by J. R. Helton
“Okay, that’s enough,” Alton said and he led Augustine out of there back to our room. “Go back to sleep, Augustine.”
The sheriff walked up and asked Mr. Sealy if everything was settled now.
“They gotta pay for these damages,” Mr. Sealy said.
“Okay, okay, we will,” Alton said.
“And I want you to check out by Monday,” Mr. Sealy said. “I got some nice people coming up, and I can’t have all this trouble going on.”
“Fine,” Alton said.
I went back to my fold-out couch then and fell asleep to the sounds of Alton yelling at the men next door.
* * *
I was standing at the top of an embankment on the edge of the railroad tracks. It was a cold, clear day, and the wind was blowing hard from the north. I watched large groups of black and brown cowbirds flying down into the yellow fields in the distance. They seemed to stretch for miles, and as soon as one group of birds had hit the ground, another would explode upward, into the air, each bird swerving and dipping at the same time, like a giant swarm of bees changing shapes in the sky.
I watched the men working down in the ditch. All of them were hard at it except the one, Hector. He dragged along, doing very little except talk, slowing down his partner, Tomas, with each tie. He noticed me watching him and tipped his cap back and said something in Spanish I couldn’t understand. Alton was driving the big machine, and the engine droned loudly. The men slowly bent to the ground again and again, hauling out the good ties from the dead grass, stacking them on the forks of the loader, and banding them in steel. Next pile. Tomas struggled with a tie embedded in the dirt while Hector sat down on the edge of the hill and spoke to him as he worked. I walked down the embankment and grabbed the tie Tomas had been struggling with, picked it up myself, and threw it sloppily onto the forks. I looked over to Hector and yelled, “Come on, let’s go! Get off your ass!” Alton shouted down from the loader above, “Move your fucking ass, Hector! Quit fucking around!” I yelled to Hector to pick up the end of a heavy tie. He hesitated. “Pick it up, goddammit!” I yelled, and picked up my end. He lifted the other, and we threw it on the forks. I quickly grabbed another one, and Hector got the other end and we tossed it on. Before I could get to the next tie, he was there. We tossed it on, and I ran to the next pile and Hector ran behind me. Soon we were ahead of all the other workers and still kept going, just him and me and Alton and the loader. We worked for six hours, steadily, until it was almost dark, and then we stopped. I struggled up the embankment to the rails. I saw a long line of brown bundles scattered through the ditches. The sky was turning from blue to black with only a thin line of red left on the horizon. Alton pulled up and cut the engine on his loader. Juan stopped the engine on his machine, and there was only a steady humming then and the wind. Everyone lined up in front of the water cooler on the flatbed except Hector, who walked off into the distance and sat down on a bundle of ties, alone.
“That’s the way I like to see ’em work,” Alton said. “We threw more ties today than any other day. That’s how you do it.”
I filled a dirty paper cup with water and took a drink.
* * *
The next morning, Alton and I drove to Cassoday to get some repairs done on the flatbed. We left the men working at the tracks with Augustine in charge. On the way down I told Alton I was quitting, and he looked surprised.
“But why? You’re just getting into it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Okay, fine,” he said, and I could see he was angry. “I knew you wouldn’t last more than a month. I knew you’d quit. You’re going back to her.”
“Right. When’s your next run to Texas?”
“Four months. I have to go to Oklahoma after this in about three weeks.”
We rode along for a while in silence.
“I guess I need to find a ride,” I said.
Alton stared at the road. “I guess so,” he said.
We rode quietly the rest of the way to Cassoday. When we pulled into the little town, Alton stopped at the mechanic’s shop and I walked down to the Cassoday Café, a small, clapboard building with a warped and tilting front porch. I opened the door, and a bell rang lightly. I sat at the counter on a round stool. The waitress appeared from the back, and I ordered a cup of coffee and some toast. She brought me the toast and poured some coffee.
“You want some jelly?” she asked.
“No thanks.”
“Strawberry preserves?”
