East of Denver (19 page)

“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.

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 looked 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.

I said, “I think we burned it.”

“We didn't.” We did. Didn't matter. While Dad went to the house to look for the grabber, I crawled under the juniper and tried to see this snake. There wasn't a snake. Pa had been poking on that bush ever since I moved back to the farm. There was never a snake.

The ground under the bush was dry. Lying on my back, I could feel yesterday's warmth thru my shirt. I decided to rest there for a while until Pa either came back or forgot what he was up to. Then eat. Then what? Wait, I guess.

I closed my eyes. A fly landed on my forehead.

I heard a hiss.

I've seen dozens of snakes in my life. I watched my old dog Jumper torture a blue racer to death. I saw a king snake before they disappeared from the plains. Garter snakes, of course. Hognose snakes. You ever seen a hognose? They have a flipped-up snout for digging holes. If you surprise one, it'll play dead. If you keep poking it, it'll stop playing dead and flatten its head like a cobra. They're harmless. You can play with them all day long.

Even so, it doesn't matter what kind of snake it is, your first reaction on seeing one is always to yelp. It's born into us all, I suppose.

So when I opened my eyes and saw a tongue flick from the head of an actual, honest-to-shit snake, I yelped. I yelped right at that snake.

The snake's head swerved back and forth in front of my face. This wasn't a hognose or a bull or anything good. I was looking at a big-cheeked, slit-eyed goddamned pit viper of a prairie rattler.

I'd only seen a rattlesnake once in my whole life. It was during wheat harvest when I was a kid. I was driving the grain cart and had some time to kill before the combine filled back up with grain. I stopped the tractor and got out to take a leak. Right in the middle of my piss, a rattler crawled over my foot. I yelped. It didn't pay me any attention. It just went over my foot and then disappeared into the wheat stubble. I was so scared I zipped up my britches and climbed back into that tractor and didn't get out again until that field was harvested.

This was scary in a whole new way.

You think about the things you've heard. First, I concluded that there was no mistaking this thing. It was a rattlesnake. I couldn't see the tail. I couldn't hear any rattles. But its body was covered with diamonds and that head, it was an arrow, ready to fly.

I thought about the TV shows where Australians pick snakes up by their tails. About illustrations in pamphlets that tell you to back away slowly. I didn't recall anything about lying flat on your back under a bush while a snake stared at your nose.

Venom. If you get bit, pull out your pocket knife and make an X over the bites and suck the poison. Or don't. But whatever you do, stay relaxed. The less your blood pumps, the less the venom can spread. Baby rattlers were the worst. Why where babies the worst? Because they have more venom. Or because, because, because they had the same amount of venom but they couldn't regulate how much they spit out. When a baby rattler bites, it shoots its whole wad. An adult can control itself. Adults sometimes bite without releasing any venom at all. The snake in front of me was definitely not a baby. That was good.

What you gotta do, what you gotta do is make sure not to threaten the thing. I just had to relax and wait for it to go away. Then ease out from under the bush, walk to the house, and eat some room-temperature salty tomato soup.

Sweat was running down my temples. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stop breathing. The goddamned snake crawled over a branch and dangled its head right up against my nose. The grassy tongue tickled my nostril.

It opened its mouth. The fangs were pressed flat against the top of its palate. The jaw stretched wide and the fangs unfolded. Then that goddamned biting fly landed on my forehead again. It dug its snout in and started chewing me up. I wanted to swat and shout and shrivel up. Still, that snake looked down on me, yawning, with its tongue flicking in and out.

The snake brought its mouth to my ear. I could hear it breathing in little raspy wisps. The tongue pushed against my hair.

It bit me on the neck, just below my right ear. There was a popping sound as the teeth punctured the skin, like pushing a straw thru the lid of a soda cup. Then the bottom jaw grabbed on and squeezed the fangs down. The snake just sat there, with its mouth clamped on my neck. It didn't feel like anything.

Dad's feet crunched toward me. The snake took its head off my neck and disappeared into the bush. I dunno. Maybe the whole thing took a split second. What's certain is that just as Pa's shoes came into view, that bite started to hurt. I scuttled out from under the juniper and jumped up, ran, staggered, and fell on my hands and knees. I put a hand to my neck and pulled it back. Two drops of blood on my palm.

Pa was carrying a five-gallon bucket. The tomato bucket. He said, “What's your major malfunction?”

I was dizzy and jazzed and upside-down. “I got snake-bit.” My tongue felt like a shoe.

Pa put the bucket on the ground. He seemed concerned, almost fatherly. “What kind of snake-bit?”

“Rattler.”

His voice caught. “You sure?”

I nodded. I pointed to my neck. “Right here.”

Pa looked at the snakebite. “You got bit by something.”

“Rattler.”

“You sure?”

I nodded. This was a way of dying.

