“Can we go home now?” I asked. “Are you done? I mean, I’ve got kids, for Christ’s sake. I can’t get caught doing this shit.”
“Oh, come on! Live a little.” He picked up the jar and began walking farther down Elm, away from Main. “Come on, trust me.”
“Where the hell are you going?” I yelled, refusing simply to follow him. But when he did not respond, I went along, trailing him at a distance of twenty feet, watching my friend stumble as he went, tripping on the broken sidewalk or on the persistent roots of trees that pushed up past the concrete. “Hey, all right, wait up. Let me carry that thing. I’m stronger than you anyway.”
He yielded the jar and then took up eight eggs, enough to fill both his hands. “I want to sit on that railroad bridge. The one over the county highway,” he said.
“All right,” I said, and so we went that way, very drunkenly.
* * *
The steel of the bridge had worn into a long series of rusty scabs over which generations of high-schoolers had graffitied their names and sacred pronouncements of love and contempt in gaudy spray paint. Boots dangling off the bridge, we sat over the county road, the jar between us, the eggs almost glowing in the night.
“It’s just us now,” Lee said.
“What do you mean?”
“Everybody else is gone. Ronny and Lucy. Kip and Felicia. It’s just us. The last of the Mohicans.”
I shrugged, dropped an egg off the bridge, where it exploded on the pavement beneath us. Not a wet explosion, more like dropping a Jell-O mold—the particles of the egg simply surrendering and slightly scattering. I dropped another, and another and another again, and still the jar was not nearly depleted.
“I’m the only one tied to the land,” I said. “The rest of you—I can’t blame you. Even you,” I said, “you’ll leave again. You’ll find somebody else, and she won’t want to live here either. She’ll drag you to Los Angeles or Paris or New York. You’ll see. People like you,” I said, throwing another egg out into the night, sobering up a little, getting meaner, “you don’t belong here. You don’t fit in anymore. Not properly. You’ve got too much.”
Lee looked at the wet road, peeled a great flake of paint off the bridge. I could see that what I had said had hurt him.
“You’re wrong about that,” he said. “I’m here for good, old buddy. I bought the mill. Bought it from Kip. So, I’m all in, as they say. Might be a goddamned boondoggle, but I’m in for a little over a million, and there’s no way I’m quitting. Gonna start a recording studio in there, set up a little theater, and this old town’s gonna have live music if it likes it or not. I don’t care if ten farmers show up for a goddamned show. We’re going to draw people in from the Twin Cities and Eau Claire and La Crosse and goddamned Milwaukee, and they’re going to come because it’s my mill in that quaint tiny town of Little Wing. And I might never find a girl, but I tell you what, I ain’t going to be looking in New York City either.”
Absentmindedly, he took a bite from an egg, then spit it out, wiped at his tongue with a corner of his shirt. “Shit.”
I sat, speechless. “You bought the mill?”
He shrugged. “It was the right thing to do. What else was I going to do? Let Kip hang out to dry? I’d do the same thing for you, bud, you ever let me. We could be partners.”
“Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”
He looked out at a set of headlights, far off, coming toward us. The car was moving fast, swerving on the slick road—we could both see that, hear the tires shrieking on each turn. It was the sloppy too-fast driving of a country-road drunk, compensating late on the turns for dimmed-down reflexes and beery vision.
Lee took an egg in his hand nimbly, his fingers making fine indentations in the slick gray skin. Arm poised, he waited until the car was within forty feet before rearing back and chucking that egg—hard and straight and true. Even in those milliseconds of egg flight, the vehicle came into finer and finer detail: a souped-up little Mazda neither of us recognized, rims flashing, the undercarriage glowing an ethereal purple, loud music dopplering toward us, the windshield darkly tinted and then—smack!—the egg detonated like a little, white stink bomb over all that smoked black glass, the tearing shriek of tires skidding and all but the grinding out of sparks as the alien vehicle’s brakes ground in resistance, and the vehicle jerked to a halt.
