by Annie DeWitt
He was an old pony that Shetland. I remembered how easy he’d taken it in the mouth.
“It’s too much,” I said to Fender as he came up behind me.
“What is?” he said.
I looked at the ashes still lighting up off one another in the fire pit and thought of the remains of the old Shetland decomposing in the pasture. And of the bodies coming home from the Gulf whose names were announced on the news. And of the eerie quiet of the Bottom Feeder in Mother’s absence. The games of Pick Up Stix with Father on the carpet. The empty couches surrounding us stripped of pillows so Birdie could build her jumps like trenches in the doorways. The house itself looked like something had exploded from within.
“All this warring,” I said.
15.
Callie kept a frozen chicken in the cupboard over the sink. The flesh was stacked on the pile of china next to the whiskey and the boxes of bullion. She kept a Styrofoam tray wedged between the plate and the bird to catch the runoff from the thaw. It took a day for a bird like that to shed all its ice.
The evening after the bonfire at the butte, Callie’d invited us to a meal. Birdie and me and Father along with Callie’s husband, The Little Wrestler, and their three young brutes. It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived. The previous night was still heavy on us. I could tell Father felt it too. “You look tired, Jeanie,” he said as we got out of the car. “Why do you look so tired?”
We gathered around the table in Callie’s kitchen and watched her prepare the meat. Never has a woman performed such surgery. She massaged that carcass like she was trying to resuscitate some old heart. After each cut was slick with dressing she floured both sides with cornmeal.
“Test the fryer for me, baby,” Callie said to me, motioning toward the pan. “Toss a little water in with your fingers and see if it sizzles.”
We were there under the auspice that Father knew something about pipes. There was a clog in her disposal. Callie said one of her boys had stuck an action figure in it again. “They’re trying to replicate war,” she’d said, motioning toward the battlefield enacted by the G.I. Joes in the living room when we’d come in. The disposal had produced a realistic mangling to the leg.
“What do you make of my handiwork?” Callie’s husband said to Father as he entered the kitchen. “I was just under there a few days ago.”
“A fine job,” Father said from where he lay on his back with his head under Callie’s sink. “I’ve never been much good with my hands. Just thought I’d lend an eye to it while you were out.”
“Don’t they teach you professor types which way to turn a screw in law school?” the husband said.
“Rick’s an engineer, Rod,” Callie said looking down at Father as he pulled himself out from the cabinet.
“That explains why he’s fixing my drain pipe,” the husband said.
He laughed then. “Next time she’ll bring a damn preacher to teach our sons to shoot hoops. If you need me I’ll be out in the yard with the animals.”
Rod let the screen door go behind him as he made his way into the yard. It slammed a little on its hinges. The spring was still tight.
“Why don’t you put all that away, Rick,” Callie said gently.
“I’ll get you a clean towel.”
“I suppose it would be good to freshen up,” Father said, brushing his hands against his knees as he righted himself in the tight space of her kitchen, ducking so as to avoid the low-hanging lamp.
Callie handed me a plastic spatula and motioned toward the chicken where it fizzled in the pan. “Let them golden,” she said. Father followed her down the hall toward the bathroom.
I watched Rod through the window over the sink as he made his way into the yard. There wasn’t much anger in him. He had a flatfooted way of walking which betrayed his low center of gravity. According to Otto, Rod had been a wrestler. Callie had met him while he was out on the circuit. “Back then she would follow anything around with a Harley and a helmet,” Otto had said. “First it was the rock bands, then the bikers. Eventually she landed with a crew of wrestlers who frequented the bar where she worked. Rod was short. It was all she could do to show herself off to him.”
The way Rod shot hoops now with his sons you could tell Callie had taken the lay out of him. He had that short guy’s way of aiming high so the ball bounced off the backboard and rebounded on the front rim before meeting the hoop. He tossed one after another like this. I’d seen carpenters nail a board with more energy.
Their house was a one-story ranch. It sat back from the road on a plot of land next to the commuter highway. An old swingset floundered in the front yard. One of the swings was broken. They’d strung it up with the chain. In back there was a tool shed that Rod had turned into a barn where he kept a few chickens and a small brown cow. In front of the barn he’d poured a square of blacktop at the end of which stood an old basketball hoop. Several dirt bikes were parked in the knoll under a tree.
Birdie was outside on the blacktop with Rod and his sons.
“You get too close to the thing,” Rod yelled as the largest of the boys landed under the hoop, bending backward and hurling the ball over his shoulder with a clumsy underhand. While the boys shot around, Rod took Birdie up on his shoulders. Every third throw he’d walk her over to the hoop and let her shoot. She reached for the rim like she wanted to hang for a minute. One of the older boys came over and lifted Birdie up under the arms until she was standing on his shoulders. He stood under the hoop while she lunged. She made the catch and hung like that for several seconds, pumping her legs.
