Among the Lesser Gods

by Margo Catts

  In the time we’d been gone, an honest-to-God Conestoga wagon had been pulled onto the green in front of the mess hall, a shelf laden with serving dishes running the length of the sideboard, bunting swagged just above it, a flag at each end. Vacationers in shorts and jeans, some with cowboy hats, some with boots, had started to gather in clumps, and the first to eat were already lined up. A pair of ranch grills gave off smoke at the back of the wagon, and a man in an apron stood behind them with a spatula. He too wore boots, a hat, and a slash of stars and stripes around his neck.

  I looked at Leo. “Does everybody who works here have to wear that bandana?”

  “Usually it’s just red, but yeah. That’s how people spot us.”

  “As if the rest of the getup weren’t enough.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. We have guests showing up in some pretty serious duds.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Here I was, rude again, and him letting it roll off his back. He was just so benignly likeable. Where was the behavior that would mark him as one of my own tribe? The temper, the alcoholism, the abuse, the selfishness that could exist on a parallel track with my own wrecked train? I didn’t make a habit of hanging out with nice people who’d never done awful things. Nice people had their own soft little world where I would only feel my own jagged edges more acutely. As I did now.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That came out wrong. Can we get food or something?”

  “Sure.”

  We joined the line leading to the grills behind a balding man with a red-striped shirt hanging like a circus tent over a pot belly.

  He turned slightly toward us. “Howdy,” he said to Leo, giving a little nod to me.

  “Hey,” Leo said. “You had a good day?”

  “Yup.” The man turned another step toward the grill. “Hamburger,” he said to the cook.

  Howdy? I mouthed to Leo.

  He pinched a little smile and shook his head. Later.

  We got barbecued chicken, a scoop of baked beans out of a blackened kettle at the back of the wagon, then waited as a round woman wearing a denim skirt and little red sneakers stood on her toes to peer into each dish and serve herself dainty spoonfuls of side dishes. Coleslaw. Check the next. Potato salad. Check the next. Fruit salad. Lots of prodding with tongs to select a biscuit. Really? Were these people living in a world where buffet items constituted big decisions? I gave myself a heap of everything, without looking, waiting pointedly behind her at each dish.

  We ate at a white-draped table on the grass as the mountain’s shadow spread over us. A candle in a mason jar sat on a miniature circle of bunting at the table’s center. We talked about music, I think. The edge of the second button on my jeans dug into my belly, and I shifted in my chair and tried to pay attention to what Leo was saying. Something about a country singer I’d never heard of. The food had no flavor, and at some point the image of a grasping, malformed alien grabbing handfuls of it from the bottom of my esophagus swam into my mind and I put my fork down. Tuah’s voice drowned out anything Leo said. Whatever you decide, it’ll be hard. I was being lousy company, but Leo was still talking, so maybe I was doing a better job of functioning than I thought.

  I pulled on my sweatshirt and then smelled a different quality of smoke. Dry and acrid. Not a barbecue grill. I twisted in my chair.

  Flames danced and curled around a skeleton teepee of branches, easily four feet high, tickling the indigo sky. Lawn chairs made a dotted outline around the fire, and a pair of children ran past it, arms and legs silhouetted in stop motion against the flickering light. My heart started pattering against my sternum.

  “When did that fire get started?” I asked.

  “It just got big a minute ago. You want s’mores?”

  “No, thanks. I’m full.”

  “Well, I do. Let’s go get a seat by the fire and wait till it gets some good hot spots.”

  I made a show of checking my watch. I couldn’t see the hands. Either my wrist was shaking or my eyes had blurred. “You know, I should go. Long drive, early morning.”

  “How early do you go to bed? You’d be in town by, what? Nine thirty?”

  “I need a lot of sleep these days.”

  “You’ll miss the Indian show,” Leo said with a grin.

  “The what?”

  “Indian show. Tribal dances by the fire. Then there’ll be fireworks.”

