Trouble No Man

by Brian Hart

  “Talk to your mom.”

  “She said no.”

  “I’ll talk to her again.”

  “If she gets a baby, I get a puppy.”

  “Sound logic.”

  “I do get a puppy.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I say yes. It’s up to your mom and she’s still sad about your old dog.”

  “You told me.”

  “I know. I’m a repeater. Me and Fugazi. It’s up to your mom.”

  The girl wraps her arms around a heap of potatoes and tries to lift them all at once and drops all but a couple. She’s smiling up at him. He brushes the dirt from his shirt and takes time to load her arms with potatoes and sends her on her way with a pat on the back. Haze from the fires in the distance makes it seem as if the sky is slowly lowering down on them and maybe it is.

  [4]

  M<55

  CA 94203

  The man shades his eyes with his hand and searches the swollen river for the abandoned bridge pilings. The new bridge was supposed to replace the old I Street Bridge but the money evaporated before they even got to the deck. Tough old I Street had been owned by the railroad and they’d let it decline until they had to pay to have it torn down and hauled away. Black silt dunes rib the ground and form scalloped ramps onto the concrete. His front tire sinks to the hub and he’s forced to dismount and push his rig. Among the broken walls of the power plant, hacksawed cables and pipes glint like jewelry on a corpse. Someone has tipped a crude ladder constructed of tie-wired rebar and driftwood against the lone standing cooling tower and the high-water mark is slashed with red spray paint, the words Jefferson Was Here scrawled above it.

  He and the vet were going to ride bikes here together but as they were leaving a Bosnian woman with her two young children showed up at the gate towing a trailer full of parasite-ridden sheep so he’s alone, which he prefers.

  Because the river brings her, again, to his mind, flowing water. She’s drawing him in now. They’d come to this place, he and his wife. Left the kids with their aunt, twist-top wine, skinny dip in a filthy river, out to the broken bridge. They swam in their shoes because of the broken glass on shore. How long ago was that? All of his math involves his children, X and Y to locate himself. Her hair was tied up and when they got out he kissed her neck. She is the high-water mark. They’d made up a story for the kids about a broken water main to explain their soggy shoes. Had to cross a lake in the parking lot to get into the Walmart.

  She isn’t here. She’s gone. The river talks to him and tells him this is a lie. Dark side of the road. Don’t think twice. It’s all right. He knows he won’t see her again. But if someone else were to tell him that, he’d call them a liar. Because it feels like a lie, an untruth. The river knows. He will see her again. He has to. No use to sit and wonder why, babe. He’s going in. He needs to feel the water, to be near her.

  He unzips the rain flap on the trailer and the dog lifts its head and sniffs the air and together they watch the brown water swirl around the pilings on the inland-bound current. The dog seems content, even with the Elizabethan collar and the staples. The man squats down and gives him a soft pat, then takes off his jacket and shirt and folds them and puts them safely inside the trailer, blanketing the dog. He removes his shoes and his pants—he wears no underwear—and places them on top of his jacket. He smooths the layers of clothing and gives the dog a last ear scratch and jaw rub.

  Standing naked, he has the hide and bulgy, quick muscling of a lizard, and is covered in several lifetimes of tattoos and scars. From any distance he appears stained and cursed, God-stranded and clearly forsaken outside the crumbling walls of human decorum. That said, he doesn’t look out of place.

  He crosses the ground gingerly, surfer sans board, and slides down the bank into the mud and froth and wades into the sloshing water until he leaves the bottom and mounts his crawl stroke. The brackish water smells of lawn fertilizer and burns his eyes and the small cuts and scratches on his hands.

  Breathing hard, rubber arms, nearly equidistant from either shore, he climbs from the water onto the slippery remnants of the massive bridge piling and squats there on the broken concrete and rusted rebar. I helped build this, he’d said to her. Explains the state of it.

