He shook his head. “I’m gonna have to do something.”
The barn door opened, and Billy filled it.
“Staff meeting?” said Harley.
“Yahp,” said Billy.
Harley jabbed his pitchfork into a straw bale and they walked to the house.
Clear into the new year, and still the letter from the village attorney sat on the kitchen table. Billy flicked it so it spun, stopping with the address right side up before Harley.
“You know this ain’t goin’ away, right?”
“Yah,” said Harley.
“Klute Sorensen is the spiritual equivalent of an orally flatulent bulldog, but a bulldog nonetheless. Masks his effluvial essence with the scent of money—although you’ll notice he never actually ponies up—and the locals are willing to overlook a lot of stink for that.”
Harley just sat there. There were vast subsections of reality in which he could muster no interest, and this was one of them. And yet he knew he had to do something about it.
“He’s got his teeth in. He won’t let go. You aren’t careful, he’ll own this whole works, right down to this table and all it sits on,” said Billy.
“I know,” said Harley, resignation in his voice.
“I’m telling you, that calf—that calf’s yer ticket. You’re keeping your million-dollar light under a two-dollar bushel.”
Harley stood. “I gotta go clean out my truck.”
“Yes?” Billy’s question was implied.
“I’m taking a woman to the sale barn tomorrow.”
“Is that even legal?”
Harley rolled his eyes.
“Anyone I know?”
“Mindy Johnson.”
“Not familiar.”
“Red F-250. Headache rack.”
“Oh, her.” Billy nodded appreciatively. “The newcomer. So you figure this one will pan out? Yer kinda oh-fer in that department. Oh-fer life.”
“At least I’m in there swinging.”
“First of all, I’d hardly call one date in six months swinging,” said Billy. “And didn’t your last relationship implode over a wine and cheese party in an art gallery?”
“Well, it certainly crashed.”
“You were wearing khakis, fer cripes’ sake.”
Harley couldn’t deny that. At the time he had seen it as a form of self-improvement. Although it hadn’t been his idea.
“What about you?” said Harley, mounting a counteroffensive. “I’ve never once seen you with a woman.”
“I’m saving myself.”
Harley snorted. “For what?”
“Not for, from.”
“From?”
“Women.”
“Why?”
“Because women been my trouble since I found out they weren’t men.”
“Waylon,” said Harley. “Again.”
Billy grinned, drained his beer, and departed for his trailer.
CHAPTER 16
In the food pantry, Carolyn and Meg were mopping out the mop room. Any irony in this was obscured by the stench rising around them. The Swivel town sewer system had been sketchy for years, but lately it was getting worse. Several basements had been flooded with sewage, no treat at any time but especially poignant in winter. So far the pantry had avoided this fate, but now and then the mop room drain belched up foul gas and backwash.
When Klute Sorensen proposed Clover Blossom Estates, and further proposed that the town pick up the tab for new streets and sewers to service the development, there had been objections. But then Klute and the banker from Solid Savings had shown a PowerPoint presentation that laid out very clearly how an investment in Clover Blossom Estates (rather than the boring business of spending the money to fix the existing infrastructure) would actually accelerate the generation of tax revenues required to upgrade the old part of town. “You wanna win, you gotta go all in!” said Klute. The soundtrack during his drive over had been Too Bold to Fold: Poker Champs Up Your Ante.
Of course the tax revenues never materialized, but the PowerPoint presentation had been very nicely put together, including animated graphics of dollar bills spouting out of a toilet. “Usually the government’s flushing your money down the toilet,” interjected Klute knowingly, as the banker, the village board, and several citizens—only moments ago opposed to the whole idea—chuckled and nodded appreciatively. Vance Hansen beamed, thrilled to be in the presence of a man so assured and persuasive as Klute. This was before there had been so much yelling.
Although she was dying to, Carolyn had specifically avoided asking Meg about Klute Sorensen’s presence at the salvage yard. Meg was swabbing the last of the residue from the tiles when she said, “So . . . Klute Sorensen asked me out on a date.”