  And that was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. Indians dancing in front of the flames, explosions, cowboy costumes, the new-construction Conestoga wagon, the mini golf, the pool, the bandanas, the goddamn baked beans out of a fake kettle. And the fire. That fucking fire I could feel growing against my back. Was it smoke closing my throat, making my heart pound in my ears, now? I stood, tipping the chair over.

  “Look. I gotta go.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks for asking me,” I said. “It’s been fun.” I pushed my hands into my sweatshirt pockets and started walking toward the car, dizzy, breathing harder than I should, panic chasing me. Leo fell into step beside me. I could feel reason draining out of me as I walked, the vortex around it swirling with Florida heat and bloody birth and mountains and Tuah and goddam fucking, fucking fire.

  I reached for the door handle on the Pinto.

  “Look,” Leo said. “Is something wrong? I mean, one minute we’re talking and then—” He slid one hand against the other, the upper shooting off into the dusky sky. “Zoom.”

  “I just have to go,” I snapped. “It’s getting late.”

  He took a step backward, palms forward. There was a limit, it seemed, to how easygoing he was. “Okay, if that’s what you want. Just thought I’d give you a chance to be honest.”

  “Honest? Like all this?” I waved a hand behind me. “Disney Cowboy Land, yipee-kiy-yiy-yoh, matching bandanas, howdy pardner? I don’t think you want my kind of honest. My shit doesn’t belong here.”

  “You do know I just work here, right? It’s just a place to escape. Everybody has stuff.”

  “Everybody has stuff? Really? Everybody?” The tightness in my throat pushed my voice higher. “I cheated with my deadbeat apartment manager, and now I’m pregnant. I’m a college graduate with no job, living with my grandmother and babysitting for free. And that fun fire back there with the marshmallows? I started one when I was ten, just a little one, and I ended up burning twenty-seven houses and killing three people. Killing. Is that the kind of stuff everybody has?”

  Leo, predictably enough, didn’t have a response. I didn’t give him time for one.

  “I didn’t think so,” I said, yanking the door open. “Go have marshmallows. Sorry—thanks for inviting me, but it’s time for me to go.”

  I dropped into the car, slammed the door, backed out, and drove away.

  22

  Paul greeted me Monday morning with his cap already on, his bag slumped by the door. He held out a cup of coffee.

  “You want some?” he asked, even though it was already too late for me to do anything other than take it. He went on talking before I could say thank you.

  “I got up and started the coffee like normal but I must’ve still been kinda asleep because I put in what I used to for two of us, you know, and then after it was already going …” He took a breath, then went on, “I figured it out and by then there was nothing to do but throw it away. And then I thought I’d keep it for you because I know you must get up pretty early … to … get packed, showered, dressed, you know. And do your hair and all … get here as early as you do, so I thought you must be pretty tired and could use a little pick-me-up.”

  There was nothing to say. By the time he’d finished, my history was completely envisioned, sculpted, and kiln-dried. Never mind that no, I’d packed and bathed—not showered—in the time I had the night before, and that it didn’t seem especially early because I’d been lying awake for hours and my ponytail had taken only a few seconds to pull back. Too late. But I couldn’t find my old irritation, my
compulsion to hammer back from inside his constructions. I knew them as something different now. As Leo had said, we all have stuff. Or at least Paul and I did.

  “No, that’s fine. Thanks.” I took a sip. “How are the kids?”

  “Well, now—” He lifted the bill of his cap to scratch his head. “Sarah’s been kinda cranky. Whiny. Kevin’s been off by himself a lot. Surly. I don’t know.” He looked down, shaking his head. “I just don’t know.” He looked back up at me, brows raised, forehead creased. “What do you think I should do? Be tougher? Back off?”

  “I—uh—I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I guess same as usual. They do chores first, then play or we do errands. Sarah likes her friends, and I’ve been trying to get Kevin out with other kids. Dinner. We read together at night. Is there something you’d like me to do?”

