The Hungry Season

by Greenwood, T.

He prints out the pages he needs: how to take care of the plants, their life cycle, how to harvest the crop. It looks like he’s going to have to wait until at least late August before he can get anything smokeable. They’ll be back in California by then.

  “You know anybody who sells?” he asks Alice.

  “Sells what?” she asks.

  Sometimes he forgets that she’s only fifteen. She looks a lot older, and she’s smarter than most fifteen-year-olds too. But she’s so naïve. Country, Misty and her friends might say. Innocent, he thinks.

  “P-O-T.”

  “My friend Ruby’s brother smokes.” She shrugs. “He’s kind of an asshole though.”

  They ride their bikes all the way into Quimby, and lo and behold Alice signals for them to pull into the Cumberland Farms parking lot.

  They get off their bikes, and a kid in a dark denim jacket says, “What the hell you want?” to Alice.

  “Don’t give me any grief, Muppet,” she says. “I’m here for a corn dog and a slushie. My friend’s the one who needs something.”

  “Hey, California,” he says, nodding at Finn.

  How does everybody here know his story? This place gives him the creeps.

  Within three minutes,Alice has her corn dog, a slushie and a candy bar, and Finn has enough grass to get through another couple of weeks.

  They ride home fast; it feels good to make his legs work hard. His lungs feel like shit though; he needs to quit smoking cigarettes. They leave the bikes at Alice’s house and take a walk to the secret garden.

  “Want a Kit Kat?” she asks, offering him one of the sticks from her bar. “I love these. My dad always used to use them to bribe me when I was little. I’ll do anything for a Kit Kat.”

  At the garden, Finn pulls the folded up instructions out of his back pocket. “We’ve got to weed. And we’ve got to get rid of the males.”

  “Just tell me what to do,” Alice says. Her lips are red from the slushie. It makes Finn smile.

  There must be a word for this. This being alone but together. Sam retreats to the loft after dinner, listening to the quiet sounds of Finn and Mena below. No voices, just the shuffling of feet, the opening and closing of doors. The music from Finn’s room, the clink clank of dishes, the cadence of pots and pans and running water in the kitchen. Mena has her first rehearsal tonight, but she said she would be home by ten.

  He pulls the bottle of capsules out of the drawer, pops two in his mouth and swallows them dry. He can feel them as they make their way down his throat, to his chest, and finally when they dislodge and make their way to his gut. He will try again, he thinks. He just needs to keep trying.

  He pulls a book out of the pile on his desk, thumbing through the pages he’s marked with Post-its.

  During World War II, at the University of Minnesota, a physiology professor named Ancel Keys solicited volunteers in an experiment in starvation. The experiment, involving thirty-six men, was aimed at determining the physical and psychological effects of starvation and how the people who had suffered from starvation during the war might be brought back to health. The men who joined were, for the most part, conscientious objectors, pacifists (Mennonites, Brethrens and Quakers) committed to nonviolence but eager to make a contribution in the efforts at postwar rehabilitation of the war’s victims.And so in November of 1944, these thirty-six men all volunteered to be starved. This was their contribution to their country. Their patriotic gesture.

  He imagines the way these men must have felt on that cold November afternoon, walking into the university’s lab, where they would systematically be fed and then deprived.

  Sam closes his eyes tightly and sees the young man he is beginning to recognize: the worn wool cap over pale red hair, the spray of freckles across his nose, the wire-rimmed glasses that are perched there. He sees him rub his hands together and blow into them for warmth. He sees him smile and nod at another young man who is also standing at the building door, waiting.

  Sam looks closer.

  The man is not really a man but rather a grown boy, maybe twenty years old. He has a girlfriend at home in Boston. A mother with sad eyes and bad dreams. His father died last year. An accident at the mill where he worked.

  Sam imagines what the young man must be feeling as a sharp gust of wind whips across the campus green and cuts through his threadbare coat. As he looks at the brick building where, for the entire upcoming year, he and the other volunteers will feel nothing but hunger.

