THEY had been talking about the funeral when Lee’s name came up. They were sitting on the rock-wall overlook for half an hour and Erick, still combating a hangover with a painkiller cocktail he’d finagled from a friend of a friend, was now telling Louis about the time Lee had driven up from Central Virginia to Pittsburgh International to surprise him fresh off the plane after eighteen months of contracting in Baghdad. Erick was telling Louis, Lee’s older brother, about how Lee spent hours dolling herself up for the occasion. Every nail had been filed, buffed, and painted a rosy pink to match her dress (a far cry from the black she painted her nails these days). Her hair had been styled in such an elaborate way it was as if she’d spent hours in the mirror working a series of rollers through. She hadn’t needed to do any of that, but she’d done it all for him. That was when he knew, Erick told him, and Louis said nothing.
Erick talked and Louis had his sweaty Redskins hat over the turn of his knee while he took a drink from his Camelbak. The break was a welcomed one, Erick’s entire body radiating soreness from the 2,900-foot mountain-bike haul up to the knob of Massanutten. Louis had been quiet from the get-go, save for when Erick brought up Pa Showalter’s funeral, to which, even then, Louis would only repeat, “It was a good ceremony. My dad appreciates it, I’m sure,” his stock response of the afternoon. Erick recognized that particular brand of sadness in the corner of Louis’s eyes; sadness more like helplessness worked over and concealed by a far-reaching stare—the kind of sadness Erick had seen in the eyes of comrades and locals alike while working in Iraq.
Erick said, “Can we speak frankly?”
“Shoot,” said Louis.
“It’s about Lee.”
Louis took another drink and then checked the water level in his Camelbak. Erick surveyed Louis’s face for reaction but saw none.
“With your dad gone and all, we all know the farm could use another body—a permanent body. And I’ve been thinking pretty seriously about marriage.” He paused, looked right at Louis. “Could I get your blessing before I ask Lee to marry me? Had planned on asking your father.”
Could I get, the words clattered dumbly through his head; such a brainless way to phrase the question. Like he was propositioning his dealer for more goodies: “Could I get a nickel bag?” “Could I snag a pair of 60 mgs?”
“What you and Lee do is completely between you and Lee.” Louis said, his words hanging there, same as they always did.
Erick broke down Louis’s response: not a “no,” exactly, but just what the hell was it with Louis that he could never give anyone a straight answer? Erick stood up to go fish out another 30 mg Vicodin—the least lethal in his collection of painkillers and opioids—to numb the monster headache that had returned, pushing like open palms against the sides of his skull and creeping its way upward. But goddamn him, they weren’t in his backpack. The glove compartment, he now remembered. Locked up in the 4Runner at the base of the mountain. Erick felt like planting his fist into stone: he hadn’t even been functional enough this morning to remember the things he needed. Pharmies of any kind, he was aware, remained the only steady habit he’d brought back from Iraq. Maybe seeing all that he’d seen—Iraqi families forced apart by the hands of questioning soldiers, flipped Humvees on fire and left to burn, martyrs blowing themselves up in parked cars, faces fucked beyond recognition—all served as enough justification. But whatever the deep-rooted reason—and he could never pinpoint just one—he’d made a concerted effort to cut back in the last month and was now closer to quitting than he’d ever been. Still, it remained his private battle. No one knew, not even Lee, and he intended to keep it that way. Above, a torrid Shenandoah sun burned down, and Erick let his thoughts settle while he studied the film of humidity clinging to the crowns of the white oaks, scattered with a few roosting hawks, daywatching and silent.
Erick had on his helmet. Had on his Spenco half-finger, gel gloves. He motioned with a nod of his head and the buckling of his chinstrap that they get going down the trail.
“Should be a doozy,” Louis said, passing Erick and picking his Trek off the ground.