  No one is on the water, no boats or barges. But on the opposing shore, among the flood garbage and the charred driftwood of almond orchards and Sierra forests, wadded against the rubble of burned and crumbling condominiums, he catches sight of six, make that eight, people huddled around a cook fire. No boats on shore, not even a skiff. Bald heads. Kelpers, the vet had called them, people who harvest kelp and algae. The man was surprised to learn of the inland kelp trade. The last time he saw this river it was just a brown trickle and the kelp trawlers, not to mention the algae blooms, seeded like oyster beds, novelties still, were operating well offshore.

  He watches the drifting smoke, smells the toxic dust, tastes it like a broken filling in his mouth. “Talk to me,” he says to the river. “Say something.” He dives back into the blood-warm water and finds his stroke.

  An outlaw trawler, hand gurdy mounted under a tarp-roof bait house, is motoring seaward, looking haggard with heaped gear and no hands on deck. The man stays low in the water until it passes. Breaking through the spray on the wave crests he looks for the kelpers on the far shore but can’t find them. With the current and the wind, he loses three hundred yards to the drift and has to crawl over a jumble of slippery drowned cars and crawls the roof of a half-submerged Sprinter van to gain the bank.

  Dripping in the dirt at his rig the dog sticks its head out of the trailer for a sniff and the man obliges him.

  He stands naked and lets the wind dry his body. Little to none of his filth has been removed by the swim. He is thin and poorly used but it’s obvious by the square of his shoulders and the way his weight settles pendulum-smooth onto the balls of his feet—if nothing else—he’s durable. As he slips once again into the dry comfort of his no-longer-fancy black suit a smile haunts his face.

  He pushes his bike and trailer up the gentle slope of a barren hillside. At the top he leans his bike against a stone bench and takes a moment to catch his breath. His skin is skimmed with a chalky residue and as the sun warms him it begins to itch. Behind him, a bum’s road, a scar of single-track, worms from the broken trees back to the industrial four-laners and eventually the old freeway. To the northeast, on the opposite shore, what had been the vista from the bench, is the trashed capital, with its unfinished high-rises, abandoned tower cranes, and the dust that only gets deeper. The man is reminded of what craftsmen term the signature of the machine, where the cutting blade would mar the work. From space, there would be a discernible pattern, kerf marks. Up close it isn’t collapse or even destruction, it’s a natural process, like watching mold eat an orange in time-lapse.

  The man mounts the bike and follows the single-track through the dead forest until he comes to a short sandbag wall, a defensive position. He hauls the bike and trailer over in two parts, careful with the dog, and reconnects them on the wide unmarked blacktop that loops through the warehouses on the other side.

  The gate is down at the railroad crossing. He rolls to a stop and gets off the bike. In the distance, coming toward him trackside he sees five, maybe six of the kelpers stooped beneath their mossy hauls and dragging carts and wagons, pushing wheelbarrows. The man maneuvers around the gate and climbs onto his bike. He looks over his shoulder, lifts his head at the kelpers, speaks to the dog. “Here comes the future.” After a shaky start, they’re smoothly under way, rolling. The kelpers shout something but he isn’t stopping. He’s gone.

  [5]

  M>35

  CA 96118

  He could’ve bought the kit instead and he wouldn’t have had to figure out how the components went together. Plug and play, right out of the box. But he needed to know how everything went together because it was him that was going to be fixing it if it broke. When it broke. Now he needed to be an electrician. This morni
ng he was a carpenter. Yesterday a plumber. This road is paved with self-reliance. If it were paved at all. He’d been skimming Walden, thought Thoreau a pussy, a whamby poseur of the highest order. Goats would’ve annihilated HDT. Never mind drought or children.

  In any case, he’d saved a little money doing the solar himself, but really at this point it wasn’t about the money. Insurance settlements had come in, his and hers, like twinned sinks in an oversized bathroom. Losses paid, hers for death, his for injury. His sink was in fact much smaller and truly pathetic beside her swimming pool of grief. But they didn’t have to worry for a while, not about money at least.

