by Gregory Hill
We tossed it on top of the pile, like a cherry.
* * *
It was mid-afternoon on the eleventh day before the foreclosure and the house had been ridded out. We lay on the ground under the shade of the big locust tree. Gravel and sandburs stuck in our backs. Flies bit our arms. We didn’t slap at them.
Heading into an outside nap, the sun feels good on your eyelids. Orange glow. Soon, Pa started snoring. I followed him into a slumber stirred occasionally by a quick breeze. Nonsensical dreams of daytime. Flat on our backs like two corpses.
* * *
Pa shook me awake, excited. “You gotta see this!”
I reassembled the world. We were still lying on our backs. The shadows were longer, the ground was cooler.
Pa pointed straight up. “The clouds! There’s so many things in those clouds, I don’t know where to start.”
I looked up. It was nothing but clouds. Good ones, sure. Puffed up, lit orange and purple by the dropping sun and moving quick far above the top of the locust tree.
“Look there!” he said. “A cat. And a man on a bicycle.” He jabbed at another part of the sky. “A tomato.” He laughed to himself. “A tomato in the sky! Over there. A horse pulling a bus. I can’t believe it.”
I told him I didn’t see anything.
We stood up. He pointed at a cloud. “Follow my finger. See it there? You see it?” I sighted from behind his shoulder, followed his finger. I didn’t see anything.
He was patient. “Here. Look. Those are the eyes. Those big ones.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And that’s the tail. Look quick, it’s changing.”
“I see it. Yep. I see one. It’s a dragon.” I still didn’t see anything.
He looked at me sideways. Then followed my gaze. “That could be. Look over there, a fish with a woman’s face. Everything, right up there. This is something else.”
I squinted, let my eyes unfocus. I concentrated, relaxed. I did it all, but I didn’t see anything but clouds. Dad was leaping, he was so happy. Watching Pa there, bouncing on the dirt, I had to agree that he was right. Being out there, with him right then, it was something else.
* * *
We didn’t eat dinner that night. Neither of us was hungry. All those jars of tomatoes and not a drop of appetite.
We had pretty much cleaned out the whole house. All that remained was some furniture and few this-and-thats. The walls were bare. Whole rooms were empty. Our voices echoed.
I said, “What do you wanna do?”
Pa said, “It’s dark. Might as well sleep.”
I helped him brush his teeth and then I went with him into his bedroom to say good night. The closet door was open. Mom’s clothes were hanging on the rod. Dresses and jackets and blouses. Things she wore to church and for gardening.
“We missed some stuff, Pa.”
“Missed it how?”
“We threw away a whole bunch of things today. But we didn’t throw out those clothes.”
“Why would we throw out those clothes? They’re your mother’s. She needs those.”
“I reckon she does.”
* * *
On the tenth day, I decided we should set the pile on fire. But Pa wouldn’t let me. “Not yet,” he said. “You have to be safe.”
We spent all day being safe.
First, we made a trench around the granary. The dirt was too hard for digging. We scratched a row with a hoe all the way around the granary and then ran water thru it, like a little moat. As the water trickled in, Dad dragged the hoe round and round the trench. Sometimes he ran, sometimes he got distracted by a bug. Eventually, the trench was deep and wide enough that we could get some good soaking going on.
With the water softening up the soil, we used spades to dig, dig, dig. It was another hot day. Even with the soaking, the dirt was still plenty hard and it made for sweat. Summer didn’t want to let go.
Dad accidentally snapped the handle on his spade. It happens sometimes, especially if your shovel is seventy years old. After that, we took turns digging with the one good shovel.
It was a lot of work. I didn’t want to dig a trench. I wanted to set a match to that pile. I kept hoping Pa would forget why we were digging so we could quit messing around. When I tried to distract him, he’d say, “We should get back to work.” Give him credit for focus.
We dug and dug and dug. The trench was a foot deep and two feet wide by lunchtime.
Instead of eating, we napped outside for a couple of hours while the hose trickled water into the trench. When we woke up, we went right back to work. My back hurt. My hands were starting to blister. A few hours twisting a wooden shovel handle can do a number on your hands, even if you have calluses.
We didn’t speak. Our britches became frosted with mud. That goddamned trench got deeper and deeper. It was like we were running a marathon. Not some bullshit Boston Marathon where people were cheering and handing us cups of water, but the real Marathon. The first one, where the guy died.
When it got dark, a rout of coyotes started yipping to the west. They were going good, making a racket like a bunch of junior high girls. We kept at it. The hole grew as wide as a coffin and half as deep as a grave. I was so tired I couldn’t get more than a tablespoon of dirt with each heave of the shovel. Pa took over. Even he was moving slow.
I sat in a slump while the coyotes yipped and Dad dug. After several minutes, he tossed the shovel out of the trench and climbed up to solid ground. He was a dark shadow against the purple ink of the sun-gone sky.
He said, “What’s the point of this deal, again?”
“Fire ditch.”
