by Brian Hart
“I know enough,” Barry said. “I know that those meetings didn’t change anything. Just a lot of talk with no action. The neoliberal modus operandi, gab ’em to death.”
“Your neighbor Doris.” Roy watched Barry’s eyes, making sure he knew who he was talking about, where he was going. “Remember her?”
“Of course.” Barry took off his hat again. “I went to her funeral.”
“One time she showed up here on foot, exhausted. She’d walked for miles and she told me she’d asked you to help her get her car out of the ditch and you said for a hundred bucks you’d bring your big-ass Caterpillar crawler over and pull her out. You tried to make that old woman pay you.”
“To cover fuel costs. It wasn’t any kind of disdain for her as a person.”
Jerzy stared Barry down while he spoke. “Doris took me school shopping after my folks died,” he said. “I’d never spoken to her until then. She didn’t know me. She just showed up at Sullivan’s one day and took me shopping. She knew he wouldn’t do it. Sully wouldn’t think of it. He was just my dad’s friend that got stuck with me. He didn’t know anything about me or kids, stuff like that. Doris helped me out. Because she was a good person. That’s the point.”
“Go on and screw,” Roy said to Barry.
“I don’t quit that easy.”
“I guess not, but I’d bet you’re pretty quick to bleed.” Roy stood up and Barry touched his sidearm and backed away.
Roy laughed. “There is nothing as cowardly as a dough-assed white man with a composite pistol,” he said. “Cargo pockets. You keep your extra clips in there, tough guy? Where’s your bug-out bag? Why don’t you bug out?”
“Why don’t you try me?” Barry said.
“Make my day,” Roy said. “Feeling lucky. You’re a Hollywood hero, Barry. I’m gonna call you Chuck Norris. Hey, Chuck Norris!”
“Just a tattooed piece of shit,” Barry said, and turned to leave.
Karen opened the door and glared at Roy. Wiley and Sarah were behind her. They’d been listening the whole time. “Hello, Barry,” she said.
“Karen,” Barry said, not looking back, raised his arm to wave.
“Sorry, girls,” Roy said. “I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
Jerzy followed Wiley inside. Roy picked up Sarah and sat down on the steps. Karen sat down beside them. They watched Barry hustle down the road. The dog was shadowing him at the fence line but he hadn’t noticed.
“He’s going to come back,” Karen said. “You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you and Jerzy just help him out?”
“How would you feel about drilling a well for the Jeffs if you were Jerzy?”
“Barry didn’t have anything to do with what happened at that roadblock. He wasn’t there.”
“He’s guilty by association.”
“We’re all guilty of that.”
“Why don’t you like anybody, Papa?” Sarah said.
“I like plenty of people, sweetheart. I like you and mama and Wiley, Jerzy, Aunt Ape. But I don’t like that self-righteous old turd.”
“Self-righteous old turd,” Sarah said, laughing, eyes sparkling.
“That’s right, sweetheart. That’s what he is.” Roy laughed too, but Karen didn’t think it was funny, not at all.
They sat outside and watched as the clouds rolled in. The goats were bashing one another in their shelter and rattling the corrugated metal walls in a kind of pre-thunder. The dog was between Sarah and Wiley on the stairs, intently watching the horizon, and he looked at the girls when they startled at the first sign of lightning, and seconds later, thunder. A pig squealed out of sight behind the barn and they could hear hoofbeats on the wind. The chickens must’ve gone into the coop. They weren’t around. As the rain started, it looked like twilight but it was barely after two. Strafing gusts worked fat steely drops up the stairs and chased them laughing indoors.
It wasn’t long, three days, and their joy turned to watchfulness and worry. The drill rig sank in the mud. The root cellar flooded and they had to move everything inside the house. The electric fence shorted out and the pigs and a couple of goats disappeared in the night. Roy tried tracking them but they were gone. The radio squelched and buzzed and warned against mudslides and floods, interstate travel, intermittent streams, water over roadways, downed power lines, fires.
