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.

Hinge

The cattle had been hauled to the sale barn before they auctioned Merlin F. Decker’s machinery, tools and the contents of countless containers, boxes and barrels of four outbuildings. The cousins pilfer things they thought they might use later—a crescent wrench resting on the back of a trailer, a green-glass utility insulator and a pocketful of nuts, washers and bolts that could, possibly, help repair the go-kart they pulled behind the motorcycle.

The four boys nod and reply politely to those who expressed sympathy. But they avoid their Grandmother, who was stoic until the Sunday Buick sold.

Plaster & Lathe

Marvin had to strong-arm Ruby into the move, promising quiet evenings on the porch with red beers and Royals games on the transistor. Otherwise, he said, the house would just go to someone who didn’t care, someone who would raze the house and flip the land.

He didn’t tell Ruby that his Grandfather had one windy afternoon mistakenly rotated the plans so that the master bedroom faced east. He didn’t tell Ruby that the white-washed clapboard would need siding or what it would cost. Nor did Marvin tell her that the house’s ghosts didn’t truck in nostalgia. Or that to combat these haunts, Marvin turned to amber liquids cut with ice.

There were many things he neglected to tell Ruby.

Back Room

The ruffle of thin paper over 20 years had worn barely-visible grooves that were fully-felt. Stuart Kierman rests his arms on the counter on a silvery-blue January evening. Janet always used too much starch in his Prussian blue topcoat, so as Stuart glides his way through his neat stacks of timetables and waybills, telegrams and freight reports, the hair on his arms stands at attention.

Mr. Edward Morris pushes open the door at half-past nine and brings with him sleeks of chilly wind. Without looking up, but pushing the exact amount forward, Mr. Morris says, “Round trip to Denver on the 9:43, please. Tonight, please.”

As he makes out the ticket with rigid but looping penmanship, Stuart thinks of the station at 17th and Wynkoop. There in Denver he’d marveled at the precision of countless Columbines crafted into plaster arches. He lost himself in the hum of passengers scurrying from one place to the next, and he hob-nobbed with fellow station agents who told of a three-fingered hobo ghost who would rap on ticket booth counters like the one Mr. Morris stood in front of now.

Only Stuart knows Mr. Morris won’t notice the beaux-arts architecture, nor probably hear anything but his own breathing as he makes his way off the train and to the freight desk pushed away from the bustle of the main hall. He has a package to retrieve, thought Stuart. A package that Mr. Morris deemed was reckless to send to the city in the first place. A package he would now have to pay to pick up.

“Stuart,” Mr. Morris slows. “I’ll also need a bill of lading for the coffin.”

Stuart reaches for the pad, writes gently, and then smacks the PAID stamp on the bill. Stuart skims it back to Mr. Morris.

“You didn’t have to…”

“I know.”

As Mr. Morris shuffles onto the platform to wait for the train to take him to his daughter, Stuart Kierman takes the bills out of his wallet and puts his arms back on the counter. He counts out his change.

Classroom

The moustache of white chalk against aging skin complements the silver hair of Mr. Loren Burch. He walks around the front of his desk, trying to remember the problem behind him and looking for who wasn’t paying attention in second period Algebra.

“Mr. Carl Gueller?”

“Well, um, you, ah, need to subtract the same from both sides.”

“Not close. And let’s leave the woolgatherin’ for the fields, young man.”

Lois tells Carl after class. She says that there are no hard feelings, but she was going to the W.P.A. dance with George Kimball. She says that Gayle Siler will ask Carl tomorrow.

Carl wants to protest that George didn’t like her as much, that George has a secret girl over in Canton. Carl wants to tell Lois that he, not George, should be the one to touch the softness of her hips through the cotton of her best dress. Instead he says nothing, thrusts his hand in his jeans and walks down the hall.

George stands at a workbench in fourth period shop the next day, taking a sanding block to what would eventually be the lid of a keepsake box. As the tips of his knuckles lurch into George’s cheekbone and mouth, Carl’s surprised that his knuckles begin to bleed as quickly as George falls.