They rode their mountain bikes west across the craggy ridgeline. Louis pressed hard on his bike, leaned forward over the handles. Erick could hear him flipping the front and back derailleur gears, swapping chains plate to plate, maintaining distance. Like man and shadow, Erick pressed everything he had into maneuvering with the same fluidity as Louis. His brain throbbed so hard and so fast that he was certain it would burst right through his forehead. Out of breath, he’d half-expected Louis to wait at the summit—allow a brief respite before frenzying down the mountain—but when he got there Louis had already gone. Down through the glen, Erick watched, admiring the way Louis helmed the frame of his bike, the way he played terrain like some musical virtuoso. Erick kicked off and pedaled hard to catch up. Twenty, thirty, then forty miles an hour zipping around near sideways burns. He was gaining, had Louis in his sights. Up fast, down faster, his head pounding his peripherals into dizzying, whooshing greenness. For a fleeting moment, it brought him back to that level—the warble of his tires over leaves, over dirt, his body a mere thing attached to a bike hurling through moguls and jumps and soaring through air. It was the sheer speed that brought him back. He let out a deep, gravelly hoot and pumped his fist to the air as he rounded the last bend, catching Louis and then passing him. They breached the forest and rode across the field to the parking lot.
Louis drove Valley Road past all the dairy farms and the Rockingham County chicken processing plant and Erick, after twice trying to initiate conversation, slumped in the front seat massaging his temples. Back at the farmhouse, Erick helped Louis hoist the bikes from the car and stow them inside the garage. Unchaining the wheels from the bike frame, Erick caught a glimpse of Louis Sr.’s paint-dotted work gloves in a corner of the garage. The insides, he mused, still caked in a dozen seasons of dried sweat. Then the memory smacked him: how he’d been staring at that very pair of gloves late last night smoking a cigarette, nine or ten bottles deep. He had thought then as he thought now of Pa Showalter, and he, in that long drunken moment, reckoned he had reaffirmed the significant notion of legends being born from death—though of course the revelation had seemed more weighty last night than it did now. He studied Louis Jr. for a sign of his old man, watched him as he rummaged the garage for a cloth to impulsively–almost biologically—start cleaning the muck off of his bike. Louis was the same height as his father, though leagues skinnier, Erick noted, remembering back to when Louis Sr. had cursed—the only time he had ever heard the man swear—clenching his fork and knife in tight fists at the dinner table; “Eat your fucking meat, Lou, before I lose you in the wind for God’s sake.”
Erick thought about all this, didn’t say a word, and then went to the glove compartment to retrieve his on-the-go Ziplock of assorted anesthetics. He knew he shouldn’t, but the longer he held the dull red 60 mg OC in his hand, the more he thought what the hell. He wandered into the house, into the bathroom, closed the door, and leaned over the sink. He turned on the tap and cupped water to his face. Stared himself in the eyes as if waiting for the mirror image to move first. Had dirt flakes caked to his forehead, mud lines down his neck. He washed out the dirt and then ran his fingertips against two day’s stubble. The faucet ran but instead of swallowing the capsule he chewed the thing to avoid a lengthy time-release. He turned off the tap and walked toward the guest room. Bed, bed, oh glorious bed. But first he stopped briefly in the hallway to ogle a high school photograph of Lee in a bikini. He ran his finger along the arc of her thigh. “No sex for vets,” he said out loud, “only blue balls!” Chuckling to himself, his head turned out rapid-fire thoughts about how little they’d been sleeping together—only once since Pa Showalter’s funeral and afterward she’d refused to join him in the shower. In fact, he remembered, she’d yelled at him, in earnest, for first time since he returned from Iraq, accused him of being “savage” and “a monster.” Probably for the way he’d gone at her so hard, so vicious, and how she’d been forced to reciprocate; pull his hair, use her nails, sink her teeth. All of this when she’d always maintained such a high tolerance for his crap! He thought about this. Things were amassing. Erick understood the fact that he was living under someone else’s roof, rent-free, had become more obvious to both himself and the Showalters since the passing. But where else was there to go? He’d gotten stuck. His thoughts moved slower now, as if traversing through a marsh, and he remembered it had been his mother who’d warned him such a thing could happen. She’d said, “The South is like honey. Once you’ve got your feet planted there, you’re in the stick for good.” She’d said this an hour before exhaling her last breath.