“Shit,” I said. “You fuckin’ nailed ’em, buddy. Bull’s-eye.”
The countryside went quiet and we stood up from our spots, glancing below, where the vehicle sat unmoving. Then a door opened, and a skinny young man disembarked—more of a kid, really—dressed in oversized clothing, several lengths of gold chain about his neck, and loose silky shorts that terminated not much higher than his fragile ankles. And gripped in his right hand, an impressively chromed Beretta pistol. He didn’t see us at first, the Mazda’s headlights directing his attention underneath the bridge and out onto the road beyond. “Hey, who’s out there? Who broke my muthafuckin’ windshield?” he shouted into the night. The boy sounded unsure, and I saw that he was doing his best to posture for us, trying to make his voice sound deeper against the immensity and darkness of the night, and though I knew he was just a kid, a teenager, I was also afraid of him, afraid of his pistol.
“Well, what now, wise guy?” I whispered to Lee.
“Shit,” Lee said, suddenly sounding sober. “Shit. Wasn’t supposed to have a gun.”
“You recognize him?”
“Hell no. He looks lost to me.”
The boy stood not far in front of us, in a flowing plain-white tee, his arms out in challenge, the gun glinting. He wore a baseball hat cocked heavily askew, the brim flat as a book cover, and we noticed he was trembling slightly. A faint blond goatee adorned his weak, quivering chin, long blond hair braided back behind his head.
Then Lee spoke up. “I’m up here,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender.
The boy glanced up, aimed the pistol, and fired. The jar of pickled eggs exploded and down they cascaded, riding an awful wave of pickle juice and egg alluvium. The eggs and brine did not shower the boy exactly, but they detonated violently off the pavement, soaking his basketball shoes, shorts, and white tee.
We held our breaths, Lee’s arms still up in the air. I crouched down in the shadows, felt the cool, wet railroad tracks with my hand.
“What the fuck?” the kid said in horror.
We watched as he stood stock-still, his arms out, his mouth agape as he studied himself. The air suddenly smelling like egg salad sandwiches.
The boy looked up at us, sneered, and fired his pistol.
Lee fell over, a bullet in his leg, and he was not then screaming, but gasping for breath. Satisfied, the boy sheathed his pistol against the elastic band of his underwear and retreated into the idling import before roaring off into the night. We were returned to darkness, and I went to Lee, to my friend, bent down over him.
“It hurts,” he moaned out. “I’m telling you, Hank—it’s hot as hell.”
“I’m going to get the truck, buddy,” I said. “I’m going right now. We’ll get you to a hospital.”
“Get the truck.”
“You bet, Lee. I’m going to get the truck and we’ll get you to the hospital.”
His hand shot out in the dark and seized me. “No,” he said. “Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
He sucked air loudly through his teeth and coming back out it made a whistling sound. “Because for one thing, that’s some fuckin’ bad press.” He drew another pained breath. “And for two, somebody like me, the cops are going to want to look into that. And for three, shit, we started this whole thing off by stealing anyway.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Just get the truck and come back for me.”
“All right then, you hold tight, buddy. I’m going to get the truck and come get you.”
“I’ll get down to the road.”
“No—fuck, don’t move,” I s
aid, and then I went off running toward Main Street.
* * *
By the time I returned to the bridge with my truck, he hadn’t gone very far, inching down the slope of the hill leading to the road. Already, his pale forehead was lathered in sweat.
“We gotta get you to a hospital,” I said. “This is ridiculous.” I took his arm over my shoulder and we moved unsteadily down the hill.
“No! No hospitals. It ain’t even bleeding that bad. We can get it.” He peered down at his leg. “I don’t think it came out the backside, so we just, eh, get a tweezers or something and dig that musketball out of there, you know, and wrap me up. No problem. Look, it’ll be a good story, maybe a new song. Something for those fucking journalists to write about, uh? When all the dust settles.” He attempted a chuckle, but then sucked in for more air, seized at his leg with both hands, and closed his eyes tightly.