Down the hall Father ran the water in the bathroom. As the faucet clicked off, Callie called out to him. “I’m in here if you need a towel.” Father followed her voice. I could hear him lumber into the hallway and down the hall a few strides. He paused and then turned. I waited for a few minutes, listening to the chicken fry. The flesh was still pink in the middle, not yet cooked through. I put the lid on and slipped down the hall after Father.
Father had left the door to the bathroom ajar. The window above the toilet was shaded by a curtain covered in a layer of dust. The bathroom itself was from another era. Thick yellow tiles lined the backsplash. The linoleum around the sink was worn and brown in patches. A canister of room spray glowed a sea-sick green where it was plugged into the wall. The muted blue acrylic of the shower stall—clearly a recent addition—shone in contrast to the faded seventies veneer. Around the mouth of the tub was an assortment of plastic action figures. A single naked Barbie hung upside down from a string around the spigot. I wondered which of Callie’s young brutes played with the doll in his bath.
I flattened myself against the wall and peeked around the corner. Beyond the doorway to the bedroom, Father stood at the foot of the bed. Callie was bent over, rifling through a drawer. Father watched her in the mirror, admiring her cleavage. “I thought I had an extra towel in here,” she said. As she slid the drawer closed, Callie turned around to face him. She tugged at the string of her dress. The dress fell open, revealing the tan of her stomach where I had seen her rub oil those mornings as she’d sunbathed on Otto’s lawn. The thin string of her bikini was replaced by a sheer bra. Her crotch was barely covered by a small triangle of leopard print. Callie’s form moved across the room toward Father as though in slow motion. With every step she seemed to become more feline and supple, dragging the paint of her toenails through the shag of the carpet. I waited for him to stop her.
When Callie was inches from Father’s face, she stood with her feet shoulder width apart. She reached for his hand, moving it up to her shoulder, pausing for a moment to trace the outline of her breast. I watched as she slid the strap of her bra down the curve of her arm, the thick red of her nipple peering out from the cup as it fell. The rosacea on Father’s forehead flared as it did under stress. Callie eased her way toward him and pushed him back onto the bed.
As their b
odies met, the water bed gave way beneath them. The movement seemed to revive Father. He put one hand on Callie’s chest and pushed her slightly away from him. With the other, he reached behind the small of his back. “There’s something underneath us,” he said. From behind his back Father produced a plastic action figure. The toy was missing a limb. Father held it in front of his face. “I told those boys not to play in my bed,” Callie said. “No harm done,” Father said placing the toy on the nightstand beside a bottle of antacids. Beside the bottle sat a book—The Dance of Anger—and an empty wine glass stained red at the bottom.
“I should go check on the chicken.” Father said, and started to get up.
“Wait,” Callie said.
I slipped away from the door and tiptoed down the hall.
The chicken was burnt and slightly charcoaled on one side.
“Something smells mighty good in here,” I heard Father say as he came up behind me. He put his arm around my shoulder to steady himself. “Good girl, Jeannie,” he said. “I can always count on you to take up the slack in a pinch.”
As Callie came into the kitchen, he stiffened. “Let me set the table,” he said picking up a stack of plates from the counter. Callie reached for her Marlboro Reds where she’d left them next to the chopping board. She picked up the pack and flicked the top of her nail several times against the bottom as though settling something. “It’s your call,” she said.
Father disappeared into the dining room and Callie turned toward the stove. “Dinner’s on,” she yelled to her boys out the window. As Callie exhaled a long deep drag of smoke, Birdie let go of the hoop where she hung. Rod caught her, cradling Birdie in his arms as he walked toward the house. In the light of the court, the two looked triumphant. Birdie’s blonde ringlets spread out over Rod’s shoulder. Her hair gleamed against the flannel of his shirt.
“Who’s ready for some bird?” Father said as Rod and the boys came into the kitchen.
We ate in the dining room, a small square set of oak furniture erected in an alcove off the kitchen. The walls were papered in a faded pink floral. The floor was a worn orange shag. Save the vintage chandelier Callie had hung over the table, the room had the feel of having once been something else. A nursery perhaps.
“Yes to everything,” Father was saying, “That’s the problem with kids these days. They’ve never been told no.” Father was telling Rod about his trials with the Steelhead brothers. Lately they’d been calling the house at night and hanging up the phone. Liden was onto Fender and I about the magazines.
“Boys will be boys,” Rod said. “If you burn too much of your fist into them, they turn into a pack of wailing sissies. And there’s nothing I hate more than a sissy.”
“Right,” Father said crossing and uncrossing his legs. “Well I suppose it’s different. I’m surrounded by a house full of girls.”
“Lucky man,” Rod said, smiling at Father. “I suppose there’s always room for another in the mix. Isn’t that what you’re up to here?”
“You’re insufferable,” Callie said to her husband under her breath. She looked proud of herself. Her cheeks flared under the bone.
“When’s the last time someone said no to you Rick?” Rod said to Father.
After dinner we all went out into the yard to feed the yearling. The cow was waiting for us at the gate near the shed. They’d set him loose in a small run they’d patched together out of an old white slat-board fence and sections of chicken wire.
“Sturdy little fellow,” Father said, holding Birdie up over the fence so she could reach the cow.