Carolyn had a sardonic comment ready, but this revelation stopped her in her tracks.
“He wha?”
“Well, he never quite got to specifically asking, but it was pretty clear where we were headed.”
“Well.”
Meg smiled. It had been a while since she had seen Carolyn reduced to monosyllables. Their friendship had grown slowly, and they still spent very little time in each other’s company outside the food pantry, but the hours had accumulated, and they had reached a certain ease.
“I haven’t decided what to tell him,” said Meg. She meant it, but she was also having some fun with Carolyn.
She was immediately rewarded.
“You’re considering it?!” Carolyn was looking at her aghast, her mop gripped in both hands like a parade rifle.
“Well . . . he seems very lonely.”
“He’s a raging buffoon!”
“This does not exclude him from loneliness.”
“But, he . . . you . . .”
“I think we both understand loneliness, Carolyn.”
Carolyn had been here for ten years now and Meg had never known her to share strictly social time with another person (and reviewing Glen Jacobson’s limericks didn’t count).
“Well, I can’t imagine comporting with that man on purpose,” said Carolyn. “That said, you might be exactly what he needs. You might be the one person who can talk some sense into him. Perhaps you could even soften him up and break his heart. That would be nice. Although this presupposes his possessing that organ.”
“Oh, I have no desire to hurt him,” said Meg, frowning and shaking her head as she dumped the dirty mop water down the sewer drain and then stepped back lest it regurgitate.
“I understand that,” said Carolyn. “You are irretrievably decent. But there is also another angle.”
“Yes?”
“You might need him.”
Now it was Meg’s turn to look shocked.
“Sure,” said Carolyn. “You’ve spent years avoiding relationships.”
“No, I—”
“Oh, of course you have, my dear. And for years I’ve said nothing, because it wasn’t my place. But now that it’s on the table, there is the matter of you never having any relationship—in the time I’ve known you—outside of work and the church.”
“I’m honoring Dougie,” said Meg. “And—I don’t mean this to sound dramatic, I simply mean it—and the Lord. And I like my work.”
“All worthy. But trade your hard hat for a wimple and you’re a nun.”
“But, Carolyn, I’m content.”
“That I believe—to an extent. And contentment is no small thing. So few possess it. But—”
“Are you content, Carolyn?”
Carolyn was leaning the mop against the wall and froze for a moment. Then she shrugged. “Not really. It never came naturally. I’m the first to admit I am driven by dissatisfaction far more than satisfaction. I learned the language, but truth is, I’ve always been far less adept at inner peace than outer abrasiveness.”
“Maybe you’re hiding behind discomfort as comfort.”
“Well, don’t you learn quickly,” said Carolyn, smiling. “But Klute Sorensen?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was mos
tly kidding around.”
“Maybe you should focus on that ‘mostly’ and see what comes of it,” said Carolyn.
Suddenly a quietness came over Meg. She stared out the food pantry window. “It’s odd,” she said, “for all I loved Dougie—and I did—we had so little time that in retrospect I’m sure I didn’t know who he was.” She sighed. “We were so young.”
“I say that all the time now,” said Carolyn, and Meg was shocked to see tears in her eyes.
MEG FELT SHE should have followed up on Carolyn’s unexpected teariness, but she hadn’t been sure how to proceed, and then the moment was gone, with Carolyn bustling off to unpack donation boxes. The rest of their conversation was incidental, and after they sorted the last of the cans, Carolyn checked her phone for the time and said she had to get to the post office before the window closed. They bid each other good-bye, and Meg drove away in her truck with a trio of smashed cars lashed to the bed like a stack of rusty latkes. She intended to grab a sandwich at home before delivering the cars to Clearwater, but as she crossed the overpass she spotted Klute’s Hummer idling through Clover Blossom Estates. Downshifting, she hit the turn lane and dropped the hammer southbound.