Then it got cold and the rain froze. Ice cocooned and eventually killed all but a few of their fruit trees and collapsed their greenhouse. The big oak in the yard dropped a massive limb that could’ve killed somebody. Roy and Jerzy bucked it up and stacked it on the porch with the fir and lodgepole they’d cut during the summer, some smaller stuff that’d been salvaged from the creek’s floodwater.
Enough snow fell that it took Roy an hour to shovel the porch stairs, paths to the barn, goat house, and machine shed. The wind picked up during the day and drifts unscrewed themselves from the driveway and in the fields. Roy watched out the kitchen window, a mug of rosehip tea in his hand. They were conserving coffee. He didn’t mind tea but rosehip was his least favorite. He was in a mood. The girls were playing blackjack for actual dollars. Karen’s sewing machine was thumping and whirring in her work room. Jerzy was rebuilding the transmission in Sully’s old Dodge just for something to do. It wasn’t worth saving. What was?
He finished his tea and left the mug in the sink. In the entryway he pulled on his coveralls and his rabbit fur hat and went outside to clear the snow from the solar panels. The goats heard him outside working on the roof and bleated and cracked their horns against their stall until he went in to check on them. Well fed, so far. Giving a steady gallon and a half a day. More than they could use but it helped fill out the pigs’ rations, or it used to. He made some offhand feed calculations, assessed their individual life spans.
“Keep it up,” he said to them. He scratched the hard ridges of their noses and tugged on their horns. “Hang in there. I’ll figure something out.”
The tractor didn’t want to start and smoked a lot once it did. He poured in another four ounces of fuel additive and hoped for the best. While it idled and warmed he shoveled out the doorway again so a hump wouldn’t form. His rabbit hat kept his ears warm. He wished his work gloves did the same for his hands.
He broke a shear pin before he’d made it out of the driveway. Cold work fixing it but he had a box full of them. The dog showed up and threw its body into his shoulder and knocked him over. Angry, with snow caked on his bare hands, he picked himself up.
“Sedni,” he said. He wouldn’t say it twice. He waited until the dog sat down and composed itself.
He was on his way back a half hour later when he saw the dog still sitting in the same spot, covered with snow, watching him. The best dog.
When the storm finally broke and the sun came out, the fields rolled endlessly open and unclaimed to the horizon. Cornices hung heavy and twisted along the ridges. The fences were buried under a foot of snow and the driveway looked as if it were cut in a mountain pass.
They needed to get moving. Get some air. Get out of the house. Roy and Jerzy spent the morning cobbling together the cross-country skis they’d discovered in the hayloft. Used short screws and cam straps to make bindings so they could fasten their snow boots to the skis since they didn’t have enough ski boots. After some searching, Karen found two pairs of old leather nordic boots in the back of the hall closet in a box labeled Winter Etc. Roy wore Wiley’s dad’s boots. Extra socks.
The dog went through the snow as a porpoise would water. Roy had never put skis on before. It was more like walking since the snow was so deep—they weren’t doing much sliding or gliding. They looped the property and had a snack at the top of the hill and surveyed their buried holdings. The winter felt eternal but from elevation less threatening. The dog’s whiskers were frosted, as was Roy’s beard.
Barry Miller had plowed his pasture and his cows, fifteen head, were kept in their mud-trampled corral by the mass
ive snowbanks. As a family they watched as Barry used his tractor to plug a round bale into his big circular feeder. He had the bale on the forks and had to slip beneath the roof he’d built with steel pipe and sheet metal. It was a delicate operation and the structure showed the scars and dents of when he’d missed his target. When he saw them, he killed the motor and climbed down, muck boots, walked through the feeding bovines with his hands out, giving gentle touches to passing necks and haunches.
“Come on around and I’ll open the gate,” he said.
“That’s OK. We’re going for a ski,” Roy said.
Sarah shuffled over in her skis and grabbed the fence to have a better look at the cows and Roy swatted her hand away. “Hey,” she said, clutching her hand to her chest, glaring up at him.
“What’re you doing?” Karen said to Roy.
He used the back of his hand to test for a shock. He could hear the charger popping. He was used to getting shocked. He was ready.
“This one isn’t live,” Barry said. He turned and pointed toward the house. “That one’ll knock you into next week.”
“I heard it popping,” Roy said.
