East of Denver

by Gregory Hill

  The well house remained, though. Mom used it mostly as a garden shed. In addition to the hoes and fertilizer, there was just enough room for the deep freeze.

  When I had first moved back from Denver, the freezer was filled up full. On top was nothing but frozen dinners. Beneath those were Tupperware dishes filled with Mom’s homemade cookies and banana bread. Since I’d been back, we had eaten everything on those first layers. Now all that remained were blocks of meat wrapped in butcher paper and stamped in red block letters that read “liver,” “tongue,” and “kidney.”

  Mom used to buy sides of beef from the Keaton Locker. We would gobble down the ground beef, chuck, rump, steaks—all the good stuff—but none of us wanted anything to do with the low-class meats. Mom grew up poor. Leaving that low-class meat in exile at the bottom of the freezer probably made her feel a little rich. As for me, I just didn’t like livers, tongues, and kidneys.

  Still, Mom couldn’t bring herself to throw the meat out. Probably because she grew up poor. We must have gone thru a half dozen sides of beef over the years. Now the deep freeze was three-quarters full of nothing but those livers, tongues, and kidneys.

  Dad and I were poor now and it looked like we might have to eat some of those cow parts. I took a liver from the top of the freezer and thawed it out. When I peeled back the butcher paper, it was freezer-burned, leathery, no good. That meat wasn’t just low-class; it was inedible. If the stuff on top was bad, then everything below it would be bad, too. Enough food to feed a football team for a month and all of it was dried-up white.

  * * *

  We loaded hundreds of pounds of no-good meat into the back of Pa’s pickup and drove out to a pasture.

  This was a different pasture from the one where we buried my stray cat. You don’t put rotten food in a pet graveyard. It’s disrespectful. This pasture was further south. It had been in the family for decades, maybe even a century. It used to be a wheat field until Dad put it in the CRP program and sent it back to its native state. To get there you had to drive on a two-rut road. That field was the first place I ever saw a rattlesnake.

  In the corner of the pasture was an ancient cottonwood tree next to an old, dead windmill next to the foundation of an old, dead house. The existence of that tree only reinforced the notion that trees don’t belong in Strattford County. It lived, somehow, but it was bent. Branches thicker than my waist tried to grow up tall but then gave up and curved to the earth and then tried again and failed. All the bark was gone. Nothing but white wood. The tree looked like it could have been a thousand years old.

  We wandered around the foundation of the house.

  “You know,” said Pa, “this here is an important piece of land.”

  “Why so?”

  “This was the old.” He snapped his fingers. “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “Relatives?”

  “No! They were.”

  Walking along the outline of the foundation, we deciphered where the bathroom had been, the kitchen. Some barbed wire, the door from an old car, all rusted.

  “Look here!” said Dad. He pointed to a sod brick. “That’s old.”

  We found a few more bricks, something that could have been a corner post. We traced the outline of a sod house.

  “You think this is an original homestead?”

  “That’s right,” said Pa. “Your grandma lives here.”

  “My great-grandma?”

  “The Schleichers.”

  I said, “That sounds about right.”

  The Schleichers were from Dad’s mom’s side. Those sod bricks were made by my ancestors. I wondered if any of them had anosmia. I picked up a brick. It looked like a big square dirt clod. I squeezed it and it fell apart.

  “I don’t think you should do that,” said Dad.

  “I agree.”

  While the cow livers thawed in the back of the pickup, we wandered the pasture. We followed a meandering trail, looking down every few steps to avoid prickly pears. Buffalo grass. Sagebrush. Grama. Yucca. Watch for rattlers.

  We walked until the pickup was small. We found the skeleton of a cow. It was cleaned up, bleached. I dragged a rib across the top of the spine, hoping it would sound like a xylophone. It went clunka, clunka.

  “This here’s the skull,” said Pa.

  “That looks like a pelvis to me.”

  Pa dragged his heel thru the dirt. “I don’t know about that.”

  When you find a cow skeleton, you look for the skull. You bring the skull home and hang it on something. The person who finds the skull gets to feel proud. Saying that thing was a pelvis, that took away Pa’s pride. I looked around for the real skull. Couldn’t find it. Someone else must have got there before us.

  The ground was etched with tiny animal tracks. I said, “Pa, does that look like a lizard to you?”

  He peered into the dust. “Looks like dirt.”

  “You can see where it was dragging its tail.”

  We bent our heads to the ground. We found more lizard tracks, bird tracks, ground squirrel tracks, and lots of dog-looking footprints. I said, “Those look like they were made by wolves.”

  “They were made by coyotes.”

  “They’re so big.”

  “Coyotes have big feet,” said Pa.

  As we walked further, the coyote tracks were everywhere, as if the footprints had rained from the sky. I studied one, pretending to be a boy pretending to be an Indian. They looked brand-new, like they’d been put down five minutes ago.

  Pa said, “Look here!”

  He’d found the den. It was a hole, big enough for a baby to crawl into. I crept toward it.

