Trouble No Man

by Brian Hart

  “But—don’t take this personally, babe—he might be getting a little long in the tooth for either of those,” Karen said. “Shit or get off the pot, right?”

  “Hardly,” Roy said. “I’m just getting warmed up.”

  “So who’d you skate for?” Aaron asked. “Like Powell Peralta or someone? Tony Hawk.”

  “No, not Powell,” Roy said. “Tiny companies, Abel and Pearl Snap wheels, Infinity Skate Shop.”

  “Huh, what bands?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard of them either. We didn’t record, really. We mostly toured. I was in a band called Whale Eye that played Reno a couple of times.”

  “I must’ve missed it,” Aaron said.

  “It was just noise,” Roy said.

  “Parading as art,” Karen said.

  Aaron chuckled. “Why’d you call yourselves Whale Eye?”

  “Because whale eyes look creepy, kind of like giant assholes.” Roy shifted in his seat and smiled at Karen. His schtick, along with the rest of him, was out of its element. “Assholes that contain all the wisdom of the world.”

  “Like you,” Karen said. “You wish.” To Aaron: “They were like those bands that drop their instruments at the end of the show and let them feed back as they walk off stage, except they were still there, humping their amplifiers and screaming at each other without microphones.”

  “Like Sonic Youth?” Aaron said.

  “Without the songs and lyrics,” Karen said. “Or artistic sensibility. It was dysfunctional.”

  “We had songs,” Roy said. “We had that one about eating horse meat in the Arctic. You said you liked that song.”

  “Bubblegum,” Karen said, laughing. “Radio rock.”

  “Whale’s eyes look like assholes?” Aaron said. “Wise assholes?”

  “All they did was party,” Karen said. “Who knows what he got into.”

  Out of the mountains, the shaggy, snow-covered hayfields opened up before them. They passed another broken-down car, hood up, a Subaru. The snowplow had bermed it in. There was a green sticker on the passenger window. Roy powered on his phone and had a signal so he found the insurance card in his wallet and called the insurance company and, like she was his best friend, the insurance agent or the operator or whoever said she’d send a wrecker within the hour. Karen told him to have the van dropped off at a place called Moody’s Garage and Aaron backed her, said Moody was the best in town. Easy as that. After months of believing they’d been ripped off on their insurance, paid too much for services they would never need, Roy felt slick. Billboards appeared: Water—Jobs—Liberty—Small Government, Tractor Supply, RV Park.

  “I’ll take you where you’re going,” Aaron said. “Moody’s or wherever.”

  “Do you mind dropping us at my old house?” Karen said. “It’s kind of out of the way.”

  “Not a problem. Just tell me where to go.”

  The streets were gray and black with dirty snow, quaint brick buildings, a few barnwood, stage-stop-style fronts, two, maybe three stop lights. How did it go? If you blinked, you might miss it. If you lived here, you’d be bored by now. What nonsense, these little burgs. What was the point of these places? Old people were the only ones they saw on the streets and sidewalks and some of them waved to Aaron and he waved back. If this was ever going to be his home, it didn’t feel that way. On the most basic scrotum and gut levels it felt unreal like maybe behind the buildings and under the streets there were alien operators controlling the whole show.

  The house was yellow with a red metal roof and a sad, cobbled-together porch over the crooked front steps. A dented white pickup was idling in the driveway, its exhaust clouded the air.

  “He’s here,” Karen said, too quietly for Aaron. “Mace is here.”

  Roy nodded. “And it looks like he’s leaving.”

  This was the house that Karen had grown up in. Her older half sister, Whip, had died here. The truck in the driveway belonged to Mace, Whip’s father. When they were here last, for Karen’s mother’s funeral, Roy and Mace had hung out some, run errands together. They’d picked up food from the deli counter at Leonard’s. Their shoes were tinted green from mowing and weed-eating the grass. They’d set out chairs and cleaned out the firepit. Karen’s mom had worked for the county at the Soil Conservation District and her coworkers were mostly geriatrics, but they were geriatrics that liked a few drinks at a wake. Mace had asked him about Karen and skateboarding and what their lives were like in Portland, but with his reviled, always guilty of something, convict manner Roy felt that with each word he spoke in reply he wasn’t answering questions, he was entering into a conspiracy.