He picked up a dirt clod and chucked it into the middle of the granary nest. “We’re gonna set that afire?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Then we’ll need some gasoline.”
I fetched the shovel. I gave it a kiss and then pitched it on the pile.
* * *
Let me explain again how fuel works on a farm. You have two tanks: one for gasoline and one for diesel. Big tanks. Hundreds of gallons. As tall as a man and as long as a horse. The co-op sends out a truck to fill them up a couple of times a year. You never have to go to the gas station.
I brought an empty ice cream bucket to the gasoline tank and turned on the pump. It squirted out a handful of fuel and then started sucking air. Goddamned thing was empty. That tank was never empty. In my whole life, I’d never seen it empty. Fortunately, we still had the diesel tank. I tried it. It didn’t even spit. Just dry pumping.
“Pa, we’re out of gasoline.”
“Diesel?”
“That, too.”
“How about gas?”
“Negatory.”
He said, “We’ll get some from that car of yours.”
I hadn’t driven my car in weeks. It started up good. I pulled it up to the trench with the lights on, shining so we could see what we were doing. I went into the shed and, under the flickering glow of florescent tubes, went thru piles of junk until I found a length of surgical tubing. I brought it to Pa. Bugs were flickering in the headlights. Crickets chirped slowly. I noticed that it was cool.
I said, “You gonna do this or am I? Siphon the gas, I mean.”
“You ever done it before?”
“Nope.”
He said, “Now’s a good time to learn.”
“Asshole.”
* * *
I siphoned every last drop of fuel out of my car, three buckets full. We poured it all on the pile.
Even without a sense of smell, you can tell when there’s fuel in the air. It gets in your eyes and makes the inside of your cheeks tingle. The pile was waiting to be lit. It had to be lit. You could feel the fate of this thing. We were in the moment after the airplane hits but before the skyscraper collapses.<
br />
We couldn’t find a match so we used a striker and a butane torch. I held a balled-up wad of my birth certificate over the blue flame until it caught fire. I tossed it like a baseball.
A thwoooop and the pile was alighted.
* * *
It burned for the rest of the night. Flames whirled up and disappeared into sparkling puffs of ash. The smoke blacked out the stars. Aerosol cans popped, glass cracked, plastic fizzed. Unseen things exploded, groaned. The remains of the granary caught fire. The old wood creaked into blackened oblivion. Bridges of boards collapsed, sending up bursts of blue. And throughout, the sound of wind created from nothing.
We stood with our arms crossed. Dad’s ditch did its job; when glowing ashes floated into the sky, they burned themselves out before they could start a prairie fire.
I saw the eyes of animals on the other side of the fire. They were too tall to be coyotes. Too big to be deer. They were buffalo. Watching, waiting for us to be gone.
The wind shifted and the heat singed the hair on my fingers. When I looked at the fire again, the eyes were gone. The buffalo had left.
“Hey, Pa?”
“Son.”
“What are your thoughts on religion?”
“Well.” Long pause. “People have things they do.”
“That sounds about right.”
* * *
We stood silent as the granary, the oldest remaining structure on the farm, was reduced to carbon. Flames swallowed the final bit of wood just as the sun pushed over the horizon.
With faces and clothes and fingers stained with dirt and soot, we went to bed and slept until noon.
* * *
When we awoke, we were hungry. The pantry was almost bare. All we had were two packages of ramen and a whole bunch of tomatoes.
Apparently, the electricity had gotten shut off while we slept. The fridge sat there, empty. Water dripped out of the freezer.
You need electricity to pump water up from the well. Fortunately, Mom had always kept several gallon jugs of water in the closet under the stairs, in case of a blizzard. The water was at least half a dozen years old, but it was still wet. I poured some into a pot and let the ramen soak until it became mushy. I poured a jar of tomatoes on top, added a little salt, and we had edible food.
After we ate, we wandered around. Walked out to the smoking embers of the pile. We walked around the shed but didn’t go inside. We were tired. We didn’t have anything to talk about. I wandered like a zombie. Pa wandered like himself.
* * *
Several hours later, night happened. Heat lightning to the south. The pile continued to smoke.
We slept again. In the middle of the night, we were awoken by thunder. It started raining. Soon, hail was clattering off the roof. We opened the front door and watched. Hail the size of teeth. Then eyeballs. Then fists. Punching the roof, the ground, everything. Splashing water, denting corrugated metal. Roaring, howling, mad winds. Lightning flashed. A hundred yards away, we saw a needle of black that pointed from the clouds straight to the earth. A tornado, just for us. It blew like a jet engine. Dad and I stood in the doorway, ready.
Another flash of lightning. The tornado was closer, just on the other side of the garden. Hearts thumping.
Lightning happened again, and now the needle was gone, replaced by wisps of black, like crows melted mid-flight. Our tornado had fled. And then suddenly, the storm, like all thunderstorms, passed and the rain and hail and wind stopped like a faucet shut off.
We went to bed. It was too dark to read.
CHAPTER 23
REBUILDING
I didn’t know what day it was anymore. But whatever day it was, it was the day we rebuilt the Rocket.