  “They know you’re looking. They won’t come out of that hole for nothing.”

  “You think they killed that cow?”

  “Coulda been a steer,” said Dad.

  * * *

  We retrieved the pickup and drove it to the coyote den. We peeled the butcher paper off the livers and left them piled up as a gift to the coyotes. When we were done, our hands were numb with cold and covered with cow blood.

  * * *

  With the deep freeze empty, we went on a canned food diet. We had a huge pantry, which Mom always kept stocked in case of a blizzard. No need to go grocery shopping yet. Mom was still feeding us.

  At lunchtime, while the beans or mixed vegetables or whatever were warming up on the stove, I’d plunk the piano and Dad would sing. His favorites were “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Old MacDonald.” When he sang, his eyes closed halfway. When I was growing up, Dad never, ever sang. But he liked to do it now. He was transported. I’d never seen him like that. He was a terrible singer. Didn’t know the words. Didn’t matter. He was focused.

  After lunch, he’d lay on his back on the carpet and nap for an hour.

  * * *

  One afternoon, I went out to the shed and decided to get the riding mower running. I put some gas in the tank and, amazingly, it revved right up. When I showed it to Dad, he jumped in the seat and started putt-putting it around. It became a hobby for him. He enjoyed mowing, it made the place look nicer, and it kept him out of my hair for half-hour chunks. He had a hard time keeping track of where he went. He left random scribbles of mowed swath. Over the course of a week, he’d cover the whole place. It was good to look out and see the weeds trimmed.

  Once, he drove a whole day without the belt on the mower deck. It must have snapped and dropped off into the weeds. He didn’t mow a damned thing that day. I found a replacement and installed it. I got him going again. Didn’t even bloody my knuckles.

  I fixed squeaky door hinges. Replaced the rubber washer in the dripping faucet. Painted the front door. Little stuff like that. The place started to look okay.

  Breakfast, piano, garden, housework, yard work, lunch, nap, watch the clouds, eat dinner,
TV, sleep. Sometimes the phone would ring. If Dad felt like answering, he did. It was always somebody selling something. He’d talk to them until they hung up. Nobody we knew ever called us. The people of Dorsey were always willing to leave you be. I appreciated that.

  Every day was beautiful. Sometimes it was windy and we’d stay in the house all day. Huge winds would fill the world with corn shucks blown from miles away. Most afternoons, we’d get some nice weather. A few clouds. Maybe a drop of rain.

  The garden came up. The tomato plants got big. The rest of the plants were runty. But it was all growing. Dad wasn’t allowed to hoe. He killed things when he hoed. While I worked, he sat in the shade and watched the jets drag their contrails across the sky.

  I found a kite in a closet. It was a nice canvas kite. Mom gave it to me for my birthday a long time ago. It came from a store in Boulder. Pa loved that thing. The string was a couple hundred feet long. Pa was always nervous to let it out all the way.

  He’d point at the contrails of the jets that crisscrossed the sky. “I suppose they can see it, but I’d hate for it to get in their way.”

  “I think they’re farther up than that kite can reach, Pa.”

  “I dunno. It’s gotta be a quarter mile.”

  I’d let the string all the way out and he’d slowly reel it in. I could weed the whole garden in the time it took him to bring the kite down.

  One day, a giant gust ripped the kite off the string just as Dad was reeling it back in. The string slid back to earth. The kite flew higher and higher and got smaller and smaller. When it disappeared, Dad looked at the spool in his hands and said, “What the heck is this deal for?”

  * * *

  I’d occasionally find Pa wandering around the shed, poking in the pile of parts that was his old motorized bicycle. We hadn’t touched it since we’d dragged it out of the granary. I still wanted to get that thing going again.

  I took my time. I wasn’t gonna push him. If we were going to put that motorbike back together, I wanted him to initiate the process. Let him feel like he’s running the show.

  One day, he said, “What’s this?”

  “Your bike.”

  “Why’s it all apart like that?”

  “Hard to say.”

  He said, “It’d sure be neat to put it together again.”

  I said, “Maybe we could go for a ride.”

  “Real fun.”

  “Too bad I don’t know the first thing about engines and stuff.”

  “You’re ignorant.”

  Another day I found him out there, holding the piston in his hands, like it was a newborn baby.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I was thinking how it’d be neat to put this thing back together.”

  “There’s thinking and there’s doing.”

  He said, “Well?”

  I said, “Well.”

  “Then get off your duff and get to work.”

  “Where should we start?”

  He squinted his eyes at me for being stupid. “The engine. You can’t propel yourself without an engine.”

  I squatted and stared hard.

  He squatted next to me, looked at the parts for a moment, and said, “You’re missing a carburetor.”

  “That all?”

  “Looks like it.”

  I ran to the granary, poked around. Found something that looked like a carburetor and brought it back to Pa, who was still staring at the pile of parts.

  “Will this do?”

  “Depends. You trying to carburete something?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that’s what a carburetor does.”

