The Jesus Cow (6 page)

H
arley wished his truck was a beefy F-250, but in fact it was a modest brown Silverado inherited from his father. Four-wheel drive and mounted with a plow, but rust-pocked and on the far side of shot. Rear bumper crimped from that time he backed into the barn while trying to tune in Faron Young singing “Hello Walls.” Now and then the truck just flat quit on him, and he had little tricks he'd try: waggle the carburetor flap, jiggle the battery cables, smack the solenoid with a ball-peen hammer he stored beneath the seat. Usually one of these did the trick.

Today the truck was humming along fine, and anyway he wasn't pushing it, just easing up the grade toward the overpass, his house and barn visible off to his left, and closer to the road, Billy's trailer half hidden behind a skein of ratty spruce. He thought about the interior of his house then, the rooms patient and silent, the letter from the village attorney on the kitchen table. There was
something to the driving that was resonant of that still life, as if by going mobile he was putting everything else on hold, the only world that mattered contained within the space of the cab. You took your pressure relief where you could find it, he thought.

Harley slowed as he crossed the overpass, bemused as usual by the traffic streaming through what had been the hay fields of his youth. “I wonder sometimes where they're all going,” said Harley wistfully one evening as he and Billy drank second beers by the light of the burn barrel and listened to the nonstop rubberized rush. “Walmart, mostly,” said Billy.

But Harley liked to think there was more to it than that. Today, with time to spend, he downshifted to consider the matter further and was overcome from behind by a blast of twin air horns. He started, slopping his coffee and smearing maple frosting on the shift knob.
Always SPILLING things!
he thought, even as he looked up to find his rearview mirror filled with the grille of Klute Sorensen's elevated Hummer, the chromium brush buster decorated for the season with a Christmas wreath upon which perched a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag and wearing a gold tinsel halo currently peeled back like a comb-over in a hurricane.

Dabbing at the coffee as Klute charged past him, Harley couldn't bring himself to make eye contact. In fact, the vehicular height differential rendered this impossible and Harley was limited to a glimpse of his own reflection in the Hummer's chrome-plated running board. As he watched the roaring road hog veer left into Clover Blossom Estates, Harley wiped the long john frosting from the shift knob with his sleeve and figured he'd take all the people on that interstate over Klute Sorensen any day.

THERE IS SOME
doubt as to whether Clover Blossom Estates ever had a shot at living up to its name, but it was certainly falling short at the moment, paved as it was with a meandering melange of shoulderless dead-end roads and a sparse array of chintzy split-levels, many marked by hangdog
FOR SALE
signs pitched at a cant in the snow. For the most part, Harley couldn't bear to look at the development. He would see those insta-homes and bereft plastic toys and collapsed soft-sider pools and cheap trampolines and then the image of his father would superimpose itself, the man working from dusk to dawn for all those years just to hang on, and then, in the end, having to give way anyway.

Instead, he cast his eyes to the north side of the road, where Margaret Magdalene's salvage yard sat enclosed within a tall fence constructed of corrugated steel. Meg had been compelled to put up the fence after receiving letters from Vance Hansen citing her operation as an eyesore in violation of heretofore unenforced “smart growth” statutes. Everyone knew the impetus for Vance's newfound esthetic concerns came via Klute, as the salvage yard had been there for all the decades Meg's father ran it, right up through to the present, and not only had no one objected, it was considered a visual fascination what with all the unusual bits and pieces and beached vehicles, and the tremendously entertaining homemade vehicle crusher, which in the context of Swivel's available entertainment options delivered the equivalent punch of a feature at the IMAX. Now nothing was visible above the fence but the boom of Meg's crane. Most days it could be seen dipping and swooping as she sorted steel and dropped cars into the crusher, but today, with Meg off to Christmas services, it stood still.

Meg and Harley had known each other since kindergarten,
having passed thirteen years as classmates, making their way from kindergarten to graduation in Swivel's single school building. Neither was particularly popular among their peers, nor were they unpopular, simply present as such. These days Meg and Harley were on a nodding acquaintance—he had sold her some scrap and an old two-bottom plow after his father died—but he knew little about her beyond what he observed: She worked hard, she worked steadily, and the only person who spent more time at St. Jude's—Father Carl included—was the Blessed Virgin Mary in her bathtub.