“Okay.”
She brought me two packets of preserves, and I opened one and spread it on the toast. She left, and I ate and drank. The café was empty. I could hear the waitress and cook talking in low voices in the kitchen. I stared at the cups and white dishes stacked on shelves in front of me. I looked at the glass pie container filled with slices of fruit pie. The waitress came back out and smiled and raised her eyebrows. “You want some more coffee?”
“No thanks, I gotta go.”
“That’ll be two bucks.”
I pulled three crumpled dollars out of my pocket and laid them on the counter. “Thanks.”
“Okay, thank you,” she said and picked up my plate and cup.
I got up off the stool and walked out the front door. I stopped at the edge of the wood porch. The sky was covered in low gray clouds. I looked to my left and saw the gas station and mechanic’s shop and a white church across the road. To my right there were a couple of empty shops, and the main street turned to dirt and ended. Directly in front of me, off an asphalt road full of holes, there sat a blue trailer. It was an old Airstream with rounded edges and odd fifties windows. A large leaning antenna stood up on the roof. All around the trailer’s base someone had nailed latticework and painted it gray. The door of the trailer opened, and a small boy ran out. He was nine or ten, lanky, with red hair, a T-shirt, and jeans. He ran around the lawn chasing a little cat and then hopped on a bike. He rode in circles on the asphalt road and headed in my direction. As he rode past the porch of the Cassoday Café he gave me a big wave.
“Hi!” he yelled.
I waved back and watched him ride up the street, past the white church, and up the road until he disappeared. I looked over the church’s steeple and on a hill saw a large brown sign. It read:
You are in Cassoday, Kansas.
The Prairie Chicken Capital of the World!
I walked down the porch steps and went over to the mechanic’s shop. Alton was in there playing a pinball machine.
“Is the truck ready?” I asked.
“Almost.”
I bought a few pieces of beef jerky from the mechanic’s wife. I ate them and read about all the bankruptcy sales and farm auctions posted on the walls. The mechanic came out of the garage and said the truck was ready. Alton paid the man, we climbed in the truck and drove back toward Cottonwood Falls.
* * *
A few days later a company foreman from Nebraska came through town on his way to set up the job in Oklahoma. The guy’s name was Ed, and he said he’d give me a ride as far as Tulsa. It was late afternoon when he stopped by the motel, and Alton was out loading up a truck in town.
Ed and I drove down to Matfield Green, and I found Alton in a field full of tie bundles, on his tractor, loading up George’s 18-wheeler. George and I talked for just a second, and I told Alton we were leaving right then. He said nothing and ignored me. I asked him if he could mail me my last check and handed him a piece of paper with a PO box in Texas, and he took the paper and again said nothing. George said good-bye to me, said he was going north now, but that I should stop by sometime in Texas, and he gave me his address in Giddings.
“I’ll paint your portrait,” he said.
As I got in the truck with Ed, Alton suddenly cut the engine, jumped off the loader, and ran over to the truck. I rolled down my window. Alton took off his gloves, reached in, and shook my hand.
“Thanks for working with me up here.”
“Sure.”
“It
gets kinda lonely sometimes.”
“Thanks for the job. I needed the money.”
He stood there, uncomfortable, at the edge of the truck, looking away. “Listen, uh . . . you ever see anybody down there?”
“No, not really.”
He looked down at the ground and kicked a rock. “Well, if you do, tell ’em I said hello, okay?”
“Okay.”
He looked up at me, from under his black wide-brimmed hat, and I could see my own features in his face.
“Look, don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll come get you.”
He smiled then, happy again, and walked off, putting on his gloves.
I rolled up the window, and Ed started to turn the big truck around. I looked back and saw Alton standing next to the loader in the empty field, watching us leave.
“Let’s go up to the liquor store in Strong City,” Ed said. “We can get some real beer there. All they have is that near-beer crap for miles.”
“All right.”
