by Gregory Hill
He half-smiled, half-scowled at me. Completely clueless, but thinking he was in control. Up is down and down is down.
I didn’t know what to say so I said, “Get out of my fucking face.”
He blinked. It felt good to cuss. I did it again. “You stupid son of a bitch. You tore apart the Rocket. Do you know how goddamned hard we worked on that thing? And you tore the fucker apart. Why couldn’t you have just driven it into the ditch and smashed yourself to pieces?”
For a split second, he looked hurt. Then he clapped his hands sarcastically. “Your panties are in a wedge.”
* * *
I started walking. I walked out of the shed and around the building. I walked east across the overgrown runway and into the field where Dad used to plant wheat. It wasn’t a field anymore. He’d stopped planting wheat when the government started paying him to let it revert into pasture. Now that the government wasn’t paying him anymore, it was just dirt with grass on top.
I kept walking, thru the hip-high grass and over marmot holes. Dad didn’t follow me.
A quarter mile from the house I came across a flattened patch of grass. The dirt was trampled with deer tracks. This was where they slept. I stood there, quiet, and turned around in a slow circle. I saw them. They poked their heads up out of the grass just on the other side of their flattened patch. There were three of them. Papa, mama, and baby. The buck had antlers on one side of his head but not on the other. Something must have knocked them off.
The deer stood staring at me, as deer do. I knew they were going to run. I wanted them to stay put. I wanted to pet their noses. I didn’t want to hurt them. I smiled. They ran. Big floating bounds.
I walked again. Kept going until I came to the barbed-wire fence that divided our grassland from an irrigated circle that belonged to some farmer who still had a memory and a wife and a son who knew his ass from a hole in the ground.
I couldn’t go any further unless I wanted to climb the fence and stomp half a mile thru a million dark-green, shoulder-high corn plants. After that, there would just be another corn field. Then a wheat field. Then maybe some soybeans. Some passenger in a 747 might look down with their binoculars and see me, a little black dot, crossing that endless series of circles and squares. They’d guess at what I already knew. I was nothing in the middle of nowhere.
I turned back toward the house.
This whole farm. My great-grandparents and my grandparents and my parents put it all together. One after the other, they made it better, cleaner, more perfect. But now Pa was tearing it apart. Not just letting it fall apart but actively unbolting the thing and spreading it out on the ground.
I had spent the whole summer trying to hold the farm in place, but there wasn’t any good in that. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had failed to learn from him when I had the chance. Pa had failed to teach me.
Tomatoes weren’t good enough. Tomatoes couldn’t stop the wind from blowing and the wood from rotting. They certainly wouldn’t slow down a half-wit who could dismantle the place quicker than I could gather the pieces.
If Pa could comprehend what he was doing to his farm, he’d kill himself. He’d probably kill me, too. It made me envy Vaughn Atkins in his hole in the ground.
* * *
When I walked back to the house, Pa was sitting on the front step with the mail in his hands, looking lonesome.
He said, “You been gone a hundred years.”
I said, “I’m sorry.”
He said, “You’re sorry, all right. A sorry excuse.” Teasing. Not mad at me. He didn’t recall anything. He just wanted to play.
When I was a little kid, I used to roughhouse with my dog Jumper. One time, he nipped me on the ankle. He didn’t mean to do it. I knew he didn’t mean to do it. But whether it’s on purpose or not, a dog bite hurts. I swatted him on the head. I damned that dog to hell. He didn’t hear me. Instead, he licked my ankle where he’d bit me.
That little act of ignorant fondness made me feel so bad, I swore I’d be kind to Jumper for the rest of his life. He was killed a week later when Ivan Pracht swerved his pickup into him on the dirt road in front of our house.
* * *
I said to Pa, “Let’s get you burning that mail.”
I gave him the matches and pointed him toward the trash barrel. While he fiddled with the fire, I went into the house to cook lunch. I made spaghetti with some of the not-yet-canned tomatoes that were still sitting on the counter. I didn’t have a recipe. It didn’t matter. You can fake your way thru spaghetti sauce.
As I was salting the pan of boiling tomatoes, the phone rang. I sort of hoped it would be Clarissa so I answered.
The voice in the phone said, “Stacey Williams?”
“More or less.”
“It is I, Mike Crutchfield, your banker. The time has come to discuss your father’s debt.”
“I’m cooking dinner.”
“Pithecanthropus domesticus.”
“That so?”
“May I speak with Emmett?”
“He’s doing chores.”
“Can you pass on a word to him, then?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’ve got a pen, I assume?”
I didn’t. I nodded.
“Please inform Emmett Williams that, due to his inability to remit payment for a certain hospital bill and for various other whatnots that would require more time than you or I can reasonably expect to have, the unfortunate, yet inevitable, date of foreclosure is upon us. Necessary papers have been posted to you on several occasions but you have provided neither a response nor an acknowledgment. Not that this would have retarded the procedure. They were merely formalities. It is therefore my distasteful duty to inform you that as of the first of September, a mere seventeen days from now, the Williams estate will formally become the property of the Keaton State Bank. At that moment you will need to vacate the premises. This previous statement is of particular importance. I shall repeat it. As of September first, you will need to skedaddle yourself off of my farm. I can only wish you the best of luck. Good day.”