  He’d built the vented and insulated case for the battery bank and mounted the collectors on the roof and wired them in series. Then he’d strung the wire and connected the charge controller and inverter, added inline fuses. He’d followed the directions he found online, but the way the little girl was looking at him he was sure he’d messed something up and as soon as he connected the batteries, also wired in series, the whole system would burst into flames.

  “Are you thinking?” the little girl asks him.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because you look like this.” She makes her monkey face and scratches her chin.

  “I should just hook it up, huh? I have to commit at some point.”

  “Red to red and black to black,” the little girl says. She hands him a crescent wrench.

  He reaches inside the battery case and connects the leads. Nothing explodes or changes in the slightest. He switches on the charge controller first, then the inverter. The green light comes on. The dial needle jumps upward in the voltmeter. There’s power coming into the system.

  “That’s that,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you want to do it for so long?”

  “I didn’t know what would happen.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. It works.” He’s proud of himself.

  “Mama says you’ll burn the house down.”

  “No, she said I’d burn the house down if I tried to tie into the panel. I didn’t tie into the panel. Not yet. This is just power for the barn and the goat shed and once I get the switch installed, backup for our well pump.”

  “How do you tie into a panel?”

  “If I knew that, I would’ve done it. I feel like I did something wrong.”

  “Like bad?”

  “No, just like a mistake. I feel like I messed something up or forgot something.”

  “The lights came on.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. At least the lights came on so the batteries are charging. I’ll try out the rest after they get a good charge in them.”

  There’s dust on the road. When her mother gets out of her truck, the girl leaves him and runs to her and hugs her belly. She’s a cuddler.

  “They had another meeting,” the woman says, smoothing the child’s hair back from her face.

  “Did you go this time?” the man says.

  “Yeah, but I left early.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “The light came on, Mama.”

  “It works?” She points to the solar panels on the roof of the barn.

  “So far.”

  “Big-city solar guy. You put the musk in Elon Musk. How about that? Is the house next?”

  “Looks that way.” He touches her belly, kisses her cheek, and steps beside her and grabs her homemade canvas bags filled with groceries.

  “I have layer pellets in the back too,” she says. “I got the last two bags. Florence says it might be a while before he gets more.”

  “OK,” he says. “No problem. You go inside. Get out of the sun.”

  “What’s for lunch?” the girl says.

  “We still have trout from our camping trip,” the man says.

  “Eww.”

  “Trout and pickles?” the woman says.

  “No,” the girl says. “I want potatoes and ketchup.”

  “There isn’t any ketchup,” her mother says.

  “I want ketchup, Mama.”

  “Then we’ll have to make some more, won’t we? We already canned the tomatoes. We’re halfway there.”

  “Can’t we buy some? Your ketchup is funky.”

  “Really?” She turns to the man. “Do you think my ketchup is funky?”

  “No,” the man says, grinning. “Yes. But I don’t like ketchup from the store either.”

  The little girl watches the man climb the stairs with the grocery bags then runs up and opens the door for him. “I don’t need ketchup, Mama,” she says.

  The woman stops the man on the way out the door to get the chicken feed out of the truck. “They were looking for volunteers to go with them when they take control of the courthouse.”

  “With guns.”

  She laughs. “They can’t wipe their asses without a gun.”

  “What d’you want to do?”

  “Have this baby. Be a family. Forget about them and everyone else.”

  “Forget about what? Who? What just happened?”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  [6]

  R<25

  CA 96118

  Roy stepped out of the van and the blowing snow smacked him in the face like a handful of gravel. He had his army-surplus duffel slung over his shoulder with some clothes, his skate pads and a helmet, a paperback or two, toothbrush, toothpaste, a one hitter, dugout, a bone-handled knife that he’d picked up at the Saturday Market, and, at the very bottom, a court summons from Multnomah County for criminal trespass and destruction of public property, all sausage-cased together by webbing and the skateboard strapped to the outside like a splint. Karen’s kit was smaller and more elegant, a Swiss-made cycling bag. She had her shit together. Roy looked homeless.

  “Do you want to shut the hood before we go?” she said.

  “No, leave it. That way they’ll know it’s broken down.”