We bought a case of beer in town and then started south for Oklahoma across the flat black land. We drove, stopping every once in a while to take a piss, and Ed talked quite a bit, about his time in prison, how he’d dropped ceilings before he ran into Alton in a bar in Nebraska and landed the foreman job, how he had a girlfriend in Iowa and that he was bringing her down to stay with him in Tulsa. That he thought she was pregnant. I could see a scattered line of lights from some distant town on the horizon, disappearing and reappearing as we topped each rise, and Ed talked and talked, but I figured that was okay. It was his life, and I couldn’t really blame him for being interested in it.
I was lying on my bed, staring at a water stain on the ceiling, when my mother-in-law called and invited me to join her and her new friend, Karen, at the annual Fourth of July rodeo in Cypress. She asked if I’d had dinner, and I said yes. She said so had they and, if I’d like, I should drive out right then as the rodeo was starting in two hours. I heard laughter in the background and asked what they were doing. My mother-in-law mentioned once again how it was imperative that I leave now, that they had a box, that BH and Denny Hit were coming, that Denny Hit was a former bull-riding champion from Victoria, and that she was wearing the gray boots rather than the brown. I promised to be there and hung up.
I went into the bathroom and, using pliers, turned on the cold water. I shaved and then stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes and practiced smiles and greetings.
“Hi,” I said, smiling broadly.
“Hi, how’s it going?”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
I quickly left the bathroom and changed into a pair of jeans, boots, and a freshly starched purple shirt. I went to the kitchen and filled a blue bowl on the floor with dry cat food. I watched our cat, Jack, attack the mound of food.
“What do you think of this shirt, Jack?”
The cat opened his mouth wide and shook his head with each bite, flinging little brown squares onto the linoleum.
“I think it’s too purple.”
I went out onto the front porch. The sun was setting in front of our little house in Travis Heights. A man across the street was fertilizing his lawn. A boy and girl in bathing suits ran shrieking from a sprinkler’s arc. In the evening light the shirt appeared more blue than purple, and I decided to go with it. I let the cat out, locked the house, and left for Cypress.
* * *
I noticed a few more antique shops on the town square. A new, larger Baptist church. The VFW Hall had expanded its facilities with a high pole barn and concrete pavilion for dances. There was a new white limestone high school, two new limestone strip centers, a new limestone Dairy Queen, and a new limestone bowling alley just across the road from my mother-in-law’s house.
I turned into the deeply rutted caliche drive, past the faded No Trespassing signs, and parked in the driveway under the balcony. I walked up the steep limestone steps to the front door. At the top I checked my reflection in the dining-room windows. Passing muster, I used the knocker. There was no answer, and I let myself in the house.
I called out “Betty Sue!” twice and heard nothing. I walked past a painting of blue-and-red apples and into the den. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, uneven green hills could be seen stretching out to the horizon. Between the hills and the balcony deck there was an orange Sunshine Dry Cleaners sign and a gigantic red-and-white neon bowling pin.
I turned around and saw, like a person standing against the wall, a large portrait of Dean Hampton in a green jacket and yellow cowboy hat, his thumbs hooked defiantly in his pockets. A shotgun leaned in the corner next to the painting. I walked to the bookshelves and read all the titles. I found an old pair of multifaceted rose-colored glasses, put them on, and thumbed through a book called The Impressionists lying on the coffee table. I took the glasses off and put them back exactly where I’d found them. There were decorations around the fireplace: melted candles, a clay church from Mexico, Guatemalan worry dolls, and a picture of the Bhagwan pointing serenely to the sky. A Norfolk pine and several pencil cacti were growing wildly from their small pots, tipping them over to the point of danger.