He hung up.
Dad came back from burning the mail. We ate lunch. It was pretty good. Could have used more salt.
CHAPTER 22
RID OUT
On the sixteenth day before the foreclosure, we ate spaghetti with tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Over the course of the day, the phone rang on three separate occasions. I ignored it.
* * *
On the fifteenth day, Pa watched TV while I canned more tomatoes. Pa laughed at the commercials where people got kicked in the balls. The phone rang in the morning, in the afternoon, and twice in the evening. I ignored it.
* * *
One fortnight before the foreclosure, I tried to look at the finances. Maybe I had missed something. Maybe there was some sort of Medicare or Medicaid thing we could take advantage of. Maybe, shit. Probably. But I didn’t know where to start and I didn’t know who to call for help. I didn’t want to call for help.
I went thru shoeboxes filled with receipts and bills and pieces of paper. I spread them out on the floor and looked at them until my back ached and my head hurt.
I picked up a ten-year-old tax return, tore a page off, folded it into a paper airplane, and gave it a toss. It flew toward the ceiling and crashed on the floor. I made another paper airplane. Then another and another. I made squadrons. Pa helped. He wasn’t much for folding, but he could wad the paper into balls.
We threw them at each other. We chased each other thru the house, laughing. When we got tired, we stopped. Then Pa walked thru the house, gathering the airplanes. He placed them on the floor in front of the TV and began flattening them out. He smoothed them and stacked them on top of one another. I sat in a recliner and watched.
The phone rang.
Pa said, “Will you answer that damned thing?”
“Don’t wanna.”
Two rings.
He said, “It’s bothering me.”
“Then do something about it.”
Three rings.
He stood up and walked to the kitchen, where the phone was hanging on the wall. Two feet from him. He looked around. Couldn’t find it.
Four rings.
Pa said, “Where’s that damned noise?”
Five rings.
He found the phone, lifted it off the receiver, and said, “Murphy’s crematorium. You kill ’em, we grill ’em.”
He listened for a moment and then said, “It’s for you.”
* * *
“Shakes?” It was Clarissa. I didn’t say anything. It felt like we’d been caught. It felt like she’d poked her head into our private, crumbling world. It felt like I was in a coma and she was talking to me in a dream. It felt like I didn’t have anything else to say to Clarissa after I’d messed things up the last time we’d seen each other.
“You there, Shakes?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been trying to call. I was worried.”
“We’re having a good time here.” Pa sat back down on the floor and resumed flattening his pieces of paper.
“I heard about it. About the house.”
“Oh.” Of course she had.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Things happen.”
“How’s Emmett?”
“Lemme ask him.” I said, “Pa, how are you doing?”
He looked up from his piles of paper. “I can’t remember.”
Into the phone I said, “You hear that?”
Clarissa laughed. “Yep.” I heard her lick her lips. “What are your plans? With the house?”
I said, “I don’t know. I guess we’ll live here until we have to leave. Then we’ll leave.”
“I’ve seen this happen before. From where I sit in the bank. It’s not that easy. You don’t just leave. It’s a difficult process. Mentally.”
“We’ll be okay. When it’s time to worry, I’ll worry. At the moment, I’m not worried.”
She said, “It’s time to worry.”
“Not yet.”
She said, “Don’t you care?”
“About what?”
“The farm. Your dad. Everything.”
“Whether I care or not, it doesn’t make a tick’s difference.”
“What about Crutchfield?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you care about him?”
“I especially don’t care about him. He’s a plane-stealing, farm-nabbing prick. What’s to care about that?”
“You’re angry.”
“Do I sound angry? I don’t feel angry.” I really didn’t.
“I’d be angry if I were you.”
“You wanna switch places for a couple of weeks?”
“Listen, Shakes. Just don’t do anything crazy.”
“Like try to rob a bank?”
She laughed again. “Exactly.”
“I ain’t gonna rob the bank. That idea’s over.”
“Good. That’s not what you need right now. I mean, Crutchfield isn’t evil. I know you imagine him as this big, mean, heartless demon.”
I almost interrupted her. Plane-stealing, farm-nabbing prick, yes. But not a demon. I wasn’t delusional. I let her continue.
She said, “He’s just an asshole. He’s an asshole doing what his asshole job allows him to do. But he has a family in Greeley. I hear him on the phone sometimes, talking to his kids. They talk about going to the swimming pool and pet chameleons.”
I said, “You don’t need to tell me all this.”
“I do. I want to. Shakes, the problem isn’t Crutchfield. The problem is— Wait. There isn’t a problem. But the solution is in your head. You just have to pull yourself out of this mind-set. Stop letting things happen. Stop waiting for things to fix themselves. Start worrying and then start doing something about the things that worry you.”
I said, “Are you reading this off a piece of paper?”