  Mace’s eyes were cold, almost reptilian, but sometimes they’d go dark and well over with desperate compassion. Karen called it the Disney effect, others called it bipolar disorder. Regardless, Roy still wanted Mace to like him, sick or not, crazy or not, and after he and Karen got home to Portland he’d started calling people homeboy, like Mace did, even though nobody called anybody homeboy anymore. Homey, maybe. Holmes, OK. Homeboy, that was some truly retro jail shit but when Mace said it, when he talked about his homeboys, when he called Roy homeboy, it was nothing to laugh about. He’d been with the Aryan Brotherhood in prison, had the swastika tattoo on his chest to prove it. Karen said it was about survival, not any kind of Nazi shit. Prison draws uncrossable lines. Colors stick together. If you don’t like it, don’t get locked up.

  When Karen invited Aaron in for a drink, Roy glanced at her and shook his head. She smiled back at him.

  “Better watch how you park,” Roy said. “Don’t want to block anybody in if they need to leave.”

  The smile withered on Karen’s face as Aaron maneuvered the big truck around Mace’s idling pickup. There were orange flags on red-painted bamboo poles stabbed into the snow to mark the edge of the driveway. Aaron killed the motor and got out, shut his door behind him. It was another long moment before Karen reached across Roy to open the door. “You can do it,” she said.

  “Can you?” he said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Karen said.

  “Good.” He stepped down from the truck but when he turned to grab his bag it was already in the air coming toward him and it knocked him backward into the snowbank.

  “First step’s a bitch,” Karen said, as she offered him a hand to pull him up.

  “Does that make you the first step?” Roy said.

  “In more ways than you know.” She yanked him to his feet and dusted the snow from his pants and guided him toward the porch with her hand on his back.

  [11]

  M<45

  CA 96118

  The kids are asleep and except for the light of the candle on the bedside table the house is dark. There’d been a splatter of rain earlier and the wet dirt smell of it had put everyone in a good mood. She’s sitting at her dresser talking on the phone when it suddenly squeals and crackles and the call is dropped.

  “They’re messing with the cell phone towers again,” the woman says, holding out her phone. “C’mon.”

  He sits up and scoots over to her and puts his cheek to hers so he can hear. This is their newest entertainment.

  Mom, I know. Mom, yes. Mom, I don’t believe this. I can’t understand how it happened. Me neither. Your brother’s calling. Should I answer it? Go ahead. Hey. We’re all here. Hey, how’s it going? Shitty. I’m just sick when I think about it. Who are these people? I’m physically ill.

  “Put it on speaker.” He takes the phone from her and does it himself. “It won’t wake them up. Don’t worry.”