We both slept good. The sun was halfway up the sky by the time we crawled out of our beds. We both had stubble on our chins.
For breakfast we each drank a glass of stale water. Dad didn’t act hungry. I didn’t mind a growling stomach.
We went outside to investigate the aftermath of the storm. The old locust tree was lying on its side. Like it had gotten tired and wanted to rest, with the garden as its bed. The dirt was stained where the tree’s branches had squished the last of the green tomatoes.
Other than the tree, the storm hadn’t messed things up too much. The hail had made dents here and there, shredded some leaves. But the house was still standing. No windows broke. The place where the granary had been was now a giant black spot encircled by a rusty moat.
* * *
We went to the shed and looked at the Rocket parts. When he dismantled the thing, Dad had laid everything out in a spiral in the order he’d removed it. The tools were all on the workbench. Ring expander, ring compressor, socket wrenches, gear puller. All of it. It was a kit. It had instructions. You just needed to know how to read them.
I said, “Let’s put it together.”
Dad insisted that we clean the parts before we assemble them. “Clean ’em with gas.”
I said, “We don’t have any gas.”
“Siphon some out of your car.”
“We did that already.”
“Then get some out of my pickup.”
“The only fuel we have is in the pickup. I ain’t wasting it to clean an intake valve.”
“Do it.”
Asshole.
I stuck the surgical tubing into the tank and sucked. I felt like an idiot. Nothing came out. I climbed in the cab and checked the fuel gauge. Empty.
“How the hell did that happen?”
Pa said, “Someone must have driven it somewhere.”
“Genius.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
There’s always gas somewhere. I brought the surgical tubing to every engine in the shed, every tractor on the estate. Most of them were dust-dry, but I still gathered about a quarter gallon of gasoline, sloshing in that ice cream bucket.
By then, Dad had forgotten that he wanted to clean the parts.
He sat on a bucket and watched as I attached the Rocket back to itself. It was a real paint-by-numbers deal.
“I got this figured out, Pa. You ain’t as smart as I thought you were. All this mechanical genius I thought you had is nothing but knowing what goes where.”
He said, “Same as making babies.”
“Putting the Rocket together is easier, I reckon. No wedding.”
“You think you’ll ever get married?”
I accidentally thought of Clarissa. “Doubtful.”
Pa said, “I always thought I’d be a grandpa.”
“You ain’t.”
He said, “You did other things good, though.”
I said, “Thanks. Like what?”
“Oh.” He paused. The pause expanded, stretched its legs, took a walk around the shed, and didn’t come back.
I kept twisting the screwdriver.
* * *
Time lapse. Steady work. A string of small clouds brought strobes of shade, hours went by, everything went where it belonged, and then the Rocket was ready. I checked the bolts that held the wheels on the frame.
Dad steadied a funnel while I poured our last quarter gallon of fuel from the ice cream bucket into the tank.
Tweak the throttle. Pull the choke. Stomp the footfeet and putt-putt-putt. The Rocket was arisen for the third time. We didn’t even bother to ride it. I shut it off. No need to waste fuel.
Pa patted the seat. “You know what I like about you?”
“What’s that, Pa?”
“Nothin’.”
“Me, too. Now let’s get some tomatoes in our bellies.”
Dad said, “I suppose I should get the mail.”
While Pa went to the mailbox, I went inside. I cracked open a jar of tomatoes. They must of smelled grand. For a moment, I just looke
d at them, glistening. I plucked one from the jar and dropped it down my throat. Dear lord, that room-temperature tomato was heaven. The seeds sliding over my tongue. I poured two pint jars of tomatoes into a pot and stirred them on the dead stove. I flavored them with salt.
Pa was still getting the mail. I opened the door and hollered, hands cupped around my mouth. “Dinner, Pa!”
He yelled back, “Hold up. I got something.”
His voice should have come from the direction of the mailbox, but it came from the shed. I hoped he wasn’t taking the Rocket apart again. I hollered back, “Something good?”
“Yep,” he said.
CHAPTER 24
JUNIPER BUSH
I stepped out of the house and walked toward Dad. He was next to the shed, poking a jack handle into a juniper bush he’d planted twenty-five years ago. In a land where things refuse to grow, he always treated that juniper right. It was taller than he was.
I said, “It’s lunchtime.”
“There’s a snake in there.”
This had some potential. “Rattler or bull?”
“Bull, I think. Big one.” He pointed from the juniper to where I was standing. “About that long.” Twelve feet.
“Right.”
He said, “I was thinking we should catch it.”
“You say it’s a bull snake.”
“I believe it is.”
I said, “Let’s catch it.”
“I was thinking I should get the grabber.”
Dad had built the grabber several years prior. It wasn’t anything special, just a piece of conduit with a handle and linkage and a pincher. A grabber. He’d built it from scratch in twenty minutes after he dropped a pair of pliers in a fertilizer tank. Sort of like you or I would bend a paper clip to fix a pair of broken sunglasses.