On the bed, Erick planted his body belly-down and made an X, stretching out to the four corners. He stayed like that a while. Found his body like that a few hours later when Lee came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She brought her hand through his hair and fingered a strand around.
“You’re still sweaty,” she said. “Louis take it easy on you?”
His body was heavy and it took everything in him to turn to his side.
“I’m sweaty because this place needs an air conditioner,” he said, sitting up. “Fun ride. Forgot your brother is such a gearhead.”
She said, “He’s something.”
“I’m hurting.”
“From today or last night?”
“Both,” he said. But he corrected, “last night.”
“You were pretty gone.”
“I don’t know. I just felt like drinking.”
Erick looked at his girlfriend sitting there in jean skirt and white cotton halter, and then he glanced out the window at the fields baking in the sun. Cornfields, mostly. A few wheat and a few blueberry. Ma Showalter sat at a picnic table in front of the silo, sewing together, by hand, her summer flag, the one she’d been working on since before her husband died.
“Got plans tonight?” Lee asked. “Ma and I rented a movie. Got Jim Carey in it.”
“Gus is in Harrisonburg for the night. Told me to meet him downtown.”
“Gus,” Lee repeated. “Well it’s my brother’s birthday tomorrow, don’t you forget.” She stood up and straightened out her skirt. “And tomorrow you’re on corral duty, too.” Erick was close to telling her that a mindless comedy sounded perfect, that he didn’t want to go downtown at all, that all he wanted was rest. Rest and her.
But then it was a cool Virginia weeknight and he was back in town drinking whiskey sodas at Jack Brown’s. He and Gus had developed a good feel for passing time with few words between them. They’d always been close. Back in their college drinking days, and again, as security personnel during the war, for a time, the two of them used to beat the hell out of each other and it had always brought them closer. They had called the scuffles “love quarrels.” Head-butts, knuckles at the jaw, knees to the gut. A philosophy that MMA-style fistfights were the best way to make things square. But those days were behind them; a lifetime of schmoozing and cheap thrills ahead. He and Gus sat watching the Nationals game. He watched as an old man, looking homeless, came in and ordered a Coors Light. He watched the old man drink it down in three long pulls. He didn’t pay, just smiled at the young lady bartender and left through an open door. He wondered if the old man and the bartender had an agreement, or, he wondered, if she thought the old man was too old, and she, too young to speak up, to stop him. Maybe out of respect. The spectacle made Erick hungry.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said. “While there’s still light out.”
“Thai food?” Gus asked with as much verve as he could muster. “Or subs?”
Now fully inspired, Erick repeated the former and gave into the situation and its spontaneity—gave into the “new beats” blaring through Gus’s car stereo as they rounded 33 East to Thai Cafe, to the Mai Tais and the crude jokes and some bullhassle drink called, simply, “The Special;” And to Gus’s penchant for buying more drinks, to the hilarity of Steve-O, Smith, and Craig as all three joined up at the Thai bar, to the suggestion that they all go on, after the spring rolls and drinks, to some further place; And to the tight squish of legs and the abundance of testosterone in Gus’s Tacoma; And to the idea that they might as well swing by, since they’re now in party mode, to Jim Dell’s club on South Main closer to Dayton, where the summer-session college girls have been drinking and dancing all evening, all dressed up and drunk and looking to be picked up wearing that much makeup, and to persuading some intoxicated characters—three women and a pair of local men—to come out to the mountains and watch with them the sunrise; And to while leaving the club, loudly, and with his arm around one of the ladies, seeing and matching eyes with Louis who was across the street getting ice cream with Lee at Kendall’s; And to pretending they did not see each other for better or for worse; And to hopping into the Tacoma anyhow, because it was only eleven and what the hell, you only live once, and to stopping at Mitch’s Mart for jugs of wine and a case or two, and to, after a brief sojourn at Wal-Mart, the thirty-two mile drive east to Skyline Drive at one-thirty in the morning; And to watching the stars and drunkenly mixing them with the city lights from the view way, way up there; And to singing his heart out to Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney and Rascal Flatts; And to spinning and whirling and a blur of arms lifting him up and dropping his blacked-out body into the truck bed; And to having a bucket of Shenandoah Lake water splashed on his face at sunrise near the thin, leaning graves at the cemetery, and handed a cigarette and a low-dose oxycodone and told to snap the fuck out of it, for real.
