down the mountains, neatly continuing on its way. An aerial view of Silver would show a neat dark stamp pressed into the ground, spilling out to the east to become a river again, snaking through the blue-black timber to eventually join the Lochsa.
The particulars of the project were uncertain to Jackson. Mike Leary was someone big on a project that was, in the scheme of things, small. Just a handful of speculators interested in a pretty jewel of a lake, a necklace of houses. And it was pretty. The A-frames were half-moon clusters at four points around the lake, banks of tall windows reflecting the water. It was summer camp for the six-digit circuit. It gave Jackson a thrill, even in the dark, to see the peaks of each A-frame like a cathedral, the faintest glow of the pale wood. Even as Spartan as it was, he could imagine the kind of high-end lives that would settle into the bare rooms. Stainless steel pans hanging in the kitchen; New Yorker copies on the coffee table; expensive shampoo in the bathroom. If the old heart of Silver was a craggy piece of rock, the new heart was a smooth pebble, a skipping stone. Cedar and glass, large porches that stretched, plank by plank, toward the edge of the lake.
He kept having little boy thoughts, his half-drunk mind – how do they make a town? Where do the families come from? But still how goddamn weird that you could take a patch of silt and stilt it up and hem it in, sew it like a glove – the lake’s fingers, the palm of calm water, the wrist of the lake spilling down dark mountains.
Jackson imagined that in twenty years the cleared land where the new lake sat would be lush again, full of young timber. The old riverbank, now exposed to the tin cup of the sky, would no longer look ravaged. It would become land again, and everything that had surfaced when the water ebbed away would be carried off. The shell of the old pickup, the bottles, the nameless bags of sodden, decomposed trash. At some point, it would all be dragged away or the grass would grow over it.
But still, he thought now, sick all the way to his toes, sitting in the wet dark, there was something about it that wasn’t quite right. To take something alive and change it completely.
He got to his feet, shaking his hands in the cold, kneading his numb fingers together. The deep woods here were not so different from the woods he’d grown up in. Idaho was drier, but it had the same density, the same feeling of roiling, tangled life. Thick bark, dense moss, roots that wrapped their arms around the earth. A moth at the window, a mouse at the door. In Washington, the double-wide they’d lived in on Firetrail Hill had been like a live thing. The cat left a squirrel twitching on the kitchen floor; mushrooms pushed up the carpet in the back room; a raccoon let himself in the front door. For a few years, the whole forest was a treasure chest. Even now his memories were flawed by fantasy – here, he remembered, a witch came out of the tangle of weeds. He and Lydia sitting in the old rowboat rocked by the hand of a giant. The forest floor moving beneath them, spinning them, a leaf trembling in his hand. He had that same feeling now, in the blue dark, dizzy and sick, but still the forest was all around him and he was glad for it. He took deep gulps of air. Scraps of last night were tossing in his foggy head – cigarette butts, spilled beer, the throaty laughter of the men. He’d followed them around the room, through the music and close heat, swinging his arms, pulling out his wallet. He turned back up into the woods, even as above the lake, the sky began to lighten.
Lydia
Women’s Shelter, Alamogordo, New Mexico, 2010
FIRST, GATHER EVERYTHING. THE CREDIT CARDS AND your birth certificate. The bank statements. The social security cards. If they are gone, it’s because he has taken them. This will make things harder, but not impossible. You will be lighter that way. You will make everything new. Go to a place where no one knows you. The closer you are to home, the more careful you will have to be. Close to home, you must walk quickly through the streets with your eyes on the ground. The world is big. It’s best if you keep going.
We drove for four days to get to New Mexico, through the mountains, the red Utah canyons, the flat sand. I watched the lava fields and they were ghostly as the moon. At the shelter there was a room with a sink and a tall window I couldn’t see out of. We sat for hours in a little room talking to the caseworkers.
“He could find us anywhere,” my mother said. “He could always do that, track you down in seconds. We’d make these plans and it was like he knew before we’d even left.”
It was a small town, they told us. He knew the car. He might have had surveillance equipment. They told us that it’s different, now.
You will need to sell your car. Choose something that he wouldn’t expect. Choose something that doesn’t look like you. Try not to think about times you felt that you were being watched. Instead, think about the life you want. Imagine that soon you will have a new house, and all of your new friends will come to visit. They’ll be the best friends you’ve ever had, even better than the ones you had before.
We would stay for two months at the shelter in New Mexico, before leaving again for our new life. “Texas,” my mother said. “But not Fannin. That’s where I met your father.”
In the caseworker’s office, we called my mother’s mother, who I’d never met. Her voice through the receiver was as clear as if she were in the room.
“Amy?” The voice was scared. “Amy. Where are you?”
“Shh,” my mother said. “Shh. Everything is all right.”
“Amy, listen to me,” the voice said. “You come here. You live with me.”
“It’s not safe. People know us there. People know G there.” Even in the shelter, she wouldn’t say his name.
“Exactly,” the voice said. “If they see him in town, they’ll kill him.”
I looked at my mother and at the woman. “That’s where I want to live,” I said. It said it loud.
“Smart girl,” the voice said.