Clarissa said, “Maybe. I took notes. So?”
“So how much left is there to recite?”
“I’m almost done.” She was frustrated. “I’m trying. Listen. I’m crumbling up the paper.” Crinkle, crinkle. “It’s just me, Shakes. I’m doing things so I can love myself and it’s making me feel a lot better. I’m in control now. I don’t need to starve. I don’t need to feel like a failure. But that all has to come from within. Not from being angry at things and people. And not by giving up. Crutchfield’s gonna get his. I know it. People get what they deserve.”
“I hope so.”
“See?” said Clarissa, “You’ve got some hope.”
“I hope he dies in a plane crash.”
“Maybe he will. Maybe he’ll get cancer tomorrow. But whatever happens to him will have no bearing on whether or not you’re happy unless you address the things within yourself that make you unhappy.”
“You’re still reading off that piece of paper aren’t you?”
“Yes. It took a long time to come up with this. Listen. You need to make good things happen to yourself. Otherwise I’m going to worry about you. I do worry about you. That’s why I called. All alone out there with Emmett. It must be hard.”
“I try not to think about the situation.” Dammit. She was getting to me. I don’t try not to think. I just don’t.
A pause. Then she said, “Listen, Shakes, I want you to know that I forgive you. I’m not mad about what you said to me that night. I’m eating food again. I feel good.”
“I’m real happy to hear that.” I looked at Pa, sitting on the floor. He was watching me with his mouth half open.
Clarissa said, “And I’d like to see you.”
“Well.” I thought about this. “You know where I am.”
“So we could get together sometime? There’s things we can share. Together, we might be able to pull you out of this. I’m so glad I called. I was nervous that you’d be angry and hang up on me. Or that I’d be angry and hang up on you. This is going pretty well.”
“I agree.”
“So,” said Clarissa, “when’s a good time to come by?”
“Let me check my schedule.” I pretended to look at a calendar. “How about right now?”
She didn’t say anything.
I said, “Tomorrow is also wide open.”
She still didn’t say anything. The phone was dead quiet. I blew into the receiver to check and see if it was even on. Nothing. I turned the phone off and on. No sound. No hum, no hiss. Just a dead line.
My heart raced. I closed my eyes. This was just another way for the world to kick us in the balls. Clarissa called and tried to cheer me up. And it was almost working. But I hadn’t paid the bill so the phone went dead. That’s what happens. Don’t worry.
Pa and I had successfully subtracted ourselves from the world. A visit with Clarissa would only drag us back. I didn’t want to go back. That phone call, it was a dream in a coma.
I opened my eyes. My heartbeats had slowed down again.
* * *
The thirteenth and twelfth days before the foreclosure, Pa and I went thru the house looking at stuff. There was a lot of stuff in the house.
* * *
On the morning of the eleventh day before the foreclosure, Pa said, “This house is messier than a coon’s age. We need to rid out.” Rid out. We started immediately.
There was way too much stuff to fit in the trash barrel. I decided to heap up the junk in the broke-down remains of the granary.
I walked to the granary and cleared out a path thru the busted-up wood. The way it had collapse
d, the building looked like a bird’s nest. Around the perimeter was a wall of busted-up wood. Once you climbed over that, the center was the flat of the galvanized roof sitting atop of where the floor used to be. Standing there, in the center, I felt like an egg ready to crack.
I went into the house, put all the financial papers in old shopping bags, and brought them outside with me. I stacked them in a pile right smack on the center of the granary’s collapsed roof.
* * *
Then we got busy. We used the wheelbarrow. We filled it with blankets, my old toys, Dad’s trophies from the county fair. We worked without mercy. Photo albums. A wooden chair that had belonged to my grandmother. Quilts made by my great-grandmother. The pile grew and grew. We did not take breaks. I was strong now. Almost as strong as Pa. Sweat ran down our eyebrows. Boots, worn bare, went on the pile. Thirty years of National Geographic. Newspapers with headlines from the Big Thompson flood, Super Bowl victories, Nixon’s resignation, the Moon landing, Monica Lewinsky. It all went on the pile. A surveyor’s map of Strattford County, vintage 1932. Photos of the 1926 Dorsey High School basketball team. Deeper, we found a hatbox that had belonged to Pa’s pa. The hat inside was too small for either of us. Pa winged it on top of the pile. 78 rpm records. So long, Paul Whiteman. Further back, a stack of rocks labeled with brittle masking tape, “From the first dugout built by H. Williams.” A lantern whose bottom had rusted out. A box of broken pocket watches etched with German writing.
And then, the family Bible. Heavy old thing. As big as a dictionary. Massive, worn leather cover. We looked at the birth dates written inside. Helfrich’s father, Johann Williams, born in 1851, the date inscribed with a quill. My sorry birth in 1971 was scrawled with a Bic. The text of the Bible was in a scary German typeface. Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde. This Bible had sat on a shelf in a German house in Russia, crossed an ocean, ridden a train, and gathered dust in a basement in eastern Colorado.
