by Callan Wink
“Under twenty for sure. My truck gets about twenty on the highway. You guys hungry? I’ve got some potato salad and sandwich stuff. Made some tea.”
As he followed his father up to the house, August tried to remember if he’d ever seen him like this, going barefoot over the lawn, or wearing a T-shirt in the middle of the day. Stubble on his face. He had some new glasses as well. Thick black frames that Lisa had probably picked for him. He looked like a middle-aged professor bumming around the house on the weekend. It was as if, along with shipping the cows, he’d shipped the farmer.
They made sandwiches in the kitchen, talking about which pieces of furniture his mother wanted to take and which she could live without. Then they settled on the porch, paper plates balanced on their legs, Sally there giving imploring looks.
“So,” his mother said, raising her glass of iced tea, “I think some congratulations are in order. Will we get to see the lucky young mother-to-be?”
“Thanks. We’re very excited. But no, Lisa won’t be around. She’s already up in Traverse. She wanted to get on her feet at her new job before she goes on maternity leave. We rented a little place up there, and she’s getting settled in. I’ll be headed that way when I get things wrapped up around here.”
“Are you going to get a job?” August said.
His father laughed and threw a chip to Sally. “I’ve been kicking a few things around. I actually think I’m going to buy a little snow removal business.”
His mother snorted. “You’re going to shovel sidewalks?”
“Something like that. Maybe on a slightly larger scale. You know how they get pounded by those lake-effect storms up there? It just piles up all winter, and there’s really only a couple guys doing residential plowing. One of them is getting older and wants to bow out. He’s got a big client list, a half a dozen plow trucks, a bunch of drivers. We’re in negotiations. I think we’ll hit on an agreement.” He tossed Sally another chip, and August waved a hand at him.
“Stop with that,” he said. “She doesn’t need those.”
His father acted like he was going to throw one more, but then he ate it himself. “Anyway,” he said. “I’ll work hard in the winter and then take it easy in the summer. Spend time with the new little monkey, of course, maybe come out and visit you, August. Finally see those damn Rocky Mountains.”
“Sure,” August said. “That sounds good.”
The shadow of the old white oak in the front yard was beginning to stretch into evening. A few hardy mosquitos showed, and his father lit a citronella candle. August was struggling to keep his eyes open. “So,” his mother said, firing up her cigarillo with the candle’s flame, “Traverse City, eh? I wonder if they have the cherry festival still.”
“I’m sure they do. They’ve been having that forever.”
“Remember that street dance?”
“Long time ago now.”
“Still a good memory, though, right?”
“Of course. Lots of those floating around out there.”
His mother and father were talking, and August started to drift. He caught himself tilting out of his chair and jolted awake. He stood and stretched. “I’m beat,” he said. “Good night, guys.” He started down the steps, whistling Sally up. “I’ve got your bed made up in your room,” his father said.
“And I’ll be down in the old house,” his mother said. “The spare bedroom is open, of course.”
August, standing in the yard, watched the vapor light over the barn door flick on. “When’s the last time you started my old truck, Dad?” he said.
“It’s been a while. Should fire up, though. I know it has gas.”
“Okay. See you guys in the morning, then.”
August grabbed some bedding from the old house and went to the shed. The Ranger coughed to life on the second try, and he honked at his parents, still sitting on the porch, as he drove by. He took the back roads slowly out to Brockway Lake. The surface of the water was like glass, a few nightjars out swooping low. He arranged the blankets and pillows in the back of the truck while clouds formed and obscured the stars. A gray mist rising from the lake enveloped the truck in its damp fold. August lay on his back, covers to his chin. Sally burrowed her way under the blankets near his hip, and he dug his fingers in the thick ruff of fur under her collar. The possibility that his father’s new child would never come to this lake—would never jump from the stacked bales in the haymow, would never climb the beeches that lined the back fence—had some vague but important implications for the relationship August was likely to have with him or her. As far as he could tell, a siblingship was made as much by the setting of one’s childhood as it was by the sharing of parents. He’d give the kid a chance, of course, but he had to guess that growing up in a town full of sailboats and vacation homes was bound to render some lasting negative effects on one’s development.
He was starting to think that every childhood existed as a unique set of problems, and most of what people called living was just the act of trying to decipher, after the fact, what in the hell had happened to them. When it came down to it, he figured that his parents had done what they could. Back at the house, when he’d gotten up to leave, he’d thought that his mother and father would soon follow suit. But, as he was driving away, he could see them there in the rearview mirror. It almost looked like they had moved their chairs closer together so that they could sit side by side. He wondered if they were out there still, and what in the world they were talking about with him gone.
BY CALLAN WINK
Dog Run Moon
August
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CALLAN WINK has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays appear widely, including in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, Playboy, Men’s Journal, and The Best American Short Stories anthology. His first book, Dog Run Moon, was short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize and received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. He lives in Livingston, Montana, where he is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River.
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