  “You don’t think they’d figure it out?”

  Roy locked the doors, shut the hood, and they left the van behind. The drawstring was gone from his sweatshirt and the stretched-out hood wouldn’t stay on his head unless he held it there and then his hands would freeze. The wind needled into his left ear and soon he had a crick in his neck from trying to protect it. Karen had her head down, hat pulled low with her hood over the top, trucking along, swinging her arms like a power walker.

  “You can complain if you want,” he said.

  “Money in the bank.”

  “Are you warm enough?” Roy asked.

  “Yeah, I’m toasty. Do you want my hat?”

  “No, I’m OK.”

  She took it off and stuffed it into his hand. “Take it.” Her bangs blew into her face, eyes watering from the wind. Her beauty was powerful, held real muscle. It twisted him up and weakened him. He put the hat on and wished they were back in the van so he could be sweet but the wind iced his will and the moment passed.

  Karen smoothed her hair back and stuffed it into her hood and then cinched her hood tight around her face. He patted his pockets and remembered the cigarettes and the lighter in the glove box. “Wait here.” He dropped his pack, ran the whole way back, struggled getting the door unlocked, found the smokes and lighter, and returned, lungs burning. He hoisted his pack and backed into the wind, lighting two cigarettes at once and passing one to Karen.

  “Thanks,” she said, and took a drag.

  They walked on. Snow mounded on Roy’s shoes and his toes went numb.

  “Statistically,” Karen said, “and I’m talking within a purely hypothetical model here, it seems like, after a certain number of these automotive bed-shittings—”

  “Not to mention all the other day-in, day-out shit,” Roy said, hand raised, ready to list them if necessary.

  “After all that, it seems like someday we’d finally be transcended, thwupp, a place of wisdom and meaning.”

  “You’re high,” Roy said. “When did you get
high?”

  “I’m not high,” Karen said. “I’m talking about depth, legitimacy, our karmic gears finally meshing.” She held out her gloved hands to demonstrate the meshing of the gears.

  “Karmic gears?”

  “The odds are against the odds getting worse. You know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean.” The cherry of his smoke, tormented by the wind, was being foreskinned inside the cigarette paper. His cold tattooed hand—karmic gears—his cold tattooed body—sometimes he didn’t even recognize himself. He didn’t know if this scar-tissue insecurity was a cultural thing or maybe even evolutionary but as of late he was sure of one thing: It got fucking boring. Roy’s life and his boom-bap bass line of peacockery and failure got fucking boring. Talking about it. Wearing clothes. Getting work done, new ink. Haircuts. Eating. Living. Breathing in and out like forever.

  Karen didn’t have much ink, minor damage; a bird and a covered wagon, that was it. Once he’d overheard her at his mom’s house say that she didn’t see his tattoos anymore, couldn’t name them if asked. He was invisible to her. He put on the show and she didn’t even notice.

  A hot-bodied grim reaper in a miniskirt and halter top holding a weed-eater graced his stomach, and on his chest and creeping up his neck he had DEK8D above an exquisitely rendered bald eagle. The wings went from one shoulder to the other, big as shit. Roy used to skate with some guys and they’d all gotten DEK8D tats. But Roy was the youngest and grommiest so his was the gnarliest. DEK8D Skateboards. Death Said Crew. You will know us by our trail of skull stencils, beer cans, weed smoke. A couple of skate mags had done stories about them. Roy still carried the clippings. With the press, they picked up sponsors, small companies, a skate shop or two, and made a video. For a while it looked like they’d all get paid, not just free clothes and shit, but it never happened. DEK8D and Death Said had doubled in size and then foundered and fell apart. Cocaine was a factor, so were liquor and women. To Roy, it seemed to be an organic process, and in his mind, true to skateboarding. Skate scenes, maybe music scenes too, were dependent on conditions and counter pressure. They sprouted and grew, died. You did some shit and it was great and maybe even beautiful and then it was over. You were in the dirt. What was next? Wait for the dirt, that’s what.