Kitchen

Paulette doesn’t move from the sink when the screen door opens. Nor does she turn when she hears the shuffle of Edward’s boots behind her.

He clears his throat. “Well, honey, looks like we’ll be seven for dinner.”

“Does that include you?”

“I was fixin’ on it.”

“You keep those men on like you do, and I won’t be able to fix near anything.”

She mouths his response as he replies, “Good people help others in lean times, honey.”

“You keep those men on, your own family’s gonna be lean, too…Honey.”

“I reckon you’re right. But it’s the way I am.”

The way he is has turned Paulette’s kitchen and dining room into a makeshift restaurant. Only these customers don’t pay. She knows his intentions are right, but with grain sellin’ at 26 cents a bushel and drought that would make Elijah blush, Edward scratches just enough from the elevator to keep the bank pleased and these transient folk employed, housed and fed.

She walks to the icebox, wiping her hands on a green floral print apron. She’d killed and plucked four chickens yesterday, thinking the birds would last two days. She cuts as her mother had – down the middle, pop and chop both wings, same with the legs, and then separate the thigh from the breast. Seasoned now, the chicken rests on the wax paper as Paulette whisks the buttermilk. She grabs the coffee can from under the sink, pounds it on the counter a couple of times and watches as the liquid bleeds through.

As she dunks the pieces in the buttermilk and twists them in the peppered flour, Paulette doesn’t realize that the deep blue veins of these birds match the ones that spiderweb on her own ankles.

Logbook

On the workbench in the basement, Zeke sets the two green card files to his left and the new 1955 Chevy parts catalog, bound in a series of three-ring notebooks, to his right. He sits on a backless stool and locks his feet inside the bottom rung.

He sharpens a pencil with his penknife, then draws out an index card. On each card he copies the description and the part number on the top line, writing in all caps. Below, on the left of the card, he writes INVENTORY. At 10 p.m., he stops. He will do this after dinner for the next several weeks, marking his daily progress with a shim he uses as a bookmark.

Every evening when he gets upstairs and readies for bed, Zeke finds his wife, Vera, already asleep.

Drum

Didn’t really think nothing of it when folks started moving away, since we followed suit, too. Dad had already passed when mamma got a job down south. Sold the house to Mr. Jenkins. Nice enough, I guess, but one of those kind that was snakebit by what I always called refuse.

Over the years, he’d haul all sorts of stuff – sheets of scrap tin, tons of old rims, blistered tractor tires, a couple three sawed-off truck beds, and stacks of 18-foot metal beams. Hell, Jenkins had beams stacked up four or five high in the back yard. Never seen anything like it. Stuff just gathered back there. It sat, and since that property pushes so far south, I guess he thought he had to fill it.

He passed several years back now. It took four flatbeds to haul all that junk. Four. Four trucks of sheer junk. Sure cost his grand-niece a pretty penny to clean that mess up, and all she got was that house you was lookin’ at.

Fridge

Marge sends the four grandkids around to the north side of the pond. She unties the trotline from around the cottonwood sapling that shouldn’t be growing on the west side of the dam. She waits and signals Jerry, the oldest. They lift on three.

She hears the shouts of “Seven, grandma, seven,” but Marge only sees the five treble hooks. The boys walk the line back around the pond, dragging the catfish through the dust. Jerry strings the catch and drops them in a five-gallon bucket. Marge puts great faith in liver, but her husband swears by stinkbait. Marge takes chicken liver from butcher paper and slithers it on the empty hooks. The cousins each grab a bit of the line, careful to keep the bait off of the ground and the dangling hooks out of tanned arms. They walk the line back and set it.

On a table Marge drives a 20 penny nail through the head of each catfish and cleans them as the boys skip rocks and play guns.

Gears, Gaskets, Belts

George allows Joanie to set up her dollhouse on the side of the mechanic’s bay mostly on account that he made the house and the beds, armoires and tables that make it a home. She moves the figurines around the house, and they settle in the kitchen. Joanie instructs her father that this particular family always eats standing up since they can’t really bend their legs. George laughs gently as he pops the hood on the 1954 Ford F100 that Percy says seems to be skipping.

He watches his daughter, nine now with sandy brown pig-tails and lime-green cotton sun-dress, as she stretches out on the cardboard that covers the floor. “Sweetheart, can you help me with something.”  “Sure, papa.”

“Climb up in there and start this puppy up.”