Try not to think of the times when things were not what they seemed: when your mother carried in a bowl of yellow pears that had been eaten to lace by insects, and how you watched her from the kitchen window as she cried, wondering at her despair. Or the long week she stayed in bed and no one said why. You knocked and knocked, but your brother led you away. He fed you whatever you wanted, straight from the cupboards. Don’t think of these things. Let them be over or they will break your heart.
It was as if I went to sleep and woke up in a dry and brittle country, and I was older, with a different name, and I had no brother. The dreams started, that my father was coming for us. On those nights I practiced everything I knew. To truly disappear, you must change everything. Forget your habits. Choose a different life. Understand that who you have been is gone and will never come back. I said it to myself over and over: My name is Lena Harris, I am thirteen years old, I’ve lived with my mother, right here, since the day I was born.
Jackson
Silver, Idaho, 2010
THE CREW BOSS WANTED TO SEE HIM. SLOW HONEY DELIVERED the message to Jackson from the window of his pickup, just as Jackson had pulled up to the sawhorse
to start in again, slowly splitting the beams the way he’d been taught. Shit, Jackson thought. He’d spent the whole afternoon praying he didn’t fuck up, and now he’d fucked it up anyway. It had something to do with the night at the bar – he could feel it in his gut. What had he said – something about shoes. Too much innuendo for that crowd, that’s for sure. He might as well have just told them he’d sucked cock for cash – that he’d do it for free! – and then let the chips fall. This was much worse, to have to answer for something he’d only insinuated. Where next? Who did he even know? Back to Portland? Back to Washington? His father in his armchair, the TV dinners he must be eating now. The new girlfriend he’d be fucking on the terrible worn mattresses.
He put all of the tools away, stacked the wood he’d been about to work with in a neat pile. Everything in its place. “You want a ride?” Honey asked.
To where? “Where’s he at?” Jackson asked.
“East side,” Honey said. It was worse than he thought. He was going to the rich side of town to be fired.
“Yeah.”
Honey drove him in Riley’s pickup, which made him think that maybe Honey wasn’t as slow as they said, to be allowed to drive that shiny, expensive car. Everything’s relative, sure, but Honey seemed just fine.
“Lots of metals out here,” Honey said. He hauled metal from the sites to Kellogg on his own trailer. It saved Jackson and the rest some of the work, and Honey made enough to live on, selling the bulk for a few cents on the pound, dragging a magnet to separate the pure weight from what was more valuable – aluminum, copper.
“You make good money?” Jackson asked.
“Sure.”
There was a long silence; Honey moved the truck around deep potholes, steering it expertly with one hand.
“Friend of mine,” Honey said, “put siding on his whole house. Corrugated metal. Didn’t spend a dime.”
“Wow,” Jackson said. Maybe he could haul junk with Honey when they kicked him off the crew. “Hey, do you know what he wants me for?”
“Nah.” Honey bumped the truck over the potholes. “Bet yer scared, huh?”
“What did I say, Honey?” Jackson asked. Scrubby branches squeaked the windows. “Did I do anything really stupid?”
“What do you mean?” Honey asked, and Jackson began to understand why everyone called him Slow.
“I’m scared,” Jackson said.
“Don’t worry. They’re just probably needing more help on this side.”
“You asked if I was scared.”
“Nah,” Honey said.
The East side looked like a whole different game. The foundation had been set for a big house – a house that made the A-frames look like camp cabins, and apparently the whole crew was devoted to it. Jackson tried to imagine who might live in a house like that. A Senator? A business executive? Who, with that kind of money, would come out to this dark little corner of the bottleneck? There were a hundred things he didn’t understand. The first being Honey’s sad little smile as he let Jackson out of the cab.
Don Newlon was sitting on the edge of the foundation. Jackson had noticed him the other night. Don’s skin was an olive color; he had that dark hair and he’d just shaved his beard from the other night, so there was a shadow of stubble around his jaw; he was so beautiful that Jackson couldn’t look at him full on; he just looked at Don’s edges. Beautiful Don with his long legs out in front of him like a kid, eating a sandwich. Watching him with the sandwich pissed Jackson off, all of a sudden; how can you eat when you’re about to fire someone? All the old adages of his father’s – the way that the shift leaders would sell out their wives before they’d lose a profit. “Throw your beads at someone else’s daughter.” His father shouting at the Channel 5 news when everyone was protesting the union. That was one thing about his father – he was a union man. The union gave him health insurance and got him off in time for cheap domestics at the bar, and no matter how many times the pressure came for a union bust his father wouldn’t budge.
“Hey,” Jackson said. Don held out the hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich and Jackson shook it. He had shaken more hands in the last few days than ever before in his life. Don’s hands were strong with long fingers. His palms were warm and dry, not too soft. It was a good handshake.
“Hey, Jack. Can I call you Jack?”
“Sure.”
“How’s the work going?”
“It’s all right.”
“Do you know your way around yet?” Don asked. He was looking at Jackson with his blue eyes and the dark hair was falling into them and Jackson looked away.