“The way that thing is growing, we should have steaks by fall,” Rod said.
On the way home Father was silent.
“He used to be a wrestler,” I said after a while. We were sailing down the hill on Merriam past the farmhouses in the center of town.
“Reach into the glove compartment,” Father said. “Give me one of those cigars.” He didn’t hesitate to light one as he drove.
When we got back to the house Father settled into the couch in front of the news. “I’m going over to Otto’s to check on the Sheik,” I said.
“What time is it?” Father said looking out Mother’s windows at the amount of light left in the sky. “Alright, so long as Otto’s in the barn mucking the stalls. Be back before bed. And take the flashlight with you so I can watch out the window when you cross the road.”
Light blasted through the windows that lined the front of Otto’s barn as I ran across the street. It reminded me of an old movie theater, each stall screening a different run. I hurtled toward it, flashing the light once behind me so Father could see.
Wilson was raking the hay out of the aisle when I came in.
“Hi Wilson,” I said. “It’s just me. It’s just Jean.” Wilson looked up and focused on me for a minute.
“I went to camp today,” he said. The way he was standing, belly over the belt, his chest puffed out, I could tell that today was a proud day for Wilson. It was odd to see an old man look so young again. He was bald and fat and graying. No less than forty in the light, the way the shadows clung to his face. And yet standing there in the aisle in that moment, his cheeks looked like a six year old’s the first time he hits his first solid ball over the diamond. A good wind comes in from the outfield and brings some color into his face.
“Was she pretty?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Daddy’s proud of me. I went to camp and I met a redhead. A pretty girl.”
“Your Daddy’s always proud,” I said.
“You’re pretty too, Jeannie,” he said. “Daddy says I like the pretty girls.”
“There’s few things I’m less wrong about than women,” Otto said. I hadn’t seen Otto standing at the far end of the barn. He must’ve been in the tack room settling the evening’s chores when I’d come in. I knew he’d go there occasionally when the feed was on and the horses were settled for the night. I’d walked in on him one evening sitting at the draftsman desk he’d bought for His Helene back in the days when she still kept the books for the riding lessons they ran out of the barn.
Otto’s face that night had a drawn, wan look that accompanies sleeplessness. I went to him out of pity.
“Tell the story again, old boy,” he said to Wilson as I snuck up under Otto’s armpit, wrapping one arm around his waist.
“What story?” Wilson said.
“The one about getting chased,” Otto said, draping his arm over my shoulder. His body was fit for a man of his age. It had that taut tension that comes from the small inhalation of a parent thrilling over an act of their child’s bravery.
“I went to visit the redhead in her cabin today,” Wilson said.
“And who caught you, son?” Otto said, egging him on.
“The counselor,” Wilson said. “He chased me out with a broom.”
“And what did you tell him when he chased you?”
“I told him my Daddy said I like the pretty girls.”
“That a way, son,” Otto said. “You old bastard, you. You’re just like your old man.”
I looked up at Otto’s eyes. A pride was rising in them, a glory he’d once thought fondly of and now recalled.
“That was a good one,” Wilson said.
“It sure was,” Otto said. “I’m proud of you. You might be ugly as shit but at least you’re still chasing tail.”
The two were laughing then. There was something in the way Otto laughed, his body doubled over, leaning forward toward his son standing in the thin light down the aisle, that made me realize that this was a feeling Otto’d been deprived of for a long while, the ability to connect with his son as a man. Otto glimpsed that for a moment. It felt damn good. They both felt damn good.
“The counselor said he thought he wanted to rape her,” Otto said between breaths. He was laughing so hard he was almost sobbing. “I got a c
all this morning. Can you imagine? That dim wit actually thought my son had enough man in him to rape that girl.”
Wilson understood his father’s laugh as a sign of encouragement.
“Rake a girl,” he said. “My Daddy says I’m gonna rake a girl.”
Wilson took the rake in his arms and started spinning with it. He looked as if someone had dropped a harness around his belly, lifting him up toward the rafters, lending him grace and spin.
“Maybe I’ll rake you, Jeanie,” he said. “You’re a pretty girl too.”
Otto was chuckling all the way to the house. His arm was heavy on my shoulder as we walked. After all that, he seemed to have given up on something of the evening. I looked at the stars over top of us and thought of Wilson dancing and the sight of the power lines over Bluecreek. I thought about asking Otto what Wilson had meant by all that in the barn.
“Back to work now, son,” he’d eventually said to Wilson when he got the air back in his chest. “That’s enough of that.”
“Will you be alright then?” I said to Otto.
“Right as rain,” Otto said. “Why don’t you come in for a minute and see if you can make that old piano play again.”
The piano was a small upright Otto kept in the back room near the porch. The top of it resembled a bench from an earlier time, a resting place where all the old faces still sat around and kept watch on the day. It was lined with frames and trinkets, relics of the days when His Helene had still been working her hand and saying her say over her two boys. The collection had the feel of an album—all the best moments splayed together despite the shit faces and gap teeth.