She’s in the cab before he knows it. “Just turn the key to the right,” he says. She does, and the boom from 239 Y-Block V8 rattles the garage. He notices immediately that it’s not purring. George walks to the bench and grabs a stethoscope. He places it on the running engine and moves around. He thinks it’s in the sixth cylinder. A tiny hiss, he thinks. Could be worse. He hollers for Joanie to shut off the engine. She bounces down from the cab. “What’s wrong?”

“Probably just a piston ring or a valve,” he says. “Would you like to stay here while I work, or do you want to head home?” He grabs his box of wrenches.

“I’ll stay.”

He disappears under the hood and works.

“Why do you have this?” Joanie asks. George turns and sees his daughter with the stethoscope in her ears and her hand over her heart. He rips it from her.

“Don’t ever touch my tools. Ever,” he commands. He pauses and looks at his daughter’s puzzled, hurt eyes. He continues in a whisper, “Because that’s how I make my living.”

 

Glendale

Marie rotates her tiny fist, wrapped in a dishtowel, inside the pint glass. As she sets it next to the others, she hears the door open.
Sheriff James Braughton walks into Moody’s Billiard Parlor flanked by Deputy Merrill Bice. They approach Ed, who hits one more shot (15 in corner) and stands.

Marie watches as Ed barely leans on his stick, left hand up, left knee slightly bent and a little sway in those still-skinny hips. Though she can’t see his face, she knows Ed pushes his tongue into his upper lip before he speaks.

“A little early to be lookin’ for a game, Jimmy.”

“I’m not here to socialize, Ed. I come on business.”

“Mind you, I am ears, and mine do like propositions.”

“It’s time to go, Ed. It’s time. This check should be enough to get you gone and the lease’s already canceled. You got til Friday.” He pauses. “You know better than to fleece Nelson’s son.”

“Jimmy, I spotted him 25 a game, 35 in the last one. Not my fault a banker’s son can’t shoot snooker and handles one scotch like four.” Ed pinches the check, scissor-like, from Braughton. He unfolds it, examines the number and pushes his tongue into his upper lip. “I hear, though, there’s a spot up in Glendale. May have to head up that way.”

“You do that.”

Marie moves slowly from behind the bar to the tables, carrying with her a sherbet container filled with soapy water. She wipes methodically. She will leave this place cleaner than she found it.

Green Paint

Kevin is surprised how easily the phone comes off the wall. The red, blue, yellow and green wires float from the wall. At least she can’t call back again to tell him she won’t be back.

He walks to the back room and unlocks his gun cabinet. He takes the Ruger Security Six .357, sheathed in a rust-orange fake-velvet cover. He grabs a box of Federal hollow-points and unzips the case as he walks to the kitchen.

He wants Celinda’s fancy plates, heirlooms she calls them.  Too fancy for them to use unless her sister was visiting. He will prop them up at the bottom of a fence post and blast them from the porch, he thinks.

The only thing Kevin finds in the cupboard is a bag of generic paper plates.

Handles

Elias darts from behind the Downs water tower and tucks his satchel close to him with the base of his left arm. He runs with a slight skip, and he pulls himself into the slow-moving, opened-door freight car. He quickly moves out of sight toward the front of the car, plops down and stretches his legs as the train gathers speed.

The gently rocking vibrations of the car allow Elias to relax after two months of planning. A half-hour later, though, a raspy voice intones, “You aim to get yourself jack-rolled, son?” A match quickly illuminates the spot the voice emanates from. Elias makes out a rumpled hat, squinting eyes a dark, matted beard. “A breshen needs a jocker.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Where you headin’?”

“West. Seattle. My older brother out there told me there was money to be made on fishing boats.”

“Catching the big hole in the sky?”

“Excuse me, sir.”

“That means heading out west. What you running from?”

“I am not running from anything, sir. I am running to something.”

“That’s a might smart answer. I am not fond of spearing biscuits in Denver, so how you fixed for food?”

He hesitates, but Elias slides his satchel across the car.

“Time and rails, kid. Time and rails. That’s what we’ve got now.”

Outbuilding 2

The two pairs of leather gloves on the nails under the hay hooks were too big for either of their hands, and neither one of them could handle a bale alone. But they pull the gloves as taut as they can with their teeth. They each grab a hook.

The brothers pick hay from the second row since the bale would already be higher than the trough. With a windup, they bury the hooks into the middle of each end. Dust billows.

They shuffle step across the floor and use both hands to tumble the hay over the edge of the trough. One breaks up the bale, the other retrieves the wire. After eight bales, they climb the fence at the west end of the barn, unwrap the rusted chain and swing the gate open. The cattle shuffle in to feed.

Grandpa, who watches from the truck, steps out and empties his pipe on his boot heel. He approaches the boys and ruffles their tow heads. “Not bad,” he says. “Now get in the truck. We’ve got more to do.”