  As Mena pulls up to the Town Hall on Tuesday night, she is still trembling. On the way here, that stupid dog that lives down the road from them came after her car and she nearly went off the road trying to avoid it. She’s rattled from the near-accident, and nervous about being here. She thinks about turning back, leaves the car running even after she’s parked.

  It’s a beautiful night though, so clear that the sky is almost bright even after the sun is gone. She sits in her car, fumbling around in her purse, stalling. When she looks up again, there is a man at her window.

  Startled, she thinks about the time she almost got carjacked in Chula Vista. It had started like this too. It takes a second to remember where she is and roll down the window.

  “You must be May,” the man says, extending his hand for a shake.

  “Hi,” she says, smiling.

  “Old Man. But you can call me Hank. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Mena,” she says, and shakes his hand.

  He opens the door for her and she gets out. Now there’s no going back. Inside there’s a card table set up with an urn of coffee and a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. “Oh, should I have brought something?” Mena asks Hank.

  “We take turns,” he says. “My grandson works over to the Shop’n Save, so I’m usually good for a deli platter or two.”

  “You’re from Quimby then?” she asks.

  “Third generation.” He smiles. “I’m guessing you’re not from up here.”

  “No, but we just bought a place at Lake Gormlaith. The Carson place? We used to come here in the summers when our children were small.”

  “Flatlanders,” he says, shaking his head knowingly, teasing her.

  She thinks of the rocky cliffs their little bungalow is perched on and smiles. “My husband grew up here. Samuel Mason?”

  “I know Sammy Mason!” he says, slapping the top of the table with his hand. “The only celebrity to come outta Quimby.”

  Mena laughs.

  “You want a donut?” he asks.“I already ate all the jelly ones, but I think there might be some chocolate left over.”

  Lisa and the girl who is stage managing the show, Anne, are sitting on the stage, their legs dangling over the edge. Jake Rogers and the kid they cast as Martin are sitting in a pair of folding metal chairs at the foot of the stage. She takes a seat next to the kid. He can’t be that much older than Finn.

  “Hi,” she whispers. “I’m Mena.”

  “Kyle,” he says softly. “You remember Jake?”

  Mena nods, and Jake leans over Kyle to shake her hand. She notices Jake’s fingers are long and thin, square nails. His skin is rough and warm.

  They start rehearsal with an icebreaker. Lisa has them put the chairs in a circle, and she asks each of them to fill out a brief questionnaire about themselves. Name, Age, Sex. Where are you from? What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you have any scars? If so, how did you get them? What do you love? What do you hate? Lisa gives them each a fresh pencil and a clipboard. When they are finished, she has them all introduce themselves. Mena is first.

  She takes a deep breath, confused again for a moment about where she is. She remembers that awful place she and Sam went, the place the doctors recommended after Franny died.That group met in a church basement. Caring Friends. That’s what it was called. A whole room full of people who had lost their children. The stories were exhausting, horrific. As if their own grief wasn’t enough to handle. It was too much. After the first night they never went back.

  “My n
ame is Mena Mason. I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, but I’ve lived in San Diego for the last twenty or so years. Right now, I am living with my family up at Lake Gormlaith. I’m forty years old ... though I guess I’m probably supposed to lie about that, right?” She laughs nervously. “What do I want to be when I grow up? I used to think that I wanted to be an actress. Then I became a mom. And a caterer. Now, I think I might like to be an actress again.” She smiles. Everyone is looking at her. “I have a scar from a car accident I had when I was little. We hit a school bus, and I ...” She points to the place on her cheek. “It’s hard to see now. But I know it’s there.” She looks at Lisa. “These are just physical scars you want, right, not emotional?” and immediately regrets this.

  “That’s up to you,” Lisa says.

  “Well, I suppose I have a lot of those,” she says. Her throat aches. “Actually just one big one, and it’s pretty new. So, anyway.” She takes another big breath. “I love my mother, Greek food ... I’m one hundred percent Greek, second generation American on both sides.... I love cooking, the beach. I love collecting sea glass. I love my family.” She feels her throat constrict. “And I hate pitbulls. Sorry if any of you have one but, God, there’s this awful dog that chases my car every time I drive past his house. I almost ran him over on my way here.”