Despite himself, Harley glanced back to his left, to where he used to build forts and hunt rabbits along the fence line, and later, when he was old enough to drive a tractor, rake the hay before he and his father baled it. The fence lines were gone now, replaced by nursery shrubberies and stick saplings staked and strung stiff in the freezing wind. The houseless lots were tufted with brown weeds sprung sparsely through the snow crust like back hair on a pale man. A single string of Christmas lights hanging from the eaves of one of the few occupied houses only heightened the spavined grimness of the scene. Accelerating past the gates of Meg's salvage yard, Harley steered into the northward curve with the heel of his hand, determined to put Clover Blossom Estates out of sight and mind.

The roads were spotty with snowpack and ice, but Harley had the back end of his truck loaded down with two tractor tires, several five-gallon plastic buckets of sand, and a decommissioned transmission he intended to drop off with Meg come spring, so traction was no trouble. He rolled along, the heater blowing the aroma of that Kona Luna to all corners of the cab. He purposely held off on the
long john and doughnuts. He didn't want to mess with the flavor of that first sip. As good as pastry goes with coffee, Harley always felt the sugars disrupted the palate.
One loses the finer notes
, he thought. Then he grinned at himself: gas station coffee soaking his pants, frosting stuck to his sleeve, the radio blasting “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

Yah
, he thought.
Like you're the king of finer notes.

KLUTE SORENSEN SAT
parked in his idling Hummer at the far end of Clover Blossom Estates and considered the state of things. It was time to get serious. Jacking up Vance Hansen had been a start, although he wasn't sure even now that the boy was up to the job. If Vance and the village couldn't get it done, Klute might have to bring in a bigshot attorney from Clearwater—or so he liked to tell himself, although whether he could afford the legal fees he did not know. But he figured he had a pretty good shot at dislodging Harley Jackson. That fellow didn't seem to have a lot of fight in him.

And then there was Meg Jankowski. Klute had been applying pressure on her via Vance Hansen's “smart growth” letters, and he had been planning to increase the pressure. But last night, up there all alone in that big house of his, he got to thinking about how the last time he saw her she was paying cash for gas in the Kwik Pump and he noticed her calloused hands and thought,
Surely she is ready for a better life. A life where she doesn't have to lug crushed cars and dress in coveralls
. Klute also noticed her form beneath the coveralls and this too played into the equation. He wasn't sure how to go about acting on this new angle, but the seed was planted. Looking across the road to the salvage yard, he squeezed his eyes shut tight and imagined it replaced with a Burger King and a Motel
6 and then he imagined driving slowly through a booming and blooming Clover Blossom Estates with Meg in the passenger seat of the Hummer, her eyes turned admiringly upon him, her hands manicured and soft, the diamond on her ring finger glittering like a disco ball.

Klute opened his eyes and turned his attention to the actual view. He had hoped for so much more. Rather than this sad batch of houses, he had envisioned a thriving suburb. There should be a profusion of holiday lights, he thought. Festive plywood Santas! Rows of those paper sack thingies filled with sand and burning candles! The curbs should be thick with empty minivans, the occupants inside, ripping into gifts. Instead he got this . . . this . . . this
betrayal
.

“No better time to hoist canvas,” intoned the upbeat narrator of
Set Sale!
, which was booming in the speakers, “than when you are becalmed! Be ready for the breeze!”

Klute Sorensen punched the Off button, blew a very wet raspberry at the windshield, and hit the accelerator, drawing great satisfaction from the roar of the engine and the screech of the tires as he hopped the curb, blasted a shortcut through the snow covering one of his many undeveloped lots, and put the disappointment of Clover Blossom Estates in his rearview mirror.