  He’d been nodding as I spoke, in the way someone might open and close a sponge to make it absorb more liquid. In the way of a father trying to figure out how to mother his children now that their mother was gone. I could feel the ache.

  “I see.” Now his head turned from side to side. “No, not at all. You’re doing everything just great.”

  “I—” I hesitated, but some part of me had already started pushing words out and the delay was only reluctance about stirring grief, not indecision about whether I should. The help I had to offer might be worth it. “Do you remember when Sarah asked you about her mom’s secret place?”

  Paul nodded.

  “I—might know what it is. Along the Hat Creek trail? I rode up there a couple of weeks ago, and I saw a place that looked just like Sarah’s picture. Really shady and green, with the creek right there.”

  “I think I know, if it’s what I’m thinking of. We used to go there, too.”

  “Maybe the kids would want to go sometime.”

  He nodded again, lips tight. “Yes, yes. Maybe sometime.”

  “It sounds like they want to remember their mom. I think realizing that you’re forgetting is almost as bad as losing a person in the first place.”

  He looked down at his boots, then back up at me. A silent witness, the house wrapped itself around us.

  “You’ve been there, then,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Who?”

  “My mom, too.”

  He gave a single tilt of his chin in response. A code. A token establishing a partnership of loss.

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said after a moment.

  “Yes.” He nodded, now as if confirming the words to himself. “That’s right. I know.” He took a deep breath. “I got to the market yesterday. There’s cereal. And bananas. I got some apples, but they’re not very good. The kids like apples if they’re good, but they don’t like these very much, so don’t feel like you have to make them eat them, but … if you could think of something else to do with them that’d be good because I know you hate to waste food as much as I do. You could stew them. The kids like that. With some sugar and cinnamon. That’d taste real good … maybe with some pork chops. You should use Carrie’s recipe. She made some good pork chops. There were some spices she used …”

  He turned away from me as he spoke, his feet following each other toward the dim brown kitchen. He switched on the light and got a recipe box out of a cupboard, then started walking his fingers through the cards.

  “… somewhere in here. I know I saw her get it out, but there’s a tab here for meat, and there’s a tab here for main dishes, and I’m not sure where to look because maybe she thought it was kind of a casserole because there were onions and some sauce in there, too. I have onions. They’re in the pantry … Oh—I think this is it.”

  He straightened, a single card between his thumb and forefinger, then laid it on the counter and smoothed it, pressing it into place. He finally met my eyes. “You can make pork chops with sauce and have them with apples.”

  “I will,” I said. “Tonight.”

  He nodded, lips rolled in against each other.

  “Well, I’d better go,” he said, looking down. He gave a tug to the bill of his cap, then turned toward the door as I picked up the recipe card. Saucy chops. The card was yellowed, with a brown spot to the right of “soften the onions.” It was less a recipe than a set of steps, too simple to need to be written down. Cook four slices of bacon, then cook sliced onions in the bacon fat, then add the chops, then cream of mushroom soup, then put the crumbled bacon back in the pan. Salt was the closest thing to a spice. Had this been written by Carrie’s mother, part of a scaffolding built around a young, troubled woman about to attempt managing a household on her own?

  “You’ll be back Friday?” I asked as he pulled open the door.

  “That’s right.” He paused, then turned back toward me. “You want me to call during the week?”

  An ache of compassion pulled against the base of my throat. “That’d be nice,” I said.

  *

  “Where’s Kevin?” Poppy asked as I tucked my heels under myself on the porch step. The sun lay across my lap, warming my thighs.

  “With friends,” I said. Sarah sat on the ground, squealing with laughter, puppies clambering over each other to lick her face. It was their first day out in the yard. Their mother sat by Poppy’s knee, heavy-bellied and sober, supervising.

  “Really? Who?”

  “Some kid named Scott stopped by. I think he lives over there.” I twisted and made a vague gesture behind myself, toward the street that ran parallel to this one. “But I got the sense they were going to meet up with some other kids.”