  “Thanks,” Lisa says, and squeezes her hand.

  “Jake, you’re next.”

  Jake smiles. He’s shaved his beard. He looks younger without it. His cheeks have that sort of flush red that usually comes with childhood, with winter weather.

  “I’m Jake Rogers. I moved to Quimby from DC about six years ago when I got divorced. I’m thirty-seven years old. I wanted to be a fireman when I grew up, but now I make violins for a living. Potato, potahto.”

  Everyone laughs.

  He looks down and taps at his chest. “I have a scar from a surgery I had when I was an infant ... a hole in my heart. I love music, all kinds, but especially violin. Go figure. I love playing football with my brothers on Thanksgiving. I love snow. I love the cold.” He looks down at his clipboard, reading. “I love traveling to places no one usually wants to go. I’ve been to Iceland. To eastern Europe. To the far northern provinces of Canada.” He looks at Mena. “I love Greek food.”

  Mena blushes and then feels embarrassed for blushing. He didn’t mean anything by that; what is wrong with her?

  “And I hate liars. Oh, and mayonnaise.”

  After everyone has finished, Lisa hands out a fresh questionnaire with the same set of questions. “Now I want you to fill this out for your character. And when we go around the circle, I want you to become your character and introduce yourself.”

  This part is easy. As they go around the circle, going in the opposite direction this time, Mena feels herself becoming May. Losing everything that is Mena. It all falls away like a discarded dress. By the time it is her turn to speak, Mena is already long gone.

  Dale finds a motel just past Albuquerque that is only thirty-nine dollars a night for a single room. She’s been gone the entire length of her shift at Blockbuster as well as an extra hour, and she imagines her mother is probably just now starting to wonder where she is. She knows that her mother will not be alarmed, not at first. Sometimes Dale doesn’t come straight home from work. Most Fridays, she goes to the Domino’s that’s right across from the Blockbuster and waits for an extra large pizza with pepperoni and cheese sticks to be made. Then she walks home, balancing the hot cardboard boxes in her hands, a couple of complimentary DVD rentals from work teetering on top. Her mother may, at this very minute, be standing in the kitchen, staring at the innards of the refrigerator, contemplating what to drink, as she waits for Dale to come home.

  Dale knows her mother’s first response to her tardiness will be anger. She’s come to expect these Friday night dates. Even when Dale moved out that one semester, she was with her mom on Friday nights. She knows it will take at least another hour before the anger dissipates and she begins to become concerned. She’ll call Dale on her cell then, and when Dale doesn’t pick up, she’ll call the Blockbuster, maybe even the Domino’s. It will take at least two hours before real worry sets in and her mother has to take a couple of Xanax to calm down. There will be a tall aluminum tumbler filled with wine and ice to wash down the pills. There will be an open freezer door. Spoonfuls of coffee ice cream and handfuls of the Raisinets she buys in giant plastic vats from Sam’s Club. And soon the Xanax will take over, calming, soothing. But with the absence of fear, her mother’s anger will return, blooming like a wilted flower that’s been placed in a fresh vase of water. She’ll start leaving messages on Dale’s cell then, threatening to call the police if she doesn’t hear back in five minutes. There will be another tumbler of wine and then she’ll start to cry. She’ll tug at her hair and cry, big tearless sobs, pacing around the house, turning the TV off and on. She won’t go looking for her, not yet; it will take another Xanax and another tumbler of pink Zinfandel before she gets in the car and starts to drive up and down the streets, with the windows rolled down, shouting Dale’s name. Dale knows this, because this is exactly what happened that night with Fitz last fall. Exactly. But that night Dale wasn’t in New Mexico. She was in Phoenix, and that night she had finally come home, shown up just as her mother was pulling back into the driveway after a futile search of Glendale’s nearly identical streets. And that night she needed her mother almost as much as her mother needed her. As they made their way together through the front door, theirs was a collective sigh of relief. Shared tears. And they’d sat together in the backyard under a starless sky and ate an entire party-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and drank a whole liter of Coke, grateful to have each other. She squeezes her eyes shut, wills her mother away. She’s got at least an hour more before the tumbler comes out of the cupboard.