George’s blood leaks from a rictus of grievance and pity. With one knee still on the floor, George calmly states, “By a certain math, I understand why you’re pissed. But you gotta understand, Carl, that me and Lois ain’t got nothing to do with you.”

Shingles

Three tall pots rest on the cookstove, each whiffing out steam that gathers in droplets on the paling wallpaper. Gayle stands over the sink and hulls the flats of strawberries. Pinched between thumb and index finger, she cuts a half-moon to the right, a half-moon to the left and then pulls. She barbers the insides of each one for good measure before tossing them into the cold-water bath on the opposite side of the sink. She crushes them with a potato masher until her forearm begins to ache. The strawberries go into the saucepan that gurgles on low heat. The added mounds of sugar and pectin form cumulus splashes atop the scarlet fruit. She turns up the heat and stirs.

She sets Mason jars face up in the sink and pours in boiling water until it splashes over the sides, creating runnels of heated mist that cloud her vision and ruddy her skin. With longish tongs, she moves the febrile jars into the pre-heated oven.

Gayle uses the bottom of her cherry-print apron to wipe the sweat and steam from her face and walks to the window over the sink. She pushes it open with both hands, and the wind blasts its way inside the kitchen. She thinks of Jerome on the combine and wonders when he’ll escort her to the frostiness of the picture show over in Hollyrood.

She thinks of Jerome sitting in his heat and wonders if he thinks of Gayle, standing in hers.

Meter at Station

The sleet slams sideways and crackles when it hits the layer of ice that covers all outdoor surfaces of Bud’s Full Service 66 at 5:30 on a February morning.

Papa hacks with the croup, so Vincent skips school and bundles himself in coveralls and a red stocking hat with the Phillips logo. He pulls the long-handled dandelion digger from the rack in the heater-less garage, and repeatedly stabs it through the ice on either side of the two pumps. Vincent knows that his dad will say that the pocks of pale gray in the concrete have come from such makeshift clearing. The shovel’s already bent sides curl even more as they cut through the shattered crystals and scrape the pavement with the sound of work. The clearing consumes 45 minutes.

The customers, mostly regulars, seem a bit more friendly on account of the weather, and watch Bud’s youngest—is he 12 now, asks Mrs. Siler—clear the remaining ice on both windshields, check the oil and tires and pump the gas.  They all see Bud in the boy, but they only say, “Thanks.” The sleet knocks harder after noon, and Vincent must repeat the stabbing and shoveling on the half-hour.

Vincent hasn’t seen this yellow four-door 66 Impala, with rust highlights on the wheel wells and rocker panels, but he does his job anyway. He walks to the driver side, and the man cracks the window but a sliver. “Windshields, oil, and tires,” he says as the waft of butts, stale food and despair slither through the crack. “And a quarter’s worth of gas.”

Vincent displays nothing as he puts the quarter in his coveralls. He scrapes the windshield with coiled anger, doing the math in his head – not even a third of a gallon. He has to remove his gloves to remove the caps from the frosted stems. The gauge doesn’t budge in the cold. He pops the hood, goes halfway up the driver’s side, pulls, wipes, places, pulls again, looks and swords the stick back in place.

He walks to the back of the heap, tugs hard on the license plate and pushes it down, but it doesn’t stay. When he feels the sting of the pump on his bare hand, Vincent decides. Bending down, he removes the gas cap, and rattles the nozzle so it seems to be in place. He then slowly pumps the quarter’s worth of gas onto the ground at his feet. It splashes on his boots. He lets the license plate bang back up and taps the car twice on the trunk.

Sandstone

Walter Hoffman rides silently in the dawn’s light and approaches the Scottswood spread. He anticipates the opportunity to spend time with Cecil, scratch a few bits and lay under pinpricks of light, lullabied by coyotes. Cecil was already in the barn gathering his father’s tools—a combination of feathers, hammers, chisels and wedges‑—that they’d have to haul down on this first day.