TWO BOXES AWAITED Carolyn in the post office. Back inside the pump house, she opened the lighter of the two boxes first and tucked the Zebra Cakes and ramen packets in their space behind the carboys. Then she opened the second box and brought out a cylindrical object all taped up in bubble wrap. Her oil pump had been making funny noises lately, and she had chased this one down on eBay.
Changing into exercise clothes, she filled the carboy, climbed aboard the bicycle, and began to pedal. The old pump growled, but it was still moving oil. Carolyn propped a book in the rack and took a sip of water. Then she looked at the tubs of oil surrounding her. It was going to be quite a workout.
CHAPTER 17
After Billy departed, Harley changed the oil in his Silverado and excavated the cab, clearing it of coffee cups, doughnut bags, baler twine, and the odd .30-06 cartridge. It’s one thing to go on a first date in an old truck, quite another to create the impression one is a well-armed hoarder wired on discount carbs and convenience store caffeine. As a final touch, he vacuumed the seats. He got a little bit of everything, from cookie crumbs to lock nuts.
With the truck ready, Harley spent the rest of the day cleaning his house, because you never knew. Harley didn’t live in squalor, but he did tend to let the dishes stack and the dusting lag. It was dark by the time he dragged the vacuum upstairs and started in on his bedroom, the floor of which was carpeted with discarded clothes. The process had the feel of an archaeological dig, and when he finally made it to the farthest corner and unearthed a pair of rumpled dress khakis and a teal polo shirt, he gave out a bemused hmph! of recognition.
Taking the khakis by the waistband, he held them up. As Billy had so kindly reminded him, he had worn them on his infamous last date, a trip to the opening reception of an art show at a Clearwater gallery owned by friends of his algorithmically selected date. The frontal pleats of the pants were marked with a dark maroon stain. Harley studied the stain and recalled its source, specifically a cheapish vintage of plonk which he slopped while choking on the inhaled fleck of a cocktail cracker upon which he had unsuccessfully attempted to balance a blot of dilled Brie. As he coughed the crumb and slopped his wine, the Brie bounced off his pastel polo shirt, clinging just long enough to impart a grease print, then fell to the blond hardwood of the art gallery floor. In a spastic attempt to catch the cheese while one-handing the wineglass, Harley fatally head-butted a mixed-media sculpture titled Transitions: The Meadowlark Weeps whilst backsplashing the remaining wine into the face of the woman who had dressed him in the polo and khakis and dragged him to the gallery in the first place.
Harley had been compelled to purchase the fractured sculpture by the gallery staff, who comported themselves as if he had farted at a funeral. He was carrying nowhere near sufficient cash to match the price tastefully penciled in the lower-right corner of the display (he noted the absence of a dollar sign, a bit of cosmetic censorship meant to ease the sketchy transition from art to commerce), so although it felt like the least artistic sort of thing to do, he put the whole works on his Swivel County Credit Union debit card. There was a moment of discomfort when his available funds came up twenty bucks short, but after a hushed consultation between the cashier and the gallery owner that included worried glances at both Harley and the maimed art, it was agreed that everyone could be happy with what the Swivel County Credit Union would provide, and Harley was rung up. On the way home, the remains of Transitions: The Meadowlark Weeps rode on the pickup truck seat between Harley and his date. Everyone in the cab felt the metaphor spoke for itself, and thus it was a silent passage.
There had been no more dates.
Impulsively, Harley gathered the polo shirt and khakis into his arms, walked downstairs and out the door, then around behind the garage and stuffed the shirt and pants into his burn barrel. Dressing the clothes with a drizzle of used motor oil, he lit and dropped a match, enjoying the soft whuff of ignition and the belly-dance waver of the flames taking hold. Sadly, after the motor oil was consumed, the fabric settled to a smolder, so Harley went into the garage, retrieved Transitions: The Meadowlark Weeps, and tossed it in. Constructed from renewably resourced balsa wood, indigenously masticated hemp fibers, and locally sourced llama yarn—all united with slatherings of volatile bonding agents purchased on sale at Home Depot—it took with an aggressive crackle, and shortly he had to move back three feet to alleviate the heat on his cheeks.