Gus and Steve-O, what was left of the party people, dropped Erick off at the Showalter’s farm around six in the morning. Neither said “bye,” just fiddled the truck into reverse and seemingly kept on their adventure. Erick thought about that a moment. Wondered if thirty-one was too old. He was hungry, but didn’t think he could force himself to eat. He grabbed his stomach, walked up the stairs to the front porch, sat on the rocking chair, took off his shirt. He had acquired a bruise and a scrape across his cheek, but couldn’t place a mental finger on from what. He hated that like fire. Through the house’s thin walls, he could hear Ma Showalter messing around in the kitchen, the local news on the TV. Up from the rear of his skull rose some heavy feeling—regret, maybe—a feeling he wasn’t used to registering. It washed over him. He stroked his stubble, three days thick. He thought about the prescription vials that he still had in his duffle, nowhere near running low. The dishes clanged inside the house and the feeling worsened.
Rummaging through his pocket he found a receipt from Wal-Mart dated from the night before and stamped with the five-dollar-seventy-seven-cent purchase of a pre-cooked Ellio’s Pizza and a Bic lighter. The memory came back to him: a group of El Salvadorians had followed him and the boys around the frozen food isles looking stiff and ready to fight. He remembered Steve-O had wanted to mouth off, but didn’t. Just long series of staredowns. MS-13 gang guys, Rockingham County’s notorious drug runners, tattooed everywhere. Whatever happened, he asked himself, with all that. Hopefully nothing, but how could he be sure? He checked his knuckles. They weren’t cut-up or bruised. He stared across the porch to the morning’s sun-drenched fields and envisioned Pa Showalter in them, using the rusted scythe to harvest the cereal grain. “The harvesting,” Louis Sr. had once said, “is the most exhausting part. But when we take it across town to the Wilson’s and they turn it into bread, it’s all worth it. That’s how the balance works out here. Someone will go to the farmer’s market and buy a loaf. Grown from right here, on this farm.” And then what? Erick remembered asking him. “And then we move on,” he’d said.
It wasn’t the same with Louis Sr. as it had been with the others he’d seen die in Iraq, Erick thought. Not even close. That whole country had been a desert graveyard, a land where lives commonly came to an end well before they were meant to, unlike the rarefied heart attack in a Virginian cornfield. Erick did a pretty good job of pushing thoughts of Iraq out of his mind, but whenever he mused on death, he couldn’t help but think about the downtown Baghdad shootout. That day, he’d been working as part of a security team, ushering a diplomat around the city from meeting to meeting for just under a week. The diplomat was due to fly out in two hours and, exiting the Al Shareed Hotel, the Iraqi Islamic Front was waiting in ambush. Waves of gunfire broke out and volleys ensued across the crowded street. Erick grabbed the white-haired diplomat and pulled him to the ground behind an SUV. Bullets pelted the roof, popped the tires and sent them into a hissing frenzy. Five meters away there was another vehicle, a two-door sedan—its alarm blaring—and then, beyond that, an alleyway—an escape. Erick stood up and returned fire, ordered the diplomat to run ahead while he provided cover. The diplomat did and, after an instant, Erick joined him behind the sedan. But from there, the distance to the alleyway was too great, and they’d get shot-up if they tried to sprint it. Erick checked the inside of car: the driver was dead, his white dishdasha covered in blood. They’d have to push the car along to shield themselves. Erick turned to the man: “You gotta work to stay alive.” Erick shoved the car into neutral. The diplomat shed his suit jacket and the man, now suddenly a bear, helped Erick muscle the car forward. Then, into the alleyway, shots still firing, Erick had the diplomat by a fistful of his shirt. Adrenaline coursing through him, the weight was nothing. But after some ten seconds or so, he turned and found that he’d been pulling along a lifeless body. Alive—so alive—and then gone, just like that. That memory served for him as a kind of definition of death, and memories of dead men living would always play and replay in his mind like cinematic reels showing him false and unwarranted clips.
