Trucks grabbed another tomato slice. He scraped off the salt. Then he set the slice back down on his plate. He looked over at Claudia. She was sitting on the couch with her legs folded to one side, leaning on her forearm and moving puzzle pieces around. She didn’t look bored. Just concentrating. Intense.
“What have you loved in life you just couldn’t shake?” Trucks asked. “I could explain it better, but I think you’ll know what I mean.”
Gerald took a sip of coffee. Some egg scraps on his plate. His fork askew. He was deep in thought.
“You don’t have to answer,” Trucks said. “Maybe it was a stupid question.”
Trucks stood and walked over to the sink. He filled his water glass and chugged until it was gone. Then he looked out the little window at the surrounding acreage. Watched the gray morning sky hovering over Crow Agency like a descending blanket.
“I’d say my wife,” Gerald said. “But I don’t know if you can really count that. She wasn’t something you’d want to ‘shake,’ as you put it. Because the things you wanna shake are the things that feel like small drips of poison. Those things you return to again and again when half your gut says no and the other half thinks you couldn’t live another day without it. And then you wonder, is it actually love when it comes to those things? Is it love or sickness or addiction or some kind of consolation for a different life you can’t have? Can’t make? Even with the greatest of intentions and will? Hell if I know.”
Trucks half-filled his glass with water. He walked over to the table and sat down.
“Were you born to love her? Your wife? Do you think you were made to know each other like that?” Trucks asked.
Gerald grabbed his fork and scraped the egg debris on his plate. Then he looked up. “The way we fit together and the strength of our love, you’d be dumb not to at least consider it. Like you’re walking this big open country for all these years and meet all these people that are nice enough but make you think stranger, stranger, stranger, stranger. None of them feeling enough like you or your kind. None of them making the fit. Then one day you meet her, and within a minute, you’re not thinking stranger. You’re thinking, Girl, I know you. I’ve known you all along.”
Trucks took a bite of the scraped-off tomato.
“It sounds too good to be real,” Trucks said.
“It’s an uncommon feeling, I think,” Gerald said. “Lots of people talk about it, saying they were made for each other, but those are the same idiots you find divorced in two years. Words get thrown around a lot. Notions about romance plugged into their heads through the TV and the magazines. But it ain’t real love. Not even close to that deep, unending thing that so few have. That’s how I see it, anyhow. That’s my dime’s worth.”
“What about your kids? Could you say that with them too? That you knew them all along?”
Gerald thought. Trucks finished the tomato. The plate was empty now.
“No. Not with the children. They came from me. I made them. The similarities were implied in the making. Me and my kids might not be the exact same or even all that similar sometimes, like with my oldest, Josie. She can’t stand being in nature. She always hated the homestead here, hauling feed to the horses and pigs and cows and chickens. Camping out in the sticks and trudging through shit and getting up at first light and all the good stuff that comes with this life. But we’re still made of the same blood. And with Maddie, my wife, she was no part of my blood but every part of my being. That’s the best I could put it, I guess.”
Trucks ran his fingertips over his glass.
“That’s definitely not a sickness,” Trucks said.
“No, it’s not. It’s a truly beautiful thing.” Gerald looked out the window. “I already assume the answer, but have you had it? You felt anything like that solid, endless love?”
Trucks put his hand under the table. He ran his knuckles along the underside of the hard wood.
“Nothing like you described, no. With Elle and me, it was always like a sickness. I’d get worried when she’d leave for days all strung out. Not knowing if she was bent on pills or heroin. Afraid when she returned that she’d only leave again. And me always fearing that final leaving. Every day just fearing it like a ghost of fire you either walk through or put out. Boy, I don’t miss being sick like that. The helplessness in your gut. Always trying to explain to my little girl where her mama was. Why she wasn’t home for breakfast, for dinner, for playing time in the alley. How can you be right with yourself if all you’re doing is lying to your kid? And how long can a man keep that up before he breaks? Or before it breaks his girl? But even in my moments of sickness—my girl in the tub or sleeping on the floor or coloring in a book, her mama out somewhere doing all those crooked things—it kinda lit me up. Made me feel sparked and alive. Like being left is the only way I know how to love and live. And you find a way to deal. Always has to be some kind of outlet for that pain and loss. And even when I was young and going home to home, I still had the gym. The ring. And you can move all you want between those ropes, pedal for miles and miles, but that ring goes nowhere. And the scars pile up. The bleeds. The bruises. The breaks. But that boxing doesn’t save you. It’s temporary. It’s just the salve on the wound that tears a little each day, and all you’re trying to do is get it closed, pull it closed, keep it closed. But it’s never easy as that. Nothing is. And one day she leaves and never turns back. And you’ve got your girl still, but you also have all these piling bills. Because the winter’s not getting any warmer, and the fights don’t come any faster, and the purses don’t grow any larger. And one day you lose your girl. They take her from you. Then you lose your mind. And while your mind is lost you try to work through everything you knew then and everything you know now, and the only thing you work out is that you’re a man. You’re a man with a good chin whose been taking shots for years, and this ain’t any different if you don’t allow it to be. So you live with the lights out, and you eat next to nothing, and you take your plastic bucket to make cowboy showers in the convenience store restroom, and you say yes to the promoters fucking you over with small purses because you’ve got nothing left but to get your girl back. And you get evicted and sleep on the streets and tuck away under bridges but keep saving your stashed money in a rusted-out coffee tin and hide it at the back end of a fire escape between Rosemont and Ferry right near where you met the woman who’d rather live to die by the eye of a needle than raise the precious thing you’d made together. And so you take all you have in the pit of you and roll up your sickness and anger and poison and hate and take it out on those fights and land the drifting punches and run when you have to and absorb when you can’t and feel the bang and the thump and the spin of lights when you take that real pop, and at some point you’ve stuffed enough away in that metal can that you can find some forgiveness in laying that money down to the sharks before they fuck up your knees or your back and you find your way to that goddamn children’s home and grab your girl and say without saying that this is what it means to care about someone, that this is what a man does, that this is all you can do and all you’ve ever done, and good enough or not, it must stand because you’ve got nothing left and no other way to make it in this crazy world of yours and that one day she’ll know that and must know that by the beating your face has taken and the crooked fingers you’ve held her with for so damn long that they’re molded to her feel like a quiet prayer of forgiveness or a touch like the mantra to never let go.”