“So,” Karen said to Barry. “Are you holding up all right?”
“I am. Thank you. How are you all faring?” He looked lonely and tired, a man trying to hold off despair.
Jerzy and Sarah began sword fighting with their ski poles. Wiley told them to knock it off.
“We’re happy for the snow,” Karen said. “It’ll be great in the spring.”
“I’ll tell you,” Barry said. “I wasn’t quite ready for this.”
“You’re not the only one,” Roy said.
“If you need anything,” Karen said. “Don’t hesitate. We don’t want you to feel alone out here.”
“I appreciate that, Karen. Thanks for coming by.” He pulled his heavy jacket down to cover his pistol and gave Roy and Jerzy a nod. When the tractor fired up, Roy swung his skis around and broke trail toward the creek bottom. A pond had formed during the rains and he had thoughts of clearing the ice and letting the girls skate, but he’d have to find skates first.
Karen sailed past him on the downhill, with Sarah and Wiley and Jerzy close behind, following in her tracks. Roy trudged along with a fat layer of snow bonded to the bottom of his skis. Karen had rubbed wax on everybody else’s skis but Roy had been too impatient. He’d wanted to try out his gear. He’d wanted to move. They’d been in the house too long.
When one after the other they came to a stop on the flats, the ice humphed loudly and Karen made everyone hurry back toward the safety of the hillside. Roy saw this and tried to run on his skis. He made it a couple of steps and fell on his face. He got up in a panic and went to take his skis off but by then everyone had started to move on.
Roy’s face and his rabbit-fur hat were covered in snow and it was packed down his boots. He was cold. He wasn’t happy with being the slowest or the idea of his girls falling through the ice. The girls started toward home. Jerzy tried to pass but fell down and they laughed at him, left him to wallow in the powder. They hadn’t seen Roy fall or they would’ve said something. The fear on his face. Karen had, she waited. “Look at you,” she said, wiped the snow from his face.
There was a cardboard box on the porch when they got back and fresh boot tracks in the drive. Wiley and her sister clattered out of their gear and ran up the stairs. Jerzy lay sprawled in the driveway. The older girl unfolded the package lid with one hand while stiff-arming her little sister with the other.
“It’s a roast,” Karen said when she looked in the box, smiling big. “Ten pounds of ground.”
“Hamburgers!” Sarah said.
“I’m going to bake him a pie,” Karen said.
“Feeding old bachelors is a bad idea,” Roy said.
“Putting you and Jerzy on skis was a bad idea.”
He was still struggling to free himself from his bindings. His hands were frozen. Sarah ran down the stairs and shoved him to the ground. Before he could get up, Wiley joined in and kicked snow in his face.
“I thought you were going to fall through the ice,” he said, catching Sarah by the ankle and dragging her toward him. He kicked his skis off and got to his feet, hung Sarah upside down by her leg. “I think you need to cool off,” Roy said. He crossed the driveway and tossed Sarah in the deep powder on the other side of the bank. He chased Wiley but she was too fast and he gave up.
They left their skis on the porch and had hamburgers on sourdough for an early dinner. Nobody asked for or even mentioned ketchup.
Christmas Eve day. The storms continued, snow blowing sideways. Barry Miller was parked in front of his open security gate, blocking the road, waiting for Roy. Roy didn’t bother to turn off his tractor. He leaned over the steering wheel and pulled down his balaclava. “Merry Christmas,” Roy shouted.
Barry opened the door of his cab a bit wider and leaned out. “You, too.”
“Your Jeff buddies must not like the snow, huh? Been awful quiet.”
Barry shook his head and halfway smiled. “Snowbirds, I tell you. They’re fleeing if they haven’t already fled.”
“You?”
“I live here, Bingham. Like it or not.”
“You want to get this road cleared? I’ll go first and you catch the other side and my berm. We can switch on the loop back. Be a lot faster that way.”
Barry nodded. “You got enough fuel?”
Roy turned and gauged the distance to his house and his fuel supply, did the mental math of the highway loop. “It’ll be close but I think I’ll make it.”