I bent to a bottom shelf, pulled out a photo album, and looked at some pictures: Dean in a black tuxedo seated in a chair, his long hair brushed back from his high forehead, his eyes at half mast, a handsome closed mouth and crooked smile, with Betty Sue standing regally beside him in a long black evening gown, her hand on his shoulder, her long dark hair pulled back into a bun, her face placid, calm, unreadable. An awkward picture of Susan and me at the 1979 junior prom, before a silver curtain. I was wearing a garish white tuxedo, my hair a curly long brown mass, my arm around Susan next to me. She was smiling wildly, wearing too much makeup, a corsage, and a low-cut puce satin dress with spaghetti straps barely hanging from her thin shoulders. I put the album back and went through two others. After a few minutes I put the albums back on the shelf and left the den. I walked through the dining room, my boots echoing on the pink Saltillo tile, through the living room, past the open louver doors, into the master bedroom.
A short, thin, pretty woman walked toward me, examining her nails. She jumped, her hand to her mouth. “Oh!”
“Sorry.”
Betty Sue touched my arm, turned her head, and I gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“You scared me to death. We’re trying on clothes. Karen, come here.”
A voice from the bathroom: “Just a minute, please.”
Betty Sue posed in front of me. She raised her hands, palms up, and smiled. “Well?”
“You look great.”
She wore gray boots, a jean skirt, a jean shirt, a silver iguana or some type of lizard pin, and a bolo tie. I silently appreciated the outfit but stayed too long on the bolo and new curly hair.
“The bolo’s too much, isn’t it? I just got a perm today. It will take three days to look as it should. So until Monday I’m in perm limbo. You look very nice, dear. Very tan and healthy and handsome.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you healthy? Is your stomach okay?”
She turned to enter the bathroom as I answered.
“Oh yeah, I’m doing great—”
From the bathroom: “Go on, I’m listening,” then, to the invisible Karen, “Put this on, no wait, this,” and back to me, “You’re doing great?”
I sat down in a leather chair facing away from the windows and toward the bathroom. An altar of assorted Mexican bric-a-brac rose from the chest of drawers beside me.
“I’m doing absolutely great.”
“Good. We’re all great, and”—she added brightly—“we’re all cute.”
“Great.”
“What do you think of these earrings?’
Betty Sue stepped out, slightly different from purple eye shadow and two simple diamonds hanging heavily from her earlobes.
“I think they’re great.”
“Great. Well, I think it’s time to go, but Karen, my new best friend, is taking foreve
r.”
“Okay, okay, I’m ready,” Karen said, and came into the bedroom.
“Karen, this is my son-in-law, Jake Stewart.”
“Hi.”
“Hi, Jake Stewart,” Karen said, dragging out the s sound. She smiled and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
I stared at her face, my mouth open slightly. Betty Sue sighed loudly and walked from the room saying we were late and that she could absolutely not find her purse. Karen promised just a second and turned to retrieve one last article from the bathroom. I saw, then, that in the flurry of rodeo preparation she’d forgotten to zip up the back of her blue jean skirt. I also couldn’t help noticing she’d neglected to put on any underwear. I sat back down in the leather chair and watched her bend over to fill a small purse and adjust the loose-fitting vest she wore without a shirt. After a few seconds she said, “Okay” quietly, turned, smiled at me again, and left the room.
Halfway to the kitchen, walking behind her, I cleared my throat.
“Karen, I don’t think you’re quite finished yet.”
She stopped. “What?”
“Your skirt.”
She touched the bare skin through her open zipper. “Oh my God,” she said. “I’m so embarrassed.” She backed into the kitchen.
I waited a moment in the living room. I heard Betty Sue gasp, pause, and then ask if I’d be a dear and carry the garbage down to the garage for her. I said of course, and that one of the constants in my life was taking the garbage out of her house.
I carried the two green bags from the kitchen out of the house. Betty Sue locked the front door. I followed her and Karen, their skirts zipped, down the steps and past the front yard. Weeds had taken over the St. Augustine. A bad freeze had killed the yuccas lining the drive. The plants hung limp, brown, and dead over the limestone retaining wall. I shoved the garbage bags into full cans in the garage and squeezed into the back seat of Betty Sue’s Toyota.
“This is going to be so much fun,” Betty Sue said.