  They, I told you they were doing this, Mick. I’m going to throw up. Mom, it’ll be fine. I don’t really understand how people live there. What’d you mean? They’ve lived there forever and they just got crazier and crazier and with no water in the ground and the EPA sending water downstream for fish. They were fucked. Mick, please. Sorry. But they got organized and they got people elected. Wait, hold that thought. What they actually did is they got guns and trained
an army and set up roadblocks and chased families off of what they were calling their territory. It’s totally racist, not to mention fascist. Totally. But they were like farmers, don’t farmers like need Mexican labor? Not when they don’t have water and they have lots of guns. And now what? Can we go there? Can I visit? Why? Why what? Why would you? Because it’s American soil. Technically. So I can visit. I wouldn’t. No shit. You always want to put your nose in the middle of the biggest turd you can find. Mick, enough. Fine, just, Christ, let them have it. It’s a dried-up shit hole. Hundreds and hundreds of square miles and they just stole it. If I were a Native American, I would be so mad. If you were a Native American, you’d be way more interesting. So glad you joined in, baby brother. That’s really sweet. As if I wanted to feel shittier. Oh, cool it, you two. There’s no way all of that is even close to being a shit hole, Mom, or worthless in any way. Mineral rights, you know. I don’t know what else there’d be without water but what if they like strike gold. In California? I think they’ve found all the gold by now. Idiot. Fuck you. My God, you don’t age, you just get more annoying. They should send in the actual army and blow them the fuck up. Hawk much? You want to scorch the earth just a skosh more? Just bomb it a wittle bit? Fuck you, Sam. There it is. Mick bleeds too. I think they’re all ex-soldiers anyhow, or that’s what it looks like on the news. They’re veterans of foreign wars. Oh my God. It’s like reap what you sow, right. We train these people. Who’s we? You couldn’t train a ball to roll downhill. I’m so sick of you. We should visit. I’m not going near that place. You’re a pussy. I am a pussy. I live in Los Angeles, Sam. I eat breakfast tacos and do yoga. I don’t own a gun or want to. I actually think people that use guns for hunting should have to rent them, instead of keeping them like in their houses. Like renting skis instead of owning them. Why do we have to own everything? Wow, my son the Communist. How’s that legal weed, Mick? Great. It’s really great. Anyway. I heard there’s going to be an amazing documentary on how the Preservation was formed, like the key players. It went all the way to the White House. Mom, wake up. He signed the executive order to establish the fucking place in the White House. Who doesn’t know that?

  “I don’t even miss TV when this happens,” the woman says.

  “Men are more visual.”

  “Because they’re limited mentally.” She slugs him in the thigh.

  “Fucker. Stop it. We’re going to lose the signal. Stop.”

  “It changed. Is this different people? What is this? I miss them already. They’re like my friends.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Wait, they’re the same. I think.”

  Once all the militias joined together under the Jeffersonian flag, it was like only six months later and they launched their little campaign. Can you imagine? If they were anything except white men, they would be splattered on a wall somewhere. True. But instead they occupy a dozen national parks and wildlife areas and end up camped out at the Bonneville Dam. Boom boom boom. I can’t imagine. From the Canadian border all along Highway 97, south to where Highway 89 intersects I-80. And it’s not like Idaho and Nevada, Montana, Utah aren’t itching to get in on this. You don’t know that. Like you know more than me. Whatever, bong hit, Mick. Whatever, box wine, sis. At first Mimi and I thought it was something that maybe a SWAT team would take care of, then it was in the courts. Like they made a legal claim. Mimi isn’t exactly a political mastermind, Mom. She voted. OK, Mom, sorry. She voted her conscience, unlike you. Poor Mick, no votey vote. Too hungover. All right. My vote wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. It’s all so corrupt. Grand understatement. The Preservation is like the Illuminati running a train on the Koch brothers’ corpses in the clear-cut that was the Bohemian Grove. Oh my God. I don’t know what that means, honey. You’ve lost me. Why would you say that to your mother? It’s a joke. Lighten up. We can still take our country back. This isn’t an actual secession, there’s isn’t going to be a fifty-first state. I know, Mom, you old hippie dreamer you. It just seems like at this point, you know, why? Do you think all of the people in those towns within the 89/97 corridor want to be under militia control? Yes, Mom, I do. I think they would’ve left if they didn’t want to be there. They say they don’t want government handouts or overreach. Mom, they don’t know what they want. They say—

  The broadcast ends in a series of loud clicks and goes silent. “My friends,” the woman says.

  “That was way better than listening to the Jeffs,” he says.

  “Wolf Mother to Massive Cyborg, this is Wolf Mother.” She has a militia voice she employs daily, mostly toward her children.

  “Imminent Peril to—”

  “Like they could even spell that. Next time we hit a roadblock, ask those turds. Hey, blue falcon, spell imminent.”

  “Maybe that was a propaganda campaign, subliminal warfare stuff,” he says. “Do you feel more agreeable or less to the Jeffersonian cause now?”