“Follow me.” Roy trailed his neighbor through the massive security gate and down his driveway and parked alongside one of his two elevated fuel tanks, killed the motor. Barry climbed the ladder and unlocked the tank and passed Roy the filler hose and nozzle.
“I’m getting some coffee,” Barry said. He walked alongside Roy’s tractor and snagged his frosty travel mug. “Do you take sugar?”
“Black. Thanks.”
Roy topped the tank and hung up the hose. Barry was still gone. His house was a single-level ranch with lap siding, solar-cell roof, same as Roy’s. With the snow it was a huge pain in the ass. Hail damage didn’t help either. Barry had the fuel tanks and several large propane tanks. Roy figured he must be in some militia loop for getting them filled because no one drove out this far anymore. He had several concrete outbuildings with two corrals and his Herefords. No milk cows or goats, no horses. Roy wondered where he got his hay, figured it must be another militia connection. The barn looked Soviet bloc, like a nuclear bunker that he’d forgotten to sink in the ground. Barry was walking back with the coffee.
“You alone here?” Roy asked.
“For now.”
“You got a girlfriend stashed somewhere?”
Barry winced, looked away as he passed up his coffee. “Did you lock that up?”
“No, didn’t know if you had to use it too.”
“I’m full.” Barry watched Roy fumble with gloved hands until he’d set the latch and closed the hasp and finally slapped the lock down and secured the tank.
They worked together in a staggered pattern, but even then the going was slow. When the road turned east/west, the snow had drifted four feet high. Roy was soon covered in a thick layer of snow and ice and hated Barry for having an enclosed cab.
The highway hadn’t been plowed but it had been driven on with snowmobiles and what looked to be a snowcat. Barry opened the door of his tractor and got out.
“Get down from there. You’re gonna freeze to death.”
“I’m fine.”
“Go on. Mine’s got heat. I can drive your little piece a shit. I promise I won’t hurt it.”
“It’s not a piece of shit. Just an old, underpowered, worn out—” Roy climbed down and gave Barry a swat on the shoulder with a frozen hand. He pulled himself inside and shut the door on the cab of Barry’s tractor. He took off his gloves and held them over the heat vents. Barry engag
ed the blower in Roy’s tractor and took off. Roy followed him. There was a printed photograph of a woman on the dash. She was standing before a table cluttered with antique firearms, and a banner above her announced the Reno Gun Show.
Barry stopped just beyond the gate of his property and climbed stiffly from the Kubota. He motioned Roy through the gate and once he was clear of the swing he set the brake and got down from the tractor. He left the engine running.
“If it keeps up,” Barry said, in a mask of white, “and it looks like it will, I’ll keep an eye out for you and we’ll hit it again.”
“OK.”
“And I’ll get on the radio about the highway too.”
“See if the Jeffs will plow it?”
“Somebody has to. If no one else, Cal Trans.”
“Now you want Cal Trans.” Roy laughed.
“Nobody saw this snow coming.”
“Karen did. She said it was going to happen just like this. She said it was cyclical, California always is.”
“I bet it’s worse at the low elevations with the flooding.”
“It’s always worse somewhere else. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Yep.”
Roy stopped and turned. “Hey, Barry.”
“What?”
“You want to come to our place for Christmas dinner?”
“What’re you having?”
“The roast you gave us, potatoes. Blackberry pie.”
“No, thanks. Maybe next year.”
“OK. Karen’d kill me if I didn’t ask.”
“You’re off the hook now.” Barry turned and walked away.
Roy climbed on his tractor and slipped it into gear. Barry was already on the other side of his fence, chaining his gate closed.
[37]
M<55
OR 9XXXX
From a distance the small towns they come to appear deserted, but desertion is never complete, there’s always someone. The poor kid is crying as he pedals. The man tries to talk to him but he doesn’t want to talk. They pedal: chain noise, bottom bracket creak, wind. With uncomfortable regularity he checks over his shoulder but there’s no one behind them. It’s difficult to keep moving and they’re going too slow to ever make it anywhere. It’s as if they aren’t moving at all. His girls appear in the road before him. Strange children. Dead on the road. The dog is limping and the man has oh shit oh shit oh shit on the brain, a dull panic. They are out of water. He turns to say something to the boy about being out of water.
