His father left when Rodney was thirteen years old, but he came back to visit most weekends, even when his life was running short, living alone by then in some innavigable parcel of land north of Cuming, south of Ames, east of 40th, west of the river. The man died and was buried during the three years Rodney was away in the army. Rodney could have had a furlough to return for the funeral, if he’d requested one, but he didn’t. His mother had moved back to Hastings by that time too, since Rodney was in the military and she’d retired early. She was fifteen years older than Rodney’s father. She worked a long time even after she retired from Mutual, simple stuff she was used to doing with insurance forms, for a while at the hospital in Hastings, a few years after that for a shyster lawyer.
Rodney wished someone would have been there to meet him when he came back from the army, but it wasn’t a big deal. In those days men had to drive up from base after serving, which was from Arkansas in his case. He rode with a few guys he knew who were heading his way, another from Omaha and a couple from Sioux City who had the car. They stopped at the dog track in Council Bluffs because the two with the car wanted to gamble.
The family of the other guy from Omaha was waiting outside. That guy wanted to give Rodney a ride. “C’mon, buddy. Get in the car,” he said, but Rodney shook his head and jogged after the two from Sioux City who were entering the track. “I’ll find a ride,” Rodney yelled back. “I’m going to bet some.”
Rodney did like to watch the greyhounds run. That’s what he did for a few hours, even after the guys with the car decided to head on. He sat inside the smoke-dense building with a smattering of other men who bent over their laps to study the odds. Rodney distracted himself by watching the greyhounds pound the earth on the other side of the glass, those long dogs chasing a mechanical rabbit along the rail. They went around the track and then back into a box.
He hadn’t thought about it in real terms until then, that his father was dead. It made him sad that his dad died young — he didn’t even know what had done it. Rodney wondered if he was a man then, since he no longer had a father. If that’s what would do it.
During an intermission he walked outside and across the parking lot, jumped a fence near the interstate and jogged across the bridge to Omaha. He was in fatigues still, a rucksack sagged over his shoulder. Rodney couldn’t keep his breath running over the bridge and had to stop every so often to look down at the river, as if he were lost in a strange country, a new man in a lonely and desolate place.
It was that summer Rodney found the job mowing. Then there was the man he worked with to talk to if he wanted. And he’d see his mother a few times each year until she was unable to travel. And then he met his girl, although that never lasted as long as they thought it would.
Rodney and the other man work this afternoon in an overgrown lot on Park Avenue. This is still his neighborhood, his part of the city. First they roll the mowers off the trailer, then tilt the blade houses up to unwind grocery sacks and wire fencing from the blades, then they put on goggles and gloves, spray bug repellant that smells like bleach on the fabric that covers their legs and arms. Rodney surveys the yard through blustering clouds of mosquitoes, looking for objects that might break the mowers — pieces of metal, chunks of lumber, a broken suitcase — and for bodies that have been dumped. He’s heard stories about corpses hidden in the weeds, girls with skin coal black from decay, their shirts torn off, skirts pulled up over their hips, but he’s never come across one.
The address of the house is spray painted in big orange numbers across the front. This house had a fire, a long time ago by the looks of it, and was abandoned. Through a hole in the roof Rodney sees the charred frame of two-by-fours and what looks like an exercise bike missing its wheel, the slow drift of white summer clouds churning in the sky beyond the hole in the roof. Closer to the house there are empty bottles of booze, aerosol cans, containers of isopropyl alcohol meant to jumpstart cars that folks will drink if they’re cold enough. Homeless people live here in the winter, in houses like these, leaving behind piss stains and soiled clothes that can’t be worn anymore.
After starting the engine, Rodney drives towards a wall of weeds and pushes it over with the mower, then, as he circles the yard, his tires etch a concentric pattern into the undergrowth, jigsawing around the fixtures, a fire hydrant, a light pole. The engine jumps under his seat, straining to turn over as it chops weeds and grass and beer bottles and whatever else is in there, stirring up dust and ten thousand furious insects.
Rodney keeps thinking that he would like to have sung the hymn right for the old woman at the home. He doesn’t feel bad about lying, about saying he’s a gospel singer, but he would like to have sung to her the way the hymn was meant to be sung. As he kills the engine after mowing up to the foundation, Rodney thinks that maybe one day he will sing to her, or to someone else, to the lowdown woman in the room next to his who caterwauls the blues every night. He used to sing all right and might be able to again. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to him, sitting on top of the mower, watching the bugs settle back to the earth, but maybe one day he’ll sing again.
(Tamara Jones)
Aaron met Tamara Jones outside a liquor store in Omaha. It was just a come-on. She walked out and Aaron took her picture. She laughed at him at first. He charmed her with persistence.
She kept a room in a boarding house and that’s where they went to drink. They had some beers and screwed. It wasn’t anything special.
Tamara sang along with the albums she played the whole time he was there. She only ever stood up to use the bathroom at the end of the hall, or to flip a record. She laid naked on her bed and wailed disconsolate incantations, tilted at different keys, half-notes, trying to exorcise the slow undulations of her blues.
It really bothered Aaron the way she did it.
Bad Faith
1
It was after a show at Sokol Underground. I’d been driving up to Omaha once or twice a week that semester and having a few drinks near the back of the room while the bands played. Nothing serious. Not like some girls. Just a g-and-t or two in that smoky basement venue under the gymnastics club, listening to the bands. I bought their albums, stuck their pins to the strap of my bag then drove back to Lincoln when the show was over.
Things changed when I saw the Zapruder Films. A couple of guys from the band invited themselves over to my friend’s place for drinks. She talked me into going too and it wasn’t such a big deal. I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time. My friend Allie was tall and buxom, a blonde in a skirt and banana-yellow tights, with a blue headband. I was the opposite of her, short, but was trim enough to get noticed. Me and Allie knew each other from high school, back in Aurora, the town we grew up in. The guys from the band were named Sammy and Eric, and they both played guitar. They’d known each other a long time too, had met in junior high homeroom and started listening to the Ramones. “The rest is history,” Sammy told me, though I hadn’t asked him about it. Their band wasn’t well-known. I’d never heard of them anyway. They weren’t very good and were just opening for Malkmus because their drummer was the kid brother of a guy who used to play bass for Pavement. Something like that. I wasn’t really listening.
The four of us watched Fargo and drank screwdrivers in Allie’s apartment. There weren’t enough glasses to go around so Sammy drank his out of a cereal bowl. Monopoly was pulled out of its box but we didn’t end up playing. It was too much trouble to count out money. We just watched the movie and laughed about each other’s accents. The Zapruder Films were out of Boston. They drawled in ways different than we did.