“This is what you get for stealing.”
“Damn,” Lee said. “I never thought. Never thought it would be hot.” His breathing was all hisses and sharp pants, the pain such that occasionally, he screamed out a string of f-bombs, or even laughed at himself, anything to breathe deeply, to expel the air inside him and to take in new air. His pant leg was soaked a dark, dark burgundy, almost black. We took off his shirts and knotted them about the meat of his leg. Then he sat beside the road, examining the stars to distract himself, and marking the progress of a passing satellite. I gave him a minute before helping him up and loading him into my truck, and then I ran around the hood and slid into the vehicle.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Fuck. I’m not bleeding on your truck, am I?”
“No, I threw down some garbage bags on the seat. Come on—where to?”
“My place,” he wheezed. “I got pills, liquor. I can bleed anywhere I want to. The place could use some new carpeting anyhow.” Then, after a moment of grimacing, “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Okay, go.”
“All right,” I said. “Your funeral.” And then I gave his wounded leg one good squeeze, which elicited a hearty scream as he stared at me, disbelieving and irate, before softening just a bit and resting his head against the cool, foggy window.
“Fuck,” he said. “I suppose I deserved that.”
I nodded and stepped on the gas.
R
I WAS STAYING IN WATERLOO, Iowa, with my uncle Delmar, who had just then got himself out of jail after doing about two years for stealing an ex-girlfriend’s dirt bike. He was living in a trailer near a river I can’t remember the name of, and the trailer was actually pretty clean, but he had no furniture, and the prior tenants had taken all theirs except for a coffee table, a lamp, and a shitty old mattress which they’d set fire to and which was nothing more now than a pile of melted, rusty coils in Del’s firepit.
We weren’t close, me and Del, but I was passin’ through Waterloo at that time on the circuit, and my mom told me to look him up and I did. He was happy to hear from me, said I could help him scavenge up some furniture. I said sure, long as he’d put me up for a few nights’ lodging.
So the next two days we rode around Waterloo, drivin’ slow in an El Camino he swore was his own. We drove through neighborhoods starin’ out at the boulevards and lookin’ for thrown-away furniture we could take. And we did find some stuff, actually. A kitchen table, some chairs, a twin mattress, a couch. We loaded it all into the bed of the Camino and drove back to his place, set about making his trailer a little more comfortable. When we were done, he lit a cigarette, let out a ragged cough, and said, “Shit. I suppose I haven’t fed you all day. Want some hot dogs?” He reached into an empty refrigerator and threw me a package of Oscar Mayers after taking one himself and biting into it, cold.
I shook my head at him. “Uncle Del, I’m gonna need to roast this thing ’fore I can eat it, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “Let’s get a little bonfire together. Sit by the river. Shoot the shit. I ain’t got much for food, but I do got about a case of beers.”
* * *
So we got drunk and Del talked about prison, asked me about the rodeo, things in Little Wing. My memory is terrible since the accident, but I remember that conversation pretty clear, because that was the night when I got CORVUS tattooed on my chest, right next to a little crow, which is what “corvus” actually means, I guess.
Del had learned tattooing in prison, and as we sat around the campfire he showed me all of his ink; see, he’d used his own body for practice, let other inmates practice on him, too. Most of the tattoos weren’t so good, but some were, including his rendering of Moby-Dick, which he claimed he’d read all of while behind bars.
“I’ll ink you up, if you’d like,” he told me. “Gratis.”
“But, I mean, we could just go into town and get one done too,” I said.
“Sure, sure thing, nephew. The only thing is, you’d have to pay.”
* * *
Del sat me down at his new kitchen table and shaved what few hairs there were on my chest, just above my heart. He used a yellow Bic shaver, I remember that, and then he disinfected the area with some vodka and a handkerchief.