As the initial flare of flames settled into a steady burn, Harley took up an old hay fork and poked at the contents of the barrel. He felt oddly at peace, as if some invisible wall had been breached. The fork was missing one of its three tines and Harley kept it out here for this very purpose. The truth is that a burn barrel fire needs no tending, but Harley found it a soothing mental exercise even in untroubled times. Tonight as he poked and prodded, nudging bits of khaki and tempera-soaked lath toward the flames, he felt as he always did that relieving sense of finality when trash is reduced to ash. I got no more business wearing clothes like that, Harley thought to himself as the pastel collar blackened, than I do being with a woman like that.
In fact, if pressed, Harley would admit that clothes like that and women like that had saved him from the triangular career path of many local men his age: trailer, toil, and tavern. Yah, Harley thought, as he forked a strip of scorched Dockers and dandled it through a veil of flames, you didn’t get it right with Wendy Willis, or Kelly Motzer, or Jenny Haskins, or anyone since, but you learned a little something from each one. Indeed, it was likely Skunk-haired Girl’s residual influence—her poetry, her nudging him into a semester of creative writing—that led to his presence at the ill-fated art show, but the trouble there was not the art, it was the clothes and the company. Harley made a mental note to continue to meet art, but to meet it—life, for that matter—on his own terms, which is to say probably in jeans and old boots and certainly not in the company of a woman who would dress him otherwise.
That night Harley was a long time finding sleep. When it came he lay with one arm extended to the empty side of the bed, daring to imagine it occupied.
CHAPTER 18
Come morning, when the chores were complete (thinking ahead, he again unscrewed the lightbulb over the calf’s pen), Harley showered, shaved, and dressed: old jeans, a worn T-shirt beneath a flannel shirt, logger boots, and a Carhartt jacket. Returning to the bathroom he paused for a moment, looked at himself in the mirror, then opened a drawer and studied the contents: a comb, a toothbrush, nail clippers, a deodorant stick. Reaching into the back of the drawer he pulled out a bottle of cologne. The cologne had been purchased for him by the art-show girlfriend. She was really trying to tune me up, he thought. He sniffed the bottle, then dumped it in the trash.
Mindy had suggested they take her truck since it was newer and more roadworthy
, but residual male pride compelled Harley to insist on his Silverado. He also saw this as a chance to beta test his new resolve to meet life on his own terms. If Mindy was the sort of woman to balk at the idea of a first date in a rusty farm truck, well, it would save him—both of them—a lot of trouble on the front end.
He recalled the way the coffee beaded on her boots and figured she’d be fine with it.
SHE STEPPED OUT of the granary as he pulled up, and his breath caught. She was wearing a canvas jacket, the bomber cap, and camo cargo pants.
And those boots.
His heart gave a little whoopty.
As he opened the door for her (there was the momentary emancipated male internal debate about whether this was gallant or chauvinistic, then Harley’s internal voice said Tough nuts and he grabbed the handle; Meeting life on my own terms, he thought, although his internal voice quavered a tad) he was struck again by the directness of her gaze, her hazel green eyes jovial and piercing all at once.
“Well, thank you,” she said, in a tone that somehow simultaneously acknowledged, excused, and encouraged his outdated courtliness.
“How’s life in the granary?” asked Harley, not knowing where else to begin.
“Goin’ good!” said Mindy. “Wired in the two-twenty today.”
“Oh,” said Harley. “So now you can get a stove.” Mindy had told him she was cooking on a hot plate.
“Um,” said Mindy. “The two-twenty is for my welder.”
The marvels accumulate, thought Harley.
“You weld?”
“I used to date a welder. The man kind, not the machine kind.”
Harley’s gut tightened.
“Well, I didn’t just date him. We lived together for three years. He worked for a bridge-building company, welding up beams. Then he started making sculptures from scrap. ‘Sculptwelding,’ he called it. Fish with fins made of Volkswagen hoods, cows with oil funnel teats.
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