Another one came and Erick couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. Last Christmas: the time when he’d gotten eggnog-buzzed and drifted off, Lee nestled atop his chest, only to wake up hours later, the house still, the fireplace full of fire, and Louis Sr. awake and smiling at him from the loveseat where his wife had fallen asleep, her head on his lap. He thought about that: he and Louis Sr. the only ones awake, the farm so still. Then his mind landed on Lee and he’d try to convince himself that he’d not yet lost her.
The sound of footsteps creaking down the stairs escaped through the screen window and the TV shut off. He heard voices. The front door swung open walloping the side of the house and out into the sticky valley morning stepped Louis.
“Morning,” Louis said, handing Erick a black coffee. “Just getting in?”
Erick’s cheeks got even hotter, “Yeah, late night. An Iraq buddy of mine.”
“Sure thing.”
They chewed silence. Louis slurped his coffee.
“About last night,” Erick said. “I suppose you told Lee about what you saw.”
“What did I see?”
“Well I guess you saw me, drunk, and my arm around some girl. And I’m only guessing that because I’m guessing I saw you, too.” He looked right up at Louis, wrapped his t-shirt around his hand, wiped the sweat out from under his eyes. “You were with Lee.”
“Wasn’t sure if you’d remember.”
“I remember.” They considered each other through squints.
“I haven’t told her.”
“You haven’t.”
Louis shook his head. “That’s on you.”
“You’re damn right it’s on me. It’s none of your business.”
“Sure. But I want you to do me a favor.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m not demanding it of you.”
Erick turned to look at Louis.
“See that field right there?” He continued.
“Of course I see it.”
“That’s pride,” he said. “Think of what that meant to my father. What it means to my family.”
My: the word rang down Erick’s ear canal. Maybe they’d never see things eye-to-eye. He faced the ground. “You saying I have no pride?”
“I’m saying you could use some time to think things over.”
Erick waited a minute before speaking again.
“Are you kicking me out?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what about this? Are we square?”
“I don’t know, Erick. I guess we’ll see.”
“Last night,” Erick said, “that doesn’t happen again.”
“If you say so.”
Erick’s heart pounded as hard and as fast as did his head, the gin and whiskey and wine still working their way out. Any potential comebacks that he had were frozen, and before he could open his mouth to speak again, Louis clanged back through the front door.
After a nap on the porch, Erick came back inside and Ma Showalter was organizing the last of the homemade jam into mason jars. As per every Saturday, Erick knew that she was making her finishing touches—tying on ribbons and such—before loading them into crates on the truck bed and heading downtown to sell the jam, along with the organic tomatoes and corn, at the Harrisonburg Farmer’s Market. The whir of the standing fan and the natural Shenandoah rhythms—the distant tractors, the nations of black crows, the occasional breezes meandering through the fields—brought to Erick a momentary surge of confidence. He asked Ma Showalter could he marry her daughter.
“Truth is, Erick, you aren’t my son,” she said. “So I can’t tell you what you can and can’t do.”
Erick sat. A few minutes later Lee entered the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, kissed her. Then she helped her mother tie ribbons onto the mason jars.
“Well, I better get working,” Erick said.
“Louis Jr.’s already out there,” Ma Showalter said, pointing through the window. “He’d take the help I’m sure.”
“He’d better.” The words blurted from his mouth. Erick threw on his shirt and burst through the back door.
Inside the coop he told Louis to take off, that he could manage the day’s work.
Louis didn’t even raise his head. “I’m fine,” he said. “You go on inside. Nurse that hangover of yours.”
Erick walked over and the two of them stared hard at each other.
“Don’t you do it,” Erick said.
And Louis threw the first punch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Wasserboehr is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he also teaches in the undergraduate writing program. You can read more from Jeff at First Stop Fiction and Subtle Fiction.
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LF #022 © Jeff Wasserboehr. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, August 2012.