  She parks in front of her motel room and starts to unload the Bug. She’s afraid to leave anything in the car; it only locks on the passenger’s side. Everything she loves is inside this car. By the time she’s brought in her backpack and the box of books she squeezed into the tiny trunk under the hood, she’s sweating. This is the kind of heat that feels like a spank, like a sharp slap against bare skin. A hand intent upon inflicting pain. Dale shakes her head, as if she can shake this memory away too.

  Fitz. Goddamned Fitz. It’s funny, she thinks, how he still manages to invade her consciousness like this. Most people don’t have any say what happens in their dreams, but they’re in charge of their waking thoughts. For Dale, everything’s flip-flopped. Thanks to Ambien, she’s got control of what happens when she closes her eyes. But the memories that pop in and out of her head during the day are unpredictable and arbitrary. She’ll be walking around the grocery store and he’ll round the corner, not really, but she’ll catch a glimpse of his hair, his elbow, the back of his neck.Then, just like that, she’s transported back to that studio apartment where she let him do things to her that no one should ever do. It’s those times all of a sudden her record slows down to a crawl, the needle deep and sluggish in the grooves, the sound a sort of moaning.

  Fitz. It started with a crush, one of those silly obsessions she’d had since she was a kid that she knew would never amount to anything. She’d had a hundred crushes, a thousand unrequited loves from middle school on. But they never came to fruition. She could fantasize all she wanted, but it didn’t matter. The boys never noticed her at all, and if she ever got up the courage to approach them, it inevitably ended with simple dismissal or downright cold-hearted rejection. But Fitz was different.

  He sat next to her in her Women’s Lit class fall semester last year, one of only two guys in the whole class and the only straight one as far as she could tell. She loved the way he smelled, like clove cigarettes and dirt. Like a garden. Just smelling him made her insides knot up, moisture to seep between her legs. He wasn’t the kind of guy she would ever have spoken to first. He was intimidating: too good looking, too smart. And so when he offered her a ride home after cl
ass (she was making her way to the bus stop and he said, Hey, I’ll drop you at home if you’d like, my car’s right here), she couldn’t believe he was speaking to her. She remembers there was a lot of crap on the passenger seat, books and papers and some trash. He had to clear it off for her, but he was unapologetic for the mess. She would have been mortified for him to see her own mess (and she certainly had her own mess), but he was unconcerned. “Sit here,” he said, patting the threadbare seat.

  When they pulled into her driveway, she half expected he’d come to a rolling stop and open the door for her to jump out. But instead he leaned over her, reaching for the handle of the passenger door, and stopped short, and his hand grazed her left breast as the door opened. Then his breath was hot in her ear. “I want to fuck you,” he whispered. At home that night she searched the place where his hand had made contact with her, as if there might be some lingering evidence of his touch.

  She didn’t have class with him again until the following week. It was a graduate level class, and it only met once a week for three hours. By the time the week was over, by the time those excruciating three hours were over, she could barely take the anticipation anymore. This time, he pulled her by the hand as they left the classroom. They drove silently to his apartment, which was at the edge of campus, and then they were, suddenly, at the threshold. She thought about her mother then; she’d told her she was going out to a movie with a friend after class. Dale had known all along what she was doing.

  He didn’t even bother turning on the lights; through the windows the halogen streetlights made everything in the tiny apartment bluish. Hazy. The sink in the kitchenette was full of dishes; there was clutter everywhere. She tripped over a box that was on the floor next to the bed, which was in the middle of the main room.

  That night, the first night, it was over fast. He simply laid her on the bed, pinning her hands with his, kissing her neck with hard, wet kisses, and then he was yanking at her panties and unzipping his fly, not even bothering to take off his jeans. The zipper was cold on her bare thigh. And then he was doing what he’d said he wanted to do, the legs of the wooden bed scraping on the floor with each thrust. And then there was wetness and the stink of earth and the glowing tip of his cigarette. His penis limp and bathed in blue light.