by Callan Wink
Tim reached into the trash bag, came up with another beer, cracked it, and took a long drink. “So, Wes has been on the rhubarb wine heavily at this point and knows that Cale is going to give him endless amounts of shit about this if he backs down. Also, Wes was always up for stuff. You couldn’t hardly ever out-weird him. That was one of his dimensions. So, he grabs one of the eligible bachelorettes and takes her for a spin around the dance floor. Apparently Hoot women don’t get to drink too much, but in this situation they’re all knocking back the rhubarb hooch and Wes said she was downright aggressive. Took him by the hand. Dragged him into this little room they had set up off the back of the place.
“Okay, now, this is the part where I knew it was all truth when Wes told me. I mean, at first I was skeptical, too, but then he got to this part and I knew he hadn’t made it up. The Hoot gal pulls him into the bedroom and he sits on the edge of the bed. She sits next to him and then she reaches under the bed and pulls out a big white sheet. She says, I’m supposed to put this over my top to cover myself from you. Okay, Wes says. We don’t have to do a damn thing if you don’t want to. The girl looked at Wes, looked at the sheet, and then laughed. She threw the sheet on the floor and pulled the dress over her head and that was that.”
“So, why exactly did that make you know he wasn’t lying?”
“Okay, well, Wes had this real funny thing—he liked women to have a lot of hair down there, like a real big bush.”
“Weird.”
“I know. It was his thing. I have no idea why. Anyway, he told me that he was kind of disappointed because this Hoot girl was completely shaved! Can you believe that? He said, after, they got to talking a little and he asked her about it, kind of teasing. And she got shy and said she’d heard that men outside the colony liked it bald and so she’d done it that morning, and Wes said he had to laugh at the irony of it all.”
“So that’s why you’re convinced he wasn’t bullshitting you?”
“Pretty much—it’s just too strange of a detail for him to make up. Also, when he talked about it, he got kind of serious. I mean, he would be joking about Cale setting him up and all of that, but when we got to that end part of the story he was serious. Wes didn’t take much serious, but he said that the Hoot gal was nicer and funnier than pretty much any girl he’d known, and I think he kind of regretted the whole thing. He came at me with this story out of nowhere, too. It wasn’t like he was looking for a way to fuck with me. We were just driving somewhere and he came out with it like it was bothering him. He also said that after it was over she said that she was supposed to lay on her back and put her knees up to her chin and wait for thirty minutes, but instead of doing that she just went to the bathroom and got dressed and said she’d let the chips fall where they would. And, there’s one more reason I know it’s true.”
“Yeah?”
“He showed up one day with a whole butchered hog. Told our parents that he’d helped the Hoots put up a bunch of hay over the weekend and that’s how they’d paid him. I know for a fact that my brother Weston never helped no Hoots with no hay. He hated doing hay more than anything. Always got all sneezy and itchy.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“For a fact. How about you?”
“What about me?”
“The wick, son. Have you ever dipped the wick?”
“Oh, Jesus, who cares?”
“Well, have you?”
“Yes. I’ve dipped.”
“I don’t believe you. What was her name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“That’s because, like as not, she’s a figment. No shame in it, pal. Maybe we can go down to Billings one of these weekends and shed you of the great weight of your virginity. That’s why you’re so serious, I bet. You dip the wick and all your troubles melt away and you’re reborn a man.”
“That hasn’t been my experience.”
“I’m serious. There’s a reason why men have been fighting and dying for it since the beginning of time. Okay, I can tell you’re getting embarrassed. We’re about out of beer, and soaking in a hot tub with nothing but dudes depresses me. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
* * *
—
Near midnight now, snow starting to fall, the wind punching it sideways across the shafts of Tim’s headlights. The Qwikstop was still open, and they pulled in for more beer. August stayed in the truck, and Tim came running back with a case and a foil package of Backwoods. He handed August a beer and a cigar. He pulled his hat a little lower down on his head, lit his Backwoods, clenched it between his teeth, and tossed August the lighter. He cracked his beer and raised it toward August. “Here’s to Clint Eastwood,” he said, dropping the truck into gear and roaring out of the parking lot. Everything silent under the snow. No signs of life on the streets of Martinsdale. No footprints on the sidewalks. No TVs glowing blue through living room windows. Tim barreled through the single red light. “Welcome to the great Western apocalypse,” he said.
August blew a line of smoke out the slightly opened window. “I was thinking about your brother and the Hutterite girl,” he said.
“Oh yeah? You thinking about going down to the colony and signing up for some good bucking?”
“Not really. I was thinking that the Hutterites wouldn’t have just given your brother that butchered hog for no reason.”
“I know. That’s what I was saying. I’m not bullshitting you about the story.”
“No. I mean the Hutterites wouldn’t give your brother a hog unless he fulfilled his end of the bargain, see what I’m saying?”
“I know, man. He did it, I’m sure of it.”
“Tim, what I’m saying is that unless he actually knocked her up, there’s no way they’d just give him a hog. They weren’t bargaining with him about the sex. It’s clearly about the sperm to them. Same as when you have an AI guy come and do your heifers. They wouldn’t come through with the hog unless it took, and she got pregnant. You probably have a nephew or a niece out there. That’s what I’m saying. Uncle Timmy.”