He touched my neck. “Does it hurt?”

I nodded. It was getting hard to move my neck.

“Those snakes don't always give you a full shot of their juice. It might not be too bad.”

I was about to cry. I looked toward the sky so the tears wouldn't fall out. “It hurts, Pa.”

Pa bit his lip. He was worried. He was my father and he didn't know what to do. He said, “Call the doctor?”

“Telephone doesn't work.”

Dad's eyes darted to the juniper bush. He rushed over, stuck his arm in the branches, and pulled out the snake by its neck. It was as long as he was tall, wagging and flopping. He pushed the snake's face to the ground and stepped on it with the heel of his tennis shoe, twisting back and forth until red spilled onto the dirt. The snake's tail twisted here and there and then it lay still. Pa dropped the snake in the bucket and brought it to me.

“Recognize this?” He was smiling.

“We gotta get moving.” We didn't have any gas. We couldn't get moving. My right ear was starting to ring.

I lay down. I heard Pa messing around. Touching things in the shed. “Pa, I'm snake-bit. We need to do something.”

He said, “I know. I'm making it happen.”

I rolled over so I could watch him. He was dragging a tarp along the floor. “That deal there.” He pointed to the item that had previously been covered by the tarp. The jet-engine tractor. The last thing he worked on before he lost his mind.

“That thing.” My throat was pinched. “It don't work.”

“It might. In a coon's age.” He climbed on the tractor seat. It had originally been a John Deere R. Made in the fifties. No cab. Squat and green.

He had reversed the seat and the steering wheel so the rear wheels pulled and the front wheels dragged behind. The engine was out and in its place was a jet turbine. He put his hand on the housing. Pa was gonna make that thing work. I wouldn't die on that slab of concrete.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I heard Pa climb onto the seat. He clicked some switches. Then he said, “Vrooooooooooooooooom!”

I looked at him. He was bouncing on the seat, moving the steering wheel back and forth. “Whoooooosh!”

I straightened out my crossed eyes.

“Pa.”

“I'm driving.”

“Pa. I need help.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.”

I pushed myself upright and crawled to the WBC Rocket where it was propped up on its kickstand. I draped myself over the frame and tried to climb on. I held onto the handlebars, stood up. The bike fell over on top of me.

Dad jumped off the tractor and lifted the bike off me. “Why's your neck so?”

“Snakebite,” I hissed. “I got one.”

“Black. Your neck is black.”

I noticed the hair on his hands was singed short. Smoke floated around us. Pa looked around, worried. Then he smiled. “The trash is burning.”

I nodded forward.

We are on the road. I'm balanced on the Rocket's seat. Pa is standing on the pedals. My hands are around his belly. They're tied together at the wrists. The world passes by slowly. I roll my face off of his back and see the five-gallon bucket hanging from the left handlebar. It's banging against the front fork. The engine goes putt-putt-putt. There's a quarter gallon of gas in the fuel tank. Where can we go?

I close my eyes again.

We are in a pasture. I'm curled on my side. Pa's on his hands and knees. He's digging the sand like a dog, scooping dirt out between his legs. I try to talk. My voice is a raspy squeal. I touch my face. The skin's taut.

Pa keeps digging. His eyes are closed, the lids dark with dust. The hole gets bigger. The sand is moist. I close my right eye and watch with my left.

“Look at this!” Dirt rains onto my face. Every piece of sand feels like a shot from a BB gun.

I work my left eye open. Pa is holding a half-decayed animal by its tail. I don't recognize it at first. Then it assembles itself in my head. The animal: cat. The cat: mine. We're in the pasture for dead dogs. Boy, does my head hurt.

Pa sets my dead cat on the ground. Then he grabs me by the wrists and drags me to the edge of the hole. I resist with all my strength, which is to say I barely resist at all. I'm on the edge of a grave.

“A real molly rauncher,” says Pa. He picks up the bucket and tips it over the hole and out slides the dead rattlesnake. The scales hiss against the edge of the bucket and then it makes a thump and it's in the hole. Pa picks up the cat corpse, drops it on top, says, “That'll give him someone to talk to,” and then starts kicking the dirt back in.

My belly shakes. I can't breathe enough to laugh. I can't move my mouth to smile. I feel a tear drip out of my left eye and slide down my nose. Its coolness makes my skin feel better.

We're on the Rocket. My hands are tied around Pa's waist again. He sings, over and over, “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques . . .”

The road is a smooth blacktop highway. I don't know where we're going. I don't know who I'm leaning against. It's my father. He's driving the Rocket. We pass the grain elevators of the Keaton Co-op. Why are we in Keaton? The hospital's not in Keaton. It's in Strattford, forty miles north and three miles west. We only have a quarter gallon of gas. The world's a smear. There is only now, which hurts, and not-now, which is a mystery.