Mr. Scottswood came to the barn as boys laded Etta, the farm’s eldest bay, with the necessaries for two weeks of on-location quarrying. “I won’t be down your way for a week, so you get a good jump on that stone,” he said. “And take care with them tools. Charles Shaffer, over in Bunker Hill, forged that star drill for me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Walter. “You’ve showed us. We will be careful.”

The friends banter easily on the way down about girls and horses. They stop to water the horses in Elk Creek; they even unload Etta to give her a break from the sweltering sun.

Mr. Scottswood had scraped the overburden from the stone two weeks prior. And now a strip of Dakota sandstone, its ferric contents washing the stone in subterranean sinopia, would, with metal rods and the sweat of young men, become the building blocks of Mr. Scottswood’s barn.

Walter nestles the bit into the stone, wiggling it with pressure. On his knees, he holds the iron bit with two hands. He glances up at a Cecil, who holds the stone hammer and a crooked grin.

“What?”

“Hope I don’t slip. That’d hurt.”

The force of metal on metal viciously shakes Walter’s hands, but he holds on. Every six holes, the boys trade.

Outbuilding

Randy walks open-mouthed toward the aluminum garage. His boots squish in the sand. The frayed short rope that hangs down from the right garage door skips in the early morning wind. Randy bats it as he enters the shade of the empty garage.

His friend Terry had gotten the truck for him at the I-70 Auto Auction, since individual buyers weren’t welcome. 1966 Chevy with a 283, three on the tree, 126,000. High, sure, but highway miles. Turquoise with a white stripe. Cherry body. 500 bucks. Since then, only one battery, one headlight, a few filters, gas and oil.

Randy had picked Laura up for their first date in it. They had gone to see The Fugitive at the Mid-State Cinema. During the movie she was rigid, keeping her hands planted on welded-together knees. But at the Sno-Cone stand afterwards, she gushed about Harrison Ford and then kissed Randy flush on the mouth. They got back in his truck.

The July day before they were married in the courthouse, Randy asked Laura if she wanted to ride there in a limo, since Terry said he could get one. “No need for that,” she said. “Let’s take your truck. “

Randy stares at the splats of grease and oil on the cement. That one looks like a Sno-Cone, he thinks.

Behind the Store

— How many times did you go into Koepke’s?

— Three times. Once on Sunday, once on Tuesday and then last night.

— Who was with you?

— Carl Gueller, Georgie Kimball, Charlie Burton and Russell. But Burton and Russell never went in the store. They stood out in the sand where Fritz drives up.

— Don’t try to protect anyone. How did you get in?

— The stick was off. We took it off late in the day. We did that twice. The other time Carl went through the coal chute and then opened the back door.

— Tell me, exactly, what you took?

— We split up inside. I took some firecrackers. Carl took bars and some gum, and Georgie went to the box. The second time, though, the box was empty. The last time, Carl went to the box and George took the candy.

— How much money did you get?

— Carl just put the money in his pocket. Georgie dumped it into my hand, but I put some back.

— I don’t believe you. How did you split the money?

— Georgie probably got three total . Carl about a buck and a half.

— Where did you go to split up the money?

— Down by the ditch by the depot. We divvied it up for the picnic. Carl gave Burton and Russell each 25 cents. Georgie gave them each 35 cents.

— You got some of the split up?

— Georgie gave me a dollar

— Why didn’t you tell me this before?

— I was scared to tell.

— You will go up there. You will apologize to Mr. Koepke. How old are you?

— Nine.

— You’re too young to be talking to a peace officer. But don’t forget how this feels.

— Yes, sir.

Buckets

The hopper came from the back of a mail-truck. Gordon’s son made his shady living telling folks what they needed to hear before buying the things that seemingly landed at his feet. It’s a steal, he’d say, only you’ll need to haul it.

The hopper rattled the ground as it came off the flat-bed, and Carlton had a helluva time trying to get the thing level, but no problem at all in filling the trailer. Junk from the Morton Building in back, bee equipment up front. The double-doors would seal up with a series of squeaking hinges, a tough pull and a metallic thwack. He would, though, need to find a padlock.