Shotgun shacks around the mudflats, the dingy houses that used to be lakefront property. The shady dark arms of the ironworks. The row of failing businesses: Maxine’s Shear Perfection; Gold Mine Pawn; the liquor store. The clear teardrop of the new lake.
“Oh, sure,” Jackson said. What was this? “The whole damn bunker.”
“Just like M*A*S*H*!” Don said.
“Those were tents.”
Don looked a little wounded. “Right,” he said.
Jackson felt an immediate sense of remorse. He wanted to take it back so that Don would smile at him again. “I loved that show,” Jackson said. I loved that show? He hadn’t even watched that show, only when he and Lydia tried dressing the television antennae in tin foil and it had picked up the Trinity Broadcast Network and that – M*A*S*H*, and neither were the forbidden treasures he’d been hoping for. Jackson had thought of M*A*S*H* as an old person’s show, he remembered now. Don must be twelve or fifteen years older than him – it hadn’t occurred to him until now to wonder how old Don was, but he guessed he was in his early thirties. Older than himself, and younger than Eric. Don had faint lines at the corners of his eyes from the sun or laughter. Jackson looked at them and looked away again.
“Me, too,” Don said, happily.
“Yep,” Jackson said. “Me, too.”
“Ha!”
Jackson fished for a cigarette. His hands were shaking as he lit it. He didn’t understand what was going on. It didn’t seem like Don was here to fire him, but why else? To try to be his friend? Don looked like the kind of person Jackson normally would have avoided – beautiful – too beautiful, he thought – and capable, too much of getting his way in the world filling up his chest. Jackson could imagine him in a sports bar or out on the street, harassing queers just for the hell of it. Throwing peanuts at a couple fags across the bar. He looked like the kind of guy Jackson hated the most – the kind who would play grab-ass with his douchebag friends and then beat some queer kid down on the street. But that was a lie, too – the truth was he hated them because he was afraid. A beautiful man might see desire on him, might catch a glimpse of something sparking in Jackson that the man felt the need to extinguish. And now Jackson could feel his whole body being pulled toward Don, a warm need in him that he could not let Don see. Please, Jackson thought, looking at Don’s square shoulders, his easy smile, don’t look at me.
“Where you from?” Don asked.
How to answer? “Portland,” he said.
“Missoula,” said Don.
Jackson nodded. He would die if he couldn’t come up with something to say. His thoughts whirred and lit on words and then abandoned them again. “Montana,” he said finally. Stupid.
“Yes.”
Kill me, Jackson thought. Please God.
“You coming to the party?” Don asked.
“What party?”
“Saturday night. For Easter.”
“Easter was two weeks ago.”
“Well, it’s a party, still.”
“Sure,” Jackson said.
“You ever shot a gun?”
“What?”
“A gun.”
“No.”
Don turned and grinned at him. “We’ll fix that Saturday, then.” He stood up, sandwich gone, and gestured toward his truck across the lot. “You want a ride back?”
They rode back in silence. Jackson wanted to
throw up. What was there to say? Nothing. Don was the most beautiful man Jackson had ever seen and it had to be written all over his face. Why had Don called for him? Jackson fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, smoked it through the cracked window. If Don had wanted to tell him something he’d done wrong, then why hadn’t Don brought it up? If Don had just wanted to see him … Jackson sucked on the cigarette and watched the paper burn down.
Don pulled the truck up to the site and Jackson reached for the door handle.
“Hey,” Don said, and caught Jackson’s arm with one hand. Jackson looked down at Don’s long fingers, the trimmed oval nails with a hairpin line of dirt under each one. They both did. There was a long beat and Jackson felt a flush come over him, the blood blooming through his body, electricity and fear. “If you need anything, let me know,” Don said, and dropped his hand. “If anybody gives you a hard time.”
Jackson was suddenly feverishly hot. He didn’t know where to look, just nodded at Don and smiled in a way he hoped looked natural. He wasn’t being fired. He wasn’t being fired. Don had touched his arm. He watched the truck move off down the road, back toward the East side.
Finally, he walked back to the sawhorses to split the rest of the beams, moving mechanically, thinking about Don, his long fingers, his coltish limbs. It had been twenty terrible, wonderful minutes and now he felt ruined and obsessed. The whole of his experience: Chris, a half-dozen anonymous men in Portland, Eric. A certain dark Sunday afternoon in the high school pool, Chris lying across Jackson’s lap while Jackson jerked him off, the damp warm chlorine, the wet trail of their footprints shrinking on the concrete. He’d looked down at Chris’s half-closed eyes, his warm cock – Jackson had felt so sure he was in love then, with Chris in the cup of his hand. But in all of the too-quick weeks of their friendship Chris would never look at him, not really. He only let Jackson touch him, kiss him, and for a few weeks that had seemed like enough. Until it wasn’t. A humiliating bitter taste in his mouth, the lock of hair. Chris looking past him. Later, the men in Portland, faceless, ghosts, numbers: fifty dollars, a hundred. A bottle, a meal. And then that first meeting with Eric, when he’d pulled out his billfold and reached across and touched Jackson’s arm, and even sitting across from fat, despicable Eric he’d felt a flush of something. It felt like attraction but really it was something else. Flattery. Hope.