Shelves

The cousins, Chad and Steve, attempt to work stealthily, stealing minutes between chores and hours when Grandma thinks they’re hunting birds. Grandpa, of course, watches the whole thing unfold, at one point laughing at the boys as they pound horseshoe nail after horseshoe nail to secure the back axle.

“You think that’ll hold?” he asks as he walks around the scattered pieces of the wooden cart.

“It’ll work,” says Steve.

The boys talk Grandpa into pulling the go-kart on the road behind the Scout. He allows them to ride tandem, but he makes them wear helmets.

After an eighth of a mile, they’re up to 15 miles per hour. Steve takes one hand off the steering rope and puts up his thumb. Grandpa complies. At 20 miles per hour the cart shakes and the back rubber wheels bend in and begin to rub against the butt of Steve’s overalls.

Grandpa slows at Cussin’ Paul’s place, and Steve turns the cart to avoid the Scout. The boys hop off, and immediately check the back axle. Out of more than four dozen nails, only a handful are left. They get in place, and Steve lets Chad give the thumbs up. Grandpa floors it, leaving the boys with a faceful of dust. In less than ten seconds, the entire back section collapses and the back wheels wobble to their respective ditches.

Grandpa slows, but he doesn’t stop.  He drags them all the way back to the driveway, waving his seed hat out the window the entire time.

Station

With the windows down, the morning wind whips through the truck, swirling the bank receipts, wrappers, and plastic cups on the passenger side floor.

He could tell he had too much of a load when he stops to turn onto Iron Street. The rocks grumble at the sides of the truck. Need a bed pad, Randy thinks.

Smoking a Marlboro Red, Terry stands between the abandoned gas pumps at his salvage yard as Randy pulls up.

“I’m thinking about painting these suckers up,” he says through the window, smacking each pump with his palms. Randy squeezes out of the truck, but his door hits one of the pumps. “Shit, son, watch the merchandise.”

“Your pumps need to watch my truck.”

“And you need to learn how to park.” Terry doesn’t hesitate before revving back up. “Now, like I was saying, all I gotta do is shoot clear those hoses, fix up the storage tank or grab a new one, do a little do-si-do with the zoning board and have me a gas station. Put Lester in one of those white suits. Maybe sell Nehi.”

 

Tool Storage

Herbert Patterson sits at the kitchen table, drinks his coffee, pokes at his steak and eggs and worries about his spread. He’s got more acreage and head of cattle than he can handle, not enough money in the bank and a wife not suited for the farming life, even though she cooks like a farm wife. Marjorie manages the chickens and hogs just fine, but she refuses to get on a tractor, and she has made it clear she wants to move back to Ellsworth.

“Why don’t you just sell out to Jarvis? He knows this land better than your daddy, or his daddy, did.”

“What’ll he pay with? No bank’s going to give a hired hand that kind of money.”

“Doesn’t hurt to ask.”

Herbert broaches the deal with Jarvis as they feed the cattle. “I’ve been working this land since before you was born. I’m happy just working, and I don’t want to go fooling with money men and deeds,” Jarvis says.

Herbert coaxes Otis Sanford to buy the section that fall by agreeing to pay Jarvis’s wages for a year. With a handshake, Herbert leaves three generations in another man’s hand.

Window

The regulars only nod as Janitor John walks into Mopsie’s in his Sunday best and his Knox bowler on a Friday night at 10 p.m. They know better than to speak to him today.

John asks Earl for a beer and a shot of whiskey. Earl hesitates. “What’s wrong with your usual?”

“Today ain’t usual. I got the money, please give me what I ask for.”

Earl obliges. On Tuesday, second grade teacher Myrtle Triplett was found unresponsive in the boarding house, and today was her funeral.

Earl can’t tell John that Myrtle never considered John a suitor – she was only acting kindly to someone so clearly affected by the War. And John can’t know that Earl had been with her several times in the last few months, but he couldn’t take her swings and spells. She was a sad soul, Earl thinks, and this is why a 26-year-old woman drinks enough chloral hydrate to knock out a team of horses.

Instead, Earl keeps setting up the pint glasses and shots. After four drinks, John demands the attention of the bar, “Our earthly desires do not always culminate in our satisfaction.” John stumbles into his normal place at the piano, gathers himself, and sings “His Eye is on the Sparrow” in an abounding baritone.

And no one says a word.