Tim nodded, sucked deep so his cigar cherry glowed angry. He exhaled through his nose and said, “Yeah, I’ve considered it. A little. The kid would be two or three years old now. Half-Hoot, half-Duncan. I mean, half-Hoot, sure. But half-Duncan, too. I’ve been thinking, maybe soon it’ll be time to swoop in. Get the kid back into the fold of his family. Kid needs its mom up until a certain point. But a Duncan living like a Hoot? If my old man knew he would rupture.” Tim drank, tipped his ash into an empty can in the cup holder. He hunched down a little in his seat to get a better look outside. “What a night,” he said. “What a mystery. Ever think about it? How the blackest sky can make the whitest snow?”
“Huh?” August said.
“Let’s go get him. Tonight.”
“Him?”
“My brother’s son. I guess it could be a daughter, but I feel that it’s a son. Tonight’s the night. I’m glad you brought it up. Suddenly I feel ready.” Tim was driving on the river road now, the Musselshell out there somewhere, cracked and frozen under a crooked line of midnight trees. It was snowing harder now, so that it seemed to come from the earth as much as the air, an upwelling of particles, white sky, white ground, headlights breaking against a swirling white wall, the truck plunging.
“I wasn’t suggesting anything,” August said.
“No, you said it yourself. He got the hog because it took. And pretty soon now my father’s grandson is going to be speaking German and wearing pilgrim clothes. Ain’t happening. For so long, I’ve been the only one that knows, and now you know, and here we are together, on our way, taking action.” The truck fishtailed slightly around a corner and Tim howled, pushing the button to lower both of their windows. He crammed his hat down against the rush of air, snow coming in, dusting their coats, sticking in eyebrows and eyelashes, snow behind the windsh
ield and outside it, no separation from the gusts. They were in the blizzard’s belly now, a part of it, no longer just traveling through.
“Maybe you want to slow down,” August said.
Tim didn’t turn to look at him. Eyes lost in the whitewash, the barest hint of dark that implied the road’s shoulder. “Like I haven’t driven this exact way every day of my life,” he said. “All roads lead to the one you’re on at any given moment. Right? Isn’t that the saying?”
“I’m not totally sure on that.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard that one? Thought you’d heard them all.”
Without slowing, Tim jerked the wheel to the left and they bounced over a cattle guard and down a rutted, snow-covered drive. There were vapor lights, downcast and glowing green, barely illuminating the shapes of outbuildings. They were approaching the colony, the truck lurching, Tim punching the gas to make the diesel rev. Long, dark dormitory buildings loomed ahead and Tim slowed the truck and let it idle. The headlights were blazing into a lace-curtained window. Someone’s kitchen, maybe. Tim lit another Backwoods and sucked deep, his cheeks caving. He wedged the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Hang on, kid,” he said, then cranked the wheel, laid on the horn, and popped the clutch. The truck, light in the back, did a fast donut, tires burning through the snow, headlights whipping around. Doors and windows, a child’s swing set, a pump house, a basketball hoop. August was clinging to the oh-shit handle with everything he had, snow in his face, the smell of rubber melting against the frozen ground. Tim kept it hammered wide open, horn blaring, windows and doors, the swing set, the pump house, the basketball hoop. Lights were coming on in the dorms, and still they were spinning. The windows the doors the swing set the pump house the basketball hoop a dark figure holding something, backlit in a doorway.
“Gun!” August yelled. “Guy’s got a gun.”
Tim’s jaw was tight. He slowed, straightening the wheel, plowing them through a drift up and onto the driveway, the lights of the colony behind them now, fading, as they crashed over the cattle guard and hit the river road.
“Holy shit,” August said, punching at Tim’s leg. “That was crazy. They probably have no idea what just happened. That dude had a shotgun, I swear. I didn’t know Hutterites even had guns. I didn’t know they played basketball, either.”
Tim was driving slowly now. He rolled the windows up and cranked the heater. “Any more beer left?” he said. After a while he parked at a turnoff overlooking the river. They each had a beer and August tipped his can toward Tim. “To your brother Weston,” he said. “RIP.”
Tim nodded, took a long drink, and belched. “You ever hear stories about people who are drunk surviving accidents? Like, all the time how drunk people in car wrecks survive when all the sober people die. Right? You’ve heard that, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why is that? I’ve never really figured it out.”
“I guess it’s because when you’re drunk your muscles are looser, and so you are more able to absorb impact, or something.”
“Maybe that’s it. Anyway, that wasn’t the case with my brother. Ol’ Weston got piss drunk after that rodeo and drove and crossed a center line and he ran head-on into a van, and the van was driven by a guy with his wife and two kids in the back and everyone died except one of the kids, and the kid, a girl, was mangled, and my old man went broke paying her medical bills. That’s how it actually went down. They were Mexicans. Illegals. Shoot them at the border, my dad says. Then he sells our best section of river-bottom pasture to your boss, Ancient Virostok, to pay for the kid’s surgeries. No one made him do it. He did that on his own.”