  “Huh. You might want to watch out for that.”

  Sarah tipped backward under a groundswell of puppies, and her hysterical laughter turned to wailing the instant her head touched the grass. “Ow, they’re biting me!”

  Poppy hoisted herself off the step more quickly than I did and pulled Sarah upright by one arm. “That’s what they do, honey. If you want to play you should probably keep moving. Run around a little.”

  She looked up to Poppy with a stuttered sniffle. She tightened her shoulders under her too-small yellow T-shirt and swallowed hard, then launched herself toward the corner of the yard, puppies tumbling after her.

  “Did you see that?” Poppy said as she lowered herself back onto the step beside me with a grunt, indicating Sarah with a tilt of her head. “Tough kid. She’s gonna do just fine.”

  But I’d seen something different—a little girl swallowing pain into herself because she believed she had no one to turn to for sympathy. A child I was failing. And maybe not the only one.

  “What did you mean about Kevin’s friends?” I asked.

  Bella stood and made a low sound in her throat. The puppies must have gone farther than she liked. As Sarah paused to check over her shoulder for them, they turned as a group and started stumbling back to their mother. Sarah looked at us, the question clear in her eyes.

  “Little ones need their moms,” Poppy said, without waiting for her to say anything.

  I winced and looked sideways, but Poppy didn’t give any visible cues that she regretted what had escaped her lips.

  “I know,” Sarah said with resignation. She trudged back toward us and flopped on the grass as the puppies crawled over their mother. She plucked a blade of grass. This clearly wasn’t the time to discuss Kevin.

  “Do you think Brownies or Blue Birds are better?” Sarah asked.

  It took me a moment to respond, even inarticulately. “What?”

  “If you join Brownies you get a sash with the badges.” She gestured with one hand across her taut little belly, shoulder to hip. “And you sell cookies. In Blue Birds you get a purse. It’s red. They sell candy.”

  I blinked. Girls’ clubs. Which meant I knew only slightly less than I did when I thought she was comparing baked goods to wildlife.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said. “When do you have to decide?”

  “Second grade.”

  Another y
ear. More than. The strength with which she hurled herself toward the future caught me off guard again and again. The past, short as it was, lay undisturbed behind her.

  “Well, I guess you have more time to think about it,” I said. “Maybe when the time comes you can just do whatever your friends are doing.”

  God, what terrible advice. But maybe she hadn’t heard me. She’d started pulling more blades of grass and then examining them, testing their worth as kazoo membranes between her thumbs.

  “Like I said,” Poppy muttered to me.

  I sighed. “Maybe.”

  The children hung in my mind like weighted bags. I could see what Paul had been talking about. They’d been testy yesterday and last night, seesawing opposite each other in either needling or being obstinate. In my own uneven emotional state, my arsenal of responses amounted to telling them to stop it. The invitation that had drawn Kevin out of the house this morning had been a relief.

  “You seen that fella that bought you the drink lately?” Poppy asked, stretching her legs out in front of her and swiveling her feet to tap the sides of her sandal soles against each other.

  “A barbecue Sunday night up at the Flying J—that guest ranch? He works there.”

  “Know it well. Everybody does.”

  “I guess so. Anyway, it was a bad night. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the last of him.”

  “Too bad. Looked like a nice kid.”

  I shrugged. “For somebody.”

  The door opened behind us with a click. “What time is it?”

  Poppy answered without turning around. “Just after eleven, Mama.”

  “I can’t find The Price Is Right.”

  “Channel four, Mama.”

  “It’s not there.”

  “Change it and try again.”

  “It’s not there,” the old woman repeated.

  Poppy turned around. “You want me to send Miss Elena in there to fix it for you?”

  The old woman scowled at me for a moment. “Hi,” she said. Then she pulled her head inside and slammed the door.

  “I’d be happy to—”

  But Poppy shook her head and waved her hand. “No, no. Don’t even think about it. She doesn’t need any help. She just wants attention.”