Lock

My mama grew up in that house you was lookin’ at. Ain’t much to look at now, but at the time she had a restaurant there on the west side, cooked in the back. She ran that even when she was pregnant with me. Farm food, you know—steak, chicken, pork, taters, corn. She made mean fried okra.  Her trick was pepper in the flour, you see.

This town was big then, three, no, four hotels, a couple pool halls, five taverns, and a couple more not-so-official if you know what I mean. Lumber yard over there, and a big general store across the street. All from the railroad. Big business then. Back down that hill was loading for cattle and hogs, and the crops got loaded in over at the elevator back by the paved road. We went to school back up there, but that’s been gone for what, since, oh, late 60s, I imagine.

Saturday night was our night as kids. The street was wider, and folks would park in the center. The traffic went on both sides. Cars lined up all the way from Meg’s place up past where we are now. Me and my brother would just run loose on those nights. Ducking in and out of the parked cars, you know, throwing rocks in the alley, sassing young men who were on dates. Boy stuff.

Hell, we spent more time trying to get out of trouble than we did getting into it.

Hollyrood

He hadn’t noticed the sky being that deep of blue come 11, but then he also had been sitting on the tractor. He hears the Chalmers roar, but when he tilts his head to see it, he only hears the grinding of the motor.

He tries to get up out of the field of sorghum, and that’s when Glenn realizes he can’t move his leg. That’s when Glenn suffers—and swears he smells—the searing mid-thigh. He cuddles his head up and sees the dark purple crusted on his jeans and feels something puddle warmly below him.

As the pain increases, the memory takes over… the truck swaying south down Sanders road. He’d seen it a half-mile down the road, dust ballooning behind it like an explosion writ small. He saw the kids in the bed, and what was that… rifles?… Nah, just drunk kids messin’ on a late summer Saturday. Glenn couldn’t have heard the pop of the .22 over the roar of the tractor. His left leg didn’t hear it either, but it certainly caught it. Ass-over-tea-kettle off the side of the Chalmers.  And then that mazarine sky.

It takes Glenn nearly 10 minutes to crawl back to the tractor, a painful few to fashion a tourniquet out of his handkerchief, and another 10 to use the footboard and steering wheel to pull himself up. He forces the gears without the clutch and manages, almost sidesaddle, to put some pressure on the gas. His folks’ house is a mile and a half away.

Once on the road, he has a hard time staying on the road. He keeps looking up at the sky and down at the grease around the gear shift. White and fuzz creep into his vision, and he swears the truck has come back to finish him.

He holds his hand over his eyes, adjusting to the sheer whiteness of the room. Until he focuses on his leg hoisted with a series of shiny pulleys, he considers he might have passed. He feels the crispness of the sheets on his forearm. He’s nearly asleep when he senses movement in the room. The nurse steps to his side.

“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Vancil. Doctor said another 10 minutes and you wouldn’t been lyin’ here. I am Dora, and I’ll be seein’ to you these next several days. Water?”

Glenn swallows quickly, then gulps again.  He smiles at her. She returns it.

That was 65 years ago.

Hotel Roof

Jack tumbles into the dark room he doesn’t want to be in. He gropes for the out-sticking peg and palms it. The cheap-patterned wallpaper glows in the low-wattage. He sits on the bed, springs straining and creaking, and pulls off his boots. Jack fishes his wallet, flush with chiseled greenbacks won on green felt, from his inside jacket pocket. He counts the money twice. He sets it on the nightstand, pushing the lamp to the side.

He’s getting slower, he thinks. Less careful, he thinks.

Jack knows that not hopping that freight at 11:17 made him four more sawbucks. But it also meant four more whiskeys and a few more angry fellows in a town not used to guys like him.

The room spins a little. Jack places his hands on his knees and closes his eyes. He hears the shuffle of feet outside the room. Shadows crowd the crack at the foot of the door.

The knock comes gently. The cost of not hopping the 11:17 won’t.

Electrical Box at Elevator

The swash spitting out of Walter Witt’s mouth sizzles in the molten afternoon. “Hell, son, I been buckin’ grain for nigh 25 years, and damned if I ever seen scoop jockey work like you. Your brother Lyle would’ve already had this stuff down the screen.”

Harold Talley can’t tell Mr. Witt to shut his yappin’ piehole—instead he sucks in hard on his left cheek, releasing the sweetness of two lemondrops. He shoves the grain scoop deep into the sunglow yellow seed piled in the back of the truck, and pushes it, nearly backhanded, toward the undersized hopper door. The grain waterfalls out and through the screenings that will carry it into the elevator. The dust, worse now with his increased exertion, leaves thin, abstract ribbons on Harold’s tanned arms.