“Well, what do you want?”
“Corvus.”
“Who’s that? A girl?”
“No, he’s my friend.”
“You want a man’s name tattooed on your chest? What happened? He die?”
“He’s my friend. And he’s going to be famous. You watch—soon enough, I won’t be the only one.”
“Here, write it down for me. Big block letters. An’ make sure you spell it out just right. You can’t wash this away.”
He used a sewing needle and the ink from some pens inside the Camino’s glove box. When he finished carving the letters, he asked, “What’s it mean, anyway?” His face was as close to my own as I could ever remember another man’s being, and he blew his cigarette smoke out and across my own face. I looked at the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. At the yellowed teeth inside his mouth, the dark gums.
“I think it means crow. At least, that’s what all his T-shirts show, crows.”
“You want a crow to go along with it? I could probably do a pretty decent crow.”
“You ever done one before?”
He looked at me.
“All right,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have me another beer though, first.”
“Good idea. Grab me one, too.”
* * *
I like Chicago just fine. Sometimes, I ride the El with our girl, Christina, just to get out of the apartment. She’s an angel. I think she likes the train. People come over, peek into her little bassinet. We can ride all day if we want to, and sometimes we do. I stare out at the big buildings, and already I can pick out the Sears Tower or whatever the hell they call it now. And the John Hancock, where I guess Kip used to live. We ride past Wrigley Field and go up all the way to Evanston, then all the way back down, way south, past Comiskey and Chinatown, to where the city begins to level off.
And nobody looks twice at me. And nobody tells me what to do, or what not to do. And when I get lost, I just ask for help, and having a little baby in my arms always seems to help too.
B
WHEN WE WERE JUST TEENAGERS, Henry brought me to the top of the feed mill. It was a summer night without any breeze and I snuck out of the house after my parents had gone to sleep. We walked downtown, holding hands, and anyone might have seen us, except that no one was out, no one was watching, just one old widower, sitting on his front porch swing, swinging, and he waved at us through the darkness.
Up on top of those silos, there was a breeze, and far off over the countryside, lightning connecting heaven to earth. We took our shoes off, let our feet dangle. We kissed, and I was aware that my upper lip was sweaty, but Henry didn’t seem to care. He touched my ears, my neck. He told me he loved me. An eighteen-year-old Henry.
It’s all been worth it. Every fight, all those years of childish experimentation, the occasional heartbreak, the paltry
checking account, the used, old trucks. To have lived with another human being, another person, this man, as long as I have, and to see him change and grow. To see him become more decent and more patient, stronger and more competent—to see how he loves our children—how he wrestles with them on the floor and kisses them unabashedly in public. To hear his voice in the evening, reading books to them, or explaining to them what his father was like while he was alive, or what I was like as a girl, a teenager, a young woman. To hear him explain why our part of the world is so special. To hear him pray for trees and for dirt and for rain and for those people in the world less fortunate than us. To hear his voice in church, singing. To hear him urge our children to protect those kids at their school who others bully. To see him stop our truck in the middle of the road to carry a snapping turtle off the asphalt and into a nearby pond. To watch him on our tractors, in the last orange light of day.
* * *
When Eleanore was born, I ruptured my uterus. The amount of blood was horrific, but the doctor said that everything was normal, that it was just a tear. But Henry was adamant that something was wrong, and that if the doctor didn’t do something right that fucking second Henry was going to break the man’s jaw. Two male nurses were called in to subdue him, and even I said, “Henry, it’s fine, as long as the baby is healthy, please don’t worry. Just go on into the hallway and get yourself a glass of water.”
I remember the doctor, clear as day, saying, “Listen to your wife, mister. Listen to your wife before I have to call the police.”
Most men, most people, in that situation, would have backed off, would have submitted to the doctor’s authority, to the two nurses clutching his biceps, to the calmness of my voice. Henry didn’t.
Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel Page 25