“Shit, man. That’s bad.”
Tim was staring straight out the windshield. Snow falling, melting on the warm glass. “Hutterites and Mexicans and my brother Weston. It’s like an unholy trinity. I was never religious, but then he died and I sort of figured some things out. You can’t believe anything that anyone tells you; that’s for starters. A man can only believe himself and only the things that come to him in dreams, because that’s where the will of the world is pure.”
“I never remember my dreams,” August said. “They say everyone dreams, but every morning I wake up blank.”
Tim turned to look at August, and there was no recognition there. “Who are you, and why are you even here?”
August was going to say something, make a joke, but the look in Tim’s eyes was withering. August backed out the truck door, turning up the collar of his coat.
“I don’t even know who you are,” Tim said. “You’re a figment.”
August was walking now, hands jammed into his pockets. At least three miles to the Two Dot Bar and his truck. He’d be very cold when he arrived.
The bunkhouse phone rang, and it was August’s father. August was heating a bowl of chili in the microwave. Only four-thirty but already dark. A hollow banging as the wind picked at a loose piece of aluminum sheeting on the shop roof.
“I got your number from your mother.”
“I was meaning to give you a call.”
“Yeah, that’s okay. I imagine you’re busy.”
“Just doing odds and ends around the place right now. Getting ready for calving, though.”
“Fun. Fun.”
“What’s new back there? How are things? Is Lisa still there?”
“Things are all right. Lisa was gone for a while, but she’s back now and we’re doing better. Been having a bad winter, and that’s hard for everyone. It’s almost like when I was a kid. Don’t know if you’ve seen it on the news, but we’ve been getting the lake-effect storms just about every week. I had to get up on the milking shed and cut the snow off in big chunks with a spade. I thought the roof was going to buckle.”
“That’s a pretty sturdy roof, though.”
“It was wet snow. I didn’t want to take any chances. You been getting snow out there?”
“Not a lot. It’s been windy.”
“Cold?”
“It was twenty below the other morning.”
“How does it feel? It’s that dry cold, right? Not as bad as it gets back here with the damp?”
“I guess that’s true. Twenty below is still pretty damn cold.”
“That’s a fact.”
“But the sun comes out more here, so it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s not so gray all the time.”
“I guess I’ve been here long enough I’m used to the clouds. Wouldn’t know how to take it if it were any other way.”
“It’s not too hard. Sunshine’s not too hard to take, really.” The microwave dinged, and August pinned the phone between his shoulder and ear. He removed the bowl from the microwave, gingerly. Steam rose from the rim and he dunked a spoon, blew over it a few times, and took a cautious slurp. It was scalding, and he spit, swearing, and nearly dropping the phone.
“You all right there?”
“Hot chili,” August said. “Trying to eat.”
“Oh, I didn’t want to interrupt your dinner. Just checking in to make sure you’re doing all right.”
“It’s fine. I’m all right.”
“Okay then. I’m signing off.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Have a good one, son.”
“Night, Dad.”
August had been sleeping for hours. The sound of voices from the yard woke him. A yellow beam from the headlights pointing toward the bunkhouse cleaved the room. He shuffled across the cold concrete floor and stood with the door cracked, listening to Ancient and Kim argue. Kim was behind the wheel of her Subaru and Ancient was outside the car, leaning against the frame of the driver’s side so she couldn’t close the door.
“What?” Ancient was saying loudly. “What did you expect? Huh? What did you think?”
Kim said something August couldn’t hear, and Ancient b
arked a laugh. “Surrre,” he said. “That’s rich. That’s a good one.” He pounded the roof of the Subaru with his fist, and then the car started moving so he had to twist awkwardly to avoid getting run over. There was the scrabbling sound of Kim’s tires tossing gravel as she pulled away fast, her lights red and dimming as she turned out onto the road. Ancient was down on his back in the driveway, and when he tried to get to his feet he stumbled. He wasn’t wearing a belt, and his jeans had slid down his hips. August could clearly see the dingy white of his underwear as he made his way across the yard, hitching his pants with each step.
* * *
—
A week later they were fixing a fence at the back of Ancient’s newly acquired piece of pasture, and they’d gotten their truck stuck. There’d been a weeklong thaw that had softened the frozen two-track into a thick red gumbo. Ancient had been driving, and they’d slipped and skidded down a small hill, coming to rest on the rise that hid the Musselshell River. They got out of the truck, and Ancient bent to inspect the tires, caked over with clay. They both looked back at the hill they’d have to climb to get out of the field. Ancient removed his hat and ran his hands through his hair before jamming it back down. After backing the truck all the way up to the very edge of the new fence, Ancient told August to sit on the bed, for more weight over the back wheels, and he gunned it, trying to build as much speed as possible. They made it less than halfway up the hill before the wheels started spinning, throwing up greasy clods of red clay. The truck fishtailed to a stop, and Ancient backed it down. They tried three more times until finally they were dug in so deep that he was unable to move at all and they were stuck. They tried rocking it, with August pushing from the front. Then they tried putting alder limbs from the riverbank under the tires, and that didn’t work either.