  “On a scale of one to ten? I’m a soft eleven.” She drops into her bro voice. “Ultimate Fight Boss to Rip Chain. This is Ultimate Fight Boss, do you copy. I’m all sexy time and ready to party-party in my massive nakedness. How many clicks to my six?”

  “You’re a kook.”

  “Rip Chain, do you copy.”

  “Copy.”

  She gives him a kiss and slides her hand inside his underwear. “Raging Boner to—”

  “Enough.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” She stands up to undress, waits until she’s naked to blow out the candle.

  [12]

  M<55

  CA 94203

  The artifact of a train clatters toward him out of a murky cloud of dust. The engineer isn’t paying attention, doesn’t notice him or doesn’t care to. The man waits until he spots an open boxcar. He watches over his shoulder and walks alongside the train and when it’s close he hustles for twenty feet or so before he catches a rung and pulls himself up. Someone from inside snags him by the waist and gets him safely inside. A family, man and woman, four children, aged toddler to teenager. It’s the father that pulled him in. He glances toward his kids and pats his chest. He’s young, Latino, designer jeans and a threadbare dress shirt, a filthy dust mask on a string around his neck.

  “Protegeré a mis hijos,” he says.

  “I’m not gonna hurt anybody,” the man says. He sits down and rests his hands on his knees.

  The mother and her children are overdressed for the heat. All of them have dust masks perched on their heads but they’re newer and whiter than the father’s, and still have the yellow rubber bands attached. They don’t have any luggage, just a two-liter of water and a reusable grocery bag with oranges in it.

  “No los toque,” the father says.

  “I’m more scared of them.” The man makes a face at the children that shows how scared he is. The smallest smiles at him and pulls her shoulders toward her ears, leans into her mother. The other children stare at him like he owes them money. The woman reaches in the sack and pitches him an orange.

  “Gracias,” he says.

  “You’re welcome,” she says.

  The boxcar door is left open and as the train increases its speed the clattering and the wind get louder. The family pulls on their dust masks. Earth movers in the distance are scraping the wasteland in an effort to reclaim some arable ground. The air tastes grainy and leaves an LSD tang in the man’s mouth.

  Three of the four children are sleeping now, leaning against each other, rocking with the motion of the train. The eldest watches as the man peels and eats his orange, finally looks away as he wipes the juice in his beard onto his sleeve. He keeps the peels in his pocket so he can smell them later.

  In a sun-blasted field of weeds a man stands up like a reconstituted scarecrow from his bed of dross and stares at the train. The man can’t help but think of the settlers of this central valley and what riches they stumbled into. The man has a look at his shoes, his hands, his fellow travelers, then watches the man in the field as he lays back
down in his weedy nest.

  A few houses appear on the horizon, hundreds of burnt foundations like circuit board. People are walking beside the tracks. The man and the father stand and watch to see if someone needs help up, but no one chooses their car.

  The train slows. They’re among warehouses and abandoned factories, close to the freeway. A few minutes later the train grinds to a stop. The man can see the arc of a freeway overpass between the buildings.

  “Sal del tren,” the father says.

  “Checkpoint,” the woman says. She and the rest of the family climb down with the father passing the two youngest to their mother and move quickly toward a factory that at one point had manufactured brake parts. The man follows them away from the unseen checkpoint and wanders across a parking lot and is surprised to see the vet waiting for him, outside her pickup, waving.

  He gets in the truck and lets the dog lick his hand and tugs on its ears. The lampshade is gone. The vet is wearing the same set of scrubs as when he first arrived. She still wears her wedding ring but she’s been a widow now longer than she was married. She reaches under her seat and drops a pair of dusty running shoes in his lap.

  “Found these in the back of the garage.”

  “Thanks,” he says. The man leans into the back and rubs his head against the dog’s muzzle.

  “He isn’t chewing on his staples so I lost the lampshade,” the vet says.

  “How is he?”

  “You weren’t gone that long.”

  “But you took off the lampshade.”

  “He’s a little stiff still, but he can take a punch. He’s a tough cookie.”

  “He’s a cookie. I’ll give you that.”