He didn’t have any further luck with the trout that morning — even when he floated a Jassid beetle down a riffle, a method he usually considered cheating — but he didn’t care.
He ate his last sandwich, washed it down with water from his canteen, and began the hike back up to his truck.
When Lucien walked into the house at noon he was nearly ready to fall over. Sleep kept nudging him and his mother offered a smile shy of laughter when she saw him. He sighed, walked past her and into his room where he managed to get out of most of his clothes before passing out. He was even sleepy in his dream.
In his dream, he was stumbling through a dense forest following the sound of a woman crying. Birds were screaming, monkeys were speaking from branches, water was dripping from giant leaves of a canopy that let in limited light. He worked to make himself alert, to keep his eyes open, to focus on something, anything, and there in front of him, open-mouthed and silent, nailed to a tree was the figure of Jesus, turning from flesh to wood to carbon. In the woods, he came upon a bed in which his father, missing many pounds and dressed in a hospital gown, lay dying. The dying man swung his legs around, landed his feet on the floor of matted leaves, stood up, and began to pace.
“So, you’ve finally come to see me,” his father said, walking away toward a flowering tree. He turned and walked back.
“I’m sorry.”
The man started for the tree again, then whipped around, clutching his gown. “Ha! Caught you! Didn’t I? Admit it, I caught you peeking at your old man’s crack. Damn these gowns.” He staggered to the bed and sat.
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“Shut the hell up. Stop apologizing.” He leaned back and put his head on the pillow. “Death is really fucked up, Lucien. It has its downside.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s only temporary. Life goes on forever, but death is only temporary.”
Lucien rubbed his eyes and watched shapes fade in and out. “I don’t get it.”
“What’s your favorite color, son?”
“Dun.”
Lucien watched his father close his eyes and begin to swell, first his face, his cheeks pressing beyond their limits, then his neck and arms. Christ was talking now, strange words that were not clear. Lucien looked at Jesus and said, “But I don’t know you.” And all was silent.
Throwing Earth
Joseph Martin straightened, cracking his back. He winced, and a sigh of release softened his face. Letting the pitchfork rest against the stall wall, he twisted his torso again but heard no sound. He leaned his head and shoulders past the gate and called out to his son.
Wes left the water trough he was watching fill up and walked across the hard-baked ground of the corral toward the barn.
“I want you to finish up in here,” Joseph said, stepping out of the stall and stomping his boots to free the clinging dung and straw. He watched the boy set to work. “I’m going to take a look at your mother’s car.”
The boy paused, particles from a pitched load settling. “She ain’t here.”
Joseph pushed up his hat and raked at the perspiration on his forehead with the back of his hand. “She told me her car was acting up.” He looked toward the house. “Where’d she go? She say?”
“I don’t know, Daddy.”
Joseph looked at the horizon, and the hot, dusty day. “When you finish in here, come get me and we’ll worm the last of the horses.”
The boy nodded and Joseph left him to work.
Joseph went to the house and stopped in the kitchen to pour himself a glass of cold water from the bottle in the refrigerator. He held the glass against his face, looking around for a note that his wife might have left. He thought about replacing the leaky T-pipe at the top of the water heater, but instead went outside and sat beneath the big cottonwood. He soaked up shade and watched the driveway, the road, the magpies, the jays.
Wes came to the front yard and stood by Joseph, stunned momentarily by the shade. “Ready to do the horses?”
Joseph stood up.
“What were you doing, Daddy?”
“Nothing.”
“I got the medicine out.”
“Good.” Joseph slapped a hand on Wes’s shoulder. “Good.”
They walked to the small corral beyond the barn.
“Daddy, you think it’d be all right if I went out for the basketball team this year?”
Joseph smiled. “Sure, why not?”
“Just figured I’d ask. I know there’s a lot to do around here.”
Joseph looked at his son and for the first time actually noticed his height. “When did you get as tall as me?”
“Taller,” Wes said.
Joseph pressed his back against the tiled wall of the shower. Once, more of his body struck flush; now his shoulders curved over a bit. Dirt and dust followed rivulets down his body, twisting off his tired legs and finding the drain. He turned off the water and dried his body roughly with a white towel that was stiff from hanging on the line.
While he dressed he listened to his wife downstairs in the kitchen; he heard her footsteps, the clattering of plates and pots settling on the table. She was whistling. The tune annoyed Joseph, but he couldn’t help listening closely. He laughed softly at himself, discovering his anger, but the emotion was no surprise. He was only startled by the calm of it all.
He dressed in new jeans and a white shirt and went downstairs. He sat at the dining-room table, where he always sat, his back to the window.
Wes said nothing, just tore into his meal, keeping his eyes cast down at his busy plate.
“How’s your car?” Joseph asked.
Cora was not ready with an answer. Her voice broke as she searched for words. She landed on, “It did fine today, for a while, but the noise started again.”
“The squeaking you described?” he asked, not really paying attention to her, but tossing a sidelong glance toward the boy.
“Yes,” she said.
He nodded and mumbled that he would tend to it later. He asked Wes to pass the bread. After a silence he asked, “By the way, where’d you go earlier?”
Her response was ready and clear and its suddenness pulled Wes’s eyes from his fork to her. “I was at Amy’s house, helping her choose wallpaper for her kitchen.”
“She doing it herself or having somebody come in?” Joseph buttered his roll.
“Having somebody come in,” Cora said. “And of course I picked up some groceries.”
The moon was unrelenting as Joseph stared out the bedroom window. The cornbread globe, just shy of full, sang a glow of restful light, but Joseph was up cursing it. He went to the window and looked down at the bay mare in the pasture. He couldn’t climb back into bed. He couldn’t lie between the sheets with that woman; he couldn’t have her foot brush his leg or her hair tickle his shoulders. He pulled on his pants and went down the stairs, outside, and across the yard to the corral. The night was cool and not very dark. He took up a handful of earth and looked at it. He knew that if he threw it as hard and as far as he could, all of it would still fall on his land. He let the dirt sift through his fingers.
The next weeks saw a steady rain that had come late, but had come. The pastures were soft and the horses stayed near the trees in the corner of the pasture. Cora’s car was gone more and more. He had seen her car parked in the same place in town several times. Refusing to acknowledge that a blind eye is just as vulnerable as one that sees, he went about his work, rising early, falling silent in the evenings. He could see her car in his sleep, through the windshield of his truck, the rain rolling down it, the wipers counting cadence.