As he tries to move toward the back of the bed, Harold’s pull-up boots sink in the mounds. He stumbles and tries not to listen to Witt’s puff about molasses, tortoises and FDR. Instead, begrimed and handkerchiefed like a upstart bandit, Harold just pulls harder on his cheek.

Window

Marge glasses the west pasture from the porch, as if she needs additional proof. She knows in a few minutes she’ll be out digging up every one of those rosettes of light pink that punch through the bluestem.

As spring breaks, the cattle graze up north of the pond, but the herd can’t move to the better grass until Marge rids the pasture of the thistles. She leaves the field glasses dangling from her neck, takes her gloves from atop the wood stove and walks out to the Scout.

The Scout rattles through the uneven ground off the path to the pond. She angles the vehicle to the northwest and parks about 30 yards from where the fence corners. The ground, spring moist, gives with her steps. She carries a sharp-shooter shovel, and a handful of paper bags that, as they fill, she will set in the back of the Scout

Marge remembers how her father taught her this chore—four deep shovel pushes in a diamond shape. Go at a bit of an angle on the fourth. Use one hand to push down on the shovel, and reach with the other to pull out the plant. Shake out the dirt. Thistle in the bag. Repeat.

Two weeks later the old stock tank down by the Morton Building bulges with tangled roots and deepening heliotrope adornment. She’ll replay this battle with thistles again next spring. For now, though, Marge sprays the pile with lighter fluid, strikes a match, and watches the whole mess burn.

Stage

The Knox Bowler looks crisp from the back, so does the golden vest, and Janitor John plunks his way through Carmichael’s “Rockin’ Chair” as the parents take their seats.

Mrs. Lindquist, behind the curtain at stage right, nods John’s way, and he wraps up the song with a flourish. Unlike the rehearsal, John spins on his seat and rises to the crowd, nudging their applause with a slow lifting of his arms. Mrs. Lindquist turns to Vera Storer and reminds her to smile.

John plays the opening bars of “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,” as Vera, a timid eight-year-old in white and lace, steps and toes in time. She concentrates on remembering the funny-named steps. The stage feels different, warmer, with an audience; only Vera can’t see past the glaring lights at the base of the stage. She remembers to smile.

Afterwards, Janitor John shakes her hand and Mrs. Lindquist gives her a hug. Her mother, Lillian, now backstage, tugs at the hem of Vera’s dress and says that it looks too crooked. Vera continues to look out at the stage lights, losing herself in their whiteness.

Vera shakes back to now. The lamp beside her recliner heats her face. It’s Tuesday, she thinks, and she’s no longer eight.  She remembers that her daughter will be here soon to clean the apartment that now passes for home.

Trailer

Jarvis awakes before the six o’clock alarm as he’s done for the past he can’t remember now how many years. He throws his legs over the side of the bed and nestles his feet into his house slippers and tugs the robe from its bed on the post. With hands planted on the bed, he pushes himself up.

He shuffles into the darkened kitchen, flips the switch, opens the cabinet, lights the stove and starts the coffee. He cracks and whips two eggs as the patties cook and the toast browns. In 20 minutes he will drive the eight miles to Patterson’s spread, where he will water, feed, cut, mend, ride, bale and do whatever Patterson’s son says he’s supposed to do.

For now, though, Jarvis sets out one cup, one saucer, one plate, one knife and one fork. Just as he’s always done.

Second Floor

Kenny already stands on his new-to-him front porch before the door to the unrecognized pick-up even opens. Kenny readies to extend a hand, but the man now in front of him keeps his in the pockets of his Carhartts.

“Name’s Jones. Live yonder and run hogs and milo. You won’t be seeing me much.” Jones spits to the right. “I’m not exactly amenable to you town folks thinking you know farmin’. You ever need help, well, you just call someone else.” Jones spits again, pivots and returns to his truck.

Kenny’s hands are on the steering wheel three months later as he crawls his way home in an ice storm. A car has slid off the road about a quarter mile from Kenny’s spread, and its hazards blink through the sleet. A woman stands beside the car, waving. He recognizes her as Jones’s wife. He drives right past her.

Kenny’s hands are on the tractor wheel that spring when he finds Mabel, his German Shepherd, lying about 20 feet from the road. She’d been shot in the head with a rifle more suited for big game.

Kenny’s fingers count in 24 rows of Jones’s ready-to-harvest milo before his hands pick up a small sledge hammer wrapped in a towel and a tent bag that contains a dozen pieces of #8 rebar cut to 14 inches. Kenny’s careful not to trample the crop, and he straddles each row as the muffled metallic tink of steel through cloth scatters into the starless night.