TWO FOR SPLITTING
Trucks had given Claudia a hatchet with a leather sheath over the blade. It was like an axe to her proportions. He showed her the motion. The dominant hand at the top. The other steady and firm at the bottom. He demonstrated how to position the legs as a base, lift the axe, bring it down with a slide of the top hand. Crack.
“Good. But when you come down, slide that lead hand along the wood,” Trucks said. He came up behind her and took her arms. He could smell June’s perfume. “Up, like this. Then use those little lats
to do the work. Legs rooted. And come down like a pendulum.”
Claudia giggled. “That’s a funny word.”
Trucks stepped away. “Give it a try by yourself. Not fast. Just like we practiced.”
Claudia stepped up to the chopping block. Raised the little hatchet. Came down with better form. More control.
“See, that’s a good one,” Trucks said.
“Better?”
“A lot better, Pepper Flake. You’re getting it.”
Claudia smiled.
“Let’s see it a few more times,” he said.
“Okay.”
She brought the hatchet up. Slow. Even. Her breath flowing out in little clouds. Came down with the hatchet. She looked over at Trucks, and he nodded. She took the hatchet up again, then back down.
“How about we get that sheath off and have you split a real piece of wood?”
“I guess so,” Claudia said.
She handed over the hatchet, and Trucks unsnapped the leather sheath. He put the sheath in his coat pocket and inspected the blade. He handed it over to Claudia.
“I like that it’s shiny and pretty,” she said.
“It might look pretty, but it’s dangerous. It’s killing sharp, so be careful. Be gentle. Don’t take your eye off it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She fixated on the blade.
“Just stand there and hang on.”
Trucks grabbed a half log from the unsplit pile, whittled down to nothing much after his feverish chopping that first morning. He walked back over and put the half log on the chopping block.
“Now measure that distance,” he said. “You remember how?”
Claudia held the hatchet out with both hands. She looked at Trucks for confirmation.
“Don’t look at me. Watch your blade. Line up the cut.”
Claudia looked back at the wood. The tip of the blade was at the center. She hesitated. She shook.
“What?” Trucks asked.
She relaxed her arms and looked over at him.
“I don’t wanna break it,” she said.
“The axe?”
“No, the wood. It looks nice when it’s not broken.”
Trucks walked over. He held out his hand, and she gave him the hatchet. He snapped the leather sheath back on and set the hatchet beside the piece of half wood on the chopping block. He picked her oversized gloves up out of the snow and put them on Claudia’s hands. Then he walked over to the unsplit pile and covered it with a small tarp. When he turned around, she was standing behind him. Following him like a small shadow.
“Here,” he said, and held out his hand.
She looked confused. Almost reluctant. But she took his hand, and he walked her away from the woodpile and the covered blades. They went down a winding slope that led to the horse pasture. Wooden fences with thick, knotted slats ran for hundreds of yards around the field.
Trucks pulled his coat sleeves over his cold bare hands and brushed snow off the top wooden rail. Then he blew into his hands and picked Claudia up and placed her on the rail. She rested her feet on the middle slat. Trucks stood beside her. Leaned his elbows on the top rail. They looked out at this new big-sky world.
“This is where the horses used to run,” he said. “Back when Gerald was keeping horses.”
Claudia leaned in to him. She pointed to her ears, and said, “The wind’s loud.”
Trucks reached in her hood, behind her ears, and slightly turned the volume dials down. First the left, then the right.
“That better?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
Trucks went back to leaning on the railing. “So I said this is where the horses used to run back when Gerald was keeping them.”
“Where did he keep them?”
“See the barn over there? The one with the open doors?”
“Yup.”
“He used to keep them there in the stalls. Feed them oats and hay.”
“They probably didn’t like it there. Horses are sposed to run around.”