OUT ON THE
road Harley had settled into the drive, leaning forward, lacing his fingers and draping his forearms around the steering wheel. As he rolled along, he relived his gas station encounter. This Mindy: he hadn't seen her before. Although he was not dialed into Swivel's social scene much beyond the gossip he eavesdropped on from the back row of folding chairs during the monthly fire department
meeting, he figured he would have heard of her before if she had been here long. She seemed the sort to cut a swath. And he wasn't the only single fellow in town whose heart might get the yips over a woman like that in a truck like that.

Harley was no monastic, but neither was he what you'd call a “swinging” bachelor. Lately he had been on a sustained celibate stretch. His last relationship had come to a precipitous and inglorious end in an art gallery in Clearwater. In its wake he felt neither bereft nor bereaved; rather more faded out on the whole idea of trying so hard for so little. At forty-two years of age, he had a long track record of never quite making relationships last, and lately he hadn't even been all that wound up about making them start.

And yet, of course, even the most reticent heart is ressurrectable, and this Mindy had tripped something in him. Her sense of humor, her buddy-movie grin, her roughneck spark, those boots, they all suggested someone who wouldn't necessarily need Harley to supply much maintenance. He was also, he had to admit, tantalized by that tattoo.

Even so, he knew what would happen: What had always happened. Being shy, but determined, he would spend up to three months circling and hoping and working up accidental meetings, and rehearsing her companionship in his head as silly as any lovesick high-schooler, all to build up to the courage of asking her out. It was an established pattern of over twenty years now, no less pathetic for its consistency.

BACK IN SWIVEL
, Meg was heading home. The Christmas services had been wonderful. Father Carl had fairly glowed with holiness, and as Meg looked over the congregation she felt as always the
combination of joy and wonder at the power of people gathered, of heads bowed, of hymns sung. She admitted to some slight peevishness over the size of the congregation on this day as opposed to any given standard Sunday, and to wondering where everyone disappeared to the rest of the year. It wasn't so much the state of their souls she worried about, but rather the state of her church.

The sideburns Father Carl had worn when he married Meg and Dougie were gone now, as was much of the hair on his head, and over the course of time, the congregation had likewise thinned. Most Sundays entire pews would be empty, the Naugauhyde unwarmed. In fact, St. Jude's was in danger of deconsecration. There were rumblings that the higher-ups wanted to shunt the Swivel congregation to Boomler. While the official line cited attendance, many suspected it had more to do with the fact that the Swivel church had been paid off years ago, whereas the much grander Boomler church still carried a significant mortgage. The matter had yet to be decided, but word in the diocese was that Bishop Burkle was definitely doing the math.

Never mind
, thought Meg, shaking her head. She didn't want to surrender her joy just yet. As she crossed above the interstate, she thought of how she had heard the sirens that day, how she had run from the salvage yard to the overpass, and looking over the railing to the south, saw the cluster of flashing red lights and knew, just knew, Dougie was gone.

We never shared a married Christmas
, thought Meg. After she pulled through the salvage yard gate, she switched the truck off and sat there for a bit, listening to the engine click and cool. She wondered what it would have been like to share today with Dougie, to hold his hand during the homily, to rise from the pew and sing
beside him. She wondered what he might have looked like with some age on him.

She wondered, in fact, where he
was
.

THE MAPLE-FROSTED LONG
john and three of the doughnuts were gone and the Kona Luna was down to a lukewarm slosh when Harley pointed his truck for home. He had driven a meandering loop and was now pulling onto the straight stretch of Five Mile Road that led past the Big Swamp and back to Swivel when he noticed Mindy's F-250 parked at the old Nicolet place. Harley hit the brakes again, hanging at the stop sign with his blinker on. The Nicolet place was pretty much a wreck, the barn fallen in and the house not far behind. The sturdiest structure on the place was the granary, and the F-250 was parked right beside it. The granary windows were covered with Visqueen, and Harley could see light within. Outside the granary a table saw was set up beside two sawhorses, and there was fresh sawdust in the snow. Seeing movement behind the Visqueen, Harley blanched at the idea of getting caught looking, casting himself as a stalker before he even got started. He lurched from the stop sign and headed for town. Sneaking one more look in the rearview mirror he perceived the shape of what appeared to be a motorcycle beneath a snowbound tarp, and it occurred to him that he had never even considered the possibility of a boyfriend.