  Something good happened. Pa’s switch flipped to the “on” position. There’s this look that he used to get when he was working. His eyes would dart around and his mouth would flatten out with a tiny hook of a smile on one corner. As a little kid, I’d ask him what was so funny and he used to say, “Nothing.” He loved to work.

  I watched him. He watched his hands. The half-smile arrived. We began assembling the engine, I anticipated when I could. I knew he would want to clean grime, so I filled a coffee can with gasoline from the tank out back and dipped greasy things into it. I gave him wrenches. I became ten, he became forty. The morning turned to afternoon. We took a break. Drank water from the hydrant outside. Spat on the dirt.

  Everything had a place. The piston and the crank and the flywheel. We did not move quickly. We spent several afternoons working on it. I started to get an understanding. I don’t know how, but I eventually turned into the point man on the project. Actually I do know how. Dad was slow. His bursts of genius were followed by hours of searching for tools he’d set down in random places. I stared at that engine and it metamorphed from a block of bolted-together bits of metal into a tangible collection of parts. Like when you understand that an Elvis song is not just noise coming from your stereo; it’s a collection of sounds made by guitars and a giant bass and a singer. When constituent parts become visible, you can begin to understand how they cooperate to make music or move a bicycle or, if you go far enough, why the last two surviving members of a family are squatting on a concrete floor trying to locate a lock washer.

  * * *

  I dreamt of valve lifters and ignition points. There was a linear path from fuel to fire to kinetic motion. I didn’t understand the guts of the thing like Dad did, but I understood that it had guts. It got to the point where I’d send him on an errand and work by myself. He’d spend an hour trying to locate the 9/16" combo wrench while I put the rings on the piston.

  And then we were ready to start the engine. Everything was in place. The engine was sitting on two four-by-fours on the floor. I checked the spark plug. I made sure there was gas.

  I said, “We’re ready.”

  Pa was impressed. “We did some real good work.”

  I said, “Let’s wait and see.”

  “Step on it.”

  I stomped the kick start. Nothing. I stomped again. Nothing. I opened the choke. Closed the choke. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Sweating. Piece of shit. It should be working. Pa watched patiently. To him, each of my attempts was the first one. But he saw me getting riled up and he enjoyed that.

  I said, “I gotta take a break.” I walked around back of the shed and took a piss. As I was walking back, I heard the engine come to life.

  Dad was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the washing machine engine putt-putt.

  Delighted and mystified, I said, “What’d you do?”

  “I fixed it.”

  Things like that made me wonder if he wasn’t faking it all.

  * * *

  With the engine restored, we started working on the bike frame. My dad was ten years old when he did this the first time. That young version of my pa acquired a bike frame, removed the pedals, built a pulley mechanism that would operate as a variable-speed centrifugal clutch, welded a contraption that would hold the whole thing together, and then rode it all over the place.

  The frame was in pretty good shape yet. Unlike the engine, there wasn’t much to it. All we had to fix was bearings and rubber. The bearings were easy. We unpacked them, soaked them in gasoline until the grit floated off, slathered them with grease, and put them back together. Cleaned and packed, everything spun smooth.

  Using some vulcanizing fluid and the rubber from an old inner tube, we patched a dozen holes in each tube. Before we put them on the wheels, we filled them fat with air and ran them thru a bucket of water. No leaks. Not now, at least. But that wouldn’t last long.

  There’s a plant called the goathead. It grows flat the ground. The seeds are hard as rocks and pointy as the devil. Goatheads kill bike tires. We had goatheads everywhere. It didn’t use to be like that. Back when, we fought them hard. I fought them hard. For my seventh b
irthday, Dad built me a special tool. It was a hoe handle with a little V-shaped blade on the end. It slid under the plant and allowed you to snip it off right above the taproot. Pa would give me two dollars for every five-gallon bucket I could fill with those weeds.

  I spent many summer days walking thru ditches, looking for yellow flowers. Any time I wasn’t working with him on farm stuff, I was expected to fill a bucket with those damned plants. Homework? You can do your homework after dinner, when it’s dark out. I killed so many of those plants I used to hallucinate them.

  Pure, boring misery, and all so we wouldn’t have flat tires. The thing is, the goddamned things were too short to puncture a car tire. The only danger was to bare feet—which wasn’t a problem since we always wore shoes outside—and bike tires. I stopped riding my bike when I was twelve years old, which made the entire endeavor a waste of time. I argued that we were engaging in a pointless war. I drew analogies to Vietnam.

  It didn’t matter. Pa was stronger than me. He didn’t have to raise a fist; when I told him he was an idiot, he said, “That’s fine. Now go fill that bucket up.” I’d fill it up, burn the weeds. Cuss under my breath. Sing Billy Joel songs angrily. It didn’t matter. It’s daylight, so work. I wore that V-blade down to a sliver on those damned weeds. Eventually, I got them under control. Or they got me under control. Whatever it was, I took pride in it. When I’d go to another farm and see a mat of green vines, I’d feel contempt for the lazy bastards who couldn’t bother to kill the goddamned goat.