“You’re right.”
“I like when their long hair bounces when they run. Did he have more animals?”
“Chickens, cows, pigs. Probably some goats, I’d guess. I don’t know.”
“My friend Mary said chickens are mean and they poke you if you bother them.”
“Peck,” he said.
“Peck,” she said.
“And I don’t think they peck you on purpose to be cruel or anything. They seem to peck at about anything solid or anything that looks like food—pebbles, grains, seed, grass, scraps. Like they’re nothing more than scavengers.”
“I’d probably run if I saw them.”
“You don’t have to worry. There aren’t any here. And I’m with you, besides.”
Claudia didn’t say anything. She kicked her heels against the wood and looked forward.
“Where did the horses go? Did they jump over the fence and run away?” she asked.
“I don’t know where they went. Gerald felt too old to farm, I guess. Or maybe he didn’t have the heart for it anymore. It takes a lot of work to run an animal family.”
“Do you think the horses ran away?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. Why do you think they’d do that?”
“The fence,” she said. Like it was the most obvious thing.
“Oh,” he said. And thought about it. “You probably have a point.”
“If they put me in a fence, I’d jump over it and run away too. That’s what I think. And if you’re as fast and big as a horse, you can run far and get away from everyone and be strong if anything tries to hurt you. But I wouldn’t wanna have to run. I’d rather stay and be nice with everyone than have to leave.”
Trucks folded his hands together. Looked at them. Then he said, “Nothing’s gonna hurt you, Pepper Flake.”
Claudia looked away. She stared beyond the pasture for a while. Then she swung her legs over the top rail and jumped down.
“I’m gonna go inside,” she said.
She started walking toward the house.
“Hey,” Trucks yelled.
Claudia turned around.
“Don’t you believe me?”
Claudia shrugged.
“I swear on everything, nothing’s gonna hurt you.”
“You can’t say promises like that,” Claudia said, and then she turned and kept walking.
Trucks watched her go up the incline. Smooth. Quick. No bit of hesitation. And under her breath, as she moved farther and farther away, he could have sworn he heard her little voice: “You can’t. You just can’t.”
THE PONDEROSA CONFERENCE
The three of them laid in the dark under a tall ponderosa pine. They all had their hoods up, using them like thin pillows. Claudia was in the middle. They were looking at the night sky. Gerald pointed out the constellations they could see and traced the ones they couldn’t. Trucks listened. He had no idea about astronomy and the patterns of stars. He knew only the patterns of punches—how to throw them, how to dodge them, how to absorb them. As Gerald talked, Trucks closed his eyes and thought of all the galaxies he must have drawn with his fists. How many times he’d seen stars after a nasty pop. Maybe, in his current life, he was a planet, Claudia the moon. Ever circling each other but always this gap. Like the dark chasm could never be crossed.
Trucks opened his eyes. They adjusted to the night sky. He grabbed for Claudia’s hand, but she pulled away and put her big-gloved hands on her stomach. She breathed a big sigh.
“Where did your wife go?” Claudia asked Gerald.
“Well, she died,” he said. “Part of that cycle we all must complete.”
“Do you miss her?” she asked, turning to him.
“Of course I do. It was really tough losing her.”
Claudia turned back to look at the sky. There was silence for a while.
“And she’s up there somewhere with the people in the constant-ations?”
Trucks didn’t correct her.
Gerald said, “That’s a nice way to think of it. Yeah. Sure she is.”
“So I was right?” Claudia said.
Gerald thought a moment. “You carry the people you lose with you in some capacity or another. When their body calls it quits, the spirit goes floating. Maddie, my wife, she’s spread out there over the hill of flowers.” He raised his arm and pointed with his thumb. “I could show you if it was spring and they were all blooming. You couldn’t see her, of course. Not like she was. She’s part of that soil now. She’s among the flowers. In the roots and stems and petals. She’s feeding the world in her way, and that’s beautiful, see?”
Claudia nodded.
“I used to show her the constellations too. We’d come lay out here and trace from star to star, light to light, until we thought we got them all. But I bet there’s far more out there we can’t even see. There’s so much we just don’t know. We can only see what’s visible to us or what our minds allow. So some of where you see those people you lost is in the things you used to do together, the sounds and feels and smells of the world that give you the reminders of the ones you loved. Even the feel of this snow on my back, the way I see a napkin folded, the smell of lilac, reading the words star anise, or a pair of rainboots in a storefront window. Memories, I guess. Private and very personal reminders of who they were and the life you had together. It only means something to you. It’s only true of love and loss from your view. In your mind. In that little spinning universe you got right up there.” Gerald lightly tapped on his head. “And it’s all yours. It’s what you’ve created. What you’ve made of it.”
The three of them kept looking up. Their breaths coming out at opposite intervals.
Gerald grabbed the cuff of Claudia’s coat and tugged on it. “How do you feel about heading out tomorrow?” he asked. Trucks had told Gerald it would be best if they left soon. He didn’t feel good about leaning on Gerald like they had. Gerald offered another day or two, but Trucks already felt guilty enough.
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